Whether you examine the French in their houses or in public, you are
every where stricken with the same want of delicacy, propriety, and
cleanliness. The streets are mostly so filthy, that it is perilous to
approach the walls. The insides of the churches are often disgusting, in
spite of the advertisements that are placed in them to request the
forbearance of phthifical persons: the service does not prevent those who
attend from going to and fro with the same irreverence as if the church
were empty; and, in the most solemn part of the mass, a woman is suffered
to importune you for a liard, as the price of the chair you sit on. At
the theatres an actor or actress frequently coughs and expectorates on
the stage, in a manner one should think highly unpardonable before one's
most intimate friends in England, though this habit is very common to all
the French. The inns abound with filth of every kind, and though the
owners of them are generally civil enough, their notions of what is
decent are so very different from ours, that an English traveller is not
soon reconciled to them. In short, it would be impossible to enumerate
all that in my opinion excludes the French from the character of a
well-bred people.--Swift, who seems to have been gratified by the
contemplation of physical impurity, might have done the subject justice;
but I confess I am not displeased to feel that, after my long and
frequent residences in France, I am still unqualified.
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