"They Return
From Travel With A Wonderful Confidence Which May Very Well Be Called
Impudence ...
All their learning is in wearing their clothes well; they
have very much without their heads, very little within; and
They are
very much more solicitous that their periwigs fit handsomely, than to
speak discreetly; they laugh at what they do not understand, which
understanding so little, makes their laughter very immoderate. When they
have been at home two or three years, which they spend in the vanities
which they brought over with them, fresh travellers arrive with newer
fashions, and the same confidence, and are looked upon as finer
gentlemen, and wear their ribbons more gracefully; at which the others
are angry, quit the stage, and would fain get into wiser company, where
they every day find defects in themselves, which they owe to the ill
spending that time when they thought only of being fine gentlemen."[385]
When these products of a French education could not remain in town, but
were obliged to live on their estates amid rough country squires, it
went hard with them. "They will by no means embrace our way," says The
Country Gentleman in Clarendon's Dialogue of the Want of Respect Due to
Age, "but receive us with cringes and treat us with set speeches, and
complain how much it rains, that they cannot keep their hair dry, or
their linnen handsome one hour. They talk how much a better country
France is and how much they eat and drink better there, which our
neighbors will not believe, and laugh at them for saying so.
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