Here is a good fellow who has undoubtedly visited the wrong places.
The Frenchman is no better. He comes to London for a week on business. (I say "on business," because nobody would think of coming to London on pleasure), and profits by his visit to go and see Madame Tussaud's Exhibition. Then he returns home, and exclaims, parodying Victor Hugo's celebrated lines: "How proud a man is to call himself a Frenchman when he has looked at England."
He has looked at England, it is true, but he has not seen it.
To look is an action of the body. To see is an action of the mind.
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When people travel in foreign lands, they often make two kinds of mistakes.
Firstly, they are liable to visit the wrong places, like the Englishman who returned home "thanking God he was born an Englishman."
Secondly, they draw conclusions too quickly.
Let us illustrate this.
When English people alight at a French hotel and find no soap on the washstand, do you believe they conclude from this that the French carry their own soap in their trunks when they travel? Not they. They conclude that the French do not wash, or that, if they do, their ablutions are performed by means of a corner of a handkerchief dipped in water.