United States or Vanuatu ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
As to Shakespeare, it has time out of mind been an article of faith with the insolent insulars that he is quite above any Frenchman's reach. One by one they are driven from their foolish prejudices, and made to confess that Frenchmen may equal them in some serious things, as well as beat them in all the lighter accomplishments.
In fact, it is difficult now to take seriously the impassioned protests with which a number of insulars greeted the proposal. Nevertheless, in one sense the change of title came about most inopportunely. Fate willed that over against the Durbar at Delhi there stood forth the spectral form of Famine, bestriding the dusty plains of the Carnatic.
"Abroad, these fair insulars occasionally unbend and are charming" she says, "but at all times I have found Englishmen of birth the best bred and most agreeable men in the world." Since her withdrawal from European life Mme. Bonaparte has lived secluded from society.
And to finish these extracts with a most important suggestion for the improvement of the British nation: "It is much to be lamented that our Insulars who act and think so much for themselves, should yet, from grossness of air and diet, grow stupid or doat sooner than other people, who, by virtue of elastic air, water-drinking, and light food, preserve their faculties to extreme old age; an advantage which may perhaps be approached, if not equaled, even in these regions, by Tar Water, temperance, and early hours."
It is curious that, much as cleanliness is thought of among ourselves, we are content to wear linen washed and ironed so execrably as we do. Clean linen in England means one thing, in France another; and no French maid or waiter would put on the half-washed, half-ironed linen we aristocratic insulars wear so complacently. Here indeed is a field for female enterprize!
And to finish these extracts with a most important suggestion for the improvement of the British nation: "It is much to be lamented that our Insulars who act and think so much for themselves, should yet, from grossness of air and diet, grow stupid or doat sooner than other people, who, by virtue of elastic air, water-drinking, and light food, preserve their faculties to extreme old age; an advantage which may perhaps be approached, if not equaled, even in these regions, by Tar Water, temperance, and early hours."
He also established the feast of San Juan, which lasted, and still lasts, the whole month of June; and when some respectable people, Insulars as well as Peninsulars, protested against this official propaganda of vice and idleness, he replied: "Let them be while they dance and gamble they don't conspire; ... these people must be governed by three B's Barraja, Botella, and Berijo."
Ah, how you are dull, you insulars, and how impossible for your foggy island to produce a Fouche, a Canler, a genius of police, a Columbus of the subterranean darknesses of your city. The brother, dying, advertises for the sister, dead; and who will answer that letter, think you?
Word Of The Day