The Project Gutenberg eBook of English Pharisees French Crocodiles, by Max O'Rell.

You have been kind enough to receive favorably two volumes of unpretentious impressions of your great and most hospitable country, published in 1889 and 1891.

You are a dear friend and a delightful fellow. You are on the road that will safely lead you to the discovery of everything that can insure the prosperity of the land of which you are so justly proud.

I have drawn a few sketches for you. Perhaps they will show you that people can be happy without rolling in wealth, or living in a furnace.

Take up this little book and, lighting a cigar, lie down quietly on the grass and read it under the shade of a tree.

CONTENTS.

CHAPTER		PAGE
I.	Foreigners	1
II.	John Bull up to Date	9
III.	Jacques Bonhomme, the Landed Peasant-Proprietor of France	17
IV.	Jacqueline, the Fortune of France	27
V.	Joseph Prudhomme, the Jog-Trot Middle-Class Frenchman	33
VI.	Entertaining Neighbors	47
VII.	French Impulsiveness and British Sangfroid Illustrated by Two Reminiscences	53
VIII.	English Pharisees and French Crocodiles	57
IX.	French and English Social Failures	69
X.	High-Life Anglo-French Gibberish as Used in France and England	79
XI.	Humor, Wit, and Hibernianism	87
XII.	The Mal de Mer	95
XIII.	British Philosophy and French Sensitiveness	107
XIV.	The French Snob	123
XV.	A Success as an Anglophobist. (The Late Marquis de Boissy)	127
XVI.	Woman Worship	131
XVII.	Faith and Reason	139
XVIII.	The Worship of the Golden Calf	153
XIX.	Why the French were Beaten in 1870	173
XX.	England Works for Herself. The World Owes Her Nothing	177
XXI.	The Spirit of Destruction and the Spirit Of Conservatism	183
XXII.	Order and Liberty	191
XXIII.	The Humors of Politics	209
XXIV.	Lords and Senators	225
XXV.	What France Has Done to Merit the Respect Of the World	231

ENGLISH PHARISEES AND
FRENCH CROCODILES.

CHAPTER I.

FOREIGNERS.

People very often speak ill of their neighbors, not out of wickedness, but merely out of laziness; it is so much easier to do so than to study their qualities and all the circumstances that might oblige you to change your opinion.

For instance, some fifty years ago, a great English wit, Sydney Smith, said that it required a surgical operation to make a Scotchman understand a joke.

However, the satire was neatly expressed.[Pg 2] When the English get hold of a good joke, and see it, it lasts them a long time.

The Scotch are a hundred times more witty and humorous than the English; but John Bull still goes on affirming that "it requires a surgical operation to make a Scotchman understand a joke."

If such misunderstanding can exist between the English and the Scotch, just imagine what feelings the natives of a land can inspire in foreigners.

In some ears it sounds like bastards. In some people's minds, it is the synonym of bad. The English greengrocer, for instance, divides his asparagus into large and small heads. The fine large ones he binds together and sells at high prices under the name of English asparagus. The bundles of threads at one shilling figure in his shop window as foreign.

In England, the adjective English is syn[Pg 3]onymous with excellent. In France, we have an adjective that signifies excellent, too, and that is the adjective French. Do but make an observation to a French shopkeeper upon the price of his goods, and he will promptly answer: "I keep a cheaper article, but it is naturally of greatly inferior quality. Would Monsieur like to see my English stock?" In French commerce, English is synonymous with worthless.

Once an American said to me, on board a steamer, sailing from Liverpool to New York: "You are a foreigner, I guess."

As a rule, a foreigner is a good fellow,[Pg 4] brought up by worthy parents, and belonging to a country quite as good as yours.

Nations may be well or badly governed. They may possess hot or cold climates, indifferent or beautiful scenery. The manners and customs of their inhabitants may be utterly different. But the most stupid statement that can possibly be made is that some nations are better or worse than others.

We French people ought not to be a closed letter to the foreigner, for Heaven knows we make no attempt to hide our defects, and I might even add that if we did study to hide them, instead of boasting of them, we might cut quite as good and moral a figure as the most proper inhabitant of the British Isles or of the State of Maine.

We offer ourselves to criticism so unreserv[Pg 5]edly, owning our shortcomings with such frankness, such abandon, that it ill becomes our neighbors to find fault with us. Indeed, we are a nation that confesses with a gay candor that should disarm unkind criticism.

Yes, the foreigner ought to be able to read, as in an open book, that good, warm-hearted, France that he hardly looks at. For him, France is Paris; Paris that supplies him with pleasures for a fortnight, and that he despises when he is satiated. The real France, peaceful and laborious, he knows nothing about beyond what he has seen of it from the windows of a railroad car.

"I have just returned from France. What a country it is! Ah! I have seen pretty sights, I can assure you! I will tell you all about it in private, when we meet. All I can say now is, that I thank God that I was born an Englishman."[Pg 6]

The Frenchman is no better. He comes to London for a week on business. (I say "on business," because nobody would think of coming to London on pleasure), and profits by his visit to go and see Madame Tussaud's Exhibition. Then he returns home, and exclaims, parodying Victor Hugo's celebrated lines: "How proud a man is to call himself a Frenchman when he has looked at England."

Firstly, they are liable to visit the wrong places, like the Englishman who returned home "thanking God he was born an Englishman."[Pg 7]

When English people alight at a French hotel and find no soap on the washstand, do you believe they conclude from this that the French carry their own soap in their trunks when they travel? Not they. They conclude that the French do not wash, or that, if they do, their ablutions are performed by means of a corner of a handkerchief dipped in water.

Mark Twain, the prince of American humorists, exclaims upon entering the bedroom of a French hotel: "What, waiter, no soap! Don't you know that soap is indispensable to an Englishman or an American; and that only a Frenchman can do without it?"

It is true that you find soap on the washstands in English or American hotels; but the English and their American cousins may perhaps be astonished to hear that a true-born Frenchman would have as much repugnance to using hotel soap, as they would to using a[Pg 8] toothbrush that they might find on a lodging-house washstand. Some people like second-hand soap; some do not. We will even make bold to inform them that a great many French ladies are so particular as to carry about a supply of bedroom towels with them when they travel.

CHAPTER II.

JOHN BULL UP TO DATE.

Would you know what an Englishman is—let him be a duke's son, officer in Her Majesty's service, student, schoolboy, clerk, shopboy, gentleman, or street rough?

Well, an Englishman is a lusty fellow, fearless, hardy, and strong-knit, iron-muscled, and mule-headed, who, rather than let go a ball that he holds firmly in his arms, will perform feats of valor; who, to pass this ball between two goals, will grovel in the dust, reckless of lacerated shoulders, a broken rib or jawbone, and will die on a bed of suffering with a smile upon his lips if he can only hear, before closing his eyes, that his side has won the game.

Multiply this Englishman by the number of the stars in the firmament, and you will arrive[Pg 10] at a pretty correct idea of England's martial, if not military, force.

The Englishman does nothing by halves. His favorite adjective is thorough. The more difficulties he has to surmount the more he is in his element; he is a curious mixture of lion, mule, and octopus. Outdoing Milo of Crotona, he would manage to withdraw his wrist from the cleft of the oak.

Mr. Gladstone said one day (many years ago): "When I work, I work as hard as I can; when I run, I run as fast as I can; when I jump, I jump as far as I can." He might add now: "When I get into a mess, I plunge into it over head and shoulders."

To three qualities I ascribe the success of John Bull: his tenacity, the coolness of his head, and the thickness of his skin.

Take an Englishman to visit the ruins of some old castle: he will not rest until he has thrust his nose into every nook and cranny of[Pg 11] the place, and climbed the most crumbling walls, at the risk of breaking his neck over and over again. He has seen nothing if he has not seen all. You may think yourself lucky if he has not profited by your back being turned for a moment, to go and hoist the Union Jack on the summit of the highest tower. That is a little weakness of his that makes him a trifle inconvenient occasionally, I must say; but, you see, one cannot get on in this world without a certain aptitude for making one's self at home.

He conquers the world for the good of the world. When he goes after pastures new, he takes the Bible with him. It will not be long before the natives have the Bible, and he their land. On arriving upon his new field of operation, the missionary places the Bible in the hands of the natives, and thus addresses them: "My dear Brethren, lift your eyes to Heaven, and pray. Lift your eyes—higher—higher—still higher—that's it. Now close them, and do not open them until I tell you—that's it[Pg 12]—pray—there—now open your eyes, you are saved."

Truly, a strange being, but an interesting subject of study, is this same Englishman. Capable of combining a thousand different personages, of playing a thousand different parts, of doing in Rome (to use his own words) as the Romans do; extreme in each of his acts, presenting the most striking contrasts, but always guided by his reason. Fiery patriot, yet calmly bearing the greatest humiliations while awaiting the propitious moment for taking his innings. In the temple, a publican, crying aloud, "O Lord, I am but a miserable sinner!" Outside its door, a Pharisee, setting up for a marvel of virtue. Worshiper of Mammon and Jehovah, the man most concerned in the interests of the next world, and most wrapped up in the concerns of this.

In the singular, a man upon whose word you can rely as you would upon a trusty sword;[Pg 13] in the plural, a people who have too often merited the epithet "perfidious." At home, preaching temperance, even to the forswearing of all drinks but water; abroad, not only encouraging, but enforcing the opium trade. At home, prosecuting the individual that ill-uses an animal, unless, indeed, the animal be a wife; abroad, setting a price upon the head of a recalcitrant foe. At home, punishing with imprisonment the people who obstruct the rowdy processions of the Salvation Army mountebanks; in India, sending to prison the same mountebanks, who, in their zeal, might create religious difficulties among a nation that he has subdued.

Opportunist par excellence, he never asks all or nothing. He accepts a little as being better than nothing; and thus it is that little by little, without shock or violence, without revolutions, he perfects the machinery of his constitution.

Everything John Bull does is perfect. When anything goes wrong, he knows where[Pg 14] to lay the blame: he keeps Scotchmen, Irishmen, and Welshmen conveniently at hand for that purpose.

At prayer time, a man appearing somewhat uncomfortable. When he prays, he makes a grimace, or hides his face in his hat, and reminds one of Heinrich Heine's sayings, "that a blaspheming Frenchman must be a more pleasing object in the sight of God than a praying Englishman."

Also watch John Bull as the collection is going on. Hear him sing at the top of his voice

And all the time see how carefully he feels his pockets to be quite sure that it is a three-penny bit that he has got hold of.

And what a diplomatist he is! Ask him for a reform, and he will stare at you astonished,[Pg 15] assuring you that all is for the best in the best of worlds. But shake your fist at him, and show him that you mean to have that reform, and he will smile, and say: "Oh, that's all right, I beg your pardon, I didn't know that you were in earnest."

Worshiping his old monarchy, devoted to his old institutions, but ravenous for justice and liberty, he would be ready again to-day to demolish both monarchy and constitution, as he did in the seventeenth century, if his liberty ran the least danger. In politics, possessing the virtues that are indispensable to the prosperity of a nation—respect of the law and respect of power clearly manifested—he always bows to the decision of a majority. Refusing to submit to despotism in any shape or form, he himself keeps in order and discipline all his paid guides and governors: his queen, his princes, his ministers, his generals, his judges, his priests.[Pg 16]

Wise, industrious, and persevering, never doubting his strength, above all minding his own business, and imposing upon one and all their attributions and duties, from his sovereign down to the humblest citizen, he has chosen for his motto:

CHAPTER III.

JACQUES BONHOMME, THE LANDED PEASANT-PROPRIETOR OF FRANCE.

Jacques Bonhomme is a small landowner, fond of his country, his cottage, his fields, his cow, and his gros sous. His great aim is to be independent of the world, and to this end he takes great care of his pence, and has no need of any French John Bright to tell him that if he does so, the pounds will take care of themselves; it is a sentiment inborn in him. If you wish to make him happy, when he brings you a load of wood or a cask of cider, pay him in silver five-franc pieces—his coin of predilection. He will take gold without repugnance, but will look askance at a banknote. If you were to tender him a check, the odds are ten to one that he would immediately go for a policeman.[Pg 18]

He does not seek to imitate the dweller in cities, either in his habits, speech, or dress. All he has on his back is not worth more than four or five francs, but his blouse is new when he buys it, and it belongs to him, as my black coat belongs to me. His food costs him about fourpence or fivepence a day at the outside, but it is wholesome and abundant. He keeps early hours and saves his candles, he lives a healthy life and saves doctors' bills. When he lies down to die, it is in his own bed, and his parish has not to pay for his funeral.

Every French village has its poor, but pauperism is unknown, for Jacques Bonhomme is charitable, and he always finds means to send a basin of soup to a neighbor whom he knows to be in want of one. It is only for the loafer that he has no pity; when he has called a fellow-creature fainéant, he has used the strongest invective in his vocabulary.

In politics, he takes very little interest, if any. All governments are acceptable to him, except perhaps the one that happens to be in power when he gets bad weather for the har[Pg 19]vest. How else explain the fact that changes of government have always been made in Paris without his sanction, or even his opinion being asked for; and that the seven million five hundred thousand men who vote for the Republic to-day, are the seven million five hundred thousand who, when they were asked by the Emperor, in the year of the Plebiscite, whether they would still have him or not, answered almost to a man: "I will."

Jacques Bonhomme scarcely knew what a Plebiscite was; but he went to see his parish priest, who said to him:

"Well, my good fellow, that is all the Emperor asks you to say; that is voting."

There is one form of government, however,[Pg 20] of which he would dread the return: the government of the curés. He has not forgotten the tithe and the corvée, nor the days when the monks used to come and pay little visits to his wife and his cupboard, to bless his children, and relieve him of his superfluous butter and eggs.

He is no great churchgoer; yet, when he meets his parish priest, he touches his cap, but almost as he would touch it to an equal.

He is beginning to know how to hold a pen, but he rarely uses one except for the purpose of adding up his little accounts. As to letter-writing, he sees no fun in a frivolous pastime that would cost him three sous.

He has been placed by Nature on a fertile soil that yields him all he needs, and if you were to talk to him of emigration, he would stare and ask you what crime he had committed to deserve transportation. There is no more home-abiding creature upon the face of the earth.

You may tell him you are going round the[Pg 21] world. He will let you go. He is not jealous.

On the wall of the village schoolroom he has seen a map of the world, but although he is willing to believe that it fairly represents the earth we live on, he would fain have seen the name of his dear village on it. He doubts not that the earth is round, since his curé and his schoolmaster say so; but the only proof he has of it is the sight of the line of horizon that greets his eyes, when he climbs the hill-top.

I know two or three of these honest French workers, who were induced to go to Paris in 1878, to see the Universal Exhibition. Such was their suspicion of the gay capital that, before setting out, they sewed their golden louis in the lining of their coats, and had their wills made by the notary.

The French peasant is peaceful, sober, and laborious. He possesses in a remarkable degree that invaluable quality than which there[Pg 22] is no higher intelligence for the solution of the great problem of existence, which consists in patiently accepting one's fate, however hard it may be, and making the best of it. His ideal of life is the independence which is the fruit of labor, and he is satisfied with very little in the days of his strength, because the prospect of eating his own bread when his strength is gone makes him happy. He is thrifty and self-denying, but he is not deficient in any of the generous sentiments. He befriends his poorer relatives, he can be hospitable and charitable, and a patriot, too, when occasion calls, as history has proved. But he is no fire-eater, no yearner after social regeneration by baptism of blood, no dreamer of new worlds to conquer, nor the revival of dying feuds in ghastly wars. The surging passions of the capital, bred and fed by vice and improvidence, are horrible to him. He wishes the world to be at peace, so that he may be left alone, and be allowed to raise his flocks and grow his corn and wine in peace.[Pg 23]

It is when he is making a purchase, at the fair or at the market, that Jacques is to be seen in his element.

Look at him as he takes a preliminary turn or two around the little rickety stall. He hesitates a long while before making up his mind; he knows that if he seems to have a fancy for any particular article, he will probably be asked a good price for it. So it is only cautiously, and with a look of indifference on his face, that he at length draws near. Next, taking up the coveted object with the limpest of fingers, he gives off sundry little grunts of disapprobation. He turns it over and over, looks at it well on all sides, shakes his head, and invariably finishes by dropping it back in its place again.

Then he turns, and makes as though he would go away, but after having taken a few steps, he brings up, comes back, and indicating the object of his maneuvers with a contemptuous finger, says to the vender:

He has scarcely heard the reply before he exclaims: "You mean that for a joke, I suppose."

Watch him a little later, as he goes off, carrying his purchase in triumph, and you will plainly see that he has made a bargain.

If Solomon had known Jacques Bonhomme, we might be inclined to think that it was he whom the Hebrew king had in his mind's eye, as he wrote: "It is naught, it is naught, saith the buyer; but when he has gone his way, then he boasteth."

Jacques' manner is no less remarkable when he has to part with the value in cash.

He seldom carries his money in his trousers' or waistcoat pocket. He confides it to the depths of a long purse, from which it is only to be extracted with difficulty, and this purse is hidden inside his blouse, and carefully attached to it by a strong leather string.

When the operation of paying has to be[Pg 25] performed, Jacques gently lifts his blouse, and, making a rather wry face, draws forth his purse from its hiding-place. In the act of untying the leather string, he is as unhappy-looking a creature as you may well behold. He rarely faces the enemy on these occasions. He turns his back to you, and pretends to have great difficulty in getting his money out of his recalcitrant purse. Perhaps he hopes you will get tired of waiting, and say to him: "Never mind, Jacques, you can pay me another day."

When at last he has the money in his hand, he turns toward you, holds it out, draws it back, but eventually makes up his mind to the loss of this little portion of his patrimony.

Then he begins to wonder whether you have not taken him in; but, as it is too late to draw back, he resolves that he will be a match for you next time.

CHAPTER IV.

JACQUELINE, THE FORTUNE OF FRANCE.

Jacques Bonhomme's wife is the fortune of France. Hard-working, thrifty, sober, you will always see her busy, either working in the field, selling her wares in the market-place of the nearest town, or engaged about her little household. She is the personification of industry, and when the winter of life comes on, you will find her by the chimney corner, or near the cottage door, keeping watch over the little ones, while she knits or spins; it is with her needles or her distaff in her hand that she peacefully passes away from earth. Not an hour in the life of the good Jacqueline has been spent in indolence.

It is she who hides the five-franc pieces in the corner of her linen cupboard, only to be taken out when there is an opportunity of[Pg 28] rounding off the little family domain. Shares, bonds, and all such lottery tickets, she leaves for the small bourgeois of the town, who love to wait their turn at the door of the Treasury Office on the day of a national loan. No papers for her; what she likes is a field or a cow, something she is quite sure to find in its place in the morning, when she wakes up.

It is on market-day that you should see her! She makes light of a ten or twelve-mile walk to the chief town of her district, carrying a basket loaded with fruit or vegetables on each arm. In the evening, you may meet her with baskets empty, but pockets full, trudging back to her peaceful cottage—the center of all her affections. Follow her along the road a little, and you will see that, as she goes, she manages to busy her fingers on a pair of stockings for the little ones.

Her daughter does not wear fringes on her forehead, feathers on her hat, fifty-cent diamonds in her ears, or flounces on a second-hand skirt; but, though she is dressed in a[Pg 29] plain coarse serge gown, and a simple snowy cap, her round rosy cheeks tell you that she is healthy, and a pair of eyes, that stare at you like the daisies in her father's field, tell you that she is pure.

When she goes into service—which is often the case—every month, as she receives her wages, she quietly pays a little visit to the savings bank of the town.

