Last year there was a project of holding a Breton Eisteddfod at
Quimper in Brittany, and the French Home Secretary, whether wishing
to protect the magnificent unity of France from inroads of Bretonism,
or fearing lest the design should be used in furtherance of
Legitimist intrigues, or from whatever motive, issued an order which
prohibited the meeting. If Mr. Walpole had issued an order
prohibiting the Chester Eisteddfod, all the Englishmen from Cornwall
to John o' Groat's House would have rushed to the rescue; and our
strong sense and sturdy morality would never have stopped gnashing
their teeth and rending their garments till the prohibition was
rescinded. What a pity our strong sense and sturdy morality fail to
perceive that words like those of the Times create a far keener sense
of estrangement and dislike than acts like those of the French
Minister! Acts like those of the French Minister are attributed to
reasons of State, and the Government is held blameable for them, not
the French people. Articles like those of the Times are attributed
to the want of sympathy and of sweetness of disposition in the
English nature, and the whole English people gets the blame of them.
And deservedly; for from some such ground of want of sympathy and
sweetness in the English nature, do articles like those of the Times
come, and to some such ground do they make appeal. The sympathetic
and social virtues of the French nature, on the other hand, actually
repair the breaches made by oppressive deeds of the Government, and
create, among populations joined with France as the Welsh and Irish
are joined with England, a sense of liking and attachment towards the
French people. The French Government may discourage the German
language in Alsace and prohibit Eisteddfods in Brittany; but the
Journal des Debats never treats German music and poetry as
mischievous lumber, nor tells the Bretons that the sooner all Breton
specialities disappear from the face of the earth the better.