CHAPTER II

VARIETY IN FRANCE

The _Rue de Rivoli_, the _Champs Elysées_, and the _Boulevard des Italiens_ are familiar to the travelling English, but they know little of provincial France, and they reciprocate, in a great degree, the French indifference about provincial England. Both nations prefer travelling in Switzerland and Italy to visiting each other. This encourages the notion of uniformity which would be greatly modified by a more detailed acquaintance with the provinces.

[Sidenote: Physical Geography.]

[Sidenote: Effects on Population.]

The variety in the physical geography of France, and in the climate, would be enough already to lead one to expect a corresponding variety in human characteristics. We find in the British Islands that the mountaineers are unlike the inhabitants of the plains, that the people of the north, whose climate is severe, are in some respects unlike those of the south, whose climate is milder, that the maritime population differs from the inland population and the manufacturing from the agricultural. The Englishman is familiar with these contrasts in his own country, yet instead of expecting them in France he supposes French people to be all alike.

[Sidenote: The Size of France.]

[Sidenote: The French Highlands.]

[Sidenote: French Coasts.]

[Sidenote: Atlantic.]

[Sidenote: Mediterranean.]

[Sidenote: Varieties of French Climate.]

The mere size of France might lead one to expect diversity. It is about three times the size of Great Britain, so that the distances in France are greater and the parts of the population more separated. It is not the custom in England to think of France as a mountainous country, because English impressions of it are chiefly derived from railway journeys across the French Lowlands. I may therefore remind the reader that the French Highlands cover an area equal to the whole of Great Britain, that they include fifty peaks above eleven thousand feet, and a much greater number higher than Ben Nevis, a dozen of them in the department of the Ardèche alone. On the other hand, the French plains are so vast that they include the area of three Irelands. Here is evidently one great cause of variety in the conditions of human life, but France has also nearly two thousand miles of sea-coast, with two very distinct maritime populations, one brought up on the shore of the Channel and the Atlantic Ocean, subject to the same influences as those on the English and Irish coasts, the other by the tideless Mediterranean, under the same influences as the sailors and fishermen of Genoa. Now, with regard to climates, French meteorologists tell us that there are seven distinct climates in France. The most northerly differs little from that of the south of England, whilst the most southerly is Spanish towards the west and, to the east, Italian. You may write a list of French towns, Paris, Tours, Lorient, Lyons, Marseilles, Bordeaux, each of which has a climate perfectly distinct from every one of the others. I believe it is not an exaggeration to say that all these towns differ from each other as much as Amiens does from London, for example, and in some cases the difference is much greater. The difference between Marseilles and Lorient is greater than that between London and Inverness.

[Sidenote: Brittany and Provence.]

It would be difficult to imagine two modern nations more different from each other, both in country and people, than are Brittany and Provence. Brittany has a rainy, temperate climate with sea-breezes; Provence, a fierce dry heat, with almost perpetual sunshine and very strong and lasting continental winds. Brittany is the land of the apple-tree, Provence the land of the olive. The shores of Brittany are washed by the tides of the Atlantic, those of Provence by the waves of the tideless Mediterranean. It is like comparing Wales with Italy and the Welsh with the Italians. The Bretons have their ancient language still, the Provençaux retain their beautiful soft modulated Latin, one of the most exquisitely perfect instruments for poetry in the world. The Bretons preserve their costumes; their ways of living, their temper, their ideas, are all different from those of Provence.

[Sidenote: Diversity in Neighbourhood.]

[Sidenote: The Morvan.]

[Sidenote: Les Morvandeaux.]

The great distance between north-western and south-eastern France may lead us to expect wide differences. The variety that exists in great nations is still more striking when we observe the trenchant differences that often divide populations which, geographically, are near neighbours. The Morvan is a district about fifty miles from north to south by thirty from east to west. It is not marked on the maps of France, but the reader will understand its situation when I tell him that it embraces portions of four departments: the Yonne to the north, the Côte d’Or to the east, the Nièvre to the west, and Saône-et-Loire to the south. In shape it resembles the Isle of Man, but it includes about five times as much territory. Autun is just outside of it to the south-east, and Avallon just inside it to the north. This district, or region, is marked by a peculiar physical character. It is a land of hills (not mountains), woods, and running streams, and the inhabitants, until their country was opened by good roads, were scarcely less a people apart than the Bretons. They have a language of their own, which, though akin to French, is not French, and the people are now for the most part able to speak French or Morvandeau at will (just as in the Highlands of Scotland they speak English or Gaelic), and their French is remarkably pure.

[Sidenote: The Morvan Race.]

[Sidenote: Material Civilisation.]

[Sidenote: Cookery in Burgundy.]

[Sidenote: Gardening.]

Now, if you compare the people of the Morvan with those of the plain of Burgundy and the Saône, which is quite near, you find the most striking differences. First there is a difference of race and of physical constitution, the Morvan race being the smaller of the two, the women more frequently pretty and well made on their small scale, with a predominance of dark hair and eyes, and a rich rather than a fair complexion. Besides this, there is a great disparity in material civilisation. The art of cookery has been accounted one of the most effectual tests of human advancement; when the people are clever cooks they are usually, it is said, clever in other arts besides, and they set a value on civilised life generally, and will be at great pains to maintain it. Such an art as cookery may have nothing to do with the intellectual side of life, and the Muse may exist on a little oatmeal, though she generally does her work better on a more varied and more interesting diet; but cookery is of great economic importance, because a cooking people will appreciate all the alimentary gifts of Nature and master the arts that procure them, whilst the non-cooking races are negligent and careless providers. The French are reputed to be a cooking race, but the Morvan people scarcely understand cookery better than the Scottish Highlanders. Servants from the Morvan are often sharp and active, honest, willing, laborious, cheerful, contented, amiable, yet with all these fine qualities invariably unable to cook a dinner. In the Burgundy wine district and the plain of the Saône a talent for cookery is very common in both sexes, and there are plain unpretending wives of small inn-keepers or wine-growers who would be perfectly capable of serving a royal feast, and not in the least disconcerted by the undertaking. All the Saône bargemen are said to be clever cooks, and they live extremely well. In the Morvan the peasants live with severe self-denial, chiefly on potatoes and thin soup flavoured with a morsel of bacon. Their drink is often a poor kind of perry or cider; they indulge in wine on market-days and sometimes sparingly at home, but then it is of a meagre quality. Near the Saône the people are a gardening as well as a cooking race; the Morvan people are not gardeners; a rich man may have a garden as a matter of luxury, but the peasants do not cultivate vegetables or fruit-trees. In some parts of the Morvan the spring comes six weeks later than at Chalon on the Saône.

[Sidenote: The Fine Arts.]

Lastly, in the Morvan there are no fine arts. There may be occasional artistic genius, like that of Gautherin, the sculptor, who began life as a poor Morvandeau shepherd boy, but such gifts find no natural development in the district. The Burgundy wine country, on the other hand, has always been favourable to art of all kinds, and to learning. Architecture, sculpture, painting, music, and all kinds of scholarship have flourished at Dijon in an association (perhaps not altogether accidental) with good cookery and the richest of all French vintages.

[Sidenote: Departments.]

[Sidenote: Provinces.]

[Sidenote: Districts.]

[Sidenote: Local Climates.]

I have dwelt somewhat disproportionately on this contrast, because I know the country well. It is offered to the reader merely as one example out of many. I am told by those who know other parts of France familiarly that contrasts equivalent to this are to be found in various other regions and districts of that extensive country. There are three ways of dividing France, into departments, provinces, and districts. The departments, although taking their names from physical geography, as a help to the memory for locality, are in reality nothing more than artificial divisions for administrative convenience. The provinces (Burgundy, Normandy, Guienne, etc.) are convenient in another way, because of their connection with history, and also because it is believed still that the population of each province has a character of its own. Districts, though without any definite political or historical character, and often with rather vaguely defined limits, are useful in fixing local characteristics in the mind. Only local antiquaries could enlighten us about their obscure history; but one thing is always noticeable about them which is that the characteristics of each district are of a special nature. For example, the Morvan is a land of hills, woods, and streams; the Sologne is a woody plain, perfectly flat and interspersed with sandy pools and marshes; Les Dombes are an insalubrious region, full of fish-ponds; and Rouergue (in Guienne) is a land of hills and streams, like the Morvan, but with greater altitudes and wilder scenery. The population of each of these districts takes a certain character from the nature of its surroundings and from the local climate, which in one place may be dry, in another rainy, in one very equable and mild, in another extreme in heat and cold. Even within a distance of fifteen or twenty miles you discover, from the meteorological registers kept by the road surveyors, that twice as much rain falls in one village as in another. You have the wet and woody regions, the arid, hot, rocky regions, the lands of pasture and meadow, the vine lands, the country of extinct volcanoes, the peat morasses, the unprofitable sand countries by the sea where only the maritime pine can resist the invasion of sterility.

[Sidenote: The Spirit of Towns.]

[Sidenote: An Aristocratic Centre.]

[Sidenote: A Commercial Town.]

Then there is the spirit of towns; each town has a certain individuality, each has a spirit of its own derived from its historic past, and from its occupations in the present. One town may be a clerical and aristocratic little centre, where a republican (even under the Republic) has not the faintest chance of getting into society; a place where all public functionaries under the Government are socially boycotted; a place where all modern ideas are quietly ignored or despised, where reputations have no currency, and nothing is valued but conformity to a narrow local standard of the _comme il faut_. Thirty miles away, there is, perhaps, a busy commercial town, where all ideas are centred upon a pecuniary success, and people are esteemed exactly in proportion to their capital without regard to other considerations,--a town where all the fortunes are recent, and all have been acquired in trade.

[Sidenote: Extremes in the same Place.]

[Sidenote: Nîmes.]

[Sidenote: Lyons.]

[Sidenote: Michelet’s Description.]

Another variety, very little understood out of France, is that of extremes meeting in the same town. This is sometimes especially striking in the southern towns, and it may be of very long standing, like the conflict between Protestantism and Roman Catholicism at Nîmes, a city that cannot be correctly described as either Protestant or Catholic; and yet there is more of each religion in it than there would be if the rival faith were extirpated. But the best example in France of a city combining the most opposite characteristics is Lyons. It is at the same time most republican and most clerical. “There is one town above all,” wrote Michelet, “where the antagonism of two ages, of the spirit of old times and the new spirit, strikes even the eyes in all its grandeur--that town is Lyons.... I leaned on the parapet on the steep of Fourvières, and said to myself, as I looked upon the opposite hill, gloomy, black below, under the cypresses of the Jardin des Plantes, colossal above in its piles of work-people’s houses, ten or fifteen storeys high,--I said, _These are not two hills; they are two religions_. The two towns of Lyons, that of the convents and that of the workshops, are the goals of pilgrimage for the poor. Some of them come to the Lyons of miracles and seek charity; these come to Fourvières.[91] But thou, good workman, wilt come to the hill of labour, the serious Croix Rousse. The part in the banquet which thou desirest is bread won by thine own hands.” I was reminded of these words of Michelet when, at Lyons, I said to a mechanic who was working on Sunday, “This task prevents you from going to mass.” The man paused an instant in his labour, looked up at me seriously, and answered, “It is not my custom to go to mass. He who works prays.” He then resumed his prayer with hearty strokes of a hammer.

[Sidenote: The Nation of Paris.]

As in England, London is a kind of nation in itself, so in France we have the nation of Paris. The word is so little of an exaggeration that Paris has often, on the most momentous occasions, acted quite independently of the country, and did actually proclaim its right to autonomy under the Commune, whilst the constant effort of the municipal council ever since has been to erect itself into a parliament at the Hôtel de Ville, and have its own way in spite of the assemblies at the Palais Bourbon or the Luxembourg.

[Sidenote: Character of Paris Local.]

The Parisian nation has not the same characteristics as the nation of Londoners. The distinguishing character of London is to be, not local, but world-wide; the character of Paris is to be as local as ancient Athens, and as contemptuous of all that lies outside. It is commonly believed that Paris is France, but how can it be France when it is so utterly unlike the provinces? This error comes from the foreigners’ habit of staying in Paris only, so that Paris is very really and truly all France to them, being the only France they know. Yet the character of the French capital, so far from being representative, is all its own.

[Sidenote: Paris Artistic.]

France is not, generally speaking, an artistic country. In the provinces few care for art or know anything about it, whereas Paris is the most artistic city in Europe; and that not simply as the place where pictures and statues are produced in the greatest numbers, and architects find most employment, but as the place where art sentiment is most generally developed, so that it runs over into a thousand minor channels, till the life of the capital is saturated with it.

[Sidenote: French Provincial Life.]

[Sidenote: Intellectual Paris.]

[Sidenote: Level of Studies in Paris.]

