For individual courage the two peoples are nearly on a par, but they differ in their training. It is unpleasant to have to confess that brutal and barbarous customs are favourable to the development of courage, yet some of them unquestionably are so, and a higher civilisation might have a difficulty in replacing them. Football, as practised in English public schools, is a brutal pastime, but it is an excellent discipline in courage. French duelling, though infinitely more refined in its forms, is in principle thoroughly barbarous, but as a school of courage there is nothing to equal it, and the great advantage of it in that respect is the constant possibility of an encounter that hangs over the head of every Frenchman, and accustoms him to the idea of danger. He goes through life like an armed knight riding through a wood. In saying “every Frenchman” I exaggerated, because, in fact, men are very differently exposed to the danger of duelling in France. Peasants never fight duels, workmen hardly ever, but there is not a gentleman, or an officer, or a deputy, or a journalist, who is not ready to go on the field of private battle at a moment’s notice. It is true that these encounters rarely end fatally, yet there is always danger, if only from accident. An intimate French friend of mine, when he had a duel on his hands, would go home to his wife and say, “Now, my dear, I must be left very quiet, as I have to fight to-morrow morning;” then he would go to bed and sleep till four o’clock, when he drank nothing but a glass of water before facing lead or steel. [Sidenote: Boxing.] [Sidenote: Bull-fights.] I have a poor opinion of the sort of courage which consists in looking on with tranquil nerves whilst others suffer. However, this base valour may sometimes be of use. The English may acquire it to some extent by witnessing pugilistic combats, the French of the south by seeing bull-fights in the arenas of Nîmes and Arles; but it is only a very small proportion of the population in England and France that now witnesses these things, the spectators are not comparable in numbers to the vast Roman public that hardened its heart in the gladiatorial shows. [Sidenote: Field Sports.] As for field sports, those practised in England require little courage except in horsemanship for English hunting. In France there are dangerous boar-hunts. It is, however, only in some parts of France that this amusement is to be had, and it is practised by comparatively few persons, chiefly amongst the richer gentry. Field sports are good for keeping up the energy of semi-barbarous aristocracies, which, in the absence of war, might lapse into indolence without them. [Sidenote: Courage in the Common People.] [Sidenote: Military Service.] [Sidenote: French Boys.]