ideas.

Mrs. Trollope records as an historical and noteworthy phrase, much in
vogue in 1835, "Young France," and describes it as one of those
cabalistic formulae which assume to give expression to a grand, terrible,
sublime, and volcanic idea. What shall we say now-a-days of these two
brief monosyllabic words, in which the strong generation of the
Revolution and the First Empire reposed so haughty a confidence? What
shall we say of them to a disillusionized youth, who no longer believe
in anything, and know neither faith nor culture, except in one thing,
money--for whom Sport and the Bourse have replaced the literature which
strengthened and developed the faculties, and the politics which made
men citizens?

Mrs. Trollope preserves two other words, which first rose into
popularity in 1835--the words _rococo_ and _decousu_. All things which
bore the stamp of the principles and sentiments of former generations
were branded as _rococo_. Whatever partook of the extravagance of the
Romantic school was termed _decousu_. Eventually this latter word was
abandoned as wanting in vigour, and at first that of _debraille_ was
substituted; afterwards that of _Bohemian_, which, despite the injurious
insinuation it conveyed, has been accepted and adopted by a considerable
school. Mrs. Trollope avers that, when she visited France, it was
impossible for two persons to carry on a conversation for a quarter of
an hour without introducing the words _rococo_ and _decousu_ a score of
times. They turned up as frequently as "the head of Charles I." in Mr.
Dick's discourse. And, she adds, with her usual causticity, that if one
were to classify the population into two great divisions, it would be
impossible to define them more expressively than by these two words.

* * * * *

That Mrs. Trollope had no sympathy with the Romantic school will not
excite surprise. Lamennais and Victor Hugo she stigmatizes as _decousus_
of the worst kind, and places them in the same rank as Robespierre. The
genius of Victor Hugo, so vast, so elevated, and so profound, she could
not understand; she could see only its irregularities, like a certain
"aesthete" who, when contemplating the water-floods of Niagara, directed
his attention to a supposed defect in their curve! Her methodical,
matter-of-fact mind was wholly unable to measure the proportions of the
gigantic genius of the author of "Notre Dame," and hence she discharges
at him