bout wars between neighboring nations now, than it was before the
existence of that intercommunication which in our day has been created
by the press, the railway, and the electric telegraph.

I have lived long enough to find hundreds of my countrymen
participating in a real knowledge of the French, and believing with me
that they are a brave, intelligent, and generous nation. Nearly half a
century of experience amongst them has taught me that there is much to
learn and much that is worthy of imitation in France. The social habits
of the French, and their easy mode of communication, always gain the
admiration, and often invite the attachment of foreigners. They are
less prejudiced than we islanders, and are much more citizens of the
world than ourselves. I have received an immense amount of courtesy in
France; and if there be less of solid friendship--which, however, in
England is based too often on a similarity of birth, position, and
wealth--in France, you have, at least, a greater chance than in England
of making a friend of a man who neither looks to your ancestors nor
your amount of riches before he proffers you the most sincere intimacy,
and, if necessary, disinterested aid, purely on the ground of your own
merit and character.

Many of the better qualities of the French are not discoverable by the
superficial traveller, any more than the sterling qualities of the
Englishman are appreciated by the foreigner who makes a brief sojourn
in Great Britain. Slowly, but, I believe, surely, the agreeable
knowledge that I possess of the French is becoming more universal; and
I cannot but imagine that such a correct appreciation will be fraught
with the most valuable political as well as social results.

Intelligent Englishmen have lived long enough to appreciate the genius
of Napoleon I., whose mode of governing France has been applied by
Napoleon III. with a success which prejudice even has been compelled to
acknowledge. But I remember a period when probably not a dozen
Englishmen could have been found to speak of the first Emperor with the
most ordinary common sense. I will, however, record one honourable
exception to the rule. The late Lord Dudley and Ward, an eccentric, but
able man, was at Vienna, in the midst of a large party, who were all
more or less abusing or depreciating the fallen hero, whose very name
had so long created fear and hatred amongst them. It was naturally
supposed that the Englishman who was si