French & English : $b A comparisonHamerton, Philip Gilbert
History
French & English : $b A comparison
Hamerton, Philip Gilbert
National characteristics, English; National characteristics, French
In ordinary pedestrianism there is not much difference between the two
countries except in the female sex, and there it is strongly marked.
Englishwomen who have leisure walk perhaps three or four times as much
as Frenchwomen in the same position. Young men in both countries may
be equally good walkers if they have the advantage of rural life. The
French peasants are slow pedestrians but remarkably enduring; they will
go forty or fifty miles in the twenty-four hours, being out all night,
and think nothing of it. Riding on horseback is much more practised in
England; the economy of the carriage, by which one horse can transport
several persons, and the excellent modern roads, had almost killed
equestrianism in France, but now there are some signs of a revival.
Here, too, the large national army has an excellent influence. Great
numbers of Frenchmen learn to ride in the cavalry and artillery, and
the captains of infantry are all mounted. There is not, in France, the
most valuable training of all, that of riding to hounds in the English
sense; and therefore it is probable that England could produce a far
greater number of horsemen able to leap well. As for style in riding,
that is a matter of taste, and national ideas differ. The French style
is derived chiefly from military examples, the English indirectly from
the hunting-field.
[Sidenote: False Ideals of Dignity.]
[Sidenote: French Ecclesiastics.]
[Sidenote: Exercises permitted to English Clergymen.]
[Sidenote: French Notions of Dignity.]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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