French lines

“ Lancers, the only French troops yet to reach Belgian soil, and a small
body of infantry, without artillery.
Yet, rapid as the action of the Allies was, it was not as rapid as the downward sweep of the German horde that rushed to meet them.
There was a crash, as if rock were hurled upon rock, as the Lancers, the flower of the French cavalry, scarce seated in the saddle, rushed forward to save the pickets, to encounter the first blind ford of the attack and to give the Belgian infantry, farther in, time to prepare for defense. ”

“ As we travelled on, amid scenes of truly Alpine grandeur and loveliness, the thought arose to my mind, how little even the much-travelled English dream of the wealth of scenery in France! Our cumbersome old diligence carried only French passengers. Nowhere else in Europe does the English tourist find himself more isolated from the common-place of travel. ”

“ And in looking at it one feels once more, as one so often feels in trying to estimate French architecture or the French landscape, how much of her total effect France achieves by elimination. If marked beauty be absent from the French face, how much more is marked dulness, marked brutality, the lumpishness of the clumsily made and the unfinished! As a mere piece of workmanship, of finish, the French provincial face—the peasant's face, even—often has the same kind of interest as a work of art. ”

“ It is to find—not the most fashionable pleasantry, for it loses its aroma between Paris and the frontier—but the witty understanding, the critical atmosphere in which the French live, from the poet down to the artisan, from the duchess to the boy in the street. ”

“ It resembles France in nothing. Over there are order, arrangement, symmetry, cleanliness, wellmown lawns, and profound silence in the streets. The passers-by are as serious and mute as spectres. When, being French and alive, you speak in the street, these spectres look back at you and murmur with an inexpressible mixture of gravity and disdain: ‘French people!’ When I was in London I was walking arm-in-arm with my wife and sister. ”

“ THE FERRY AT DECKER Is it an illusion of romance, merely, or is it true that, in spite of the fact that the French, governmentally speaking, have been out of old Vincennes—the very region of it—for over a hundred and fifty years, and that nearly all we know of the town of twenty thousand has come into existence in the last fifty years, there still exists in it, hovers over it, the atmosphere of old France? ”

“ The proud and angry spirits which then roamed about Paris unemployed begins to recover its old channels, though worn deeper by recent torrents. The natural urbanity of the French begins to find its way, like oil, to the surface, though there still remains a degree of roughness and bluntness of manner, partly real, and partly affected, by such as imagine it to indicate force and frankness. The events of the last thirty years have rendered the French a more reflecting people. ”

“ The time has arrived when eminence in printing means much more than good work along existing lines. It means a radical departure and the full recognition of the power and value of art in printing. We have been rather hesitant in accepting this word, art, as applying legitimately to printing, and we have been hesitating merely because we have seen the term so freely and ignorantly applied to work that merited no better name than archaic ”

“ Look at a railway porter, or a railway policeman—the decent uniform and the punctual system soon make a new man of the peasant. An English priest in Paris, with little prejudice in favour of our race, assured me that no girls crossed the sea who acquire so speedily the carriage, deportment, and grace which distinguish French women, as girls from Munster, coming perhaps as servants to some great lady. ”

“ We saw the paysannes here in deep gipsy straw hats, the first we had beheld in France among this class of people; for even in Paris, the petites bourgeoises, as well as the countrywomen, all walk about in caps, or the French handkerchief tied carelessly round the head. ”

“ The esprit, that delicious ingredient which has been so lamentably omitted in German character, she had imbibed from her French education; and in lieu of that plodding interchange of flat commonplaces which constitute the ordinary staple of conversation between the young of opposite sexes beyond the Rhine, she had imported the light, delicate tone of Parisian raillery—the easy and familiar gaiety of French society, so inexpressibly charming in France, and such a boon from heaven when one meets it by accident elsewhere. ”

“ In all ages France and England have carried on an exchange of trifles, which is all the more constant because it evades the tyranny of the Custom-house. The fashion that is called English in Paris is called French in London, and this is reciprocal. ”

“ 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. ”

“ For the representation of pieces bearing the general character which we have described, the French are certainly better fitted than any other people,—their native gaiety and sprightliness of disposition,—the polish which their manners so readily acquire,—their irrepressible confidence and self-conceit,—their love of shewing off, and attracting attention, give really a stage effect to many of their serious actions, and to almost all their trifling conversation and amusements. ”

“ Few nations are more courteous than the French. Here the stranger, let him come from what country he may, and be ever so unacquainted with the people and language, he is sure of a civil reply to any question that he may ask. With the exception of the egregious blunder I have mentioned of the cabman driving me to the Elysee, I was not laughed at once while in France. ”

“ Hence there comes about a gradual weaning from France. London begins to count for more than Rouen. The Norman knights and barons very likely season their talk with what they may have called English slang; and the better taught of the islanders—the sons of country franklins affected more knowledge of the Norman tongue, and came to know the French romances, which minstrels sang at their [56] doors. So it was that slowly, and with results only observable after long lapse of years, the nation and language became compacted into one; and the new English began to be taught in the schools. ”

