KEEP your tempers, Messieurs; we shall not quarrel. There is a difference between Impudence and Impertinence. The two words are often used synonymously by the vulgar, but they are no more alike than any other two words that begin with an I. 'When we behold an angel, not to fear is to be IMPUDENT,' says DRYDEN: 'We should avoid the IMPERTINENCE of pedants,' says SWIFT. These two great masters of the English tongue have well defined the difference between the two words. There is always an air of confident greatness about impudence that wins respect, and not infrequently success. ALEXANDER was assuredly the most impudent man of his time; so was CAESAR; so was LUTHER. Even now, when half the human race has grown impudent, we cannot but wonder at the impudence of that obscure monk. GALILEO, too, was a very impudent fellow until the well-bred 'Rev. and dear Sirs' of his time taught him modesty. And CROMWELL! what an Arch-Impudence was he! And NAPOLEON! he put Impudence itself to the blush. And have there been no Impudences among us? It cannot be denied that our Fourth-of-July-men made a very impudent declaration, to say the least of it. But these were all individual instances. The French are impudent as a nation. They have no sense of modesty. They insist that all the world shall eat French, drink French, talk French, dance French, and dress French. Did ever any traveller visit a city or town in any quarter of the globe in which a Frenchman had not set up a restaurant? FANNY ELLSLER was astonished when she landed at the American Hotel, to find that her dinner had been prepared by a Parisian cook; and yet she had come over here to show us her French steps. Simple Fanny! How did she think we could live without French cookery, if we could not live without French dancing? What traveller has ever visited a remote village that a French _modiste_ had not visited before him? Is it possible to dine any where, without having a French bill of fare thrust into your hand, and some dish with an _a la_ under your nose? Is there a living being in any part of the world willing to make oath to having visited a ball-room or a church without encountering a French dress or a French bonnet? The Quakers cannot; they would as soon wear scarlet ribbons as any other than French gloves and French muslins.