menon, while a milder one is to be found. Vanity then, vanity, which from time immemorial has been considered as the peculiar characteristic of the French, is the great source of the evil. Insolence, indeed, is so little to be assigned as its true cause, that when they put forth their pretensions to universal pre-eminence, as they do every day in the week, and every hour in the day, it is under the intimate and innocent persuasion that they are merited, and will readily be admitted; and with a happy unconsciousness that the rest of the world (too much amused to be angry with them) are enjoying a sly laugh at their expense.

The English are a proud people; their superiority over others, where it really does exist, they feel intensely, and assert with firmness and decision; but, happily for them, they are not vain; and a notion of universal superiority is a delusion to which none but their vulgar and their very ignorant are subject. There is extant among them a stock of good sense, and it is seldom that good sense is unaccompanied by modesty; and when, by the examination of themselves, or a comparison with others, they detect their own errors and deficiencies, they steadily set about the task of correcting and supplying them they endeavour really to attain excellence before they boast of its attainment. Now the French consider themselves as arrived at the very acmé of perfection in all things accomplishable by human effort: they entertained precisely the same opinion two or three centuries ago; and it will be impossible for them to think better of themselves a century hence, when, probably, they will have improved in many respects wherein they are, at present, greatly wanting. This is a real and serious evil; it retards the march of their improvement; and, so far, their vanity is a crime which carries its punishment along with it. But even the assertion of universal excellence does not satisfy them: no, all Europe, the whole world, must bend the knee and acknowledge the supremacy of French valour, French glory, French patriotism, French politeness, French literature, French

this, that, and the other. The eternal song of La gloire Française, la politesse Française, &c. &c. is dinned in one's ears "from morn till noon, from noon till dewy eve;" it is shouted from their stage, and the echo is repeated from their very senate and a dozen little authors scribble a little journal full about it seven days in every week. Now it may not be amiss to examine the basis on which these pretensions are founded. Schlegel has observed, that the French always demand so much that one is almost inclined to allow them less than they are really entitled to: this is the necessary consequence of an exorbitant claim; but in the following hasty, though candid examination, it is intended to concede all that in strict and severe justice ought to be conceded to certain FRENCH PRETENSIONS.

The noisiest, and not the least obtrusive of their pretensions is to supremacy in valour, patriotism, and military glory; nothing else is heard of at their theatres, nothing else is seen but illustrations of it at their picture galleries and printshops. Now, no one is inclined to dispute their claims to military renown; nor does it at all detract from their reputation for valour, that their armies were destroyed in Russia, beaten out of Spain, and compelled to negotiate a peace at the very gates of their own capital: this is the mere fortune of war, and to these reverses all nations. are liable, who make war their chief occupation. But it is impossible to suppress a smile, when one hears them misname all their battles, Victories, and difficult to forbear reminding them, in the midst of their empty boasts of invincibility, that they have been vanquished, upon their own ground too, upon French ground, and (to say nothing of many other reverses) that the two most signal defeats ever sustained in person by their greatest general were inflicted upon him by English commanders. Why will they not honestly acknowledge their defeats? Their valour would suffer no impeachment by it. French soldiers are composed of the same materials as others, and are equally vulnerable to bullets and bayonets; and there

is nothing marvellous in their losing a battle against equal numbers of troops, as well disciplined as themselves, any more than in their obtain ing victories over twice or thrice their number of raw Prussian recruits, or undrilled Portuguese peasants.

Nor is any one disposed to deny that the French are as brave a people as any in the universe; on the contrary, their claim to a character for courage is freely admitted, and they have, in many instances, nobly proved it. But it is their pretension to pre-eminence in valour, and almost to the exclusive possession of it, that is rejected. Personal courage is not the exclusive growth of France, it is not the peculiar inheritance of a Frenchman; indeed no quality is more common as occasion requires, it can be procured any where for a shilling a day. It is seldom that the victories of the French have been obtained either through a deficiency of courage in those they have had to contend with, or a super-abundance of it in themselves; and it is singular that they do not perceive how much they detract from the value of their own boasted exploits by impeaching the bravery of their opponents: there is but little glory in vanquishing a cowardly foe. Were they, indeed, to boast of the superiority of French discipline and French tactics, that superiority might be conceded to them; and even with respect to that, it seems to be generally considered, among those best enabled to judge in military matters, that most of their successes, under Napoleon particularly, were obtained by the system of bringing (so to express it) indestructible numbers of men into the field. But the truth is, that in modern warfare, where so much is done by the mere pulling of a trigger, or the pointing of a match, where no man sees the bullet aimed directly at himself, personal prowess is less essentially necessary in the common soldier, at least, there is less opportunity for its display,-than in ancient times, when a battle was a series of single combats, and each man, selecting an opponent, fought

