The French temper is not generally very sociable, yet in Paris there is great openness of manner, and a charming readiness to enter into that kind of intercourse which is lightly agreeable without involving much beyond the passing hour. For the free play of the mind, without any pretension to make it more than play, there is no place in the world like Paris. It is a great art or a great gift to make social intercourse bright and truly a relaxation equally removed from pedantry on one side and the dulness of indifference on the other. There is an ease, an apparent simplicity, and a clearness of expression in Parisian talkers that we rarely meet with in provincials, yet these same provincials acquire the Parisian polish after a few years’ _frottement_ in the capital. [Sidenote: The Moral Contrast.] I have said elsewhere that there is a contrast in the moral code between Paris and the provinces. Paris now resembles, at least in some degree, the Italy of Byron’s day, where illicit _liaisons_ were tolerated if there was a certain deference to appearances; provincial France, as a rule, resembles provincial England in the severity of public opinion. [Sidenote: Aristocracy in Paris and the Provinces.] Aristocracy is of immense weight in the French provinces, even when accompanied by very little wealth; in Paris it counts for nothing unless accompanied by great wealth. Like London, Paris is democratic, and takes each man for what he _is_ (famous, rich, talented, witty), without inquiring what his ancestors were. [Sidenote: Contrasts of Individual Character.] [Sidenote: The Englishman’s Frenchman.] [Sidenote: French Notions of English Character.] Besides these local differences there remain in France as in England all the contrasts and varieties of individual character. Some of these varieties are known in England through the historians and novelists, but many more are totally unknown there. It is useless for me to refer to them in an English book without elaborate descriptions for which there is no space in this volume. I need only say that as the Frenchman’s Englishman is not an exact representative of all Englishmen taken individually, so it is with that curious ideal type that may be called the Englishman’s Frenchman. In my own limited experience I have known a certain number of French people of whom English writers would say, if I described them accurately and elaborately in a work of fiction, that they had not a single French characteristic, and the less the English critics knew of France the more positive they would be. So, if you were to describe a talkative and genial Englishman, such as G. H. Lewes, for example, French readers who had never been in England would tell you that he was not English, that they knew better, that the real Englishman is stiff, grave, proud, awkward, and reserved, so that he can never have the flexibility of mind that Lewes possessed, nor be, like him, an amiable and delightful _causeur_.