here remains enough of their characteristic gaiety to
distinguish them from every other people in Europe.

Their excessive frivolity is perhaps even more remarkable than their
gaiety; they have not sufficient steadiness for the uninterrupted
avocations of graver life. In the midst of the most serious or deep
discussion, a Frenchman will suddenly stop, and, with a look of perhaps
more solemn importance than he bestowed upon the subject of debate, will
adjust the ruffle of his brother savant, adding some observation on the
propriety of adorning the exterior as well as the interior of science.
[48]"Leur badinage," says Montesquieu, "naturellement fait pour las
toilettes, semble etre provenu a former le caractere general de la
nation. On badine au conseil, on badine a la tete d'une armee, on badine
avec un ambassadeur."

The vanity of the whole nation, it is well known, is without all bounds;
and although this is most apparent, perhaps, and less unequivocally
shewn in every point connected with military affairs, it is yet confined
to no one subject in particular, but embraces all--in arts, science,
manufactures; in every thing, indeed, upon which the spirit and genius
of a nation can be exercised, it is not too much to say, that they
believe themselves superior to every other nation or country. Nay, what
is very extraordinary, so much have they been accustomed to hear
themselves talk in this exaggerated style; so natural to them have now
become those expressions of arrogant superiority, that vanity has, in
its adoption into the French character, and in the effects which it
there produces, almost changed its nature.

In other countries--in our own, for instance, a very vain man is an
object of ridicule, and generally of distrust. In France he is neither;
on the contrary, there appears throughout the kingdom a kind of general
agreement, a species of silent understood compact amongst them, that
every thing asserted by one Frenchman to another, provided it is done
with sufficient confidence and coolness, however individually vain, or
absolutely incredible, ought to be fully and implicitly believed. It is
this excessive idea which the French instil into each other of their own
superiority, joined to the extreme ignorance of the great body of the
people, which composes that prominent feature in their national
character--_their credulity_--and which has long rendered them the
easiest of all nations to be imposed upon by politica