ght of that great people which has never been at peace.

XXIX. Humanity: an Interlude

Except for some fine works of art, which seem to be there by accident,
the City of Brussels is like a bad Paris, a Paris with everything noble
cut out, and everything nasty left in. No one can understand Paris and
its history who does not understand that its fierceness is the balance
and justification of its frivolity. It is called a city of pleasure; but
it may also very specially be called a city of pain. The crown of roses
is also a crown of thorns. Its people are too prone to hurt others, but
quite ready also to hurt themselves. They are martyrs for religion, they
are martyrs for irreligion; they are even martyrs for immorality. For
the indecency of many of their books and papers is not of the sort which
charms and seduces, but of the sort that horrifies and hurts; they are
torturing themselves. They lash their own patriotism into life with the
same whips which most men use to lash foreigners to silence. The enemies
of France can never give an account of her infamy or decay which does
not seem insipid and even polite compared with the things which the
Nationalists of France say about their own nation. They taunt and
torment themselves; sometimes they even deliberately oppress themselves.
Thus, when the mob of Paris could make a Government to please itself, it
made a sort of sublime tyranny to order itself about. The spirit is the
same from the Crusades or St. Bartholomew to the apotheosis of Zola.
The old religionists tortured men physically for a moral truth. The new
realists torture men morally for a physical truth.

Now Brussels is Paris without this constant purification of pain. Its
indecencies are not regrettable incidents in an everlasting revolution.
It has none of the things which make good Frenchmen love Paris; it has
only the things which make unspeakable Englishmen love it. It has
the part which is cosmopolitan--and narrows; not the part which is
Parisian--and universal. You can find there (as commonly happens in
modern centres) the worst things of all nations--the DAILY MAIL from
England, the cheap philosophies from Germany, the loose novels of
France, and the drinks of America. But there is no English broad fun,
no German kindly ceremony, no American exhilaration, and, above all, no
French tradition of fighting for an idea. Though all the boulevards look
like Parisian boulevards, though all the shops look like