Not only does the place of education give no social position to a Frenchman, but education itself now gives him very little, because it has been made accessible to poor men. Eton and Oxford are respected because they are expensive;—if the same education, or a better, were given in cheap schools, it would lose its social significance. France seems to have reached, or almost reached, that point towards which the whole world is tending, when education will be too common to confer rank, and it is even possible we may get back to the middle-age idea that it is lordly to be illiterate. Even now, something of this sentiment is distinctly perceptible in France. Clever young men in the middle class are considered to be working creditably for persons in their line of life, but the nobility do not meet them on that ground; they outshine them, not in learning, but in field-sports and equipages.
The Native Language.
Clever Frenchwomen in the Middle Classes.
Rare Use of the Best English.
A refined way of speaking the native language does something for social position in England. English people say of a man, “He has a good accent, he speaks like a gentleman;” in France so many middle-class people speak well habitually that pure speech has almost ceased to be a distinction. Even if the men had not broken down that barrier, clever Frenchwomen would have removed it. How many of them have I met with, in the middle classes, who, for enunciation, articulation, readiness and accuracy of expression, and precision of accent, spoke quite as well as ladies of rank! This, too, in a country where clear, and prompt, and accurate speaking is valued and appreciated to a degree unknown in England. It is only the most cultivated English people who dare to employ, in conversation, the full powers of their noble tongue; the others shrink from the best use of it, and accustom themselves to forms of speech that constitute, in reality, a far inferior language, in which it is so difficult to express thought and sentiment that they are commonly left unexpressed.[15]
Culture versus Rank.
French Aristocracy unaccustomed to work.
Character of the French Rural Aristocracy.
Intellectual Industry of some Retired Tradesmen.
Barbarians in the Upper Classes.