474 



THE LIVING RACES OF MANKIND 



these schools. More attention is paid to 

 manners, and the pupils are more strictly 

 looked after than in the lycees. The rela- 

 tions between the sexes are regulated with 

 less freedom among the French than in 

 most civilised countries. Girls and boys do 

 not come much into contact with each 

 other. Until she is married, the young 

 girl is kept in strict seclusion. Marriages 

 are arranged by the parents of the young 

 couple, and are generally business trans- 

 actions. When a young man wishes to 

 marry, his parents look out for a suitable 

 wife among their friends, and arrange the 

 matter of the lady's dowry for him. Every 

 girl is expected to bring something into 

 the common stock of married life. Although 

 it must not be supposed that these marriages 

 turn out badly as a general rule, there can 

 be no doubt that the system tends to 

 make French women rather insipid. Until 

 marriage their minds are almost a blank, 

 and even after it their conversation, full 

 of sparkle and Celtic gaiety as it often is, 

 lacks depth and character. 



The French peasant must next occupy 

 our attention. France is the largest wheat- 

 producing country in Europe, and the land 

 is held by a vast number of small pro- 

 prietors, each farming a minute portion. 

 This arises from the system of portage for^e. 

 At the death of a proprietor his property 

 is divided among his children, so that it 

 is seldom possible to find large holdings 

 anywhere. Even if a man by saving and 

 diligence add to his small estate, the in- 

 exorable laws of nature and the Republic 

 soon reduce it to tiny proportions. The 

 French peasant is industrious and frugal. 

 He is, as a rule, intensely ignorant of every 

 thing that goes on outside his little sphere 

 of life, which is of the narrowest and most conventional type imaginable. Such intelligence 

 as he has and he is not without considerable native shrewdness he concentrates entirely 

 on his life-long struggle to win a scanty subsistence from the soil. His ownership of his little 

 plot gives him a sturdy independence which saves him from the degradation in which the 

 agricultural classes of other countries are so often sunk. His dwelling is of the poorest 

 description an unplastered hut of at most two rooms, bare and frequently far from clean. 

 Meat he seldom tastes. Life is chiefly supported on a soup made of vegetables and scraps 

 of bacon, and on bread and milk. 



The blue blouse is the universal dress of the French lower classes, even in towns, where 

 the postman goes his rounds usually dressed almost exactly like the peasant in the fields. 

 Education is doing much to raise the intellectual level of the peasants, and before very long 



Photo by Valentine & Sons, Ltd.] 



A GYPSY OF GRANADA. 



[Dundee. 



