Perhaps it ought also to be said in our defence that we are afflicted by the infirmities of a ruling people. We are not only profoundly conscious that we are an invincible nation ourselves, but also are saturated with the belief that we have a commission to govern other nations. Our talents are mostly exercised in India and Africa, but if one reigns absolutely anywhere, he carries himself as a king everywhere, and the ordinary Englishman annexes any place he fancies in holiday time because his fathers have been appropriating provinces from time immemorial. One sometimes falls a prey to the Philistine that is in us all, and begins also to despise what our friend pleasantly calls “all this scraping and bowing,” by which he means a Frenchman's politeness in little things, and is tempted to think that it would be better if local government on the Continent were relieved of a burden of petty rules and a host of gorgeous officials, and were reinforced by a strong infusion of downright common sense. One means, in plain words, that if a foreign district were handed over to an English stipendiary magistrate and a score of London policemen, its people would learn for the first time the scope and meaning of good government. Many well-doing Englishmen cannot unto this day achieve a single grammatical sentence in any language except their own, and are free from all pretensions. Our rector stoutly declares that in his popular lecture, “To Paris and back, or a Glimpse of French Life,” he did not cite the familiarity of Parisian children with French as a proof of the precocity of foreigners, but he can never watch two Frenchmen in conversation without innocent enjoyment. The sounds they make are marvellous, but it is beyond question that they mean something, and it is pleasant to know that persons who cannot speak English are not left without means of communication. Foreigners, an Englishman remembers, labour under hopeless disabilities. Little can be expected from a people whose language permits a sentence--in a scientific book too--to end with “zu, ab,” and one may not be Pharisaic and yet have gloomy views--this illustration can be used in the pulpit--about a nation that has no word for home. One of our French class at school, a stout gentleman now, and worth £100,000, declares he would never demean himself by any attempt at foreign tongues, and demands that foreigners should learn English, “which will yet be the language of the world.” He was recently boasting that he had travelled a month by the aid of signs, although he does himself less than justice, for on sight of the railway station he will say “Bannhof, eh?” to the driver in quite a jocular way, as one by way of pleasing a four-footed pet.