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diff --git a/39862-0.txt b/39862-0.txt index 1f5b8d1..f6796c3 100644 --- a/39862-0.txt +++ b/39862-0.txt @@ -1,29 +1,4 @@ - ENGLISH TRAITS - - - - -This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost -no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it -under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this -eBook or online at http://www.gutenberg.org/license. - - -Title: English Traits - -Author: Ralph Waldo Emerson - -Release Date: May 30, 2012 [EBook #39862] - -Language: English - -Character set encoding: UTF-8 - - -*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ENGLISH TRAITS *** - - - +*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 39862 *** Produced by Al Haines. @@ -6191,376 +6166,4 @@ the Alleghauy ranges, or nowhere. 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You may copy it, give it away or re-use it -under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this -eBook or online at http://www.gutenberg.org/license. - - -Title: English Traits - -Author: Ralph Waldo Emerson - -Release Date: May 30, 2012 [EBook #39862] - -Language: English - -Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 - - -*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ENGLISH TRAITS *** - - - - -Produced by Al Haines. - - - - - - ENGLISH TRAITS. - - - - BY - - - RALPH WALDO EMERSON. - - - - - NEW AND REVISED EDITION. - - - - BOSTON: - JAMES R. OSGOOD AND COMPANY, - Late Ticknor & Fields, and Fields, Osgood, & Co. - 1876. - - - - - COPYRIGHT, 1856 AND 1876, - BY RALPH WALDO EMERSON. - - - - UNIVERSITY PRESS: WELCH, BIGELOW, & Co., CAMBRIDGE. - - - - ---- - - - - -CONTENTS - - - CHAPTER I.--FIRST VISIT TO ENGLAND. - CHAPTER II.--VOYAGE TO ENGLAND. - CHAPTER III.--LAND. - CHAPTER IV.--RACE. - CHAPTER V.--ABILITY. - CHAPTER VI.--MANNERS. - CHAPTER VII.--TRUTH. - CHAPTER VIII.--CHARACTER. - CHAPTER IX.--COCKAYNE. - CHAPTER X.--WEALTH. - CHAPTER XI.--ARISTOCRACY. - CHAPTER XII.--UNIVERSITIES. - CHAPTER XIII.--RELIGION. - CHAPTER XIV.--LITERATURE. - CHAPTER XV.--THE "TIMES." - CHAPTER XVI.--STONEHENGE. - CHAPTER XVII.--PERSONAL. - CHAPTER XVIII.--RESULT. - - ---- - - - - - ENGLISH TRAITS. - - - - -CHAPTER I.--FIRST VISIT TO ENGLAND. - - -I have been twice in England. In 1833, on my return from a short tour -in Sicily, Italy, and France, I crossed from Boulogne, and landed in -London at the Tower stairs. It was a dark Sunday morning; there were -few people in the streets; and I remember the pleasure of that first -walk on English ground, with my companion, an American artist, from the -Tower up through Cheapside and the Strand, to a house in Russell Square, -whither we had been recommended to good chambers. For the first time -for many months we were forced to check the saucy habit of travellers' -criticism, as we could no longer speak aloud in the streets without -being understood. The shop-signs spoke our language; our country names -were on the door-plates; and the public and private buildings wore a -more native and wonted front. - -Like most young men at that time, I was much indebted to the men of -Edinburgh, and of the Edinburgh Review,--to Jeffrey, Mackintosh, Hallam, -and to Scott, Playfair, and De Quincey; and my narrow and desultory -reading had inspired the wish to see the faces of three or four -writers,--Coleridge, Wordsworth, Landor, De Quincey, and the latest and -strongest contributor to the critical journals, Carlyle; and I suppose -if I had sifted the reasons that led me to Europe, when I was ill and -was advised to travel, it was mainly the attraction of these persons. -If Goethe had been still living, I might have wandered into Germany -also. Besides those I have named (for Scott was dead), there was not in -Britain the man living whom I cared to behold, unless it were the Duke -of Wellington, whom I afterwards saw at Westminster Abbey, at the -funeral of Wilberforce. The young scholar fancies it happiness enough -to live with people who can give an inside to the world; without -reflecting that they are prisoners, too, of their own thought, and -cannot apply themselves to yours. The conditions of literary success -are almost destructive of the best social power, as they do not leave -that frolic liberty which only can encounter a companion on the best -terms. It is probable you left some obscure comrade at a tavern, or in -the farms, with right mother-wit, and equality to life, when you crossed -sea and land to play bo-peep with celebrated scribes. I have, however, -found writers superior to their books, and I cling to my first belief, -that a strong head will dispose fast enough of these impediments, and -give one the satisfaction of reality, the sense of having been met, and -a larger horizon. - -On looking over the diary of my journey in 1833, I find nothing to -publish in my memoranda of visits to places. But I have copied the few -notes I made of visits to persons, as they respect parties quite too -good and too transparent to the whole world to make it needful to affect -any prudery of suppression about a few hints of those bright -personalities. - -At Florence, chief among artists, I found Horatio Greenough, the -American sculptor. His face was so handsome, and his person so well -formed, that he might be pardoned, if, as was alleged, the face of his -Medora, and the figure of a colossal Achilles in clay, were -idealizations of his own. Greenough was a superior man, ardent and -eloquent, and all his opinions had elevation and magnanimity. He -believed that the Greeks had wrought in schools or fraternities,--the -genius of the master imparting his design to his friends, and inflaming -them with it, and when his strength was spent, a new hand, with equal -heat, continued the work; and so by relays, until it was finished in -every part with equal fire. This was necessary in so refractory a -material as stone; and he thought art would never prosper until we left -our shy jealous ways, and worked in society as they. All his thoughts -breathed the same generosity. He was an accurate and a deep man. He -was a votary of the Greeks, and impatient of Gothic art. His paper on -Architecture, published in 1843, announced in advance the leading -thoughts of Mr. Ruskin on the _morality_ in architecture, -notwithstanding the antagonism in their views of the history of art. I -have a private letter from him,--later, but respecting the same -period,--in which he roughly sketches his own theory. "Here is my -theory of structure: A scientific arrangement of spaces and forms to -functions and to site; an emphasis of features proportioned to their -_gradated_ importance in function; color and ornament to be decided and -arranged and varied by strictly organic laws, having a distinct reason -for each decision; the entire and immediate banishment of all makeshift -and make-believe." - -Greenough brought me, through a common friend, an invitation from Mr. -Landor, who lived at San Domenica di Fiesole. On the 15th May I dined -with Mr. Landor. I found him noble and courteous, living in a cloud of -pictures at his Villa Gherardesca, a fine house commanding a beautiful -landscape. I had inferred from his books, or magnified from some -anecdotes, an impression of Achillean wrath,--an untamable petulance. I -do not know whether the imputation were just or not, but certainly on -this May day his courtesy veiled that haughty mind, and he was the most -patient and gentle of hosts. He praised the beautiful cyclamen which -grows all about Florence; he admired Washington; talked of Wordsworth, -Byron, Massinger, Beaumont and Fletcher. To be sure, he is decided in -his opinions, likes to surprise, and is well content to impress, if -possible, his English whim upon the immutable past. No great man ever -had a great son, if Philip and Alexander be not an exception; and Philip -he calls the greater man. In art, he loves the Greeks, and in -sculpture, them only. He prefers the Venus to everything else, and, -after that, the head of Alexander, in the gallery here. He prefers John -of Bologna to Michel Angelo; in painting, Raffaelle; and shares the -growing taste for Perugino and the early masters. The Greek histories -he thought the only good; and after them, Voltaire's. I could not make -him praise Mackintosh, nor my more recent friends; Montaigne very -cordially,--and Charron also, which seemed undiscriminating. He thought -Degerando indebted to "Lucas on Happiness" and "Lucas on Holiness"! He -pestered me with Southey; but who is Southey? - -He invited me to breakfast on Friday. On Friday I did not fail to go, -and this time with Greenough. He entertained us at once with reciting -half a dozen hexameter lines of Julius Csar's!--from Donatus, he said. -He glorified Lord Chesterfield more than was necessary, and undervalued -Burke, and undervalued Socrates; designated as three of the greatest of -men, Washington, Phocion, and Timoleon; much as our pomologists, in -their lists, select the three or the six best pears "for a small -orchard"; and did not even omit to remark the similar termination of -their names. "A great man," he said, "should make great sacrifices, and -kill his hundred oxen, without knowing whether they would be consumed by -gods and heroes, or whether the flies would eat them." I had visited -Professor Amici, who had shown me his microscopes, magnifying (it was -said) two thousand diameters; and I spoke of the uses to which they were -applied. Landor despised entomology, yet, in the same breath, said, "the -sublime was in a grain of dust." I suppose I teased him about recent -writers, but he professed never to have heard of Herschel, _not even by -name_. One room was full of pictures, which he likes to show, -especially one piece, standing before which, he said "he would give -fifty guineas to the man that would swear it was a Pomenichino." I was -more curious to see his library, but Mr. H----, one of the guests, told -me that Mr. Landor gives away his books, and has never more than a dozen -at a time in his house. - -Mr. Landor carries to its height the love of freak which the English -delight to indulge, as if to signalize their commanding freedom. He has -a wonderful brain, despotic, violent, and inexhaustible, meant for a -soldier, by what chance converted to letters, in which there is not a -style nor a tint not known to him, yet with an English appetite for -action and heroes. The thing done avails, and not what is said about -it. An original sentence, a step forward, is worth more than all the -censures. Landor is strangely undervalued in England; usually ignored; -and sometimes savagely attacked in the Reviews. The criticism may be -right or wrong, and is quickly forgotten; but year after year the -scholar must still go back to Landor for a multitude of elegant -sentences,--for wisdom, wit, and indignation that are unforgetable. - - -From London, on the 5th August, I went to Highgate, and wrote a note to -Mr. Coleridge, requesting leave to pay my respects to him. It was near -noon. Mr. Coleridge sent a verbal message, that he was in bed, but if I -would call after one o'clock, he would see me. I returned at one, and -he appeared, a short, thick old man, with bright blue eyes and fine -clear complexion, leaning on his cane. He took snuff freely, which -presently soiled his cravat and neat black suit. He asked whether I -knew Allston, and spoke warmly of his merits and doings when he knew him -in Rome; what a master of the Titianesque he was, etc., etc. He spoke -of Dr. Channing. It was an unspeakable misfortune that he should have -turned out a Unitarian after all. On this, he burst into a declamation -on the folly and ignorance of Unitarianism,--its high unreasonableness; -and taking up Bishop Waterland's book, which lay on the table, he read -with vehemence two or three pages written by himself in the -fly-leaves,--passages, too, which, I believe, are printed in the "Aids -to Reflection." When he stopped to take breath, I interposed, that, -"whilst I highly valued all his explanations, I was bound to tell him -that I was born and bred a Unitarian." "Yes," he said, "I supposed so"; -and continued as before. "It was a wonder, that after so many ages of -unquestioning acquiescence in the doctrine of St. Paul,--the doctrine of -the Trinity, which was also, according to Philo Judus, the doctrine of -the Jews before Christ,--this handful of Priestleians should take on -themselves to deny it, etc., etc. He was very sorry that Dr. -Channing,--a man to whom he looked up,--no, to say that he looked _up_ -to him would be to speak falsely; but a man whom he looked _at_ with so -much interest,--should embrace such views. When he saw Dr. Channing, he -had hinted to him that he was afraid he loved Christianity for what was -lovely and excellent,--he loved the good in it, and not the true; and I -tell you, sir, that I have known ten persons who loved the good, for one -person who loved the true; but it is a far greater virtue to love the -true for itself alone, than to love the good for itself alone. He -(Coleridge) knew all about Unitarianism perfectly well, because he had -once been a Unitarian, and knew what quackery it was. He had been -called "the rising star of Unitarianism."' He went on defining, or -rather refining: 'The Trinitarian doctrine was realism; the idea of God -was not essential, but super-essential'; talked of _trinism_ and -_tetrakism_, and much more, of which I only caught this: 'that the will -was that by which a person is a person; because, if one should push me -in the street, and so I should force the man next me into the kennel, I -should at once exclaim, "I did not do it, sir," meaning it was not my -will.' And this also: 'that if you should insist on your faith here in -England, and I on mine, mine would be the hotter side of the fagot.' - -I took advantage of a pause to say, that he had many readers of all -religious opinions in America, and I proceeded to inquire if the -"extract" from the Independent's pamphlet, in the third volume of the -Friend, were a veritable quotation. He replied that it was really taken -from a pamphlet in his possession, entitled "A Protest of one of the -Independents," or something to that effect. I told him how excellent I -thought it, and how much I wished to see the entire work. "Yes," he -said, "the man was a chaos of truths, but lacked the knowledge that God -was a god of order. Yet the passage would no doubt strike you more in -the quotation than in the original, for I have filtered it." - -When I rose to go, he said, "I do not know whether you care about -poetry, but I will repeat some verses I lately made on my baptismal -anniversary"; and he recited with strong emphasis, standing, ten or -twelve lines, beginning,-- - - Born unto God in Christ-- - - -He inquired where I had been travelling; and on learning that I had been -in Malta and Sicily, he compared one island with the other, 'repeating -what he had said to the Bishop of London when he returned from that -country, that Sicily was an excellent school of political economy; for, -in any town there, it only needed to ask what the government enacted, -and reverse _that_ to know what ought to be done; it was the most -felicitously opposite legislation to anything good and wise. There were -only three things which the government had brought into that garden of -delights, namely, itch, pox, and famine; whereas, in Malta, the force of -law and mind was seen, in making that barren rock of semi-Saracen -inhabitants the seat of population and plenty.' Going out, he showed me -in the next apartment a picture of Allston's, and told me 'that -Montague, a picture-dealer, once came to see him, and, glancing towards -this, said, "Well, you have got a picture!" thinking it the work of an -old master; afterwards, Montague, still talking with his back to the -canvas, put up his hand and touched it, and exclaimed, "By Heaven! this -picture is not ten years old":--so delicate and skilful was that man's -touch.' - -I was in his company for about an hour, but find it impossible to recall -the largest part of his discourse, which was often like so many printed -paragraphs in his book,--perhaps the same,--so readily did he fall into -certain commonplaces. As I might have foreseen, the visit was rather a -spectacle than a conversation, of no use beyond the satisfaction of my -curiosity. He was old and preoccupied, and could not bend to a new -companion and think with him. - -From Edinburgh I went to the Highlands. On my return, I came from -Glasgow to Dumfries, and being intent on delivering a letter which I had -brought from Rome, inquired for Cragenputtock. It was a farm in -Nithsdale, in the parish of Dunscore, sixteen miles distant. No public -coach passed near it, so I took a private carriage from the inn. I -found the house amid desolate heathery hills, where the lonely scholar -nourished his mighty heart. Carlyle was a man from his youth, an author -who did not need to hide from his readers, and as absolute a man of the -world, unknown and exiled on that hill-farm, as if holding on his own -terms what is best in London. He was tall and gaunt, with a cliff-like -brow, self-possessed, and holding his extraordinary powers of -conversation in easy command; clinging to his northern accent with -evident relish; full of lively anecdote, and with a streaming humor, -which floated everything he looked upon. His talk playfully exalting -the familiar objects, put the companion at once into an acquaintance -with his Lars and Lemurs, and it was very pleasant to learn what was -predestined to be a pretty mythology. Few were the objects and lonely -the man, "not a person to speak to within sixteen miles except the -minister of Dunscore"; so that books inevitably made his topics. - -He had names of his own for all the matters familiar to his discourse. -"Blackwood's" was the "sand magazine"; "Fraser's" nearer approach to -possibility of life was the "mud magazine"; a piece of road near by that -marked some failed enterprise was the "grave of the last sixpence." -When too much praise of any genius annoyed him, he professed hugely to -admire the talent shown by his pig. He had spent much time and -contrivance in confining the poor beast to one enclosure in his pen, but -pig, by great strokes of judgment, had found out how to let a board -down, and had foiled him. For all that, he still thought man the most -plastic little fellow in the planet, and he liked Nero's death, "_Qualis -artifex pereo!