They Eat Grapes And Bread From
Seven Till Nine, From Nine Till Twelve They Dress Their Hair, And
Are All The Afternoon Gaping At The Window To View Passengers.
I
don't perceive that they give themselves the trouble either to
make their beds, or clean their apartment.
The same spirit of
idleness and dissipation I have observed in every part of France,
and among every class of people.
Every object seems to have shrunk in its dimensions since I was
last in Paris. The Louvre, the Palais-Royal, the bridges, and the
river Seine, by no means answer the ideas I had formed of them
from my former observation. When the memory is not very correct,
the imagination always betrays her into such extravagances. When
I first revisited my own country, after an absence of fifteen
years, I found every thing diminished in the same manner, and I
could scarce believe my own eyes.
Notwithstanding the gay disposition of the French, their houses
are all gloomy. In spite of all the ornaments that have been
lavished on Versailles, it is a dismal habitation. The apartments
are dark, ill-furnished, dirty, and unprincely. Take the castle,
chapel, and garden all together, they make a most fantastic
composition of magnificence and littleness, taste, and foppery.
After all, it is in England only, where we must look for cheerful
apartments, gay furniture, neatness, and convenience. There is a
strange incongruity in the French genius. With all their
volatility, prattle, and fondness for bons mots, they delight in
a species of drawling, melancholy, church music.
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