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ENGLISH IDEAS OF FRANCE. 



With the word France, most persons connect in their minds an idea 

 either of a place where we may live for nothing, or next to it, or else 

 of a nation the most elegant and polite in the world. We find many 

 exclaiming, on the one hand, " Well, never mind — we can goto France, 

 and live there on half our incomes, and better than we do in England !" 

 or else, on the other, the sickening sentence in the mouths of but too 

 many of our own country, of " our more polite neighbours, the 

 French !" 



With regard to the living so much cheaper in France than in Eng- 

 land, we have our doubts ; for we have travelled from Calais to Mar- 

 seilles, and from Bayonne to Metz, in search of this same object, 

 our inquiries having been directed, in the principal towns, towards the 

 probable expenses of a residence ; and the calculations we have made in 

 each respecting the price of provisions, house-rent, fuel (a great consi- 

 deration in France), and the minor expenses of housekeeping, being 

 balanced with the want of society, and many of the comforts of life that 

 from our infancy we have been accustomed to, and which we are quite 

 unable to do without, have never been sufficiently in our favour to make 

 us think them a desirable place for a fixed residence. 



The regular resorts of the English, on the Continent — Boulogne, 

 Tours, Calais, and Caen — first claim our attention, since whatever may 

 cause us to leave our own country, we always prefer to be with those 

 who have feelings in common with us ; and which may, in some 

 degree, do away with our isolated position as aliens. These we tried, 

 and the result was far from satisfactory. Each looked upon his neigh- 

 bour with an eye of suspicion, and wondered whether the crime of 

 poverty, suspicion of debt, or something more immediately recognizable 

 by our country's laws, might be the reason of our remaining abroad ; — 

 our corn was generally meted by our neighbour's bushel. But when in 

 time this began to wear away, and something like sociability ensued, 

 we in our turn began to learn the characters of our friends, and found 

 them not altogether desirable acquaintances. Much that we heard 

 might be untrue ; for tongues, in these " free prisons," are no less busy 

 than false. But still the taint of evil report hung around. The French 

 inhabitants, in these towns, desire not the society of the English. They 

 have been too often dejeived by them ; and as they know not how to 

 draw a distinction betwixt those who are respectable and those the 

 reverse, they close their doors against all. So much, indeed, is this 

 the case, that Boulogne — which is, without exception, the best 

 adapted of all the French watering-places for sea bathing — is avoided 

 like an infected place by the Parisians, solely on account of the number 

 of English always to be found there. 



Then comes the question. What have we saved by being here ? The 

 answer is, Nothing — we might have lived equally as cheap in an 



