So it always was, so shall ever be.”
The Attraction of Greece for Englishmen.
The love of a foreign language is enough to give us a friendly interest in the country where it is spoken to perfection, and as Englishmen are better linguists than the French, foreign countries have this attraction for them. They are also better scholars, and therefore may be more drawn towards Greece.
The French love Algeria or Italy.
Some Frenchmen have this second love, and when they feel nostalgia for any land out of France it is sure to be Algeria or Italy. Frenchmen never have any local affections in England. They may keep a grateful recollection of English houses where they have been kindly received, but have never any delight in England as a country. Their prejudices against its climate and about the absence of taste and art are ineradicable.
Love of the French for France.
Illusions.
France the Pet of Providence.
The love that the French have for France is associated with many innocent illusions. They believe it to be the only perfectly civilised country in the world, the home of all the arts, of all scientific and intellectual culture. Of late years France is to the republicans the one country where political and religious liberty is complete. It is, of course, the land where French people feel most at home, where they can most readily get the superfluities which are necessary to them—the elaborately-ordered and complete repasts, the abundant fruits, the varied drinks, the talk in the café, the lively and pointed newspaper articles that they can understand at a glance, the clever plays that they listen to with such rapt attention. Those Frenchmen who believe in a Providence think that it has specially favoured their own country. “Dieu protège la France.” Before the phylloxera came He gave his Frenchmen wine and refused it to the canting English, before the German invasion He gave them the intoxicating wine of victory. They have marvellous illusions about their climate; they think of it as a
“Fair clime where every season smiles