France is not, generally speaking, an intellectual country. The people are quick in small things, and they are very intelligent up to a certain point, but life in the French provinces is far less intellectual than in England or America. Parisians say that provincial French life is absolutely and hopelessly stupid. They may think that sincerely, for such an opinion would only, in their case, be a natural effect of contrast, but it is an exaggeration. Provincial life is not exactly stupid, French people can hardly be that under any circumstances, but it is mentally very small and narrow, owing to the extreme isolation of the few superior intelligences, and the prodigious ignorance by which they are surrounded. Unless tied down to provincial life by property, professions, or kindred, an intellectual Frenchman gravitates naturally to the capital, which in this manner drains the provinces of the best men. It is an exaggeration of French vanity to believe that Paris is the light of the world, but it is really the light of France. The provincials believe themselves to be more moral and more serious than the Parisians, but they admit that provincial life is dull without making any effort to enliven it, and the clever provincial speaks of Paris as that paradise from which he is an exile. Notwithstanding their apparent levity, I am told by all who are competent to form an opinion, that the Parisians study better than the provincials. The ordinary level attained in all studies is much higher in Paris than in the provincial cities. The Parisians are the most laborious and best disciplined art students in Europe. In the French University the best professors are reserved for Paris, or promoted to the capital in course of time, and they all say that the boys work better there than in the provinces.

[Sidenote: Reputation in Paris and the Provinces.]

The difference between the Parisian and the provincial mind is shown in nothing more conspicuously than in its different estimates of human superiority. In Paris the question is what you are, in the provinces what your family is, or what you possess. Reputation in literature, art, or science, is relatively more valuable in Paris than it is even in London, though it is very valuable there; in the French provinces it counts for nothing, or next to nothing. Many Parisian reputations never reach the provinces. The provincial habit of respecting the idlest people most, is in itself antagonistic to fame, which is usually the consequence of hard work. Then there is the indifference, or semi-contempt, towards the pursuits that lead to fame, towards literature, science, and the fine arts. The fame of political celebrities penetrates everywhere like an unpleasant noise--unpleasant, at least, to all but their own following.

[Sidenote: Parisian Manners.]

The French temper is not generally very sociable, yet in Paris there is great openness of manner, and a charming readiness to enter into that kind of intercourse which is lightly agreeable without involving much beyond the passing hour. For the free play of the mind, without any pretension to make it more than play, there is no place in the world like Paris. It is a great art or a great gift to make social intercourse bright and truly a relaxation equally removed from pedantry on one side and the dulness of indifference on the other. There is an ease, an apparent simplicity, and a clearness of expression in Parisian talkers that we rarely meet with in provincials, yet these same provincials acquire the Parisian polish after a few years’ _frottement_ in the capital.

[Sidenote: The Moral Contrast.]

I have said elsewhere that there is a contrast in the moral code between Paris and the provinces. Paris now resembles, at least in some degree, the Italy of Byron’s day, where illicit _liaisons_ were tolerated if there was a certain deference to appearances; provincial France, as a rule, resembles provincial England in the severity of public opinion.

[Sidenote: Aristocracy in Paris and the Provinces.]

Aristocracy is of immense weight in the French provinces, even when accompanied by very little wealth; in Paris it counts for nothing unless accompanied by great wealth. Like London, Paris is democratic, and takes each man for what he _is_ (famous, rich, talented, witty), without inquiring what his ancestors were.

[Sidenote: Contrasts of Individual Character.]

[Sidenote: The Englishman’s Frenchman.]

[Sidenote: French Notions of English Character.]

Besides these local differences there remain in France as in England all the contrasts and varieties of individual character. Some of these varieties are known in England through the historians and novelists, but many more are totally unknown there. It is useless for me to refer to them in an English book without elaborate descriptions for which there is no space in this volume. I need only say that as the Frenchman’s Englishman is not an exact representative of all Englishmen taken individually, so it is with that curious ideal type that may be called the Englishman’s Frenchman. In my own limited experience I have known a certain number of French people of whom English writers would say, if I described them accurately and elaborately in a work of fiction, that they had not a single French characteristic, and the less the English critics knew of France the more positive they would be. So, if you were to describe a talkative and genial Englishman, such as G. H. Lewes, for example, French readers who had never been in England would tell you that he was not English, that they knew better, that the real Englishman is stiff, grave, proud, awkward, and reserved, so that he can never have the flexibility of mind that Lewes possessed, nor be, like him, an amiable and delightful _causeur_.

[Sidenote: Causes that diminish Variety.]

Notwithstanding the great variety that still exists in France, certain modern tendencies are steadily diminishing it. The army is silently making the peasantry more national, less local. Railways take people from one province to another, and from all provinces to Paris. Public education is the same for all France. The University is not a local institution, like Oxford or Cambridge, but ubiquitous in the nation, like the Anglican Church in England. Cheap postage and telegrams make the nation itself seem smaller, and Parisian newspapers penetrate everywhere. External habits are now almost the same in all French towns; the hotel system is the same everywhere, the cafés are all alike. Besides this, the French nature is not very tolerant of individuality in character, but tends to reduce it to one dead level of uniformity. “_Être comme tout le monde_” has long been the rule of French civilisation, and there is nothing more contrary to its spirit than to be “singular” or “original.”

EPILOGUE

What is called the “national character” of the French and English has never been fixed, and it is now perceptibly changing.

[Sidenote: Changes in English National Character.]

The English were at one time not in the least Puritanical. They afterwards became moderately Puritanical in the upper classes and intensely so in the middle classes. They are now slowly but steadily passing out of Puritanism.

The English were at one time more European than insular. After that they became intensely insular, truly a peculiar people. Now, again, they are slowly becoming, chiefly through the influence of London, less insular and more European.

[Sidenote: Artistic and Scientific Ideas.]

The most powerful agents of change in recent times have been scientific and artistic ideas. These ideas are continuing their work unceasingly, and are even entering into the education of the young. To judge of their importance as new powers we have only to remember that artistic and scientific ideas formerly lay almost entirely outside of aristocratic and middle-class thinking, and were confined to persons specially devoted to artistic or scientific pursuits.

[Sidenote: Extent of Scientific Influence.]

[Sidenote: Its Result.]

The change may easily be under-estimated. The love of art and science may be called a taste for pictures or a fancy for shells and minerals, and so made to appear no better than an amusement. In reality, however, the change is most momentous. Science has taught a new way of applying the mind _to everything_. It has affirmed the right and duty of investigation and verification, it has set up a new kind of intellectual morality which has substituted the duty of inquiry for the duty of belief. The immediate result has been, in England, a sudden and amazing diminution of intolerance, a wonderful and wholly unexpected increase of mental freedom. The people of England have now become tolerant to a degree which could have been hoped for by no one who knew the formerly oppressive and aggressive character of religious majorities in that country. The boast of the national poet, that England was a country where men freely said their say, is now losing its apparently ironical aspect and may be true for the coming generation. The bigotry that still remains is only an inheritance of the past, it does not really belong to the present, still less to the more enlightened future.

[Sidenote: The Influence of Art.]

[Sidenote: Art and Puritanism.]

The influence of art is less visible than that of science, and seems inferior in this, that art is associated with ideas of pleasure and relaxation in the public mind, though it is more associated with ideas of study and hard work in the minds of artists. However this may be, the influence of art is important in England as one of the forces which are weakening the spirit of Puritanism. Art and Puritanism are antagonistic forces. The true Puritanical spirit always instinctively feels and knows this; for example, it shuts up the National Gallery on Sundays, and would shut up the Louvre if it could.

[Sidenote: The Study of Nature.]

Another important influence of the fine arts is in directing the national mind more to the love and study of nature. Art and nature are not the same, yet art gives a new delight in nature. I am not aware that this goes much beyond a refreshment of the faculties, yet, in an age when men are jaded by over-work and by the peculiar fatigue of life in large towns, a refreshment of this kind may be, and is, more important than in simpler times. One of the modern modifications of English character is that it seeks for natural beauty with a new desire. The modern love of nature is connected with a certain independence of conventionalism, and this is important, because conventionalism includes so much.

[Sidenote: Changes in the French Character.]

[Sidenote: Modern Industrial Enterprise.]

As the English character is changing in these and other ways, so the French character is changing by its passage from the military to the industrial epoch. It is unfortunate that the enterprise of the Panama Canal seems doomed to failure, because it afforded exactly the outlet that was desirable for French industrial ambition. It was by treating it as a patriotic enterprise and playing upon the patriotic chord that M. de Lesseps attained a delusive appearance of success. The exhibition of 1889, the Eiffel Tower, and the proposed bridge over the Channel, are also proofs of French industrial enterprise on a scale intended to attract attention. The ambition to excel is still in French imaginations, but it is diverted in great part from military to peaceful pursuits. There is no reason why French democracy, which is really averse to war, should not take a legitimate pride in undertakings that require as much science and energy, and almost as much treasure, as the greatest military operations.

[Sidenote: Common Sense in Education.]

[Sidenote: Desire for Physical Improvement.]

Another change in the French estimate of things is the increasing tendency to apply common sense to education in spite of old habits and traditions, to discard what cannot be mastered, and to learn more thoroughly what is practically possible and worth learning. The French are also inclined to attach more value to physical exercises. The English have lately become aware of this in consequence of M. Paschal Grousset’s very laudable efforts as a journalist in favour of more active amusements in the _lycées_; but the movement began several years earlier, and that writer would not have succeeded as he did without a public opinion already prepared to be favourable. I have shown elsewhere that the French are by no means indisposed to gymnastics and military drill. They are ignorant of cricket, as were the ancient Greeks, certainly not the most inactive people of antiquity.

[Sidenote: Dominant Tendencies.]

The dominant tendencies in the two countries appear to be these. The English are becoming more open-minded and the French are gaining in practical sense and prudence. The English are advancing in religious, and the French in political liberty. Material progress of all kinds is obvious and conspicuous in both.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] Here is an instance of misleading by mistranslation. The English newspapers speak of Parisian “Communists” when they ought to say Communards. A Communist is a Socialist of a particular kind, who wants to have goods in common after the fashion of the early Christians. A Communard is a person who wishes for an extreme development of local government. He thinks that the Commune (something like a township) ought to have more autonomy--be more independent of the State. M. Charles Beslay, an old friend of mine, became a Communard and was Governor of the Bank of France under the Commune. He was a most upright and honourable gentleman, and so far from being a Communist that he defended the treasure of the Bank of France throughout the civil war of 1871, and afterwards handed it over intact to the proper authorities. I do not accuse English journalists of intentional dishonesty in this case; there is no English equivalent for _Communard_, the nearest English rendering would be _township home-rule-man_.

[2] Observe that the like-minded companions were “few.”

[3] It is curious that the French gymnastic societies should be rather discouraged by the Church, as giving too much attention to the body. I have seen formal expressions of clerical disapprobation. There may be some other reason. Everything has a political colour in France, and I believe that the gymnastic societies, now very numerous, are mainly republican.

[4] A French friend of one of my sons was invited to shoot at Ferrières, on the preserves of Baron Rothschild, but he said he soon had enough of it, as the game was so abundant that the interest in the pursuit of it was entirely destroyed. He compared it, as an amusement, with the shooting of fowls in a poultry yard.

[5] There are some remarkable exceptions. It would be possible to form one French regiment of very fine men, but I doubt if there are enough for two regiments. Napoleon’s _Cent Gardes_ were specimens.

[6] “In that case,” it may be objected, “boys who left school at fourteen would miss Latin altogether.” Yes, it is Professor Seeley’s desire that they should omit Latin, and those who left at sixteen would omit Greek. The time so gained would be devoted to real culture through English.

[7] Since the above paragraph was written I have consulted a very able _Professeur de Faculté_ and Latin examiner on this _Question du Latin_. He says: “The young men who come up for examination have an imperfect knowledge of Latin, and the standard of attainment falls lower and lower. The remedy that I should propose would be to reduce to fifteen the number of _lycées_ where Latin and Greek are taught. In those fifteen _lycées_ I would maintain a really high standard of genuine scholarship. That would be sufficient for all the real scholars that the country wants, and then the teaching in the ordinary _lycées_, being relieved of false pretension about Latin and Greek, might itself become genuine in other ways.”

[8] In an article in the _Revue Internationale de l’Enseignement_ for April 13, 1885. The article contains many interesting details.

[9] The following is a genuine English address from pupils in a Parisian _lycée_ to their master:--

“My dear and respected Professor--I take the liberty of testifying the feelings of gratitude which animate us all since we have been under your tutorship.

“No doubt we have been lacking in zeal and attention, but we nevertheless appreciate fully the pains you have evidently taken for our benefit. We therefore assure you that if you are not satisfied, we take the engagement to strive to do better hereafter; and you shall see that we will be faithful to our word.

“We terminate with the desire that you will sincerely accept this as a true testimonial of our real affection and respect.”

Creditable, though not faultless.

[10] There have been a few exceptions, such as Lord Egremont and the Duc de Luynes.

[11] French carters are superior to English in providing two-wheeled carts with breaks. I remember seeing the horses suffer very much for the want of them in steep roads and streets in England. The French, too, are usually very careful about balancing loads so as not to press heavily on the shaft-horse, but they are merciless in first overloading a cart and then beating the horse because the weight is beyond his strength.

