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HORTICULTURAL JOURNAL, and FLORISTS' REGISTER; The only Work devoted to the Description and Interests of Florists' Flowers. Published Monthly, price ls. by C. F. Westley, bookseller and stationer, 165, Strand, near Somerset House and King's College; splendidly Embellished with Coloured Specimens of Flowers. Not exceeding a Whole Page £1 5 0 Works of all kinds, communications, subjects connected with Floriculture and Botany, and Advertisements, may be forwarded to the Editor, at the publisher's. The First half-yearly Part, price 78. 6d. with thirteen splendid Coloured Figures of interesting Tulips, Carnations, Pansies, Dahlias, &c. is now ready. "Mr. Dillon is a clear-headed and acute investigator of abstruse points, and he possesses, besides, the rare qualification of bringing his arguments into a distinct focus, and within a narrow compass.-Monthly Review, No. 42. See also Athenæum, No. 67. Published by R. Hunter, 72, St. Paul's Church-yard. Just published, in 2 vols. 8vo. price 158. DEONTOLOGY; or the SCIENCE of MORALITY; in which the Harmony and Coincidence of Duty and Self-interest, Virtue and Felicity, Prudence and Benevolence, are explained and exemplified. From the MSS. of JEREMY BENTHAM, Arranged and Edited by JOHN BOWRING. London: Longman, Rees, Orme, Brown, Green, and Longman. LETTER FROM AN ENGLISHMAN TO A FRENCHMAN, ON A RECENT APOLOGY IN THE JOURNAL DES DEBATS,' FOR THE FAULTS OF THE ENGLISH NATIONAL CHARACTER. AT your suggestion I have thrown upon paper, though in a hasty and imperfect manner, some of the thoughts which occurred to me after perusing in the Journal des Débats, under the signature C-s, a criticism on Mr. Bulwer's recent work, England and the English.'. 'The well-known author of these articles is a person to whose writings on England some attention is due. He is one of the few Frenchmen who have a considerable acquaintance with English literature; and he knows, for a foreigner, much of England. His knowledge, however, is of a kind which reminds me of a saying of one of my own countrymen. Somebody having, in his presence, praised a third person very highly for the extensiveness of his knowledge, Yes,' he replied, he knows exactly enough of every subject to have the wrong opinion.' Precisely of this kind is the knowledge which M. Chales possesses of England. He knows just enough to encourage him to entertain the most erroneous opinions. He knows just enough to believe that whatever he does not know, does not exist. He knows just enough to be able to read a work, by a writer of acknowledged merit, abounding with descriptions and exemplifications of many of the most striking features in the social state of Great Britain, and to close the book without having received a single impression; never dreaming that he can have any thing to learn on the subject of England from an instructed and clever Englishman; setting down, in the quietest manner, as groundless and worthless, every thing in the book which goes beyond what he previously knew. It would be ungracious in an Englishman to be severe on a foreigner for not being severe upon us. I am glad when a Frenchman praises the English; I am glad when, in a certain stage of his intellectual developement, he even overpraises us, as I am also when an Englishman, in the same stage of his progress, overpraises the French. It is a natural reaction against the national prejudice and antipathy from which both countries have but recently emerged. It is also a very natural middle stage in the expansion of an individual intellect. A vulgar person sees only the virtues of his own nation, only the faults of other nations: but when, ourselves beginning to rise above the herd, we first perceive the faults which are prevalent among our own country-men, we are apt to pass into the contrary extreme, and to exaggerate the degree of positive excellence which is implied by the absence of those particular faults in other nations. While we continue bigoted, all we see in foreigners is, that they have not our vir No. 90. 2 E tues when we become half-enlightened, we sometimes see only that they have not our faults, forgetting, or not sufficiently recollecting, that they have other faults which may be equally or more pernicious. This last one-sidedness Mr. Bulwer may have partly fallen into; and even if, as I am more inclined to think, he is not justly chargeable with it, yet the tone of severe animadversion in which he speaks to his own countrymen of their national vices, might require to be modified if he were speaking of those same vices to foreigners; just as we should remonstrate with a brother or a friend in far stronger terms than we should use in speaking of the faults of that brother or friend to a stranger, who is not already familiar with their good qualities. A writer, therefore, who had to introduce Mr. Bulwer's book to the French public, would have had much to say in mitigation of the unfavourable impression which might be produced by such strictures on the English if taken without qualification. He might have said to the French reader, Here is a powerfully drawn picture of the faults of the English character; but a character is not to be judged solely by its faults. The characteristic faults, both of an individual and of a people, always point to their characteristic virtues; and if you display the one without the other, you may produce either a panegyric or a satire, which you will, but not a fair judgment. By insisting, in the same manner, upon the faults of the French character, without placing by their side those excellences which are often the bright side of the very same qualities, a picture might be made of France as repulsive as Mr. Bulwer's picture of England, though with a different kind of repulsiveness.' Had M. Chales reviewed Mr. Bulwer's book in this spirit, he would have merited the thanks of both countries. But the course he has adopted is the very reverse. Instead of bringing forward the other half of the truth, he denies that half which Mr. Bulwer has so cleverly delineated. Instead of teaching France to know us, he teaches us not to know ourselves. Instead of using our example to improve his own countrymen, he will not allow us to be improved by theirs. Instead of pointing out to the French how much good, and good of the highest and rarest kind, and good which they are far from having yet equalled, coexists in England with all the evil which Mr. Bulwer describes, he boldly avers that the evil is not evil. Such commendation of England is worse than the ancient antipathy. It is unnecessary for me, writing to you, to heap up common places on the importance of friendship and sympathy between two such nations; but we want you to sympathize in our virtues, not in our faults. The wiser and better of the English will not thank a Frenchman for stepping in with a denial or a vindication of all that they most disapprove in their own countrymen, |
