FRENCH AND ENGLISH.

AN oath, a red wig, red whiskers, a white
great-coat with a cape, a thick stick, and a
bull-dog in a string, were characteristic externals
of an English Milor on the French stage,
during the time when Englishmen were
anything but honoured guests in France. A
few years ago, a favourite comic song, sung
on the Boulevards, was an Englishman's
dream; in which,  in a series of stanzas, the
dreamer imagines he is on the point of death
by pistol, by poison, by drowning, and by the
hangman; but, starting up at the critical
moment, he wakes and exclaims, at the end
of each stanza:—

Ah, what happiness, if we could go on dreaming for ever!

Even now, the popular notion of English
melancholy and affection for suicide still dwells
among the French in spite of railroads with
their hundred thousand travellers per season,
and we know not how many ten-thousand
British permanent residents in France and
French residents in England; yet the bulldog
has been exchanged for most marvellous
ideas of our devotion to steeple-chase, cricket,
and courses of yachts and " gigs."

In a recent collection of stories, purporting
to illustrate the eccentricities of several
nations, written by Monsieur Charles Newil,
we have stories of Englishmen which could
certainly have only been written by a Frenchman,
after a week in London, lodging in
Leicester Square, and studying English
character nowhere beyond the purlieus of
Soho and the confines of Regent Street. All
the Englishmen so drawn have the same
peculiarities—a disgust for life, a passion
for sport, a habit of drinking porto and grogs,
and of smoking of cigars at all times of the
day.

Thus the story of Ephraim Wheat, Esq.,
opens with Ephraim examining the decorations
of a long file of carriages, drawn up before
the Club of Coventry, in Piccadilly; then,
entering the porte cochère, and ascending
the staircase leading to the club, he asks a
powdered, and liveried footman if Monsieur Tom
Wild is in the drawing-room? to which the
lackey replies, bowing respectfully, " Yes,
your honour." Wheat proceeds to the drawing-
room, and finds Wild leaning with his back
against the chimney-piece, chatting to a
circle of friends. He calls him on one side,
into a little private room, saying to a waiter,
who was engaged in arranging chessmen,
"Davis, a bottle of port, and cigars:" port
and cigars being, it seems, the inevitable
accompaniment of every English interview.
These having been brought on a silver salver,
the door shut, and orders given that no
one should be admitted, Ephraim Wheat
proceeds to confide to his brother-in-law, Tom
Wild—in a melancholy dialogue too long for
us to quote—that his passage is taken in the
Emerald for Baltimore; that it is not for
business, or for pleasure that he is
undertaking this voyage; but that he, the unhappy
Wheat, having the reputation of being the
first pistol-shot in England, has heard of an
American, one Joe Erickson, who has eclipsed
him; being able to split six bullets on a knife,
in six shots, at fifty paces. Accordingly, he
has sent to Paris (of all places in the world!)
for a pair of pistols and intends starting
instantly for the United States; where, at
Baltimore—near the prairies, and the Huron
Indians—he intends to challenge the American
to a match of two thousand five hundred
shots. If victor, he will return by the first
vessel sailing for England; if vanquished, he
will hang himself!

"My poor sister, my poor niece! " exclaims
Tom Wild, " have you the courage to make
the one a widow, the other an orphan?"

"Oh! " replies Ephraim, calmly, taking an
envelope sealed with black out of his pocket,
"I have prepared for that, and you will be
my executor. Mistress Wheat will have
the finest diamonds, the best horses, and the
most comfortable chateau in the county of
Durham; and, as for little Mary, I have left
her——"

At this stage Tom Wild sees that argument
is perfectly lost on his brother-in-law, and
changes the subject to horses, hounds, parties
de crickets, and yachts; telling Ephraim that
he expects to win enormous sums of money
in bets by new arrangements he has recently
made.

"How, pray? " cries Ephraim, evidently
piqued.

"Why," replies Tom, " as you are leaving
England, I don't mind telling you that, as
you have for two years always beaten me on