[12] My wife had no rest till she had procured the abolition of this custom by an edict from the Mayor of Sens, but very likely it went on in private afterwards.

[13] The University decorations of _Officier de l’Instruction Publique_ and _Officier d’Académie_ confer no social position. The fellowship of the University confers none either outside of the University itself.

[14] The reason for the cheapness of the _lycées_ is because they are not intended to be paying concerns (deficits being filled up by the State), and because the pupils benefit by the wholesale scale of all purchases, on which, of course, no profit is made. The buildings, being supplied by the towns and the State, are rent free. Some of the newer ones are magnificent. The _Lycée Lakanal_, near Paris, cost £400,000, and is a model of practical modern arrangement.

[15] An English friend of mine, himself a man of the very highest culture, says that the cultivated English keep their talk down to a low level from a dread of the watchful jealousy of their intellectual inferiors. They only dare venture to talk in their own way between themselves in privacy.

[16] I can speak from experience on this matter, having had in youth an intensely strong local affection for the wilder parts of northern England, a feeling that afterwards extended itself to Scotland, but I remember that when this feeling was strongest, the midland and southern counties were quite like a foreign country to me--a very dull, uninteresting foreign country--and I had no home feeling whatever in London, nor any desire to revisit it.

[17] It is needless to quote Moore, but the reader may thank me for stealing for his benefit a short lyric by an Irish poet, Mr. Robert Joyce, which is full of the tender sentiment of patriotism, associating love and death in the most touching manner with the often-repeated name of one Irish valley--Glenara.

[Sidenote: An Irish Poet.]

I

O, fair shines the sun on Glenara, And calm rest his beams on Glenara; But O! there’s a light Far dearer, more bright, Illumines my soul in Glenara-- The light of thine eyes in Glenara.

II

And sweet sings the stream of Glenara, Glancing down through the woods like an arrow; But a sound far more sweet Glads my heart when we meet In the green summer woods of Glenara,-- Thy voice by the wave of Glenara.

III

And O! ever thus in Glenara, Till we sleep in our graves by Glenara, May thy voice sound as free And as kindly to me, And thine eyes beam as fond in Glenara, In the green summer woods of Glenara!

[18] During the Franco-German war I knew French people who could not utter the word “_Patrie_” with dry eyes.

[19] During and after the invasion the intensity of the patriotic sentiment was always in exact proportion to the harm done by the invader. It was very feeble where he did not appear, and stronger in proportion to the duration of his presence and the harm that he inflicted. It is still intense in Alsatia and Lorraine, and especially intense in the French who have been expelled from those provinces.

[Sidenote: Varying Intensity of Patriotic Sentiment.]

[20] I regret not to have preserved some letters written to the English newspapers by private soldiers, in which they described how they were avoided by civilians even of the humbler classes. They appear to have felt themselves more despised in uniform than if they had been out of uniform. This is simply because the English people have never witnessed the sufferings undergone by soldiers in time of war.

[21] For example, at the time when I am writing these pages, a young gentleman, who is an intimate friend of mine, and who has received a scientific education, is diligently preparing himself to pass an examination for a commission in the artillery next month. Being obliged to serve in the army in any case, and having a right degree of _amour-propre_, he wishes to be an officer, and in a scientific branch of the service.

[22] The throne of Louis Philippe was itself a democratic institution.

[23] For the reader’s convenience I quote four passages from Dicey on the sovereignty in England. The references are to the first English edition.

“If the true ruler or political sovereign of England were, as was once the case, the King, legislation might be carried out in accordance with the King’s will by one of two methods.”--_The Law of the Constitution_, p. 354.

“Parliament is, from a merely legal point of view, the absolute sovereign of the British Empire.”--_Ibid._

“The electorate is, in fact, the sovereign of England. It is a body which does not, and from its nature hardly can, itself legislate, and which, owing chiefly to historical causes, has left in existence a theoretically supreme legislature.”--_Ibid._, p. 355.

“Our modern mode of constitutional morality secures, though in a roundabout way, what is called abroad ‘the sovereignty of the people.’”--_Ibid._

[24] The American system would not have succeeded in France. If the president had exercised the authority of an American president the Chamber would not have endured it, and there would have been a presidential crisis, with a new presidential election, every six months. The present system is not ideally perfect, but it suits the French temper better than any other that modern ingenuity can devise.

[25] It may be answered that this could be done by refusing to vote the supplies, but if the Sovereign were perfectly obstinate the House of Commons could not long put a stop to the working of the public service.

[26] It is an English habit to represent _égalité_ as an Utopian aspiration for equality in all things. The French understand it to mean nothing more than equality before the law.

[27] Article in the _Contemporary Review_ for March 1888.

[28] The reader will observe that I have substituted “nobility” for “House of Lords,” as there is no House of Lords in France, and “clerical” for “academical” education, as there is nothing corresponding to Oxford and Cambridge.

[29] _Popular Government_, Essay III.

[30] An English critic once said that the decimal monetary system had not yet been accepted by the French people because they counted in sous. They do not invariably count in sous, but they often do, and that without being unfaithful to the decimal principle, as may be seen by the following table:--

The five-franc piece = 100 sous. The half-franc piece = 10 sous. The one-sou piece = 1 sou.

[31] The word “conservative” is not used in this place with reference to the Tory party alone. There is much conservative sentiment in other parties.

[32] Even if the English did ultimately adopt the French weights and measures, without the coinage, they would not enjoy the full convenience of those systems, which consists in great part in their _relation_ to the coinage. For example, in English land measure (what is called “square measure”) you have 160 poles to the acre. A farmer takes an acre at thirty-seven shillings, how much is that per pole? I do not know; I must make an elaborate calculation to find it out. A French farmer takes a _hectare_ at sixty-seven francs, how much is that per _are_? Owing to the _intentional relation between measures and money_, the answer comes instantaneously, without calculation, sixty-seven centimes.

[33] M. de Freycinet, at the time when he was Foreign Minister in France, expressed a feeling of regret, that owing to the instability of English cabinets, it was not easy to carry on protracted negotiations.--_Speech of the 27th of November 1886._

[34] _Memoirs of Mrs. Jameson_, by her niece Gerardine Macpherson, First Edition, p. 154.

[35] This curé was an acquaintance of mine. His sister-in-law told me the amount of the subscription as an example of clerical influence.

[36] Here is a case well known to me. The income of the commune is 3000 francs, that of the curé about 1000. To offer the free disposal of the curé’s income to the municipal council is to offer a great temptation.

[37]

“‘And will not one man in the town help him, no constables--no law?’

“‘Oh, he’s a Quaker, the law don’t help Quakers.’

“That was the truth--the hard, grinding truth--in those days. Liberty, justice, were idle names to nonconformists of every kind; and all they knew of the glorious constitution of English law was that its iron hand was turned against them.”--_John Halifax_, ch. viii.

[38] This excellent lady went on a visit to an old friend, who found her appearance so miserable that she took the liberty of clothing her from head to foot. The saint was _aware_ that she had been clothed, but neither pleased nor offended. She only laughed, and I believe her secret satisfaction in the matter was that she could give the old clothes to some beggar. I hope, but feel by no means sure, that she did not give away the _new_ ones, which were a surprising improvement to her appearance.

[39]

“Her faith through form is pure as thine, _Her hands are quicker unto good_.” _In Memoriam._

[40]

[Sidenote: A Civil Funeral.]

Hardly any one with the least pretension to rank or station, unless he might be some republican functionary, would venture to attend a civil interment in a French provincial town. A lady who knows the interest I take in these matters, wrote me a letter in March 1886, from which I make the following extract:--

“Il vient de passer sous mes fenêtres un convoi de la Libre Pensée, ce titre étant brodé en lettres d’argent sur tous les côtés du corbillard, qui est très beau avec ses franges d’argent. Une très grosse couronne d’immortelles rouges est placée sur le cercueil, et tous les assistants en portaient à la boutonnière. Le convoi marchait très lentement, très silencieusement. Que de méchants propos se disaient sur le passage du cortège! Nous n’avons pas encore le droit à l’indépendance. Il faudra bien des années pour que nous ayons notre libre arbitre sans être calomniés.”

Insults addressed to a funeral procession are immensely significant in France, where so much outward respect is usually paid to the dead.

[41] For Mr. Arnold the Trinity was “the fairy tale of the Three Supernatural Men.”

[42] This is a religion entirely without dogma, and Christian only in the sense that it would cultivate a Christian spirit.

[43] I have even known a sincere and severe Catholic who told me that no one who disobeyed habitually the moral law, whatever his beliefs, could be a Catholic. Giving drunkenness as an example, he said that there had never been such a person as a Catholic drunkard, because by the mere fact of being a drunkard a man proved that he was not a Catholic.

[44]

[Sidenote: Mr. Mivart.]

How much intellectual liberty is now enjoyed within the Roman pale may be seen in Mr. Mivart’s most interesting article on “The Catholic Church and Biblical Criticism” published in _The Nineteenth Century_ for July 1887. Mr. Mivart does not think it probable that a line of the Bible was written by Moses, whilst it is “in the highest degree unlikely that Abraham, Isaac, or Jacob ever really existed, and no passage of the history of any one of them is of the slightest historical value in the old sense.” The book of Jonah is a parable, that of Daniel quite untrustworthy and little more than a mass of fiction. With regard to the Deluge Mr. Mivart says, “I well recollect dining at a priest’s house (in or about 1870) when one of the party, the late accomplished Mr. Richard Simpson of Clapham (a most pious Catholic and weekly communicant), expressed some ordinary scientific views on the subject of the Deluge. A startled auditor asked anxiously, ‘But is not, then, the account in the Bible of the Deluge true?’ To which Mr. Simpson replied, ‘True! of course it is true. There was a local inundation, and some of the sacerdotal caste saved themselves in a punt, with their cocks and hens.’”

[45] “_L’Angleterre est instruite, élevée, gouvernée par ses clergymen._”--PHILIPPE DARYL.

[46] An essential difference between France and England. “No one,” says Professor Dicey, “can maintain that the law of England recognises anything like that natural right to the free communication of thoughts and opinions which was proclaimed in France nearly a hundred years ago to be one of the most valuable rights of man.”--_The Law of the Constitution_, first edition, pp. 257, 258.

[47]

[Sidenote: Law about Associations not Obsolete.]

The ordinary law about associations was declared by some English journals to be “obsolete,” and revived only for persecution. It was so little obsolete that it was steadily applied to lay associations. I was at one time an honorary member of a French club limited to eighteen in order that an “authorisation” might not be required; and I have been vice-president of another club, not limited in numbers, so that we had to send our statutes to be approved by the prefect, and whenever the slightest change was made in them they had to be submitted again to the same authority. It was a very simple formality, costing three sous for a postage stamp. Had we acted like the unauthorised religious orders, which declined to submit to this not very terrible piece of tyranny, we should have been dissolved as they were, and turned out of our club-house as they were turned out of their establishments.

[48] Author of _L’Irréligion de l’Avenir_, _Esquisse d’une Morale sans Obligation ni Sanction_, _Les Problèmes de l’Esthétique Contemporaine_, _La Morale d’Epicure et ses Rapports avec les Doctrines Contemporaines_, etc. Guyau died in 1888 at the age of thirty-three.

[49] The reverend father is speaking of Her Majesty’s visit to the Grande Chartreuse, which she was able to make by taking advantage of an ancient rule made before the Church could foresee the monstrous anomaly of an heretical king or queen. By that rule, which still remains in force, a bishop or a reigning sovereign can visit a house of cloistered monks or nuns. The Archbishop of Canterbury could, however, scarcely get into a nunnery, as the Rev. Father du Lac informs us that the ancient English sees were erased by Pius IX. from the list of the bishoprics of Christendom.

[50] In the number for 23d July 1887.

[51] A Natural History Society was founded in Autun (a small old town in Burgundy) two or three years ago. It now includes more than four hundred members. Their principal pleasure is to take long walks in the neighbourhood for geological and botanical purposes. They have meetings, lectures, and a museum. Anything more moral or more healthy it is impossible to imagine.

[52] There have been years in the memory of living men when anybody who would take two barrels to a wine-grower might carry away one of them full of wine (the wine being worth less than the wood); and when for the payment of one sou a man might drink wine as if it were water.

[53] An interesting example of English improvidence came to my knowledge recently. A professional man of great talent, who had been eminently successful, died, leaving a widow and a large family of children. At the time of his death the children were all married. The widow was left without a penny, and was anxious to find a situation, because the married children _all living up to the extreme limit of their incomes, as their father had done_, were unable to subscribe an annuity. In France they would probably all have had savings, and, with the national love of the mother and sense of filial duty, would have cheerfully hastened to provide for her old age.

[54] This is rather too favourable to the English of that day, as they certainly did not take warm baths so frequently as French people do now. They had not the conveniences. Few private houses had a bath-room and few towns had public baths.

