and conscientiousness of English workmanship.
We buy a frightful table in Bond Street, and, behold, it will last for
ever. The drawers in DOWLAS'S house are as delightful to open and shut
as they are horrible to look at. English boots will outlast French
boots, and English gloves French gloves. Whatever may have been the case
years ago, it is a great mistake to suppose that these articles are
better now in Paris than in London. The great difference is shortly
this[5]--our artists are tradesmen and their tradesmen are artists. In
all articles of simple usefulness we have an unquestionable superiority,
but where something more than convenience or durability is required our
designers seem quite helpless. A certain funeral car will occur to many
as an example of this truth, and, perhaps, by malicious persons, will be
taken to shew how much or how little is to be expected from Government
Schools of Art.

The Tourist is aware that no one can walk about Paris without seeing
abundant evidences of the coarsest moral and social feeling, and claims
an infinitely higher position for his own countrymen and countrywomen in
this respect. He also recollects that he has already ridiculed the dress
of Frenchmen, and sees that this may be supposed inconsistent with a
sweeping panegyric on French taste. But this is an exception that
proves the rule. A Frenchman's _theory_ of dress is wrong. He always
wants to be conspicuous and picturesque. Hence, nothing is too singular
and showy for him. He gets himself up, as if for the stage, with velvet
and fur and beard and moustache, and exhausts the resources of his
inventive mind for new and still more _piquant_ combinations. When he
turns his attentions to the chase, the result is something worth seeing,
and no mistake, as will be more plainly seen by a picture of a party of
sporting gentlemen going out shooting. But these comicalities are
eschewed by the genuine "swells," who adopt our sober English notions of
masculine costume, and, indeed, dress exactly like Englishmen. The
advice of _Polonius_ to _Laertes_ will literally apply to the matter at
the present day:--

"Costly thy habit as thy purse can buy.
But _not expressed in fancy_--rich, not gaudy--
For the apparel oft proclaims the man.
And they in France _of the best rank and station_
Are most select and generous, chief in that--"

The most august confirmation has been given to this view. I state with
becoming reverence and a