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What a strange, ungrateful animal is man! What respect he has for his conquerors! What contempt for those he can conquer! When he speaks of the lion that devours him, or the eagle that tears his flesh, he is ready to take off his hat to them; when he speaks of the donkey that renders him great service, or of the goose that furnishes him a good dinner, a pen to write with, and a bed to lie on, he cannot sufficiently express his contempt.
Do you remember, dear American friends, how, some four years ago, a certain Lord Sackville, British minister in Washington, was given twenty-four hours to leave the country? Never had John Bull been administered a better kick before. Did he go to war with America? Oh, no. The prime minister of England declared that you could not expect "gentlemanly manners from American politicians," and John Bull was satisfied, and he set about bullying little Portugal about some South African bit of territory.
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When the Englishman meets with his superior, he is ready to admit it. If he be jealous of him, he will not expose himself to ridicule by showing it. He does not shun the prosperous man, he cultivates his acquaintance. He is not necessarily a schemer for that; where there is no meanness there is no scheming. He acknowledges all the aristocracies; the aristocracy of birth, the aristocracy of money, and the aristocracy of talent; and I only blame him for one thing, which is that he has much less admiration for the third of these than for the other two. At a public dinner, in England, you may see in the places of honor, on either side of the chairman, one or two lordlings, then the wealthy guests ... then, but much farther down, the literary men, artists, and other small fry.
We French people have not the bump of veneration very much developed, it is true; but we have an admiration, approaching veneration, for talent and science, and the same Frenchman who takes no notice of a duke, will turn to get a second look at a great literary man or a savant. The commonplace Englishman, who humbles himself before a village squire, or a big banker, takes his revenge when he meets the schoolmaster who, in France, would be a professeur, but who, in England, were he a double first of Oxford, an ex-scholar of Balliol College, goes through life by the name of schoolmaster; rinse your mouth quickly.
In England, social disparity excites no jealousy. On the contrary, the noble and the wealthy are popular.
In France, we have given up admitting superiority since our walls have been ornamented with the announcement that all Frenchmen are brethren, free men, and equals. This rage for equality degenerates into jealousy of all superiority. In fact, the French are all equal to their superiors, and most of them superior to their equals. As soon as superiority clearly manifests itself, in political life, in literature, in the fine arts, anywhere, it is ostracized.
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I was talking one day with a Frenchman, who still massacres the English language, although he has lived in this country more than twenty years. In the course of conversation I named a compatriot of ours. "Now, there is a man," said I, "who speaks English admirably."