In the course of this chapter I have avoided exceptions for the sake of clearness, which makes it necessary to add that there are people in both nations whose manners are not national. It is not an English characteristic to be a lively and brilliant _causeur_, yet there are Englishmen who have that quality and that art. The manners of George Henry Lewes were more French than English; he had the openness and ease of a Frenchman, his frank welcome, his gay cordiality, his abundant flow of words, his natural delight in conversation, his unhesitating self-confidence. There is also a small class of Frenchmen who have those qualities in manners which are believed to be exclusively English. They are quiet and reserved, they listen well, they never interrupt, they do not attempt to shine. When they talk, they talk deliberately, and in the purest language, never condescending to use the slang which is now rapidly corrupting the French tongue, and they employ terms accurately without French exaggeration. They are polite, but with an intelligent moderation, and they make no show of politeness. These are exceptions on the favourable side. There are also innumerable exceptions which are nothing but a variety of individual failures to approach the national ideal. It is useless to attempt the description of these. All comic and satirical literature takes them for its own. CHAPTER V DECORUM [Sidenote: _Le Décorum anglais._] The French laugh at the English for their “_décorum anglais_,” as if the English were alone in having a strict rule about what is becoming. The French themselves are equally strict, but in other ways, nor is this strictness confined to the upper classes, for the French peasantry have it in a marked degree.[68] [Sidenote: Oversights in Decorum.] [Sidenote: Japanese Bathing.] [Sidenote: English Bathing in former Days.] [Sidenote: A French Bather in England.]