'ENGLAND AND HER CRITICS. 509 



London, the abhorrence or contempt of all good and liberal citizens ; 

 and that their mad and wanton character has been immeasurably sur- 

 passed by the sanguinary perpetrations of the mobs of Paris and 

 Marseilles. But when the Count avers that our nobility are insolent ; 

 our people gross; that the possessor of gold alone is considered 

 respectable ; let us ask him, pray, in whose opinion ? Whatever may 

 be the strength of party in the British aristocracy, in their private 

 character a more enlightened, philanthropic, courteous, unpresuming 

 class of men no age whatever boasted, or no country of the world 

 possesses : and as to the predominance of gold in swaying the appre- 

 ciations of the rich and intellectual, he could not perhaps have taxed 

 his ingenuity more severely than to find an order of existing people 

 whose opinions it has less controlled, and on which the strength of 

 character and reputation only have so distinct and forcible an influence. 

 As to the inhospitality and grossness of the people, we conceive the 

 impeachment, coming from a Frenchman, must be downright jocu- 

 larity. Does the Count Achille de Jouffroy know that almost every 

 nobleman in Britain has his country mansion " crowded to the brim" 

 throughout the sporting months ? that every gentleman of fortune, 

 according to his means, adopts the self-same system of old English 

 hospitality, and that his guests are sumptuously regaled, throughout 

 their sojourn, with every luxury that all the quarters of the globe and 

 corners of the earth supply ? There we find no dovetailing of meta- 

 morphosed rechaujfees, no third appearances of fricandeaus, no pom- 

 pous usurpations of conceit upon the legal territory of real epicurism, 

 no supplement or substitution, devised by parsimonious chicane, to eke 

 out the appearance of a feast. All is genuine, from the massive 

 chalice and the salver to the solidity of our national reproach the 

 glorious sirloin ; all perfect and appropriate, from the cleanly sim- 

 plicity of English cookery to the more questionable mysteries of 

 foreign skill ; the oldest hock, the best Lafitte, madeira smooth as 

 oil, sherry that would tempt a Mussulman, and fine rich port that 

 would mollify the rigour of a cynic. Is the Count offended, that we 

 give not up the spacious damask regions of our board to the insipid 

 nonsense of mythology, nor place misshapen Venuses and Dians on 

 our tables ? We act more wisely j we place the bright originals, in 

 all their beauty, purity and grace, around them ; and, though to our 

 unspeakable delight, they neither rack us with their politics, or 

 emulate the smoke-jacks of our kitchen with their tongues, we sted- 

 fastly maintain, that in no country of the universe, where chastity, 

 good sense, and beauty are appreciated justly, is the fund of conver- 

 sation more enchanting, to a man of decent expectation, than the 

 animated tenor of that well-directed affability, vivacity, and mirth, 

 which form the envied and unrivalled charm of real English good 

 society. 



Much in the same off-handed style of condemnation does the Count 

 Achilles level his invective at the grossness of the English people. 

 The higher classes of our countrymen are palpably above our vindi- 

 cation ; let the Count contrast the calm the cold reserve, if he thinks 

 fit to call it so, of Englishmen, with the eternal antics and grimace of 

 his own adored race ; and let us see, even under his disfiguring and 



