a rude look; a stranger gentleman, and
never receive a rude word. That the French are a self-respecting
people is also evinced by the fact that they are a sober people.
Drunkenness is scarcely known in France; and one may travel all
through it and never witness the degrading sight of a drunken man.

The French are also honest and thrifty, and exceedingly hard-working.
The industry of the people is unceasing. Indeed it is excessive; for
they work Sunday and Saturday. Sunday has long ceased to be a Sabbath
in France. There is no day of rest there. Before the Revolution, the
saints' days which the Church ordered to be observed so encroached
upon the hours required for labour, that in course of time Sunday
became an ordinary working day. And when the Revolution abolished
saints' days and Sabbath days alike, Sunday work became an established
practice.

What the so-called friends of the working classes are aiming at in
England, has already been effected in France. The public museums and
picture-galleries are open on Sunday. But you look for the working
people there in vain. They are at work in the factories, whose
chimneys are smoking as usual; or building houses, or working in the
fields, or they are engaged in the various departments of labour. The
government works all go on as usual on Sundays. The railway trains run
precisely as on week days. In short, the Sunday is secularised, or
regarded but as a partial holiday.[99]

[Footnote 99: I find the following under the signature of "An
Operative Bricklayer," in the _Times_ of the 30th July, 1867:
"I found there were a great number of men in Paris that
worked on the buildings who were not residents of the city.
The bricklayers are called _limousins_; they come from the
old province Le Limousin, where they keep their home, and
many of them are landowners. They work in Paris in the summer
time; they come up in large numbers, hire a place in Paris,
and live together, and by so doing they live cheap. In the
winter time, when they cannot work on the buildings, they go
back home again and take their savings, and stop there until
the spring, which is far better than it is in London; when
the men cannot work they are hanging about the streets. It
was with regret that I saw so many working on the Sunday
desecrating the Sabbath. I inquired why they wo