Scarcely any quarrels, I believe, take place between the English and French, nor did I hear of any violent fracas but one. In this instance, the English officers concerned must have been sad, brutal, vulgar fellows. They, however, after behaving in a most gross insulting manner, were compelled by some Frenchmen not to eat but to drink their words, and that out of a vessel not usually employed in drinking. I shall not repeat the contemptible affair, but it furnished the subject of a caricature. The English officers in general behave in a handsome and liberal manner, and their conduct was spoken of in high terms of encomium by very many of the French themselves. I regret however exceedingly that any of the British officers should have imbibed the low prejudices and vulgar hatred against the French, which certain people preach up in England to cover their own peculations and interested views. A young friend of mine, with whom I was one day talking on political subjects, said to me: "I cannot help agreeing with you in many things, but I am staggered when I think that your ideas and reasoning are so contrary to the ideas in which I have been brought up; so that I rather avoid entering at all on political questions." I do not wonder at all at this, for I recollect when I was at school at Eton, the system was to drill into the heads of the boys strong aristocratic principles and hatred of Democracy and of the French in particular; we were ordered to write themes against the French Revolution and verses of triumph over their defeats, with now and then a sly theme on the great advantage of hereditary nobility; in these verses God Almighty was to be represented as closely allied to the British Government and a _sleeping partner_ of the Administration. One of the fellows of Eton College actually told the late Mr Adam Walker, the celebrated lecturer on natural and experimental philosophy, who was accustomed to give lectures annually to the Etonians, that his visits were no longer agreeable and would be dispensed with in future; as "Philosophy had done a great deal of harm and had caused the French Revolution." With respect to my visit to Versailles, I was much struck with the vast size and magnificence of the buildings and with the ingenuity displayed in the arrangement of the grounds and the numerous groups of statues, grottos, aqueducts, fountains and ruins. Still it pleases me less than St Cloud, for I prefer the taste of the present day in gardening and the arrangement of ground, to the ponderous and tawdry taste of the time of Louis XIV, and I prefer St Cloud to Versailles, just as I should prefer a Grecian Nymph in the simple costume of Arcadia to a fine court lady rouged and dressed out with hoops, diamonds, and headdress of the tune of Queen Anne. Napoleon must have had an exquisite taste. [32] Exceptions to this are, I understand, the Gallery at Florence, and the Museo Vaticano at Rome, which are both open to all and no fees allowed.