"These two men begin by studying each other very curiously and with a kind of secret uneasiness; they then turn away, or, if they meet, they are careful to speak only with a constrained and absent air, and to say things of little importance. "And yet they know nothing of each other; they have never met, and suppose each other to be perfectly honorable. Why, then, do they take such pains to avoid intercourse?" De Tocqueville was a very close observer, and I hardly know a single instance in which his faculty of observation shows itself in greater perfection. In his terse style of writing every word tells; and even in my translation, unavoidably inferior to the original, you actually see the two Englishmen and the minute details of their behavior. Let me now introduce the reader to a little scene at a foreign _table d'hôte_, as described with great skill and truth by a well-known English novelist, Miss Betham-Edwards:-- "The time, September; the scene, a _table d'hôte_ dinner in a much-frequented French town. For the most part nothing can be more prosaic than these daily assemblies of English tourists bound for Switzerland and the South, and a slight sprinkling of foreigners, the two elements seldom or never blending; a visitant from another planet might, indeed, suppose that between English and French-speaking people lay such a gulf as divides the blond New Englander from the swarth African, so icy the distance, so unbroken the reserve. Nor is there anything like cordiality between the English themselves. Our imaginary visitant from Jupiter would here find matter for wonder also, and would ask himself the reason of this freezing reticence among the English fellowship. What deadly feud of blood, caste, or religion could thus keep them apart? Whilst the little knot of Gallic travellers at the farther end of the table straightway fall into friendliest talk, the long rows of Britons of both sexes and all ages speak only in subdued voices and to the members of their own family."