_" better than most history. He worships a man that will -manifest any truth to him. At one time he had inquired and read a good -deal about America. Landor's principle was mere rebellion, and _that_ -he feared was the American principle. The best thing he knew of that -country was, that in it a man can have meat for his labor. He had read -in Stewart's book, that when he inquired in a New York hotel for the -Boots, he had been shown across the street and had found Mungo in his -own house dining on roast turkey. - -We talked of books. Plato he does not read, and he disparaged Socrates; -and, when pressed, persisted in making Mirabeau a hero. Gibbon he -called the splendid bridge from the old world to the new. His own -reading had been multifarious. Tristram Shandy was one of his first -books after Robinson Crusoe, and Robertson's America an early favorite. -Rousseau's Confessions had discovered to him that he was not a dunce; -and it was now ten years since he had learned German, by the advice of a -man who told him he would find in that language what he wanted. - -He took despairing or satirical views of literature at this moment; -recounted the incredible sums paid in one year by the great booksellers -for puffing. Hence it comes that no newspaper is trusted now, no books -are bought, and the booksellers are on the eve of bankruptcy. - -He still returned to English pauperism, the crowded country, the selfish -abdication by public men of all that public persons should perform. -'Government should direct poor men what to do. Poor Irish folk come -wandering over these moors. My dame makes it a rule to give to every -son of Adam bread to eat, and supplies his wants to the next house. But -here are thousands of acres which might give them all meat, and nobody -to bid these poor Irish go to the moor and till it. They burned the -stacks, and so found a way to force the rich people to attend to them.' - -We went out to walk over long hills, and looked at Criffel, then without -his cap, and down into Wordsworth's country. There we sat down, and -talked of the immortality of the soul. It was not Carlyle's fault that -we talked on that topic, for he had the natural disinclination of every -nimble spirit to bruise itself against walls, and did not like to place -himself where no step can be taken. But he was honest and true, and -cognizant of the subtile links that bind ages together, and saw how -every event affects all the future. 'Christ died on the tree: that -built Dunscore kirk yonder: that brought you and me together. Time has -only a relative existence.' - -He was already turning his eyes towards London with a scholar's -appreciation. London is the heart of the world, he said, wonderful only -from the mass of human beings. He liked the huge machine. Each keeps -its own round. The baker's boy brings muffins to the window at a fixed -hour every day, and that is all the Londoner knows or wishes to know on -the subject. But it turned out good men. He named certain individuals, -especially one man of letters, his friend, the best mind he knew, whom -London had well served. - - -On the 23th August, I went to Rydal Mount, to pay my respects to Mr. -Wordsworth. His daughters called in their father, a plain, elderly, -white-haired man, not prepossessing, and disfigured by green goggles. -He sat down, and talked with great simplicity. He had just returned -from a journey. His health was good, but he had broken a tooth by a -fall, when walking with two lawyers, and had said, that he was glad it -did not happen forty years ago; whereupon they had praised his -philosophy. - -He had much to say of America, the more that it gave occasion for his -favorite topic,--that society is being enlightened by a superficial -tuition, out of all proportion to its being restrained by moral culture. -Schools do no good. Tuition is not education. He thinks more of the -education of circumstances than of tuition. 'T is not a question -whether there are offences of which the law takes cognizance, but -whether there are offences of which the law does not take cognizance. -Sin is what he fears, and how society is to escape without gravest -mischiefs from this source--? He has even said, what seemed a paradox, -that they needed a civil war in America, to teach the necessity of -knitting the social ties stronger. 'There may be,' he said, 'in America -some vulgarity in manner, but that 's not important. That comes of the -pioneer state of things. But I fear they are too much given to the -making of money; and secondly, to politics; that they make political -distinction the end, and not the means. And I fear they lack a class of -men of leisure,--in short, of gentlemen,--to give a tone of honor to the -community. I am told that things are boasted of in the second class of -society there, which, in England,--God knows, are done in England every -day,--but would never be spoken of. In America I wish to know not how -many churches or schools, but what newspapers? My friend, Colonel -Hamilton, at the foot of the hill, who was a year in America, assures me -that the newspapers are atrocious, and accuse members of Congress of -stealing spoons!' He was against taking off the tax on newspapers in -England, which the reformers represent as a tax upon knowledge, for this -reason, that they would be inundated with base prints. He said, he -talked on political aspects, for he wished to impress on me and all good -Americans to cultivate the moral, the conservative, etc., etc., and -never to call into action the physical strength of the people, as had -just now been done in England in the Reform Bill,--a thing prophesied by -Delolme. He alluded once or twice to his conversation with Dr. -Channing, who had recently visited him (laying his hand on a particular -chair in which the Doctor had sat). - -The conversation turned on books. Lucretius he esteems a far higher -poet than Virgil: not in his system, which is nothing, but in his power -of illustration. Faith is necessary to explain anything, and to -reconcile the foreknowledge of God with human evil. Of Cousin (whose -lectures we had all been reading in Boston) he knew only the name. - -I inquired if he had read Carlyle's critical articles and translations. -He said he thought him sometimes insane. He proceeded to abuse Goethe's -Wilhelm Meister heartily. It was full of all manner of fornication. It -was like the crossing of flies in the air. He had never gone further -than the first part; so disgusted was he that he threw the book across -the room. I deprecated this wrath, and said what I could for the better -parts of the book; and he courteously promised to look at it again. -Carlyle, he said, wrote most obscurely. He was clever and deep, but he -defied the sympathies of everybody. Even Mr. Coleridge wrote more -clearly, though he had always wished Coleridge would write more to be -understood. He led me out into his garden, and showed me the -gravel-walk in which thousands of his lines were composed. His eyes are -much inflamed. This is no loss, except for reading, because he never -writes prose, and of poetry he carries even hundreds of lines in his -head before writing them. He had just returned from a visit to Staffa, -and within three days had made three sonnets on Fingal's Cave, and was -composing a fourth, when he was called in to see me. He said, "If you -are interested in my verses, perhaps you will like to hear these lines." -I gladly assented; and he recollected himself for a few moments, and -then stood forth and repeated, one after the other, the three entire -sonnets with great animation. I fancied the second and third more -beautiful than his poems are wont to be. The third is addressed to the -flowers, which, he said, especially the ox-eye daisy, are very abundant -on the top of the rock. The second alludes to the name of the cave, -which is "Cave of Music"; the first to the circumstance of its being -visited by the promiscuous company of the steamboat. - -This recitation was so unlooked for and surprising,--he, the old -Wordsworth, standing apart, and reciting to me in a garden-walk, like a -school-boy declaiming,--that I at first was near to laugh; but -recollecting myself, that I had come thus far to see a poet, and he was -chanting poems to me, I saw that he was right and I was wrong, and -gladly gave myself up to hear. I told him how much the few printed -extracts had quickened the desire to possess his unpublished poems. He -replied, he never was in haste to publish; partly, because he corrected -a good deal, and every alteration is ungraciously received after -printing; but what he had written would be printed, whether he lived or -died. I said, "Tintern Abbey" appeared to be the favorite poem with the -public, but more contemplative readers preferred the first books of the -"Excursion," and the Sonnets. He said, "Yes, they are better." He -preferred such of his poems as touched the affections, to any others; -for whatever is didactic--what theories of society, and so on--might -perish quickly; but whatever combined a truth with an affection was -[Greek: _chtma es aei_], good to-day and good forever. He cited the -sonnet "On the feelings of a high-minded Spaniard," which he preferred -to any other (I so understood him), and the "Two Voices"; and quoted, -with evident pleasure, the verses addressed "To the Skylark." In this -connection, he said of the Newtonian theory, that it might yet be -superseded and forgotten; and Dalton's atomic theory. - -When I prepared to depart, he said he wished to show me what a common -person in England could do, and he led me into the enclosure of his -clerk, a young man, to whom he had given this slip of ground, which was -laid out, or its natural capabilities shown, with much taste. He then -said he would show me a better way towards the inn; and he walked a good -part of a mile, talking, and ever and anon stopping short to impress the -word or the verse, and finally parted from me with great kindness, and -returned across the fields. - -Wordsworth honored himself by his simple adherence to truth, and was -very willing not to shine; but he surprised by the hard limits of his -thought. To judge from a single conversation, he made the impression of -a narrow and very English mind; of one who paid for his rare elevation -by general tameness and conformity. Off his own beat, his opinions were -of no value. It is not very rare to find persons loving sympathy and -ease, who expiate their departure from the common in one direction, by -their conformity in every other. - - - - -CHAPTER II.--VOYAGE TO ENGLAND. - - -The occasion of my second visit to England was an invitation from some -Mechanics' Institutes in Lancashire and Yorkshire, which separately are -organized much in the same way as our New England Lyceums, but, in 1847, -had been linked into a "Union," which embraced twenty or thirty towns -and cities, and presently extended into the middle counties, and -northward into Scotland. I was invited, on liberal terms, to read a -series of lectures in them all. The request was urged with every kind -suggestion, and every assurance of aid and comfort, by friendliest -parties in Manchester, who, in the sequel, amply redeemed their word. -The remuneration was equivalent to the fees at that time paid in this -country for the like services. At all events, it was sufficient to -cover any travelling expenses, and the proposal offered an excellent -opportunity of seeing the interior of England and Scotland, by means of -a home, and a committee of intelligent friends, awaiting me in every -town. - -I did not go very willingly. I am not a good traveller, nor have I -found that long journeys yield a fair share of reasonable hours. But -the invitation was repeated and pressed at a moment of more leisure, and -when I was a little spent by some unusual studies. I wanted a change -and a tonic, and England was proposed to me. Besides, there were, at -least, the dread attraction and salutary influences of the sea. So I -took my berth in the packet-ship Washington Irving, and sailed from -Boston on Tuesday, 5th October, 1847. - -On Friday, at noon, we had only made one hundred and thirty-four miles. -A nimble Indian would have swum as far; but the captain affirmed that -the ship would show us in time all her paces, and we crept along through -the floating drift of boards, logs, and chips, which the rivers of Maine -and New Brunswick pour into the sea after a freshet. - -At last, on Sunday night, after doing one day's work in four, the storm -came, the winds blew, and we flew before a northwester, which strained -every rope and sail. The good ship darts through the water all day, all -night, like a fish, quivering with speed, gliding through liquid -leagues, sliding from horizon to horizon. She has passed Cape Sable; -she has reached the Banks; the land-birds are left; gulls, haglets, -ducks, petrels, swim, dive, and hover around; no fishermen; she has -passed the Banks; left five sail behind her, far on the edge of the west -at sundown, which were far east of us at morn,--though they say at sea a -stern chase is a long race,--and still we fly for our lives. The -shortest sea-line from Boston to Liverpool is 2,850 miles. This a -steamer keeps, and saves 150 miles. A sailing ship can never go in a -shorter line than 3,000, and usually it is much longer. Our good master -keeps his kites up to the last moment, studding-sails alow and aloft, -and, by incessant straight steering, never loses a rod of way. -Watchfulness is the law of the ship,--watch on watch, for advantage and -for life. Since the ship was built, it seems, the master never slept but -in his day-clothes whilst on board. "There are many advantages," says -Saadi, "in sea-voyaging, but security is not one of them." Yet in -hurrying over these abysses, whatever dangers we are running into, we -are certainly running out of the risks of hundreds of miles every day, -which have their own chances of squall, collision, sea-stroke, piracy, -cold, and thunder. Hour for hour, the risk on a steamboat is greater; -but the speed is safety, or twelve days of danger, instead of -twenty-four. - -Our ship was registered 750 tons, and weighed perhaps, with all her -freight, 1,500 tons. The mainmast, from the deck to the top-button, -measured 115 feet; the length of the deck, from stem to stern, 155. It -is impossible not to personify a ship; everybody does in everything they -say:--she behaves well; she minds her rudder; she swims like a duck; she -runs her nose into the water; she looks into a port. Then that -wonderful _esprit du corps_, by which we adopt into our self-love -everything we touch, makes us all champions of her sailing-qualities. - -The conscious ship hears all the praise. In one week she has made 1,467 -miles, and now, at night, seems to hear the steamer behind her, which -left Boston to-day at two, has mended her speed, and is flying before -the gray south-wind eleven and a half knots the hour. The sea-fire -shines in her wake, and far around wherever a wave breaks. I read the -hour, 9h. 45', on my watch by this light. Near the equator, you can -read small print by it; and the mate describes the phosphoric insects, -when taken up in a pail, as shaped like a Carolina potato. - -I find the sea-life an acquired taste, like that for tomatoes and -olives. The confinement, cold, motion, noise, and odor are not to be -dispensed with. The floor of your room is sloped at an angle of twenty -or thirty degrees, and I waked every morning with the belief that some -one was tipping up my berth. Nobody likes to be treated ignominiously, -upset, shoved against the side of the house, rolled over, suffocated -with bilge, mephitis, and stewing oil. We get used to these annoyances -at last, but the dread of the sea remains longer. The sea is masculine, -the type of active strength. Look, what eggshells are drifting all over -it, each one, like ours, filled with men in ecstasies of terror, -alternating with cockney conceit, as the sea is rough or smooth. Is -this sad-colored circle an eternal cemetery? In our graveyards we scoop -a pit, but this aggressive water opens mile-wide pits and chasms, and -makes a mouthful of a fleet. To the geologist, the sea is the only -firmament; the land is in perpetual flux and change, now blown up like a -tumor, now sunk in a chasm, and the registered observations of a few -hundred years find it in a perpetual tilt, rising and falling. The sea -keeps its old level; and 't is no wonder that the history of our race is -so recent, if the roar of the ocean is silencing our traditions. A -rising of the sea, such as has been observed, say an inch in a century, -from east to west on the land, will bury all the towns, monuments, -bones, and knowledge of mankind, steadily and insensibly. If it is -capable of these great and secular mischiefs, it is quite as ready at -private and local damage; and of this no landsman seems so fearful as -the seaman. Such discomfort and such danger as the narratives of the -captain and mate disclose are bad enough as the costly fee we pay for -entrance to Europe; but the wonder is always new that any sane man can -be a sailor. And here, on the second day of our voyage, stepped out a -little boy in his