In Volume 2, Count de B**** calls upon Yorick to give his honest assessment of the French people based upon his travels through the country. In a combination of metaphor and simile, Yorick offers his impression—and compares the French to the English:
See, Mons. Le Compte, said I […] —by jingling and rubbing one against another for seventy years together in one body’s pocket or another’s, they are become so much alike, you can scarce distinguish one shilling from another.
The English, like antient medals, kept more apart, and passing but few peoples hands, preserve the first sharpnesses which the fine hand of nature has given them—they are not so pleasant to feel—but in return, the legend is so visible, that at the first look you see whose image and superscription they bear.
In this metaphor, the French are like shillings—common coins that, after years of handling, have become more or less identical. The English, on the other hand, are like medals—well-preserved and distinct in their individuality, if slightly unpleasant to handle. Yorick's argument appears to be that social interaction, in the manner of the French, is liable to make one lose one's identity.
The tension between national and personal identity is a major theme in A Sentimental Journey, and Yorick makes many comparisons between the distinct French and English cultures throughout the novel—a particularly pressing concern, given the larger historical context of the Seven Years' War fought between France and England at the time of Sterne's writing.
