Anglo-French

“ England is the only country in Europe whose inhabitants never leave it in search of fortune. There are, moderately speaking, twenty Frenchmen in London for every Englishman at Paris. By far the greater part of those Frenchmen travel to get money, and almost all the English to spend it. But we should certainly be led into great errors, by forming an idea of the character of the French nation from that of the French fiddlers, dancing-masters, dentists, and valet-de-chambres to be met with in England, or other parts of Europe. ”

“ English travellers in France, and those with whom they have to do, understand each other better than at the time when I began my journey; and more accommodations to the English taste are provided. The rivalry between France and England will subsist as long as the geographical position of the two [Pg 183] countries: but no people are more willing than the French, in ordinary cases, and when not stimulated by strong incitements, to distinguish between the nation and the individual. Thus far we may all be cosmopolites; though nations be divided, let men be united. ”

“ But he has surely meditated on our history and has divined the reason of the very existence of France; why she merits love beyond her frontiers, and why she should be defended "like a treasure." England is not made up of traders, soldiers, sailors, politicians, but also—and that is what the French people will learn better every day—of poets, subtle philosophers, and of thoughtful and religious spirits. ”

“ Considering what France was under her Kings, what she now is, and how many troubles she has had to endure at the hands of intriguers, the conclusion in its substance, in its nudity, in its complete entirety, accepted by all men able to read French History, is surely that France always was, is at heart, and should remain what Great Britain is, and rightly wishes to remain, i.e., a Constitutional Monarchy. ”

“ It was, in reality, a plot, under cover of Catholicism, to introduce absolute monarchy, and to make England a dependency of France, not only by the acceptance of French money, but by submission to a French army. ”

“ In order to realize the advantages which France then had over England, it will be well briefly to review the condition of our land at that time. Our population was far smaller than that of the French Republic. France, with her recent acquisitions in Belgium, the Rhineland, Savoy, Nice, and Piedmont, numbered nearly 40,000,000 inhabitants: but the census returns of Great Britain for 1801 showed only a total of 10,942,000 souls, while the numbers for Ireland, arguing from the rather untrustworthy return of 1813, may be reckoned at about six and a half millions. ”

“ There is a striking difference in this respect between England and the countries on the continent—the paysans of France and the bontadini of Italy being physically far superior to their degenerate masters; while the gentry and nobility of England differ from the peasantry in limb and feature as the racer differs from the dray-horse, or the greyhound from the cur. The contrast between the manners of English and French gentlemen is quite as striking. ”

“ At the best of times England and France were rather like two fierce, well-fed dogs, the doors of whose kennels looked right into each other. Causes of the war.Edward had wisely begun his reign with several serious attempts to conquer Scotland, and had won a great battle at Halidon Hill in Berwickshire, while, all the time, French help was being poured into Scotland. Then, again, the French never ceased their attempts to eat up our old ally, Flanders, now more than ever necessary to English trade. Finally, no English King of any spirit could refuse to defend Gascony, our one foreign possession. ”

“ Whatever has been the stock from which the inhabitants of modern France has sprung, their extraordinary capacity of assimilation seems to have endowed them generally with those national characteristics popularly labelled the genius of the French. This process, discernible all through the pages of history, seems as vital to-day as ever.
To any one familiar with the French people, it is a matter for astonishment that the average Briton fails in the most profound fashion to realise the [Pg 13] most obvious of the national characteristics of his neighbours across the Channel. ”

“ They brought brilliant and barren triumphs to England, and, like most wars, were a wasteful and terrible mistake, which, if crowned with ultimate success, might, by removing the centre of the kingdom into France, have marred the future welfare of England, for the happy constitutional development of the country could never have taken place with a sovereign living at Paris, and French interests becoming ever more powerful. ”

“ All the world knows, both in France and England, that such things must be; the only difference is, that in England nobody allows it, while in France nobody denies it. The French seem to me in this respect to be the nicer people of the two. An English friend told me that, being at Toulon, after breakfast he inquired of the femme de chambre, (for in France no one scruples mentioning such things to a female,) the way to No. ”

“ There is no answer to such a statement. Frenchmen believe, quaintly enough, that the hand of every foreigner is always against them. The national conceit in France, an excellent asset, of course, for the nation, but singularly aggravating sometimes, is enormous, unfathomable, and entirely impervious to argument or logic. The greatest praise for anything in France is that [Pg 67] it is French. ”

“ This quiet little girl, at once artless and disenchanted, pious and disillusioned, does not answer in the least to the conception that a young German artist forms of France. But we know better! The little governess personifies that France, known to few outside her boundaries, which is compact of sacrifice, of duty, of delicate conscientiousness, of rigid economy for self and generous outlay for some treasured ideal, child, or cause:—the France of Port-Royal, the France of ‘48. ”

“ It is true, that the noblesse who have visited England with proper recommendations, and have been introduced to the best society, do us justice: the men of letters also, who, from party motives, extol every thing English, have done us perhaps more than justice. But I speak of the French in general; not the lower classes only, but the gentry of the provinces, and even those who in other respects have pretensions to information. ”

“ Let me at the same time admit, without hesitation, that we have sometimes borrowed from England too [307] completely and precipitately. We have not sufficiently calculated the true character and social condition of French society. France has increased and prospered under the influence of royalty seconding the ascending movement of the middle classes; England, by the action of the landed aristocracy, taking under its charge the liberties of the people. These distinctions are too marked to disappear, even under the controlling uniformity of modern civilization. ”