shirt-sleeves, who had hid himself, whilst the ship -was in port, in the bread-closet, having no money, and wishing to go to -England. The sailors have dressed him in Guernsey frock, with a knife -in his belt, and he is climbing nimbly about after them, "likes the work -first-rate, and, if the captain will take him, means now to come back -again in the ship." The mate avers that this is the history of all -sailors; nine out of ten are runaway boys; and adds, that all of them -are sick of the sea, but stay in it out of pride. Jack has a life of -risks, incessant abuse, and the worst pay. It is a little better with -the mate, and not very much better with the captain. A hundred dollars -a month is reckoned high pay. If sailors were contented, if they had not -resolved again and again not to go to sea any more, I should respect -them. - -Of course, the inconveniences and terrors of the sea are not of any -account to those whose minds are preoccupied. The water-laws, arctic -frost, the mountain, the mine, only shatter cockneyism; every noble -activity makes room for itself. A great mind is a good sailor, as a -great heart is. And the sea is not slow in disclosing inestimable -secrets to a good naturalist. - -'Tis a good rule in every journey to provide some piece of liberal study -to rescue the hours which bad weather, bad company, and taverns steal -from the best economist. Classics which at home are drowsily read have -a strange charm in a country inn, or in the transom of a merchant brig. -I remember that some of the happiest and most valuable hours I have owed -to books, passed, many years ago, on shipboard. The worst impediment I -have found at sea is the want of light in the cabin. - -We found on board the usual cabin library; Basil Hall, Dumas, Dickens, -Bulwer, Balzac, and Sand were our sea-gods. Among the passengers, there -was some variety of talent and profession; we exchanged our experiences, -and all learned something. The busiest talk with leisure and -convenience at sea, and sometimes a memorable fact turns up, which you -have long had a vacant niche for, and seize with the joy of a collector. -But, under the best conditions, a voyage is one of the severest tests to -try a man. A college examination is nothing to it. Sea-days are -long,--these lack-lustre, joyless days which whistled over us; but they -were few,--only fifteen, as the captain counted, sixteen according to -me. Reckoned from the time when we left soundings, our speed was such -that the captain drew the line of his course in red ink on his chart, -for the encouragement or envy of future navigators. - -It has been said that the King of England would consult his dignity by -giving audience to foreign ambassadors in the cabin of a man-of-war. -And I think the white path of an Atlantic ship the right avenue to the -palace front of this sea-faring people, who for hundreds of years -claimed the strict sovereignty of the sea, and exacted toll and the -striking sail from the ships of all other peoples. When their privilege -was disputed by the Dutch and other junior marines, on the plea that you -could never anchor on the same wave, or hold property in what was always -flowing, the English did not stick to claim the channel, or bottom of -all the main. "As if," said they, "we contended for the drops of the -sea, and not for its situation, or the bed of those waters. The sea is -bounded by his Majesty's empire." - -As we neared the land, its genius was felt. This was inevitably the -British side. In every man's thought arises now a new system, English -sentiments, English loves and fears, English history and social modes. -Yesterday, every passenger had measured the speed of the ship by -watching the bubbles over the ship's bulwarks. To-day, instead of -bubbles, we measure by Kinsale, Cork, Waterford, and Ardmore. There lay -the green shore of Ireland, like some coast of plenty. We could see -towns, towers, churches, harvests; but the curse of eight hundred years -we could not discern. - - - - -CHAPTER III.--LAND. - - -Alfieri thought Italy and England the only countries worth living in: -the former, because there Nature vindicates her rights, and triumphs -over the evils inflicted by the governments; the latter, because art -conquers nature, and transforms a rude, ungenial land into a paradise of -comfort and plenty. England is a garden. Under an ash-colored sky, the -fields have been combed and rolled till they appear to have been -finished with a pencil instead of a plough. The solidity of the -structures that compose the towns speaks the industry of ages. Nothing -is left as it was made. Rivers, hills, valleys, the sea itself, feel -the hand of a master. The long habitation of a powerful and ingenious -race has turned every rood of land to its best use, has found all the -capabilities, the arable soil, the quarriable rock, the highways, the -byways, the fords, the navigable waters; and the new arts of intercourse -meet you everywhere; so that England is a huge phalanstery, where all -that man wants is provided within the precinct. Cushioned and comforted -in every manner, the traveller rides as on a cannon-ball, high and low, -over rivers and towns, through mountains, in tunnels of three or four -miles, at near twice the speed of our trains; and reads quietly the -_Times_ newspaper, which, by its immense correspondence and reporting, -seems to have machinized the rest of the world for his occasion. - -The problem of the traveller landing at Liverpool is, Why England is -England. What are the elements of that power which the English hold -over other nations? If there be one test of national genius universally -accepted, it is success; and if there be one successful country in the -universe for the last millennium, that country is England. - -A wise traveller will naturally choose to visit the best of actual -nations; and an American has more reasons than another to draw him to -Britain. In all that is done or begun by the Americans towards right -thinking or practice, we are met by a civilization already settled and -overpowering. The culture of the day, the thoughts and aims of men, are -English thoughts and aims. A nation considerable for a thousand years -since Egbert, it has, in the last centuries, obtained the ascendant, and -stamped the knowledge, activity, and power of mankind with its impress. -Those who resist it do not feel it or obey it less. The Russian in his -snows is aiming to be English. The Turk and Chinese also are making -awkward efforts to be English. The practical common-sense of modern -society, the utilitarian direction which labor, laws, opinion, religion, -take, is the natural genius of the British mind. The influence of -France is a constituent of modern civility, but not enough opposed to -the English for the most wholesome effect. The American is only the -continuation of the English genius into new conditions, more or less -propitious. - -See what books fill our libraries. Every book we read, every biography, -play, romance, in whatever form, is still English history and manners. -So that a sensible Englishman once said to me, "As long as you do not -grant us copyright, we shall have the teaching of you." - -But we have the same difficulty in making a social or moral estimate of -England, as the sheriff finds in drawing a jury to try some cause which -has agitated the whole community, and on which everybody finds himself -an interested party. Officers, jurors, judges, have all taken sides. -England has inoculated all nations with her civilization, intelligence, -and tastes; and, to resist the tyranny and prepossession of the British -element, a serious man must aid himself, by comparing with it the -civilizations of the farthest east and west, the old Greek, the -Oriental, and, much more, the ideal standard, if only by means of the -very impatience which English forms are sure to awaken in independent -minds. - -Besides, if we will visit London, the present time is the best time, as -some signs portend that it has reached its highest point. It is -observed that the English interest us a little less within a few years; -and hence the impression that the British power has culminated, is in -solstice, or already declining. - -As soon as you enter England, which, with Wales, is no larger than the -State of Georgia,[1] this little land stretches by an illusion to the -dimensions of an empire. The innumerable details, the crowded succession -of towns, cities, cathedrals, castles, and great and decorated estates, -the number and power of the trades and guilds, the military strength and -splendor, the multitudes of rich and of remarkable people, the servants -and equipages,--all these catching the eye, and never allowing it to -pause, hide all boundaries, by the impression of magnificence and -endless wealth. - - [1] Add South Carolina, and you have more than an equivalent for the - area of Scotland. - -I reply to all the urgencies that refer me to this and that object -indispensably to be seen,--Yes, to see England well needs a hundred -years; for, what they told me was the merit of Sir John Soane's Museum, -in London,--that it was well packed and well saved,--is the merit of -England;--it is stuffed full, in all corners and crevices, with towns, -towers, churches, villas, palaces, hospitals, and charity-houses. In -the history of art, it is a long way from a cromlech to York minster; -yet all the intermediate steps may still be traced in this -all-preserving island. - -The territory has a singular perfection. The climate is warmer by many -degrees than it is entitled to by latitude. Neither hot nor cold, there -is no hour in the whole year when one cannot work. Here is no winter, -but such days as we have in Massachusetts in November, a temperature -which makes no exhausting demand on human strength, but allows the -attainment of the largest stature. Charles the Second said, "It invited -men abroad more days in the year and more hours in the day than another -country." Then England has all the materials of a working country -except wood. The constant rain--a rain with every tide, in some parts -of the island--keeps its multitude of rivers full, and brings -agricultural production up to the highest point. It has plenty of -water, of stone, of potter's clay, of coal, of salt, and of iron. The -land naturally abounds with game, immense heaths and downs are paved -with quails, grouse, and woodcock, and the shores are animated by -water-birds. The rivers and the surrounding sea spawn with fish; there -are salmon for the rich, and sprats and herrings for the poor. In the -northern lochs, the herring are in innumerable shoals; at one season, -the country people say, the lakes contain one part water and two parts -fish. - -The only drawback on this industrial conveniency is the darkness of its -sky. The night and day are too nearly of a color. It strains the eyes -to read and to write. Add the coal-smoke. In the manufacturing towns, -the fine soot or blacks darken the day, give white sheep the color of -black sheep, discolor the human saliva, contaminate the air, poison many -plants, and corrode the monuments and buildings. - -The London fog aggravates the distempers of the sky, and sometimes -justifies the epigram on the climate by an English wit, "in a fine day, -looking up a chimney; in a foul day, looking down one." A gentleman in -Liverpool told me that he found he could do without a fire in his parlor -about one day in the year. It is however pretended, that the enormous -consumption of coal in the island is also felt in modifying the general -climate. - -Factitious climate, factitious position. England resembles a ship in -its shape, and, if it were one, its best admiral could not have worked -it, or anchored it in a more judicious or effective position. Sir John -Herschel said, "London was the centre of the terrene globs." The -shopkeeping nation, to use a shop word, has a _good stand_. The old -Venetians pleased themselves with the flattery, that Venice was in 45, -midway between the poles and the line; as if that were an imperial -centrality. Long of old, the Greeks fancied Delphi the navel of the -earth, in their favorite mode of fabling the earth to be an animal. The -Jews believed Jerusalem to be the centre. I have seen a kratometric -chart designed to show that the city of Philadelphia was in the same -thermic belt, and, by inference, in the same belt of empire, as the -cities of Athens, Rome, and London. It was drawn by a patriotic -Philadelphian, and was examined with pleasure, under his showing, by the -inhabitants of Chestnut Street. But, when carried to Charleston, to New -Orleans, and to Boston, it somehow failed to convince the ingenious -scholars of all those capitals. - -But England is anchored at the side of Europe, and right in the heart of -the modern world. The sea, which, according to Virgil's famous line, -divided the poor Britons utterly from the world, proved to be the ring -of marriage with all nations. It is not down in the books,--it is -written only in the geologic strata,--that fortunate day when a wave of -the German Ocean burst the old isthmus which joined Kent and Cornwall to -France, and gave to this fragment of Europe its impregnable sea-wall, -cutting off an island of eight hundred miles in length, with an -irregular breadth reaching to three hundred miles; a territory large -enough for independence enriched with every seed of national power, so -near, that it can see the harvests of the continent; and so far, that -who would cross the strait must be an expert mariner, ready for -tempests. As America, Europe, and Asia lie, these Britons have -precisely the best commercial position in the whole planet, and are sure -of a market for all the goods they can manufacture. And to make these -advantages avail, the river Thames must dig its spacious outlet to the -sea from the heart of the kingdom, giving road and landing to -innumerable ships, and all the conveniency to trade, that a people so -skilful and sufficient in economizing water-front by docks, warehouses, -and lighters required. When James the First declared his purpose of -punishing London by removing his Court, the Lord Mayor replied, "that, -in removing his royal presence from his lieges, they hoped he would -leave them the Thames." - -In the variety of surface, Britain is a miniature of Europe, having -plain, forest, marsh, river, sea-shore; mines in Cornwall; caves in -Matlock and Derbyshire; delicious landscape in Dovedale, delicious -sea-view at Tor Bay, Highlands in Scotland, Snowdon in Wales; and, in -Westmoreland and Cumberland, a pocket Switzerland, in which the lakes -and mountains are on a sufficient scale to fill the eye and touch the -imagination. It is a nation conveniently small. Fontenelle thought, -that nature had sometimes a little affectation; and there is such an -artificial completeness in this nation of artificers, as if there were a -design from the beginning to elaborate a bigger Birmingham. Nature held -counsel with herself, and said, 'My Romans are gone. To build my new -empire, I will choose a rude race, all masculine, with brutish strength. -I will not grudge a competition of the roughest males. Let buffalo gore -buffalo, and the pasture to the strongest! For I have work that -requires the best will and sinew. Sharp and temperate northern breezes -shall blow, to keep that will alive and alert. The sea shall disjoin -the people from others, and knit them to a fierce nationality. It shall -give them markets on every side. Long time I will keep them on their -feet, by poverty, border-wars, sea-faring, sea-risks, and the stimulus -of gain. An island,--but not so large, the people not so many as to -glut the great markets and depress one another, but proportioned to the -size of Europe and the continents.' - -With its fruits, and wares, and money, must its civil influence radiate. -It is a singular coincidence to this geographic centrality, the -spiritual centrality, which Emanuel Swedenborg ascribes to the people. -"For the English nation, the best of them are in the centre of all -Christians, because they have interior intellectual light. This appears -conspicuously in the spiritual world. This light they derive from the -liberty of speaking and writing, and thereby of thinking." - - - - -CHAPTER IV.