“ He visited every notable spot in the brilliant and curious town where one spoke first in French, and English only as an afterthought; where even the blind beggar appeals to the charitable in two languages; where the citizens ride in up-to-date motor-cars and the visitors in the high-slung, swing-shaped horse calache; where the traffic takes the French side of the road; where the shovel hats and cassocks of priests are as commonplace as everyday; where the vivacity of France is fused into the homely good-fellowship of the Colonial in a manner quite irresistible. ”

“ Nothing, indeed, is wanting to quick travelling in France, but English drivers and English carriages. How would a mail-coach roll upon such a road! The French postillions, and even the French horses, such as I met on the road, have a kind of activity without progress—the postillions are very active in cracking their whips over their heads, and the horses shuffle about without mending their pace. ”

“ Better a dinner of herbs in France, with its sunshine, than roast beef in England and fog therewith. No wonder that the French think so little about heaven when they have such a beautiful country to live in on earth. ”

“ 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. ”

“ A second shining example is found in the history of the rise of the French language. This marvelously lucid tongue had its origin in a little island in the Seine, at present the heart of the great city of Paris. The language of the inhabitants of that tiny isle, to be sure, was at first a rude lingo no whit superior to the various patois of Romanized Gaul. But the inhabitants of that vigorous district soon gained the political ascendency over their neighbors and gradually extended their speech throughout the whole of Ile-de-France. ”

“ Miss Randolph would have me stop the car on the bridge to watch it.
A queer thing about France, by the way. You and I have both been entertained right royally in jolly old châteaux by delightful French people of our own class. We know that life in such country houses can be as charming as it is in England; yet if one had never seen it from the inside, one would fancy in [Pg 130] travelling that nothing of the sort existed. Roughly, one might sum the difference up in a phrase by saying that France presents a peasant's landscape, England a landlord's. ”

“ I'm as American as they make 'em. Born on lower Broadway and brought up in the New York public schools. I don't know anything about France, except that we have to come here to get the right styles in hats. I don't even speak any French except to say 'combien' and enough to count. ”

“ By 1350 France had absorbed all the antecedent varieties of illumination. From France, therefore, spring all the succeeding styles now considered national.
And as is most natural, these styles develop by proximity—the nearest to French being Netherlandish. The next, as a result of immediate intercourse, Italian. Then German, Spanish, and the rest, as intercourse gave opportunity. It is not always an easy matter to say offhand whether a MS. is French or Flemish. In the earlier days it is not easy to say whether it be French or English, or even whether French or Italian. ”

“ In other words, the variations of usage between Great Britain and the United States are infrequent. In England the railway was preceded by the stage-coach, and in America the railroad was preceded rather by the river steamboat; and probably this accounts for the slight differentiation observable in the vocabulary of the traveler. But this is not the reason why we in America make misuse of a French word, dépôt, while the British prefer the Latin word terminus,—restricting its application accurately to the terminal station of a line. ”

“ It was strange that the first persons we should see since we left the wharf at the foot of Fifteenth Street, North River, the first we should see in France, should not be French people, but German soldiers. ”

“ Let universal Paris, universal France, as with the throat of the whirlwind, sound only: To arms!—‘To arms!’ yell responsive the innumerable voices: like one great voice, as of a Demon yelling from the air: for all faces wax fire-eyed, all hearts burn up into madness. ”

“ Instead of French folk, with whom we can chat about their crops, rural affairs, the passing scenes, gaining all kinds of information, feeling that we are really in France, and forgetting for awhile old associations, henceforth we shall find on board these steamers our near neighbours, whom, no matter how much respected, we are glad to quit for a time. From end to end of the vessel we shall hear the voices of English and Transatlantic tourists, one and all most probably 'disappointed in the Rhône;' but, indeed, for the river, we should as well be at home! ”

“ The activity and the fecundity of the type founders in producing new type faces has operated, in the first instance, to furnish new excuse for discord. Then a reaction began, and the liberality of the founders in making complete lines and elaborate series of type faces is suggesting uniformity in scheme and supplying material for consistent execution. The elaborate specimen books are scarcely a temptation to restraint however, nor do they tempt to classicism. Too much type at the hand of the printer37 is a positive detriment. ”

“ Tho railway which crosses the whole country from east to west, the telegraph stations scattered throughout the territory, the camps and fortresses occupying tho strategical positions, and the tracts of land bought up for cultivating vines and olives, all attract to the interior a continually increasing stream of French clerks, merchants, speculators, and workmen of every description, as well as the Kabyles who call themselves Frenchmen, and who come to offer themselves as reapers and harvesters. ”

“ 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." ”

“ It is for all these reasons, and thousands more that creep into the blood and the brain beyond the range of analysis, that Paris takes such a grip of the foreigner, and becomes the birth-town of his maturity. ”

“ We hear the roar of the trains in the plain, trains moving westwards, towards France. Those afoot walk as in a dream; many never leave their palliasses. The men from Provence are thinking of the sunshine ”

“ It is their singular perseverance in this favourite pursuit which renders a French ball to a stranger more than commonly ludicrous. In England, when the company begins to assemble, you are delighted with the troops of young and blooming girls, who throng into the dancing room, with faces beaming with the desire, and forms bounding with the anticipation of pleasure. In France, you must conceive the room to be superbly lighted up, and the walls covered with large mirrors, which, in their indefinite multiplication, suffer nothing, however ludicrous, to escape them. ”