“ I should like to pay a visit to England, because I am told the nobility in that country are not so proud as ours; notwithstanding this, Heaven knows what money they spend in Paris; they are fine looking men, but speak very bad French. The French admire nothing of the English but their constitution, but I admire their openness. ”

“ I have lived long enough to find hundreds of my countrymen participating in a real knowledge of the French, and believing with me that they are a brave, intelligent, and generous nation. Nearly half a century of experience amongst them has taught me that there is much to learn and much that is worthy of imitation in France. The social habits of the French, and their easy mode of communication, always gain the admiration, and often invite the attachment of foreigners. They are less prejudiced than we islanders, and are much more citizens of the world than ourselves. ”

“ The attention which the French have, of late, paid to Physiognomy, may be ascribed not only to the infatuating nature, and intrinsic excellence of that science, but, also, to adventitious circumstances. France, or, more properly, its metropolis, has, within a few years, become, as it were, the immense stage on which all the varieties of human aspect and action have been exhibited. ”

“ At this very time they were not only meditating a blow at the commerce of England, by preventing the admission of English goods into any port of France and Belgium, and into any of the French dependencies, but they were fostering and entertaining a number of Irish revolutionists at Paris, and were contemplating a grand expedition to Ireland, in order to co-operate with the rebellious there, and to convert that country, as they had done Holland, Belgium, &c, into a French dependency. ”

“ The typical Romance nation was thus formed, itself a nation in the strictest sense, though it has since done much to absorb and assimilate parts of the other nations on its borders. Yet we may perhaps see in the growth of the French nation, at least as compared with England and Scandinavia, some influences from the city-life of more southern lands. ”

“ The people are a simple, quiet folk, living just as their fathers lived, happy, clean, contented, and stationary. This last quality provokes the English of Upper Canada dreadfully, who complain that the French make everything they require at home, and buy nothing whatever which contributes to the revenue of the Dominion except a little cheap tea. However, there is much to be said for the Frenchmen, and I am very glad that our English people have constantly before them the example of such a self-sufficing and unambitious life. ”

“ They were uncongenial with, disastrous to, any hopeful enterprise. And we are to find in this fundamental quality of French dominion, with all the zeal and heroism engaged in it, the reason for the fact that France has no heritage here. ”

“ There is no country in which the English are so popular as in France; [100] but, though the French have been frequently roughly handled by the English, and have seen their capital occupied by an English army, they have never been subjected to the supposed ignominy of receiving assistance from them. ”

“ Besides the native inhabitants, there are many foreign residents, and some English. As these are in general in good circumstances, they have usually the best houses in the town, and live in the substantial style of their respective countries. The English denizens very well understand that they are constantly under the eye of the French government, and its spies: they live, therefore, as much as possible in public; and in their balls, and dinners, and entertainments, have a due mixture of French visitants. ”

“ France (38,343) , the land of the French; a nation standing in the front rank among the powers of Europe. It occupies a geographical position of peculiar advantage in the western portion of it, having a southern foreshore on the Mediterranean and a western and northern seaboard washed by the Atlantic and the English Channel, possessing altogether a coast-line, rather undeveloped however, of upwards of 2000 m., while to the E. it abuts upon Belgium, Germany, Switzerland, and Italy. ”

“ France has a small debt and an immense army; while England has a vast debt and scanty forces. France has five millions of kindly, merry, well-fed yeomen. England swarms with dark and withered artisans. Every seventh person you meet in France is a landowner in fee, subject to moderate taxation. Taxes and tenancies-at-will have cleared out the yeomanry of England. France has a literature surpassing England's modern literature. France is an apostle of liberty—England the turnkey of the world. France is the old friend, England, the old foe, of Ireland. ”

“ It has been observed that nations reaching their zenith, regard with more complacency their rising morn, than the approaching west. France, notwithstanding the precision given to her language by Richilieu, and the Academy, turns back affectionately to her Troubadours and Trouvires, to the long-drawn, scarce-readable "Romance of the Rose," and the itinerant Chronicles of Froissart. England is not indifferent to Anglo-Saxon traditions, or the customs of her Norman dynasty. ”

“ France presented a striking contrast to England in government, in religion, in the structure of society, in habits of living, in manners, in dress, — in short, in a thousand details that make up the greater part of everyday existence. Moreover, France, taken by herself, was full of contradictory elements. Standing as she did in the forefront of civilization, boasting the most brilliant philosophers and men of letters in Europe, her life was throttled by a system of government that was daily becoming more inadequate to the demands of the time. ”

“ In the far East the chief rivals for empire were the British, Dutch and French, and in America the British, French and Spanish. The British had the supreme advantage of a water frontier, the “silver streak” of the English Channel, against Europe. The tradition of the Latin Empire entangled them least.
EUROPEANS TIGER HUNTING IN INDIA
(From the engraving of the picture by Zoffany in the British Museum)
France has always thought too much in terms of Europe. ”

“ Delicacy in France and in England.—Causes of the difference between them.
There is nothing perhaps which marks the national variety of manners between the French and the English more distinctly than the different estimate they form of what is delicate or indelicate, modest or immodest, decent or indecent: nor does it appear to me that all the intimacy of intercourse which for the last twenty years has subsisted between the two nations has greatly lessened this difference. ”