--RACE. - - -An ingenious anatomist has written a book[2] to prove that races are -imperishable, but nations are pliant political constructions, easily -changed or destroyed. But this writer did not found his assumed races -on any necessary law, disclosing their ideal or metaphysical necessity; -nor did he, on the other hand, count with precision the existing races, -and settle the true bounds; a point of nicety, and the popular test of -the theory. The individuals at the extremes of divergence in one race -of men are as unlike as the wolf to the lapdog. Yet each variety shades -down imperceptibly into the next, and you cannot draw the line where a -race begins or ends. Hence every writer makes a different count. -Blumenbach reckons five races; Humboldt, three; and Mr. Pickering, who -lately, in our Exploring Expedition, thinks he saw all the kinds of men -that can be on the planet, makes eleven. - - [2] The Races, a Fragment. By Robert Knox. London: 1830. - -The British Empire is reckoned to contain (in 1848) 222,000,000 -souls,--perhaps a fifth of the population of the globe; and to comprise -a territory of 5,000,000 square miles. So far have British people -predominated. Perhaps forty of these millions are of British stock. Add -the United States of America, which reckon (in the same year), exclusive -of slaves, 20,000,000 of people, on a territory of 3,000,000 square -miles, and in which the foreign element, however considerable, is -rapidly assimilated, and you have a population of English descent and -language, of 60,000,000, and governing a population of 245,000,000 -souls. - -The British census proper reckons twenty-seven and a half millions in -the home countries. What makes this census important is the quality of -the units that compose it. They are free forcible men, in a country -where life is safe, and has reached the greatest value. They give the -bias to the current age; and that, not by chance or by mass, but by -their character, and by the number of individuals among them of personal -ability. It has been denied that the English have genius. Be it as it -may, men of vast intellect have been born on their soil, and they have -made or applied the principal inventions. They have sound bodies, and -supreme endurance in war and in labor. The spawning force of the race -has sufficed to the colonization of great parts of the world; yet it -remains to be seen whether they can make good the exodus of millions -from Great Britain, amounting, in 1852, to more than a thousand a day. -They have assimilating force, since they are imitated by their foreign -subjects; and they are still aggressive and propagandist, enlarging the -dominion of their arts and liberty. Their laws are hospitable, and -slavery does not exist under them. What oppression exists is incidental -and temporary; their success is not sudden or fortunate, but they have -maintained constancy and self-equality for many ages. - -Is this power due to their race, or to some other cause? Men hear gladly -of the power of blood or race. Everybody likes to know that his -advantages cannot be attributed to air, soil, sea, or to local wealth, -as mines and quarries, nor to laws and traditions, nor to fortune, but -to superior brain, as it makes the praise more personal to him. - -We anticipate in the doctrine of race something like that law of -physiology, that, whatever bone, muscle, or essential organ is found in -one healthy individual, the same part or organ may be found in or near -the same place in its congener; and we look to find in the son every -mental and moral property that existed in the ancestor. In race, it is -not the broad shoulders, or litheness, or stature that give advantage, -but a symmetry that reaches as far as to the wit. Then the miracle and -renown begin. Then first we care to examine the pedigree, and copy -needfully the training,--what food they ate, what nursing, school, and -exercises they had, which resulted in this mother-wit, delicacy of -thought, and robust wisdom. How came such men as King Alfred, and Roger -Bacon, William of Wykeham, Walter Raleigh, Philip Sidney, Isaac Newton, -William Shakspeare, George Chapman, Francis Bacon, George Herbert, Henry -Vane, to exist here? What made these delicate natures? was it the air? -was it the sea? was it the parentage? For it is certain that these men -are samples of their contemporaries. The hearing ear is always found -close to the speaking tongue; and no genius can long or often utter -anything which is not invited and gladly entertained by men around him. - -It is race, is it not? that puts the hundred millions of India under the -dominion of a remote island in the north of Europe. Race avails much, -if that be true, which is alleged, that all Celts are Catholics, and all -Saxons are Protestants; that Celts love unity of power, and Saxons the -representative principle. Race is a controlling influence in the Jew, -who, for two millenniums, under every climate, has preserved the same -character and employments. Race in the negro is of appalling -importance. The French in Canada, cut off from all intercourse with the -parent people, have held their national traits. I chanced to read -Tacitus "on the Manners of the Germans," not long since, in Missouri, -and the heart of Illinois, and I found abundant points of resemblance -between the Germans of the Hercynian forest, and our _Hoosiers_, -_Suckers_, and _Badgers_ of the American woods. - -But whilst race works immortally to keep its own, it is resisted by -other forces. Civilization is a re-agent, and eats away the old traits. -The Arabs of to-day are the Arabs of Pharaoh; but the Briton of to-day -is a very different person from Cassibelaunus or Ossian. Each religious -sect has its physiognomy. The Methodists have acquired a face; the -Quakers, a face; the nuns, a face. An Englishman will pick out a -dissenter by his manners. Trades and professions carve their own lines -on face and form. Certain circumstances of English life are not less -effective: as, personal liberty; plenty of food; good ale and mutton; -open market, or good wages for every kind of labor; high bribes to -talent and skill; the island life, or the million opportunities and -outlets for expanding and misplaced talent; readiness of combination -among themselves for politics or for business; strikes; and sense of -superiority founded on habit of victory in labor and in war; and the -appetite for superiority grows by feeding. - -It is easy to add to the counteracting forces to race. Credence is a -main element. 'T is said, that the views of nature held by any people -determine all their institutions. Whatever influences add to mental or -moral faculty, take men out of nationality, as out of other conditions, -and make the national life a culpable compromise. - -These limitations of the formidable doctrine of race suggest others -which threaten to undermine it, as not sufficiently based. The fixity -or inconvertibleness of races as we see them, is a weak argument for the -eternity of these frail boundaries, since all our historical period is a -point to the duration in which nature has wrought. Any the least and -solitariest fact in our natural history, such as the melioration of -fruits and of animal stocks, has the worth of a _power_ in the -opportunity of geologic periods. Moreover, though we flatter the -self-love of men and nations by the legend of pure races, all our -experience is of the gradation and resolution of races, and strange -resemblances meet us everywhere. It need not puzzle us that Malay and -Papuan, Celt and Itonian, Saxon and Tartar, should mix, when we see the -rudiments of tiger and baboon in our human form, and know that the -barriers of races are not so firm, but that some spray sprinkles us from -the antediluvian seas. - -The low organizations are simplest; a mere mouth, a jelly, or a straight -worm. As the scale mounts, the organizations become complex. We are -piqued with pure descent, but nature loves inoculation. A child blends -in his face the faces of both parents, and some feature from every -ancestor whose face hangs on the wall. The best nations are those most -widely related; and navigation, as effecting a world-wide mixture, is -the most potent advancer of nations. - -The English composite character betrays a mixed origin. Everything -English is a fusion of distant and antagonistic elements. The language -is mixed; the names of men are of different nations,--three languages, -three or four nations;--the currents of thought are counter: -contemplation and practical skill; active intellect and dead -conservatism; world-wide enterprise, and devoted use and wont; -aggressive freedom and hospitable law, with bitter class legislation; a -people scattered by their wars and affairs over the face of the whole -earth, and homesick to a man; a country of extremes,--dukes and -chartists, Bishops of Durham and naked heathen colliers;--nothing can be -praised in it without damning exceptions, and nothing denounced without -salvos of cordial praise. - -Neither do this people appear to be of one stem; but collectively a -better race than any from which they are derived. Nor is it easy to -trace it home to its original seats. Who can call by right names what -races are in Britain? Who can trace them historically? Who can -discriminate them anatomically, or metaphysically? - -In the impossibility of arriving at satisfaction on the historical -question of race, and--come of whatever disputable ancestry--the -indisputable Englishman before me, himself very well marked, and nowhere -else to be found,--I fancied I could leave quite aside the choice of a -tribe as his lineal progenitors. Defoe said in his wrath, "the -Englishman was the mud of all races." I incline to the belief that, as -water, lime, and sand make mortar, so certain temperaments marry well, -and, by well-managed contrarieties, develop as drastic a character as -the English. On the whole, it is not so much a history of one or of -certain tribes of Saxons, Jutes, or Frisians, coming from one place, and -genetically identical, as it is an anthology of temperaments out of them -all. Certain temperaments suit the sky and soil of England, say eight -or ten or twenty varieties, as, out of a hundred pear-trees, eight or -ten suit the soil of an orchard, and thrive, whilst all the unadapted -temperaments die out. - -The English derive their pedigree from such a range of nationalities, -that there needs sea-room and land-room to unfold the varieties of -talent and character. Perhaps the ocean serves as a galvanic battery to -distribute acids at one pole, and alkalies at the other. So England -tends to accumulate her Liberals in America, and her conservatives at -London. The Scandinavians in her race still hear in every age the -murmurs of their mother, the ocean; the Briton in the blood hugs the -homestead still. - -Again, as if to intensate the influences that are not of race, what we -think of when we talk of English traits really narrows itself to a small -district. It excludes Ireland, and Scotland, and Wales, and reduces -itself at last to London, that is, to those who come and go thither. -The portraits that hang on the walls in the Academy Exhibition at -London, the figures in Punch's drawings of the public men, or of the -club-houses, the prints in the shop-windows, are distinctive English, -and not American, no, nor Scotch, nor Irish: but 't is a very restricted -nationality. As you go north into the manufacturing and agricultural -districts, and to the population that never travels, as you go into -Yorkshire, as you enter Scotland, the world's Englishman is no longer -found. In Scotland, there is a rapid loss of all grandeur of mien and -manners; a provincial eagerness and acuteness appear; the poverty of the -country makes itself remarked, and a coarseness of manners; and, among -the intellectual, is the insanity of dialectics. In Ireland, are the -same climate and soil as in England, but less food, no right relation to -the land, political dependence, small tenantry, and an inferior or -misplaced race. - -These queries concerning ancestry and blood may be well allowed, for -there is no prosperity that seems more to depend on the kind of man than -British prosperity. Only a hardy and wise people could have made this -small territory great. We say, in a regatta or yacht-race, that if the -boats are anywhere nearly matched, it is the man that wins. Put the -best sailing-master into either boat, and he will win. - -Yet it is fine for us to speculate in face of unbroken traditions, -though vague, and losing themselves in fable. The traditions have got -footing, and refuse to be disturbed. The kitchen clock is more -convenient than sidereal time. We must use the popular category, as we -do by the Linnan classification, for convenience, and not as exact and -final. Otherwise, we are presently confounded, when the best-settled -traits of one race are claimed by some new ethnologist as precisely -characteristic of the rival tribe. - -I found plenty of well-marked English types, the ruddy complexion fair -and plump, robust men, with faces cut like a die, and a strong island -speech and accent; a Norman type, with the complacency that belongs to -that constitution. Others, who might be Americans, for anything that -appeared in their complexion or form: and their speech was much less -marked, and their thought much less bound. We will call them Saxons. -Then the Roman has implanted his dark complexion in the trinity or -quaternity of bloods. - - -1. The sources from which tradition derives their stock are mainly -three. And, first, they are of the oldest blood of the world,--the -Celtic. Some peoples are deciduous or transitory. Where are the -Greeks? where the Etrurians? where the Romans? But the Celts or -Sidonides are an old family, of whose beginning there is no memory, and -their end is likely to be still more remote in the future; for they have -endurance and productiveness. They planted Britain, and gave to the -seas and mountains names which are poems, and imitate the pure voices of -nature. They are favorably remembered in the oldest records of Europe. -They had no violent feudal tenure, but the husbandman owned the land. -They had an alphabet, astronomy, priestly culture, and a sublime creed. -They have a hidden and precarious genius. They made the best popular -literature of the Middle Ages in the songs of Merlin, and the tender and -delicious mythology of Arthur. - -2. The English come mainly from the Germans, whom the Romans found hard -to conquer in two hundred and ten years,--say, impossible to -conquer,--when one remembers the long sequel; a people about whom, in -the old empire, the rumor ran, there was never any that meddled with -them that repented it not. - -3. Charlemagne, halting one day in a town of Narbonnese Gaul, looked out -of a window, and saw a fleet of Northmen cruising in the Mediterranean. -They even entered the port of the town where he was, causing no small -alarm and sudden manning and arming of his galleys. As they put out to -sea again, the emperor gazed long after them, his eyes bathed in tears. -"I am tormented with sorrow," he said, "when I foresee the evils they -will bring on my posterity." There was reason for these Xerxes' tears. -The men who have built a ship and invented the rig,--cordage, sail, -compass, and pump,--the working in and out of port, have acquired much -more than a ship. Now arm them, and every shore is at their mercy. -For, if they have not numerical superiority where they anchor, they have -only to sail a mile or two to find it. Bonaparte's art of war, namely, -of concentrating force on the point of attack, must always be theirs who -have the choice of the battle-ground. Of course they come into the -fight from a higher ground of power than the land-nations; and can -engage them on shore with a victorious advantage in the retreat. As -soon as the shores are sufficiently peopled to make piracy a losing -business, the same skill and courage are ready for the service of trade. - -The _Heimskringla_,[3] or Sagas of the Kings of Norway, collected by -Snorro Sturleson, is the Iliad and Odyssey of English history. Its -portraits, like Homer's, are strongly individualized. The Sagas -describe a monarchical republic like Sparta. The government disappears -before the importance of citizens. In Norway, no Persian masses fight -and perish to aggrandize a king, but the actors are bonders or -landholders, every one of whom is named and personally and -patronymically described, as the king's friend and companion. A sparse -population gives this high worth to every man. Individuals are often -noticed as very handsome persons, which trait only brings the story -nearer to the English race. Then the solid material interest -predominates, so dear to English understanding, wherein the association -is logical, between merit and land. The heroes of the Sagas are not the -knights of South Europe. No vaporing of France and Spain has corrupted -them. They are substantial farmers, whom the rough times have forced to -defend their properties. They have weapons which they use in a -determined manner, by no means for chivalry, but for their acres. They -are people considerably advanced in rural arts, living amphibiously on a -rough coast, and drawing half their food from the sea, and half from the -land. They have herds of cows, and malt, wheat, bacon, butter, and -cheese. They fish in the fiord, and hunt the deer. A king among these -farmers has a varying power, sometimes not exceeding the authority of a -sheriff. A king was maintained much as, in some of our country -districts, a winter-schoolmaster is quartered, a week here, a week -there, and a fortnight on the next farm,--on all the farms in rotation. -This the king calls going into guest-quarters; and it was the only way -in which, in a poor country, a poor king, with many retainers, could be -kept alive, when he leaves his own farm to collect his dues through the -kingdom. - - [3] Heimskringla. Translated by Samuel Laing, Esq. London: 1844. - -These Norsemen are excellent persons in the main, with good sense, -steadiness, wise speech, and prompt action. But they have a singular -turn for homicide; their chief end of man is to murder or to be -murdered; oars, scythes, harpoons, crow-bars, peat-knives, and hay-forks -are tools valued by them all the more for their charming aptitude for -assassinations. A pair of kings, after dinner, will divert themselves -by thrusting each his sword through the other's body, as did Yngve and -Alf. Another pair ride out on a morning for a frolic, and, finding no -weapon near, will take the bits out of their horses' mouths, and crush -each other's heads with them, as did Alric and Eric. The sight of a -tent-cord or a cloak-string puts them on hanging somebody, a wife, or a -husband, or, best of all, a king. If a farmer has so much as a hayfork, -he sticks it into a King Dag. King Ingiald finds it vastly amusing to -burn up half a dozen kings in a hall, after getting them drunk. Never -was poor gentleman so surfeited with life, so furious to be rid of it, -as the Northman. If he cannot pick any other quarrel, he will get -himself comfortably gored by a bull's horns, like Egil, or slain by a -land-slide, like the agricultural King Onund. Odin died in his bed, in -Sweden; but it was a proverb of ill condition, to die the death of old -age. King