Complete. Translation of J. N. Jordan for the Nineteenth Century, 1884.

THE FRENCH and English are both fond of lauding their own national customs, and in finding flaws in those of other countries. My French interpreter jeered at the English, and my English interpreter ridiculed the French.

  A Chinese going to Europe suffers from two difficulties, to which he finds it very hard to accustom himself: one is the confined nature of the house accommodation, the other the high price of everything. In the West the cost of ground for building purposes is enormous, and the consequence is that people are obliged to live in houses eight or nine stories high. Not only this, but so sparing are they of land in constructing their houses, that there are generally one or two pits underground, which serve as kitchens and wine cellars. Their parks and gardens, however, are laid out on a most extensive scale, and care is taken to copy nature in all its wild simplicity. These resorts of amusement and pleasure vary in size from one to three miles in circumference. Here they show no disposition to stint themselves in the matter of land, and bestow much care upon the neat arrangement of such places, thereby embodying the maxim transmitted by Mencius, that, “if the people are made to share in the means of enjoyment, they will cherish no feelings of discontent.” Both France and England are at one in the above respect.

  The English excel in their use of ways and means for the acquisition of wealth; the French delight in extravagance and waste. With the former, the result of the general eagerness to get rich is that everything, however inferior in quality, is high-priced; while with the latter, extravagance has become a national habit, and prices know no bounds. Such is the difference between the two countries, a difference, however, which entails the same inconvenience upon the traveler in either case.