Excerpt from Fromentin<br><br>Enveloped in a thin veil Of ocean mists, and at times she seems to float in the midst of her waves and her sands, beneath a sky bounded by remote and inde terminate horizons, vague and immense, like some vast wreckage overgrown with gardens and oases. For more than a century, she was downtrodden by the English. But if she owes them the pain and humilia tion of defeat, they at least inspired her with a pas sion for commercial greatness and a desire for wealth. Through her shipowners and bankers, she amassed riches that permitted her to devote a goodly share of her days to leisure and festivities, for the better ment of her material welfare and the embellishment of her mind. Thus in the midst Of this industrious community, faithful to its duties, jealous of its lib etty, there was slowly formed a powerful and cultured bourgeois class, eager for all forms of intellectual improvement.<br><br>About the Publisher<br><br>Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com<br><br>This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.