D., you old humbug! what do you mean by uttering your shallow vulgar criticism on the greatest nation of Continental Europe? You know nothing of their history, except that they were beaten at the battle of Waterloo; you can't speak a word of their language; you can't read one of their newspapers; you are supremely ignorant of their character and institutions, and yet you treat them as a mob of hairdressers, dancing masters, and cooks (and not good cooks either), and exult in the time-honoured conviction that one Englishman can thrash two Frenchmen. DOWLAS, attend to me, I am going to talk about taste--a word that ought to excite shame and anguish in your mind. For a quarter of a century you have been smothering the world with printed fabrics of fantastic and horrible ugliness. Millions upon millions of yards of these abominations have found their way into every nook and corner of the world. Remote tribes of wandering Tartars and the squaws of painted Choktaws have clad their bodies and depraved their souls with your outrageous patterns. Bales marked with the well-known D. (oh, how could you, MR. DOWLAS, Sir?) have carried their baleful influence into the innocent populations of the Peaceful Ocean. The least hideous of these productions are those you have stolen (and spoiled) from the French, and if there is any improvement in your patterns of late years, it is entirely to be attributed to your piracy of French designs. The fact is, that France has become the Mistress of Arts to the world. If England lives in a fever of industry, _she_ lives in a fever of invention. Every novelty we have is due to her restless creative spirit. In arts, in letters, in philosophy, she scatters abroad new ideas with unsparing profusion; other nations, following with unequal steps, treasure up what falls, and claim it as their own. This exuberance of fancy is only the result of the universal artistic feeling which seems to animate her citizens. You cannot go anywhere in Paris without being conscious of this. Every shop window is a picture. Look at that pastrycook's. A few pieces of china and half-a-dozen bon-bon boxes form a composition that is really charming. Is there any one from Marlborough House could do it as well? Only think of the tons of three-cornered tarts and Bath buns that form the decoration of a London confectioner's. And yet this pretty arrangement is due to the intuitive taste of the little scrubby ignorant daughter of the people who serves in the shop. I will not draw your attention to the quiet becoming style of her dress, because you have often confessed to me in private your admiration of Parisian toilettes, though in the presence of MRS. D. you loudly affect to prefer the dowdy manner adopted by that lady in common with the most part of her countrywomen. I will, therefore, make no further mention of ladies' costume, only protesting that, in my opinion, all Frenchwomen in their degree dress to perfection, and that an ugly bonnet is no certain