[55] Especially in combination with the beautiful colour of the waxed walnut furniture and the red hangings of the beds.

[56] What follows is sketched from life.

[57] Plays were performed on Sunday at the court of Queen Elizabeth.

[58] Dancing, archery, leaping, May-games, and morris dances, were expressly permitted by James I. on Sunday in his Book of Sports. He forbade brutal sports only.

[59] The idea that governs the action of the Church of Rome with regard to the observation of Sunday in countries where she is free to do what she thinks best, appears to be simply the protection of toilers from their own drudgery on one day of the week. She herself keeps the day as a festival, and requires the attendance of the laity at one mass, which may be short and early.

[60] I made inquiry afterwards to ascertain what the parish priest thought of these proceedings, and discovered that he made a distinction. He did not approve of dancing on the public dancing-floors in the village, especially at night, because it sometimes led to wrong, but he was not opposed in any way to Sunday dancing in private houses.

[61] The distinction between sacred and profane music is fictitious, merely depending on the title that a musician chooses to give to his composition. The distinction between serious and light music is real, whatever the title. This is so well understood in the Church of Rome that the priests allow any music to be performed in their churches which is the expression of a serious or sublime idea.

[62] M. de St. Victor managed the estates belonging to the Countess de Talleyrand, and he lived at her old château of Montjeu, one of the most romantically situated places in France, in the midst of a large well-wooded park upon the hills.

[63] The passage is very well known, but I may quote it for the convenience of some readers:--

“And how is it possible that a man who has nothing, who is naked, houseless, without a hearth, squalid, without a slave, without a city, can pass a life that flows easily? See, God has sent you a man to show you that it is possible. Look at me, who am without a city, without a house, without possessions, without a slave; I sleep on the ground; I have no wife, no children, no prætorium, but only the earth and heavens, and one poor cloak. And what do I want? Am I not without sorrow? Am I not without fear? Am I not free? When did any of you see me failing in the object of my desire? or ever falling into that which I would avoid? Did I ever blame God or man? Did I ever accuse any man? Did any of you ever see me with a sorrowful countenance? And how do I meet with those whom ye are afraid of and admire? Do not I treat them like slaves? Who, when he sees me, does not think that he sees his king and master?”--_Epictetus_, Long’s Translation, Book III. chap. xxii.

[64] A friend of mine knows an impoverished French Marquis, the head of an old family, who lives like a peasant in a bare old house that is never repaired. He and his sister consume one bottle of common wine between them each week, and they are served by one old faithful female domestic. Their ruin was caused by lavish uncalculating generosity, by what Herbert Spencer would call the culpable excess of altruism.

[65] It is very significant that as the spirit of luxury has increased in France, the width and costliness of picture-frames have increased along with it.

[66] This reminds me of a French proverb often quoted by an old naval officer whom I knew. _Rien n’est bien fait qui n’est pas fait habituellement._

[67] I am myself old enough to remember how, when I was a boy, two gentlemen of good family quarrelled over their port wine after dinner, and one of them shouted to the other, “I’ll pull your nose, sir, I’ll pull your nose!” Some highly polished young reviewer of the present day will say that I had fallen into low company, but those gentlemen of a past time were quite as good as he is likely to be with all his polish, and it is probable that the aristocratic spirit was far more genuine in them than it is in anybody now.

[68] For example, in the French neighbourhood best known to me it is contrary to peasant decorum for a farmer and his wife to walk to church together. He must go first with his male companions, and she must follow with the women. It is also contrary to decorum for a man to be seen giving his arm to his wife, under any circumstances.

[69] I have heard of two cases that ended fatally, simply in consequence of obedience to English decorum.

[70] A French gentleman wanted to let me a country house, and said, with an air of conscious superiority, “It would be quiet and convenient for the prosecution of your--your _industry_.”

[71] As a system of recruiting party adherents, it has the great advantage of catching rather rich and influential people, especially landowners. Very poor families would gain nothing by the “de,” and, in fact, they drop it when it is theirs by right.

[72] This is stated simply as a fact and not in depreciation. There is not a more respectable class in France than the peasantry.

[73] He also takes precedence of the bishop. An intimate friend of mine was appointed to a prefecture. On his arrival the archbishop sent to say that he would receive him at his palace. This was an attempt to put the prefect in an inferior position, so he answered that it was not further from the palace to the prefecture than from the prefecture to the palace. The archbishop then came.

[74] George du Maurier attributes this happiness in the wealth of others to what he calls “The British Passion for inequality,” illustrated by him in _Punch_. An Englishman is walking with a Frenchman in Hyde Park, and gives utterance to that passion in these words:--

“_Sturdy Briton._ It’s all very well to turn up your nose at your _own_ beggarly Counts and Barons, Mossoo! But you can’t find fault with _our_ nobility! Take a man like our Dook o’ Bayswater, now! Why, he could buy up your Foreign Dukes and Princes by the dozen! and as for you and me, he’d look upon us as so much dirt beneath his feet! Now, that’s something _like_ a nobleman, that is! That’s a kind o’ nobleman that I, as an Englishman, feel as I’ve got some right to be _proud_ of!”

[75] The want of money, in these days, very frequently induces a French nobleman to marry an heiress in the middle classes. This is the most powerful cause of infractions of French exclusiveness.

[76] The essential difference between the scientific and the religious views is that the one sees a special Providential commission, where the other only perceives an undesigned accumulation of natural force.

[77] There is more English poetry of the same order, for example the following, also quoted from Mr. Gerald Massey--

“Oh! this world might be lighted With Eden’s first smile-- Angel-haunted--unblighted, With Freedom for Toil: But they wring out our blood For their banquet of gold! They annul laws of God, Soul and body are sold! Hark now! hall and palace, Ring out, dome and rafter! Ay, laugh on, ye callous! In Hell there’ll be laughter.”

[78] “Well, before _I’d_ put on stockings no better washed than those!”

[79] “Paid for, is it? It would not have been if thou hadst had to earn the money.”

[80] Just before returning the proof-sheet of this chapter I heard one French peasant describing his landlord to another in these terms:--

“Monsieur le Comte is one of the best landlords in this neighbourhood. He thoroughly understands agriculture, he looks after everything on the estate, but he never presses his tenants, never asks them for rent. On the contrary, he is always ready to help a tenant in any reasonable outlay.”

The landlord in question is a rich nobleman, living on his own land, and not by any means regarded with “the most savage enmity,” though he happens to be a Frenchman. I have seen his château and estate, a fine property, beautifully situated.

[81] Probably her chief reason, unexpressed, was that to have been asked in marriage for her good looks would have implied a deficiency of dowry, or, at least, left room for the supposition that there had not been dowry enough, of itself, to attract an offer of marriage.

[82] I was permitted to read a letter from the young lady’s father, in which he said, “The offer was quite beyond anything that my daughter could have hoped for, but after full consideration she decided to decline it, and I think she acted wisely, as money is not everything in this world.” The girl was left entirely free, as if she had been in England.

[83] A girl with £200 a year will expect, in marriage, a household expenditure of £800 a year. I proposed this theoretical proportion to a French gentleman of much experience, and he said that the estimate was moderate.

[84] Of course I mean with reference to aristocratic rank. A duke who has talent of his own is likely to recognise it in others.

[85]

[Sidenote: An Artist in Goodness.]

The public knows something of Madame Boucicaut’s acts of public beneficence (though they were so numerous that it is impossible to remember such a list), but I have learned through several different private channels how thoughtful her kindness was to individuals. By long practice she had become quite an artist in goodness, having cultivated her talent in that way as another might have learned to paint or to sing. There was an inventiveness about her beneficence that made it as original as poetry, and as beautiful in its originality.

[86] In any case a French officer cannot marry without an authorisation emanating from the Ministry of War. A military friend told me that the following mishap occurred to an officer in his regiment who thought he would like to marry a certain girl in a certain town. He applied for permission, which was refused. The regiment was sent elsewhere, and the sensitive officer was smitten a second time, so he applied for permission again. It came in the form of an authorisation to marry not the second, but the first young lady. The officer did so, and discovered, when too late, that she was one of those governing women who order about their husbands like children, so he has leisure to deplore the decision of the authorities.

[87] French carelessness in correcting is especially lamentable in school-books. I have before me a French school edition of _Childe Harold_, abounding in gross typographic blunders that must be most puzzling to French boys. M. Taine’s _Histoire de la Littérature Anglaise_ is very faulty in this respect.

[88] “Mr. Arnold’s studies of other nations, other ages, and other creeds would, I should have thought, have led him to regard Nonconformity as an universal power in societies, which has, in our time and country, its particular embodiment, but which is to be understood only when contemplated in all its other embodiments; the thing is one in spirit and tendency, whether shown amongst the Jews or the Greeks--whether in Catholic Europe or Protestant England. Wherever there is disagreement with a current belief, no matter what its nature, there is Nonconformity. The open expression of difference and avowed opposition to that which is authoritatively established constitutes Dissent, whether the religion be Pagan or Christian, Monotheistic or Polytheistic. The relative attitudes of the Dissenter, and of those in power, are essentially the same in all cases, and in all cases lead to vituperation and persecution.”--_The Study of Sociology_, ninth edition, p. 234.

[89] The French in Shakespeare has been said (never by French critics) to prove that he knew the language. It proves just the contrary.

[90] Lady Scott was of French extraction, yet Scott could not speak French.

[91] The place on the steep on the right bank of the Saône, behind the cathedral. Since Michelet wrote, a gorgeous new church has been built there for the miracle-working Virgin.

INDEX

A

Accent, purity of, a mark of rank in England, not in France, 59

Affections, family, strong in the French, 47; cooler in England, 49; cultured in France, 49; example of Her Majesty Queen Victoria, 51; English sympathy with the lower animals, 52, 53; French hardness, _ib._

Agnostics, their influence in the French University, 42

Allen, Mr. Grant, just to France as regards Algeria, 202

Alliances. See Marriage

America, system of Presidential government unsuitable to France, 110

Americans, their condemnation of idleness, 46

Anglicans, philosophical, different opinions, 171; treatment of dogma, _ib._; formalists but not hypocrites, 172; amongst the English clergy, _ib._; nearest French equivalent, 173. See Church of England

Animals, humanity of the English and hardness of the French, 52; cruelties in both nations in sport and cookery, 53

Apocrypha, no longer venerated in England, 55

Archery, unbecoming in English clergymen, 7

Army, English, a profession regarding volunteers and militia as amateurs, 92; old purchase system, _ib._; French army under the Second Empire, raised by conscription but not national, 93; healthy revolution after the Franco-German war, _ib._; real dignity of all military service, 94; conscription under the Republic compensated by unity of sentiment with civil population, 95; by improvement in physical strength and activity, and extension of education, _ib._; national armies essentially peaceful when combined with parliamentary government, 96; French averse to the war in Tonquin, _ib._; conscription in the English army inevitable, 97

Aristocracy, English, strong views of Matthew Arnold, 324; overshadowing the English mind, 326; favourable to simplicity of life, 327; faults of the French Noblesse, _ib._; their contempt for trade, 328; usurpations of the territorial “de” in France, 329

Arnold, Dr., his personal influence in moral training, 39; depended on his being a clergyman, 43

Arnold, Matthew, error as regards a French catechism used in _lycées_, 195, 196; confusion of _l’État_ with _le Pays_, _ib._; charges the French with immorality, 220; strong views of aristocracy, 324; his influence, 400; his division of the English into Barbarians, Philistines, and Populace, 401

Art, independent of luxury, 295; beautiful materials, _ib._; the nude, 317; realism, 318; depreciation of English art in France, 410; appreciated by cultivated French artists, 411; English prejudice against French art, 412, 413; patriotic bias of French art, 414. See Education, Artistic.

