concluding that civil behaviour gives one
a right to expect kind offices, or that a man is false because he pays a
compliment, and refuses a service: I only wish to infer, that an
impertinence is not less an impertinence because it is accompanied by a
certain set of words, and that a people, who are indelicate to excess,
cannot properly be denominated "a polite people."

A French man or woman, with no other apology than _"permettez moi,"_
["Give me leave."] will take a book out of your hand, look over any thing
you are reading, and ask you a thousand questions relative to your most
private concerns--they will enter your room, even your bedchamber,
without knocking, place themselves between you and the fire, or take hold
of your clothes to guess what they cost; and they deem these acts of
rudeness sufficiently qualified by _"Je demande bien de pardons."_ ["I
ask you a thousand pardons."]--They are fully convinced that the English
all eat with their knives, and I have often heard this discussed with
much self-complacence by those who usually shared the labours of the
repast between a fork and their fingers. Our custom also of using
water-glasses after dinner is an object of particular censure; yet whoever
dines at a French table must frequently observe, that many of the guests
might benefit by such ablutions, and their napkins always testify that
some previous application would be by no means superfluous. Nothing is
more common than to hear physical derangements, disorders, and their
remedies, expatiated upon by the parties concerned amidst a room full of
people, and that with so much minuteness of description, that a
foreigner, without being very fastidious, is on some occasions apt to
feel very unpleasant sympathies. There are scarcely any of the
ceremonies of a lady's toilette more a mystery to one sex than the other,
and men and their wives, who scarcely eat at the same table, are in this
respect grossly familiar. The conversation in most societies partakes of
this indecency, and the manners of an English female are in danger of
becoming contaminated, while she is only endeavouring to suffer without
pain the customs of those she has been taught to consider as models of
politeness.

Whether you examine the French in their houses or in public, you are
every where stricken with the same want of delicacy, propriety, and
cleanliness. The streets are mostly so filthy, that it is perilous to
approach the walls. The in