I scarcely recollect any, where a
ferocious disposition was not accompanied by corresponding manners--or
where men, who would plunder or massacre, affected to retain at the same
time habits of softness, and a conciliating physiognomy.

We are, I think, on the whole, authorized to conclude, that, in
determining the claims to national superiority, the boasted and unvarying
controul which the French exercise over their features and accents, is
not a merit; nor those indications of what passes within, to which the
English are subject, an imperfection. If the French sometimes supply
their want of kindness, or render disappointment less acute at the
moment, by a sterile complacency, the English harshness is often only the
alloy to an efficient benevolence, and a sympathizing mind. In France
they have no humourists who seem impelled by their nature to do good, in
spite of their temperament--nor have we in England many people who are
cold and unfeeling, yet systematically aimable: but I must still persist
in not thinking it a defect that we are too impetuous, or perhaps too
ingenuous, to unite contradictions.

There is a cause, that doubtless has its effects in representing the
English disadvantageously, and which I have never heard properly allowed
for. The liberty of the press, and the great interest taken by all ranks
of people in public affairs, have occasioned a more numerous circulation
of periodical prints of every kind in England, than in any other country
in Europe. Now, as it is impossible to fill them constantly with
politics, and as the taste of different readers must be consulted, every
barbarous adventure, suicide, murder, robbery, domestic fracas, assaults,
and batteries of the lower orders, with the duels and divorces of the
higher, are all chronicled in various publications, disseminated over
Europe, and convey an idea that we are a very miserable, ferocious, and
dissolute nation. The foreign gazettes being chiefly appropriated to
public affairs, seldom record either the vices, the crimes, or
misfortunes of individuals; so that they are thereby at least prevented
from fixing an unfavourable judgement on the national character.

Mercier observes, that the number of suicides committed in Paris was
supposed to exceed greatly that of similar disasters in London; and that
murders in France were always accompanied by circumstances of peculiar
horror, though policy and custom had rendered the publication of such