LIX
English women, even of the highest rank, look like dowdies in Paris; or exactly as countrywomen do in London. It is a rule-of-three proportion. A French milliner or servant maid laughs (not without reason) at an English Duchess. The more our fair country women dress à la Française, the more unlucky they seem; and the more foreign graces they give themselves, the more awkward they grow. They want the tournure Françoise. Oh! how we have ‘melted, thawed, and dissolved into a dew,’ to see a bustling, red-faced, bare-necked English Duchess, or banker’s wife, come into a box at the French theatre, bedizened and bedaubed! My Lady-mayoress or the Right Honourable the Countess Dowager of ——, before she ventures on the word vulgar, or scorns her untitled and untutored neighbours as beneath her notice, should go to see les Angloises pour rire! That is the looking-glass for upstart wealth and inflated aristocracy.