lacquey who should hope to pass for a gentleman
would be detected not alone by one, but by every
trait of his manner, language, and bearing. The
fixed and well-defined gradations of rank in
England have impressed each class, and even the
sections of each class, with very distinctive
marks; and one recognises the City men, the
lawyers, the physicians, the clergymen, the
squires, as easily as one pronounces on a
provincialism.

This ready tact, however, fails us when we try
to apply it to the foreigner. All these tests,
applicable to ourselves, fail when we employ them
towards him.  He may be guilty of lapses in his
parts of speech, like Mrs. Malaprop; he may
violate every rule of grammar, and outrage every
principle of language; yet how are we to detect:
him? Where is the Englishman, who has not
passed years of life abroad, who could pronounce
by the test of language on the status and rank of
a foreigner? And yet so strangely diffused and
disseminated throughout all gradations of the
Continent are the ordinary conventionalities of
life, that it is by language alone we are able to
discriminate between the man of education and
the pretender. Every one familiar with foreign
life has had in his service a courier or a valet,
whose air, manner, and general "get up" were
an admirable fac-simile of the real article. All
of us have seen fellows with the most imposing
appearance, and what would be called a
distinguished address, and yet to a discriminating
eye as unquestionably stamped "flunkey" as
any Private in the army of yellow plush. But
how is the home-bred Englishman to know this?
How is he to discover that these graces are the
uniform and conventional usage of everybody
abroad, and not more the prerogative of the
duke than of the duke's gentleman?

My reader will, perhaps, ask at this moment
whether I mean by this apology that the
unforfortunate Miss Bailey was perfectly justified
in being deceived, and that, in fact, she had an
undeniable right to be "taken" by the signor
with the long name, and I reply as promptly,
Nothing of the kind. I am just as severe in my
condemnation of the lady's rashness as I should
be of his who, without any knowledge of the
subject, previous study, or preparation, would
adventure to make costly purchases in matters
of high art. Saving that in the one case it
may be a life's happiness is on the venture, and
in the other a sum of money—they are much
alike—yet who is there in this very self-reliant
age—who would buy up a gallery of reputed
Raphaels and Corregios, and merely on the
faith of the name exchange his bank-notes for
mock Rembrandts and forged Cuyps, impositions
so gross as to be only laughable when subjected
to the eye of real connoisseurship? This is
precisely the error I would reprobate, not as the
newspaper critic does, however for want of
knowledge, but for want of caution; not that
the buyer purchased unwisely, but that he
purchased at all. What I want to declare is that
foreigners, like objects of art, medallions,
majolica, Sèvres china, or Capo di Monte porcelain,
are an especial study. They possess a
certain lacquer of civilization common to all ranks,
forms and observances of good breeding in very
general use, and extremely likely to deceive those
in our own country who ascribe such characteristics
only to the highest ranks of society.

The cashier of a bank recognises the forged
note by an instantaneous instinct; he has not
to con over the engraving, and the secret symbol,
and the water-mark; so, in the matter of
a foreigner, he who has passed years in their
intercourse attains that readiness in discrimination
which saves many a blunder. But how is
your untravelled Englishman to arrive at this?
It is impossible; and what is the consequence?
While the unfortunate Miss Bailey is the dupe
at home, her brother Bob is the despot abroad.
To him all foreigners are cheats, rogues, and
blackguards. Confounding all ranks and conditions,
he makes no more count of the man of
station and eminence than of the lacquey that
showed him the cathedral. Full of self-imputed
superiority to the Frenchman or the German,
he imagines that absurdity in dress and
eccentricity in behaviour are essential to show how
he despises public opinion, and thus two
diametrically opposite faults—implicit credulity
and insolent distrust—spring out of the
self-same ignorance. Is it necessary to say that we
make far too much of the " foreigner" in
England, and hold him far too cheaply abroad; and
bad as the former mistake is, the latter is
infinitely more productive of mischief. No one
who has not known the Continent long and well,
could easily believe how much the character of
England has suffered in foreign estimation by
the bearing of our travellers, especially of the
young-men order. In fact, if not leavened by
the good breeding of our highest class, our
manners and social usages would be deemed
below all comment. Who has not witnessed
the lounging swagger of the Tweed-clad Bull
through churches where people were at prayer;
his loudly uttered questions as to this or
that; his cool invasion of the most sacred
precincts; his irreverent examination of relics,
or his scoffing impatience when directed to
some object of special veneration? Who has
not seen him at the promenade, where whatever
the city owns of fashion is as observant of dress
as in the drawing-room, strolling about in the
costume of a broken-down player, mayhap with
a felt-hat and knickerbockers, and, more
ridiculous still, a courier's bag slung round him?
Is the vulgarian aware that he might as well
wear a hat with a cockade or a coat with a
livery-button? At the restaurant, the café, the
theatre, it is all the same, he is ever
distinguishable by his dressing and by an aggressive
manner; a something that seems to invite
insult, an air assumed to outrage the "confounded
foreigner," and show him "what stuff John
Bull is made of." The Englishman's estimate
of the foreigner and of all things foreign is that
there is no bone in him; nothing solid, stable,
and resisting; and he deems the morality, like
the cookery, far too light to be nutritious.