We cannot but believe that though amusing, these caricatures--exhibited as they are to ignorant and prejudiced minds--tend to confound the just relations between one people and another. Perhaps friendly Excursions on both sides of the channel may do much to lessen these absurdities. Unfortunately--as recent publications too well prove--the mistaken estimate of the English is by no means corrected by the graver works now and then put forth by distinguished men. Highly as we esteem M. Guizot and some Frenchmen of real attainments, who have written upon England, we have never taken up a book on the subject without painful disappointment, or without seeing in it errors almost equal to M. Ledru Rollin’s more recent incongruities. To the honour of our modern English authors be it spoken, they have been zealous to avoid such ridiculous mistakes. It is true that the harmless old legends respecting Foreigners--that nine-tenths of them are Frenchmen; that all are of very slender proportions in figure; that their staple diet is frogs; and that, despite Alison’s and every other History of Europe, they very much prefer to dance than to fight; together with other popular delusions--still linger in the minds of some of our bold peasantry and milder cockneys; but it is to be hoped, after many years of peace and better sense, that we may now claim for the majority of even an under-educated British public, a more correct knowledge of the personnel and manners of our Continental neighbours, than our Continental neighbours manifestly have of us. The very foible of Lord Pudding himself--that of being a _travelling_ Englishman--would defend him from such blunders as the literary Frankenstein who gave life to the monster, has fallen into. Travelling Englishmen are common abroad, who speak foreign languages, and understand foreign customs, extremely well. There are many of our travellers whom we should be very glad to improve: and thanks to railways, and to our possession of some--though not very much--of the wealth which the foreign dramatic and fictionist artists so liberally attribute to us, we are rapidly polishing off the rust of national prejudice, and ignorance of our brethren abroad. Should an English author or actor be guilty of such laughable mistakes about foreigners as those we have pointed out, woe unutterable would alight on his ignorant head.