Hake of Sweden cuts and slashes in battle, as long as he can -stand, then orders his war-ship, loaded with his dead men and their -weapons, to be taken out to sea, the tiller shipped, and the sails -spread; being left alone, he sets fire to some tar-wood, and lies down -contented on deck. The wind blew off the land, the ship flew burning in -clear flame, out between the islets into the ocean, and there was the -right end of King Hake. - -The early Sagas are sanguinary and piratical; the later are of a noble -strain. History rarely yields us better passages than the conversation -between King Sigurd the Crusader, and King Eystein, his brother, on -their respective merits,--one, the soldier, and the other, a lover of -the arts of peace. - -But the reader of the Norman history must steel himself by holding fast -the remote compensations which result from animal vigor. As the old -fossil world shows that the first steps of reducing the chaos were -confided to saurians and other huge and horrible animals, so the -foundations of the new civility were to be laid by the most savage men. - -The Normans came out of France into England worse men than they went -into it, one hundred and sixty years before. They had lost their own -language, and learned the Romance or barbarous Latin of the Gauls; and -had acquired, with the language, all the vices it had names for. The -conquest has obtained, in the chronicles, the name of the "memory of -sorrow." Twenty thousand thieves landed at Hastings. These founders of -the House of Lords were greedy and ferocious dragoons, sons of greedy -and ferocious pirates. They were all alike, they took everything they -could carry, they burned, harried, violated, tortured, and killed, until -everything English was brought to the verge of ruin. Such, however, is -the illusion of antiquity and wealth, that decent and dignified men now -existing boast their descent from these filthy thieves, who showed a far -juster conviction of their own merits, by assuming for their types the -swine, goat, jackal, leopard, wolf, and snake, which they severally -resembled. - -England yielded to the Danes and Northmen in the tenth and eleventh -centuries, and was the receptacle into which all the mettle of that -strenuous population was poured. The continued draught of the best men -in Norway, Sweden, and Denmark, to these piratical expeditions, -exhausted those countries, like a tree which bears much fruit when -young, and these have been second-rate powers ever since. The power of -the race migrated, and left Norway void. King Olaf said: "When King -Harold, my father, went westward to England, the chosen men in Norway -followed him; but Norway was so emptied then, that such men have not -since been to find in the country, nor especially such a leader as King -Harold was for wisdom and bravery." - -It was a tardy recoil of these invasions, when, in 1801, the British -government sent Nelson to bombard the Danish forts in the Sound; and, in -1807, Lord Cathcart, at Copenhagen, took the entire Danish fleet, as it -lay in the basins, and all the equipments from the Arsenal, and carried -them to England. Konghelle, the town where the kings of Norway, Sweden, -and Denmark were wont to meet, is now rented to a private English -gentleman for a hunting-ground. - -It took many generations to trim, and comb, and perfume the first -boat-load of Norse pirates into royal highnesses and most noble Knights -of the Garter: but every sparkle of ornament dates back to the Norse -boat. There will be time enough to mellow this strength into civility -and religion. It is a medical fact, that the children of the blind see; -the children of felons have a healthy conscience. Many a mean, -dastardly boy is, at the age of puberty, transformed into a serious and -generous youth. - -The mildness of the following ages has not quite effaced these traits of -Odin; as the rudiment of a structure matured in the tiger is said to be -still found unabsorbed in the Caucasian man. The nation has a tough, -acrid, animal nature, which centuries of churching and civilizing have -not been able to sweeten. Alfiori said, "the crimes of Italy were the -proof of the superiority of the stock"; and one may say of England, that -this watch moves on a splinter of adamant. The English uncultured are a -brutal nation. The crimes recorded in their calendars leave nothing to -be desired in the way of cold malignity. Dear to the English heart is a -fair stand-up fight. The brutality of the manners in the lower class -appears in the boxing, bear-baiting, cock-fighting, love of executions, -and in the readiness for a set-to in the streets, delightful to the -English of all classes. The costermongers of London streets hold -cowardice in loathing:--"we must work our fists well; we are all handy -with our fists." The public schools are charged with being bear-gardens -of brutal strength, and are liked by the people for that cause. The -fagging is a trait of the same quality. Medwin, in the Life of Shelley, -relates, that, at a military school, they rolled up a young man in a -snowball, and left him so in his room, while the other cadets went to -church;--and crippled him for life. They have retained impressment, -deck-flogging, army-flogging, and school-flogging. Such is the ferocity -of the army discipline, that a soldier sentenced to flogging, sometimes -prays that his sentence may be commuted to death. Flogging, banished -from the armies of Western Europe, remains here by the sanction of the -Duke of Wellington. The right of the husband to sell the wife has been -retained down to our times. The Jews have been the favorite victims of -royal and popular persecution. Henry III. mortgaged all the Jews in the -kingdom to his brother, the Earl of Cornwall, as security for money -which he borrowed. The torture of criminals, and the rack for extorting -evidence, were slowly disused. Of the criminal statutes, Sir Samuel -Romilly said, "I have examined the codes of all nations, and ours is the -worst, and worthy of the Anthropophagi." In the last session (18:18), -the House of Commons was listening to details of flogging and torture -practised in the jails. - -As soon as this land, thus geographically posted, got a hardy people -into it, they could not help becoming the sailors and factors of the -globe. From childhood, they dabbled in water, they swum like fishes, -their playthings were boats. In the case of the ship-money, the judges -delivered it for law, that "England being an island, the very midland -shires therein are all to be accounted maritime": and Fuller adds, "the -genius even of land-locked countries driving the natives with a maritime -dexterity." As early as the conquest, it is remarked in explanation of -the wealth of England, that its merchants trade to all countries. - -The English, at the present day, have great vigor of body and endurance. -Other countrymen look slight and undersized beside them, and invalids. -They are bigger men than the Americans. I suppose a hundred English -taken at random out of the street would weigh a fourth more than so many -Americans. Yet, I am told, the skeleton is not larger. They are round, -ruddy, and handsome; at least, the whole bust is well formed; and there -is a tendency to stout and powerful frames. I remarked the stoutness, -on my first landing at Liverpool; porter, drayman, coachman, -guard,--what substantial, respectable, grandfatherly figures, with -costume and manners to suit. The American has arrived at the old -mansion-house, and finds himself among uncles, aunts, and grandsires. -The pictures on the chimney-tiles of his nursery were pictures of these -people. Here they are in the identical costumes and air, which so took -him. - -It is the fault of their forms that they grow stocky, and the women have -that disadvantage,--few tall, slender figures of flowing shape, but -stunted and thickset persons. The French say, that the Englishwomen -have two left hands. But, in all ages, they are a handsome race. The -bronze monuments of crusaders lying cross-legged, in the Temple Church -at London, and those in Worcester and in Salisbury Cathedrals, which are -seven hundred years old, are of the same type as the best youthful heads -of men now in England;--please by beauty of the same character, an -expression blending good-nature, valor, and refinement, and, mainly, by -that uncorrupt youth in the face of manhood, which is daily seen in the -streets of London. - -Both branches of the Scandinavian race are distinguished for beauty. -The anecdote of the handsome captives which Saint Gregory found at Rome, -A.D. 600, is matched by the testimony of the Norman chroniclers, five -centuries later, who wondered at the beauty and long flowing hair of the -young English captives. Meantime, the Heimskringla has frequent -occasion to speak of the personal beauty of its heroes. When it is -considered what humanity, what resources of mental and moral power, the -traits of the blond race betoken,--its accession to empire marks a new -and finer epoch, wherein the old mineral force shall be subjugated at -last by humanity, and shall plough in its furrow henceforward. It is -not a final race, once a crab always crab, but a race with a future. - -On the English face are combined decision and nerve, with the fair -complexion, blue eyes, and open and florid aspect. Hence the love of -truth, hence the sensibility, the fine perception, and poetic -construction. The fair Saxon man, with open front, and honest meaning, -domestic, affectionate, is not the wood out of which cannibal, or -inquisitor, or assassin is made. But he is moulded for law, lawful -trade, civility, marriage, the nurture of children, for colleges, -churches, charities, and colonies. - -They are rather manly than warlike. When the war is over, the mask -falls from the affectionate and domestic tastes, which make them women -in kindness. This union of qualities is fabled in their national legend -of _Beauty and the Beast_, or long before, in the Greek legend of -_Hermaphrodite_. The two sexes are co-present in the English mind. I -apply to Britannia, queen of seas and colonies, the words in which her -latest novelist portrays his heroine: "She is as mild as she is game, -and as game as she is mild." The English delight in the antagonism -which combines in one person the extremes of courage and tenderness. -Nelson, dying at Trafalgar, sends his love to Lord Collingwood, and, -like an innocent school-boy that goes to bed, says, "Kiss me, Hardy," -and turns to sleep. Lord Collingwood, his comrade, was of a nature the -most affectionate and domestic. Admiral Rodney's figure approached to -delicacy and effeminacy, and he declared himself very sensible to fear, -which he surmounted only by considerations of honor and public duty. -Clarendon says, the Duke of Buckingham was so modest and gentle, that -some courtiers attempted to put affronts on him, until they found that -this modesty and effeminacy was only a mask for the most terrible -determination. And Sir Edward Parry said of Sir John Franklin, that, -"if he found Wellington Sound open, he explored it; for he was a man who -never turned his back on a danger, yet of that tenderness, that he would -not brush away a mosquito." Even for their highwaymen the same virtue -is claimed, and Robin Hood comes described to us as _mitissimus -prdonum_, the gentlest thief. But they know where their war-dogs lie. -Cromwell, Blake, Marlborough, Chatham, Nelson, and Wellington are not to -be trifled with, and the brutal strength which lies at the bottom of -society, the animal ferocity of the quays and cock-pits, the bullies of -the costermongers of Shoreditch, Seven Dials, and Spitalfields, they -know how to wake up. - -They have a vigorous health, and last well into middle and old age. The -old men are as red as roses, and still handsome. A clear skin, a -peach-bloom complexion, and good teeth are found all over the island. -They use a plentiful and nutritious diet. The operative cannot subsist -on water-cresses. Beef, mutton, wheat-bread, and malt-liquors are -universal among the first-class laborers. Good feeding is a chief point -of national pride among the vulgar, and, in their caricatures, they -represent the Frenchman as a poor, starved body. It is curious that -Tacitus found the English beer already in use among the Germans: "They -make from barley or wheat a drink corrupted into some resemblance to -wine." Lord Chief Justice Fortescue in Henry VI.'s time, says, "The -inhabitants of England drink no water, unless at certain times, on a -religious score, and by way of penance." The extremes of poverty and -ascetic penance, it would seem, never reach cold water in England. -Wood, the antiquary, in describing the poverty and maceration of Father -Lacey, an English Jesuit, does not deny him beer. He says, "his bed was -under a thatching, and the way to it up a ladder; his fare was coarse; -his drink, of a penny a gawn, or gallon." - -They have more constitutional energy than any other people. They think, -with Henri Quatre, that manly exercises are the foundation of that -elevation of mind which gives one nature ascendant over another; or, -with the Arabs, that the days spent in the chase are not counted in the -length of life. They box, run, shoot, ride, row, and sail from pole to -pole. They eat and drink, and live jolly in the open air, putting a bar -of solid sleep between day and day. They walk and ride as fast as they -can, their heads bent forward, as if urged on some pressing affair. The -French say, that Englishmen in the street always walk straight before -them like mad dogs. Men and women walk with infatuation. As soon as he -can handle a gun, hunting is the fine art of every Englishman of -condition. They are the most voracious people of prey that ever -existed. Every season turns out the aristocracy into the country, to -shoot and fish. The more vigorous run out of the island to Europe, to -America, to Asia, to Africa, and Australia, to hunt with fury by gun, by -trap, by harpoon, by lasso, with clog, with horse, with elephant, or -with dromedary, all the game that is in nature. These men have written -the game-books of all countries, as Hawker, Scrope, Murray, Herbert, -Maxwell, Gumming, and a host of travellers. The people at home are -addicted to boxing, running, leaping, and rowing matches. - -I suppose, the dogs and horses must be thanked for the fact, that the -men have muscles almost as tough and supple as their own. If in every -efficient man, there is first a fine animal, in the English race it is -of the best breed, a wealthy, juicy, broad-chested creature, steeped in -ale and good cheer, and a little overloaded by his flesh. Men of animal -nature rely, like animals, on their instincts. The Englishman -associates well with dogs and horses. His attachment to the horse -arises from the courage and address required to manage it. The horse -finds out who is afraid of it, and does not disguise its opinion. Their -young boiling clerks and lusty collegians like the company of horses -better than the company of professors. I suppose, the horses are better -company for them. The horse has more uses than Buffon noted. If you go -into the streets, every driver in bus or dray is a bully, and, if I -wanted a good troop of soldiers, I should recruit among the stables. -Add a certain degree of refinement to the vivacity of these riders, and -you obtain the precise quality which makes the men and women of polite -society formidable. - -They come honestly by their horsemanship, with _Hengst_ and _Horsa_ for -their Saxon founders. The other branch of their race had been Tartar -nomads. The horse was all their wealth. The children were fed on -mares' milk. The pastures of Tartary were still remembered by the -tenacious practice of the Norsemen to eat horse-flesh at religious -feasts. In the Danish invasions, the marauders seized upon horses where -they landed, and were at once converted into a body of expert cavalry. - -At one time, this skill seems to have declined. Two centuries ago, the -English horse never performed any eminent service beyond the seas; and -the reason assigned was, that the genius of the English hath always more -inclined them to foot-service, as pure and proper manhood, without any -mixture; whilst, in a victory on horseback, the credit ought to be -divided betwixt the man and his horse. But in two hundred years, a -change has taken place. Now, they boast that they understand horses -better than any other people in the world, and that their horses are -become their second selves. - -"William the Conqueror being," says Camden, "better affected to beasts -than to men, imposed heavy fines and punishments on those that should -meddle with his game." The Saxon Chronicle says, "he loved the tall -deer as if he were their father." And rich Englishmen have followed his -example, according to their ability, ever since, in encroaching on the -tillage and commons with their game-preserves. It is a proverb in -England, that it is safer to shoot a man than a hare. The severity of -the game-laws certainly indicates an extravagant sympathy of the nation -with horses and hunters. The gentlemen are always on horseback, and -have brought horses to an ideal perfection,--the English racer is a -factitious breed. A score or two of mounted gentlemen may frequently be -seen running like centaurs down a hill nearly as steep as the roof of a -house. Every inn-room is lined with pictures of races; telegraphs -communicate, every hour, tidings of the heats from Newmarket and Ascot: -and the House of Commons adjourns over the 'Derby Day.' - - - - -CHAPTER V.