with him foot to foot, knowing that he must "either do or die." The battle of Waterloo was, at many periods of it, a contest somewhat of this latter nature. To the French its result was, utter, total, irretrievable de feat! This, though it adds a bright ray to English glory, casts no shade on the courage of the French. They were vanquished, not because they were wanting in courage, but because they had to contend against courage fully equal to their own, assisted by superior bodily strength. Their prowess in that fight is generously recorded by the nation who were then their enemies, who, attributing somewhat of the failure of the French to the common chances of war, arrogate to themselves nothing beyond the glory of having been victors in a battle, which brought for the first and last time NAPOLEON into personal opposition with WELLINGTON— a battle which, considered whether as to the numbers engaged in it, the obstinacy with which it was contested, or the deep importance of its consequences, is unparalleled in the history of Europe. Why will the French not exercise a similar modesty in recording their victories?

Patriotism-Patriotism is a noble feeling, and the French boast much and eternally of theirs; but, like courage, it is considered as natural to man, and the less talked about, the readier is the possession of it believed. Every man is presumed to love his native land. The savage, who fights to the death in defence of his habitation in the wild wood, is a patriot. The Arab, who protects his desart-tent from aggression, is a patriot. William Tell was a patriot. Hampden and Sidney were patriots. The Spaniards, who (aided by the English) drove the French invaders of their country back beyond their own frontiers, were patriots. These are instances of real patriotism, which implies, not the trespassing upon the rights of other nations, not the invasion of other countries, but the determined and uncompromising defence of one's own! Verbum sat."

To excellence in Poetry and the

poets, this one would be sufficient: that while the poetry of England and Italy passes into all the modern lan guages, the poetry of the French remains fast bound in the iron fetters of their own verse.

In Music and Painting they rate their pretensions so highly-they so absolutely deny the existence of these arts in a tolerable state elsewhere than in France, they treat so con temptuously the very supposition of a successful rivalry by any other country, that it is proper their real merits should be determined by a comparison with the highest standards-with the acknowledged models of attainable perfection in art. A test of criticism less exalted would be below the level of the rank they claim; to this, severe as it is, do their overwhelming pretensions expose them, and by its result must they be content to stand or fall.

In Music, the only two nations in the world who can boast of names become classical are Italy and Ger many. England is not to be taken into consideration, simply because she puts forth no pretensions to musical fame; France is, simply because she does. And what pretensions? Such as give us the right to expect that she will support them by the production of master-pieces, of works become famous, and, as it were, naturalized throughout Europe, like the music of the Italians and the Germans. Where are they? Will it be believed that she has not one, not a single one, not a bar, nor a note to produce! What has she that will bear a comparison with any of the works of Mozart? Whom dare she venture to place by the side of Haydn? Where are her Cimarosas ? Her Paesiel los? What has she comparable to

the Barbiere or the Otello of Rossini? It is not too much to say, that she has hardly produced one Score that would be listened to by any but French ears, or obtain a reputation far beyond the walls of Paris. The French will bring forward their Grand Opera, their Academie Royale de Musique, (or, as, in strictness, it ought to be called, their academy for dancing), but alas! that will not assist them, for what have they done there? Nothing, positively nothing! With the poor exception of two or three operas by Gretry, remarkable for nothing but a pretty Romance or two, and a few mediocre compositions by Catel and Kreutzer, there is not one of the operas upon which the French would found their reputation as a musical nation that is not the work of foreign composers! Gluck was a German; Piccini, Salieri, Sacchini, and Spontini, Italians; and as well might the French claim the works of Rossini as their own be cause they are occasionally performed in Paris, as attempt to arrogate to themselves a musical fame on the strength of the Iphigenias, Armida, Dido, Edipus, and the Vestal, composed by foreign authors upon French words. And to this is reduced the nationality of the Grand Opera Français. ↑

At their Comic Opera they have, indeed, produced some very pretty music; but even here, so far as nationality is concerned, they will be found to be in almost as naked a plight as at their Grand Opera. It is painful to enter into such minute scrutinies in a mere question of art, but the demands of the French upon our admiration are so exorbitant, that one is compelled to a rigid examination of their validity. It has already been shown that the great and established works, at the great French