of the Paris journalists, during the
fraternization of "All Nations," in 1851. Since
the dark days of Master Perlin, we have
enjoyed years of peace and friendly
intercourse, but it is clear that this class of the
French do not yet understand us, and what
is worse, show no signs of wishing to do so.

Of the letters alluded to, those of M.
Edmond Texier, a not undistinguished writer
in the Siècle, are among the most remarkable
for wildness of invention and
misapprehension of everything he sees and hears.
Angels' visits are frequent, and in rapid
succession, compared with his deviations into
fact. Though the most random of writers,
he is scarcely ever, even accidentally, in the
right. And so illogical is he, withal—so
self-contradictory are his very mistakes—that it is
difficult to assign to him any other claim to
literary distinction, than a happy and unfailing
felicity in hitting the wrong nail in the
very centre of the head.

The first English phenomenon which did
not find favour in M. Texier's eyes was, of
course, the climate. Of the sun he saw very
little; and when he did see it—in the height
of summer—it was like "a red wafer fixed
upon a sheet of grey paper." It is unnecessary
to follow him through the fog, rain, and foul
weather of every description, which he
describes, but could not have seen during his
visit to London. The heavy atmosphere has
its influence upon the people. Looking on
the crowds passing in the streets, he is "struck
with the sadness imprinted on their countenances.
The continental Englishman—the
Englishman one sees in Paris—is not the same
person as the Englishman in England, and
especially in London. Englishmen have a mask
which they leave at Dover when they embark,
and which they put on again when they
return home. Look at them in France—
they are careless, joyous, and sometimes
amiable; they talk, they laugh, they sing
even, at table, without much solicitation; and
I have seen them bold enough to conquer a
contre-danse, or figure in a quadrille. In
London they are grave as lawyers, and sadder
than mutes. Not only do they stop their
dancing and singing, but they are most careful
not to laugh, for fear of losing their
consideration or credit. At the theatre, or
at a soirée, if a woman allows herself to laugh,
it is because a woman is a woman everywhere,
and must occasionally show the pearls
of her mouth. As to the men, the ennui
which consumes them is so profound, that it
has imprinted its stigma upon their countenances.
Their expression is always drooping,
and morning or night we meet them with the
same air of depression which explains the
strange malady of the spleen. . . Nothing
is more lugubrious than the physiognomy of
London, on a day of fog, of rain, or of cold.
It is then that the spleen seizes you. On
such days the immense city has a fearful
aspect. One believes oneself walking in a
necropolis—one breathes sepulchral air. Those
long files of uniform houses, with little
windows like guillotines, of a sober colour,
enclosed by black railings, seem two ranges
of tombs, between which phantoms are
walking."

The sadness of the people is, perhaps,
partly induced by the habit of wearing black
coats, which M. Texier says is universal in
England. "The gentlemen and trading classes
both wear black coats; the coat, when it is
shabby, becomes, for the consideration of a
few shillings, the property of the working man,
who wears it on Sundays; when this second-hand
(seconde main) fragment is completely
worn out, the possessor sells it again to a
beggar. The last, having worn the garment
to rags, sells it in his turn to a broker, who
sends it immediately to Ireland, where it is
sold for a few pence to the poor. It is not
until after this last process that the black
coat, made in a Piccadilly or Strand
establishment, absolutely ceases to exist."

But the Englishmen whom M. Texier sees
in London are not only melancholy wretches
and wearers of black coats: they are even
worse: "The dandies yawn on their thoroughbreds,
the ladies yawn in their carriages. Not
one among these representatives of the richest
aristocracy of the globe, seems to suspect that
a famished population is crawling at their
feet. Absorbed each in his own ennui, they
have no time to occupy themselves with the
misery of others. On these ill-omened days
—and they are numerous—the Englishman,
under the influence of his climate, is brutal to
all who approach him. He insults and is
insulted without giving or receiving excuses.
A poor man falls down from inanition in the
middle of the street; the passer-by strides
over him, and proceeds on his business; his
task finished, he enters his club, where he
dines copiously, where he intoxicates himself,
and where he forgets, in the sleep of drunkenness,
the overbearing ennui of the day. In
London, happiness consists not in the sensation
of living, but in the forgetfulness of existence.
Hence these pitchers of beer, these bottles of
ale, this gin, this porter, and these monstrous
grogs (ces grogs monstrueux!) absorbed by a
single man in one evening."

However, the indulgence in "these
monstrous grogs "—and also, it may be presumed,
in such things as astounding ales, alarming
gins, and unnatural porters—is caused and
excused, M. Texier tell us, by his old enemy
the climate; and he hopes that, in speaking
thus, he will not be accused of entertaining
any national prejudice or resentment: "I am
not, thank God, one of those who cannot
speak of Shakspeare without thinking of the
battle of Waterloo; I relate what I have
seen and see every day, and do not at all ask
that France should take her revenge for
Trafalgar."

The next infamous institution in England,
after the appalling climate and the monstrous