previous kindness: now if we are to receive strangers, I can really see
no reason why we are not to be as civil to them as possible; and so far
from imputing the desire to please them to a bad heart, I think it a
thousand times more amiable and benevolent than telling them, a
l'Anglaise, by your morosity and reserve, that you do not care a pin what
becomes of them. If I am only to walk a mile with a man, why should I not
make that mile as pleasant to him as I can; or why, above all, if I
choose to be sulky, and tell him to go and be d--d, am I to swell out my
chest, colour with conscious virtue, and cry, see what a good heart I
have?

"Ah, Monsieur D'A___, since benevolence is inseparable from all morality,
it must be clear that there is a benevolence in little things as well as
in great; and that he who strives to make his fellow creatures happy,
though only for an instant, is a much better man than he who is
indifferent to, or, (what is worse) despises, it. Nor do I, to say truth,
see that kindness to an acquaintance is at all destructive to sincerity
to a friend: on the contrary, I have yet to learn, that you are
(according to the customs of your country) worse friends, worse husbands,
or worse fathers than we are!"

"What!" cried I, "you forget yourself, Vincent. How can the private
virtues be cultivated without a coal fire? Is not domestic affection a
synonymous term with domestic hearth? and where do you find either,
except in honest old England?"

"True," replied Vincent; "and it is certainly impossible for a father and
his family to be as fond of each other on a bright day in the Tuilleries,
or at Versailles, with music and dancing, and fresh air, as they would be
in a back parlour, by a smoky hearth, occupied entirely by le bon pere,