When the English servant receives her monthly wages, she straightway goes to buy a new hat and get photographed in it.

I will refrain from speaking of the duchesses who condescend to act as "helps" to the American public.

And the patriotism of her! Ah, let me here pay my humble tribute of admiration and gratitude that she has so great a claim to! Who among us French has not kept, engraven on his memory, the souvenir of the devoted peasant women of Normandy, Pi[Pg 30]cardy, of Alsace and Lorraine, and all they did for us in that terrible year that would have seen the death of France, if France could die? Who among us has not admired and blessed them? With a sad smile on her face, how kindly the poor Jacqueline welcomed the weary soldier, worn out with fatigue and hunger! And, while the rich bourgeois too often received us with a frown, as he muttered, "More soldiers!" her greeting was always kindly. "Come in, my poor lads," she would cry; "you are tired and hungry. We have not much to offer here, but you shall have a bed to-night, if it is but a bed of straw, a good soup, and a rasher of bacon, or whatever there is in the cupboard. That will do you good. My own poor lad is fighting somewhere; it is many weeks ago now that I heard from him, but I hope some kind soul is doing for him to-night what I am doing for you." And the good creature would prepare her vegetables, put the soup on the fire, make up beds for us [Pg 31] around the hearth, and give us old soft shoes for our poor blistered feet. And when, in the morning, we left her hospitable roof, we would say, "Allons, maman, adieu et merci. God bless you for all you have done for us." And as we went our way, she, standing on the threshold of her door, would wave her handkerchief, and watch the regiment out of sight. Then she would turn away, and the evening found her ready to do the same for the next weary band of men that halted at her door.

Oh! my good peasant folk of France, you are the fortune of your country, and you also, with your rustic simplicity, are its generous heart. It is among you that tired human nature drinks deep draughts of pure life-giving air, and forgets the struggles of the city, its noisy pleasures, its ephemeral joys, its jealousies and burning hatreds; it is in your midst that the soul is tuned into harmony with mankind, and man feels at peace with all the[Pg 32] world, as he looks at the bright spring blossoms, breathes the intoxicating perfume of the humid forest, and gazes at Nature, as she emerges from her bath of dew to robe herself in a raiment of light.

CHAPTER V.

JOSEPH PRUDHOMME, THE JOG-TROT MIDDLE-CLASS FRENCHMAN.

Joseph Prudhomme, whom the Anglo-Saxon people are fond of representing as a fighting cock, sighing constantly after glory and conquest, is a modest proprietor, peaceful, home-loving, steady-going, whom his mother calls "petit," and his wife leads by the nose.

Glory and conquests! he has had enough of all that: it is peace that he asks for at the top of his voice. Like his social inferior, Jacques Bonhomme, the only conquest that he hankers after, is the conquest of that independence which is assured by a safe investment at three or three and a half per cent.

Joseph is not wealthy, but he is rich, rich like most of us, not in that which he possesses, but in that which he knows how to do with[Pg 34]out. He is rich, because the little he has got is always safe and stable.

It is stability in fortunes and the proper distribution of wealth over a nation which constitute real riches, and that is why France, who has now more than six millions of contented landed proprietors, is probably, in the proper sense of the word, the richest nation in the world.

Joseph is by no means a great speculator. Economical and industrious, he quickly goes on his sober way, until he has amassed the snug little sum that will allow him to live at his ease.

To have from one to two thousand dollars a year, such is his aim. As soon as he has attained it, he knocks off work and takes life easily, devoting his time to his wife and family.

Economy is the very genius of France. The peasant buys a bit of land; the working classes put something in the savings bank, which, at the present moment, has more than $450,000,000 in its coffers. The middle classes[Pg 35] buy government securities. Very few people speculate.

In France, everybody runs after comfort, but few run after wealth. When an American has a million, he must have two, and then ten. He forgets that he can possess one million, but cannot possess ten, without losing his peace of mind and happiness. The Frenchman wants comfort; he wants enough to establish his children, educate his boys, portion his daughters, and spend his old days in quietness. He wants no more. In France, we have no Jay Goulds. If a Suez Canal was made, it did not owe its existence to a few capitalists, but to hundreds and thousands of workers who brought their savings.

When Joseph has retired from business, he begins to dream of honors. The words Town Counselor, District Counselor, and Mayor, are pleasing to his ear, inasmuch as these honorable posts enable their holders to wear uni[Pg 36]forms. And Joseph has a decided weakness for uniforms and gold braid. A sword specially; a sword adds an inch or two to his stature.

He is fond of making sounding phrases, and his signature is a masterpiece of inimitable calligraphy.

His game of predilection is dominoes. When he plays at loto, he never fails to add, after announcing the number seven, la pipe à Thomas.

When he sends twenty francs to his boy, he scrupulously seals the envelope in five places, and stares incredulously, if you tell him that the English often stuff a bundle of banknotes into their letters, and do not take the trouble to register them.

He has the name of being a Republican. I am willing to believe him one, since he now votes for the Republic; but it is less from profound conviction than from the dread of hearing that barricades are being erected in Paris, that he votes for the government of the day.[Pg 37] "Beati possidentes!" he cries, there is nothing like tranquillity.

He belongs to a little town, administered by a mayor, two deputy-mayors, and a municipal council; his little town forms part of an arrondissement, administered by a sub-prefect and a council of arrondissement; his arrondissement forms part of a department, administered by a prefect, a council of prefecture, and a general council; his department forms part of France, administered by a President of the Republic, a ministerial council, a council of state, a Senate, and a Chamber of Deputies. Add to this, the general council of agriculture, the general council of commerce, the council of manufactures, the council of mines, the council of roads and bridges, the council general of prisons, the council of war, the council of finance, the council of the navy, the council of prud'hommes, the board of health, and a hundred others, and you will see that, if Joseph[Pg 38] pays taxes, he has the satisfaction of knowing that he is counseled abundantly.

His accounts are kept by an administration that "all Europe envies," and carried to the fourth decimal, a luxury which costs him a good fourth of his revenue in personnel and red tape, but which on the other hand saves the Treasury at least one dollar per annum. The centimes column is guaranteed exact by every French clerk; this ought to console Joseph for the little errors which may exist in the column of the millions. In a ministerial office, a mistake of a centime puts the whole staff in commotion, from the ground floor to the roof, and if a clerk were to propose to replace the centime out of his own pocket, and thus set matters right, he would be looked upon as a dangerous man, and his career would be blasted, unless, indeed, the affair should make some noise, in which case he might see[Pg 39] himself provided with a seat in the Chamber of Deputies.

In business, Joseph's probity is almost proverbial, and his punctuality carried to a ridiculous point. On quarter day, he pays his rent at the stroke of noon. In England, the landlord can only demand his rent twenty-one days after it is due, and bills are only presented after three days' grace. His commerce is hindered by his exaggerated attention to trifles, but when he sells you a pair of boots, you can put them on, and walk in them.

He is jealous of his reputation, and a compliment paid to the quality of his merchandise gives him as much pleasure as the profit he gets out of it.

I do not hesitate to affirm that not only does the small French bourgeois not covet wealth, but that he is almost afraid of it. I might name many old provincial parents, who have written long letters to their sons, com[Pg 40]mencing with congratulations upon the literary, artistic, or other successes they had met with in Paris, and ending with lamentations over the financial ones which had resulted therefrom. These good people were full of fear lest money should raise a barrier between them and their dear son, and thus cloud the happiness of the family.

When he marries, woman is not exactly an enigma to him; but do you think he is any the worse husband for that? Not he. The purity of his wife becomes an object of worship for him; he recognizes in her a moral being so superior to himself that he soon abdicates all his prerogatives in her favor; and he consoles himself for the authority that he rarely knows how to maintain in his home, with the thought that the administration of his affairs is in safe hands. Taking life placidly, he grows round[Pg 41] and rubicund; he is well cared for, petted, coddled; he lives in clover. His wife is his friend, his confidante. If from one cause or another the family revenue diminishes, she knows it as soon as her husband; with her economy and good management, she faces the danger; with her energy, she wards off ruin from her threshold. In important matters, as well as in the smallest, she has both a consultative and deliberative voice. Content with her supremacy in the home circle, she asks for no other rights; politics are not in her line. And yet a French woman is far from lacking patriotism. Those same timid girls and tender mothers who could not bear us out of their sight, are the women who said to us, not long since: "Do not think about us; your country claims you, do your duty."

Provincial life in France is narrow, limited in the highest degree, I must admit; but what wealth of love and happiness those little[Pg 42] coquettish-looking white houses hold! They are so many nests!

The greatest charm about our provincials, who are constantly made the butt for Parisian witticisms, is that they do not change.

When you live that feverish Parisian life, that consumes you by overtaxing your intellectual powers, what a treat it is to go and see the old folks, in the old house that is standing there just as you remember it in your childhood! Every room, every piece of furniture, is linked in your memory with some event of bygone days. How you revive in that old place!

In the thickest darkness you could find everything. Your dear old mother is there in her chair by the window, in her favorite place, which has not altered so much as an inch. The old servant, who danced you on her knee, watches at the door for the first glimpse of the carriage that brings you. And the cries of joy, and the clapping of hands! What welcome awaits you! Everyone speaks at the[Pg 43] same time, you are taken by storm, nobody thinks of checking his delight (in France, joy is allowed free outlet). You go up to the room that used to be yours to shake off the dust of your journey. Nothing is altered, everything is there, just where it always was in the old days; you feel as if you had grown twenty years younger. You go down, and in the dining room you see the large fireplace that has undergone no stupid modernizing. Will you ever forget the bloodcurdling ghost stories that you listened to so breathlessly in the twilight, as you roasted chestnuts in the embers? What shivers of horror would run through you as you nestled close up in that chimney corner! And so all the past revives again: the April walks in quest of dewy primroses, the scamper over the daisy-strewn fields in the glorious summer sunshine; the clandestine raids on the pear trees, and the scoldings from mother, who was sure to read the history of the afternoon in the meek faces and torn raiment.[Pg 44]

The Frenchman of the provinces wraps himself up in his family, almost to the exclusion of the outer world. In the streets he salutes his acquaintances with a profound bow; on New Year's Day he pays them a visit of ceremony, offers the ladies a packet of marrons glacés, or a couple of oranges; but his hospitable table is only open to his children, who, as long as he lives, are at home in the house. One or two intimate friends at most are allowed to penetrate freely into the little circle; the time is killed, even killed by inches, A garden, chickens, ducks, the Saturday pot-au-feu, such is the extent of his ambition. All this luxury can be obtained for about a hundred dollars a month. When his three per cent. rentes secure him this sum, he retires from business, and gives his younger fellow-creatures a chance.

His family being generally small, he has all his dear ones around him, under his roof.

To give a good education to his sons, and a good dot to his daughters, to see them happily married, and keep them near him after their marriage, to bring up his grandchildren, guide their first tottering steps, make companions of them, launch them in life, and see them all assembled around his death-bed, such is the life of the good Joseph Prudhomme.

CHAPTER VI.

ENTERTAINING NEIGHBORS.

To an impartial observer, who goes on his way philosophizing, and keeping his eyes open to what passes on either side of the English Channel, it is really a very amusing sight to see how the two countries seem to make it their aim, each to do the contrary of what the other does.

When we are in difficulties, we take our watch to our aunt; the English take theirs to their uncle.

In France, the curé has a certain number of vicaires under his orders; in England, it is the curate who is the vicar's subaltern. On this point, there is no doubt about our being in the right, since a curate is a priest, ordained to[Pg 48] take charge of a cure (the responsible care of souls), whereas a vicar (vicarius) is a priest who takes the place of another.

In France, coachmen keep to the right; in England, they keep to the left. The drivers of hansom cabs are seated far from their horses, and are obliged to use very long whips; but, as they keep to the left, the action of the whip takes place in the middle of the road, and thus peaceful promenaders of the pavement are spared many a disagreeable cut.

The French language possesses the two words éditer and publier; the English language has to edit and to publish. But it must be well understood that it is to publish which means éditer, and to edit which means publier. These Chinese puzzles, so constantly met with, are not useless, however; they are the delight of French examiners in England, and, of course, the despair of candidates, which is easy to[Pg 49] understand, if one considers how much easier it is to be examiner than examined.

In England, you "get wet to the skin," in France, we "get wet to the bones," and you know that, when the English go as far as the backbone, the French, not to be outdone, go as far as the marrow of the bone.

In England, people are witty "to their fingers' end"; in France, "to the end of their finger-nails."

The index is placed at the beginning of English books, but at the end of French ones.

Both the French and English languages have aspirate h's, but, whereas in English it is vulgar to drop them, in French it is vulgar to sound them.

In France, it is considered very bad form to call people by their names directly after being introduced to them. We simply address them as Monsieur, Madame, Mademoiselle. In England, only shopmen address ladies as Madam, or Miss. When you have been intro[Pg 50]duced, you must add a person's surname to the title, to Mr., Mrs., or Miss, in speaking to them.

In England, they "take French leave"; but in France we "take English leave," and we are quits.

The pound sterling contains twenty shillings, the shilling twelve pence, the penny four farthings; and if you want to find out, for instance, how much the sum of 356 pounds, 18 shillings, and 9 pence 3 farthings, has brought in, at compound interest, in four years, five months, and eight days, at the rate of 3⁷/₁₉ per cent., I would advise you to procure a ream of foolscap paper and set to work. When you have waded through the sum, you will wonder how it is that the English, practical as they are, have not adopted the decimal system. But then, you see, they have adopted it in France.

Even down to the manner of holding a fork or an umbrella, the two nations seem to be saying to each other: "You do it that way? very well, then, I shall do it this way."[Pg 51]

In making an inventory of the contrasts in the two nations, it would be difficult to say which is oftener in the right. The balance is probably pretty even.

The last I will mention is the difference in the manner of keeping Good Friday, and in this, I think, the good mark ought to be for us.

Good Friday, being the anniversary of the death of our Savior, the French keep it in fasting and prayer. On the following Sunday, the day of His Resurrection, they rejoice. Easter day, being Sunday, finds the English people plunged in solemn silence; but, on Good Friday, they take their holiday, and the lower orders celebrate their Redeemer's death by knocking down cocoanuts.

CHAPTER VII.

FRENCH IMPULSIVENESS AND BRITISH SANGFROID ILLUSTRATED BY TWO REMINISCENCES.

Two incidents that took place lately, in Paris and London respectively, may serve to illustrate French impulsiveness and English sangfroid.

The other evening the opera "Les Huguenots" was played at the Grand Opera. The singer who took the part of Marcel was out of sorts, and sang flat. An old gentleman, seated in an orchestra stall, was observed to be restless and uncomfortable during the performance. At the end of the last act, Marcel passes before the church, just at the moment when the Duke of Nevers and his partisans come out of it.[Pg 54]

"Huguenot," answers Marcel, and he falls, shot dead by the followers of the Duke.

This part of the opera had no sooner been acted, than the old gentleman, who now looked radiant, rose from his seat, put on his hat, and, shaking his fist at the dead hero, to the great amusement of the public, cried at the top of his voice:

"You donkey, it serves you right, you have been singing out of tune the whole evening."

In a beautifully appointed English house, afternoon tea, served in costly china, had just been brought to the drawing-room, when the mistress of the house inadvertently overturned the tea-table. Without the slightest show of vexation, without oh! or ah! Lady R—— calmly touched the bell, and, on the appearance of the domestic, merely said:[Pg 55]

"My dear," whispered Lady P—— to a friend, "she won't match that china for $500."

A fearful railway accident has taken place. The first car, with its human contents, is reduced to atoms.

An Englishman, who was in one of the first-class cars at the rear, examines the débris.

"Oh!" he says to an official, pointing to a piece of flesh wrapped up in a piece of tweed cloth. "Pick that up, that's the piece of my butler that has got the keys of my trunks."

CHAPTER VIII.

ENGLISH PHARISEES AND FRENCH CROCODILES.

The French and the English have this very characteristic feature in common: they can stand any amount of incense; you may burn all the perfumes of Arabia under their noses, without incommoding them in the slightest degree.

The French boaster is noisy and talkative. With his mustache twirled defiantly upward, his hat on one side, he will shout at you, at the top of his voice that,[1] "La France, Mon[Pg 58]sieur, sera toujours la Fr-r-rance, les Français seront toujours les Fr-r-rançais." As you listen to him, you are almost tempted to believe, with Thackeray, "that the poor fellow has a lurking doubt in his own mind that he is not the wonder he professes to be."

But allow me to say that the British specimen is far more provoking. He is so sure that all his geese are swans; so thoroughly persuaded of his superiority over the rest of the human race; it is, in his eyes, such an incon[Pg 59]tested and incontestable fact, that he does not think it worth his while to raise his voice in asserting it, and that is what makes him so awfully irritating, "don't you know?" He has not a doubt that the whole world was made for him; not only this one, but the next. In the meantime—for he is in no hurry to put on the angel plumage that awaits him—he congratulates himself on his position here below. Everything is done to add to his comfort and happiness: the Italians give him concerts, the French dig the Suez Canal for him, the Germans sweep out his offices and do his errands in the City of London for $200 a year, the Greeks grow the principal ingredient in his plum pudding. The Americans supply his aristocracy with rich heiresses, so that they may get their coats of arms out of pawn. His face beams with gratitude and complacency, as he quietly rubs his hands together, and calmly thanks Heaven that he is not as other men are. And it is true enough; he is not.

"Dear brother reader," says Thackeray,[Pg 60] "answer as a man of honor. Do you think a Frenchman your equal? You don't, you gallant British snob, you know you don't.... Oh, my country! if I were a Frenchman, how I would hate you!"

There is one great difference between our two boasters: the Englishman will seek, on all occasions, to appear a trifle better than he really is—he never runs himself down; if he has a defect or two, he will let you find them out; but the Frenchman, on the contrary, is a braggart of vice. To hear him joke about matrimony, for instance, you would take him for a libertine. To listen to some of the plays that he will applaud, to see the caricatures that amuse him, you might come to the conclusion that, in his eyes, marriage was not a sacred tie. But do not form your conclusions too hastily. Those jokes, that delight him, are often in very doubtful taste, I admit; but they are jokes and nothing more, and if you were to[Pg 61] take the plays and caricatures for real pictures of French life, you would be making as great a mistake as you could well make.

Now, a Frenchman, who had given an appointment to his wife, would be apt to take on a little look of mystery as he hurried away from a friend in the street, with the words: "Excuse my haste, I must leave you; I have an appointment." And if you heard the response, "Ah! you rascal, I'll tell your wife," accompanied by a knowing shake of the head, you might rashly take the pair for a couple of reprobates. But once more you would be wrong. Such harmless trivialities—for trivialities they must be called—are indulged in by men who are the honor and joy of their homes.

Let me tell you this: Whenever you hear a Frenchman speak ill of himself, do not believe him, he is merely boasting. Be sure that nothing is more true. I shall never say anything more true so long as I live.

We French hide our virtues and do not like to be reproached with them. On this subject[Pg 62] I might tell an anecdote which, if venerable, is none the less amusing.

The Athenæum, a paper written by the élite of the literary, scientific, and artistic worlds, was at a loss to know, not long since, why almost all the heroes of French novels were engineers. The reason is that French engineers are all ex-pupils of the Polytechnic School. I mean the engineers of mines, roads, and bridges. These young men, having passed their youth in study, in order to prepare for the most difficult examination we have, naturally have the reputation of being steady. The anecdote is this: Edmond About one day wrote: "Virtuous as a Polytechnician." The sentence displeased the young mathematicians, and they promptly took the author of it to task.

