While admitting that Frenchmen have brought much grace along with the continual gratification of the senses into the diversions of outdoor existence, it is questionable if they enjoy them really as the English do. We cannot easily conceive a French Minister shaking off the cares of office to refresh himself with all the gusto of a schoolboy on the golf links. Taste and national character would be much more likely to lead him to seek change and distraction in that temple of fame, the _salon_. Here we may picture him talking with the consummate and exquisite ease of his race. Their sports, like their clubs, the French have borrowed from England, and, according to the point of view, have improved or disfigured these noble institutions; but their _salon_ is their own. No other race has even tried to compete with them on this famous ground, for the reason that no other race has the art of general conversation. You must have the instinct of good conversation, be yourself something of an artist in it, be able to bring an attention, a readiness of wit and intelligence and information, demanded in this national pastime. The French speak well because they know how to listen so well. With them there is no such thing as talking down the company. The deference given is duly claimed and granted, and the first thing that strikes you in a _salon_ is the complete absence among the men of that vexatious British habit of lounging. Frenchmen in their families do not lounge as Englishmen lounge in strange drawing-rooms. I once heard a Russian woman who had sojourned in both countries say, _Les Anglais n’ont pas de tenue_. And this is true. An Englishman who counts himself a gentleman will put his feet on railway cushions when women are present, he will sprawl before women in rooms, keep his hands in his trousers pockets while talking to them, nurse his foot at an afternoon call—in a word, do everything but sit on the chairs or seats of civilisation in a simple and inoffensive attitude. Not one of these things have I ever seen Frenchmen do, even in intimacy. Their correctness in a drawing-room is scrupulous. Familiarity is the very last thing they suggest, though the house you meet them at may be one they have been in the habit of visiting once a week at least for many years. Englishwomen to whom I have remarked this peculiar characteristic of their countrymen retort that the behaviour of Frenchmen in dining-rooms is as inferior, compared with that of their compatriots, as ever could be the behaviour of Englishmen, tested by the same standard, in drawing-rooms. I willingly admit the accusation, and I confess I should find both races more delightful if each borrowed the best of the other, and so mended their ways and became perfect. I do not care on which side the lesson begins, if only Frenchmen will eat as well as Englishmen, and Englishmen will imitate the perfect “tone” of the Frenchman in a drawing-room. The niceties observed by each in its sphere