ver. Scratch the Russian, and you
know what you will find. I answer, a gentleman uninfluenced by a stale
proverb; we have a delightful specimen in this very house. M. Villars is
great at scratching, since his readers are recommended to grate
Peruvians and Javanese. Under the three articles, we are told, lies the
one barbarous material! The ladies of these are charming, seductive,
irresistible, but they want _ton_, and lack the delicacy of the _monde_.
We foreigners are too proud of our beauty and our dollars, have an
unquenchable thirst for pleasure, and we are socially daring. M. Villars
is funny in the fashion of his class. He says that we English-speaking
class of foreigners bear aloft a banner with the strange device 'All
right.' M. Villars proceeds to remark, 'We take from foreigners what we
should leave to them, their feet upon chairs, and their hats upon
their heads, as at the Italiens the other night.' He finds that a
cosmopolitan invasion has made French society less delicate, less
gallant, less polite.
[Illustration: JONES ON THE PLACE DE LA CONCORDE.]
"We are to blame! Belgravia is not refined enough for the Avenue de
l'Imperatrice. Clapham, I infer, would not be tolerated at Batignolles.
I repeat, I have gone through some arduous times here, in the midst of
the foreign invasion of polite society. I have scratched neither Russ,
nor German, nor Servian, nor Wallachian. But I must be permitted to
observe, that I have found their manners quite equal to any that were
native. Shall I go further, Emmy, and speak all my mind? There is a race
of the new-rich--of the recently honoured, here, who are French from
their shoe-rosettes to their chignons. They come direct from the Bourse,
and from the Pereire fortune-manufactory of the Place Vendome. They
bring noise and extravagance, but not manners. I have seen many of my
countrymen in Parisian drawing-rooms, in the midst of Frenchmen,
Russians, Princes of various lands; and, do you know, I have not seen
anything _much_ better in the way of bearing, manners, and mental
culture and natural refinement than the English gentleman. I feel quite
positive that it is not he who has lowered the manners or morals of
Napoleon the Third's subjects. I am bold enough to think that a
probationary tour through some of our London drawing-rooms would do good
to the saucy young seigneurs I see leaning on the balcony of the Jockey
Club when we are driving past.
"I will remind M. Villar
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