I forget the exact words of their reply, but it ran, as nearly as I can recollect:

And I can vouch for the truth of this little anecdote: I was one of those who signed the letter.

Call a Frenchman a "good father" or "good citizen," he will smile and probably answer back, "You humbug!" Yet he is a good father and a good citizen, and he used to be a good garde-national, notwithstanding his objection to be told so. He proved it during the siege of Paris, although his wife had never been able to look at him in his uniform without laughing.

Now, if the Englishman, who ornaments his buttonhole with a piece of blue ribbon, does not put on two pieces more to proclaim urbi et orbi that he is a good father and a good citizen, it is because the idea never occurred to him—for nobody doubts that, like his neighbor, he, too, is a good father and a good citizen.

Ah! I say once more, if we only knew how to hide our faults as we can hide our virtues, what a respectable figure we could cut by the side of our neighbors![Pg 64]

The English hypocrite is the hypocrite of virtue and religion. English novelists have exposed him, but have not succeeded in extinguishing him; the Chadbands, the Stigginses, the Podsnaps, the Pecksniffs, all the saintly British Tartuffes, are as flourishing as ever.

Molière could, in his times, put on the stage such a man as Tartuffe; at the present day the type is extinct; the religious hypocrite would not go down in France; the character is exploded.

Pecksniff, one of the most powerful creations of Dickens, a photograph from the life, had named his two daughters, Mercy and Charity. In France, this worthy father and the Misses Mercy and Charity would find every door shut in their faces. This kind of vocation would lead straight to the workhouse.

It is not that we have no hypocrites, however. We keep the article, but it is of a different pattern.

The hypocrite does but force the characteristic note of his race. The English are religious (I mean church-going), the French sentimental; therefore, the English hypocrite is the hypocrite of religion, and the French hypocrite is the hypocrite of sentiment.

The former will enter into conversation with you by expressing a hope that you do not concern yourself too much with the things of this world. Chadband presents himself at the house of a friend with the salutation: "Peace be upon this house." Then, seeing the table garnished with good things, he cries: "My friends, why must we eat? To live. And why must we live? To do good. It is then right that we should eat. Therefore, let us partake of the good things which are set before us." Thereupon he gorges himself, that he may be able the better to support life, and do the more good. No French novelist would dare portray such a personage in his books.[Pg 66]

The French hypocrite proceeds differently. He makes professions of friendship for you, embraces you, enters into your woes with touching displays of feeling; when occasion seems to require, he can shed a few tears, his lachrymal gland is inexhaustible. As he takes his departure, he "hopes things will soon look brighter," and offers you a cigar.

It is at the funeral of a good bequeathing uncle that he is especially edifying. He follows, with staggering steps, the remains of the beloved defunct; he is literally supported to the grave by the two friends on whose arms he leans. Tears trickle down his cheeks, he is pale and exhausted. His handkerchief has a wide black border, but smells of musk. He tells you, with sobs, that his uncle was a father to him, and begs you to excuse him, if he finds it impossible to master his grief.

The two kinds of hypocrisy, one as loathsome as the other, are clearly manifested even in the criminals of the two countries.

The English prisoner at the bar is not submitted to examination, and thus the public is spared his professions of faith; but the letters he writes to his friends, and to which the newspapers generally give publicity, show him in his true light. "He believes in God; he knows that Heaven will not fail to confound the infernal machinations of the wretches who accuse him."

I extract the following lines from the trial of the vile assassins of Mme. Ballerich:

"Q. You loitered about the house and asked Mme. Ballerich for a fictitious person, in order to take stock of the premises, did you not?

"A. I do not deny that I meant to commit[Pg 68] a theft, but a crime was far from my thoughts. A crime is going too far; I would not dishonor my family; I swear it by my mother.

"Q. You struck the fatal blow that killed the victim. When you left she was still alive?

"A. I did not look to see whether Mme. Ballerich was dead. It is bad enough to be mixed up at all in affairs of that kind! It made me feel sick to see the blood. I suffered internally; I was struck with remorse and repentance and I thought of my mother. (Here the prisoner burst into tears.)"

The English assassin, on mounting the scaffold, generally gives his friends rendezvous in the better land, and implores his Maker's pardon. The French murderer implores the pardon of his mother.

CHAPTER IX.

FRENCH AND ENGLISH SOCIAL FAILURES.

The French social failure is generally a radical. If he had cared to do as plenty of others do (and seeing you prosperous, he accompanies this with an expressive glance), if he had cared to intrigue and curry favor, he too could have cut a figure in the world. But unhappily for himself, he does not know how to disguise his opinions; he is, according to the formula, poor but honest.

It is his pride that leads him to avoid the lucky ones of the earth; he has no desire to be taken for a schemer. If he has lost all else, honor still is left, and this, his only remaining treasure, he intends to preserve intact.

He despises money, and if he does not return that little loan he borrowed of you, it is[Pg 70] because he presumes that your contempt for filthy lucre is equal to his own.

Yet the sight of gold melts him, and there flits across his face a smile of satisfaction, mingled, however, with a tinge of sadness at the thought of being caught capitulating with the enemy. But to convince himself that he has lost none of his independence of character, he goes straightway and says evil of you, so that no man shall say of him that he was corrupted by the loan of a paltry coin.

You will generally find that he has been bankrupt once or twice; but as that has not made a rich man of him, you conclude that, if he has not a great love of money, neither has he a great talent for business.

He lays his poverty at everyone's door but his own. Society does not understand him. He shall go to his grave without having had a chance of revealing himself to the world. Meanwhile he opens a general agency. Not having been successful with his own affairs, he hopes to have better luck with other people's.[Pg 71]

As a rule, you find that he has married a servant or a laundress, "to pay a debt he owed to Society," as he puts it. But Society, who is but a thankless jade, turns her back upon him and his wife. Never mind, he has done his duty. Upon this point he finds nothing to reproach himself with. Some men marry for money; thank Heaven, he is not one of that sort.

Let anything you undertake prove a success, and you will hear him say that he had thought of doing it long ago; it was only his idea stolen from him. But there's the rub; what is the use of ideas, when one has no capital?

He occasionally talks of committing suicide, of throwing himself into the sea; but this idea of his has been stolen so many times over that he gives it up in disgust.

The French social failure is not uncommonly a philosopher, and even keeps a spark of facetiousness through all his misfortunes.

About ten years ago, I was talking one day with a Frenchman, who had been established in England some time. Established! I am getting facetious, too, you see.

I was erroneously maintaining to him that imprisonment was still inflicted in England for debt.

"Parbleu! I ought to know better than you," he said. "I was the last to come out."

The English social failure is much more humble than his like in France, for the simple[Pg 73] reason that, in France, poverty is no crime, while in England, as in America, it is. Apart from this the two types do not differ much.

In the commercial world, the English social failure is an agent of some sort; generally wine or coal. In the exercise of his calling, he requires no capital, nor even a cellar. He not unfrequently entitles himself General Agent: this, when the wreck is at hand. Such are the straws he clutches at; if they should break, he sinks, and is heard of no more, unless his wife comes to the rescue, by setting up a lodging house or a boarding school for young ladies. There, once more in smooth water, he wields the blacking brush, makes acquaintance with the knife board, or gets in the provisions. In allowing himself to be kept by his wife, he feels he loses some dignity, but if she should adopt any airs of superiority over him, he can always bring her to a sense of duty by beating her.

In the republics of art and letters, you generally find him playing the part of critic, con[Pg 74]soling himself for his failures by abusing the artists who sell their pictures, or the authors who sell their books. For these he knows no pity. He can all the more easily abuse his dear brethren of the quill or brush that he has not to sign his invectives; his prose is anonymous. Once a week, in the columns of some penny paper, he can, with perfect impunity, relieve his heart of the venom it contains.

The mud he scatters has one good quality—it does not stain; one fillip ... and it is gone.

Here is a sample of this kind of production. I extract it from a paper as pretentious as it is little read:

Now Carlyle, who was very sensitive to adverse criticism, used to call these revengeful failures in literature "dirty puppies," and it was kind of him to so far notice them.

But if I were the author in question, an answer somewhat in the following style would rise to my pen:

"My Dear Sir: I admire your independence and your contempt for the money and the favors of the public. But one question I would ask of you: Why do you send your invectives to the wrong address? If I am famous, as you are pleased to say, without believing it any more than myself, do not lay the blame upon me, my dear sir; lay it rather upon that 'fool of a public' who is silly enough to prefer my scribblings to your chefs-d'œuvre. Not for the world would I say anything that might be disagreeable to you, but I would fain remind you that, ever since the days of Horace, the authors of books[Pg 76] that sell have never been appreciated by the authors of the books that do not."

The bitterness of Mr. Tommy Hawk's criticisms forms a curious contrast with the fairness and good-nature of the serious English critic.

The latter possesses a large stock of good sense, good taste, learning, and independence. He can blend counsel and encouragement, and he has a conscience; that is to say, as much aversion to disparaging as to flattering. The same author whom he praised yesterday because his work was worthy of praise, he blames to-day because his work is deserving of blame; he is no respecter of persons.

Criticism should be taken with thanks and deference, if fair and kind; with deference and no thanks, if fair but unkind; with silence and contempt, if insulting and unfair.

Mr. George Augustus Sala, the wittiest and best-humored of English journalists, in one of his interesting Echoes of the Week, not long ago accused a book of my own, after paying it one or two compliments, of being as full of blunders as an egg is full of meat.

Now, could Mr. George Augustus Sala, with his knowledge of London dairy produce, pay my book a more witty and graceful compliment?

CHAPTER X.

HIGH-LIFE ANGLO-FRENCH GIBBERISH AS USED IN FRANCE AND IN ENGLAND.

Languages have this in common with many mortals; when they borrow they do not return. This is perhaps a happy thing, for when borrowed words do get returned, good Heavens! what a state they come home in!

We thought we were doing a fine thing in taking the words ticket, jockey, budget, tunnel, fashion from the English. They are, however, but French words mutilated, and there is not much to be proud of in reacquiring them. The English had borrowed of us étiqueter, jacquet (petit Jacques), bougette (the king's privy purse), façon. Better they had kept them. Up to the nineteenth century, it was by reason of war and conquest that both conquerors and conquered saw their vocabularies invaded by[Pg 80] foreign words; but is it not strange that in the nineteenth century, the century of civilization, so-called, peace between England and France should bring about such a disastrous result?

Nous avons changé tout cela; nowadays nous lunchons. Nous lunchons! What a barbarous mouthful, is it not?

The word déjeuner signifying "to cease fasting," or, as the English say, "to breakfast," it is wrongly used in speaking of a second repast. Déjeuner is, therefore, irrational; but is this any excuse for making ourselves grotesque?

Now that the French lunch, the English will déjeuner more than ever, of course.

Parisian good society no longer takes tea, it "five o'clocks"; and the bourgeois is beginning to put at the foot of his cards of invitation:

When the English wish to have a song or a piece of music repeated by an artist, they shout: Encore! And, the following day, the papers, in their accounts of the performance, announce that Mademoiselle So-and-So was encored.

While I am upon this subject, allow me to give you a little sample of modern English; it will prove to you that Alexander Dumas was right, when he pronounced English to be only French badly pronounced, and I would add, badly spelt:[Pg 82]

"The concert was brilliant, and the ensemble excellent. Miss N—— was encored, but Mr. D——, who made his début, only obtained a succès d'estime."

Go to Trafalgar Square. Place yourself at the foot of that long Roman candle, on the summit of which the statue of Nelson may be perceived ... on a clear day. Turn toward the Palace of Westminster, and you will see on your left the Grand Hôtel and the Avenue Theatre, on your right the Hôtel Métropole. In your rear you will find the National Gallery. As all these buildings are within a hundred yards of Charing Cross station, the terminus at which you alight on coming from France, your first impression will be that it will not take you long to learn to speak English. Ah! dear compatriots, be not deceived; you little guess the terrible perfidiousness of that language. Those provoking Britons seem to have taken a wicked pleasure in inventing a collection of unheard-of sounds, a pronunciation that will fill your hearts with despair, and[Pg 83] that puts them quite out of the reach of imitation.

Thou mayest dress like an Englishman, dear compatriot, eat roast beef like an Englishman, but, never, never wilt thou speak English like an Englishman. Thou wilt always massacre his language; let this console thee for hearing him massacre thine.

"I have often wished, that as in our Constitution there are several persons whose business it is to watch over our laws, our liberties, and commerce, certain men might be set apart as superintendents of our language, to hinder any words of a foreign coin from passing among us; and, in particular, to prohibit any French phrases from becoming current in this kingdom, when those of our stamp are altogether as valuable. The present war has so adulterated our tongue with strange words, that it would be impossible for one of our grand[Pg 84]fathers to know what his posterity have been doing, were he to read their exploits in a modern newspaper."

M. Hippolyte Cocheris, the learned French philologist, quotes, in one of his writings, a piece of prose from an aristocratic pen, which appeared in No. 116 of the New Monthly. It runs as follows:

To edify his readers, and make them appreciate this little masterpiece of hybrid style at[Pg 85] its due value, M. Cocheris proceeds to translate the piece into French, carefully replacing all the words in italics by English ones, thus:

M. H. Cocheris maintains that a French author would never dare to have recourse to such a literary proceeding. Nonsense! Read our novels, read our newspapers. At every page, you find mention made of fashionables in knickerbockers, who, dressed in ulsters, repair to the turf in a dogcart with a groom and a bulldog. They bring up at a bar and eat a slice of pudding or a sandwich, washed down with a[Pg 86] bowl of punch or a cocktail. These gentlemen have the spleen, in spite of the comfortable life they lead. In the evening, they go and applaud the humor of a clown, and call snobs those who prefer the Comédie Française.

If this picture of the state of things be really a true one, the French Academy, which was founded to look after the mother tongue of Molière, had better lower its blinds and burn tapers.

CHAPTER XI.

HUMOR, WIT, AND HIBERNIANISM.

Humor is a subtle, witty, philosophical, and greatly satirical form of gayety, the outcome of simplicity in the character, that is met chiefly among English-speaking people.

Humor has not the brilliancy, the vivacity of French wit, but it is more graceful, lighter, and above all more philosophic. A sarcastic element is nearly always present in it, and not unfrequently a vein of sadness. There is something deliciously quiet and deliberate about humor, that is in perfect harmony with the English character; and we have been right in adopting the English name for the thing, seeing that the thing is essentially English.

Germany has produced humorists, among whom Hoffman and Henry Heine shine conspicuously; but this kind of playful raillery[Pg 88] is not to be met with in French literature, except perhaps in the Lettres provinciales of Pascal.

In France, irony is presented in a more lively form. Swift and Sterne are the acknowledged masters of British humor, as Rabelais and Voltaire are the personification of French wit.

British humor does not evaporate so quickly as French wit; you feel its influence longer. The latter takes you by storm, but humor lightly tickles you under the ribs, and quietly takes possession of you by degrees; the bright idea, instead of being laid bare, is subtly hidden; it is only after you have peeled off the coating of sarcasm lying on the surface, that you get at the fun underneath.

I believe Parisian wit might be correctly described as a sudden perception and expression of a likeness in the unlike. Here is an example of it; an English one:[Pg 89]

Sydney Smith, the most Parisian wit England has produced, one day asked the Corporation of the City of London to pave St. Paul's Churchyard with wood. The Corporation replied that such a thing was perfectly impracticable.

"Not at all, gentlemen, I assure you," cried Sydney Smith; "you have only to lay all your heads together, and the thing is done."

Voltaire is the personification of that kind of wit; but other countries have produced men whose wit he should have had the modesty of calling "as good as French." England is foremost among those countries. Douglas Jerrold, Sydney Smith, Sheridan, Lord Eldon, had they been born in France, would have been called French wits.

Sheridan's son one day came to his father[Pg 90] and announced that he would be a candidate for Parliament.

"I have none," said the son, "I am independent, and belong to no party. I will stick on my forehead: 'To be let.'"

Lord Eldon was a great sufferer from gout. A sympathizing lady friend had made him a beautiful pair of very large slippers to wear when his enemy troubled him.

One day his servant came to him, and announced that the lovely slippers were gone, and had been stolen.

That kind of wit, peculiar to the Irish, and commonly called Hibernianism, is an apparent congruity in things essentially incongruous.[Pg 91] In fact, it expresses what is apparently rational, but in reality utterly irrational.

Thus, when an Irishman was told that one of Dr. Arnott's patent stoves would save half the usual fuel, he exclaimed to his wife: "Arrah! thin I'll buy two and save it all, my jewel."

We have nothing in French wit that can properly be compared to Hibernianism, except perhaps the gasconnade at times, but in the gasconnade there is no humor, the essence of it is exaggeration.

"You often forget to close the shutters of the ground-floor rooms at night," an Irishman would say to his servant; "one of these fine mornings I shall wake up murdered in my bed." I do not know that friend Paddy has ever perpetrated this one, but he is quite capable of it.

During the famous Michelstown Inquiry, Pat Casey was examined. He had seen the affray, hidden behind a wall.[Pg 92]

"Well, sor," said Pat, "better be a coward for foive minutes than to be dead for the rest of your loife."

The Hibernianism is one of the forms of laziness of the mind, but it is not at all a proof of stupidity. On the contrary, all those jokes that the English are fond of putting to the credit of the Irish, are only the proof of a certain overflow of intelligence, two ideas issuing simultaneously from the brain, and getting confused into one. Dissect a Hibernianism, and you will generally find two ideas, perfectly sensible, but not agreeing together.

I have met with just as many noodles in England as elsewhere. But among all the Irish that I have come across, though some have been lazy, and many have been bunglers, I have not yet met one who was not intelligent, amiable, and witty.[Pg 93]

While on this subject, I might remind the English of the remark made once by their celebrated critic, John Ruskin, at Oxford: "English jokes are often tame, but there is always wit at the bottom of an Irish bull."

Burke, the greatest English orator that ever lived, was an Irishman. Excuse, I beg, this Hibernianism of mine.

Lord Dufferin, that ambassador, and Lord Wolseley, that only general, whom England has been serving for the past few years, roast, baked, and boiled, to her friends and foes alike, the two saviors to whom she invariably turns when anything is going wrong ... or is wanted to go wrong, are sons of Erin.

Sheridan, the author of the "School for Scandal," that the English might almost call their only comedy, was Irish.

One might almost say that all that is most delicate and most witty in English literature is of Irish origin.

When we have added that the Duke of Wellington was an Irishman, perhaps we shall have succeeded in showing that England is very far yet from having paid her little debt of gratitude to Ireland.

CHAPTER XII.

THE MAL DE MER.

To think that those worthy French and English people, who only live twenty-one miles from each other, should not be able to exchange visits without first making acquaintance with the mal de mer! To think that this must be the last impression that each one takes home with him!

The mal de mer! That uninteresting complaint which awakes no pity in the breast of man!

The sky is serene, a light breeze gently fans your cheek, the water in the harbor is as smooth as a sheet of glass. You timidly ask the first sailor you come across a question or two as to the weather and the outlook for the[Pg 96] passage—not for your own reassurance, for you are a pretty good sailor, but ... for a friend, or ... for a lady who is traveling with you, and who suffers dreadfully from seasickness. The sly fellow sees through your little ruse, and answers, with a serio-comic look: "The sea, sir! like a lake, sir; like a lake."

You feel reassured. You say to yourself: "Well, this time, at all events, we shall have a good passage;" and you cheerily pace the deck, light of heart and firm of foot, convinced that if anyone is ill, it will not be you.

The whistle sounds, the boat is set in motion, and gently and smoothly glides to the mouth of the harbor.

