THE ENGLISH FROM A FRENCH POINT OF VIEW.

Oamaru Mail, Volume I, Issue 261, 22 February 1877, Page 2

THE ENGLISH FROM A FRENCH POINT OF VIEW.

English manners and customs have lately furnished the text for a series of articles in the Paris Eveuement, each more grossly exaggerated than its predecessor. The Pays, finding with what relish the highly-spiced dish is received by the French public, is following in the same wake, and published lately an article on English independence, which should make us thoroughly ashamed of our nationality, if the pprtraiu were a correct one. There may be a grain of gomfort in knowing that the Americans sin even more against the laws of good breeding than ourselves. " But after them," says the writer, " it is a recognised fact that the English are the most arrogant, disobliging, selfish people on the face of the earth." He goes on to say that " under all circumstances!, in all societies, an Englishman makes himself at home, with a brutal indifference to others' comfort that makes the better bred Frenchman shudder." This, he explains, is due to the inherent selSshntss which is paramount in the British breast, and which, in its turn, arises from the profound disdain all Englishmen experience; for everything that isj not English, ivlsigh makes them appropriate the'best cut of a fowl at the contin--n!al table d'hote, the best place at the table, the most comfortable corner in the railway carriage, That the writer speaks truth cannot be'doubted, seeing the damning evidence the following incident supplies, of which he affirms lie was recently an eye-witness :—" I was in the Calais train," he says, " in company with an English milord, whose vis-A-vis was a French lady, Milord asked the lady in wretched French whether she objected to smoke. The lady confessed she had an insurmountable repugnance to

the odor of tobacco, upon -which milord replied that she had better get out, as he was going to light his pipe, which the animal proceeded to do forthwith." "This," he continues, "is of the Englishman who sets hinisa7 •£> as the representative of the first. v <' Uon in the world. He is brought up, iriibued, impregnated with this idea to the very marrow of his bones ; we must accept him. as he is. or, which would be wiser, resolutely abjure the contact of such an unsociable, despotic, and hopelessly ill-con-ditioned being." Much in the same strain follows, the perusal leaving one unable to decide which is the most astonishing } that such absurdities should be written, or that a Parisian journal of the Pays' standing should print them.