ratitude, he impudently declares, that what he had done was no more
than simple gallantry, considered in France as an indispensible duty on
every man who pretended to good breeding. Nay, he will even affirm,
that his endeavours to corrupt your wife, or your daughter, were the
most genuine proofs he could give of his particular regard for your
family.

If a Frenchman is capable of real friendship, it must certainly be the
most disagreeable present he can possibly make to a man of a true
English character, You know, Madam, we are naturally taciturn, soon
tired of impertinence, and much subject to fits of disgust. Your French
friend intrudes upon you at all hours: he stuns you with his loquacity:
he teases you with impertinent questions about your domestic and
private affairs: he attempts to meddle in all your concerns; and forces
his advice upon you with the most unwearied importunity: he asks the
price of every thing you wear, and, so sure as you tell him undervalues
it, without hesitation: he affirms it is in a bad taste, ill-contrived,
ill-made; that you have been imposed upon both with respect to the
fashion and the price; that the marquise of this, or the countess of
that, has one that is perfectly elegant, quite in the bon ton, and yet
it cost her little more than you gave for a thing that nobody would
wear.

If there were five hundred dishes at table, a Frenchman will eat of all
of them, and then complain he has no appetite. This I have several
times remarked. A friend of mine gained a considerable wager upon an
experiment of this kind: the petit maitre ate of fourteen different
plats, besides the dessert; then disparaged the cook, declaring he was
no better than a marmiton, or turnspit.

The French have the most ridiculous fondness for their hair, and this I
believe they inherit from their remote ancestors. The first race of
French kings were distinguished by their long hair, and certainly the
people of this country consider it as an indispensible ornament. A
Frenchman will sooner part with his religion than with his hair, which,
indeed, no consideration will induce him to forego. I know a gentleman
afflicted with a continual head-ach, and a defluxion on his eyes, who
was told by his physician that the best chance he had for being cured,
would be to have his head close shaved, and bathed every day in cold
water. "How (cried he) cut my hair? Mr. Doctor, your most humble
servant!" He dismissed his physician, lost