ink, of all people, that you least deserve the accusation. With
regard to the few, your philosophers, your mathematicians, your men
of science, are consulted by those of other nations, as some of their
profoundest authorities. With regard to the many, the charge is still
more unfounded. Compare your mob, whether of gentlemen or plebeians,
to those of Germany, Italy--even England--and I own, in spite of my
national prepossessions, that the comparison is infinitely in your
favour. The country gentlemen, the lawyer, the petit maitre of England,
are proverbially inane and ill-informed. With you, the classes of
society that answer to those respective grades, have much information
in literature, and often not a little in science. In like manner, your
tradesmen, your mechanics, your servants, are, beyond all measure, of
larger, better cultivated, and less prejudiced minds than those ranks in
England. The fact is, that all with you pretend to be savans, and this
is the chief reason why you have been censured as shallow. We see your
fine gentleman, or your petit bourgeois, give himself the airs of a
critic or a philosopher; and because he is neither a Scaliger nor a
Newton, we forget that he is only the bourgeois or the pelit maitre,
and set down all your philosophers and critics with the censure of
superficiality, which this shallow individual of a shallow order
may justly have deserved. We, the English, it is true, do not expose
ourselves thus: our dandies, our tradesmen, do not vent second rate
philosophy on the human mind, nor on les beaux arts: but why is this?
Not because they are better informed than their correspondent ciphers
in France, but because they are much worse; not because they can say
a great deal more on the subject, but because they can say nothing at
all."

"You do us more than justice," said Monsieur D'A--, "in this instance:
are you disposed to do us justice also in another? It is a favourite
propensity of your countrymen to accuse us of heartlessness and want of
feeling. Think you that this accusation is deserved?"

"By no means," replied Vincent. "The same cause that brought on the
erroneous censure we have before mentioned, appears to me also to have
created this; viz. a sort of Palais Royal vanity, common to all your
nation, which induces you to make as much display at the shop window as
possible. You show great cordiality, and even enthusiasm, to strangers;
you turn your back on them--you forget them