I might have disputed this assertion, that honours and titles are always the rewards of virtue; and could have produced abundance of instances of the opposite proposition. But I allowed that they often were so, and that hereditary honours in a family always ought to have, and sometimes had, the effect which he supposed: but these concessions being made in their fullest extent, still he would do injustice to the English, by forming a judgment of their national character from what he had observed of the temper, manners, and genius of those Englishmen with whom he had been acquainted in foreign countries; because three-fourths of them were, in all probability, men of fortune, without having family or high birth to boast of; so that they had the greatest inducements to indolence, without possessing the motives to virtuous exertions, which influence people of high rank.—For, though it rarely happened in other countries, it was very common in England for men of all the various professions and trades to accumulate very great fortunes, which, at their death, falling to their sons, these young men, without having had a suitable education, immediately set up for gentlemen, and run over Europe in the characters of Milords Anglois, game, purchase pictures, mutilated statues and mistresses, to the astonishment of all beholders: And, conscious of the blot in their escutcheon, they think it is incumbent on them to wash it out, and make up for the impurity of their blood, by plunging deeper into the ocean of extravagance than is necessary for a man of hereditary fashion.
Here our conversation ended, and the gentleman promised that he would abide by the idea he had formed of the English nation from the works of Milton, Locke and Newton, and the characters of Raleigh, Hambden, and Sidney.
Among the remarkable things in Frankfort the inns may be reckoned. Two in particular, the Emperor and the Red House, for cleanliness, conveniency, and number of apartments, are superior to any I ever saw on the continent, and vie with our most magnificent inns in England.
At these, as at all other inns in Germany and Switzerland, there is an ordinary, at which the strangers may dine and sup. This is called the Table d’Hôte, from the circumstance of the landlord’s sitting at the bottom of the table and carving the victuals. The same name for an ordinary is still retained in France, tho’ the landlord does not sit at the table, which was the case formerly in that country, and still is the custom in Germany.