we say) a losing game; but it is equally characteristic of the race
to forget its humiliations as if they had never been, and to come out
intact when the fortune of war changes, more French than ever, almost
unabashed and wholly uninjured, by the catastrophe which had seemed
fatal.

If we had any right to theorise on such a subject--which is a thing the
French themselves above all other men love to do,--we should be disposed
to say, that wars and revolutions, legislation and politics, are things
which go on over the head of France, so to speak--boilings on the
surface, with which the great personality of the nation if such a word
may be used, has little to do, and cares but little for; while she
herself, the great race, neither giddy nor fickle, but unusually
obstinate, tenacious, and sober, narrow even in the unwavering pursuit
of a certain kind of well-being congenial to her--goes steadily on,
less susceptible to temporary humiliation than many peoples much less
excitable on the surface, and always coming back into sight when the
commotion is over, acquisitive, money-making, profit-loving, uninjured
in any essential particular by the most terrific of convulsions. This of
course is to be said more or less of every country, the strain of
common life being always, thank God, too strong for every temporary
commotion--but it is true in a special way of France:--witness the
extraordinary manner in which in our own time, and under our own eyes,
that wonderful country righted herself after the tremendous misfortunes
of the Franco-German war, in which for a moment not only her prestige,
her honour, but her money and credit seemed to be lost.

It seems rather a paradox to point attention to the extraordinary
tenacity of this basis of French character, the steady prudence and
solidity which in the end always triumph over the light heart and light