The French peasant has not the charm of the Irish peasant—the women, above all, lack the lovely complexion and beautiful eyes of the Irish—and he has less of the grand air. He is much more the son of the soil and less of the gentleman. The writer, wishing to be true to life, could never make such enchanting “copy” out of him as Jane Barlow made of the Irish peasant in her delightful _Idylls_. There is too little poetry about him, and he is too evenly balanced and cool-headed to offer us many of the adorable surprises of humour. I have heard it said, by French persons who live in the country, that Zola comes nearer to truth and reality in his presentment of the peasant than George Sand in her exquisite pastorals, or M. René Bazin in such a tender and lovely story as _La Terre qui Meurt_. But Balzac himself did not weave us tales of romance and delicate feeling when he touched upon the theme; and so it is very likely that the fellow is more of a brute than he seems to be in casual intercourse, without, however, sinking to the loathsome depths of the realism of _La Terre_. I, when I recall him to mind, own that I ever see him a dignified, well-mannered figure in blue blouse, generally clean, sometimes incredibly patched by his thrifty wife, frugal, sober, hard-worked, not too garrulous, and yet not resentful of easy speech, nor suspicious of the stranger who accosts him with courtesy. I find him in all things, as he presents himself to the eye and offers himself for observation, the superior of his British brother Hodge, neither so gross nor so unintelligent, with a look in his eye much resembling humour. He has his demands upon life, too, which are not those of the clownish brute, the inarticulate rustic. Not for nothing was the Revolution made, since by it has he learnt that he has his own share in the joys of civilisation, and that if he work hard enough his sons may aspire to such a measure of education as a harsher lot denied him. When business brings him into a little town or a great city, his eye alights on beautiful objects, placed there as much for him as for the owners of seigneurial dwellings. Flowers, trim parks, legends in stone, splendid cathedrals, every gracious blending of line and colour, combine to train his eye in beauty and refine his nature. He need thread these quaint and lovely streets with no slouching step, for he, and such as he, are too conscious of their stable efforts in the general work of order and national prosperity. He need touch his forelock to no great lord for permission to breathe the free air of heaven, for does not he, too, possess his bit of land, his little dwelling, from which none can oust him? And, on feast-days and Sundays, are there not always public museums at hand for his instruction and entertainment? No country in the world takes such care to provide museums for the people throughout all the provinces as France. Every year the State purchases pictures at the annual exhibitions