iasm, and activity, the mass of French people want that
admirable quality which I unfeignedly think is the particular
characteristic of ourselves:--I mean, _common sense_. In the midst of their
architectural splendor--while their rooms are refulgent with gilding and
plate-glass; while their mantle-pieces sparkle with or-molu clocks; or
their tables are decorated with vases, and artificial flowers of the most
exquisite workmanship--and while their carpets and curtains betray
occasionally all the voluptuousness of eastern pomp ... you can scarcely
obtain egress or ingress into the respective apartments, from the
wretchedness of their _locks_ and _keys!_ Mechanical studies or
improvements should seem to be almost entirely uncultivated--for those who
remember France nearly half a century ago, tell me that it was pretty much
then as it is now. Another thing discomposes the sensitive nerves of the
English; especially those of our notable housewives. I allude to the
rubbishing appearance of their _grates_--and the dingy and sometimes
disgusting aspect of carpets and flowered furniture. A good mahogany dining
table is a perfect rarity[199]--and let him, who stands upon a chair to
take down a quarto or octavo, beware how he encounter a broken shin or
bruised elbow, from the perpendicularity of the legs of that same chair.

The same want of common-sense, cleanliness, and convenience--is visible in
nearly the whole of the French menage. Again, in the streets--their
cabriolet drivers and hackney coachmen are sometimes the most furious of
their tribe. I rescued, the other day, an old and respectable gentleman--
with the cross of St. Louis appendant to his button-hole--from a situation,
in which, but for such a rescue, he must have been absolutely knocked down
and rode over. He shook his cane at the offender; and, thanking me very
heartily for my protection, observed, "these rascals improve daily in their
studied insult of all good Frenchmen." The want of _trottoirs_ is a serious
and even absurd want; as it might be so readily supplied. Their carts are
obviously ill-constructed, and especially in the caps of the wheels; which,
in a narrow street--as those of Paris usually are--unnecessarily occupy a
_foot_ of room, where scarcely an _inch_ can be spared. The rubbish piled
against the posts, in different parts of the street, is as disgusting as it
is obviously inconvenient. A police "ordonnance" would obviate all this in
twenty-four hou