Slang.—Les Jeunes Gens de Paris.—La Jeune France.—Rococo.—DÉcousu.

I suppose that, among all people and at all times, a certain portion of what we call slang will insinuate itself into familiar colloquial intercourse, and sometimes even dare to make its unsanctioned accents heard from the tribune and the stage. It appears to me, I confess, that France is at present taking considerable liberties with her mother-tongue. But this is a subject which requires for its grave discussion a native critic, and a learned one too. I therefore can only venture distantly and doubtingly to allude to it, as one of the points at which it appears to me that innovation is visibly and audibly at work.

I know it may be said that every additional word, whether fabricated or borrowed, adds something to the riches of the language; and no doubt it does so. But there is a polished grace, a finished elegance in the language of France, as registered in the writings of her Augustan age, which may well atone for the want of greater copiousness, with which it has been sometimes reproached. To increase its strength, by giving it coarseness, would be like exchanging a high-mettled racer for a dray-horse. A brewer would tell you, that you gained in power what you lost in grace: it may be so; but there are many, I think, even in this age of operatives and utilitarians, who would regret the change.

This is a theme, however, as I have said before, on which I should not feel myself justified in saying much. None should pretend to examine, or at any rate to discuss critically, the niceties of idiom in a language that is not native to them. But, distinct from any such presumptuous examination, there are words and phrases lawfully within the reach of foreign observation, which strike me as remarkable at the present day, either from their frequent recurrence, or for something of unusual emphasis in the manner in which they are employed.

Les jeunes gens de Paris appears to me to be one of these. Translate it, and you find nothing but "the young men of Paris;" which should seem to have no more imposing meaning than "the young men of London," or of any other metropolis. But hear it spoken at Paris—Mercy on me! it sounds like a thunderbolt. It is not only loud and blustering, however; you feel that there is something awful—nay, mystical, implied by the phrase. It appears solemnly to typify the power, the authority, the learning—ay, and the wisdom too, of the whole nation.

La Jeune France is another of these cabalistic forms of speech, by which everybody seems expected to understand something great, terrible, volcanic, and sublime. At present, I confess that both of these, pronounced as they always are with a sort of mysterious emphasis, which seems to say that "more is meant than meets the ear," produce rather a paralysing effect upon me. I am conscious that I do not clearly comprehend all the meaning with which they are pregnant, and yet I am afraid to ask, lest the explanation should prove either more unintelligible or more alarming than even the words themselves. I hope, however, that ere long I shall grow more intelligent or less timid; and whenever this happens, and I conceive that I fully comprehend their occult meaning, I will not fail to transmit it faithfully to you.

Besides these phrases, and some others that I may perhaps mention hereafter as difficult to understand, I have learned a word quite new to me, and which I suspect has but very recently been introduced into the French language; at least, it is not to be found in the dictionaries, and I therefore presume it to be one of those happy inventions which are permitted from time to time to enrich the power of expression. How the Academy of former days might have treated it, I know not; but it seems to me to express a great deal, and might at this time, I think, be introduced very conveniently into our own language: at any rate, it may often help me, I think, as a very useful adjective. This new-born word is "rococo," and appears to me to be applied by the young and innovating to everything which bears the stamp of the taste, principles, or feelings of time past. That part of the French population to whom the epithet of rococo is thus applied, may be understood to contain all varieties of old-fashionism, from the gentle advocate for laced coats and diamond sword-knots, up to the high-minded venerable loyalist, who only loves his rightful king the better because he has no means left to requite his love. Such is the interpretation of rococo in the mouth of a doctrinaire: but if a republican speaks it, he means that it should include also every gradation of orderly obedience, even to the powers that be; and, in fact, whatever else may be considered as essentially connected either with law or gospel.

There is another adjective which appears also to recur so frequently as fully to merit, in the same manner, the distinction of being considered as fashionable. It is, however, a good old legitimate word, admirably expressive too, and at present of more than ordinary utility. This is "dÉcousu;" and it seems to be the epithet now given by the sober-minded to all that smacks of the rambling nonsense of the new school of literature, and of all those fragments of opinions which hang so loosely about the minds of the young men who discourse fashionably of philosophy at Paris.

Were the whole population to be classed under two great divisions, I doubt if they could be more expressively designated than by these two appellations, the dÉcousu and the rococo. I have already stated who it is that form the rococo class: the dÉcousu division may be considered as embracing the whole of the ultra-romantic school of authors, be they novelists, dramatists, or poets; all shades of republicans, from the avowed eulogists of the "spirited Robespierre" to the gentler disciples of Lamennais; most of the schoolboys, and all the poissardes of Paris.