Indeed, among the things that most strikes a traveller through France, as characteristic of the people, is the skill with which persons of even the poorest classes prepare and serve up food. The French women are careful economists and excellent cooks. Nothing is wasted. The _pot au feu_ is always kept simmering on the hob, and, with the help of a hunch of bread, a good meal may at any time be made from it. Even in the humblest auberge, in the least frequented district, the dinner served up is of a quality such as can very rarely be had in any English public-house, or even in most of our country inns. Cooking seems to be one of the lost arts of England, if indeed it ever possessed it; and our people are in the habit, through want of knowledge, of probably _wasting_ more food than would sustain many another nation. But in the great system of National Education that is to be, no one dreams of including as a branch of it skill in the preparation and economy in the use of human food. There is another thing that the traveller through France may always depend upon, and that is civility. The politeness of even the French poor to each other is charming. They respect themselves, and they respect each other. I have seen in France what I have not yet seen in England--young working men walking out their aged mothers arm in arm in the evening, to hear the band play in the "Place," or to take a turn on the public promenade. But the French are equally polite to strangers. A stranger lady may travel all through the rural districts of France, and never encounter a rude look; a stranger gentleman, and never receive a rude word. That the French are a self-respecting people is also evinced by the fact that they are a sober people. Drunkenness is scarcely known in France; and one may travel all through it and never witness the degrading sight of a drunken man. The French are also honest and thrifty, and exceedingly hard-working. The industry of the people is unceasing. Indeed it is excessive; for they work Sunday and Saturday. Sunday has long ceased to be a Sabbath in France. There is no day of rest there. Before the Revolution, the saints' days which the Church ordered to be observed so encroached upon the hours required for labour, that in course of time Sunday became an ordinary working day. And when the Revolution abolished saints' days and Sabbath days alike, Sunday work became an established practice.