The daily morning journal and courier., 1898-12-20

OllitI WISE IS It Wllu lllS tWO NpthtAiNS SO often, politically speaking, at variance This subject might well i'll many pages. I will endeavor in the brlefest possible language to indicate a phase and account for an enthusiasm de- sienated as Anglomania by unfriendly critics over the water. The immense attention of late years paid in France to | English institutions, art and letters has | not escaped general obSeiN ation among ourselves. Indeed, some of the | excellent works recently published on such topics have been translated, mo- | tably M. Demolin's celebrated eulogium Of the Anglo-saxon. Our public | schools, our colonies, our trades-unions | have found opponents in Max Leclere, | Leroy -Beaulieu and others equally impartial and equally competent. | Ilistorians, abandoning tho legendary anmus of their predecessors, have | treated England from a judicial point of view in manuals written for the I.ycee and primary schools. Following In their wake, critics have turned from | Tolstoi and Turgeneff to Wordsworth | and Elizabeth Barrett Browning.
 The most important book inspired by | the poet of ''The Excursion" in any l language is from the pen of a Lycee professor, while another enthusiast for English poetry, M. Texte, has just | written a charming monograph on Aurora Leigh"
 | Nor is English art neglected, either | by individuals or the State. Most readers are doubtless familiar with the papers that have from time to time ap- peared on Ruskn, Burne- Jones and others in the Revue des Deux Mon-' des," and surely most visitors in Paris will visit the recently opened Sale Anglaise" of the Louvre, a gallery de- i voted to Constable, Romney and other i old English painters. Artistic folks in France paper their walls with the de- , signs of William Morris and Walter Morris and Walter Crane. The decora- i tion of modern French drawing-room recalls Melbury Road
 Other importations from our shores ] may be learned by referring to the latest dictionary appendix. Golf, foot ball, paper chase have been added to the list of outdoor sports. 'Patiences, or card games of patience, will soon, 1 doubtless follow. We are no longer in vited by French hosts to midday de- jeuner, but to 1 o'clock lunch, and hot ] buttered toast is the accompaniment 1 of o'clock tea.
 England, indeed, so say old fashioned French folks, las been overpraised, and l is in danger of being over-imitated.
 This talk about Anglo-Saxon ex- ge ,I ,yelI chc 10 critic of this calibre to an English friend but we French folks have our own character, let us keep it. I have travelled in your country, and have
 good English friends, nevertheless, I hold to my opinion. The present fashion of anglicizing everything is being
 carried much too far. Your young girls who go out cycling with their
 friends of the other sex alone have been brought up to independent habits,
 and risk nothing by indulging in them. With young Frenee girls the case 1t quite fferent, and I foresee the gravest danger from such an innova tion."
 How far English and French educa
 ton differ in the nursey the following
 examples will show Quite lately two
 English boys aged respectively eight and nine, received Royal Humane Society's medals for rescue and at- tempted rescue of their companions.
 And the other day a Frenchwoman and her English guest were partaking of tea in neighbours garden. Look at that big boy of mine'' remarked the former. He has his nose in a book | from morning till night, yet has to be washed and dressed like a baby. How | French all his isl" Nevertheless these coddled petted, overcared-for little beings are often subjected to or
 deals happily unknown among our
 selves. We have no Lycees-those dreary prisons to which hapless child ren are consigned in tender years, those "Bastilles awaiting another revo-
 lution" so movingly described by Jean
 Aicard in his autobiographical novel, | "L'ame dun enfant."
 Just as French educatonalists are
 insisting upon the superiority of our
 nursery regime-a following up of Herbert Spencers theories-so do they
 clamor for Lycee internals or the mass ing together of boarders-hundreds of
 boys from seven years, and upward as
 completely shut out from home and
 feminine influence as our criminals in | Portland Prision. M. Aicards book is bitter indictment of the military sys-
 tenn in education. There is one point l most strikingly brought out by all
 French writers in England. Whether
 they are treating of our schools, our social and philanthropic movements,
 our trades-unions or our home legisla- tion, one and all dwell on the education
 of the conscience with us, the moral
 and religious training as developed in
 the various phase of our national life.
 Take, for instance, the great work of
 the first living French philosopher,
 La Psychologie due Peuple F'rancais"
 of M. Fouillee. Tt has been justly
 remarked" he writes, that the tenn