Artists, French, their generosity, 31

Ascanius, his friendship for Euryalus excessively French, 47

B

Bagehot, Mr., his defence of titles, 325

Balzac, a hard-working genius, 403

Beckwith, Miss, the English swimmer, 10

Beljame, his evidence respecting the teachers and teaching of modern languages in France, 20; recent reforms in examinations and certificates of teachers, 21

Bible, English knowledge of, 27; French ignorance of, 28, 55

Bifurcation, introduced into French schools by Fortoul’s ministry, 29

Bishops in France, may not ride or drive, 7

Bismarck, Prince, charges the French with hating their neighbours, 83

Black, William, his appreciation of patriotic tenderness in the “Princess of Thule,” 66

Boar, wild, shooting in France, 11

Boating in England, 3; limited in France, 8; French regatta clubs, 9

Bonheur, Rosa, nothing in common with Landseer, 398; her reputation in England, 412

Book-buyers in France, 395

Boucicaut, Madame, a true success, 376; her goodness, _ib._

_Bourgeoisie_, or middle class in France, 35; ignorant of art, 35; vastly increased by French system of education, 56, 57; inferior to the French _noblesse_ in field sports and equipages, but not in learning, 59; equal in purity of speech and language, 60

Bright, John, a salmon-fisher, 3

Britain. See Variety in

Brittany contrasted with Provence, 434

Browning, Robert, unknown in France, 24; his love for Italy, 72

Burgundy, contrasted with the Morvan district, 436

Byron, Lord, a distinguished swimmer, 3; widely known in France, 24, 408

C

Cabinets, government of, in France and England, 110

Cafés, French, maintained by habitués, 237; tend to separate the sexes, 367

Calendar, ought to be international, 124

Canadian society, Mrs. Jameson’s first impression, 81

Carlyle, Thomas, his teaching not followed by the English, 399

Carnot, President, his election a proof of the obedience of the French army to the civil authorities, 94

Caste in France and England, 321; true and false, 322; aristocratic spirit, _ib._; titles, 323; peerage of Tennyson and Victor Hugo, _ib._; strong views of Matthew Arnold, 324; defence of titles by Bagehot, 325; faults of the French _noblesse_, 327; contempt for trade, 328; absence of pure caste in England, 330; new peers, 331; Anglican clergy, _ib._; French clergy and religious orders, 332; military officers in France and England, 334; officials, 335; _Noblesse_, _Bourgeoisie_, _Peuple_, 336; English gentlemen, _ib._; fashionable and educated classes, 337; French peasantry, _ib._; pariahs in England and France, 338; infidels and republicans, _ib._

Catholics, Roman, results of emancipation in England, 125; English sympathies with French Catholics, _ib._; an international religion, 142; social preponderance in France, 153; devotion of Catholic Sisters, 161; genuine and formal, 174; liberal interpretation of the Jesuits, _ib._; dogma of eternal punishment, 175; misrepresentation as to the expulsion of religious orders from France, 191, horror at the marriage of the Protestant clergy, 208; good reputation of the French clergy, 223; observance of Sunday for the protection of labour, 273; incomes of the clergy in France as compared with England, 379

Catholicism in England and France, xii; how far persecuted, xvi

Cetewayo, question of England’s right to break his power, 87, 88

Chambers, Robert, self-defence as to the authorship of _Vestiges of Creation_, 196

Changes, dislike of, described by Sir Henry Maine, 120; detested by Mohammedans, Chinese, and Hindus, 120; by women, 121; provoked by old institutions, 129; future, in Great Britain and Ireland, 130

Channel Islands, French jealousy of English occupation, 88

Chauvinisme, a vulgar patriotism, ix

Cheerfulness, no equivalent in France, 389

Chevreul, the centenarian, respected in France, 54

Church of England, its social influence over the laity, 40; its strength, 125; subjection to the Queen or Parliament, 141; intensely national, 142; question of disestablishment, 151; natural jealousy of nonconformists, _ib._; freethinkers not eager for disestablishment, 152; Mr. Voysey’s views, 154; many formalists but few hypocrites, 167; philosophical Anglicans, 171; their treatment of dogma, _ib._; examples amongst the clergy, 172; ritualism promoted by formalism, 175; old-fashioned Anglican formalism, 176; opposite ideas of the marriage of ecclesiastics, 208

Church of Rome, founds all moral teaching on authority, 43; clerical jealousy of family influence in France, _ib._

Classics, ancient, proposed abandonment in French schools, 18; views of M. Frary and Professor Seeley, _ib._; neglected in France, 19; value as mental discipline, _ib._; decay of the old veneration for in France, 55

Cleanliness, English, an invention of the nineteenth century, 254; in England and France, 255; English pride in hardihood, 256; French warm baths, _ib._; cleanly appearance of the French, 257; effects of coal-smoke in England, _ib._; whitewash in England, unknown in France, 258; superior cleanness of the English, 259

Clergy, French and English, contrast in horse-riding and other exercises, 7; in yearly emoluments, 379

Clifford, Professor, fond of gymnastics, 2

Closure, adopted by the English from the French, 127

Clubs, more sociable in France than in England, 369

Colonisation, unfavourable to patriotism, 67

Comfort, English passion for, 285; opposed to Christianity and Greek philosophy, 286; difficulty of plain living, 287; English prejudice against self-indulgence, 287; stoicism of the French peasantry, 288; comfort combined in England with mental anxiety, 289; little known in France, _ib._; as costly as luxury, 290

Commerce, its influence on art-culture, 32

Communes, proposed payment of the French clergy, 150

Communist, confounded with Communard, xii, _note_.

Conscription in the French army, faults under the Second Empire, 93; revolution under the Republic, 94; improved health of the French nation, 95; increase of gymnastics and extension of education, 95; repugnant to English feeling but inevitable in the future, 97; disappearance of jealousies and social distinctions in the event of war, _ib._

Conservatism and Experiment in French written constitutions, 119; not produced by love of change but desire for order and permanence, 120; Sir Henry Maine on the dislike to change, _ib._; tendency of the French to democratic conservatism, 121; permanent innovations in France, 122; decimal coinage, departmental administration, French university, universal suffrage, representative government, 122, 123; abolition of the republican calendar, 124; permanent innovations in England, _ib._; the Anglican Church, Catholic Emancipation, revolutionary monarchy, 126; opposition of Frenchmen to railways and of Englishmen to the Suez Canal and decimal systems, _ib._; adoption by the English of the French closure, 127. See Change

Constable, revolutionised French landscape, 411

Conversation in foreign tongues a rare accomplishment, 25

Country, not an equivalent word to _patrie_, 75

Courage, national, apparent decline in England and France, 261; shrinking from war, _ib._; French courage after Sedan, 263; bottled up in the Paris Commune, _ib._; difference of training in England and France, _ib._; football, duelling, boxing, and bull-fighting, 264; field sports and military service, 265

Cricket in England, 3; not popular in France, 4

Criticisms, international, reasonable and unreasonable, 89

Crosses, alleged removal from French cemeteries, 192; the true story, 193

Cruelty to animals, sympathies of the English and indifference of the French, 52; cruelties of both nations in sport and cookery, 53

Culture of the affections in France, 50; want of it in England, _ib._; example of Queen Victoria, 51

Culture _versus_ Rank, 60

D

Dancing in the open air, out of fashion in France, 10; objectionable balls, _ib._

“De,” the particle, supposed to indicate nobility in France, 329; assumed by many of the _bourgeois_, 330; money value in marriage alliances, 355

Debt, disapproved by the French, 46

Decimal system, a permanent innovation in France, 122, 127

Decorum, difference in national ideas, 307; French and English bathing, 308; artists’ models, 309; natural necessities, 310; language, 311; inequalities of strictness, 312; French reserve, 313; at funerals, 313; in literature, 314; divorce reports in France and England, 315; English tolerance of old books, _ib._; Byron and Shakespeare, 316; comic papers, _ib._; the nude in art, 317; realism, 318

Deer in France, 11

Democracy inevitable in France after Mirabeau’s declaration of the sovereignty of the people, 105; resemblance in the growth in France and England, 106; comparison of the two revolutions, 107; government in France, 109

Departmental administration in France, a permanent innovation, 123

Dicey, Professor, his explanation of the sovereignty of parliament and people in England, 107

Dickens, a great reputation in France as an inventor, 408

Dissenters, dislike to being treated as inferiors, 132. See Nonconformist.

Dissimulation encouraged in France by clerical teachers, 41

Dowries, in France, 359; in England, 360

Drouet, Juliette, her relations with Victor Hugo, 211

Du Lac, Father, his views respecting Her Majesty the Queen, 200

Duelling in France and England, 277; an appeal to divine justice, _ib._; its survival in France, 278; English sentiment expressed in Thackeray’s _Newcomes_, 279; French sentiment, _ib._; extinguished in England by ridicule, 279; a modern French duel, 280; its causes, _ib._; difficulty in abolishing the custom, 281

Duruy’s Ministry, established the _Enseignement Spécial_ in the French Schools, 29

Duty. See Patriotic Duty.

E

Edinburgh, its superiority as an art-centre to Lyons or Marseilles, 36; the centre of the literature and art of the Scottish Lowlanders, 425

Education, artistic, French and English, 31; seriousness of the French in teaching, _ib._; generosity of French artists towards all art students, _ib._; extension of art teaching in England, 32; spread of sound elementary drawing amongst the French people, _ib._; promoted by the desire for commercial success, _ib._; art schools in Lancashire, a reaction against the ugliness of the industrial age, 33; comparative torpor of artistic life in French country towns, 34; leadership of art in France maintained by Paris, 35; academical teaching in England, 35; superiority of Edinburgh as an art-centre to Lyons or Marseilles, 36; difficult for the English to understand art, 37; success of Ruskin’s moral criticism, _ib._; English love of nature an impediment, 38; feebler moral sense of Parisians favourable to their acceptance of art, _ib._; contrast of English and Parisian ideals, _ib._

Education of feelings of French and English, 47; cultivated in France, repressed in England, _ib._; love of mothers by Frenchmen and Englishmen compared, _ib._; sentiment of friendship, 48; coolness of the family affections in England, 49; their culture in France, 50; causes of the difference, _ib._; healthy influence of the Queen in the expression of the feelings, 51; English sympathy with the lower animals ridiculed in France, 52; hardness of the scientific spirit, _ib._; cruelties for the sake of sport or cookery, 53; sentiment of reverence dying out in France, 54; decaying in England except towards the Bible and the Throne, 55; loss of veneration and faith, _ib._

Education, Intellectual, French and English, 15; superiority of Latin and Greek maintained by both, _ib._; Latin more important in France, and Greek in England, _ib._; antiquity and mystery of ancient languages and dignity of the teacher, 16; priestly character of Latin in France, _ib._; French contempt for modern languages, 17; present tendency to thorough study of the classics or to abandon them, 18; views of M. Raoul Frary and Professor Seeley as regards Latin and Greek, _ib._; of masters in the French _lycées_, 19; Latin and Greek regarded as mental gymnastics, _ib._; neglect of Greek, _ib._; inferior study of modern languages in French schools, 20; inferior teachers, _ib._; neglect of English, 21; recent reforms, _ib._; vast improvement in teachers of modern languages in France, _ib._; examinations and certificates, 21; inferior teachers of modern languages in England, 22; difficulties in appreciating foreign poetry, 23; English difficulties with French verse, 24; conventional ignorance of English literature in France, _ib._; knowledge of languages apart from a knowledge of literature, 25; hollow pretensions to superior education, 26; diminution of libraries in France and England, 27; superiority of the English in a knowledge of the Bible, 27; science more studied than literature, 28; present varieties in French secondary education, _ib._; old system of Napoleon I, _ib._; the _Bifurcation_ of Fortoul’s ministry, 29; the _Enseignement Spécial_ of Duruy’s ministry, _ib._; present varieties, 30

Education, moral training, French and English, 39; difficulty in ascertaining its results on character, _ib._; personal influence of Dr. Arnold, _ib._; national moral sense stronger in England than in France, 40; moral influence of the Church of England superior to that of the Roman Catholic clergy, _ib._; clerical education only beneficial to believers, 41; creates habits of dissimulation in unbelievers, _ib._; turns French unbelievers into hypocrites, _ib._; Agnostics in the French University, 42; moral authority of the Catholic clergy wanting in lay teaching, _ib._; moral authority of parents discouraged by the Catholic clergy, 43; value of home influences in France, _ib._; French boys civilised by their mothers, 44; manners acquired in French seminaries, _ib._; home influences and school influences in England, _ib._; advantages of English grammar schools in the country, 45; conflict between social morality and international immorality, _ib._; value of public opinion as a moral authority, 46; French disapproval of debt, and American disapproval of idleness, _ib._; professional virtues of soldiers and medical practitioners, _ib._

Education, Physical, French and English, 1; English not scientifically trained except for boat races, _ib._; activity due to open air amusements, _ib._; physical pursuits of distinguished Englishmen, 2; Professor Clifford, Gladstone, Wordsworth, Scott, Byron, Keats, Shelley, Tyndall, Millais, John Bright, Fawcett, Trollope, and Palmerston, 3; cricket exclusively English, 4; French abandonment of tennis, _ib._; tendency towards gymnastics and military drill, 5; fencing, 6; walking powers of English women, _ib._; of French peasants, _ib._; horse-riding in England and France, _ib._; contrast in French and English clergy, 7; relative strictness as regards amusements, _ib._; activity and dignity, 8; disappearance of French prejudice against boating, _ib._; swimming cultivated more in France than in England, 9; exceptional cases of Miss Beckwith, Captain Webb, and Vice-Chancellor Shadwell’s family, 10; French dancing, past and present, _ib._; field sports in France and England, _ib._; hunting in France, 11; opposition of French farmers and peasant proprietors, 12; contrasts in the physical life of classes more striking in England, _ib._; ideal of a whole nation equal to the English aristocracy, _ib._; sedentary life of the French middle classes, 13; velocipedes and volunteering of the English middle class, _ib._; French peasantry and English factory workers, _ib._; comparison of the physical qualities of the two races, _ib._; decline of health and strength in both, 14

