An Idler in Old France Author:Tighe Hopkins General Books publication date: 2009 Original publication date: 1899 Original Publisher: B. Tauchnitz Subjects: France Paris (France) Paris History / Europe / France Travel / Europe / France Notes: This is a black and white OCR reprint of the original. It has no illustrations and there may be typos or missing text. When you buy ... more »the General Books edition of this book you get free trial access to Million-Books.com where you can select from more than a million books for free. Excerpt: TWO "CIVILITIES." Is it necessary to say, by way of preface, that the little treatises which in French are called "Civilites" correspond to our manuals of "Polite Society," of "Correct Conversation," of "Behaviour," and so forth? The English opuscule is lightly esteemed by superior reviewers (perhaps the French one of the present day is not thought much of by reviewers on the Temps and the De'bats), but the next and succeeding centuries will divert themselves over it, and the first historian who can be induced to take a proper view of his functions will find it a useful sidelight upon social history. The best, the most entertaining, and the most informing parts of the historian's business continue to be done for him by the humble writer of monographs, on subjects which are neglected or glozed in the text-books as in the tomes. Still, one has the satisfaction of observing that, whereas "history" is little read by the general, the vogue of the monograph increases. The old "Civilites" -- those of the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries (there are earlier ones, of course; and the "Romaunt of the Rose" is, in very many parts, a "Civilite of the fourteenth century) -- arebecoming rare; but they are not impossible as "finds," and cheap finds, on the bookstalls of the Paris Quais, and now and again a "Civilite" crops up in the catalogue of a French dealer. Of the two that are before me, one is dated 1695 and the other 1782. They are both occupied with the civilities of th...« less