--ABILITY. - - -The Saxon and the Northman are both Scandinavians. History does not -allow us to fix the limits of the application of these names with any -accuracy; but from the residence of a portion of these people in France, -and from some effect of that powerful soil on their blood and manners, -the Norman has come popularly to represent in England the aristocratic, -and the Saxon the democratic principle. And though, I doubt not, the -nobles are of both tribes, and the workers of both, yet we are forced to -use the names a little mythically, one to represent the worker, and the -other the enjoyer. - -The island was a prize for the best race. Each of the dominant races -tried its fortune in turn. The Phoenician, the Celt, and the Goth had -already got in. The Roman came, but in the very day when his fortune -culminated. He looked in the eyes of a new people that was to supplant -his own. He disembarked his legions, erected his camps and -towers,--presently he heard bad news from Italy, and worse and worse, -every year: at last, he made a handsome compliment of roads and walls, -and departed. But the Saxon seriously settled in the land, builded, -tilled, fished, and traded, with German truth and adhesiveness. The -Dane came, and divided with him. Last of all, the Norman, or -French-Dane, arrived, and formally conquered, harried, and ruled the -kingdom. A century later, it came out, that the Saxon had the most -bottom and longevity, had managed to make the victor speak the language -and accept the law and usage of the victim; forced the baron to dictate -Saxon terms to Norman kings; and, step by step, got all the essential -securities of civil liberty invented and confirmed. The genius of the -race and the genius of the place conspired to this effect. The island -is lucrative to free labor, but not worth possession on other terms. -The race was so intellectual, that a feudal or military tenure could not -last longer than the war. The power of the Saxon-Danes, so thoroughly -beaten in the war, that the name of English and villein were synonymous, -yet so vivacious as to extort charters from the kings, stood on the -strong personality of these people. Sense and economy must rule in a -world which is made of sense and economy, and the banker, with his seven -per cent, drives the earl out of his castle. A nobility of soldiers -cannot keep down a commonalty of shrewd scientific persons. What -signifies a pedigree of a hundred links, against a cotton-spinner with -steam in his mill; or, against a company of broad-shouldered Liverpool -merchants, for whom Stephenson and Brunel are contriving locomotives and -a tubular bridge? - -These Saxons are the hands of mankind. They have the taste for toil, a -distaste for pleasure or repose, and the telescopic appreciation of -distant gain. They are the wealth-makers,--and by dint of mental -faculty which has its own conditions. The Saxon works after liking, or, -only for himself; and to set him at work, and to begin to draw his -monstrous values out of barren Britain, all dishonor, fret, and barrier -must be removed, and then his energies begin to play. - -The Scandinavian fancied himself surrounded by Trolls,--a kind of goblin -men, with vast power of work and skilful production,--divine stevedores, -carpenters, reapers, smiths, and masons, swift to reward every kindness -done them, with gifts of gold and silver. In all English history, this -dream comes to pass. Certain Trolls or working brains, under the names -of Alfred, Bede, Caxton, Bracton, Camden, Drake, Selden, Dugdale, -Newton, Gibbon, Brindley, Watt, Wedgwood, dwell in the troll-mounts of -Britain, and turn the sweat of their face to power and renown. - -If the race is good, so is the place. Nobody landed on this spell-bound -island with impunity. The enchantments of barren shingle and rough -weather transformed every adventurer into a laborer. Each vagabond that -arrived bent his neck to the yoke of gain, or found the air too tense -for him. The strong survived, the weaker went to the ground. Even the -pleasure-hunters and sots of England are of a tougher texture. A hard -temperament had been formed by Saxon and Saxon-Dane, and such of these -French or Normans as could reach it, were naturalized in every sense. - -All the admirable expedients or means hit upon in England must be looked -at as growths or irresistible offshoots of the expanding mind of the -race. A man of that brain thinks and acts thus; and his neighbor, being -afflicted with the same kind of brain, though he is rich, and called a -baron, or a duke, thinks the same thing, and is ready to allow the -justice of the thought and act in his retainer or tenant, though sorely -against his baronial or ducal will. - -The island was renowned in antiquity for its breed of mastiffs, so -fierce, that when their teeth were set, you must cut their heads off to -part them. The man was like his dog. The people have that nervous -bilious temperament, which is known by medical men to resist every means -employed to make its possessor subservient to the will of others. The -English game is main force to main force, the planting of foot to foot, -fair play and open field,--a rough tug without trick or dodging, till -one or both come to pieces. King Ethelwald spoke the language of his -race, when he planted himself at Wimborne, and said, 'he would do one of -two things, or there live, or there lie.' They hate craft and subtlety. -They neither poison, nor waylay, nor assassinate; and, when they have -pounded each other to a poultice, they will shake hands and be friends -for the remainder of their lives. - -You shall trace these Gothic touches at school, at country fairs, at the -hustings, and in parliament. No artifice, no breach of truth and plain -dealing,--not so much as secret ballot, is suffered in the island. In -parliament, the tactics of the opposition is to resist every step of the -government, by a pitiless attack; and in a bargain, no prospect of -advantage is so dear to the merchant, as the thought of being tricked is -mortifying. - -Sir Kenelm Digby, a courtier of Charles and James, who won the sea-fight -of Scanderoon, was a model Englishman in his day. "His person was -handsome and gigantic, he had so graceful elocution and noble address, -that, had he been dropt out of the clouds in any part of the world, he -would have made himself respected: he was skilled in six tongues, and -master of arts and arms."[4] Sir Kenelm wrote a book, "Of Bodies and of -Souls," in which he propounds, that "syllogisms do breed or rather are -all the variety of man's life. They are the steps by which we walk in -all our businesses. Man, as he is man, doth nothing else but weave such -chains. Whatsoever he doth, swarving from this work, lie doth as -deficient from the nature of man: and, if he do aught beyond this, by -breaking out into divers sorts of exterior actions, he findeth, -nevertheless, in this linked sequel of simple discourses, the art, the -cause, the rule, the bounds, and the model of it."[5] - - [4] Antony Wood. - - [5] Man's Soule, p. 29. - -There spoke the genius of the English people. There is a necessity on -them to be logical. They would hardly greet the good that did not -logically fall,--as if it excluded their own merit, or shook their -understandings. They are jealous of minds that have much facility of -association, from an instinctive fear that the seeing many relations to -their thought might impair this serial continuity and lucrative -concentration. They are impatient of genius, or of minds addicted to -contemplation, and cannot conceal their contempt for sallies of thought, -however lawful, whose steps they cannot count by their wonted rule. -Neither do they reckon better a syllogism that ends in syllogism. For -they have a supreme eye to facts, and theirs is a logic that brings salt -to soup, hammer to nail, oar to boat, the logic of cooks, carpenters, -and chemists, following the sequence of nature, and one on which words -make no impression. Their mind is not dazzled by its own means, but -locked and bolted to results. They love men, who, like Samuel Johnson, -a doctor in the schools, would jump out of his syllogism the instant his -major proposition was in danger, to save that, at all hazards. Their -practical vision is spacious, and they can hold many threads without -entangling them. All the steps they orderly take; but with the high -logic of never confounding the minor and major proposition; keeping -their eye on their aim, in all the complicity and delay incident to the -several series of means they employ. There is room in their minds for -this and that,--a science of degrees. In the courts, the independence -of the judges and the loyalty of the suitors are equally excellent. In -Parliament, they have hit on that capital invention of freedom, a -constitutional opposition. And when courts and Parliament are both -deaf, the plaintiff is not silenced. Calm, patient, his weapon of -defence from year to year is the obstinate reproduction of the -grievance, with calculations and estimates. But, meantime, he is drawing -numbers and money to his opinion, resolved that if all remedy fails, -right of revolution is at the bottom of his charter-box. They are bound -to see their measure carried, and stick to it through ages of defeat. - -Into this English logic, however, an infusion of justice enters, not so -apparent in other races,--a belief in the existence of two sides, and -the resolution to see fair play. There is on every question an appeal -from the assertion of the parties to the proof of what is asserted. -They are impious in their scepticism of a theory, but kiss the dust -before a fact. Is it a machine, is it a charter, is it a boxer in the -ring, is it a candidate on the hustings,--the universe of Englishmen -will suspend their judgment, until the trial can be had. They are not -to be led by a phrase, they want a working plan, a working machine, a -working constitution, and will sit out the trial, and abide by the -issue, and reject all preconceived theories. In politics they put blunt -questions, which must be answered; who is to pay the taxes? what will -you do for trade? what for corn? what for the spinner? - -This singular fairness and its results strike the French with surprise. -Philip de Commines says: "Now, in my opinion, among all the -sovereignties I know in the world, that in which the public good is best -attended to, and the least violence exercised on the people, is that of -England." Life is safe, and personal rights; and what is freedom, -without security? whilst, in France, 'fraternity,' 'equality,' and -'indivisible unity' are names for assassination. Montesquieu said: -"England is the freest country in the world. If a man in England had as -many enemies as hairs on his head, no harm would happen to him." - -Their self-respect, their faith in causation, and their realistic logic -or coupling of means to ends, have given them the leadership of the -modern world. Montesquieu said, "No people have true common-sense but -those who are born in England." This common-sense is a perception of -all the conditions of our earthly existence, of laws that can be stated, -and of laws that cannot be stated, or that are learned only by practice, -in which allowance for friction is made. They are impious in their -scepticism of theory, and in high departments they are cramped and -sterile. But the unconditional surrender to facts, and the choice of -means to reach their ends, are as admirable as with ants and bees. - -The bias of the nation is a passion for utility. They love the lever, -the screw, and pulley, the Flanders draught-horse, the waterfall, -wind-mills, tide-mills; the sea and the wind to bear their -freight-ships. More than the diamond Koh-i-noor, which glitters among -their crown-jewels, they prize that dull pebble which is wiser than a -man, whose poles turn themselves to the poles of the world, and whose -axis is parallel to the axis of the world. Now, their toys are steam -and galvanism. They are heavy at the fine arts, but adroit at the -coarse; not good in jewelry or mosaics, but the best iron-masters, -colliers, wool-combers, and tanners in Europe. They apply themselves to -agriculture, to draining, to resisting encroachments of sea, wind, -travelling sands, cold and wet subsoil; to fishery, to manufacture of -indispensable staples,--salt, plumbago, leather, wool, glass, pottery, -and brick,--to bees and silk-worms; and by their steady combinations -they succeed. A manufacturer sits down to dinner in a suit of clothes -which was wool on a sheep's back at sunrise. You dine with a gentleman -on venison, pheasant, quail, pigeons, poultry, mushrooms, and -pineapples, all the growth of his estate. They are neat husbands for -ordering all their tools pertaining to house and field. All are well -kept. There is no want and no waste. They study use and fitness in -their building, in the order of their dwellings, and in their dress. -The Frenchman invented the ruffle, the Englishman added the shirt. The -Englishman wears a sensible coat buttoned to the chin, of rough but -solid and lasting texture. If he is a lord, he dresses a little worse -than a commoner. They have diffused the taste for plain substantial -hats, shoes, and coats through Europe. They think him the best dressed -man, whose dress is so fit for his use that you cannot notice or -remember to describe it. - -They secure the essentials in their diet, in their arts and -manufactures. Every article of cutlery shows, in its shape, thought and -long experience of workmen. They put the expense in the right place, -as, in their sea-steamers, in the solidity of the machinery and the -strength of the boat. The admirable equipment of their arctic ships -carries London to the pole. They build roads, aqueducts, warm and -ventilate houses. And they have impressed their directness and -practical habit on modern civilization. - -In trade, the Englishman believes that nobody breaks who ought not to -break; and, that, if he do not make trade everything, it will make him -nothing; and acts on this belief. The spirit of system, attention to -details, and the subordination of details, or, the not driving things -too finely (which is charged on the Germans), constitute that despatch -of business, which makes the mercantile power of England. - -In war, the Englishman looks to his means. He is of the opinion of -Civilis, his German ancestor, whom Tacitus reports as holding "that the -gods are on the side of the strongest";--a sentence which Bonaparte -unconsciously translated, when he said, "that he had noticed, that -Providence always favored the heaviest battalion." Their military -science propounds that if the weight of the advancing column is greater -than that of the resisting, the latter is destroyed. Therefore -Wellington, when he came to the army in Spain, had every man weighed, -first with accoutrements, and then without; believing that the force of -an army depended on the weight and power of the individual soldiers, in -spite of cannon. Lord Palmerston told the House of Commons, that more -care is taken of the health and comfort of English troops than of any -other troops in the world; and that hence the English can put more men -into the ranks, on the day of action, on the field of battle, than any -other army. Before the bombardment of the Danish forts in the Baltic, -Nelson spent day after day, himself in the boats, on the exhausting -service of sounding the channel. Clerk of Eldin's celebrated manoeuvre -of breaking the line of sea-battle, and Nelson's feat of _doubling_, or -stationing his ships one on the outer bow, and another on the outer -quarter of each of the enemy's, were only translations into naval -tactics of Bonaparte's rule of concentration. Lord Collingwood was -accustomed to tell his men, that, if they could fire three well-directed -broadsides in five minutes, no vessel could resist them; and, from -constant practice, they came to do it in three minutes and a half. - -But conscious that no race of better men exists, they rely most on the -simplest means; and do not like ponderous and difficult tactics, but -delight to bring the affair hand to hand, where the victory lies with -the strength, courage, and endurance of the individual combatants. They -adopt every improvement in rig, in motor, in weapons, but they -fundamentally believe that the best stratagem in naval war is to lay -your ship close alongside of the enemy's ship, and bring all your guns -to bear on him, until you or he go to the bottom. This is the old -fashion, which never goes out of fashion, neither in nor out of England. - -It is not usually a point of honor, nor a religious sentiment, and never -any whim that they will shed their blood for; but usually property, and -right measured by property, that breeds revolution. They have no Indian -taste for a tomahawk-dance, no French taste for a badge or a -proclamation. The Englishman is peaceably minding his business and -earning his day's wages. But if you offer to lay hand on his day's -wages, on his cow, or his right in common, or his shop, he will fight to -the Judgment. Magna-charta, jury-trial, _habeas-corpus_, star-chamber, -ship-money, Popery, Plymouth colony, American Revolution, are all -questions involving a yeoman's right to his dinner, and, except as -touching that, would not have lashed the British nation to rage and -revolt. - -Whilst they are thus instinct with a spirit of order, and of -calculation, it must be owned they are capable of larger views; but the -indulgence is expensive to them, costs great crises, or accumulations of -mental power. In common, the horse works best with blinders. Nothing is -more in the line of English thought, than our unvarnished Connecticut -question, "Pray, sir, how do you get your living when you are at home?" -The questions of freedom, of taxation, of privilege, are money -questions. Heavy fellows, steeped in beer and fleshpots, they are hard -of hearing and dim of sight. Their drowsy minds need to be flagellated -by war and trade and