CCCXIX. English Women have nothing to say on general subjects: French Women talk equally well on them or any other. This may be obviously accounted for from the circumstance that the two sexes associate much more together in France than they do with us, so that the tone of conversation in the women has become masculine, and that of the men effeminate. The tone of apathy and indifference in France to the weightier interests of reason and humanity is ascribable to the same cause. Women have no speculative faculty or fortitude of mind, and wherever they exercise a continual and paramount sway, all must be soon laughed out of countenance, but the immediately intelligible and agreeable—but the shewy in religion, the lax in morals, and the superficial in philosophy.
CCCXX. The texture of women’s minds, as well as of their bodies, is softer than that of men’s: but they have not the same strength of nerve, of understanding, or of moral purpose.
CCCXXI. In France knowledge circulates quickly from the mere communicativeness of the national disposition. Whatever is once discovered, be it good or bad, is made no secret of; but is spread quickly through all ranks and classes of society. Thought then runs along the surface of the mind like an electrical fluid; while the English understanding is a non-conductor to it, and damps it with its torpedo touch.
CCCXXII. The French are fond of reading as well as of talking. You may constantly see girls tending an apple-stall in the coldest day in winter, and reading Voltaire or Racine. Such a thing was never known in London as a barrow-woman reading Shakespear. Yet we talk of our widespread civilisation, and ample provisions for the education of the poor.
CCCXXIII. In comparing notes with the French, we cannot boast even of our superior conceit; for in that too they have the advantage of us.
CCCXXIV. It is curious that the French, with all their vivacity and love of external splendour, should tolerate nothing but their prosing, didactic style of tragedy on the stage; and that with all their flutter and levity they should combine the most laborious patience and minute finishing in works of art. A French student will take several weeks to complete a chalk drawing from a head of Leonardo da Vinci, which a dull, plodding Englishman would strike off in as many hours.
CCCXXV. The Dutch perhaps finished their landscapes so carefully, because there was a want of romantic and striking objects in them, so that they could only be made interesting by the accuracy of the details.
CCCXXVI. An awkward Englishman has an advantage in going abroad. Instead of having his deficiency more remarked, it is less so; for all Englishmen are thought awkward alike. Any slip in politeness or abruptness of address is attributed to an ignorance of foreign manners, and you escape under the cover of the national character. Your behaviour is no more criticised than your accent. They consider the barbarism of either as a compliment to their own superior refinement.
CCCXXVII. The difference between minuteness and subtlety or refinement seems to be this—that the one relates to the parts, and the other to the whole. Thus, the accumulation of a number of distinct particulars in a work, as the threads of a gold-laced buttonhole, or the hairs on the chin in a portrait of Denner’s, is minute or high finishing: the giving the gradations of tone in a sky of Claude’s from azure to gold, where the distinction at each step is imperceptible, but the whole effect is striking and grand, and can only be seized upon by the eye and taste, is true refinement and delicacy.
CCCXXVIII. The forte of the French is a certain facility and grace of execution. The Germans, who are the opposite to them, are full of throes and labour, and do everything by an overstrained and violent effort.