A Year's Journey through France and Part of Spain, Volume 2 (1777)Thicknesse, Philip
History
A Year's Journey through France and Part of Spain, Volume 2 (1777)
Thicknesse, Philip
France -- Description and travel; Spain -- Description and travel
aimable creature, qui un François chez qui l'enjoument est tempore par
le judgment, & par discretion_; to all which I subscribe: but such men
are seldom to be met with in any kingdom.
This gentleman says, the most remarkable, or rather the only act of
gaiety he met with in _London_, was an harangue made for an hour in the
House of Lords, previous to the trial of Lord _Byron_; and that, as he
afterwards understood, it was made by a drunken member of parliament. He
says it made him and every body laugh exceedingly; but he laughed only
(I presume) because every body else did, and relates the story, I fear,
merely to make it a national laugh; for the harangue was certainly very
ill placed, and the mirth it produced, very indecent, at a time a Peer
of the realm was to be brought forth, accused of murder; and the
untimely death of a valuable and virtuous young man, revived in every
body's memory.
This is the unfavourable side of what the gentleman says of the first
people in England. Of the peasants and lower order, he observes, that,
though they are well fed, well cloathed, and well lodged, yet they are
all of a melancholy turn.--The French have no idea of what we call _dry
humour_; and this gentleman, perhaps, thought the English clown
melancholy, while he was laughing in his sleeve at the foppery of his
_laquais_.
These observations put me in mind of another modern traveller, a man of
sense and letters too, who observes, that the ballustrades at
_Westminster_ bridge are fixed very close together, to prevent the
English getting through to drown themselves: and of a Gentleman at
_Cambridge_, who, having cut a large pigeon-hole under his closet door,
on being asked the use of it, said, he had it cut for an old cat which
had kittens, to go in and out; but added, _that he must send for the
carpenter, to cut little holes for the young ones_. His _acute visitor_
instantly set up a _horse_ laugh, and asked him whether the little cats
could not come out at the same hole the big one did? The other laughing
in his turn, said, he did not _think of that_.
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