To fear the foe, since fear oppresses strength,
    Gives, in your weakness, strength unto your foe,
    And so your follies fight against yourself.

It is often made matter of public wonderment
why fevers, cholera, and such diseases, spread
rapidly among us, sweeping away our citizens.
There would be no such wonder, if the public were
better acquainted with the reports of the registrar,
and would listen with more attention to the
lectures of Dr. Farr.

SHOCKING!

THE other day, being at Seville, at the inn
dinner of the Fonda de Paris, I saw an English
lady thrown into great perturbation by the
conduct of a Frenchman, her neighbour, who,
having finished his plate of soup, and the
puchero being somewhat tardy in making its
appearance, drew forth a leathern case and a
box of wax matches, and, having bitten the end
off a very big and bad cigar, proceeded to light
and smoke it. I do not think a Spaniard of any
class, to the lowest, would have done this thing.
Although smoking is common enough at Spanish
dinner-tables, when only men or natives are
present, the innate good breeding of a cabalero
would at once cause him to respect the
presence of a lady and a stranger; and he would
as soon think of kindling, unbidden, a weed
before her, as of omitting to cast himself
(metaphorically) at her feet when he took his leave.
Moreover, the Frenchman was wrong even in
his manner of smoking. To consume a cigar at
meal-times is not even un costumbre del pais—a
custom of the country. It is the rather a stupid
solecism. Between soup and puchero, or fish
and roast, you may just venture on a cigarito—
a dainty roll of tobacco and tissue paper. Any
other form of fumigation, ere the repast be over,
is ill mannered. The Gaul, however, thought,
no doubt, that to puff at one of the hideous
lettuce-leaf sausages of the Regio Impériale at
dinner-time was precisely the thing to do in
Spain. He smoked at Seville, just as on a hot
day, in an English coffee-room, he would have
ordered turtle-soup, a beefsteak "well bleeding,"
and a pot of porter-beer. I only wonder
that he did not come down to dinner at the
Fonda de Paris in full bull-fighter's costume—
green satin breeches, pink silk stockings, and
his hair in a net, or strumming a guitar, or
clacking a pair of castanets. Indeed, he grinned
complacently as he pulled at the abominable
brand, and looked round the table, as though
for approval. The Spaniards preserved a very
grave aspect; and Don Sandero McGillicuddy,
late of Buenos Ayres, my neighbour, whispered
to me that he thought the Frenchman "vara
rude." As for the English lady, she was
furious. She gathered up her skirts, grated
away her chair, turned her left scapula full on
the offending Frenchman, and I have no doubt
wrote by the next post to Mr. John Murray of
Albemarle-street, indignantly to ask why
English readers of the Handbook were not warned
against the prevalence of this atrocious practice
at Spanish dinner-tables. In fact, she did everything
but quit the hospitable board. In
remaining, she showed wisdom; for Spain is not a
country where you can afford to trifle with your
meals. You had best gather your rosebuds
while you may, and help yourself to the puchero
whenever you have a chance. Ages may pass
ere you get anything to eat again.

The Frenchman was not abashed by this
palpable expression of distaste on the part of
his fair neighbour. I had an over-the-way
acquaintance with him, and, glancing in my direction,
he simply gave a deprecatory shrug, and
murmured, "Ah! c'est comme ça." SHOCKING!
It never entered the honest fellow's head that
he had been wanting in courtesy to the entire
company, but he jumped at the conclusion that
the demoiselle Anglaise was a faultless monster
of prudery, and that the inhalation of tobacco-
smoke at dinner-time, the employment of a fork
as a toothpick, the exhibition of ten thousand
photographed "legs of the ballet" in the shop
windows, and frequent reference to the anonymous
or Bois de Boulogne world in conversation,
were to her, and her sex and nation generally,
things abhorrent, criminal, and "shocking."

The French, who never get hold of an apt
notion or a true expression without wearing it
threadbare and worrying it to death, and have
even traditional jests against this country, which
are transmitted from caricaturist to caricaturist,
and from father to son, have built up the
"faultless monster" to which I alluded above,
and persist in believing that it is the ordinary
type of the travelling Englishwoman. Oddly
enough, while their ladies—and all other
continental ladies—have borrowed from ours the
quaint and becoming hat, the coloured petticoats
and stockings, and the high-heeled boots
which of late years have made feminine juvenility
so coquettish and so fascinating, no French
draughtsman, no French word-painter, ever
depicts the English young lady save as a tall,
rigid, and angular female—comely of face if you
will, but standing bolt upright as a life-guardsman,
with her arms pendent, and her eyes
demurely cast down. She always wears a
straw bonnet of the coal-scuttle form, or an enormous
flap-hat with a green veil. Her hands,
encased in beaver gloves, and her feet, which
are in sandalled shoes, are very large. She
usually carries a capacious reticule in variegated
straw of a bold chessboard pattern. She seldom
wears any crinoline, and her hair is arranged in
long ringlets most deliciously drooping. She
seldom opens her mouth but to ejaculate "Shocking !"
It is absolutely astounding to find so
accurate an observer and so graphic a narrator
as Monsieur Théophile Gautier falling into this
dull and false conventionalism in his charming
book on Spain. He is describing Gibraltar,
and is very particular in the portrayal of such
a Mees Anglaise as I have sketched above.
The fidelity of the portrait will of course be fully
appreciated by all British officers who have
mounted guard over the Pillars of Hercules.