Everyone seems in the best of spirits, people chatter in groups, and handkerchiefs are waved to the friends who have come down to the quay to see you off.

The end of the pier is passed. There you are—now for it. You have hardly rounded[Pg 97] the projection which would be for you a little Cape of Good Hope, if you were only arriving instead of departing, when the horrible construction heaves heavily forward, and then seems to sink away from under your feet, making you feel as if it were about to leave you in mid-air, and trust to your intelligence to catch it again. You would fain make your escape without delay; but everybody is there, so you hold on and look around. Little by little the faces grow serious; they begin to pale and lengthen visibly; the groups melt and gradually disperse. Everyone finds a pretext for going below and hiding his shame.

"I am not generally ill on the water," you remark to your neighbor; "but to-day, I don't know why, I am not feeling quite up to the mark; I must have eaten something at luncheon that does not agree with me.... Oh! of course, it's that wretched lobster salad! I was cautioned not to touch it, too. Oh! la gourmandise!" Confident of having persuaded your traveling companion that you are a toler[Pg 98]ably good sailor, you too disappear below ... and he, not sorry to see you go, is not long in following your example.

You go down to the cabin. Alas! that is the finishing touch. The stuffy, heavy, unwholesome atmosphere, charged with a mixed odor of tar, mysterious cookery, and troubled stomachs, brings your digestive apparatus up to your throat. You feel stifled. All the vital forces crowd to your head, and your legs are powerless to support you. You throw yourself on your berth like a log, and instinctively close your eyes, so as not to see that man over there, who is just about to open the ball, or that other who is looking at you with a mixture of amusement and pity, as he calmly eats his chop. This creature is the most annoying of all your fellow-passengers. His compassion for you is insulting. You hate his healthy-looking face, his calm, his good appetite even; and your indignation reaches its climax when you see him coolly filling his pipe and preparing to go on deck and smoke. Un[Pg 99]able to endure the atmosphere of the saloon any longer, you make a grand effort and return to the upper regions. The first sight that meets your eyes is that man again, now lavishing the most careful attentions upon your wife; he has been to fetch her some brandy and water, or a cup of tea. You would thank him, but you do not care for your wife to see you in your pitiful condition. That fellow is unbearable, overpowering. This is the only reflection suggested by his kindness to your wife; and away you steer, making a semicircle, or rather two or three, on your way to an empty bench, where you once more assume the horizontal.

A friend comes to tell you that your wife is giving up the ghost somewhere in the stern of the ship, but you make believe not to hear, and only murmur through your teeth: "So am I; what can I do for her?"

You ask the steward to send you some tea, and it comes up in an earthenware basin an inch thick. You put it to your lips. Horri[Pg 100]ble! What can it possibly be made of, this nauseating decoction? The smell of the flat, unpalatable stuff makes you feel more qualmish than ever; the remedy is worse than the evil.

Just as, at Monaco, you never fail to come across a gambler who has his system, you rarely take a sea journey without meeting with the good soul who has an infallible preventive for seasickness. "This succeeds with nine persons out of ten," she tells you. Next time you cross, you try it, but only to find that you are evidently the tenth. However, it is not a failure or two that can shake the blind confidence she has in her remedy, I must say it to her credit.

Though there exists no cure for this strange evil, I think, notwithstanding, that by the exercise of a little self-control, one can retard[Pg 101] the catastrophe. At least such is my experience.

We were one day between Guernsey and Southampton, just near the Casquettes, where the Channel makes things very uncomfortable for you, if there is the least wind blowing. I had curled myself up in a corner in the stern of the boat and was preparing to feel very sadly. Up came two French ladies, appearing, like myself, to have strayed that way in search of solitude.

I fixed my eyes on a point of the horizon, and no doubt appeared to my neighbors to be plunged in profound contemplation.

The ladies took up their position not very far from me, and began to heave very heavy sighs. I looked at them. They were green.

I was saved, for the moment at all events. It put fresh strength into me. Forcing a[Pg 102] smile, and gathering up my courage, I had the impudence to affirm that I felt pretty well. The effort of the will had the power to keep the evil in check.

At that moment I understood how you can make a hero of a frightened soldier by telling him that bravery is written in his eyes.

A man who crosses the Channel several times a year is pretty sure to have one or two little anecdotes of the mal de mer, and its consequences, in a corner of his memory.

Seated quietly on deck, I was just dozing over a book, the author of which I will not name, since his volume had less power over my senses than the rolling of the boat. I was presently brought back to consciousness by the weight of a head, laid on my shoulder. I opened my eyes, looked out of the corners[Pg 103] of them; the head was a very pretty one, upon my word.

To stay would be compromising; to get away suddenly would be ungallant and perhaps not without danger, for the poor little head might fall against the bulwarks of the boat. I reclosed my eyes, and made believe not to have noticed anything. All at once I heard a sweet voice in my ear:

"O Arthur! What shall I do? If you only knew how sick I feel. Oh! I must lean my head on your shoulder; you don't mind, do you?"

The situation was getting alarming. I kept my eyes closed, so as not to scare away the poor creature, who was evidently at sea, in more senses than one. I kept quiet, buried in my wraps and traveling cap, and, without moving my head, just murmured, "I am really awfully sorry, madam, but I am not Arthur."

This was startling enough in all conscience. I quite expected a small explosion; apologies,[Pg 104] little screams, a fainting fit, perhaps. Happily, however, on board ship, dignity is laid aside. Certainly, on dry land, this lady could not have done less than faint, if it were only for the sake of appearances. But à la mer, comme à la mer.

So there was no fuss or fainting; for that matter my poor fellow-traveler had not the strength to move. I rose, helped her to assume a more comfortable position, placed a cushion under her head, and covered her with my rug. Then, having called the steward and recommended Mme. Arthur to his care, there remained nothing but to decamp, and quit the thankless rôle of caretaker of somebody else's wife.

When we got into harbor at Folkestone, Arthur suddenly made his appearance from somewhere in the lower regions. He was my very double—the same size, the same dress.... I saw through the misadventure.

On joining the London train, I found myself in the same compartment as the young[Pg 105] couple. Arthur knew all, as they say in sensational novels, and we had a hearty laugh together over the affair. Arthur was as gay as a lark. I attributed his mirth to the fact of his having left the sea behind, and to his finding himself once more on terra firma with his beloved one. I found in the course of conversation that he had only been married the day before, and the happy pair had come over to hide their bliss in the fogs. They intended passing their honeymoon in London. It would have been sacrilege. I dissuaded them from their project, and induced them to go to Scotland, to see its lakes and mountains, and the bracken lit up with autumnal gold.

CHAPTER XIII.

BRITISH PHILOSOPHY AND FRENCH SENSITIVENESS.

The difference is enormous. If I were to publish a treatise on the English philosophers, Bacon, Locke, Stuart Mill, Herbert Spencer, Frederic Harrison, etc., I should call my work: "A Study of English Philosophy." But if I said to you that the English, not having succeeded in regaining Khartoum, contented themselves with regaining the road to England, I should add, that is British philosophy.

You would not say, "History of British Literature," you say, "History of English Literature."

There is something serio-comic about the word "British," or something chauvinistic.[Pg 108] You would be right in saying "British army, British soldiers." The lady who fills the newspapers with her outcries against the few nudities exhibited in the Academy every season, is known only by the name of "British Matron."

An Englishman only calls his fellow-countrymen "Britons" when he is half laughing at them. When he says, "We Britons," he is not quite serious; on the contrary, when he says, "We Englishmen," his face reflects the feeling of respect with which the sound of his name inspires him.

The "English public," is good society; the "British" public means the common run of mortals in the United Kingdom.

British philosophy! that philosophy that makes us like what we have when we cannot have what we like; that philosophy taught by that good mother, and incomparable teacher, whose name is Necessity.

Alas, we French people do not possess this kind of philosophy. I wish we did. As a matter of fact, we are the most absurdly sensi[Pg 109]tive, thin-skinned people on the face of the earth. We do not know how to take a kick, much less, make use of it. I mean a kick in the figurative sense; the one that leaves no trace, and does not prevent us from sitting at our ease.

But, if the Englishman knows how to take it, do you believe he feels it the less for that? Be not deceived on the point. He exercises control over himself. He does not give it back on the spot, but stores it up, rubs the injured part, applies a little cold cream, if necessary, and awaits the moment when he will be able to return it with interest. Such is the difference between the two men. To my mind, the Englishman is the more intelligent of the two.

Success turns our heads in France, reverses discourage and demoralize us; we know neither how to profit by victory, nor put up with defeat. In victory, we see only glory; in defeat, only disgrace.

Thus we are led to make war to serve dynas[Pg 110]tic interests; we go to the Crimea for the English, who do not go to Germany for us; we set the Italian nation on its feet, and to-day, see it, in its profound gratitude, preferring Germany to ourselves.

Criticism exasperates instead of benefiting us, and even occasionally amusing us. We hate our enemies, instead of being grateful to them for the good they do us; for if we owe part of our success to our friends, we owe a still greater part to our enemies.

There are two ways of causing an animal to advance—whether that animal be an artist, a writer, or a prime minister—first, by kind encouragements ... in front; secondly, by something less pleasant ... on the other side.

It is only indifference that kills; in religion, in love, in politics, in literature, in everything.

Christianity came out of the Roman arenas,[Pg 111] English Protestantism out of the Smithfield fires; and many a demagogue owed his success, under the Second Empire, to the few months' imprisonment at Ste. Pélagie that the Imperialist judges were silly enough to condemn him to.

Enemies? Why, they are our fortune. When I hear a man spoken of after his death as never having had any enemies, as a Christian I admire him, but I also come to the conclusion that the dear fellow must have been a very insignificant member of the community.

If you do something new, you make enemies of all the red tapeists; if you do something intelligent, you make enemies of all the fools; if you are successful, you make enemies of all the army of failures, the misunderstood, the crabbed, and the jealous; but these little outbursts of hatred, one as diverting as the other, are really so many testimonials in your favor.

If you send in your application for some vacant post, and you succeed in obtaining it, you may be sure that there will be but one[Pg 112] candidate who will consider that the election was made according to merit; yourself. The rest will cry out in chorus that your luck is something wonderful. Luck! What a drudge this poor word is made of! The privations you have imposed upon yourself, and the long nights that you have devoted to work, are luck. Luck, as a great English moralist puts it, means rising at six in the morning; luck means spending tenpence when you earn a shilling; luck means minding your own business and not meddling with other people's.

The Englishman knows that it falls to everyone's lot to be criticised, and he makes up his mind to endure it. He even has a certain admiration for those who criticise and rally him, if the operation is performed with a little dexterity. Violent criticism is the only kind he has a contempt for. "The fellow loses his temper," says he; "he is a fool, who proves that his cause is a bad one;" and he goes on his way unconcerned. So, while, in Paris, a Republican and a Bonapartist, who meet on[Pg 113] the Boulevards, will look daggers at each other; a Liberal and a Conservative, who meet in Pall Mall, will shake hands and go and dine together amicably. They both know that it is all humbug. After dinner, they repair to the House of Commons; one takes his seat on the left, the other on the right of the Speaker, who ought rather to be called the Spoken to, since everyone addresses his remarks to him, but he very rarely opens his lips.

Never any insults in this Parliament. You will never hear any such phrase as "the honorable member has lied," but rather, "the honorable member has just made a remark which is scarcely in accordance with strict truth." These euphemisms are the soul of the English language, the outcome of the cool British temperament. Violent language has not the least power to move an Englishman to wrath—it rather excites his pity. In an English club, two members who had called each other "liars," would find their names promptly struck off the roll, and there would be an end[Pg 114] of the matter. In France they would fight a duel.

The following anecdote shows how ready the English are to acknowledge their little failings.

I was speaking of the English spirit of colonization one day at a lecture, and in the course of my remarks on the subject, I took the liberty of saying, not without a slight touch of satire:

He evidently thought me too indulgent. By the manner in which my interrupter was applauded, I judged that he had properly seized and expressed the general feeling of the audience.

It is in adversity that the Englishman is to be admired. If he is defeated, he puts a good[Pg 115] face upon it; he accepts his defeat, and makes the best of it. "I have proved that I can fight," he says; "why should I fight a hopeless battle?" If the door must give way to the burglars, he does not wait for them to break it open, he opens it himself; if he cannot save his furniture, he saves his door; it is so much gained.

It is thanks to this practical philosophy that, on the day after an election, you see all the newspapers express their satisfaction at the result. The winning side has always gained a more brilliant, more decisive, victory than ever, in spite of the enormous difficulties that had to be overcome. The losing side invariably gains a moral victory, and this is proved by a + b.

When, after the defeat at Majuba Hill, England abandoned the conquest of the Transvaal, a feat which would have been mere child's play to her, but which would probably have aroused[Pg 116] some indignation in Europe, Mr. Gladstone announced that, after all, the Boers were only fighting for their independence, and it was not seemly for generous England to annex by force a country that wished to be free, and had given such proof of valor.

What a strange, ungrateful animal is man! What respect he has for his conquerors! What contempt for those he can conquer! When he speaks of the lion that devours him, or the eagle that tears his flesh, he is ready to take off his hat to them; when he speaks of the donkey that renders him great service, or of the goose that furnishes him a good dinner, a pen to write with, and a bed to lie on, he cannot sufficiently express his contempt.

Do you remember, dear American friends, how, some four years ago, a certain Lord[Pg 117] Sackville, British minister in Washington, was given twenty-four hours to leave the country? Never had John Bull been administered a better kick before. Did he go to war with America? Oh, no. The prime minister of England declared that you could not expect "gentlemanly manners from American politicians," and John Bull was satisfied, and he set about bullying little Portugal about some South African bit of territory.

When the Englishman meets with his superior, he is ready to admit it. If he be jealous of him, he will not expose himself to ridicule by showing it. He does not shun the prosperous man, he cultivates his acquaintance. He is not necessarily a schemer for that; where there is no meanness there is no scheming. He acknowledges all the aristocracies; the aristocracy of birth, the aristocracy of money, and the aristocracy of talent; and I only[Pg 118] blame him for one thing, which is that he has much less admiration for the third of these than for the other two. At a public dinner, in England, you may see in the places of honor, on either side of the chairman, one or two lordlings, then the wealthy guests ... then, but much farther down, the literary men, artists, and other small fry.

We French people have not the bump of veneration very much developed, it is true; but we have an admiration, approaching veneration, for talent and science, and the same Frenchman who takes no notice of a duke, will turn to get a second look at a great literary man or a savant. The commonplace Englishman, who humbles himself before a village squire, or a big banker, takes his revenge when he meets the schoolmaster who, in France, would be a professeur, but who, in England, were he a double first of Oxford, an ex-scholar of Balliol College, goes through life by the name of schoolmaster; rinse your mouth quickly.[Pg 119]

In England, social disparity excites no jealousy. On the contrary, the noble and the wealthy are popular.

In France, we have given up admitting superiority since our walls have been ornamented with the announcement that all Frenchmen are brethren, free men, and equals. This rage for equality degenerates into jealousy of all superiority. In fact, the French are all equal to their superiors, and most of them superior to their equals. As soon as superiority clearly manifests itself, in political life, in literature, in the fine arts, anywhere, it is ostracized.

I was talking one day with a Frenchman, who still massacres the English language, although he has lived in this country more than twenty years. In the course of conversation I named a compatriot of ours. "Now, there is a man," said I, "who speaks English admirably."[Pg 120]

With us, jealousy is not only the stamp of mediocrity, as it is everywhere else; it is a malady that our greatest men have been tainted with. The acrimonious and contemptible polemic that Bossuet and Fénelon engaged in, the implacable hatred of Voltaire toward Rousseau, are but two instances of it; the history of French literature abounds with others. Our Parisian newspapers are daily filled with polemics and personalities.

In England, everyone minds his own business, and does not trouble himself about what his neighbor says or does.

If the Englishman is less jealous than the Frenchman of the success of his fellow-creature, it is because he often does not attribute it to the same causes.

The Englishman maintains, rightly or wrongly, that a man owes his successes far more to his character than to his talent. If I am not mistaken, it was Thomas Carlyle who laid down this rule of British philosophy.

This philosophical proposition is very comforting to the misunderstood; to hint to a man that he is less talented than another, is to vex him; on the contrary, to tell him that he has less shrewdness, is almost to pay him a compliment.

CHAPTER XIV.

THE FRENCH SNOB.

It would be imprudent, not to say impudent, to attack the subject of English snobs. There are themes which seem marked "Dangerous ground." If the French want to know all about English snobs, they must turn to Thackeray, who has completely exhausted the subject.

The snob is the man who is utterly destitute of nobility. I should like to explain the word etymologically thus: Snob from S. Nob. (Sine Nobilitate).

The snob is the man who is ashamed of his origin, and wishes to occupy a better place in society than he is entitled to; who hires a[Pg 124] couple of flunkeys by the evening, to make folks believe he keeps a grand establishment; or who lowers his blinds from the middle of July to the middle of September, to make it appear that he is out of town, en villégiature, at the seaside, or at his place in the country.

The king of French snobs calls himself M. du Bois, M. du Val, M. du Mont—or better still, M. de la Roche-Pichenette. His father, an honest man, and useful member of society, amassed penny by penny a snug fortune; his name was Dumont, Duval, Dubois, of the bois of which useful men are made. The son squanders the money of his lamented papa, and calls himself Du Bois, of the bois of which parasites and idlers are made. If one of his estates happens to be called "la Roche-Pichenette," he dubs himself M. de la Roche-Pichenette, which looks grander still. He would be puzzled to show you the letters patent which authorize him in assuming this[Pg 125] grotesque name; but he will tell you that, if he cannot do so, it is because those Republican scoundrels of '93 destroyed them. He is a clerical and stanch Royalist, as a matter of course; noblesse oblige. In this respect he outdoes the genuine nobleman, who needs make no noise to attract attention to a name which everyone knows, and which, in spite of what may be said on the subject, often recalls the memory of some glorious event in the past. Noise he must make, unfortunately for his cause. So a German jumps on the table to make believe that he is merry.

He talks of his ancestors, and rails at the Revolution which made a man of him. Ancestors he has, of course, as you and I have; they were, doubtless, worthy fellows, good patriots, who may have been present at Fontenoy, at Rocroy, or even at the siege of Jerusalem, for the very simple reason that the principle of spontaneous generation has never been applied to man. But if his ancestors lent a helping hand at the taking of Jerusalem, and[Pg 126] also, perhaps, by the irony of fate, at the taking of the Bastille, he, for his part, has taken nothing particular except a sham title.

This kind of snob is not met with in England. The names of the lords, baronets, and knights are published every year; fraud is impossible. The few contraband barons that are to be found in England are barons of the Holy Empire.

CHAPTER XV.

A SUCCESS AS AN ANGLOPHOBIST. (THE LATE MARQUIS DE BOISSY.)

The Anglophobist of the purest water that France ever produced, was the late Marquis de Boissy, senator of the second Empire. This witty, eloquent, spirited old Gaul, was the soul of the august assembly, the only member of it who was not either stuffed or embalmed, and his memory alone will save it from oblivion. His philippics will long ring in the ears of the French.

Whether he was in the tribune treating the subject of home or foreign politics, or whether he was making a speech at the agricultural committee meeting of his borough, he had but one peroration, his cherished device, his hobby:

[Pg 128]He used to accuse England of smothering the human race with her breath, and would compare her to the octopus, that hideous and sticky mass whose tentacles have the property of creating a vacuum around them.

