in France than in England. The Englishman wishes for it in order to spend, the Frenchman in order to save, and the desire of accumulation is a more constant and a more intense stimulus than that of expenditure. Money, too, is more necessary to the bulk of our people than to yours. An Englishman cannot starve—the Poor Laws prevent that. This is one of the reasons of our universal place-hunting. Every one is anxious for a permanent income, however small. This is the reason, too, why our marriages are made so constantly for money. An English commoner, if he does not marry for love, marries for connection. He hopes to rise into a higher circle. A French roturier has no such hope. Nothing will place him on a level with the gentilhomme."
Another of Billing's observations bears on the same topic, and was very true at the time. "One of the principal causes of the turbulence of Paris is the absurd education which the middle classes give to their children. They have been told for the last sixty years that all employments are open to all Frenchmen. They see journalists, schoolmasters, tradesmen, and tradesmen's clerks made Ministers and more than Ministers; they will not send their children to commercial schools, or teach them habits of business by keeping them in their own shops. They resolve to fit them for the high offices to which the Constitution, according to their interpretation of it, declares them entitled. The children, therefore, of the grocer, and of the tailor, receive the same education as those of the duke and of the millionaire. A little Latin, rather less Greek, and a good deal of mathematics, and then they come into the world unfit for business, and indeed despising it, join the crowds of candidates that besiege every public office, and in despair turn demagogues, journalists and émeutiers."
We drove through France while all this was going on; the peasants in the villages crowded round our carriages clamouring for news, which we were unable to give them. In some places, tokens of hostility toward us as foreigners and aristocrats appeared, and we were forced to stand up and cry Vive la République! before we were allowed to proceed.
At Rochefort, the English Consul sat on the box of our carriage to protect us, as a mob of fanatics was rushing through the town shouting death to the aristocrats and bourgeois alike.
There was residing outside Nantes the Comte Walsh, already
