to be present at our
anchoring and debarkation. The French in general are much earlier risers
than either the Americans or the English; and by the time we were off
the pier, about seven in the morning, half of the town of Calais were
out to receive and welcome us. The French, moreover, as on every
occasion of my intercourse with them I found them afterwards, appeared
to me to be equally prominently different from all nations in another
quality--a prompt and social nature, a natural benevolence, or habitual
civility, which leads them instinctively, and not unfrequently
impertinently, into acts of kindness and consideration. Let a stranger
land at an English or an American port, and he is truly a stranger; his
inquiries will scarcely obtain a civil answer; and any appearance of
strangeness and embarrassment will only bring the boys at his heels. On
the other hand, let him land in any French port, and almost every one
who shall meet him will salute him with the complacency of hospitality;
his inquiries, indeed, will not be answered, because the person of whom
he shall make them, will accompany him to the inn, or other object of
his question.

I have frequently heard, and still more frequently read, that the
English nation were characteristically the most good-natured people in
the world, and that the Americans, as descendants from the same stock,
had not lost this virtue of the parent tree. I give no credit to the
justice of this observation. Experience has convinced me, that neither
the English nor the Americans deserve it as a national distinction. The
French are, beyond all manner of doubt, the most good-humoured people on
the surface of the earth; if we understand at least by the term,
_good-humour_ those minor courtesies, those considerate kindnesses,
those cursory attentions, which, though they cost little to the giver,
are not the less valuable to the receiver; which soften the asperities
of life, and by their frequent occurrence, and the constant necessity in
which we stand of them, have an aggregate, if not an individual
importance. The English, perhaps, as nationally possessing the more
solid virtues, may be the best friends, and the most generous
benefactors; but as friendship, in this more exalted acceptation of it,
is rare, and beneficence almost miraculous, it is a serious question
with me, which is the most useful being in society--the light
good-humoured Frenchman, or the slow meditating Englishman?

The