In the arts, while French productions display resource, ingenuity, and
dexterity, they at the same time show a striking want of the sense of
fitness, and are unfinished and flimsy. Such, in the cities of France,
is remarkably the case with whatever regards furniture and decoration,
while the productions of cookery are at once impregnated with filth,
and admirably calculated to conceal it. In the country, again, with a
climate superior to that of England, there is everywhere to be seen open
fields, later harvests, corn full of weeds, and inferior grain. The
difference between French and English taste in dress is very remarkable.
Even when English women take a hint from French contrivances, they
endeavour to be more natural, modest, and classical. As to male dress,
an English gentleman always desires his tailor to avoid the extremes of
fashion; and, as his dress is grave and manly, it is generally followed
throughout Europe. The French use of forks, napkins, &c. really requires
some notice. A French gentleman, in adjusting himself at his coarse deal
table and shabby cloth, does not hesitate to fix a napkin about his
neck, in such a manner as to protect his clothes in front against the
certainty of being bespattered by his mode of eating. An Englishman of
the middle class would be ashamed of such a contrivance; for, without
any particular care, he eats so as not even to stain the damask cloth
with which his mahogany table is covered.
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