Education, rank of, in France and England, 56; not a class distinction in France, _ib._; the bachelor degree necessary in France for some professions, _ib._; not absolutely necessary in England, _ib._; French boys trained as _bourgeois_, English boys as gentlemen, 57; no Eton or Oxford in France, _ib._; confers social distinction in England, _ib._; English mistakes about French _lycées_, 58; little social distinction conferred by education in France, 59; purity of accent a mark of rank in England, not in France, _ib._; French _noblesse_ outshine the _bourgeoisie_, not in learning, but in field sports and equipages, _ib._; culture _versus_ rank, 60

Egypt, French jealousy of English occupation, 87

England. See French and English

English and French. See French

English, peculiar notions of political evolution in France, 104; their preservation of an aristocracy and monarchy, 108; misrepresented in France, 187, 188; untruthful charges against the French Government, 190

_Enigmas of Life_, by Mr. W. R. Greg, want of sympathy for the growth of free institutions in France, 105

_Enseignement Spécial_ established in France by Duruy’s Ministry, 29

Epictetus, indifference to comfort, 286

Etching, revival of, 398

Eton, boating and cricket surprising to foreigners, 3; associated with social distinction, 57, 59

Etty, prejudiced against French art, 413

Europe, considered by Orientals as one nation, 421; evidence of Mr. Palgrave, _ib._; differences between England and France, 422. See Variety in Britain and Variety in France

Euryalus, his affection for his mother, 47

Exhibitions, public, English in the provinces superior to those in France, 34

F

Factory population in England, its deterioration, 13

Faith, two meanings, custom and conviction, 159; sacrifice the test of sincerity, 160; example of a young Frenchman, _ib._; devotion of Catholic sisters, 161; an Anglican saint, 163; an Anglican layman, 164; a Catholic and Protestant, 165; political and social convictions, 166

Family influence in France, 43; undervalued in England, 44; love of sons for mothers in France and England, 47; coolness of the affections in England, 49; their culture in France, 50; decay of reverence in France, 54; dispersion of middle-class families in England, 69

Farmers in France, their opposition to hunting, 12

Fawcett, Mr., love of riding and skating after his blindness, 3

Fencing, practised in France, 6

Feelings. See Education of

Field sports, difference between France and England in game-preserving, 10; game in France, 11; deer and wild boar, _ib._; French hunting, _ib._

Flaxman, his illustrations of Homer appreciated in France, 411

Foreign policy, its continuity in England, 98; unpatriotic in France, _ib._

Foreigners, impartial treatment of, viii; ridiculous or wicked, x; their difficulties in society, 25

Formalism, distinct from hypocrisy, 167; prevalence in the Church of England, _ib._; among atheists, 168; in England and France, 169; at marriages and funerals, _ib._; of philosophical Anglicans, 171; association with ritualism, 175; weakening effect on faith, 177

Fortoul’s ministry, introduced the “_bifurcation_” into French schools, 29

France. See Variety in

France, desire for rest, 135; no ritualist party, 176; her sympathy with Gordon at Khartoum, 202; feeling about war, 203. See French and English

France and England, second-class powers, 262; varying degrees of dissimilarity at different periods, 269; courtesy in France and England, 297; caste in France and England, 321; aristocratic spirit, 322; comparative wealth of France and England, 339; creations of the nineteenth century, 340; developments of industries, 341; necessity for wealth in England, 342; French feeling about riches, 343; sanctity of wealth in England, 344; sentiments of the poor, 345; national defence, 351; marriage alliances, 353; sociability greater in England, 363; separation of the sexes in France, _ib._; difference in England, 365; want of amusements in France, 367; divisions in France and England, 371; personal success, 375; known in France to the middle classes, _ib._; money-making in France, 376; lotteries and private gambling, 377; overcrowded professions in France, 378; incomes of French and English clergy, 379; of the army, public offices, etc., 381; wealthy traders, 382; English manufacturers, _ib._; cost of living in France and England, 383; strong contrasts in France, 385; little pleasures, 386; Paris and London, 387; provincial life in France and England, _ib._; industrial civilisation a failure, 388; French gaiety and English gravity, 389; national success at home, 390; comparison of France and England in religion and politics, 391; in finance, 392; party feeling, 393; science, _ib._; manufactures, 394; printing, 395; painting, 396; literature, 399; poetry, 401; young philosophers, 403; journalists, _ib._; dread of war in both countries, 404; English and French prejudices in art, 413; difference in the military reputation of France and England, 417; former French confidence and present English anxiety, _ib._; difference between England and France. See _Variety in Britain_ and _Variety in France_; modern changes in the national character of France and England, 445

Frary, M. Raoul, proposed abandonment of the classics, 18

Freethinkers, not eager for disestablishment, 152; support state religions, 157; dislike dissenters in England and Protestants in France, 158

French and English, euphony of title, vii; question of mutual consideration, ix; tendencies to resemblance, xiii; Catholics and Protestants, xv; opposition of French Republicans to England, xvii

FRENCH AND ENGLISH, CUSTOM, 267; chronology, 269; comfort, 285; luxury, 291; manners, 297; decorum, 307

FRENCH AND ENGLISH, EDUCATION, 1; physical, _ib._; intellectual, 15; artistic, 31; moral training, 39; feelings, 47; rank, 56

FRENCH AND ENGLISH, PATRIOTISM, 63; patriotic tenderness, 65; pride, 77; jealousy, 85; duty, 91

FRENCH AND ENGLISH, POLITICS, 101; revolution, 103; liberty, 112; conservatism, 119; stability, 129

FRENCH AND ENGLISH, RELIGION, 139; state establishments, 141; disestablishment in France and England, 147; social power, 153; faith, 159; formalism, 167

FRENCH AND ENGLISH, SOCIETY, 319; caste, 321; wealth, 339; alliances, 353; intercourse, 363

FRENCH AND ENGLISH, SUCCESS, 373; personal, 375; national, at home, 390; abroad, 406

FRENCH AND ENGLISH, VARIETY, 419; in Britain, 421; in France, 432

FRENCH AND ENGLISH, VIRTUES, 179; truth, 181; justice, 198; purity, 207; temperance, 233; thrift, 247; cleanliness, 254; courage, 261

Funerals in France, religious formalism at, 169; unpopularity of civil interments in provincial towns, 170

G

Gaiety, French, compared with English, 389

Game-preserving in France and England, 10; poaching, 11; Baron Rothschild’s preserves at Ferrières, 11 _note_

Gibraltar, English possession galling to Spain, 88

Gladstone, Mr., skill in felling trees, 2; opposes the masses to the classes, 113; bitterness of the contest on the question of Home Rule, 114; causes of his downfall, 116

Glasgow, the centre of the industry of the Scottish Lowlanders, 425

Gormandism in France, 239; variety of terms, 240; temperance of the real _gourmet_, 241

Government, deceptive use of the terms “Monarchy” and “Republic,” xi; essentially the same in England and France, _ib._; confusion between Communist and Communard, xii _note_; adoption of French institutions by England, xiii; the author’s opportunism, _ib._; parliamentary system alone practicable in England and France, xiv; faulty workings, _ib._; opposition of French Republicans to England, xvii

Grammar schools in England, their effect on family life, 45

Gravity, English, compared with French gaiety, 389

Greeks, ancient, their physical life compared with that of the modern English, 1; their surroundings compared with those of Manchester, 12

Greek language and literature studied more in England than in France, 15; antiquity and mystery of the language, 16; neglected in French schools, 19

Greg, Mr. W. R., want of sympathy for the growth of free institutions in France, 104; _Enigmas of Life_ quoted, 105

Grévy, President, expelled by the French chamber, 117

Guyot, M. Yves, proposal to pay the French clergy through the communes, 150

Gymnastics, general indifference of Englishmen, 2; training rare except for boat races, _ib._; accepted by the French as discipline and drill, 5; discouraged in France by the Church, _ib. note_

Gymnastics, mental, superiority of Latin and Greek as, 19

H

Harrison, Mr. F., his view of the autocracy of the House of Commons, 116

Hartington, Lord, quotes Professor Dicey’s explanations of the sovereignty of the House of Commons, 107

Haydon, prejudiced against French art, 413

Highlands, French, 433

Highlanders, Scotch, their inertia, 423; lack of enterprise, _ib._; naturally gentlemen, 424; absence of the Fine Arts and poverty of literature, _ib._; outside European civilisation, 427

Horse-riding, associated in France with military exercises, in England with hunting, 6; denied to French ecclesiastics, but permitted English clergy, 7; hunting in France, 11

Home Rule in Ireland, bitterness of the contest between the masses and the classes, 113, 114

Hospitality, decline of, in France, 369

House of Commons, its sovereignty as explained by Professor Dicey, 107; quoted by Lord Hartington, _ib._

Houses of Parliament, English, depreciated by foreigners, 415

Hugo, Victor, French veneration for, 54; his relations with Juliette Drouet, 210; his peerage, 323; his resistance to Napoleon III, 402

Hunting in France and England, 11

Hypocrisy, distinct from formalism, 167; example of a church-going atheist, 168

I

Ideals, English moral contrasted with the artistic of the Parisians, 38

Idleness condemned in America, 46

Ignorance of the English as regards Scotland and Ireland, 81

Ingres, Father, venerated in France, 54

Intellectual education. See Education, French and English

Invasion, no cruel experiences of, felt in England, 75

Ireland, English ignorance of, 81

Irish, their patriotic tenderness, 70; exemplification in Mr. Robert Joyce the Irish poet, 71

Intercourse. See Sociability

J

Jameson’s, Mrs., first impressions of Canadian society, 81

Jealousies, National, reasonable and unreasonable, 89

Jesuits, liberal interpretation of Catholic doctrines, 174

Joyce, Mr. Robert, the Irish poet, his patriotic tenderness, 71

Justice, Intellectual, less appreciated in France than in England, 198; obscured by party dissensions, 199; sympathies of classes, _ib._; English gentlemen with American slaveholders, _ib._; with French Catholics, 200; class ideas in England, 201; in France, _ib._; vulgar patriotism, 202; French criticisms of France, 203; exaggerations in literature, _ib._; French pleasantry as regards Her Majesty the Queen, 204; injustice of Victor Hugo, Carlyle, Michelet, and Ruskin, 205; just and unjust accounts of railways, _ib._

K

Keats, unknown in France, 24

Knighthood, orders of, retained in England but not in France, 133

L

Labouchere, his resolution against the hereditary principle of the House of Lords, 131

Lamartine, signs of revival, 403

Lancashire, art schools of, 33; a reaction against the industrial age, 34; almost a nation, 426; character of the Lancastrians, _ib._; their energy, encouragement of literature and art, and severe Protestantism, _ib._; connection with the Scotch lowlanders, 427; open to European civilisation, _ib._

Landseer, nothing in common with Rosa Bonheur, 398

Languages, relative study of Latin and Greek in England and France, 15; dignity of the teacher only to be secured by an ancient language, 16; antiquity and mystery, _ib._; proposed abandonment of the ancient for the modern, 18; inferior teachers of English in France, 20; vast improvement in the present study of modern languages in France, 21; in the status of the masters, _ib._; low status of teachers of modern languages in England, 22; difficulties in appreciating foreign poetry, 23; English difficulties in judging French verse, 24; exceptional knowledge of Swinburne, _ib._; rarity of conversational accomplishment in foreign tongues, 25; direction of future studies, _ib._; fail to elevate the mind, 26

Language, English, its musical qualities denied in France, 407

Latin, more studied than Greek in France, 15; antiquity and mystery of the language, 16; sacerdotal and aristocratic, _ib._; gave a dignity to laymen over inferiors and women, 17; proposed abolition in French schools, 18; neglected as a mental discipline, 19, 20; required for the bachelor’s degree necessary to professions, 56

Lecky, unknown in France, 24

Leslie, C. R., his depreciation of continental art, 412

Liberty of thought in religion unfavourable to moral authority, 42

Liberty, in England and France, 112; rule of majorities accepted in England, but not in France, 113; growing hostility of the classes in England, and hatred against Mr. Gladstone, _ib._; approximating to that of the classes in France, 114; opposition of the French Chamber to personal rule, 115; Gambetta, Ferry, Wilson, and Boulanger, 116; English jealousy of Mr. Gladstone, _ib._; Mr. F. Harrison on the autocracy of the House of Commons, _ib._; autocracy of the French Chamber, 117; religious liberty curtailed by political liberty, 118; free discussion in England limited by juries, _ib._

Libraries, private, in France and England, 27; exclusion of indecent books, 219

Literature rendered brilliant by malevolence, ix

Literature, French ignorance of English, 24; superseded by science, 28; more influential in England than in France, 399; novelists and playwrights successful in France, 403; English writers known in France only in translations, 408; Russian novels popular in France, 409; English demand for French novels, _ib._

