If anyone could help to break down-otir indifference as a
nation to the foreigner's -impression of us it should be M. Maurois—and M. Maurois more than, say, M. Siegfried, because he likes us, and I am not sure that M. Siegfried does. But the former has been criticizing us in a new way recently, in the Echo de Paris, saying, not so much what he thinks of us, as what the average Frenchnian thinks. That impression, when we read the article; may seem to us grOtesque—which serves th remind us that our too rough-and-ready impression of the Frenchman (who has, intellectually, less in common -with us than the German has) may be equally grotesque. Years ago a French author who was engaged in preparing - a dramatic version of Pickwick for the French stage announced to me a great discovery he had made— Mr. Pickwick was a Frenchman through and through. I commend that conception of the French character to the attention of any Englishman—if such there be-. who may be inclined to be Franco-phobe.
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