"The world will never have any peace," said he, "until that brute has ceased sucking the blood of other nations, and been sunk at the bottom of the sea. Old as I am, I would go for a drummer, so that I might lend a helping hand in subduing the nation that has violated the most sacred laws of humanity."

All the scourges that visit the earth were put down by him to the credit of that traitress of a neighbor; earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, inundations, cholera, the plague; even down to his own colds in the head, all were attributed by him to the baneful influence of the breeze that had passed over England.

He did not hesitate to declare that the air of the Champs-Elysées in Paris was polluted by[Pg 129] the presence of the English colony in its midst. Every time he passed through it, he fumigated himself as soon as he reached home.

Poor Marquis de Boissy, what would you have said, if you had lived long enough to receive invitations to five o'clocquer?

The old Anglophobist was sincere in his epic outbursts, and at the same time very amusing, for he was as full of wit as he was of Anglophobia.

He is dead, leaving no successor; France is at present without a declared Anglophobist.

CHAPTER XVI.

WOMAN WORSHIP.

A worshiper of grace and beauty, the Frenchman has given to woman a place which she occupies in no other nation.

Since the days when Aspasia inspired Socrates and advised Pericles, in no other country has woman's sovereignty been so supreme as it has always been, and still is, in France.

The Frenchman is keenly alive to woman's influence, and woman is an ever-present, a fixed, idea with him. Whether he study her from the artistic, physiological, or psychological point of view, his interest in her is never exhausted.

Nothing is more absurd in the eyes of the English than this ever-present idea of woman in the mind of the Frenchman, and as our dear neighbors do not know us any better than if an ocean, instead of a silver streak, separated us and them, they indulge in a thousand and one commentaries upon the puerility of our character.

However, it is to our education, and to that alone, that this weak but charming side of our national character must be attributed.

If, from the tenderest age, we were used to liberty and the companionship of children of the other sex, we should grow up thinking very little about liberty and women, and we should succeed in acquiring that sangfroid which is the foundation-stone of the prosperity and the greatness of the Anglo-Saxon race.

When we were schoolboys, and a rumor spread through the class rooms that the sister of So-and-So was in the parlor, do you remember, my dear compatriots, what a commotion it created throughout the whole establish[Pg 133]ment? Do you remember how we climbed on tables and chairs, and how happy we were if we could but catch sight of the corner of a petticoat at the other end of the courtyard? No wonder, for, to us, a girl was quite an extraordinary being, something almost supernatural. The scream of the young ladies of Miss Tomkins' Seminary, on hearing that "a man is behind the door!" is nothing, compared to the magic cry, "Une fille!" in a French school.

Is not the object of man's worship always something unknown, extraordinary, ideal? Is it not always clothed in mystery? Have we ever bestowed unlimited admiration upon those whose society we frequent every day? Habit kills admiration,[2] as it kills all sentiments that live upon illusions. If, from our childhood, woman were the companion of our daily games and walks, should we not look upon her with different eyes?[Pg 134]

To us Frenchmen, woman is a being whom we consider greatly superior to ourselves, because we have made an ideal of her.

To the Englishman, woman is a creature whom he looks down upon as a frail and frivolous being, greatly inferior to himself. With what an air of sovereign condescension the English schoolboy tells his young girl friends all about the game of football or cricket, in which he has taken part! His manner seems to say: "Is it not awfully kind of me to take the trouble to enter into these details with poor, puny creatures like you, who cannot appreciate them?"

In France, whatever a woman does is right; even her errors almost turn to her advantage. If she breaks her marriage vows, it is not she who is covered with shame, it is her husband who is covered with ridicule; and people immediately look for defects in him, and excuses for her.[Pg 135]

A society thus governed by women may lack firmness, but its salient points are sure to be good taste, delicacy, tact, wit, and amiability.

It is impossible not to mention here the ascendancy which women took over French literature in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and during the early part of the present one, through the influence of the salons littéraires. Does it not seem, in fact, as if the history of French literature might be summed up by naming the Hôtel de Rambouillet, and the salons of Mme. des Loges, Mlle. de Scudéry, Mme. de Sablé, Ninon de Lenclos, Mme. Scarron, the Duchesse du Maine, the Marquise de Lambert, Mme. du Deffand, Mme. d'Epinay, Mme. de Caylus, Mme. de Vintimille, Mme. Récamier, Mme. de Staël, and Mme. Girardin? Do we not know the courts of Louis XIV., Louis XV., Louis XVI., and Napoleon I. by the letters and memoirs of this splendid legion of women belonging to "la société polie" who have taught us the art of causer, that art of which we French have the monopoly?[Pg 136]

This woman worship, from which chivalry sprang, is the source of another trait characteristic of the French nation, a trait which we have a right to be proud of. I speak of our respect for the weak. I engage that the lowest quarter of any French town would be roused into revolution at the sound of a man having ill-treated a woman or child. It is a sentiment innate in the Celt, and which would be found in the Englishman, if the Germanic element had not gained the ascendancy in England.[3]

Is there any prettier sight than that of our public gardens filled with well-dressed, bright-faced young mothers, whose husbands come, when business is over, to listen to the band at their side, and to take them to their homes,[Pg 137] from which care is banished as far as possible, and where they are made sharers in each joy of their husbands?

Can we imagine a pleasure party of any kind without the presence of women? And when I say we, I mean all classes of society. When our workman sets out, on Sunday mornings, for the Jardin de la Muette or the Bois de Meudon, with provisions for the day, he takes his wife and children with him; and even his old mother, if he have one, must go too, or the party is not complete.

I confess that those world-famed English dinners which are not brightened by the presence of ladies have but little charm for me.

"Those English people enjoy themselves as we bore ourselves to death," once said Mme. Vigée-Lebrun.

When I say that women are rarely seen at the great public dinners, which are the distinguishing feature of English society, I exaggerate. They are sometimes admitted ... to the galleries, from thence to contemplate the[Pg 138] lords of creation consuming their prodigious repast.

Looking from the gallant knights of the trencher to the pretty faces in the gallery, I have more than once exclaimed to myself: "Nobody can say that an Englishman's eyes are bigger than his stomach."

CHAPTER XVII.

FAITH AND REASON.

The various religions in existence were founded by men of different nations to suit their own character.

The French, impressionable and fond of pompous pageants, adopted a mystical religion, which addresses itself to their senses; the English, cool and argumentative, preferred a religion which addresses itself to their reason. This is why churches in France savor of the theater, and churches in England savor of the lecture-room.

Calvinism did not take root in France, and never will, because it is not amiable. Romanism will never flourish in England again, because it says: "Believe, without seeking to understand."[Pg 140]

The Roman Catholic religion aims at gaining a hold over the heart, the Protestant religion aims at gaining a hold over the mind. The first attracts women by its poetry and mysticism and governs through them; the second attracts men by sometimes offering them food for their intellectual appetites.

Finally, the first is under the control of a foreign power, the second is national.

We French people worship a tender, merciful, almost familiar, God, whom we are wont to call sweet Savior.

The English worship the God of the Jews, that God Who commanded His chosen people to exterminate their enemies, and spare neither man, woman, or child, and Whom they call awful God.

The manner in which we speak of the Divinity shocks the English; the manner in which the English worship Him leaves us cold and indifferent.[Pg 141]

To the Frenchmen who say that religion is incompatible with liberty, I would simply reply: England and America are the freest nations in the world, and at the same time the most religious—I mean the most church-going.

To the English who say that there is no religion in France, I would reply: Our churches are not, like yours, full only from eleven to half-past twelve; they are thronged from six o'clock in the morning to one in the afternoon by a crowd whose fervor is second to that of no other church-goers, and this French piety is all the more admirable because, in our country, religion is not an indispensable garment, as it is in England.

It would be as imprudent to judge the religion of the English from the French point of view, as it would be to judge the religion of the French from the English point of view. This being granted, something more is requisite, if we would judge fairly, and that is to[Pg 142] start with the principle that all convictions that are dictated by conscience are worthy of respect.

But such is not the usual manner of setting about it. To call one's neighbors "idolaters," and hear one's self called "marchand de Bible" in return, is certainly much more lively.

The English have given the name of Mariolatry to the homage paid to the Mother of Christ, and it is a deep-rooted belief in England that the French pay to Mary a worship equal to that which they pay to God.

The divine honors paid to the Virgin Mary have nothing to do with adoration; the prayers addressed to her are for intercession. It is a poetical homage rendered chiefly by women, who would fain have the holiest of women plead with a beloved son on their behalf. It is to her that the young girl turns who has[Pg 143] just engaged her heart; it is to her that the young mother prays as she bends over the cradle of her child.

"Horrible!" cry the Protestants, "as if God were not just, as if He wanted to be told what He should do!"

But since you pray to Him yourselves, it is clear that you think it advisable to remind Him sometimes of your needs.

Then the Frenchman (excuse a comparison which, to my mind, appears to be strikingly true), the Frenchman, I say, who has the love and respect for his mother inborn in him, cannot help believing that God could not find it in His heart to refuse him anything, if Mary, His mother, would only undertake to intercede on his behalf.

The homage paid to the Virgin is nothing short of a worship to Purity, and the most ignorant Irish peasant girl has the conscience of her value when she feels she can kneel down before the white-robed statue. The influence of this worship on morality is enormous.[Pg 144]

In Scotland, the proportion of illegitimate children is 16 per cent. In Protestant Ireland (County of Antrim, etc.) it is 7 per cent. In the poorest parts of Roman Catholic Ireland, the proportion is only ½ per cent.

A religion is materialized that is practiced in temples adorned with statues and pictures, images of the dwellers in the realms of the blest. The uncultured mortal does not know what abstraction is. He believes in what he sees. When our peasant folk think of God, they picture Him to themselves as an august personage in a blue robe with flowing sleeves, who keeps the accounts of our good and bad actions and receives in private audience every morning certain saints, dressed in various colors (St. Peter invariably in bottle-green), who come to talk of their protégés, and recommend them to His mercy.

This materialism of the other world helps[Pg 145] the ignorant to understand, and explains why the poor crowd our churches, in the provinces at all events. I say in the provinces especially, for it would be as wrong to judge France by Paris, as it would be to judge England by Regent Street and the Haymarket. This is a remark that I should like to repeat at every page.

"What is it that these English people worship?" is the question invariably asked by the French who visit English churches and chapels. The fact is, there is nothing to be seen there but whitewashed walls, benches, an organ, and an enormous Bible. Tell them that, in the eyes of the English, a crucifix is a profane object, that would be looked upon with as much horror as a statue of Vishnu, and they will have their doubts whether the name of Christian really ought to be applied to an English person.

In religion, everything is spiritualized in England and America. A crucifix recalls the fact that Christ became man.

The English will have neither crucifix,[Pg 146] statue, nor picture in their churches, because they adhere to the Bible, and there they find, among the commandments of God, given on Mount Sinai:

"Thou shalt not make to thyself any graven image, or any likeness of anything that is in the heaven. Thou shalt not bow down to them, nor worship them."

The Roman Catholic Church has suppressed this commandment. It is not for me to criticise her; but as she has adopted a certain number of commandments, which she has even translated into verse in order to fix them more easily in the minds of the faithful, she would have perhaps done better to adopt them all. At any rate she has done wisely in interdicting discussion among her followers, and in telling them:

The Protestant religion is more practical and better adapted to modern life than the[Pg 147] Catholic one; but if the Protestant faith may help you to live, I believe the Catholic faith may better help you to die.

Whereas the materialization practiced by the Roman Church attracts the lower classes, the spiritualization of the Anglican Church tends to estrange them. The great unwashed of England would not understand the service of the Anglican Church. This is partly why cornets and drums are being resorted to, to draw them out of their slums.

Does not the frequentation of French cemeteries show how attached we are to the body? Does not the solitude of English cemeteries show how little our neighbors share this feeling?

The Catholic is no theologian. He does not discuss the sermons that are preached to him;[Pg 148] he may criticise the language of the preacher, but dogma is not in his line. All that is spoken from the pulpit is gospel to him.

The Protestant is essentially a theologian. He sifts most carefully all that he hears in church. He is not of opinion that man was made for religion, but that religion was made for man. I have seen more than one storm in a teacup aroused, in little country towns, by a certain sermon that had appeared to the congregation to be unorthodox. The local newspapers would be full of letters containing the bitterest and most violent recriminations. The clergyman, attacked like a mere politician who had changed his colors, would defend himself by writing letter after letter to the paper. Bible in hand, he refuted the arguments of his adversaries, who were his own flock, be it understood.

No demi-gods in England; everyone has to pass through the Caudine Forks of criticism.

A young country curate, finding that his[Pg 149] tradesmen's bills were taking larger proportions than his modest income could stand, resolved one day to thunder from the pulpit against the thirst for riches.

Never did Horace or Bourdaloue utter such anathemas against the vices of the day.

"My dear brethren," he cried, "is it possible that you can thus place the love of filthy lucre above the love of virtue?"

And, after a few generalities, he came straight to the point; he accused the tradesmen of making too large profits, and of caring more for the things of this world than for the things of the next.

His parishioners having rendered his life not worth living in the pretty little town of X——, the young reverend gentleman lost no time in packing up his traps and quitting the neighborhood, with the firm resolution never to preach any more sermons ad hominem.[Pg 150]

The Anglican, or State Church of England is a Tory institution, that is to say, an eminently Conservative one. It is also a great school of discipline for the people. As an Englishman of much good sense said to me one day, the clergyman of a small town advantageously replaces half a dozen policemen.

In my quality of Frenchman, I confess to having a partiality for this church, and of dreading the time when she will be separated from the state.

If we have many sympathizers in England, they must not be looked for, as a rule, among the bigots of all the little conventicles, who vie with one another in presenting the most striking appearance of virtue and piety.

By these pretentious, narrow-minded folk, the French are more or less looked upon as children of the Evil One. The intelligent Englishmen of good society, who know and[Pg 151] often admire us, generally belong to the Anglican Church, which takes care of their future "by special appointment," and allows them to relax a little from their natural austerity.

Nature has made the Englishman a Puritan. Churchman or not, stir him up, and it is the Puritan which rises to the surface. The day on which the Church of England is disestablished, England will be all Puritan.

CHAPTER XVIII.

THE WORSHIP OF THE GOLDEN CALF.

Nothing is done for mere glory in England, every undertaking has a practical aim.

In France, every intelligent boy of the middle class goes through his classical studies; even though he may only be intended for a commercial career, his father makes him try to pass his B. A. or B. Sc. In England, boys learn Latin and Greek in order to pass examinations, which lead to certain positions. With us, education is an indispensable ornament; here, it is a means to an end. Thus, though primary education may be much more widely spread in England, higher education is much more widely spread in France.

It is at school that young England begins to learn to make genuflections before the Golden Calf. The best prizes awarded in the large[Pg 154] public schools are prizes of money. These establishments grant exhibitions of from £40 to £100 a year, during four or five years, to the best of the pupils who leave them to go to the Universities of Oxford or Cambridge.

This scholarship system would be admirable if its object was to help the sons of poor [4] parents to continue their studies at the Universities; but such is not the case; these scholarships are constantly awarded, either through competitive examination, or through the personal interest of a governor, to sons of rich parents. And yet, these scholarships were founded by charitable persons, who bequeathed money to be applied to the education of the intelligent sons of poor parents. At present, the scholarships of the great schools of the City are at the disposal of the City Companies, who have monopolized them for their families and friends, for charity is organized on an im[Pg 155]mense scale in England, especially that well-ordered kind which begins at home.

The consequence of this state of things is that John Bull, that unsurpassed payer of taxes, is obliged to keep up Board schools in London at an enormous expense. If the great City schools fulfilled the purpose for which they were established by their "pious founders," school rates would be reduced by one-half.

The now annual exhibitions at South Kensington are closed on Sundays. No free entry during the week.

The Zoölogical Gardens are, as a matter of fact, open free on Sundays ... but only for the well-to-do classes, who may obtain special orders from the Fellows of the Zoölogical Society.

There is no place for the poor at the ban[Pg 156]quet of life in England. For them, beer and Bible, only.

Not even at church is there room for them; for I maintain that the man or woman whose clothes were not what is called here decent, would be turned away from the door; what the pastors want are sheep who will take a pew by the year, and put silver pieces on the plate.

And people marvel, or rather lament, that the workman, who has worked all the week, and has no home fit to spend his Sunday in, spends it at the public house.

But where is he to go? The English, who are generally so sensible, are curiously inconsistent in this matter.

I have seen, in English illustrated papers, pictures of Sunday in London and Sunday in Paris. The first represented a dirty mob of[Pg 157] men and women, drinking, quarreling, and fighting; the second, groups of workmen, accompanied by their wives, their children, and their old parents, in contemplation before the pictures in the Louvre Museum.

Intelligent and liberal England is moving heaven and earth to get the museums thrown open to the people on Sundays. The Prince of Wales, and the leaders of all the aristocracies of the country, are at the head of the movement; but all the little narrow-minded and bigoted world is leagued against them, and it is not probable that they will succeed. Meanwhile, the London taverns remain open, which proves that the English bigots consider gin and beer more powerful moral stimulants than the masterpieces of great artists; such appears also to be the decided opinion of the bishops, who never fail to attend at the House of Lords in full force when the subject is coming on for discussion.[Pg 158]

England erects her statues to the nobility and to finance. You see, England's great literary men were so numerous, that they had to be relegated to a corner of Westminster Abbey, for fear they should hinder circulation in the streets. With the aid of a guidebook, you may succeed in discovering the tablets erected to their memory by a not too grateful country.

Thackeray, the immortal author of "Vanity Fair," is rewarded with a tablet about a foot square. But, then, if you will take a walk around the Stock Exchange, you will see the third statue of the Duke of Wellington, and one of Peabody, the millionaire. In a little narrow City street, a bust of Milton, in an obscure niche, reminds the passer-by that the author of "Paradise Lost" was born in that place. It is comparatively unnoticed. In the wild, headlong, guinea chase, there is no time for trifling! Paris has a Rue Milton to make up for it.[Pg 159]

Yet this thirst for gold has been the greatest civilizing power of modern times. It is this which has opened up new markets for commerce in the remotest corners of the world. This British Empire, which has been called a brazen colossus with feet of clay, is the greatest empire it was ever given to man to found.

In a hundred years' time, Australia will probably be a strong and independent Republic, a second America; but the separation will mean no loss of prestige or of profit to England; her commerce will not suffer; her steamboats will continue to ply between London and Sydney, as they do between Liverpool and New York.

Who would dare to compare the greater number of England's conquests to those sterile ones that only survive in man's memory by the tears and blood that they have caused to flow?[Pg 160]

"We are a wonderful people," cries General Gordon, in his Diary at Khartoum; "it was never our Government which made us a great nation; our Government has ever been the drag on our wheels. England was made by adventurers, not by her Government; and I believe she will only hold her place by adventurers."

They were adventurers, who were the first to set foot on the soil of those remote regions which have been added one by one to the lists of England's colonies; but if England is a great nation, it is thanks to heroic deeds, such as thine, great advanced sentinel of modern civilization, who for months couldst unaided keep hordes of barbarians in check; it is thanks to heroes of thy stamp, poor Gordon!

England conquers by the railway. She imposes her civilization and her commerce in the[Pg 161] countries she subdues, puts the natives in the way of earning money, and sensibly takes care to make her yoke felt as little as possible. Her commercial power makes her indispensable to the rest of the world, including the shareholders of the Suez Canal Company, to whom she pays more than three times as much as all the other powers put together.

That which makes the strength of this colonial empire, is that each colony, like each child in the mother-country, serves the apprenticeship of life in the enjoyment of liberty.

