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,