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    tues : when we become half-enlightened , we sometimes see only that they have not our faults , forgetting , or not sufficientl y recollecting , that they have other faults which may be equally or more pernicious .

    This last one-side&ness Mr . Bulwer may have partly fallen into ; and even if , as I am more inclined to think , he is not justly chargeable with it , yet the tone of severe animadversion in which he speaks to his own countrymen of their national vices , might require to be modified if he were speaking of those

    same vices to foreigners ; just as we should remonstrate with a brother or a friend in far stronger terms than we should use in speaking of the faults of that brother or friend to a stranger , who ft not already familiar with their good qualities . A writer , therefore , who had to introduce Mr . Bulwer ' s book to the French

    public , would have had much to say in mitigation of the unfavourable impression which might be produced by such strictures on the English if taken without qualification . He might have said to the French reader , Here is a powerfully drawn picture of the faults of the English character ; but a character is not to be judged solely by its faults . The characteristic faults ,

    both of an individual and of a people , always point to their characteristic virtues ; and if you displaynhe one without the other , you may produce either a panegyric or a satire , which you will , but not a fair judgment . By insisting , in the same manner , upon the faults of the French character , without placing by their side those excellences which are often the bright side of the very

    same qualities , a picture might be made of France as repulsive as Mr . Bulwer ' s picture of England , though with a different kind of repulsiveness . ' Had M . Chales reviewed Mr . Bulwer ' s book in this spirit , he would have merited the thanks of both countries . But the course he has adopted is the very reverse . Instead of bringing forward the other half of the truth , he denies that half which Mr . Bulwer

    has so cleverly delineated . Instead of teaching France to know us , he teaches us not to know ourselves . Instead of using our example to improve his own countrymen , he will not allow us to be improved by theirs . Instead of pointing out to the French how much good , and good of the highest and racist kind , and good which they are far from having yet equalled , coexists in England with all the evil which Mr . Bulwer describes , he boldly avers

    tQat the evil is not eviL Such commendation of England is worse than the ancient antipathy . It is unnecessary for me , writing to you , to heap up common places on the importance of friendship and sympathy between two such nations ; but we want you to sympathize in our virtues , not in our faults . The wiser and better of the Eng lish will not thank a Frenchman for stepping in with a denial or a vindication © f all that they most disapprove in their , own countrymen *

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    886 The Journal de $ Dibais and the English .

• Citation
  • Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), June 2, 1834, page 386, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2634/page/2/