Arras.

Our countrymen who visit France for the first time—­their imaginations filled with the epithets which the vanity of one nation has appropriated, and the indulgence of the other sanctioned—­are astonished to find this “land of elegance,” this refined people, extremely inferior to the English in all the arts that minister to the comfort and accommodation of life.  They are surprized to feel themselves starved by the intrusion of all the winds of heaven, or smothered by volumes of smoke—­that no lock will either open or shut—­that the drawers are all immoveable—­and that neither chairs nor tables can be preserved in equilibrium.  In vain do they inquire for a thousand conveniences which to them seem indispensible; they are not to be procured, or even their use is unknown:  till at length, after a residence in a score of houses, in all of which they observe the same deficiencies, they begin to grow sceptical, to doubt the pretended superiority of France, and, perhaps for the first time, do justice to their own unassuming country.  It must however, be confessed, that if the chimnies smoke, they are usually surrounded by marble—­that the unstable chair is often covered with silk—­and that if a room be cold, it is plentifully decked with gilding, pictures, and glasses.—­In short, a French house is generally more showy than convenient, and seldom conveys that idea of domestic comfort which constitutes the luxury of an Englishman.

I observe, that the most prevailing ornaments here are family portraits:  almost every dwelling, even among the lower kind of tradesmen, is peopled with these ensigns of vanity; and the painters employed on these occasions, however deficient in other requisites of their art, seem to have an unfortunate knack at preserving likenesses.  Heads powdered even whiter than the originals, laced waistcoats, enormous lappets, and countenances all ingeniously disposed so as to smile at each other, encumber the wainscot, and distress the unlucky visitor, who is obliged to bear testimony to the resemblance.  When one sees whole rooms filled with these figures, one cannot help reflecting on the goodness of Providence, which thus distributes self-love, in proportion as it denies those gifts that excite the admiration of others.

You must not understand what I have said on the furniture of French houses as applying to those of the nobility or people of extraordinary fortunes, because they are enabled to add the conveniences of other countries to the luxuries of their own.  Yet even these, in my opinion, have not the uniform elegance of an English habitation:  there is always some disparity between the workmanship and the materials—­some mixture of splendour and clumsiness, and a want of what the painters call keeping; but the houses of the gentry, the lesser noblesse, and merchants, are, for the most part, as I have described—–­abounding in silk, marble, glasses, and pictures; but ill finished, dirty, and deficient in articles of real use.—­I should, however, notice, that genteel people are cleaner here than in the interior parts of the kingdom.  The floors are in general of oak, or sometimes of brick; but they are always rubbed bright, and have not that filthy appearance which so often disgusts one in French houses.