3-070-759 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

"Not long since we were at a dinner party in Paris; he on the right of a stanch Republican. Before the soup had been dispatched, he hastened to assure his fair neighbour that the Empire was the best Government for France", 1881. 'No. XV. - the Rector...One curious intellectual defect has the Rev. David Guy. He knows nothing of any nation but his own, and judges all political and social institutions by a rigid English standard. It is to no purpose that he has travelled in France, Italy, Germany, Russia. His French is slight in quantity and execrable in quality. Not long since we were at a dinner party in Paris; he sitting on the right of a stanch Republican. Guy, wishing to make himself agreeable, hastened, before the soup had been dispatched, to give his fair neighbour an exposition of his views on the situation in France. "Je crois," he began, plunging straight in medias res, "que le plus bon gouvernement pour la France est l'Empire..." The lady smiled and assented, hoping, perhaps, he would soon have done. But he speedily returned to the charge; till, by a superhuman feat of gymnastics, I managed to tread on his gouty toe'. Illustration from "People I Have Met", published in "Illustrated London News", 1881.