As each colony becomes rich enough to suffice unto itself, and strong enough to defend itself, England says to the colonists: "You are now big enough to manage for yourselves, it is time you learnt to do without my help." This is what the Englishman says to his sons, as they come to man's estate. The colony forms its government, chooses its ministers, and its parliament; sends representatives to England to watch over its interests there, and becomes, as it were, a branch house of that[Pg 162] immense firm, known in every latitude, under the name of "John Bull and Company."[5]

All forms of worship will lend themselves to exaggeration and develop eccentricities, and most certainly it is not the worship of the Golden Calf that is an exception to the rule. Let us look at the question from this side as well as the other.

Everyone must remember the lamentations of the Madagascar missionary, Mr. Shaw. The reverend gentleman had been parted from his flock, and obliged to take pot-luck on board the late Admiral Pierre's vessel. What meant those jeremiads? Was it apologies he wanted? Not a bit of it! This apostle wanted cash. From the day that he received $5000 from the French Government not a[Pg 163] word more was heard from him. He was quiet and happy.

$5000 for having eaten a few bad dinners! It does not fall to everyone's share to dine so satisfactorily as that.

Although the labor of preparing the posthumous works of Victor Hugo for publication will be enormous, his literary executors have refused to accept the profits, sure to be immense, which the poet meant should be the reward of their arduous task. But the thought of receiving money for such a labor of love is odious to them. English people may look upon this as sentimentality, but it compares very favorably with the highly practical proceedings of Thomas Carlyle's literary executor.

M. H——, the French député, who obtained 10,000 francs damages the other day, in Paris, from an individual who had insulted his wife, gave the money to the poor the very same day. It is a fact that, in France, no man, jealous of his honor, would pocket such gains.[Pg 164]

"But," you will say, "surely the Reverend Mr. Shaw gave his $5000 to the poor, or to some good cause——?"

In England, it is only too much the fashion to carry everything to the bank—an insult, a kick, the loss of a lover, the faithlessness of a wife, all possible inconveniences; the almighty guinea consoles for every wrong, and may be offered to anyone.

On his wedding day (January 28, 1885), the Rev. Stephen Gladstone, Vicar of Hawarden, and son of the Prime Minister of England, received, among his numerous wedding presents, a check for a hundred pounds from Dr. Sir Andrew Clark, and another for the same sum from the Duke of Westminster. The thing was so natural that not a single English paper commented on the fact.

In France, such a wedding present could only be offered to a domestic who had served us faithfully for some time.[Pg 165]

Dressed in a blouse and a large straw hat, I was one day taking a walk on the main road, when an Englishman, accompanied by a young lad of fifteen, accosted me, and asked which was the shortest way to the village of M——.

Delighted to see an Englishman, I volunteered all the information that was at my command. I even offered to accompany him as far as the lane which led to M——, and he willingly accepted.

After racking my brains to give my Englishman every detail I could think of, concerning the interesting village he was about to visit, I proposed to turn back.

I had spoken in French. I always like to make Englishmen speak French when I meet them in France. It is my little revenge.

I will admit that, in my rustic attire, I could[Pg 166] not have looked much of a dandy; but, in France, we have still preserved that good old habit of saying "Thank you," even to our inferiors.

The Briton had simply treated me as he would have a City policeman who had told him his way.

And, without another word, he drew from his pocket a fifty-centime piece, which he slipped into my hand.

As you must always keep what an Englishman gives you a chance of pocketing, I did not hesitate to put the fifty-centimes in a safe place.

"My dear sir, let me give you a piece of advice. When you have got a Frenchman to talk himself hoarse to explain to you your way, just thank him."[Pg 167]

"Above all," I continued, "never offer money in this country before you are quite sure it will be acceptable. You might have it thrown in your face," I added laughing.

"Oh! with me," I said to him, "there is no danger. I have lived a long while in England, and I am pretty businesslike by this time. I never throw money out of windows or in people's faces ... I put it in my pocket."

My practical ideas won me his esteem. We laughed heartily over the adventure, and parted the best of friends.

After having beaten the Ashantees, in 1874, brought home the umbrella of their king, and burnt their capital, a feat not requiring much talent, the dwellings being built of wood and straw, General Wolseley, on his return to Eng[Pg 168]land, had a grant of £25,000 made to him. Eight years later, on his return from Egypt, this same general received a peerage and £28,000. Lord Alcester, his companion in arms, who had operated on the walls of Alexandria, while he was operating on the backs of the Egyptians, also obtained a peerage and £30,000. When I consider that, during the siege of Alexandria, the English had only three men put hors de combat, it occurs to me that doubtless these rewards were granted to Lord Alcester at the suggestion of the British Royal Humane Society.

And yet General Roberts, the history of whose celebrated march to Candahar will remain written in letters of gold among the records of the great military feats of the present century, had to content himself with the Grand Cross of the Order of the Bath.

General Wolseley, now Baron of Cairo, a name so grotesque that he has never yet cared to assume it in public, was one day sent back to the Soudan to deliver Gordon, that modern[Pg 169] chevalier sans peur et sans reproche. The perspective was tempting; there was every prospect of an ample harvest of honors and banknotes. Unfortunately, the Mahdi cut the grass under the general's feet, and he arrived too late. Poor Gordon had to die, not to save his country, but to become, and forever remain, a specter at England's feast, the victim of her vacillations, a standing reproach to her indifference.

Gordon and Wolseley! to think that, by the irony of fate, these two names should have been associated in the same campaign! The soldier saint, and the noble millionaire, whose victories are sounded with the clink of guineas.

And you, O heroes of antiquity, arise from your long sleep, and see the progress that military art has made! Veil your faces, O Fabricius, Cincinnatus, and all you Romans, who, after you had subdued your country's foes, and drawn fettered kings behind your triumphal chariots, returned to cultivate your fields,[Pg 170] and died so poor that you had to be buried at the public expense.

It has long been England's practice to reward with money those who had rendered services to the country.

After the battle of Waterloo, the Duke of Wellington received, as a present from the nation, £400,000 and a palace at the entrance of Hyde Park.

With reference to the grants to the famous Duke of Marlborough, that great general, who filled the hearts of his enemies with terror, and the pockets of his family with the money of his countrymen, and whose descendants still receive from the state the sum of £4000 a year, Swift compares, in the Examiner, the generosity of the Romans with the generosity of the English:

A Bill of Roman Gratitude.

For frankincense, and earthen pots to burn it in,	$22.50
A bull for sacrifice,	40.00
An embroidered garment,	250.00
A crown of laurel,	.05
A statue,	500.00
A trophy,	400.00
A thousand copper medals, value half-penny apiece,	10.20
A triumphal arch,	2500.00
A triumphal car,	500.00
Casual charges at the triumph,	750.00
Total,	$4972.75

A Bill of British Gratitude.

John Churchill, Duke of Marlborough, was pocketing these $2,700,000 about the time when Fléchier, comparing Turenne to Maccabæus, was able to say of him, "that he would never accept any other reward, for the services he rendered to his country, than the honor of having served her."

It is not at the Abbey of Westminster, it is on the façade of the Bank of England that there ought to be written:

Woodstock,	$200,000.00
Blenheim,	1,000,000.00
Post-office grant,	500,000.00
Mildenheim,	150,000.00
Pictures, jewels, etc.,	300,000.00
Pall Mall grant,	50,000.00
Employments,	500,000.00
Total,	$2,700,000.00

CHAPTER XIX.

WHY THE FRENCH WERE BEATEN IN 1870.

Everyone accounted for our disasters of 1870 after his own fashion. The most ingenious theories were brought forward, and we very well know why we believe it to be indispensable and patriotic to learn German.

"Ah!" cried some, "if we had only known German, we should not have been defeated." And forthwith instruction in German was decreed obligatory.

"That is not it," said others, "it is our geography, of which we did not know even the rudiments, that has been the cause of all the evil. On leaving Paris, our officers, ignorant of the meanders of the Seine, thought that they were beating a retreat each time they came to a fresh bend of that river." And the study of geography received a fillip.[Pg 174]

Others again would have it to be that if the visors of our soldier's képis had not been lifted upward in front, the Prussians would have had a warm time of it. Down came the visors without delay.

I pass over the pious people, who saw in our disasters only the just chastisement of our faults, and will only give the opinion of Thomas Carlyle. This philosopher, whom the hazard of birth had made English, but who was a perfect German, cried out that "Germanic virtues had triumphed over Gallic vices."

Some few worthy folks, perfectly destitute of genius, but possessing an ounce or two of common sense, attributed our defeats to the fact that the Germans had an army of 1,200,000 men, whereas our own forces scarcely numbered 350,000. I fancy it is these latter that history will show to have been in the right.

The virtuous Germans that vanquished us, were they, after all, so clever at geography and French? This is how they learnt the geogra[Pg 175]phy they required, and how they made themselves understood in French:

A few Uhlans would approach to within a respectful distance of a village. There they would seize upon the first peasant, old man, or child, that passed, place a pistol to his throat, and after asking, "Are there any French soldiers in your village?" would say: "Show us the way to such and such place, and tell us the names of all the people around here, who have wine in their cellars, or hay in their barns. And you had better take care to tell the truth, or we will blow your brains out, and set fire to the four corners of your village."

Loaded pistols and lighted torches are magical quickeners of slow intellects; a deaf man would understand such arguments as these. If I took by the collar the first lad I came across in Germany, and, lifting my stick to his head, shouted into his ear: "You young rascal, I will knock your head off," I will warrant he would understand me as quickly as if I spoke the purest German.[Pg 176]

If we have any spare time, let us learn German that we may be able to read Goethe and Schiller; from the practical point of view, the utility of German is but secondary. If we should ever demand of Germany the provinces that she wrenched from us, we shall find we have enough German-speaking mouths, if we can only put into the field as many mouths of cannon as Wilhem II.

CHAPTER XX.

ENGLAND WORKS FOR HERSELF. THE WORLD OWES HER NOTHING.

"If," as M. Rénan says,[6] "those nations which have an exceptional fact in their history expiate this fact by long sufferings and pay for it with their national existence—if the nations that have created unique things by which the world profits often die victims of their achievements," England may hope to live a considerable time yet, for everything that she undertakes is national, never universal. She works for herself and herself alone. Whenever she is asked to co-operate in the execution of a great project of universal interest, she refuses pointblank, unless it appears quite clear to her that she alone will reap the profits and honors of the undertaking. An[Pg 178] Englishman's sphere of action is always England and her colonies; his only aim, British interests—two magic words to his ears.

If the Channel Tunnel could be made so that it could only be used by the English, it would be commenced to-morrow.

Lord Beaconsfield pronounced patriotism to be the most rational form of egotism. Would to Heaven it might be so interpreted in France!

When shall we, in France, cease to strive after the extraordinary and the universal? When shall we cease to concern ourselves about the happiness of the whole human race and, minding our own business, undertake only the possible and the practical? When shall we cease to become inventors and be men of business?

There is not much discovered in England nowadays, except new ways of dodging the arch-enemy.

Yet it was Newton who discovered the infinitesimal calculus and the laws of universal[Pg 179] gravitation. Yet it was England that produced Shakespeare, the sublimest example of the Creator's handiwork. Yet it was Harvey who discovered the circulation of the blood. But now England is entirely given over to business; she has no time to throw away upon inventions.

For that matter, why should England go in for inventing? She has money and a genius for commerce, and, possessing these, can do without inventors, who, as a rule, die in the workhouse, with the satisfaction of knowing that shrewd men of business have made fortunes out of their discoveries.

This has always been so. Even the sublime and Divine Thinker expiated with an ignominious death the invention of a theory which, but for the meddling of speculators, would have insured the happiness of the world. To-day He can contemplate from His celestial throne, the bishops coming out of their palaces in luxurious carriages to go to the House of Lords and vote against the opening of muse[Pg 180]ums on Sundays, or on their way to the Mansion House to feast with the Lord Mayor, who gives better dinners than were to be had in Galilee, I assure you.

The world is made up of fools and knaves, such was the judgment passed upon mankind by Thomas Carlyle, the great English historian, a rough and dyspeptic philosopher, who himself, however, was neither a knave nor a fool.

This writer, who passed his life in insulting his countrymen one after another, who could make love to his wife by correspondence when she was far away, but who never found an amiable word to say to her when she was near, this same Thomas Carlyle has calumniated the world. Where should we be without the few disinterested heroes who have devoted themselves to the amelioration of their fellow-creatures, and who, in return, have received[Pg 181] but poverty and prison, torture and death? The men who have suffered for country, religion, science, liberty; are these Carlyle's fools?

CHAPTER XXI.

THE SPIRIT OF DESTRUCTION AND THE SPIRIT OF CONSERVATISM.

How is it that the French are such vandals with regard to their country and their institutions, seeing that the love for their family, respect for their parents, and veneration for souvenirs, are such marked features in their character? The fact is that France is towed unresistingly by Paris, and that we often have to say "the French," when in reality we only mean "the Parisians."

We are accused of no longer having much respect for anything. Alas! that it should be impossible to deny such an accusation!

A country, just like a family, lives by its traditions, its souvenirs, even by its prejudices. Destroy these souvenirs, some of which serve as examples and others as warnings, destroy[Pg 184] these traditions, and you break the chain that binds the family together, and the past, though never so glorious, has been lived in vain. Is a country less dear to her sons because of her prejudices? Do we not love to find them in a dear old mother?

Do not the very prejudices and weaknesses, the thousand little failings of our friends, often endear them to us?

Then why are we not content with France as she is? Why be always wanting to change her? Is it possible that we Frenchmen, the most home-abiding men in the world, can be attacked by this ridiculous mania for change?

The study of the French language furnishes of itself plain proof of our spirit of destruction, and the Dictionnaire des Significations, which, is shortly to be published, and is awaited with impatience by the learned world, will show, by the history of the changes of meaning that our words have undergone, that the character of[Pg 185] the French people can be recognized to this very day by the descriptions that were given of it two thousand years ago.

Thanks to the jokes of the old Gauls, our ancestors, it now means "silly." Our forefathers heard in church: "Benedicti stulti quia habebunt regnum cœlorum."[7] Bénis seront les pauvres d'esprit, car ils auront le royaume des cieux. Now, in French, pauvre d'esprit means "silly," and, on their way home, the old jokers would indulge in merry remarks at one another's expense. When anyone gave proof of want of wit, he was congratulated on having his entry into the kingdom of heaven secured:

"You are stultus enough to be benedictus"; and the first adjective soon came to have the meaning of the second.

It will soon be impossible to pronounce the[Pg 186] word fille in good society, except to express relationship.

Why are we obliged to make use of this word to designate a child of the feminine sex? Simply because the feminine of garçon began to be used in a bad sense in the seventeenth century. Before the feminine of garçon—which the French had to give up, as they will soon have to give up the word fille—they had a word which is, in the present day, a horribly coarse expression.

The Gauls have always been rich in wit, but wit often of a bantering and sarcastic kind, which disparages and covers with ridicule, and of which Voltaire was the personification.

People who eat sausages on a Friday,[8] in France, think they are doing a smart thing, and rebelling against a form of tyranny, forget[Pg 187]ting that Lenten fasts had originally a sanitary reason. To give rest to the stomach, such was the aim; and a French physician said to me one day: "If there were no Lent in the spring, I should order my patients to fast two or three times a week, through that season of the year."

The Talmud forbids the Jews to eat pork, because that meat is heavy and indigestible; the Koran forbids the use of wine among the Mussulmans, because of its intoxicating properties; in fact, have not all these religious edicts a foundation of common sense, and do we not give proof of common sense in conforming to them? Truly, he is but a pitiful hero—not to use a stronger term—who boasts of not following a salutary counsel, that he does not know how to appreciate, because he does not understand.

The English, unlike us, cling to their past, and because a custom is old, that is a sufficient reason, in their eyes, for holding it sacred. I[Pg 188] feel sure that there is not an Englishman, who does not religiously eat his slice of plum pudding on Christmas Day, let him be in the Bush, at the Antipodes, on land or on water, and no matter in what latitude.

The English observance of the Sunday is tyrannical, I admit, but it is an ancient institution, and, if kept in an intelligent way, should command respect.

If the people of Great Britain do not build anything in a day, they have, at any rate, the good habit of not demolishing anything in a day.

The Englishman has an innate love of old walls that recall to him a historical fact, a departed grandeur, a memory of his childhood.

I have been present at many a touching scene, that has proved to me how deeply the religio loci is rooted in the heart of every true-born Englishman.

An old City School, dating from the fifteenth[Pg 189] century, had just been transplanted into one of the suburbs of London.

Yet it was with profound sadness that old scholars learnt of the removal of the school from its time-honored home. If they could have had a voice in the matter, the change would not have taken place. The splendor of the new school was nothing to them; the name was the same, but it was their old school no more. On the day of the farewell ceremony in the City, I saw gray-headed men, who had come from distant parts of the country, on purpose to bid farewell to the venerable walls, to have one more look at them.

If England, who only dates from the eleventh century, lives on her souvenirs and turns to them for inspiration, with what souvenirs might we inspire ourselves—we who have been a nation for twenty-three centuries?[Pg 190]

There was no England when we were the terror of Rome. There was no England when our brave and generous ancestors went to battle to deliver or avenge an oppressed nation, or welcomed a poor stranger as a friend sent by the gods. There was no England when Vercingetorix made Cæsar tremble, nor was there yet an England when, eight hundred years later, the exploits of Roland were inspiring the poets of the whole of old Europe.

Ah! let us cling to our past, we who have such a glorious one! Where is the nation that can boast such another?

CHAPTER XXII.

ORDER AND LIBERTY.

The Englishman revolts only against injustice, and that but figuratively. Brought up to respect the law, it is in the name of the law that he demands redress for his grievances, and by the law that he obtains it.

Dieu et mon droit, such is his device; notwithstanding that he has rather monopolized the first, and that his definition of the second is a trifle vague, it is certain that by them he is stimulated to do great deeds.

In most of the great public schools of England, the refractory schoolboy is still chastised by means of the rod, but do not imagine that[Pg 192] punishment is administered in an arbitrary fashion. The young offender is brought to judgment. The head master hears the evidence against him, and listens to his defense. If he is found guilty of the offense with which he is charged, the head master pronounces his condemnation and the boy is corrected on the spot. He submits without a murmur. The system may be bad, but what is good about it is that it generally proves a thorough correction for the child.

Under similar circumstances, a French schoolboy would probably seize an inkstand, or the first thing he could lay hands on, and menace his judge or his executioner with it.

Do not ask me which of the two I prefer, but let me tell you that the only punishments I have any objection to are unjust or arbitrary ones, and that severe ones, administered with discretion, are generally salutary. At all events, I ask you not to believe that the young Englishman is cowardly because he knows how to endure pain, and is submissive,[Pg 193] for a few minutes later you will see him rejoin his comrades at their play, and perform veritable acts of heroism. It almost seems to me that a child gives proof of courage in submitting to a punishment which he knows he has deserved, and that a spirit of submission to discipline is more to be commended in him than a spirit of rebellion. In resigning himself to his fate, and enduring his punishment, the English schoolboy learns to master a passion; the French schoolboy, in rebelling, allows a passion to master him. If the English system is bad, the French one must be worse.

Since I have pronounced the word rebellion, allow me to show you how differently the thing is understood in French and English schools.