Liverpool, cultivation of the fine arts better than in Rouen or Lyons, 34

London, inferior to Paris in its maintenance of art, 35; French siege of, inconceivable, 89; a nation, 427; a state within a state, 428; its standard of civilisation, _ib._; not insular but cosmopolitan, _ib._; absorbing the English aristocracy, 429

Lords, House of, its hereditary principle threatened, 131

Lotteries in France, 377

Louis XIV of France, the realisation of ideal monarchy, 109

Lowlanders, Scotch, repugnance to polish, 424; sabbatarianism, industrial triumphs, intellectual distinction, and taste for the Fine Arts, 425; their resemblances to the Lancastrians, 426

Lunch, English, unknown in France, 368

Luxury, definition of, 291; connected with expense and not with cheap pleasures, 292; development, _ib._; a home product in France but an exotic in England, 293; domestic servants, _ib._; dress, 294; independent of Art, 295; French commonplace, 296

_Lycées_, French, absence of cricket, 4; proposed abolition of Latin as compulsory, 18; question of excluding Greek, 19; teaching of modern languages, 20; examination and certificate of teachers, 21; pupils compared with those in seminaries, 44; disregard of social distinctions, 58; their cheapness, _ib._; distinguished from seminaries, 59; lay masters and priests, _ib._; deny the use of the catechism described by Matthew Arnold, 195

Lyons, cultivation of the Fine Arts inferior to that in Manchester or Liverpool, 34; a town of contrasts, 439; Michelet’s description of, _ib._

M

Macculloch, Dr., his description of the inertia of the Scotch Highlanders, 423

Macpherson’s _Ossian_ the one literary success in the Scotch Highlands, 424

Madagascar, English jealousy of French expedition, 87

Maine, Sir Henry, his view of the dislike to change, 120; interest in Mohammedans, Africans, Chinese, and Hindus, 121; conservatism of women, _ib._; his contemptuous estimate of the French President, 135

Majority, government of, in France and England, 113; a state of liberty only when balanced by a minority, 115

Malevolence entertaining in literature, ix

Manchester, cultivation of the Fine Arts better than in Rouen or Lyons, 34

Manners, national and class codes, 297; courtesy in France and England, _ib._; epistolary forms, 298; French ceremony, 299; old-fashioned, 300; embarrassments, 301; John Stuart Mill’s observation in France and England, 303; English hospitality, 304; defensive politeness, _ib._; bad manners in France and England, 305; French manners of George H. Lewes, 306. See Decorum

Marriage, French and English ideas of, 228, 353; _mésalliances_, _ib._; class ideas in France, 354; pecuniary value of the French _de_, 355; London market, _ib._; _le mariage de convenance_, 356; prudent marriages, _ib._; French customs, 357; dowerless French girls, 358; varying dowries, 249, 359; English contempt for small dowries, 360; clerical influence, 361; companionship the only ideal, _ib._; prudence and rashness, 362; marriage-feasts of the French peasantry, 369; marriage of French army officers, 381

Marriage of clergy, opposite ideas in England and France, 208; Catholic horror at the marriage of a bishop, 209

Meissonier, comparable only with the Dutch, 398

_Mésalliance_ defined, 353

Michelet, his description of Lyons, 439

Milan, King of Servia, educated in a French _lycée_, 58

Military exercises, imposed in France by the conscription, 5; duelling, 6

Military officers in France and England, 334

Militia in England, a reserve of military amateurs, 92

Mill, John Stuart, observations on French feeling, 47; on French and English manners, 303; his influence, 399

Millais, a grouse-shooter, 3

Mirabeau, his declaration of the sovereignty of the people, 105

Mivart, Mr., on intellectual liberty in the Catholic church, 174; story of the Deluge, 175

Monarchy and Republic, misuse of the terms in France and England, 103; character of the old monarchy in France, 109

Monarchy in England, its possible duration, 134

Moral training, French and English, the outcome of personal influence, 39; a national moral sense necessary, _ib._; stronger in England than in France, 40; influence of the Church of England superior to that of Rome, _ib._; effect of clerical education on unbelievers, 41; influence of Agnostics, 42; want of moral authority in lay teaching in France, _ib._; truthfulness damaged by clerical education of unbelievers, 43; French boys civilised by their mothers, 44; home influences and school influences in England, _ib._; advantages of rural life and grammar schools, 45; immorality in dealings between nations, _ib._; value of public opinion as moral authority, 46; national and professional virtues, _ib._

Morley, Mr. John, his views regarding the House of Lords, 113; his influence, 401

Morvan, district in France, a peculiar country, language, and people, 434; material civilisation, 435; ignorance of cookery, 436; contrasted with the Burgundy wine country, _ib._; absence of the Fine Arts, _ib._

Music, national, prejudices created by political jealousy, 413

Music, sacred and profane, 275

Musset, Alfred de, popularity in France, 403

N

Napoleon I, system of education founded on the classics, and lighter scientific studies, 28

Napoleon III, never won any real deference, 83

Nature, English love of, not always favourable to art, 37

National Assembly in France, declared sovereign, 107

Nationality in ideas, xviii

National success. See Success

_Noblesse_, French, surpass the _bourgeoisie_ not in learning but in field sports and equipages, 59; absence of culture, 60; life of the rural aristocracy in France, 61; barbarians in the upper classes, _ib._; despise trade and all professions save that of a soldier, 62; faults of, 327; contempt for work, 328; effect of poverty, 331;

Nonconformists, natural jealousy of the Church of England, 151; less tolerant than Anglicans, 152; social equality not to be gained by disestablishment, 154; disadvantage in belonging to inferior sects, 155; Herbert Spencer’s views concerning, 400

Novels and novelists, French and English, 213; invention of situations, 214; temptations, 215; French novels cosmopolitan, 216; variety in the demand, 217; trash, 218

O

Ochlocracy, or popular government, 105; in France a mere question of time, 106

Opportunist politics of the author, xiii

Orders, Religious, story of their expulsion from France explained, 190, 191

Orleans family, misrepresentations as regards expulsion from France, 194

Orleans princes, educated like other French boys in a _lycée_, 58

Ossian, Macpherson’s, the one literary success in the Scotch Highlands, 424

Oxford University, associated with social distinctions, 57, 59

P

Painting in France, the exquisite and the vulgar, 396; qualities of English art, 397; relative success, _ib._

Palgrave, Mr., statement that Orientals regard Europe as one nation, 421

Palmerston, Lord, love of hunting and riding, 3

Paris, superior to London in artistic Europe, 35; artistic ideal contrasted with the English moral ideal, 38; English siege of, impossible without allies, 89; a nation like London, 440; characteristics differing from London, _ib._; contrast with provincial life, 441; the light of France, _ib._; contrast in manners, 442; in morals, 443; in individual character, _ib._

Parliamentary system, alone practicable in England and France, xiv; faulty working, _ib._

Parties in England, probable opposition between strong monarchists and open republicans, 134

Patrie, a sacred word in France, 74; “country” no equivalent, 75

Patriotic Duty, in France and England, 91; English and French ideas compared, _ib._; volunteer movement in England, 92; English army more professional than national, _ib._; want of national feeling in the French army under the Second Empire, 93; revolution in public opinion under the Republic, 94; unity of sentiment between the French army and the nation, 95; influence of national armies on peace and war, 96; English repugnance to conscription, _ib._; likely to be overcome, 97; patriotism of the English in foreign policy during peace, 98; absent in France except during war, _ib._; confusion of patriotism with hatred, 99.

Patriotic Jealousy, between France and England, 85; rivalry in Europe, _ib._; in naval strength, _ib._; equalities and resemblances, 86; rivalry in Africa and the East, 86, 87; English jealousy of French colonial enterprise, 87; French jealousy of English possession of the Channel Islands, 88; not to be settled by war, 87, 88; difficulties of conquest on either side, 89; jealousies reasonable and unreasonable, _ib._

Patriotic Pride, in France and England, 77; strong in France before the Franco-German war, _ib._; subdued by the loss of security, 78; aristocracy humiliated by the establishment of the Republic, 79; not wounded in England, 80; strengthened by being the head of English-speaking nations, 81; by underrating other nations, 82; easy indifference of the French, 83; hatred of France for her neighbours, _ib._

Patriotic Tenderness, in France and England, 65; increasing in France and diminishing in England, _ib._; loyal and pathetic as expressed in Black’s _Princess of Thule_, 66; nourished by rural life, _ib._; colonisation unfavourable to English patriotism, 67; expression in composite states, _ib._; increased by religion and poetry, but diminished by travel, _ib._; causes of its diminution in England, 68; dispersion of English middle-class families, 69; reluctance of the French to emigrate, 70; patriotic tenderness of the Irish, 70; of the poet Wordsworth, 71; attachment of the English to foreign countries, 72; Robert Browning’s love for Italy, _ib._; illusions of the French as regards France, 73; provincial feeling stronger in France than in England, 74; the words _pays_ and _patrie_, _ib._; no cruel experience of invasion felt in England, 75; varying intensity, 76

Patriotism, as opposed to impartiality in discussing foreigners, viii; degenerates into _chauvinisme_, ix

Peasants, French, endurance in walking, 6; their healthy and active lives in comparison with English factory workers, 13

Pedestrianism, English ladies better walkers than French, 6

Photography, French superior to English, 399

Physical Education. See Education, French and English

Physical Education, imperfect in England, 1; amusements of distinguished Englishmen, 2; cricket and boating, 3; high physical life of the English aristocracy contrasted with that of towns, 12; peasant life in France and factory life in England, 13; English and French compared, _ib._; future of the two races, 14

Poaching in France and England, 11

Poetry, foreign difficulties in appreciating, 23; in France and England, 402; English not appreciated in France, 406, 407

Politeness. See Manners

Political celebrity in England, 326

Pope, veneration for by Catholics, 54

Prefect, his official rank in France, 335

Pride. See Patriotic

Priests in France, may not shoot, hunt, or row in a boat, 7; may fish with a hook, 8

President of the French Republic, contemptuous estimate of his position refuted, 136; his real influence, 137

Presidential government, American system of, unsuited to France, 110; compulsory retirement of Grévy and peaceful election of his successor, 111

_Princess of Thule_, an example of local patriotism, 65

Printing, French and English compared, 395

Protestantism, in England and France, xii; protected in France by Freethinkers, xv

Protestants, their isolation in France, 155; ultra-simplicity, 177

Provence contrasted with Brittany, 434

Provincial Feeling, strong in France but not in England, 74; no cruel experiences of invasion felt in England, 75

Public opinion, its value as a moral authority, 46; national and professional virtues, _ib._

Puritanism, revolutionised the English people, 270; especially the middle classes, 271; experiences of an English family on a Sunday in Paris, _ib._; success of Puritanism in Scotland, 274; sacred and profane music, 275; effect on literature, 276

Purity, dual relations between the sexes, 207; physical and mental, 208; opposite views of Catholic and Protestant of the marriage of Anglican clergymen, _ib._; Catholic horror at the marriage of a bishop, 209; opposite views of marriage with a deceased wife’s sister, _ib._; illegitimate unions in the lower classes, _ib._; tolerated in artists and writers, 210; Victor Hugo and Juliette Drouet, French opinion, 211; Lewes and Liszt, 212; immorality in great cities, _ib._; French novels no evidence of French immorality, 213; crimes frequent in all imaginary literature, _ib._; especially in English novels, 214; French novelists and their readers, 215, 216; pure literature in France, 219; misrepresentation of French lubricity, 220; extreme cases of vice, 221; social penalties, _ib._; rustic morals in England and France, 221; unmarried girls in middle and upper classes, 223; French and Anglican clergy, _ib._; soldiers and sailors, 224; student life in France and England, _ib._; Scotch and French students, 225; French and English schools, 226; domestic life in Paris, 227; conflicting views of marriage, 228; moral pride of the English, 229; want of it in France, 230; worship of the Virgin Mary, 231; moral feeling in England stronger than in France, 232

R

Railways, just and unjust accounts of, 205; Mr. Ruskin’s diatribe, _ib._

Rank, associated as with education in France and England, 56. See Education

Regattas in France, 8; clubs, 9

Religion, changed by political revolution, 118; denial of Christianity or of the authority of the Scriptures a criminal offence under English law, 118; dislike of dissenters to be treated as inferiors, 132

