第43章

CONTINENTAL SNOBBERY CONTINUED

We are accustomed to laugh at the French for their braggadocio propensities, and intolerable vanity about La France, la gloire, l'Empereur, and the like; and yet Ithink in my heart that the British Snob, for conceit and self-sufficiency and braggartism in his way, is without a parallel.There is always something uneasy in a Frenchman's conceit.He brags with so much fury, shrieking, and gesticulation; yells out so loudly that the Francais is at the head of civilization, the centre of thought, &c.; that one can't but see the poor fellow has a lurking doubt in his own mind that he is not the wonder he professes to be.

About the British Snob, on the contrary, there is commonly no noise, no bluster, but the calmness of profound conviction.We are better than all the world;we don't question the opinion at all; it's an axiom.And when a Frenchman bellows out, 'LA FRANCE, MONSIEUR, LAFRANCE EST A LA TETE DU MONDE CIVILISE!' we laugh good-naturedly at the frantic poor devil.WE are the first chop of the world: we know the fact so well in our secret hearts that a claim set up elsewhere is simply ludicrous.

My dear brother reader, say, as a man of honour, if you are not of this opinion? Do you think a Frenchman your equal? You don't--you gallant British Snob--you know you don't: no more, perhaps, does the Snob your humble servant, brother.

And I am inclined to think it is this conviction, and the consequent bearing of the Englishman towards the foreigner whom he condescends to visit, this confidence of superiority which holds up the head of the owner of every English hat-box from Sicily to St.Petersburg, that makes us so magnificently hated throughout Europe as we are; this--more than all our little victories, and of which many Frenchmen and Spaniards have never heard--this amazing and indomitable insular pride, which animates my lord in his travelling-carriage as well as John in the rumble.

If you read the old Chronicles of the French wars, you find precisely the same character of the Englishman, and Henry V.'s people behaved with just the cool domineering manner of our gallant veterans of France and the Peninsula.Did you never hear Colonel Cutler and Major Slasher talking over the war after dinner? or Captain Boarder describing his action with the 'Indomptable?'

'Hang the fellows,' says Boarder, 'their practice was very good.I was beat off three times before I took her.' 'Cuss those carabineers of Milhaud's,' says Slasher, 'what work they made of our light cavalry!'

implying a sort of surprise that the Frenchman should stand up against Britons at all: a good-natured wonder that the blind, mad, vain-glorious, brave poor devils should actually have the courage to resist an Englishman.

Legions of such Englishmen are patronizing Europe at this moment, being kind to the Pope, or good-natured to the King of Holland, or condescending to inspect the Prussian reviews.When Nicholas came here, who reviews a quarter of a million of pairs of moustaches to his breakfast every morning, we took him off to Windsor and showed him two whole regiments of six or eight hundred Britons a-piece, with an air as much as to say,--'There, my boy, look at THAT.Those are ENGLISHMEN, those are, and your master whenever you please,' as the nursery song says.