My dear
brother reader, say, as a man of honour, if you are not of this opinion?
Do you think a Frenchman your equal? You don't--you gallant British
Snob--you know you don't: no more, perhaps, does the Snob your humble
servant, brother.
And I am inclined to think it is this conviction, and the consequent
bearing of the Englishman towards the foreigner whom he condescends to
visit, this confidence of superiority which holds up the head of the
owner of every English hat-box from Sicily to St. Petersburg, that makes
us so magnificently hated throughout Europe as we are; this--more than
all our little victories, and of which many Frenchmen and Spaniards have
never heard--this amazing and indomitable insular pride, which animates
my lord in his travelling-carriage as well as John in the rumble.
If you read the old Chronicles of the French wars, you find precisely
the same character of the Englishman, and Henry V.'s people behaved with
just the cool domineering manner of our gallant veterans of France
and the Peninsula. Did you never hear Colonel Cutler and Major Slasher
talking over the war after dinner? or Captain Boarder describing his
action with the 'Indomptable?' 'Hang the fellows,' says Boarder, 'their
practice was very good. I was beat off three times before I took her.'
'Cuss those carabineers of Milhaud's,' says Slasher, 'what work they
made of our light cavalry!' implying a sort of surprise that the
Frenchman should stand up against Britons at all: a good-natured wonder
that the blind, mad, vain-glorious, brave poor devils should actually
have the courage to resist an Englishman.
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