It is the same with communities as with individuals, or it may be worse; for in nation judging nation, there is the national character to affect the judgment, and the general as well as the particular bias to be calculated on. Each has a different and ever-varying criterion of merit, consideration, and morality. 'In Spain people ask, Is he a grandee of the first class? In Germany, Can he enter into the Chapters? In France, Does he stand well at court? In England, Who is he?' This was written towards the middle of the eighteenth century; but although the revolutionary changes which each country except England has undergone, have extended to social habits and modes of thinking as well as to institutions, their respective standards of superiority remain essentially unlike.

Whilst freely admitting, therefore, that the 'enlightened foreigner' may afford useful hints or warnings, we demur to his jurisdiction when he assumes to constitute a supreme court without appeal; and the enlightened Frenchman, from Voltaire downwards, is peculiarly open to distrust. His fineness and quickness of perception, his rapidity and fertility of association, his range of sentiment and thought, his boldness and vivacity, nay, his very paradoxes and pseudophilosophy, make him a most entertaining writer of travels; but he is spoiled as a teacher, and sadly damaged as an authority, by his vanity, his marvellous self-confidence, his false logic, and his ingrained ineradicable conviction that there is nothing firstrate, nothing truly great or admirable, nothing really worth living for, out of France.

A Frenchman and an Englishman were fishing with indifferent success in one of Lord Lytton's ponds at Knebworth, when the Frenchman, who had caught

En Espagne on demande, Est-ce un grand de la première classe? En Allemagne, Peut-il entrer dans les chapitres? En France, Est-il bien à la cour? En Angleterre, Quel homme est-il ?-(Helvetius.)

nothing, thus addressed his companion: Il me semble, Monsieur, que les étangs anglais ne sont pas si poissonneux que les fleuves français.' As the conversation proceeded, it appeared that the only English pond he had ever fished was the one before him, and the only French river, the Seine.

Sir Samuel Romilly and a French general were discussing a point of equity law. Sir Samuel gave his opinion in opposition to that of General S. -. 'Pardonnez-moi, mon cher Romilly, vous vous trompez tout-à-fait je le sais, car j'ai lu Blackstone ce matin même.'

Nor let any one fancy that the national character of the French is materially altered by the crushing defeats they have sustained, or the unparalleled humiliations they have undergone at the hands of conquerors, who, in weighing the ransom, ruthlessly threw the sword into the scale. M. Thiers lost no time in preparing to play Camillus to Prince Bismarck's Brennus ;1 and no speaker in the debate on the army made a more telling hit than the Bishop of Orleans, when he declared that Germany was not a great nation, but simply a great barrack. The same (under existing circumstances) pardonable petulance and irritability will occasionally break out when England and the English are discussed; for the French have not forgiven, nor are soon likely to forgive, our neutrality during their worst hour of trial. To be sure,' observed a distinguished Frenchman to an accomplished and ready-witted Englishwoman of rank, 'it was foolish in us to hope better things from a nation of shopkeepers.' 'These popular sayings'-was the

1 Having thus mentioned M. Thiers, I will venture an opinion that— making full allowance for his warlike and protectionist tendencies'foreign nations and the next ages' (to whom Bacon bequeathed his own name and memory) will regard him as the ablest administrator and most consummate statesman that France could boast in her severest hour of trial, and the best qualified to restore her fallen fortunes, had she trusted him.

well-merited retort- are frequently destitute of any solid foundation: we have been in the habit of calling you a nation of soldiers.'

M. Taine, the last Frenchman of eminence who has written fully and freely on England, has evidently struggled hard to shake off the common weaknesses of his countrymen; and if not quite so successful as could be wished in this respect, he has produced a curious and interesting book-a book, however, in which just views and sterling truths are rather indicated than developed, whilst the most valuable trains of thought are not unfrequently suggested by the paradoxes.

