for nothing--_which they do not!_'--&c, &c.

An amusing book might be written about English society in French towns;
no one indeed knows who has not tried it, with what little society-props
such coteries as those at Avranches, Pau, &c., are kept up. It varies,
of course, every year, and in each place every year; but when we were
last at Avranches, 'society' was the watchword, we might almost say the
war cry; and we had to declare our colours as if we lived in the days of
the Wars of the Roses.

The old inhabitants are, of course, 'rather particular,' and, to tell
the truth, are sometimes rather afraid of each other. They are apt to
eye with considerable caution any new arrival; the 'new arrival' is
disposed to be equally select, and so they live together and apart,
after the true English model; and indulging sometimes, it must be added,
in considerable speculation about their new neighbours' business.

'Why were they proud--because red-lined accounts
Were richer than the songs of Grecian years?
Why were they proud--again we ask, aloud,
Why in the name of glory were they proud?'

And so on; but what we might say of Avranches would apply to nearly
every little English colony abroad. There are two sides to the picture,
and there is a good, pleasant side to the English society at Avranches;
there is also great necessity to be 'particular,' however much we may
laugh. English people who come to reside abroad are not, as a rule, very
good representatives of their nation; neither they nor their children
seem to flourish on a foreign soil, they differ in their character as
much as transplanted trees; they have more affinity with the poplars and