Mere cheerfulness of disposition is an element in every private success, and it might be argued that if any one is cheerful, say in the horrible English “Black Country,” he is living more successfully than a despondent spirit surrounded by the light and colour of Italy. The French consider themselves happier than the English because they have more external gaiety, but I do not accept this gaiety as good evidence of a happy life. Without looking upon it with any puritanical disapproval, I think it is very frequently no more than a reaction against the troubles that beset human existence everywhere, and of which the French, like others, have their share. A gay philosophy may seem wanting in seriousness, but a man must have a very superficial acquaintance with French people if he has not discovered that their gaiety often conceals many a private anxiety and care. One reason for it is the feeling, which is certainly healthy, that we ought not to trouble other people with private causes of sadness, but make an effort to be cheerful as a social duty. Another and a deeper reason is that a light philosophy seems wiser and more intelligent than a melancholy one, because the miseries of life are not worth dwelling upon unless they can be practically alleviated. The natural gravity of Englishmen causes them to be misunderstood in France, where it is taken for sadness. English gravity is not incompatible with happiness. The grave mind is happy in its gravity as the light mind in its levity; and the English are not so grave as the French believe them to be. Cheerfulness (a word for which there is no equivalent in the French language) is an English characteristic, though the English have not the champagne in the blood that bubbles up in merriment and nonsense on the top of a Frenchman’s brain. They had it long ago, in Shakespeare’s time. CHAPTER II NATIONAL SUCCESS AT HOME [Sidenote: Private National Success.] [Sidenote: Conditions of it.] There is a private national success as well as a public one. Private success, for a nation, is to have got the kind of religion and the kind of government that are suitable to the national idiosyncrasy, to have sufficient wealth and at the same time a light burden of taxation, to be free from civil discord of any dangerous acuteness, to pursue the arts and sciences fruitfully, and to live without dread of an enemy. Which of the two, France or England, has hitherto reached the highest point of success in these several ways? [Sidenote: Religion.] [Sidenote: Government.] [Sidenote: Divisions in France.] [Sidenote: Partial Success of the Republic.]