French & English : $b A comparisonHamerton, Philip Gilbert
History
French & English : $b A comparison
Hamerton, Philip Gilbert
National characteristics, English; National characteristics, French
He won a fellowship,
and is now occupying the chair of a professor of history--I do not
mean in a school, but as a _professeur de faculté_. He is one of the
most cultivated men I ever knew, and probably one of the happiest.
Such a career as his is not the usual consequence of a frivolous and
dissipated youth. I was talking, an hour before writing this page, with
a Frenchman whose own life has been a remarkable example of labour and
self-denial, and he told me that there are at this moment hundreds of
students in Paris who are supporting themselves, at least in part, by
means of lessons and humble literary work, in order that they may enter
the professions.
[Sidenote: French School Life.]
[Sidenote: Morality of Boys in French Schools.]
[Sidenote: Morality in English Schools.]
One or two indications have reached me which seem to imply that in
England there exists a belief that French school life is immoral.
This may be founded on the mutual amenities of the clerical and lay
parties in France, which profess a complete disbelief in each other’s
morality, and would equally accuse each other of murder, if that were
as difficult to test. Nobody knows much about the morality of boys,
but I may observe that the government of French schools, both lay and
clerical, is too strict for any immorality that can be detected to
make way there. The very few instances of it in school life that have
come to my knowledge have been followed by instant expulsion. I have
heard something about school immorality in England, especially in one
great public school, coupled with an expression of the desire that the
rigorous French system could be established there, not in all things,
but for this one safeguard.
[Sidenote: Domestic Servants in Paris.]
[Sidenote: The Parisian System of Lodging.]
With regard to the class of domestic servants, I am told that in
Paris the morality of servants is generally much lower than in the
country; but never having kept house in Paris I know nothing about
it, except by hearsay. Statistics show a remarkably large proportion
of illegitimate births for the capital; this, however, is rather
favourable in a certain sense, I mean in the sense of natural morality,
as the worst women are sterile. An ecclesiastic of high rank, who has
had exceptional opportunities for studying the moral aspects of Paris,
told me that he attributed the greater laxity there in the class of
domestics to the system of lodging, by which the servants are often
separated from the family life of the household, and sent to sleep up
in the attics, where they are in a world of their own.
* * * * *
[Sidenote: Unsatisfactory Nature of the Subject.]
[Sidenote: Two Codes of Morality.]
[Sidenote: Permanent Conflict between Man’s Animal Nature and his
civilised Condition.]
[Sidenote: Increase of the Difficulty.]
[Sidenote: The Prudent Classes avoid Marriage.]
[Sidenote: The Imprudent.]
[Sidenote: Effects of Crowding.]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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