Let us suppose that some privilege, which the pupils have long enjoyed, and looked upon as their right, has been withdrawn, rightly or wrongly, no matter which. What will the French schoolboys do? They will probably retire to a dormitory, there to sulk and protest[Pg 194] vi et armis. They will barricade themselves, victual the intrenchments for a few hours, and prepare for a struggle. Rebellion has wonderful charms for them; they are insurgents, therefore they are heroes. If the cause be a bad one, that matters little, it will be sanctified by the revolution; the main thing is to play at the peuple souverain. These hot-headed youths will stand a siege as earnestly as if they had to defend their native soil; dictionaries, inkstands, boots, bedroom furniture, such are the missiles that are pressed into service in the glorious battle for liberty.

But, alas for youthful valor! it all fades before the pleadings of an empty stomach; the struggle is abandoned, the citadel forsaken, and arms are laid down. The misguided ones are received back into the fold, to be submitted to stricter discipline than ever, the heroic instigators of the little fête are, in the end, restored to the tender care of their mammas, or, in other words, expelled from the school. And for a boy to be expelled from a[Pg 195] French lycée is no light matter, for the doors of all the others are closed to him, and the pleasure of playing at heroes for a few hours is often bought at the price of ruined prospects.

They manage these things differently in England. Under the same circumstances, this is what the schoolboys of old England would do. A dozen of the most influential and respectable among them would promptly form themselves into a committee, and organize an indignation meeting of all the pupils of the school. This meeting would be presided over by the captain of the school, or even by one of the masters, and the grievance would be discussed, not with any display of temper, but with the calm dignity of the free citizen. Propositions made by the boys, and duly seconded in a parliamentary manner, would be put to the vote, and the president would be charged to transmit such resolutions to the proper authorities. The meeting would then break up in a perfectly orderly manner and without a murmur, everyone going his way,[Pg 196] like a good Republican who had just performed a civic duty of the gravest importance.

Such a meeting as this has never been interdicted by the authorities, for the very simple reason that such a meeting never endangered the good discipline of a school.

Has it indeed fallen to our lot, to us who live under a Republic, to see a people living under a Monarchy enjoying every form of liberty; liberty of thought, liberty of speech, liberty of the press, liberty to meet together, in fact the right of grumbling in every form imaginable; to see them able to get redress for all their grievances, without having recourse to violence?

Do you remember the great manifestations in favor of the abolition of the House of Lords?

The Lords had refused to sanction the Franchise Bill—a bill which was to give electoral rights to two millions of Englishmen, who had[Pg 197] been deprived of them up to that time. Two hundred thousand persons meet and quietly-pass through the great arteries of London. Not a voice is lifted. The immense crowd makes for Hyde Park and there divides itself into twelve groups around twelve improvised platforms. Speeches are made, resolutions passed, and the meeting breaks up in an orderly manner.

But, you will say, the police were there, of course, to see that these people did not break the law.

The police, indeed! Yes, most certainly they were there; but it was to protect the people's right of meeting, and not to hinder them, or oppose them, in the exercise of their privileges.

It was really a wonderful sight for a foreigner, to see this crowd, bent upon overthrowing the Constitution, preceded, flanked, and followed, by mounted police, whose duty it was to see that these subjects of Her Majesty were allowed to protest unmolested! And[Pg 198] that which afforded me some amusement and more instruction still, was the sight of the Prince of Wales and some friends of his, installed on a balcony at Whitehall,[9] and evidently there to see the fun; to see at Pall Mall windows the faces of lords, apparently much amused in watching these people, who had taken a holiday, and who, if they did not gain their point, had the satisfaction of feeling that they lived in a country where they could air their grievances freely.

Ah! how quickly our anniversary-keepers would draw in their horns, if the Minister of the Interior spoke to them somewhat in this[Pg 199] manner: "You wish to hold your demonstration, my friends ... I beg your pardon, citizens; why, certainly! Demonstrate away, to your heart's content; there is nothing to hinder you. You want to carry a red flag about the streets? Carry it by all means—red, yellow, blue, any color of the rainbow that you like best. I will put as many policemen at your disposition as you may require to protect you in the free exercise of your rights."

How small the revolutionary would look if he were talked to in this way! How mortified he would be! But draw your sword, and he is happy. He goes about crying:

It is the very worst course that could be adopted. The proper cure for the mania for demonstrations is not the sword, but a little cold water.

Try how many followers you will get for a standard of revolt raised with the cry:

Ah! where is the Government that will have[Pg 200] first the strength, and then the good sense, to leave the people alone, instead of doing its best to irritate them into adopting the rôle of martyr? Monarchy or Republic, what matters the name of this Government, so that it gives us what we are in search of—our liberty.

The English newspapers love to fill their columns with the sayings and doings of French Anarchists, so as to try and prove to their readers that France "is still navigating on a volcano," although they know very well that our revolutionary mountains are incapable of bringing forth even a mouse, as the ridiculous failure of the proposed Anarchist demonstration at Victor Hugo's funeral proved. The English know perfectly well that in the year 1867, thanks to the inopportune meddling of the police, there was a riot, in Hyde Park, which was likely to have proved very serious. The English know all this; but the pot always had a trick of calling the kettle black.

Our lower orders are a thousand times more intelligent than the English ones; and when[Pg 201] the French police force cease to be the symbol, the instrument, of an arbitrary power, in order to become, in some sort, the protection of the people, our workmen will astonish the world with their good behavior, as they did on the day of our immortal poet's apotheosis.

The Frenchman is impressionable, excitable; but he is gentle, and easy to govern. The Parisians never raised any riots that could not be traced to the want of tact, or the malice, of the Government; and we all know that if M. Thiers had not been so bent upon putting down a small revolution, he would not have stirred up a large one; the Commune would have been nipped in the bud at the Buttes-Chaumont on the 18th of May, 1871. The harmless folk who were looking after the famous cannons would have been only too pleased to go home.

A nation does not learn the proper use of freedom in a day. It does not understand at first sight that obedience and respect for the law are two virtues indispensable to everyone[Pg 202] who wishes to get on tolerably under a democracy; it is for the Government to teach it its lesson. To do this properly, an authority is wanted which shall be vigilant, while making itself felt as little as possible.

This liberty should be the monopoly of no one, but the privilege of each and all. Every time our police officers pounce upon a red flag and tear it up, every time they suppress a Catholic school, or force open the doors of a convent, the fruits of many a month's lessons are lost. We go back; but the cause of the white or red flag is advanced.

Because Protestant England allows the Romanists to open as many churches, schools, and convents as they please.

All that England demands from those who live on her hospitable soil is respect for her laws. Monarchs exiled by their subjects, and Communists, Nihilists, Socialists, exiled by their monarchs, may jostle one another in her[Pg 203] streets any day; the individual liberty of the revolutionary subject being held as sacred as that of the ex-monarch.

Our neighbor's eccentricities are but the natural fruit of liberty; and these same eccentricities, which amuse us so much, in England pass unnoticed. Everyone does as he pleases, and thinks it quite natural that others should do the same. I have seen young girls on tricycles make their way through a crowd, without an unpleasant remark or a joke being indulged in at their expense. The men made way, and allowed them to pass without remarking them more than if they had been on horseback.

Do not fear the abuse of liberty; among an intelligent race, good sense will always take the upper hand.

Liberty is sure to lead to a few excesses; but it does not suffer because of them.

English religious liberty is in no wise in danger because the law tolerates, nay, protects, the rowdy proselytes of the Booth family. True religion may suffer, but not religious liberty.

The right of association is not in danger because a philanthropic club has been formed at Ashpull, in Lancashire, by men who subscribe to defray the costs when one of their number is fined for ill-treating his wife.[10]

There is no need to penetrate deeply into French and English life, to study the tempers of the two nations. The streets of London and Paris furnish the observer with ample materials every day.

In the month of April, 1891, I was one day on the top of the Odeon omnibus. In the[Pg 205] Boulevard des Italiens some repairs were going on, and at the corner of the Rue de Richelieu there was such a crowd of carriages as to cause a block. The question then arose, who was to pass first, those who came from the Madeleine or those who came from the Bastille. An altercation soon arose between the drivers, and that in a vocabulary which I will spare my readers. Meanwhile, the string of carriages lengthened, and the matter was becoming serious. At last up comes a police officer who gets the situation explained to him, forthwith enters into a discussion with the drivers, and tries to make the Madeleine party understand that it is their place to give way. He might as well have talked to the pavement. A hubbub uprose on all sides enough to make one's hair stand on end. Everybody was in the right, it seemed, and the poor police officer, tired of seeing his parliamentary efforts so fruitless, withdrew, saying: "Very well, then, do as you please; I'll have nothing more to do with it" (sic). About a quarter of[Pg 206] an hour later, we turned into the Rue de Richelieu.

In every spot where the traffic is great, you will see a policeman. He is there to regulate the circulation of the vehicles, and protect the foot passengers who may wish to cross the road. In the discharge of this duty, all that he has to do is to lift his hand, and, at this gesture, the drivers stop, like a company of soldiers at the word "halt!" Not a murmur, not a sign of impatience, not a word. When the little accumulation of foot passengers has safely crossed, the policeman lowers his hand, and everything is in motion again.

How many times, as I have looked on at this sight, which to the English appears so natural, have I said enviously to myself: "If these English people are free, if they are masters of half the world, and of themselves into the bargain, it is because they know how to obey!"

I know the favorite explanation of these[Pg 207] striking contrasts: the temperaments are different; the blood does not circulate in English veins with so much impetuosity as it does in French ones. This is true, though only to a certain extent. But be not deceived; it is the difference which exists between the education of the two races that is the real solution of the problem.

CHAPTER XXIII.

THE HUMORS OF POLITICS.

Ah! what I envy the English is that security for the morrow, which they owe to a form of government no one, so to speak, thinks seriously of questioning.

The Englishman is the stanchest monarchist, and at the same time the freest man in the world, which proves that freedom is compatible with a monarchial government. There is no French Legitimist more royalist than he, there is no French Republican more passionately fond of liberty; nay, I will go so far as to say that, in France, people would be treated as dangerous demagogues, who demanded certain liberties which the English have long possessed under a monarchy, and to defend which the most conservative of them would allow himself to be rent in pieces.[Pg 210]

At first sight, the theory of government in England appears to be most simple; two great political parties, each having its leader, whose authority is uncontested, and who takes office amid the acclamations of half the nation. Is the country threatened with danger, party spirit vanishes, Liberals and Conservatives disappear; the Englishman is supreme.

All this appears as simple as admirable. I will show farther on, however, that if there is fixity in the form of the government, there cannot be any consistency in the politics of the country.

Things are forgotten to such an extent in England that I have rarely seen a Liberal paper revert to the fact that Lord Beaconsfield, the illustrious leader of the Conservative party, began his political life in the ranks of the Radicals, or Conservative papers remind people that Mr. Gladstone, the leader of the Liberals, began his brilliant career in the Con[Pg 211]servative ranks. At all events, I never saw anyone reproach these great statesmen with having turned their coats. Lord Derby, who was Minister for Foreign Affairs under Lord Beaconsfield, was Colonial Minister in Mr. Gladstone's Cabinet. Punch had a caricature on the subject, and there was an end of the matter.

Such proceedings would excite contempt or indignation in France; but to judge them in England from a French point of view would be absurd.

In France, political convictions rest on the form of government. In England, everyone, or almost everyone, is of one mind on that subject; Conservatives and Liberals both will have a democracy, having for its object the material, moral, and intellectual progress of the people, with a monarchy to act as ballast.

The only difference that I see in the history of the two parties, during the last fifty years, is that the Conservatives willingly sacrifice their home policy to the prestige of a spirited[Pg 212] foreign policy, while the Liberals pay more attention to internal politics, to the detriment, perhaps, of foreign ones.

Here it should be added that, when an Englishman accepts the task of forming a ministry, it is, in the eyes of his partisans, out of pure abnegation, to serve his country, and, in the eyes of his opponents, out of pure ambition, to serve his own interests.

The difference which separates a Monarchist and a Republican in France is an abyss that nothing can bridge over; the difference which separates a Liberal and a Conservative in England is but a trifling step.

So the candidate for Parliament, who rehearses, in petto, the little speech that he means to address to the electors, winds up with: "Gentlemen, such are my political convictions, but, if they do not please you, let it be well understood between us that I am ready to change them." Or: "Gentlemen, I used to be a Conservative, and at bottom I am a Conservative still, but Mr. Gladstone has appointed me a[Pg 213] Civil Commissioner at a salary of £2000 a year, and I consider that a statesman who chooses his servants so well ought to be supported by all sensible men. Besides, in my new capacity, it is not a party that I am serving, it is my country."

To speak seriously, I really see very little either in the so-called Liberal or Conservative principles that can cause an Englishman to be anything more than the partisan of a certain group of men.

Under the circumstances, it is not surprising that English politics should, above all things, consist in doing in Office what has been valiantly fought in Opposition; it is a school of incisive, passionate debate—nothing more. The following incident, which is as instructive as it is amusing, is sufficient proof of this:

When Lord Beaconsfield deftly snatched Cyprus from the "unspeakable" Turk, in 1878, and, presenting it to John Bull, asked him to admire the fine catch, John's Liberal sons turned up their noses, declared that the hon[Pg 214]esty of the proceeding was dubious, and vowed the place was not fit to send British soldiers to. "It would hardly be humane to send our convicts there," they said; "not even flies could stand the climate." Two years later the Tories went out of office, and the Liberals came to power. What happened? You think, perhaps, that the Liberals promptly restored the island to the Turks with their compliments and apologies. Catch them! Better than that. No sooner were the Tories out of office than the yachts of three leading Liberals might have been seen sailing toward Cyprus, which, it would seem, a simple change of ministry had changed into a health resort. In the beginning of May of the current year, the Liberal Government gave orders to the military authorities of the army of occupation in Egypt, to send to Cyprus all the sick soldiers, who were in a fit state to be transferred—not to finish them up, but actually to hasten their convalescence.[Pg 215]

Ever since every householder has enjoyed electoral rights, each general election has placed the Opposition in power; and the enfranchisement of Mr. Gladstone's new couches sociales is not likely to change this state of things, which is, indeed, very easy to account for.

The necessarily guarded speech of those in office does not catch the ear of the ignorant multitude so readily as the irresponsible talk of the Opposition. The man in power has to defend a policy, the other attacks it right and left; it is he who has the popular rôle. "Ah!" say the crowd, "smart fellow that! if we could only have him in Office, things would be done in a proper manner! What has become of all the fine promises of the ministry?"

So they make up their minds to vote for the man who comes to them with fresh promises, and to throw overboard the one who has not been able to keep his.

If the Government has engaged in war, the[Pg 216] Opposition proves to the people what a disastrous, or, at the best, what a useless war it was; if the Government has been able to maintain peace, the Opposition proves to the people that it was at the price of national honor. The Opposition is always in the right.

To think that men of talent should lower themselves so far as to flatter the populace with such platitudes to obtain their favor! How sad a sight is this vulgarization of politics! And people often wonder how it is that, in democracies, the great thinkers, the genius of the nation, refrain from buying the favors of the people at the price of their dignity! Unhappily, this is the fate of democracies; they can but seldom be ruled by the genius of the nation, by men who would not be appreciated by the masses. No system lends itself better to the reign of unscrupulous mediocrity, for no other system obliges its chiefs to come and humble themselves before the ignorant populace, by giving them acrobatic performances in order to obtain their suffrages.[Pg 217]

Under a democracy, everybody goes into politics, and everybody requires to be pleased.

The literary man, the scholar, the artist, all are criticised by more or less competent judges; but the statesman, who is there that does not criticise him? Who does not take upon himself to judge him without appeal? Who does not drag him in the mud? Who does not cry, "Stop thief!" when he is bold enough to buy a dozen railway shares, like the smallest shopkeeper in the land?

No one says to himself, "The Prime Minister is not a fool; he ought to know what he is about; and even if he were a rogue, is it not to his interest to serve his country to the best of his ability?"

I warrant that there is not a single man, in France or England, who does not believe himself perfectly capable of criticising the acts of his Prime Minister, and very few, who do not feel equal to filling his place, if, for the good of[Pg 218] their country, they were called by their fellow-citizens to fulfill these arduous duties.

There is a great virtue, a virtue eminently English, which we French do not possess; respect for the man who is down. Yet it is not that we lack magnanimity; but we also have our contrasts. Generous, of a chivalric character, with a repugnance for any kind of meanness, we yet insult the fallen man and even bespatter the memory of one who has gone to the grave. We consoled ourselves for Sedan by singing "C'est le Sire de Fiche-ton-Camp." On the death of M. Thiers, a celebrated Bonapartist journalist exclaimed that he could jump for joy over the tomb of him who had just liberated his country. Open the newspapers of to-day, and you will still see Gambetta's memory insulted.

In England, they would have forgotten that Gambetta was a party man, and have remembered only his eloquence, which that of Mira[Pg 219]beau alone could have eclipsed, and which made him one of the brightest ornaments of contemporary France.

When Mr. Bright left the political arena for a world from whence jealousy is banished, and subscription lists were opened for erecting a statue to him, the Conservatives sent their contributions as well as the Liberals; they forgot the Radical, and remembered but the orator and the philanthropist. At the death of Benjamin Disraeli, Earl of Beaconsfield, it was Mr. Gladstone, the political enemy of the Tory chief, who pronounced the panegyric of that illustrious man in the House of Commons.

This is a sentiment that is found, it is interesting to notice, in all classes, even down to the English rough. When two men of the lower classes fight, and one of them falls to the ground, the other waits until his adversary is up again, before returning to the attack. Do not imagine, however, that this sentiment is[Pg 220] born of magnanimous bravery, for this same man, who respects his fallen adversary, will, as soon as he reaches his hovel, seize his wife by her hair, knock her down, and literally kick her to death at the first provocation.

In the latter case, there is no combat; there is correction administered by the master to his slave.

If the English have more respect than we for the man who is down, it is because they forget much more quickly than ourselves. Does this prove that they have less intelligence or more generosity? No. They are less impressionable, that is all. The trace disappears more easily, because the impression is less deep. I think this is one of the most remarkable differences between the two peoples.

In France, it is not an unwise act that ruins a political man—it is, above all things, a phrase blurted out in a moment of exultation. An act is forgotten sooner or later; but an unfor[Pg 221]tunate phrase sticks to a man, and becomes part and parcel of him, his motto, written on his forehead in indelible characters, and which he carries with him to the grave.

Take the case of M. Emile Ollivier. Since the fall of Thiers, we have had no minister, with the exception of Gambetta, whose political talent could be compared to that of the Liberal minister of Napoleon III. And yet, M. Emile Ollivier little knows his compatriots, if he thinks it is possible for him ever again to enter the political arena. To this very day, the masses ignore that it was he who proclaimed war with Prussia, but there is scarcely a child who does not know that he said "he contemplated the coming struggle with a light heart." M. Ollivier is, and will remain to the day of his death, the light-hearted man. Ridicule kills in France, and M. Ollivier is ridiculous. It is all over with him.[11]

[Pg 222]M. Jules Favre was a great orator, and for that reason one of the ornaments of his century. This is forgotten. He signed the disastrous conditions of peace dictated by Prince Bismarck. That might have been overlooked. But he had said beforehand that "not one inch of territory, not one stone of any French fortress, would he yield." This sentence was his political knell.

General Ducrot was a brave soldier. On leaving Paris to go and attack the Prussians, he was so ill-advised as to declare that he would return "dead or victorious." However, he was still more ill-advised to come back alive and vanquished. Here was another only fit to throw overboard.

Our history is full of similar incidents; actions pass away and are forgotten, words remain. Ask any ordinary Frenchman, not well up in the history of France, who Mirabeau was. He will tell you that Mirabeau was a representative of the people, who one day exclaimed at the Assemblée Constituante: "We[Pg 223] are here by the power of the people; nothing but the power of the bayonet shall remove us."