Religion, real similarity between England and France, xii; anomalous antipathies, xv; relations between Catholics, Protestants, and Freethinkers, _ib._; decay of reverence in France, 54; in England confined to the Bible and the throne, 55; State establishments, French and English compared, 141; not national in France, 142; international character of the Catholic priesthood, _ib._; Anglicanism in England, Presbyterianism in Scotland, and Catholicism in Ireland, 143; co-establishments in France, _ib._; changes under the Republic, 144; contradiction, 145; neutrality in France, _ib._; toleration in England, 146; modern idea of State protection to all creeds, _ib._; disestablishment easy in France, 147; in Great Britain and Ireland, _ib._; impolicy of confiscating the stipends of priests in France, 148; subscriptions for the Church easier than for science, 149; proposed payment of the French clergy through the communes, 150; disestablishment in England, 151; natural jealousy of nonconformists, _ib._; social power of the Church of Rome in France, 153; isolation of Protestants in France, 155; disadvantage of belonging to inferior sects, _ib._; nominal orthodoxy alone required, 156; dangers of nominal heterodoxy, 157; State religion supported by Freethinkers, 157, 158; two senses in the word “faith,” “custom” and “conviction,” 159; sincerity tested by sacrifice, 160; example of a young Frenchman, _ib._; devotion of Catholic Sisters, 161; strong faith in both Catholics and Protestants, 165; distinction between formalism and hypocrisy, 167; philosophical Anglicans, 171; examples in the English clergy, 172; French equivalent, 173; religion hereditary, _ib._; external conformity in France, 174; ritualism and formalism in England, 175; no ritualist party in France, 176; sham Christians in England and France, 184, 185; revolutionised in England by Puritanism, 270; observance of Sunday in France and England, 272; incomes of the clergy in France and England, 379

Renan, his influence, 403

Republic, French, regarded by the Conservatives as a foreign occupation, 391

Republic and Monarchy, misuse of the terms in France and England, 103

Republicans, French, their opposition to England, xvii

Republican sentiment cooling in France, 135

Reverence, dying out in France, 54; decaying in England except towards the Bible and the Throne, 55

Revolutions in France and England, misleading terms “Republic” and “Monarchy,” 103; abolition of absolutism similar in both countries, 104; want of English sympathy for the growth of liberty in France, _ib._; beginning of democracy in France, 105; sovereignty of the people, _ib._; resemblances between the two revolutions, 106; sovereignty of the National Assembly and House of Commons, 107; aristocratic republic in England, 108; irregular progress of the democracy in France, 109; absence of a written constitution in England, 109, 110; cabinet government in England copied by France, 110; the misleading use in France of American terms, “Republic,” “President,” “Senate,” 111; peaceful changes, _ib._

Reynolds, Sir Joshua, his writings on art appreciated in France, 408; his paintings depreciated as imitations, 410

Rhyme in poetry, difficulties of pronunciation, 23

Ritualism in England promoted by formalism, 175

Rothschild, Baron, abundance of game in his preserves at Ferrières, 11 _note_

Rouen, cultivation of the Fine Arts inferior to that in Manchester or Liverpool, 34

Royalist sentiment extinct in France, 54, 135

Rural and urban life in France and England, 34

Ruskin, Mr., causes of his success, an art teacher to the English, 37; his diatribe against railways, 205; his influence, 400; no readers in France, 408; depreciates French art, 413

Russian novels, demand for in France, 409

S

Sabbath. See Sunday

Sabbatarianism of the Scotch Lowlanders, 425

Sarcey, F., his evidence respecting the neglect of English and German in France, 21

_Saturday Review_, remarks on education in France, 218

Science, superseding literature, 28; its place in secondary education in France, 29

Science and Art Department in England, 32

Scotland. See _Highlanders_ and _Lowlanders_

Scotland, English ignorance of, 81; French confusion of Highlanders and Lowlanders, 425

Scott, Sir Walter, a keen sportsman, 3; his denial of the authorship of Waverley novels, 196; ignorance of French, 430

Seeley, Professor, proposals as regards Latin and Greek, 18

Seminaries, French ecclesiastical, their effect on pupils, 44

Sentiment, natural to the French, but ridiculous to the English, 47; filial affection, _ib._; friendship, 48; sympathy, 49; degrees of relationship, _ib._; funerals, _ib._; neglected tombs, _ib._; cultured by the French, 50; in the English clergy, 51; English tenderness for animals, 52; French hardness, 53; reverence, _ib._; royalist, absent in France, 54

Servants, domestic, in France and England, 293

Sisters, Catholic working Orders, their devotion, 161; activity and cheerfulness, 162; example of an Anglican saint, 163; more common in France than in England, 164

Shadwell, Vice-Chancellor, family swimming in the Thames, 10

Shakespeare as an Englishman, 429; his ignorance of French, 430

Shelley, his love of boating and swimming, 3

Shelley unknown in France, 24

Sociability, greater in England than in France, 363; French liking for talk, 364; separation of the sexes in France, _ib._; difference in England, 365; want of amusements in France, 367; especially in the provinces, 368; English lunch unknown in France, _ib._; decline of hospitality in France, 369; the club and the _cercle_, _ib._; restricted by religious and political bigotry, 370; divisions in France and England, 371

Social distinctions. See Caste

Socrates, indifference to comfort, 286

Spain, her pride wounded by English possession of Gibraltar, 88

Spencer, Herbert, great reputation in France as a thinker, 408

Spencer, Herbert, his term “anti-patriotism,” vii

Spenser, Edmund, not known in France, 24, 26

Sports: see Field sports. Drill: see Military exercise

Stability, English, French faith in, 129; wanting in English cabinets, 130; in the House of Commons, 131; threatened abolition of the hereditary principle in the House of Lords, _ib._; causes of the instability of a State Church, 132; question as regards the English Throne, 133; future of England, 134; of France, 135; coolness of French republican sentiment, _ib._; Sir Henry Maine’s estimate of a French president refuted, 136, 137

Stoicism of the English, 47

Strathclyde, old, included the western Lowlanders and Lancashire, 427

Student life in France, 224; Scotch and French students compared, 225; morality of boys in French schools, 227

Success, National, abroad, its vanity, 406; non-appreciation of English poetry in France, _ib._; French opinions of English writers, 408; Russian novels in France, 409; English demand for French novels, _ib._; French opinion of English art, 411; influence of Constable on French landscape, _ib._; wide celebrity of French painters, _ib._; French art appreciated in England, 412; English and German music unpopular in France, 413; national appreciation of minor excellencies, 414; depreciation of the Houses of Parliament by foreigners, 415; moral eminence of success in war, _ib._; French depreciation of the English navy, 416; military reputation of France and England compared, 417; changes since the Franco-Prussian war, _ib._; greatness of England dependent on her superiority in arms, 418

Success, National, at home, 390; England greater in religion and politics, _ib._; isolation of French conservatives, 391; partial success of the Republic, _ib._; English and French finances, 392; contrast in party feeling, 393; arts and sciences, _ib._; manufactures, 394; printing, 395; painting, 396; home success of French and English artists, 397; literature, 399; poetry, 401; young philosophers, 403; journalists, _ib._; dread of war in England and France, 404

Success, Personal, difficult for a French gentleman, 375; familiar to the middle classes, _ib._; example of Madame Boucicaut, 376; money-making, 377; lotteries and private gambling, _ib._; overcrowding professions, 378; wealthy traders, 382; English manufacturers, _ib._; cost of living in France and England, 383; definition of real success, _ib._; little pleasures, 386; industrial civilisation a failure, 388

Suffrage in England and France, xi

Sunday in Paris shocking to English and Scotch, 271; in England before the Puritan revolution, 272; Catholic observance for the protection of toilers, 273; example of a French Sunday, _ib._; in England and Scotland, 274; distinction between sacred and profane music, 275; rowing and sailing, _ib._; effect of the Sabbatarian customs on literature, 276

Swinburne, his exceptional knowledge of technical workmanship in French poetry, 24

Swimming, cultivated more in France than in England, 9; exceptional cases of Miss Beckwith, Captain Webb, and Vice-Chancellor Shadwell’s family, 10

T

Tea-drinking in England opposed to French ideas, 283

Temperance, drinking in France as distinct from drunkenness, 233; possible allowance of a Frenchman, 234; wine a safeguard against spirits, 235; German wine drinking, 236; difference in drinking habits in France, 237; French abstainers between meals, 239; gormandism, _ib._; temperance of the _gourmet_, 241; quotation from Thackeray, _ib._; plain living in France, 242; consumption of spirits in England, 243; dipsomania, _ib._; growing temperance in England, 244; English love of flesh meat, 245; French economy, _ib._; English asceticism, 246

Tenderness. See Patriotic

Tennis, abandoned in France, 4; the parent of English lawn tennis, _ib._

Tennyson known in France only to students in English literature, 408

Tennyson, his peerage, 323

Thackeray, a French _gourmet_, 241; ideas of duelling expressed in the _Newcomes_, 278

Thackeray, little appreciated in France, 408

Thrift, superiority of the French to the English, 247; pettiness and meanness, 248; English contempt for meanness, _ib._; selfishness and self-denial, 249; French anxiety to provide dowries, _ib._; discouragements to thrift in England, 249; contempt for small sums, 250; prodigality of the old French nobility, _ib._; modern examples of extreme thrift, 251; English improvidence, 252; results of thrift on the French nation, _ib._

Titles, the consecration of wealth, 323; peerages of Tennyson and Victor Hugo, _ib._; defended by Mr. Bagehot, 325

Tonquin, English jealousy of French expedition, 87; unpopular in France, 96

Trollope, Anthony, love for fox-hunting, 3

Toussenel, misrepresentations of England in _L’Esprit des Bêtes_, 187, 188

Towns, French, pleasantness compared with English, 34; render artistic life torpid, _ib._; their exhibitions inferior to English, _ib._; inferior taste in buildings, 35; inferior to English as art centres, 37

Training. See Moral

Training, physical. See Physical Education

Truth, repressed in French education, 181; intellectual dishonesty encouraged, 182; sham admiration in literature and art, 183; less in England than in France, _ib._; literary lying about Shakespeare and the classics, _ib._; sham Christians rewarded, 184; Sunday observance and family prayers, 185; political lying, 186; difference between French and English, _ib._; French reliance on ignorance, 187; misrepresentations of Toussenel as regards England, 188; superiority of English falsehood, 190; French Government pronounced atheistical, _ib._; alleged expulsion of religious orders from France, 191; of removal of crosses from the French cemeteries, 192; expulsion of the Orleans family, 194; story of a French catechism, 195; Walter Scott’s denial of the authorship of _Waverley_, 196; silence of Chambers as to his _Vestiges of Creation_, _ib._; French and English ideas of truth, 197

Truthfulness, a social virtue, 41; damaged by clerical education of unbelievers, _ib._

Turner, not comparable with any French artist, 398

Tyndall, Professor, a mountaineer, 3

U

University in France, teachers of modern languages assuming the status of classical masters, 21; professors mostly Agnostics, 42; bachelor’s degree necessary in France for professions, 56; not absolutely necessary in England, _ib._; confers social distinctions in England, not in France, 57

Urban and rural life in France and England, 34

V

Variety in Britain, 421; four distinct nationalities, 423; Scotch Highlanders, their inertia, _ib._; Lowlanders, their Sabbatarianism, industry, intellect, and Fine Arts, 425; Lancastrians, their resemblance to the Scotch Lowlanders, 426; London, a nation, 427; a state within a state, 428; Irish, Scotch, Welsh, 429; Shakespeare and Walter Scott, 430

Variety in France, 432; English ignorance of provincial France, _ib._; highlands, plains, and coasts, 433; seven distinct climates, _ib._; contrast between Brittany and Provence, 434; between the Morvan and Burgundy, 435, 436; departments, provinces, districts, 437; local climates, 438; diversities in towns, _ib._; Paris, a nation, 440; local as distinguished from London, _ib._; the most artistic city in Europe, _ib._; contrasted with the provinces, 441; contrast in manners, 442; in morals, 443; modern diminution of variety in France, 444

Velocipedes in France and England, 8

Velocipedes, undignified in France, 8

Veneration, Catholic, for priests, 54; absence of in French republicans, _ib._; for Victor Hugo, Ingres, Chevreul, _ib._; want of in French family life, 55; in England for the Bible and the Throne, _ib._

Victoria, Queen, an example of open expression of the feelings, 51

Victorian era, probable consequences, 133; monarchy in England, its probable duration, 134

Virtues, maintained only by a strong public opinion, 46

Virtues. See Truth

Volunteer movement in England produced by a sense of danger, 92

Voysey, Mr., his warning to dissenters, 154

W

War, diminution of national enthusiasm in England and France, 262

War, dreaded in England and France, 405

Wealth of France and England compared, 339; creations of the nineteenth century, 340; developments of industries, 341; social value of wealth in England, 342; French feeling, 343; sanctity of wealth in England, 344; sentiments of the poor, 345; views of Matthew Arnold, _ib._; and Gerald Massey, 346; aggressiveness of mill-hands in Lancashire, 347; respectful civility in France, 349; national defence, 351; rich traders and manufacturers, 382; cost of living in France and England, 383

Webb, Captain, the English swimmer, 10

Wine drinking in France, 233, 234; in Germany, 236; advantages of cheap wine, 236; wine and water, 238; growth of English taste for French wines, 282

Women, their severe conservatism, 121

Wordsworth, a pedestrian, 2

THE END

_Printed by_ R. & R. CLARK, _Edinburgh_.

Transcriber’s Notes

Obvious typographical errors have been silently corrected. Variations in hyphenation and accents have been standardised but all other spelling and punctuation remains unchanged.

Italics are represented thus _italic_.