ng with certain Italian peoples, whom he
designates as hogs, curs, wolves and foxes.]

[Footnote 3: Cobbett, comparing the relative intellectual culture of
the British Isles and of France between the years 1600 and 1787, found
that of the writers on the arts and sciences who were distinguished by
a place in the _Universal, Historical, Critical and Bibliographical
Dictionary_, one hundred and thirty belonged to England, Scotland and
Ireland, and six hundred and seventy-six to France.]

During the first Empire and the Restoration, after the tempest was
stilled and the great heritage of the Revolution taken possession of,
an amazing outburst of scientific, artistic and literary activity made
Paris the _Ville Lumiere_ of Europe. She is still the city where the
things of the mind and of taste have most place, where the wheels of
life run most smoothly and pleasantly, where the graces and
refinements and amenities of social existence, _l'art des plaisirs
fins_, are most highly developed and most widely diffused. There is
something in the crisp, luminous air of Paris that quickens the
intelligence and stimulates the senses. Even the scent of the wood
fires as one emerges from the railway station exhilarates the spirit.
The poet Heine used to declare that the traveller could estimate his
proximity to Paris by noting the increasing intelligence of the
people, and that the very bayonets of the soldiers were more
intelligent than those elsewhere. Life, even in its more sensuous and
material phases, is less gross and coarse,[4] its pleasures more
refined than in London. It is impossible to conceive the pit of a
London theatre stirred to fury by an innovation in diction in a
poetical drama, or to imagine anything comparable to the attitude of a
Parisian audience at the cheap holiday performances at the Francais or
the Odeon, where the severe classic tragedies of Racine, of Corneille,
of Victor Hugo, or the well-worn comedies of Moliere or of
Beaumarchais are played with small lure of stage upholstery, and
listened to with close attention by a popular audience responsive to
the exquisite rhythm and grace of phrasing, the delicate and
restrained tragic pathos, and the subtle comedy of their great
dramatists. To witness a _premiere_ at the Francais is an intellectual
feast. The brilliant house; the pit and stalls filled with
black-coated critics; the quick apprehension of the points and happy
phrases; the universal and excited discus