Said I, turning pale with astonishment - is it possible,
that a people so smit with sentiment should at the same time be so
unclean, and so unlike themselves, - Quelle grossierte!
Added I.
The French officer told me, it was an illiberal sarcasm at the
church, which had begun in the theatre about the time the Tartuffe
was given in it by Moliere: but like other remains of Gothic
manners, was declining. - Every nation, continued he, have their
refinements and grossiertes, in which they take the lead, and lose
it of one another by turns: - that he had been in most countries,
but never in one where he found not some delicacies, which others
seemed to want. Le POUR et le CONTRE se trouvent en chaque nation;
there is a balance, said he, of good and bad everywhere; and
nothing but the knowing it is so, can emancipate one half of the
world from the prepossession which it holds against the other: -
that the advantage of travel, as it regarded the scavoir vivre, was
by seeing a great deal both of men and manners; it taught us mutual
toleration; and mutual toleration, concluded he, making me a bow,
taught us mutual love.
The old French officer delivered this with an air of such candour
and good sense, as coincided with my first favourable impressions
of his character: - I thought I loved the man; but I fear I mistook
the object; - 'twas my own way of thinking - the difference was, I
could not have expressed it half so well.
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