politics and persecution. They cannot well read a -principle, except by the light of fagots and of burning towns. - -Tacitus says of the Germans, "powerful only in sudden efforts, they are -impatient of toil and labor." This highly destined race, if it had not -somewhere added the chamber of patience to its brain, would not have -built London. I know not from which of the tribes and temperaments that -went to the composition of the people this tenacity was supplied, but -they clinch every nail they drive. They have no running for luck, and no -immoderate speed. They spend largely on their fabric, and await the -slow return. Their leather lies tanning seven years in the vat. At -Rogers's mills, in Sheffield, where I was shown the process of making a -razor and a penknife, I was told there is no luck in making good steel; -that they make no mistakes, every blade in the hundred and in the -thousand is good. And that is characteristic of all their work,--no -more is attempted than is done. - -When Thor and his companions arrive at Utgard, he is told that "nobody -is permitted to remain here, unless he understand some art, and excel in -it all other men." The same question is still put to the posterity of -Thor. A nation of laborers, every man is trained to some one art or -detail, and aims at perfection in that: not content unless he has -something in which he thinks he surpasses all other men. He would -rather not do anything at all, than not do it well. I suppose no people -have such thoroughness: from the highest to the lowest, every man -meaning to be master of his art. - -"To show capacity," a Frenchman described as the end of a speech in -debate: "no," said an Englishman, "but to set your shoulder at the -wheel,--to advance the business." Sir Samuel Romilly refused to speak -in popular assemblies, confining himself to the House of Commons, where -a measure can be carried by a speech. The business of the House of -Commons is conducted by a few persons, but these are hard-worked. Sir -Robert Peel "knew the Blue Books by heart." His colleagues and rivals -carry Hansard in their heads. The high civil and legal offices are not -beds of ease, but posts which exact frightful amounts of mental labor. -Many of the great leaders, like Pitt, Canning, Castlereagh, Romilly, are -soon worked to death. They are excellent judges in England of a good -worker, and when they find one, like Clarendon, Sir Philip Warwick, Sir -William Coventry, Ashley, Burke, Thurlow, Mansfield, Pitt, Eldon, Peel, -or Russell, there is nothing too good or too high for him. - -They have a wonderful heat in the pursuit of a public aim. Private -persons exhibit, in scientific and antiquarian researches, the same -pertinacity as the nation showed in the coalitions in which it yoked -Europe against the Empire of Bonaparte, one after the other defeated, -and still renewed, until the sixth hurled him from his seat. - -Sir John Herschel, in completion of the work of his father, who had made -the catalogue of the stars of the northern hemisphere, expatriated -himself for years at the Cape of Good Hope, finished his inventory of -the southern heaven, came home, and redacted it in eight years more;--a -work whose value does not begin until thirty years have elapsed, and -thenceforward a record to all ages of the highest import. The Admiralty -sent out the Arctic expeditions year after year, in search of Sir John -Franklin, until, at last, they have threaded their way through polar -pack and Behring's Straits, and solved the geographical problem. Lord -Elgin, at Athens, saw the imminent ruin of the Greek remains, set up his -scaffoldings, in spite of epigrams, and, after five years' labor to -collect them, got his marbles on shipboard. The ship struck a rock, and -went to the bottom. He had them all fished up, by divers, at a vast -expense, and brought to London; not knowing that Haydon, Fuseli, and -Canova, and all good heads in all the world, were to be his applauders. -In the same spirit, were the excavation and research by Sir Charles -Fellowes, for the Xanthian monument; and of Layard, for his Nineveh -sculptures. - -The nation sits in the immense city they have builded, a London extended -into every man's mind, though he live in Van Dieman's Land or Capetown. -Faithful performance of what is undertaken to be performed, they honor -in themselves, and exact in others, as certificate of equality with -themselves. The modern world is theirs. They have made and make it day -by day. The commercial relations of the world are so intimately drawn -to London, that every dollar on earth contributes to the strength of the -English government. And if all the wealth in the planet should perish -by war or deluge, they know themselves competent to replace it. - -They have approved their Saxon blood, by their sea-going qualities; -their descent from Odin's smiths, by their hereditary skill in working -in iron; their British birth, by husbandry and immense wheat harvests; -and justified their occupancy of the centre of habitable land, by their -supreme ability and cosmopolitan spirit. They have tilled, builded, -forged, spun, and woven. They have made the island a thoroughfare; and -London a shop, a law-court, a record-office, and scientific bureau, -inviting to strangers; a sanctuary to refugees of every political and -religious opinion; and such a city, that almost every active man, in any -nation, finds himself, at one time or other, forced to visit it. - -In every path of practical activity, they have gone even with the best. -There is no secret of war, in which they have not shown mastery. The -steam-chamber of Watt, the locomotive of Stephenson, the cotton-mule of -Roberts, perform the labor of the world. There is no department of -literature, of science, or of useful art, in which they have not -produced a first-rate book. It is England, whose opinion is waited for -on the merit of a new invention, an improved science. And in the -complications of the trade and politics of their vast empire, they have -been equal to every exigency, with counsel and with conduct. Is it their -luck, or is it in the chambers of their brain,--it is their commercial -advantage, that whatever light appears in better method or happy -invention, breaks out _in their race_. They are a family to which a -destiny attaches, and the Banshee has sworn that a male heir shall never -be wanting. They have a wealth of men to fill important posts, and the -vigilance of party criticism insures the selection of a competent -person. - -A proof of the energy of the British people is the highly artificial -construction of the whole fabric. The climate and geography, I said, -were factitious, as if the hands of man had arranged the conditions. -The same character pervades the whole kingdom. Bacon said, "Rome was a -state not subject to paradoxes"; but England subsists by antagonisms and -contradictions. The foundations of its greatness are the rolling waves; -and, from first to last, it is a museum of anomalies. This foggy and -rainy country furnishes the world with astronomical observations. Its -short rivers do not afford water-power, but the land shakes under the -thunder of the mills. There is no gold-mine of any importance, but -there is more gold in England than in all other countries. It is too far -north for the culture of the vine, but the wines of all countries are in -its docks. The French Comte de Lauraguais said, "no fruit ripens in -England but a baked apple"; but oranges and pineapples are as cheap in -London as in the Mediterranean. The Mark-Lane Express, or the -Custom-House Returns bear out to the letter the vaunt of Pope,-- - - "Let India boast her palms, nor envy we - The weeping amber, nor the spicy tree, - While, by our oaks, those precious loads are borne, - And realms commanded which those trees adorn." - - -The native cattle are extinct, but the island is full of artificial -breeds. The agriculturist Bakewell created sheep and cows and horses to -order, and breeds in which everything was omitted but what is -economical. The cow is sacrificed to her bag, the ox to his surloin. -Stall-feeding makes sperm-mills of the cattle, and converts the stable -to a chemical factory. The rivers, lakes, and ponds, too much fished, -or obstructed by factories, are artificially filled with the eggs of -salmon, turbot, and herring. - -Chat Moss and the fens of Lincolnshire and Cambridgeshire are unhealthy -and too barren to pay rent. By cylindrical tiles, and gutta-percha -tubes, five millions of acres of bad land have been drained and put on -equality with the best, for rape-culture and grass. The climate too, -which was already believed to have become, milder and drier by the -enormous consumption of coal, is so far reached by this new action, that -fogs and storms are said to disappear. In due course, all England will -be drained, and rise a second time out of the waters. The latest step -was to call in the aid of steam to agriculture. Steam is almost an -Englishman. I do not know but they will send him to Parliament, next, -to make laws. He weaves, forges, saws, pounds, fans, and now he must -pump, grind, dig, and plough for the farmer. The markets created by the -manufacturing population have erected agriculture into a great thriving -and spending industry. The value of the houses in Britain is equal to -the value of the soil. Artificial aids of all kinds are cheaper than the -natural resources. No man can afford to walk, when the parliamentary -train carries him for a penny a mile. Gas-burners are cheaper than -daylight in numberless floors in the cities. All the houses in London -buy their water. The English trade does not exist for the exportation of -native products, but on its manufactures, or the making well everything -which is ill made elsewhere. They make ponchos for the Mexican, -bandannas for the Hindoo, ginseng for the Chinese, beads for the Indian, -laces for the Flemings, telescopes for astronomers, cannons for kings. - -The Board of Trade caused the best models of Greece and Italy to be -placed within the reach of every manufacturing population. They caused -to be translated from foreign languages and illustrated by elaborate -drawings, the most approved works of Munich, Berlin, and Paris. They -have ransacked Italy to find new forms, to add a grace to the products -of their looms, their potteries, and their foundries.[6] - - [6] See Memorial of H. Greenough, p. 66, New York, 1853. - -The nearer we look, the more artificial is their social system. Their -law is a network of fictions. Their property, a scrip or certificate of -right to interest on money that no man ever saw. Their social classes -are made by statute. Their ratios of power and representation are -historical and legal. The last reform-bill took away political power -from a mound, a ruin, and a stone-wall, whilst Birmingham and -Manchester, whose mills paid for the wars of Europe, had no -representative. Purity in the elective Parliament is secured by the -purchase of seats.[7] Foreign power is kept by armed colonies; power at -home, by a standing army of police. The pauper lives better than the -free laborer; the thief better than the pauper; and the transported -felon better than the one under imprisonment. The crimes are -factitious, as smuggling, poaching, non-conformity, heresy, and treason. -Better, they say in England, kill a man than a hare. The sovereignty of -the seas is maintained by the impressment of seamen. "The impressment -of seamen," said Lord Eldon, "is the life of our navy." Solvency is -maintained by means of a national debt, on the principle, "if you will -not lend me the money, how can I pay you?" For the administration of -justice, Sir Samuel Romilly's expedient for clearing the arrears of -business in Chancery, was, the chancellor's staying away entirely from -his court. Their system of education is factitious. The Universities -galvanize dead languages into a semblance of life. Their church is -artificial. The manners and customs of society are artificial;--made-up -men with made-up manners;--and thus the whole is Birminghamized, and we -have a nation whose existence is a work of art;--a cold, barren, almost -arctic isle, being made the most fruitful, luxurious, and imperial land -in the whole earth. - - [7] Sir S. Romilly, purest of English patriots, decided that the only - independent mode of entering Parliament was to buy a seat, and he - bought Horsham. - -Man in England submits to be a product of political economy. On a bleak -moor, a mill is built, a banking-house is opened, and men come in, as -water in a sluice-way, and towns and cities rise. Man is made as a -Birmingham button. The rapid doubling of the population dates from -Watt's steam-engine. A landlord, who owns a province, says, "the -tenantry are unprofitable; let me have sheep." He unroofs the houses, -and ships the population to America. The nation is accustomed to the -instantaneous creation of wealth. It is the maxim of their economists, -"that the greater part in value of the wealth now existing in England -has been produced by human hands within the last twelve months." -Meantime, three or four days' rain will reduce hundreds to starving in -London. - -One secret of their power is their mutual good understanding. Not only -good minds are born among them, but all the people have good minds. -Every nation has yielded some good wit, if, as has chanced to many -tribes, only one. But the intellectual organization of the English -admits a communicableness of knowledge and ideas among them all. An -electric touch by any of their national ideas, melts them into one -family, and brings the hoards of power which their individuality is -always hiving, into use and play for all. Is it the smallness of the -country, or is it the pride and affection of race,--they have -solidarity, or responsibleness, and trust in each other. - -Their minds, like wool, admit of a dye which is more lasting than the -cloth. They embrace their cause with more tenacity than their life. -Though not military, yet every common subject by the poll is fit to make -a soldier of. These private reserved mute family-men can adopt a public -end with all their heat, and this strength of affection makes the -romance of their heroes. The difference of rank does not divide the -national heart. The Danish poet Oehlenschlager complains, that who -writes in Danish writes to two hundred readers. In Germany, there is -one speech for the learned, and another for the masses, to that extent, -that, it is said, no sentiment or phrase from the works of any great -German writer is ever heard among the lower classes. But in England, -the language of the noble is the language of the poor. In Parliament, -in pulpits, in theatres, when the speakers rise to thought and passion, -the language becomes idiomatic; the people in the street best understand -the best words. And their language seems drawn from the Bible, the -common law, and the works of Shakspeare, Bacon, Milton, Pope, Young, -Cowper, Burns, and Scott. The island has produced two or three of the -greatest men that ever existed, but they were not solitary in their own -time. Men quickly embodied what Newton found out, in Greenwich -observatories, and practical navigation. The boys knew all that Hutton -knew of strata, or Dalton of atoms, or Harvey of blood-vessels; and -these studies, once dangerous, are in fashion. So what is invented or -known in agriculture, or in trade, or in war, or in art, or in -literature, and antiquities. A great ability, not amassed on a few -giants, but poured into the general mind, so that each of them could at -a pinch stand in the shoes of the other; and they are more bound in -character than differenced in ability or in rank. The laborer is a -possible lord. The lord is a possible basket-maker. Every man carries -the English system in his brain, knows what is confided to him, and does -therein the best he can. The chancellor carries England on his mace, -the midshipman at the point of his dirk, the smith on his hammer, the -cook in the bowl of his spoon; the postilion cracks his whip for -England, and the sailor times his oars to "God save the King!" The very -felons have their pride in each other's English stanchness. In politics -and in war, they hold together as by hooks of steel. The charm in -Nelson's history is, the unselfish greatness; the assurance of being -supported to the uttermost by those whom he supports to the uttermost. -Whilst they are some ages ahead of the rest of the world in the art of -living; whilst in some directions they do not represent the modern -spirit, but constitute it,--this vanguard of civility and power they -coldly hold, marching in phalanx, lock-step, foot after foot, file after -file of heroes, ten thousand deep. - - - - -CHAPTER VI.