tented acceptance of absolute rule. Superstition and scepticism, immorality and domestic affection, a love of rhetoric and the soberest literary taste, are found in contact, yet not in conflict, in the religious, moral, and intellectual life of the French. Even more striking is the contrast between their public and private life. Frivolous, extravagant, and impulsive where only the state is concerned, they are provident, economical, and always cautious in their private affairs. This contradiction may perhaps be explained by referring the two extremes to a common origin. Nature seems to have entirely denied them the qualities of a Ζωον πολιτικὸν—at least αὐτοκρατικὸν; she has enabled them to excel in social life, and given them moral, intellectual, and artistic capacities, if not superior, at least equal to those of the other European nations. If we are not mistaken, the secret lies for the most part in the sharp contrast between their character and their mode of thought. Rationalism, or the habit of judging with the understanding alone, is the characteristic of the French mind. This logical spirit reached its fullest development and found its most definite expression in the eighteenth century; during the Revolution and the Empire it obtained complete supremacy; but it is only in our own days that it shows unmistakably the influence which it exercises on public and private life. We shall endeavour to trace this rationalistic spirit in its workings, to discover it in the most different spheres of life, and to see how it combines with the passionately excitable temperament and the irrepressible self-love of the Celt, destitute as he is of any such harmonising qualities as the German Gemüth and the sensual idealism of the Latin race. Of course I am only speaking here of the middle class, and in it only of the large majority and the general rule, not of the minority and the exceptions, which, for reasons to be given later, rarely exist in France. In every nation the mass of workmen and peasants possess the characteristics of its civilisation in rough outline, but never so clearly marked or so fully developed as to enable us to study in them the physiognomy of this civilisation, while in the highest and richest classes the traits have become too faint to afford fitting material for observation. August, 1872. FRANCE AND THE FRENCH. CHAPTER I. FAMILY LIFE AND MANNERS. I. EVERY one knows that in France marriage, which is the basis of family life, is arranged on principles of expediency. At the same time, foreigners are wont to judge of these matters with too little discrimination. When a young Frenchman has sown his wild oats-for "il faut que jeunesse se passe" has been elevated to a moral principle is close on thirty, and in a position to set up a house, his parents, his friends, and often the young man himself, begin to look round for a suitable alliance. But it would be a great mistake to suppose that he is only marrying a dowry. This is, no doubt, a sine quâ non; yet a man is generally content if his wife's income amounts to half his own. As a rule, her fortune is kept separate (régime dotal), though sometimes, especially in the North, no such division is recognised. In these arrangements, by which the wife's share is invariably secured to her, we see the spirit and character of French marriage. As a rule, the law protects both the mother and the children in every way against neglect, desertion, extravagant habits, or a fondness for speculation on the part of the husband-a protection which a bride sometimes resents as implying a want of confidence, a wife as a troublesome restraint. But not the question of fortune alone is taken into considera A |