dramatize the long wars of the early kings, with the account given in
the journals of the reception of Victoria at Paris and of Louis Napoleon
in London; imagine the royal salutation and the official recognition of
the once anathematized Napoleon dynasty; General Bonaparte becomes in
his tomb Napoleon I. No wonder "Punch" affirmed that the statue of Pitt
shook its bronze head and the bones of Castlereagh stirred in protest.

"The English," says a celebrated writer, "like ancient medals, kept more
apart, preserve the first sharpness which the fair hand of Nature has
given them; they are not so pleasant to feel, but, in return, the legend
is so visible, that, at the first look, you can see whose image and
superscription they bear." This is a delicate way of setting forth
the superior honesty and bluntness and the inferior smoothness and
assimilating instinct of the Anglo-Saxon,--a vital difference, which
no alliance or intercourse with his Gallic neighbors can essentially
change.

A century ago there were few better tests of popular sentiment in
England than the plays in vogue. As indications of the state of the
public mind, they were what the ballads are to earlier times, and the
daily press is to our own,--generalized casual, but emphatic proofs of
the opinions, prejudices, and fancies of the hour. Now a large English
colony is domesticated in France; it is but a few hours' trip from
London to Paris; newspapers and the telegraph in both capitals make
almost simultaneous announcements of news; the soldiers of the two
nations fight side by side; the French shopman declares on his sign that
English is spoken within; the "Times," porter, and tea are obtainable
commodities in Paris; and _fraternite_ is the watchword at Dover and
Calais. Yet the normal idea which obtains in the conservative brain of a
genuine _Anglais_, though doubtless expanded and modified by intercourse