Louis XIV. has gone down to posterity with the formula: "L'Etat c'est moi"; and Napoleon III. with that device, suggested by the irony of fate: "L'Empire c'est la paix." Lamartine is the man who, outside the Hôtel de Ville, cried: "The tricolor flag has been round the world; the red flag has only been round the Champ de Mars." Thiers said: "The Republican form of government is the one that divides us the least." Gambetta: "Clericalism; that is the enemy."

And to parody a celebrated proverb, I might say that French politics may be summed up in the words:

CHAPTER XXIV.

LORDS AND SENATORS.

The existence of a hereditary House of Lords is a standing insult to the common sense of the English people.

Now, all who have had much to do with youth are perfectly agreed that, as a rule, the eldest son is the least intelligent in each family.

Moreover, the eldest son of the aristocrat is the sole heir to his father's title and estates. He knows that the fortune cannot escape him. And so, at school, he does no work; he leaves that sort of thing to his younger brothers, who will have to make their way in the world. When he leaves school or college, his[Pg 226] chief subjects of preoccupation are Jews and jockeys.

It is needless to add that, in the House of Lords, the proportion of Conservatives to Liberals is overwhelming.

Consequently, when the Liberals are in power, the House of Lords is a dangerous institution, which may at every moment hinder the working of the governmental machine; and when the Conservatives are in power, the House of Lords is a useless institution, because its approbation can be relied upon in advance by the Government.

Does it not seem as if any second chamber must necessarily be dangerous or useless?

There is an episode of French history which, to my mind, has been forgotten much too soon.

The French Senate was then, intellectually speaking, a body of men superior to the House of Lords, since they were picked men—chosen by the Emperor, it is true, but still chosen. With the exception of Sainte-Beuve, these senators of the Empire were more or less Bonapartists; cardinals, archbishops, marshals, generals, literary men, all men of importance. The duty of the Senate was to watch over the Constitution, and to stop any bill, passed by the Chamber of Deputies, that might have endangered the existence of the actual form of Government.

Well, in July, 1870, the Franco-Prussian war broke out, and, on the 4th of September, in the same year, the Chamber of Deputies deposed the Emperor, and proclaimed the Republic.

Here was a grand opportunity for the senators of showing their power, and of earning the 30,000 francs that they each received from their master.

Better still: nobody thought of taking the trouble to dismiss them officially. In presence of the strong will of the people, they packed up their traps quietly, and, to the best of my recollection, even forgot to go to the counting-house to receive their month's pay.

Poor senators! they seemed to have the measure of their power in stormy times to an inch.

In presence of the will of the nation, strongly manifested, the House of Lords would be as powerless as the French Senate was in 1870.

A strange application of that great English principle, "the right man in the right place," is the existence of this same Upper House in England!

What! can it be that this, the most sensible nation of the world, who has withdrawn all the[Pg 229] privileges of its monarchs, who has imposed restrictions upon them, and will not even allow them to make the slightest political allusion in public, can it be this nation that has given itself so many masters at once? If the English do not allow their kings unlimited power, it is because, in their wisdom, they fear that those kings may be born fools, or grow into despots; but out of five hundred lords, three or four hundred may be born fools; where then is the gain? Better be governed by one fool than by three or four hundred.

Among a free people, intellect alone ought to be admitted into the councils of the nation.

No one could have a word to say against such men as the Duke of Argyll and the Marquis of Salisbury having a vote to cast into the scales of England's destinies; but would not these able members of the aristocracy of birth gain in influence and prestige, if they sat in an elected house, side by side with the aristocracy of talent?

The House of Lords owes its existence to the English taste for antiquities or curiosities; this people, to its honor be it said, only slowly rids itself of its trammels.

It may safely be predicted that the first great political gust of wind will blow away to pieces this sort of hydropathic establishment.

CHAPTER XXV.

WHAT FRANCE HAS DONE TO MERIT THE RESPECT OF THE WORLD.

France, ruined by the wars and extravagances of Louis XIV., exasperated by the turpitudes of Louis XV., encouraged by the weakness of Louis XVI., revolts. Thrones tremble, and the whole world is awe-struck at the terrible Revolution. Kings league themselves together against her; but such is her might that, with soldiers half armed, half clothed, half fed, she puts to flight the allied armies of the enemies, who had sworn to crush her.

Up rises a man and wrests from her all the liberty she had just bought at the price of so much bloodshed. To steady himself upon an unsteady throne, Napoleon engages in dynastic wars for ten years, marching his victorious army from capital to capital, while Europe[Pg 232] wonders and trembles. At length the eagle falls, and France, sick of military glory, beaten, but not humiliated, takes breath and submits to the Restoration imposed upon her by the allied invaders. To console herself for the loss of the Republic, a form of government least calculated to foster literature and the fine arts, she profits by the return of monarchical rule to inaugurate the Golden Age of 1830. I say the Age of 1830, for such is the name this epoch, one of the most glorious in the history of France, will be known by in the next century. Now appear, in poetry, Victor Hugo, Lamartine, Alfred de Musset, Béranger; in fiction, Balzac, Chateaubriand, Alexandre Dumas, George Sand; in history, Thiers, Guizot; in political oratory, Manuel, Foy, Berryer; in criticism, Sainte-Beuve, Jules Janin; in painting, Horace Vernet, Ingres, Delacroix, Gudin; in music, Boiëldieu, Herold, Halévy, Auber; in tragedy, Talma, Rachel; in comedy, Mars, Duvernoy; in opera, Nourrit, Duprez, Lablache, Baroilhet, Malibran.[Pg 233]

To keep her hand in practice, she makes the conquest of Algeria, and, later on, having nothing else particular in hand, she takes it into her head to make the Suez Canal, a gigantic undertaking, which of itself would be enough to save the nineteenth century from oblivion. Ever enamored of great names, she re-establishes the Empire, because there is a man in the world who bears the name of the victor of Austerlitz. Smitten once more with that strange malady, the love of glory, she fights Russia in 1855 to prevent her from going to Constantinople, and Austria in 1859 to create Italian unity. Then comes that terrible year, the year 1870. With an army of 350,000 men, she sanctions a war, like the child that she is, with a nation, which for sixteen years had been silently preparing to avenge her defeat at Jena, and which had 1,200,0000 men ready to take the field. She is conquered, and, alas! humiliated. She pays her[Pg 234] conquerors $1,000,000,000, but this she has almost forgotten, and sees wrenched from her two provinces that she loved and was beloved by; this she will never forget. The following year, she holds up her head, the richest and most esteemed of European nations. To-day, if she only had a leader, republican or monarch, she would be the strongest.

Ah, dear Foreigners all over the world, respect her, that beautiful France! I have often heard the sincerest and most intelligent of you say that no country in the world would probably have been able to do as much.

THE END.

FOOTNOTES

[1] If my memory serves me, it was one of our wittiest vaudevillists who once laid a wager that he would get an encore, at one of our popular theaters on the Boulevard, for the following patriotic quatrain:

"La lâcheté ne vaut pas la vaillance,
Mille revers ne font pas un succès;
La France, amis, sera toujours la France,
Les Français seront toujours les Français."

He won the bet.

The London badauds are at present nightly applauding, at the Empire Theater, a patriotic song which begins by the following words:

"What though the powers the world doth hold
Were all against us met,
We have the might they felt of old,
And England's England yet."

Is it not strange that music-hall jingoism and chauvinisme should not only be expressed in the same manner, but by the very same words?

[2] I take the word "admiration" in the Latin sense of "wonder."

[3] The Germanic hordes, which overran Gaul in the fifth century, did not succeed in changing our language or character. On the contrary, the barbarians were civilized by contact with us, and adopted our language, instead of imposing theirs upon us. In Great Britain, the case was different: the absorption was complete: from the fifth to the ninth century, the island was perfectly Germanic.

[4] In our National Schools (Écoles Communales), the prizes often take the form of sums of money, which are deposited in the Savings Bank in the child's name.

[5] England makes colonies for the exportation of her goods and for her surplus population; France makes colonies for the wholesale exportation of her officials. In Annam, there are 1000 French Colonists, 4500 French soldiers, and 2000 French officials.

[6] "La Reforme Intellectuelle et Morale."

[7] Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

[8] Everybody knows that, at Guernsey, Victor Hugo had an Irish Catholic cook, and that the illustrious poet abstained from meat on Fridays, not to offend his faithful servant.

[9] Some two hundred years ago, a king was taken to Whitehall to be beheaded for wishing to govern without his people; but here was a future king who had come there to see the people try to overthrow the House of Lords.—Tempora mutantur.

[10] The society in question is described in the English newspapers of the 19th of December, 1884.

[11] A member of Mr. Gladstone's Cabinet said to me one day that, in England, a statesman of M. Ollivier's ability would be sure to return to power.

CASSELL'S BLUE LIBRARY.

Cassell's "Blue Library" is the name given to a new series of novels issued by the Cassell Publishing Company. The "Blue Library" will be edited with the greatest care by an editor especially engaged for that purpose. Well-known American, English and Continental authors will be represented, and none but books of high literary merit and of permanent value will be admitted to this series.

The volumes are of 12mo size, and are bound in Blue Cloth, simply but artistically decorated with a design in silver and gold.

A CHRISTIAN WOMAN.

By Emilia Pardo Bazán. Translated by Mary Springer. With an introduction by Mr. Rollo Ogden. A portrait of the author as frontispiece.

"This strong story of the realistic school is a fit opening volume to this new and dainty series."—Current Literature.

"The bright production of a brilliant and warm-hearted woman."—Boston Saturday Evening Gazette.

"Will be a delightful surprise to readers whose knowledge of realism in fiction is derived from the Zolaesque school."—Boston Globe.

"The reader will find that even Spain can produce women whose mental caliber is on a par with that of our own valued and honored writers and speakers."—Portland Transcript.

"A story of great interest."—Philadelphia Weekly Item.

"THERE IS NO DEVIL."

By Maurus Jókai. Translated from the Hungarian, under the author's supervision, by Mme. F. Steinitz. A portrait of the author as frontispiece.

THE STORY OF TWO LIVES.

JONATHAN AND
HIS CONTINENT

MAX O'RELL
And JACK ALLYN

"We have laughed with him at our neighbors, and now, if we are clever, we will laugh with him at ourselves."—Daily Graphic, N. Y.

"One reads the book with a perpetual smile on one's face, punctuated every now and then by a loud laugh, as one follows the brilliant Frenchman through his six months' tour of America. * * * He has glanced at things with the eye of a trained observer, and commented upon them with originality and humor. * * * One lays down the book with the wish that one might know its author."—Chicago News.

"The sensation of the spring. * * * It will tickle the American in spots and make him mad in spots, but it will be read, talked of, and enjoyed."—Home Journal, Boston.

"Undoubtedly the most interesting and sprightly book of the season. * * * It is rich in information."—Inter-Ocean, Chicago.

"Rarely has one sprung into so immediate a fame in two continents."—Boston Home Journal.

JACQUES BONHOMME,

By MAX O'RELL,

"If any one was absurd enough to feel aggrieved at Max O'Rell's amusement over us in 'Jonathan and His Continent,' he may take his revenge in 'Jacques Bonhomme,' wherein the light-headed Blouet laughs at his compatriots as well."—The Springfield Republican.

"The book is full of sprightly, keen observations ... there is not a dull line in it from first to last, and its information is as genuine and accurate in the way of glimpses into the more intimate life of the people as it is charming in its sparkle and glow of style."—Boston Evening Traveller.

"He is a keen observer and has a happy faculty of presenting the comical side of things, and that with unvarying good humor, apparently indifferent whether the joke hits himself or somebody else."—The Troy Budget.

"In it is pictured the French at school, at war, in leading strings, in love, at work, at play, and at table, in trouble, in England, etc., etc."—The Boston Times.

"Take it all in all, we think the most delightful book that Max O'Rell has written is his last published, entitled 'Jacques Bonhomme.'"—Home Journal, Boston.

JOHN BULL, Jr.,
OR
French as She is Traduced.

By MAX O'RELL,

"There is not a page in this delightful little volume that does not sparkle."—Phila. Press.

"One expects Max O'Rell to be distinctively funny. He is regarded as a French Mark Twain."—The Beacon.

"The whole theory of education is to be extracted from these humorous sketches."—Baltimore American.

"A volume which is bubbling over with brightness, and is pervaded with wholesome common sense."—N. Y. Com. Advertiser.

"May be placed among those favored volumes whose interest is not exhausted by one perusal, but which may be taken up again with a renewal of the entertainment afforded by the first reading."—Boston Gazette.

ELI PERKINS

MELVILLE D. LANDON ("ELI PERKINS").

In this new and taking volume, Mr. Landon recounts his thirty years' experience as a humorous writer and lecturer. "Eli Perkins" needs no introduction. His name and fame are familiar to everybody——who laughs. Reminiscences of such an exceptional career promise an intellectual treat—and the book amply fulfills the promise. In fact it does more; for Mr. Landon has not only put into it his own good stories, but he quotes, with charming skill, scores of others that he has heard told by the well-known men whom he has met in the course of his professional life. Thus, in his acknowledgment, Mr. Landon says that he has listened to thousands of anecdotes, reminiscences, and funny experiences from the lips of the following witty, wise, and eloquent thinkers, now dead: Abraham Lincoln, Charles Sumner, Generals Grant, Sherman, Sheridan, Admiral Farragut, Beecher, Roscoe Conkling, Garfield, Wendell Phillips, W. R. Travers, Artemus Ward, Nasby, Josh Billings, John G. Saxe, and others. Among the living, Chauncey M. Depew, General Butler, Horace Porter, G. W. Curtis, Jay Gould, Eugene Field, Mark Twain, O. W. Holmes, Bret Harte, and John Habberton have helped to enrich the pages of this work.

"Thirty Years of Wit" will be found, therefore, not only a fascinating book of reminiscences, but a perfect treasury of the choicest and keenest, as well as the wisest, American humor.

ORATIONS AND
AFTER-DINNER
SPEECHES

CHAUNCEY M. DEPEW.

Autograph Edition. Limited to one hundred
(100) numbered copies signed by the Author.
With two portraits, and bound in half leather. Price, $6.00.

There is no more pleasantly familiar name in this country than that of Mr. Depew, and it is by his speeches that he is best known. Very few of these have ever been printed in their entirety, and many of them have only been dealt out in fragments by the daily papers, and yet he has won a world-wide reputation by them. Taken in their complete form, as they are given in this volume, they are models of what such speeches should be. Nothing could seem dryer than some of the subjects of Mr. Depew's speeches, but there is not a dry line in any one of them. They bristle with thought and sparkle with wit. As a story-teller he has few equals, and he has the art of telling an old story so that it strikes the hearer with all the freshness of a brand-new one, while of new stories he seems to have an inexhaustible supply.

Extra Cloth, Gilt Top,	Price,	$1.50
Paper Binding,	"	50 cts.

ENGLISH PHARISEES FRENCH CROCODILES AND OTHER ANGLO-FRENCH TYPICAL CHARACTERS

BY

MAX O'RELL

AUTHOR OF "A FRENCHMAN IN AMERICA," "JONATHAN AND HIS CONTINENT," "JOHN BULL, JUNIOR," "JACQUES BONHOMME," "JOHN BULL AND HIS ISLAND," ETC.

NEW YORK CASSELL PUBLISHING COMPANY 104 & 106 Fourth Avenue

Copyright, 1892, by CASSELL PUBLISHING COMPANY. All rights reserved. THE MERSHON COMPANY PRESS, RAHWAY, N. J.

To Jonathan.

CONTENTS.

ENGLISH PHARISEES AND FRENCH CROCODILES.

CHAPTER I.

FOREIGNERS.

CHAPTER II.

JOHN BULL UP TO DATE.

CHAPTER III.

JACQUES BONHOMME, THE LANDED PEASANT-PROPRIETOR OF FRANCE.

CHAPTER IV.

JACQUELINE, THE FORTUNE OF FRANCE.

CHAPTER V.

JOSEPH PRUDHOMME, THE JOG-TROT MIDDLE-CLASS FRENCHMAN.

CHAPTER VI.

ENTERTAINING NEIGHBORS.

CHAPTER VII.

FRENCH IMPULSIVENESS AND BRITISH SANGFROID ILLUSTRATED BY TWO REMINISCENCES.

CHAPTER VIII.

ENGLISH PHARISEES AND FRENCH CROCODILES.

CHAPTER IX.

FRENCH AND ENGLISH SOCIAL FAILURES.

CHAPTER X.

HIGH-LIFE ANGLO-FRENCH GIBBERISH AS USED IN FRANCE AND IN ENGLAND.

CHAPTER XI.

HUMOR, WIT, AND HIBERNIANISM.

CHAPTER XII.

THE MAL DE MER.

CHAPTER XIII.

BRITISH PHILOSOPHY AND FRENCH SENSITIVENESS.

CHAPTER XIV.

THE FRENCH SNOB.

CHAPTER XV.

A SUCCESS AS AN ANGLOPHOBIST. (THE LATE MARQUIS DE BOISSY.)

CHAPTER XVI.

WOMAN WORSHIP.

CHAPTER XVII.

FAITH AND REASON.

CHAPTER XVIII.

THE WORSHIP OF THE GOLDEN CALF.

A Bill of Roman Gratitude.

A Bill of British Gratitude.

CHAPTER XIX.

WHY THE FRENCH WERE BEATEN IN 1870.

CHAPTER XX.

ENGLAND WORKS FOR HERSELF. THE WORLD OWES HER NOTHING.

CHAPTER XXI.

THE SPIRIT OF DESTRUCTION AND THE SPIRIT OF CONSERVATISM.

CHAPTER XXII.

ORDER AND LIBERTY.

CHAPTER XXIII.

THE HUMORS OF POLITICS.

CHAPTER XXIV.

LORDS AND SENATORS.

CHAPTER XXV.

WHAT FRANCE HAS DONE TO MERIT THE RESPECT OF THE WORLD.

THE END.

FOOTNOTES

CASSELL'S BLUE LIBRARY.

A CHRISTIAN WOMAN.

"THERE IS NO DEVIL."

THE STORY OF TWO LIVES.

JONATHAN AND HIS CONTINENT

MAX O'RELL And JACK ALLYN

JACQUES BONHOMME,

By MAX O'RELL,

JOHN BULL, Jr., OR French as She is Traduced.

By MAX O'RELL,

ELI PERKINS

MELVILLE D. LANDON ("ELI PERKINS").

ORATIONS AND AFTER-DINNER SPEECHES

CHAUNCEY M. DEPEW.

ENGLISH PHARISEES
FRENCH CROCODILES

AND

OTHER ANGLO-FRENCH TYPICAL CHARACTERS

AUTHOR OF "A FRENCHMAN IN AMERICA," "JONATHAN AND HIS
CONTINENT," "JOHN BULL, JUNIOR," "JACQUES BONHOMME,"
"JOHN BULL AND HIS ISLAND," ETC.

NEW YORK
CASSELL PUBLISHING COMPANY
104 & 106 Fourth Avenue

Copyright, 1892, by
CASSELL PUBLISHING COMPANY.

All rights reserved.

THE MERSHON COMPANY PRESS,
RAHWAY, N. J.

ENGLISH PHARISEES AND
FRENCH CROCODILES.

JONATHAN AND
HIS CONTINENT

MAX O'RELL
And JACK ALLYN

JOHN BULL, Jr.,
OR
French as She is Traduced.

ORATIONS AND
AFTER-DINNER
SPEECHES