John Mill pointed out long ago the advantage that the French have in the cultivation of the feelings. This is very much an affair of utterance in language, for it is utterance which best keeps feelings alive. French sympathy is often, no doubt, assumed; that is inevitable where so much sympathy is expressed; still, it is certain that in France all true sympathy does get expressed, and in this way people live surrounded by an atmosphere in which feeling remains active. In England the national reserve and the sharp distinction of classes are both against the cultivation of feelings, but besides this there is the pride of stoicism, the fear of seeming soft. The Frenchman’s love for his mother is ridiculous in England; in France it is only natural. In truth, perhaps, it is not so much the sentiment that is ridiculous for Englishmen as the association of it with French expressions. The English do not laugh at it in Latin. The affection of Euryalus for his mother is thought beautiful in the Æneid, but turn it into French and it comes in those very phrases that Englishmen cannot abide. “J’ai une mère issue de l’antique race de Priam, une mère infortunée qui a voulu me suivre et que n’ont pu retenir le rivage natal d’Ilion ni les mûrs hospitaliers d’Aceste. _Cette mère je la quitte sans l’instruire des dangers où je cours et sans l’embrasser. Non, j’en prends à témoin et la Nuit et votre main sacrée, je ne pourrais soutenir les larmes de ma mère. Mais vous, je vous en conjure, consolez-la dans sa douleur, soutenez-la dans son abandon._” The words that I have italicised are so perfectly French that they might be quoted from the last yellow-backed novel. The warm promise of friendship from Ascanius is also excessively French in sentiment. “Pour toi, Euryale, dont l’âge se rapproche plus du mien, admirable jeune homme, dès ce jour mon cœur est à toi, et je t’adopte à jamais comme compagnon de ma fortune: sans toi je n’irai plus chercher la gloire, et, soit dans la paix, soit dans la guerre, ma confiance reposera sur ton bras et sur tes conseils.” One young Englishman would never speak like that to another, he might possibly go so far as to say, “Hope you’ll come back all right.” [Sidenote: Effect of English Usages.] [Sidenote: The best constituted Englishman.] [Sidenote: Sympathy.] [Sidenote: The tenderer Natures.] [Sidenote: The Filial Relation in England.] [Sidenote: The Fraternal.] [Sidenote: Cousins.] [Sidenote: Funerals.] [Sidenote: Neglected Tombs.] [Sidenote: Friends and Relations.]