Your fortnight at Lord Aberdeen's amused me exceedingly, and not the
least amusing part were the eccentricities of A.B.
There is one point in which the English seem to me to differ from
ourselves, and, indeed, from all other nations, so widely that they form
almost a distinct species of men. There is often scarcely any connection
between what they say and what they do.
No people carry so far, especially when speaking in public, violence of
language, outrageousness of theories, and extravagance in the inference
drawn from those theories. Thus your A.B. says that the Irish have not
shot half enough landlords. Yet no people act with more moderation. A
quarter of what is said in England at a public meeting, or even round a
dinner-table, without anything being done or intended to be done, would
in France announce violence, which would almost always be more furious
than the language had been.
We Frenchmen are not so different from our antipodes as we are from a
nation, partly our own progeny, which is separated from us by only a
large ditch.
I wonder whether you have heard how our illustrious master is relieving
the working-people from the constant rise of house-rent.
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