the accent just a trifle strained and pedantic,
but not more so than beseemed one of nis years
and profession—talking down that fiery son of
his by sheer force of lungs, and when he had
reduced him to silence, from despair of being
heard, winding up with a triumphant peroration
that nearly drove him mad.

I am sorry to say my father was not singular
in his pet craze; nor has he died without
inheritors. There are other of my friends with
whom the French are no greater favourites than
they were with him, and who are not a whit less
intolerant. One, a kind soft-hearted fellow, who
never said No to a suppliant in his life, and who
only lives to do good to others (he is quite a
fortune to the beggars of his district, and pensions
all the crossing-sweepers for a couple of
miles round), belies his better nature, and makes
a moral hybrid of himself by perpetually abusing
those unfortunate men and brothers of ours
across the Channel. A French word in a page
of English writing makes him furious; the
mention of a French virtue maddens him like a bit
of scarlet-rag trailed before a bull; he takes it
as a personal insult, as well as a foul slander, on
the whole English nation, if any one assumes for
the French the least superiority, moral, social, or
intellectual, over ourselves; and when he comes
to an article in the newspaper or a magazine
favourably treating of them in any aspect,
he either flings the book down with disgust,
or discontinues his subscription to the work.
"Mounseer," as he calls him, is as contemptible
as he is dangerous, fit only to make
ragoûts out of old shoes, or to dance fandangos
on the tight rope, like his cousins the monkeys;
but Mounseer as one of the European families
is a decided mistake, and the sooner he is cleared
off the face of creation the better for all honest
folk remaining. Another friend, more philosophical
than the last, and with more show of
reasoning, but no easier to convince, calmly
argues from their history and their own authors
against their truth, probity, honour, virtue,
modesty, domesticity, religiousness, and every
other attribute of a reclaimed humanity. He
listens to my counter-statements with
imperturbable equanimity, then quietly tells me I
know nothing of the subject, and that I argue
like all emotional people with my heels in my
head and my heart turned upside down. A
third, in a fine, cheery, manly voice, like drops
of bright rich wine, rolls out a volley of the
laughing satires of long ago, the chief of which
is, that he "hates the French because they are
all slaves and wear wooden shoes;" while a
fourth, an uncompromising republican of Puritan
descent, grimly declares them utterly debased
from head to heel, and would as soon see his
daughter standing at the door of a casino as
suffer her to set foot on Gallic ground. The
two circumstances, indeed, would mean the same
condition in his mind.

But the cream of the jest is, that all these
worthy people—very worthy indeed in their
way, and highly estimable in their several
spheres—know about as much of France by
personal knowledge as they do of Timbuctoo.
One has been to Boulogne for twelve hours,
where he starved himself because he would not
eat their—expletive—messes, sure that he would
have horse, or dog, or frog, or madame's wornout
kid slipper in disguise; another went over
to Paris for eight days in '48; while the
remaining two of the quartet have never been
there at all, and never owned a French friend
here in England. I, on the contrary, have lived
in the country, and have had many friends and
acquaintances there; but when I would bring
my more extensive knowledge to bear upon the
subject, I am put down as a denationalised Briton,
and contemptibly unpatriotic, because I contend
that they are as good as ourselves in some
things, and better too, though of course inferior
in others, according to the way of mankind.
But chiefly because I contend that they have
family affections like other folk, and understand
the value of home, and that parents and children
are closely knit together as is the manner even
of the monkeys, and that all French wives do not
love other women's husbands, nor all French men
other men's wives, am I scouted and abhorred,
and set down as the preacher of dangerous
doctrines. "A daft preacher-monkey," says my
republican friend, looking up under his eyebrows,
after the third glass of whisky.

Now, I ask a candid public, Who is in the right,
my prejudiced friends or I?

Why are all people in such extremes? Is
there no safe walking in the Middle Way, as the
Latin Grammar used to teach us, or must we of
necessity go either by the crag or the ditch?
For my part, I like the crown of the causeway
best, and avoid the gutters and the mud-heaps
that always lie along the line. There was my
father again—what business had he in that narrow
rut of party intolerance, whence he could see
nothing of the country beyond, and nothing of
the other side? And why did he not turn higher
up into the broad Middle Way, whence he could
take in the best of both? He was a tremendous
partisan in his time, and allowed no good thing
to rise out of the Nazareth of his abhorrence.
"Demagogues, sir—demagogues! In the days of
Pitt, they would have been hanged as high as
Haman," he would say of any of our leading
Liberals. And he believed that Pitt would have
done righteously and well in the hanging. He
upheld the doctrine of Divine right, but
refused even the award of good statesmanship to
Cromwell, while believing that Charles I. was
the holiest martyr that ever stained the cruel
axe with blood. On the other hand, my
republican friend, buried in his especial rut,
will believe in no virtue of any kind in kings,
queens, and princes. To be crowned is, with
him, to be irredeemably bad; but to be a repubican
includes a roll-call of virtues, which, for
;he most part, I am sorry to say, are mere
apocrypha, unsupported by historic proof. Thus,
according to him, Marat was a conscientious
friend of the people—the best that France ever
knew; Robespierre was generous, and not cruel;
the September massacres a merciful decree; and