The Express.
London, England, 1858-09-28 00:00:00

EXPRESS FROM PARIS.

(7103 003 OWN

PARIS, MONDAT EYINING7

In the Univers M. Xavier de Fontana gives us
one of those solemnly ridiculous anti-English
articles, which, from the amusement they afford,
are so welcome on a day when there is rarely suy
intelligent,e of importance. I would willingly give
your readers the benefit of the whole, but it is very
long, and one may get tiled of too much even of
the very funniest thing. Oar author regrets that
the glorious days of Louis XIV. are no more, when
there was throughout the kingdom a wholesome
hatred of England and the English. To be rare
this hatred did not extend t the Protestant subjects
of the Great Monarch, who generally had their sons
brought up either there or in Holland: and of
whom, when the father of his people revoked the
edict of Nantes, some 100,000 took refuge with the
natural foes of Prance. This great national
disaster, from which France never has
recovered, and never will recover, is of
too little importance to be dwelt upon by M. de
Fontanes. The fist importation of that contraband
article, Anglomania, he places in the reign of the
Sixteenth Louis :—" God knows," he says, " the
good king himself was innocent of the act. He,
in imitation of his glorious ancestor, the fourteenth
of his name, was satisfied with being French." He
thought French society had nothing to learn from
English society, and that there was humiliation in
aping England. He never let an opportunity escape
him of publicly displaying his aversion for whatever
came from the other side of the Channel. Apropos of
this, it is related—but not mentioned by M. de
Fontanes--that on the return of one of his nobles
from England, he asked what the traveller had
learnt in that country. "To think (passer)," was
the reply. " Ah, you mean parser is. chemists ! (to
dress horses)," said his Majesty. But to return—
" Anglomania has survived the revolution and the
great wan of the empire. It still exists in spite of
the numerous causes which separate France from
England. We candidly admit that we cannot com-
prehend this passion—this enthusiasm for a country
which has always been hostile to us." Now comes a
grand discovery. The missions of France and Eng-
land are indeed wide apart : " England is the world's
cotton-spinner. France is the missionary of the
Gospel!" It maddens our author to see how the num-
skulls of the Debate and the Sisinie—the Michel-
Chevaliers, the Parasols, the LO la B6dollidres—
on all occasions quote English statistics when treat-
ing of French commerce and French agriculture.
England and France are antipathic countries, with
no community of thoughts, feelings, habits, aims.
How absurd to pretend that on ought to imitate
the other! How doubly absurd to argue that
because the one is behind the other in commerce
and agriculture, she is, as a nation, at all the inferior
of her rival ! " What though English commerce
reaches seven milliards, while that of Frans is be-
tween threeand four, oar wants are less than those of
England(although we hen a population of something
like ten millions more than she has), and our soil
gives us far mss than does that of England._ln can
of necessity, France could exist without the sea.
Without the sea, famine would devour the English
people . . . England gets on tolerably well
with the liberty of the preen and parliamentarian).
Experience has taught us, since 1815, that France
I cannot exist under such a rlyinte, that it would
prove our destruction." Now follows a passage which
might have been printed from a Sy-leaf ef Louis
Blanc's note-book : " Although Lanus has far some
years put enjoyed the distinction of containing all
the professors of barricades in Europe, what a poor'
affair is an English outbreak! It is a mere farce.
A ragged mob breaking windows and hallooing.
Their ordinary weapons are stone--very few of
them have ever haadled a musket. Fifty dragoons
show themselves, and all is over ! In France, on
the contrary, an trusts is a terrible battle. What,
blood his flowed in the streets of Paris since 1830!"
With respect to agriculture, although M. Lavergne
is quoted to prove that we can show no farming
equal to that in the department of the Nord--inns-
mach as it nits the legitimist writers of the Univers
I to applaud our system of primogeniture, our general
superiority in all that concerns the management of
land is accounted for by the fact that estates with
as may remain entire from one generation to another.
But a heavy sharge is made against England, of
which she is surely Innocent. " Formerly French
'society was renowned for its urbanity, its bon tow,
its exquisitely choice language. Now, the cigar
has replaced oonversetion. Whence is this chews P
It is because the club has replaced the drawing-
room—the °lab, that British importation The
Adglo•maniec may rejoice, but what has society
gained P Should we not have done better to remain
I French, Wu car forefathers ?" Admitting that the