John Bull owes his success in this world--and perhaps in the next also--to his indifference towards woman, an indifference that he is fortunate enough to owe to his peculiar organisation and the uniform temperature of his blood, and which not only enables him to keep a cool head before the charms of the fair sex, but also to maintain them in a complete state of submission. The submission of woman to man is the basis of every solid social system. In John's eyes, woman is almost a necessary evil; a wife a partner of the firm; love-making a little _corvée_ more or less disagreeable. The Englishman is unquestionably well fitted for making colonies, but badly formed for making love: he has no _abandon_ about him, cannot forget himself, and passes his life in standing sentinel at the door of his dignity. It requires more skill to make love than to lead armies, said Ninon de Lenclos, who was an authority. Go to the theatre and you will hear the young lover declare himself to his lady-love in about the same tone as we should use at table in asking our neighbour, "May I trouble you for the mustard?" This "I love you" may be sincere, and is, I doubt not; but it certainly can never have the power of our "_Je t'aime_." The English language, in avoiding the second person singular, avoids familiarity. Here a man says _you_ alike to his mistress and his bootmaker. Who among us does not still feel a thrill of emotion and pleasure as he thinks of the moment when, for the first time, he grew bold enough to change _vous_ into _toi_? Where is the woman whose pulses did not quicken with love at the sound of those words, _Si tu savais comme je t'aime_, breathed low in her ear by her accepted lover. It is true that in our high society a man uses _vous_ in speaking to his wife, but if he loves her, _vous_ is only for the gallery: there are times when _toi_ is indispensable. After all, perhaps _you_ sits better on an Englishman, with his respect for his wife: a respect of which she must be a little inclined to complain occasionally. Only go and see John Bull's house, and once more, let me repeat that by John Bull I always mean the middle-class Englishman, with an income of from two to five hundred a year. You will find it all very comfortable: drawing-room, dining-room, library, breakfast-room. But the bedroom! Ah! the bedroom! You see at a glance that you are not in the temple of love, but in a refuge for sleep and repose. Of all the rooms in an English house, the bedroom is the least attractive looking, the one that has had the least care and money spent upon it: it always looks to me like a servant's room. No little cosy arm-chairs; no pretty furniture; no ornament. Few or no curtains.[1] You look in vain for a boudoir, that green-room of the little elf-god. No: six straight-backed fragile-looking cane chairs; an iron or brass bedstead; a dressing-table in front of the window; a chest of drawers; a washstand, and a sponge-bath.