had, as it presently turned out, been asking me which of the
younger French novelists was most highly thought of by English critics;
so that her surprise at never having heard of the gifted young Sevre'
was natural enough.

We all--but no, I must not say that we all have painful memories of this
kind. Some of us can understand every word that flies from the lips of
Mme. Chose or from the mouth of M. Tel. Some of us can also talk quickly
and well to either of these pilgrims; and others can do the trick
passably. But the duffers are in a great grim majority; and the mischief
that French causes among us is mainly manifest, not (I would say) by
weaker brethren hating the stronger, but by weak ones hating the less
weak.

As French is a subject on which we all feel so keenly, a point of
honour on which we are all so sensitive, how comes it that our general
achievement is so slight? There was no lack of hopes, of plans, that we
should excel. In many cases Time was taken for us by the forelock, and a
French nurse installed. But alas! little children are wax to receive and
to retain. They will be charmingly fluent speakers of French within six
weeks of Mariette's arrival, and will have forgotten every word of it
within as brief an interval after her departure. Later, their minds
become more retentive, though less absorbent; and then, by all means,
let French be taught. Taught it is. At the school where I was reared
there were four French masters; four; but to what purpose? Their
class-rooms were scenes of eternal and incredible pandemonium, filled
with whoops and catcalls, with devil's-tattoos on desks, and shrill
inquiries for the exact date of the battle of Waterloo. Nor was the lot
of those four men exceptional in its horror. From the accounts given to
me by 'old boys' of other schools I have gathered that it was the common
lot of French masters on our shores; and I have often wondered how much
of the Anglophobia recurrent among Frenchmen in the nineteenth century
was due to the tragic tales told by those of them who had returned from
our seminaries to die on their own soil. Since 1914, doubtless, French
masters have had a very good time in England. But, even so, I doubt
whether they have been achieving much in the way of tutelage. With the
best will in the world, a boy will profit but little by three or four
lessons a week (which are the utmost that our system allows him). What
he wants, or at any rate will want, is to be a