laughing at Sydney Smith's denunciations of
the "men in drab," and his comically vindictive
wish to cut up a Quaker, and apportion him,
buttonless coat, broad-brimmed hat and all,
among the defrauded bondholders. When it was
discovered that Pennsylvania paid her obligations,
the jokes about pails of whitewash grew
stale, and we abandoned them for good. So it
was with the great sea serpent. For years the
English newspapers used to have their weekly
quota of examples of American exaggeration
and longbowism. We used to read about the
cow which, being left out on a frosty night,
never afterwards gave anything but ice-creams;
about the man who was so tall that he had to
climb up a ladder to take his hat off; about the
discontented clock down east, which struck work
instead of the hours. These jokes, too, have
now become stale, and barely suffice to gain a
giggle from the sixpenny seats when emitted by
the comic singer at a music-hall. Sarcasms
anent American brag and bunkum have not
quite died out from English conversation and
English journalism; for, unfortunately, the
newest file of American papers are full of
evidence that bunkum and brag are, on the other
side of the Atlantic, as current as ever.

How is it that, when foreigners wish to quiz
us—however good humouredly—they always
date their witticisms from the morrow of the
battle of Waterloo? The English began to be
habitual travellers in the autumn of 1815. To
us who know, or fancy that we know ourselves,
the changes which have taken place in our
manners and customs since that period are
marvellous; but to foreigners we seem to be
precisely the same people who came rushing to
Paris when the allies were in the Palais Royal,
and have since overrun every nook and corner
of Europe. We know what we were like in
'15; we had been bereft for twelve years of the
French fashions. It was only once in some
months or so that a Paris bonnet, or the design
for a Paris dress, was furtively conveyed to us
from Nantes or Hamburg in a smuggling lugger.
Of the French language and of French literature
we were almost entirely ignorant. To be a fluent
French scholar was to be put down either as a
diplomatist or a spy; and not all diplomatists
could speak French. We had not learnt to waltz;
and foreigners invited to the houses of English
residents in Paris used to turn up their eves at
our barbarous country dances, and hoydenish
Sir Roger de Coverley. We knew no soup but
turtle and pea; no made dishes but Irish stew
and liver and bacon; no wines but port and
sherry; claret gave us the cholic;
champagne was only found at the tables of princes.
We used to drink hot brandy-and-water in the
morning. We used to get drunk after dinner.
We had no soda-water. We had no cigars,
and smoking a pipe was an amusement in
winter few persons besides ship captains,
hackney-coachmen, and the Reverend Dr. Parr,
indulged. Our girls were bread-and-butter
romps; our boys were coarse and often profligate hobbledehoys, whose idea of "life" was
to drink punch at the Finish, and beat the watch.
Our fathers and mothers were staid, and prim,
and somewhat sulky, and carried with them
everywhere a bigoted hatred of popery and a
withering contempt of foreigners. This is what
we were like in 1815; and, in '15, I can easily
understand that the angular young woman in
the coal-scuttle bonnet and the green veil, who
was always crying "Shocking!" was as
possible a personage as the baronet in top-boots
who continually swore at "Jhon," his jockey,
and roared for fresh grogs.

But can it be that we have not changed since
the morrow of Waterloo? If we are to believe
our critics, we are the self-same folk. It seems
to me that we have let our beards and
moustaches grow, and have become the most hirsute
people in Europe; but a Charivari Englishman,
or a Gustave Doré Englishman, or a Bouffes
Parisiennes Englishman, is always the same
simpering creature, with smooth upper and
under lip, and bushy whiskers. Types must be
preserved, you may argue. As a simpering
and whiskered creature, the Englishman is best
known abroad, and foreigners have as much
right to preserve him intact as we have to
preserve our traditional John Bull. But may I be
allowed to point out that a type may become so
worn and blunted as to be no longer worth
printing from? For instance, there is the
Frenchman in a cocked-hat and a pigtail and
high-heeled shoes, and with a little fiddle
protruding from his hinder pocket. That Frenchman's
name was Johnny Crapaud. His diet
was frogs. His profession was to teach dancing.
One Englishman could always thrash three
Johnny Crapauds. We have broken up that
type for old metal; and it has been melted
again, and recast into something more nearly
approaching the actual Crapaud. Let me see;
how many years is it since the lamented John
Leech drew that droll cartoon in Punch entitled
Foreign Affairs? It must be a quarter of a
century, at least. He delineated the Frenchman
of his day to the life: the Frenchman of
the old Quadrant and Fricourt's and Dubourg's,
and the stuffy little passport-office in Poland-street.
That Frenchman—long haired, dirty,
smouchy, greasy—has passed away. Before he
died, Mr. Leech found out the new types; the
fat yet dapper "Mossoos," with the large
shirt-fronts and the dwarfed hats, who engage a
barouche and a valet de place at Pagliano's, and
go for "a promenade to Richmond." And had
Mr. Leech's life been protracted, he would have
discovered the still later type of Frenchman—
the Parisian of the Lower Empire, the Frenchman
of the Jockey Club and the Courses de
Vincennes—the Frenchman who has his clothes
made by Mr. Poole, or by the most renowned
Parisian imitator of the artist of Saville-row,
who reads Le Sport and goes upon Ie Tourff,
and rides in his "bromm" and eats his
"laounch," and, if he could only be cured of
the habit of riding like a miller's sack and
sitting outside a cafe on the Boulevards, would
pass muster very well for a twin brother of our
exquisites of the Raleigh and Gatt's.

It is all of no use, however, I fear. For good