and self-sufficiency and braggartism in his way, is
without a parallel. There is always something uneasy in a Frenchman's
conceit. He brags with so much fury, shrieking, and gesticulation; yells
out so loudly that the Francais is at the head of civilization, the
centre of thought, &c.; that one can't but see the poor fellow has a
lurking doubt in his own mind that he is not the wonder he professes to
be.

About the British Snob, on the contrary, there is commonly no noise, no
bluster, but the calmness of profound conviction. We are better than all
the world; we don't question the opinion at all; it's an axiom. And when
a Frenchman bellows out, 'LA FRANCE, MONSIEUR, LA FRANCE EST A LA TETE
DU MONDE CIVILISE!' we laugh good-naturedly at the frantic poor devil.
WE are the first chop of the world: we know the fact so well in our
secret hearts that a claim set up elsewhere is simply ludicrous. My dear
brother reader, say, as a man of honour, if you are not of this opinion?
Do you think a Frenchman your equal? You don't--you gallant British
Snob--you know you don't: no more, perhaps, does the Snob your humble
servant, brother.

And I am inclined to think it is this conviction, and the consequent
bearing of the Englishman towards the foreigner whom he condescends to
visit, this confidence of superiority which holds up the head of the
owner of every English hat-box from Sicily to St. Petersburg, that makes
us so magnificently hated throughout Europe as we are; this--more than
all our little victories, and of which many Frenchmen and Spaniards have
never heard--this amazing and indomitable insular pride, which animates
my lord in his travelling-carriage as well as John in the rumble.

If you read the old Chronicles of the French wars, you find precisely
the same character of the Englishman, and Henry V.'s people behaved with
just the cool domineering manner of our gallant veterans of France
and the Peninsula. Did you never hear Colonel Cutler and Major Slasher
talking over the war after dinner? or Captain Boarder describing his
action with the 'Indomptable?' 'Hang the fellows,' says Boarder, 'their
practice was very good. I was beat off three times before I took her.'
'Cuss those carabineers of Milhaud's,' says Slasher, 'what work they
made of our light cavalry!' implying a sort of surprise that the
Frenchman should stand up against Britons at all: a good-natured wonder
that the blind, mad, vain-glorious, brave poor devils sh