ored foreigners. During the late
seventeenth and earlier eighteenth centuries few, except the
aristocracy, of either country knew much of the other, and there was
comparatively little (of course there was always some) difference
between the manners and customs of the upper classes of both. Prevost
and Crebillon, if not Marivaux,[45] knew something about England. Then
arose in France a caricature, no doubt, but almost a reverential one,
due to the _philosophes_, in the drawing whereof the Englishman is
indeed represented as eccentric and splenetic, but himself philosophical
and by no means ridiculous. Even in the severe period of national
struggle which preceded the Revolutionary war, and for some time after
the beginning of that war itself, the scarecrow-comic _Anglais_ was slow
to make his appearance. Pigault-Lebrun himself, as was noted in the last
volume, indulges in him little if at all. But things soon changed.

In the book of which we have been speaking, Gustave and a scapegrace
friend of his determine to give a dinner to two young persons of the
other sex, but find themselves penniless, and a fresh edition of one of
the famous old _Repues Franches_ (which date in French literature back
to Villon and no doubt earlier) follows. With this, as such, we need not
trouble ourselves. But Olivier, the friend, takes upon him the duty of
providing the wine, and does so by persuading a luckless vintner that he
is a "Milord."

In order to dress the part, he puts on a cravat well folded, a very long
coat, and a very short waistcoat. He combs down his hair till it is
quite straight, rouges the tip of his nose, takes a whip, puts on
gaiters and a little pointed hat, and studies himself in the glass in
order to give himself a stupid and insolent air, the result of the
make-up being entirely successful. It may be difficult for the most
unbiassed Englishman of to-day to recognise himself in this portrait or
to find it half-way somewhere about 1860, or even, going back to actual
"_temp._ of tale," to discover anything much like it in physiognomies
so different as those of Castlereagh and Wellington, of Southey and
Lockhart, nay, even of Tom and Jerry.[46] But that it is the Englishman
of Daumier and Gavarni, _artistement complet_ already, nobody can deny.

Later in the novel (before he comes to his very problematical "settling
down" with Suzon and the ready-made child) Gustave is allowed a rather
superfluous scattering of probably