Voltaire and Rousseau have the double title to hatred of being Frenchmen and freethinkers. But even orthodox Frenchmen fare little better. 'The French Bossuets, Bourdaloues, Fenelons, &c., whatever may be thought of their meagre and attenuated rhetoric, are one and all the most commonplace of thinkers.' In fact, the mere mention of France acts upon him like a red rag on a bull. The French, 'in whom the lower forms of passion are constantly bubbling up, from the shallow and superficial character of their feelings,' are incapable of English earnestness. Their taste is 'anything but good in all that department of wit and humour'--the department, apparently, of anecdotes--'and the ground lies in their natural want of veracity;' whereas England bases upon its truthfulness a well-founded claim to 'a moral pre-eminence among the nations.' Belgians, French, and Italians attract the inconsiderate by 'facile obsequiousness,' which, however, is a pendent of 'impudence and insincerity. Want of principle and want of moral sensibility compose the original _fundus_ of southern manners.' Our faults of style, such as they are, proceed from our manliness. In France there are no unmarried women at the age which amongst us gives the insulting name of old maid. 'What striking sacrifices of sexual honour does this one fact argue!' The French style is remarkable for simplicity--'a strange pretension for anything French;' but on the whole the intellectual merits of their style are small, 'chiefly negative,' and 'founded on the accident of their colloquial necessities.' They are amply compensated, too, by 'the prodigious defects of the French in all the higher qualities of prose composition.' Even their handwriting is the 'very vilest form of scribbling which exists in Europe,' and they and the Germans are 'the two most gormandising races in Europe.' They display a brutal selfishness in satisfying their appetites, whereas Englishmen at all public meals are remarkably conspicuous for 'a spirit of mutual attention and self-sacrifice.' It is enough to show the real degradation of their habits, that they use the 'odious gesture' of shrugging their shoulders, and are fond of the 'vile ejaculation "bah!"' which is as bad as to puff the smoke of a tobacco-pipe into your companion's face. They have neither self-respect nor respect for others. French masters are never dignified, though sometimes tyrannical; French servants are always, even without meaning it, disrespectfully familiar. Many of their manners and usages are 'essentially vulgar, and their apparent affability depends not on kindness of heart, but love of talking.'