His method-for he insists that it is not a system -is one among many proofs of the irresistible force with which speculative minds of the higher order are tempted into theorising. Bentham contended that the credibility of witnesses was reducible to a science. Siéyès, in a moment of expansion, exclaimed to Dumont, 'La politique est une science que je crois avoir achevée.' If Mrs. Trollope heard aright, Prince Metternich said to her, 'I believe that the science of government might be reduced to principles, as certain as those of chemistry, if men, instead of theorising, would only take the trouble patiently to observe the uniform results of similar combinations of circumstances.' And what are they to do next but theorise?

Just so, M. Taine. His royal road for arriving at the essences, the elemental truths, the final causes, the connecting links, of all things, is (to use his own words) 'wholly comprised in this remark, that moral matters, like physical things, have dependencies and conditions.' Take an individual writer, poet, novelist, or historian, and carefully study his works. They will all be found marked by a certain disposition of mind or soul, a certain array of likes and dislikes, of faculties and

1 Vienna and the Austrians,' vol. ii. p. 11.

failings-in short, a certain psychological state, which is that of the author.' Then pass in review his life, his philosophy, his ethical and æsthetical code, i.e. his general views about the good and the beautiful, and you will find that they all depend upon one another; you will be able to prove logically that a particular quality, violence or sobriety of imagination, oratorical or lyrical aptitude, ascertained as regards one point, must extend its ascendency over the rest.' What is true of the individual, is true of a nation and an age: the age of Louis XIV., for example. Religion, art, philosophy the family and the State-industry, com-merce, and agriculture-have all some common principle, element, or ingredient, and might all be traced to the same moral and intellectual bent or tendency.

'Between an elm of Versailles, a philosophical and religious argument of Malebranche, one of Boileau's maxims in versification, one of Colbert's laws of hypothec, an ante-room compliment at Marly, a sentence of Bossuet on the royalty of God, the distance appears infinite and impassable. There is no apparent connection. The facts are so dissimilar that at first sight they are pronounced to be what they appear, that is to say, isolated and separated. But the facts communicate between themselves by the definitions of the groups in which they are comprised, like the waters in a basin by the summit of the heights whence they flow.

All this sounds very ingenious and very eloquent, but we do not see what good can be fairly expected to come of it, unless, as suggested by Mr. Rae, it should induce a nicer observation and more careful estimate of facts. What Condillac said of rules is applicable to M. Taine's method or system: like the parapet of a bridge, it may hinder a person from falling into the river, but will not help him on his way. Indeed, it is more likely to lure him out of it in will-o'-the-wisp fashion and land him in a slough; for the odds are that he will draw on his imagination for his dependencies and conditions: that the facts will be made to fit

the theory, instead of the theory being based upon the facts that he will take for granted the connecting link or family likeness between the sermon and the compliment, the religious argument, the maxim of versification, and the elms.

It will be seen, as we proceed, that M. Taine attributes many points of national character, good, bad and indifferent, to the same cause as the exuberant growth and rich foliage of our trees: that he accounts on the same principle for the large feet of our women and the intemperance of our men. But for a Frenchman with a theory, he is a miracle of impartiality, acuteness, and good sense; and we may say of the English life depicted in his pages, what the merryman in the Prologue to Faust' says of human life: Every one lives it; to not many is it known; and, seize it where you will, it is interesting.' We may take up M. Taine at any stage of his progress, or we may begin with him at the beginning; steam with him up the Thames, and arrive with him on a cold foggy morning at London Bridge.

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Sir Walter Scott states incidentally, in one of his novels, that much of the knowledge of life and character displayed in them was owing to his habit of talking freely with fellow-travellers, whether he had any previous acquaintance with them or not. M. Taine has the same habit. The first conversation he notes down is with an Englishman of the middle class, 'son of a merchant, I should suppose; he does not know French, German, or Italian; he is not altogether a gentleman-twenty-five years of age; sneering, decided, incisive face;-he has made for his amusement and instruction a trip lasting twelve months, and is returning from India and from Australia.' He is from Liverpool; and after laying down authoritatively that a family that does not keep a carriage may live comfortably there upon three or four hundred a year, goes on to say that one must marry, that is a matter of