My next point was that a successful nation would pursue the arts and sciences fruitfully. Both France and England may look back with satisfaction to all that has been done during the last fifty years. There has been absolutely no sign in either country of decadence, notwithstanding frequent self-depreciation. Of the scientific progress that has been made I will say little, from simple incompetence to deal with a subject so vast and so much beyond my grasp. I only know, as an ignorant yet interested spectator, that hardly any enterprise now seems to be too great for the intelligence of English and French engineers, or for the skill of the workmen whom they direct. If they do not build pyramids greater than those of Egypt and hippodromes more substantial than the Coliseum, it is only because there is no demand for them. Ours is the age of communication, and here England takes the lead with her railways, France with her admirable system of common roads and her complete inland navigation. France has made the Suez Canal, has attacked Panama, and is looking forward to a ship canal from Paris to the sea. Lancashire is making Manchester a seaport, and Scotland is bridging over the Firth of Forth. A gigantic project for a bridge from Dover to Calais is on the list of things that French engineers consider possible. It is difficult to state fairly what has been contributed by each country to the improvement of the railway and the telegraph; it is plain, however, that the practical art of railway travelling first originated in England. The first balloon rose in French air, and a balloon was for the first time successfully steered in France. The French are generally a little ahead of the English in military inventions, as in the use of breech-loading cannon and improved rifles and gun-powder, as well as other explosives, and now in the strength and perfection of armour-plating. Almost all the improvements in scientific agriculture are of English origin, and so are the machines used in it which are now extensively sold in France. Whilst the English are the greater maritime nation of the two and have an incomparably larger carrying trade, improvements in ship-building have usually originated either with the French or the Americans. In the construction of pleasure-boats, the English are ahead of the French for sea-going yachts (though inferior to the Americans), but the French with their great rivers have studied and brought to perfection the small centre-board sloop which tacks rapidly.
Manufactures.
Printing.
French Éditions de Bibliophile.
Common French Editions.
French Book-buyers.
French Carelessness about cheap Work.
Careless Correcting.
I am not a good judge of any kind of manufacture except those connected with literature or the fine arts, so I will pass by the cottons of Manchester and the silks of Lyons with the simple observation that Lancashire has produced the spinning jenny and Lyons the Jacquard loom. With regard to the printing of newspapers and books, which I understand better, the French are admirable in the exquisite, but their common work is not so good as the English. French éditions de bibliophile, such as those of Lemerre, Jouaust, Tross, and the Société de Saint Augustin, not to mention many publications by Quantin and others, are equal to the best work of English printers in the mechanical qualities of type-cutting and clearness of impression, whilst they are, I think, a little superior to it in taste. All the French éditions de bibliophile that I possess or have examined are scrupulously correct in their freedom from typographic errors, whilst with common French editions it is just the contrary. There is a very well known Parisian publishing house that issues an immense quantity of volumes so rich in typographic faults that no English publisher would own them; yet ordinary French readers, who are very inattentive and also very patient, either do not notice or do not object to them. The fact is that there are two distinct classes of book-buyers in France—les amateurs and le vulgaire. The first are hard to please, and will have nothing to do with ugly or faulty editions, whilst they will give any price for exquisitely perfect work; the second neither know nor care anything about the matter, and in producing for them it does not signify how bad the work may be, provided only that the price does not exceed three francs fifty centimes per volume. The carelessness of the French about cheap work used to be very conspicuous in their newspapers, but these have improved during the last decade. I well remember the time when it was almost impossible to find a single English name or quotation, however brief, correctly printed in a French newspaper. English critics always attributed these faults to the writers of the articles, but they were more frequently due to absolute carelessness in correcting.[87] The press-work, too, used to be disgraceful; it is now fairly good in the daily papers and excellent in the illustrated weeklies. France is not a good country for presentable editions at moderate prices. The two most popular poets—Victor Hugo and Alfred de Musset—are not to be had in anything answering to the readable current editions of Tennyson. There are the big octavos and the little exquisite Elzevirs for amateurs, and the vulgar editions for the public.
The Exquisite and the Vulgar.