--MANNERS. - - -I find the Englishman to be him of all men who stands firmest in his -shoes. They have in themselves what they value in their horses, mettle -and bottom. On the day of my arrival at Liverpool, a gentleman, in -describing to me the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, happened to say, "Lord -Clarendon has pluck like a cock, and will fight till he dies"; and, what -I heard first I heard last, and the one thing the English value, is -_pluck_. The word is not beautiful, but on the quality they signify by -it the nation is unanimous. The cabmen have it; the merchants have it; -the bishops have it; the women have it; the journals have it; the Times -newspaper, they say, is the pluckiest thing in England, and Sidney Smith -had made it a proverb, that little Lord John Russell, the minister, -would take the command of the Channel fleet to-morrow. - -They require you to dare to be of your own opinion, and they hate the -practical cowards who cannot in affairs answer directly yes or no. They -dare to displease, nay, they will let you break all the commandments, if -you do it natively, and with spirit. You must be somebody; then you may -do this or that, as you will. - -Machinery has been applied to all work, and carried to such perfection, -that little is left for the men but to mind the engines and feed the -furnaces. But the machines require punctual service, and as they never -tire, they prove too much for their tenders. Mines, forges, mills, -breweries, railroads, steam-pump, steam-plough, drill of regiments, -drill of police, rule of court, and shop-rule, have operated to give a -mechanical regularity to all the habit and action of men. A terrible -machine has possessed itself of the ground, the air, the men and women, -and hardly even thought is free. - -The mechanical might and organization require in the people constitution -and answering spirits; and he who goes among them must have some weight -of metal. At last, you take your hint from the fury of life you find, -and say, one thing is plain, this is no country for faint-hearted -people: don't creep about diffidently; make up your mind; take your own -course, and you shall find respect and furtherance. - -It requires, men say, a good constitution to travel in Spain. I say as -much of England, for other cause, simply on account of the vigor and -brawn of the people. Nothing but the most serious business could give -one any counterweight to these Baresarks, though they were only to order -eggs and muffins for their breakfast. The Englishman speaks with all his -body. His elocution is stomachic,--as the American's is labial. The -Englishman is very petulant and precise about his accommodation at inns, -and on the roads; a quiddle about his toast and his chop, and every -species of convenience, and loud and pungent in his expressions of -impatience at any neglect. His vivacity betrays itself, at all points, -in his manners, in his respiration, and the inarticulate noises he makes -in clearing the throat,--all significant of burly strength. He has -stamina; he can take the initiative in emergencies. He has that -_aplomb_, which results from a good adjustment of the moral and physical -nature, and the obedience of all the powers to the will; as if the axes -of his eyes were united to his backbone, and only moved with the trunk. - -This vigor appears in the incuriosity, and stony neglect, each of every -other. Each man walks, eats, drinks, shaves, dresses, gesticulates, -and, in every manner, acts, and suffers without reference to the -bystanders, in his own fashion, only careful not to interfere with them, -or annoy them; not that he is trained to neglect the eyes of his -neighbors,--he is really occupied with his own affair, and does not -think of them. Every man in this polished country consults only his -convenience, as much as a solitary pioneer in Wisconsin. I know not -where any personal eccentricity is so freely allowed, and no man gives -himself any concern with it. An Englishman walks in a pouring rain, -swinging his closed umbrella like a walking-stick; wears a wig, or a -shawl, or a saddle, or stands on his head, and no remark is made. And -as he has been doing this for several generations, it is now in the -blood. - -In short, every one of these islanders is an island himself, safe, -tranquil, incommunicable. In a company of strangers, you would think -him deaf; his eyes never wander from his table and newspaper. He is -never betrayed into any curiosity or unbecoming emotion. They have all -been trained in one severe school of manners, and never put off the -harness. He does not give his hand. He does not let you meet his eye. -It is almost an affront to look a man in the face, without being -introduced. In mixed or in select companies they do not introduce -persons; so that a presentation is a circumstance as valid as a -contract. Introductions are sacraments. He withholds his name. At the -hotel, he is hardly willing to whisper it to the clerk at the -book-office. If he give you his private address on a card, it is like -an avowal of friendship; and his bearing on being introduced is cold, -even though he is seeking your acquaintance, and is studying how he -shall serve you. - -It was an odd proof of this impressive energy, that, in my lectures, I -hesitated to read and threw out for its impertinence many a disparaging -phrase, which I had been accustomed to spin, about poor, thin, unable -mortals; so much had the fine physique and the personal vigor of this -robust race worked on my imagination. - -I happened to arrive in England at the moment of a commercial crisis. -But it was evident that, let who will fail, England will not. These -people have sat here a thousand years, and here will continue to sit. -They will not break up, or arrive at any desperate revolution, like -their neighbors; for they have as much energy, as much continence of -character, as they ever had. The power and possession which surround -them are their own creation, and they exert the same commanding industry -at this moment. - -They are positive, methodical, cleanly, and formal, loving routine, and -conventional ways; loving truth and religion, to be sure, but inexorable -on points of form. All the world praises the comfort and private -appointments of an English inn, and of English households. You are sure -of neatness and of personal decorum. A Frenchman may possibly be clean: -an Englishman is conscientiously clean. A certain order and complete -propriety is found in his dress and in his belongings. - -Born in a harsh and wet climate, which keeps him in doors whenever he is -at rest, and being of an affectionate and loyal temper, he dearly loves -his house. If he is rich, he buys a demesne, and builds a hall; if he -is in middle condition, he spares no expense on his house. Without, it -is all planted; within, it is wainscoted, carved, curtained, hung with -pictures, and filled with good furniture. 'T is a passion which -survives all others, to deck and improve it. Hither he brings all that -is rare and costly, and with the national tendency to sit fast in the -same spot for many generations, it comes to be, in the course of time, a -museum of heirlooms, gifts, and trophies of the adventures and exploits -of the family. He is very fond of silver plate, and, though he have no -gallery of portraits of his ancestors, he has of their punch-bowls and -porringers. Incredible amounts of plate are found in good houses, and -the poorest have some spoon or saucepan, gift of a godmother, saved out -of better times. - -An English family consists of a few persons, who, from youth to age, are -found revolving within a few feet of each other, as if tied by some -invisible ligature, tense as that cartilage which we have seen attaching -the two Siamese. England produces under favorable conditions of ease -and culture the finest women in the world. And, as the men are -affectionate and true-hearted, the women inspire and refine them. -Nothing can be more delicate without being fantastical, nothing more -firm and based in nature and sentiment, than the courtship and mutual -carriage of the sexes. The song of 1596 says, "The wife of every -Englishman is counted blest." The sentiment of Imogen in Cymbeline is -copied from English nature; and not less the Portia of Brutus, the Kate -Percy, and the Desdemona. The romance does not exceed the height of -noble passion in Mrs. Lucy Hutchinson, or in Lady Russell, or even as -one discerns through the plain prose of Pepys's Diary, the sacred habit -of an English wife. Sir Samuel Romilly could not bear the death of his -wife. Every class has its noble and tender examples. - -Domesticity is the taproot which enables the nation to branch wide and -high. The motive and end of their trade and empire is to guard the -independence and privacy of their homes. Nothing so much marks their -manners as the concentration on their household ties. This domesticity -is carried into court and camp. Wellington governed India and Spain and -his own troops, and fought battles like a good family-man, paid his -debts, and, though general of an army in Spain, could not stir abroad -for fear of public creditors. This taste for house and parish merits -has of course its doting and foolish side. Mr. Cobbett attributes the -huge popularity of Perceval, prime minister in 1810, to the fact that he -was wont to go to church every Sunday, with a large quarto gilt -prayer-book under one arm, his wife hanging on the other, and followed -by a long brood of children. - -They keep their old customs, costumes, and pomps, their wig and mace, -sceptre and crown. The Middle Ages still lurk in the streets of London. -The Knights of the Bath take oath to defend injured ladies; the -gold-stick-in-waiting survives. They repeated the ceremonies of the -eleventh century in the coronation of the present Queen. A hereditary -tenure is natural to them. Offices, farms, trades, and traditions -descend so. Their leases run for a hundred and a thousand years. Terms -of service and partnership are lifelong, or are inherited. "Holdship has -been with me," said Lord Eldon, "eight-and-twenty years, knows all my -business and books." Antiquity of usage is sanction enough. Wordsworth -says of the small freeholders of Westmoreland, "Many of these humble -sons of the hills had a consciousness that the land which they tilled -had for more than five hundred years been possessed by men of the same -name and blood." The ship-carpenter in the public yards, my lord's -gardener and porter, have been there for more than a hundred years, -grandfather, father, and son. - -The English power resides also in their dislike of change. They have -difficulty in bringing their reason to act, and on all occasions use -their memory first. As soon as they have rid themselves of some -grievance, and settled the better practice, they make haste to fix it as -a finality, and never wish to hear of alteration more. - -Every Englishman is an embryonic chancellor: his instinct is to search -for a precedent. The favorite phrase of their law is, "a custom whereof -the memory of man runneth not back to the contrary." The barons say, -"Nolumus mutari"; and the cockneys stifle the curiosity of the foreigner -on the reason of any practice, with, "Lord, sir, it was always so." -They hate innovation. Bacon told them, Time was the right reformer; -Chatham, that "confidence was a plant of slow growth"; Canning, to -"advance with the times"; and Wellington, that "habit was ten times -nature." All their statesmen learn the irresistibility of the tide of -custom, and have invented many fine phrases to cover this slowness of -perception, and prehensility of tail. - -A sea-shell should be the crest of England, not only because it -represents a power built on the waves, but also the hard finish of the -men. The Englishman is finished like a cowry or a murex. After the -spire and the spines are formed, or, with the formation, a juice exudes, -and a hard enamel varnishes every part. The keeping of the proprieties -is as indispensable as clean, linen. No merit quite countervails the -want of this, whilst this sometimes stands in lieu of all. "'T is in -bad taste," is the most formidable word an Englishman can pronounce. -But this japan costs them dear. There is a prose in certain Englishmen, -which exceeds in wooden deadness all rivalry with other countrymen. -There is a knell in the conceit and externality of their voice, which -seems to say, _Leave all hope behind_. In this Gibraltar of propriety, -mediocrity gets intrenched, and consolidated, and founded in adamant. -An Englishman of fashion is like one of those souvenirs, bound in gold -vellum, enriched with delicate engravings, on thick hot-pressed paper, -fit for the hands of ladies and princes, but with nothing in it worth -reading or remembering. - -A severe decorum rules the court and the cottage. When Thalberg, the -pianist, was one evening performing before the Queen, at Windsor, in a -private party, the Queen accompanied him with her voice. The -circumstance took air, and all England shuddered from sea to sea. The -indecorum was never repeated. Cold, repressive manners prevail. No -enthusiasm is permitted except at the opera. They avoid everything -marked. They require a tone of voice that excites no attention in the -room. Sir Philip Sidney is one of the patron saints of England, of whom -Wotton said, "His wit was the measure of congruity." - -Pretension and vaporing are once for all distasteful. They keep to the -other extreme of low tone in dress and manners. They avoid pretension -and go right to the heart of the thing. They hate nonsense, -sentimentalism, and highflown expression; they use a studied plainness. -Even Brummell their fop was marked by the severest simplicity in dress. -They value themselves on the absence of everything theatrical in the -public business, and on conciseness and going to the point, in private -affairs. - -In an aristocratical country, like England, not the Trial by Jury, but -the dinner is the capital institution. It is the mode of doing honor to -a stranger, to invite him to eat,--and has been for many hundred years. -"And they think," says the Venetian traveller of 1500, "no greater honor -can be conferred or received, than to invite others to eat with them, or -to be invited themselves, and they would sooner give five or six ducats -to provide an entertainment for a person, than a groat to assist him in -any distress."[8] It is reserved to the end of the day, the family-hour -being generally six, in London, and, if any company is expected, one or -two hours later. Every one dresses for dinner, in his own house, or in -another man's. The guests are expected to arrive within half an hour of -the time fixed by card of invitation, and nothing but death or -mutilation is permitted to detain them. The English dinner is precisely -the model on which our own are constructed in the Atlantic cities. The -company sit one or two hours, before the ladies leave the table. The -gentlemen remain over their wine an hour longer, and rejoin the ladies -in the drawing-room, and take coffee. The dress dinner generates a -talent of table-talk, which reaches great perfection: the stories are so -good, that one is sure they must have been often told before, to have -got such happy turns. Hither come all manner of clever projects, bits -of popular science, of practical invention, of miscellaneous humor; -political, literary, and personal news; railroads, horses, diamonds, -agriculture, horticulture, pisciculture, and wine. - - [8] "Relation of England." Printed by the Caraden Society. - -English stories, _bon-mots_, and the recorded table-talk of their wits, -are as good as the best of the French. In America, we are apt scholars, -but have not yet attained the same perfection: for the range of nations -from which London draws, and the steep contrasts of condition, create -the picturesque in society, as broken country makes picturesque -landscape, whilst our prevailing equality makes a prairie tameness: and -secondly, because the usage of a dress-dinner every day at dark has a -tendency to hive and produce to advantage everything good. Much -attrition has worn every sentence into a bullet. Also one meets now and -then with polished men, who know everything, have tried everything, can -do everything, and are quite superior to letters and science. What -could they not, if only they would? - - - - -CHAPTER VII.--TRUTH. - - -The Teutonic tribes have a national singleness of heart, which contrasts -with the Latin races. The German name has a proverbial significance of -sincerity and honest meaning. The arts bear testimony to it. The faces -of clergy and laity in old sculptures and illuminated missals are -charged with earnest belief. Add to this hereditary rectitude, the -punctuality and precise dealing which commerce creates, and you have the -English truth and credit. The government strictly performs its -engagements. The subjects do not understand trifling on its part. When -any breach of promise occurred, in the old days of prerogative, it was -resented by the people as an intolerable grievance. And, in modern -times, any slipperiness in the government of political faith, or any -repudiation or crookedness in matters of finance, would bring the whole -nation to a committee of inquiry and reform. Private men keep their -promises, never so trivial. Down goes the flying word on the tablets, -and is indelible as Domesday Book. - -Their practical power rests on their national sincerity. Veracity -derives from instinct, and marks superiority in organization. Nature -has endowed some animals with cunning, as a compensation for strength -withheld; but it has provoked the malice of all others, as if avengers -of public wrong. In the nobler kinds, where strength could be afforded, -her races are loyal to truth, as truth is the foundation of the social -state. Beasts that make no truce with man, do not break faith with each -other. 'T is said, that the wolf, who makes a _cache_ of his prey, and -brings his fellows with him to the spot, if, on digging it is not found, -is instantly and unresistingly torn in pieces. English veracity seems to -result on a sounder animal structure, as if they could afford it. They -are blunt in saying what they think, sparing of promises, and they -require plain dealing of others. We will not have to do with a man in a -mask. Let us know the truth. Draw a straight line, hit whom and where -it will. Alfred, whom the affection of the nation makes the type of -their race, is called by a writer at the Norman Conquest, the -_truth-speaker; Alueredus veridicus_. Geoffrey of Monmouth says of King -Aurelius, uncle of Arthur, that "above all things he hated a lie." The -Northman Guttorm said to King Olaf, "It is royal work to fulfil royal -words." The mottoes of their families are monitory proverbs, as, _Fare -fac_,--Say, do,--of the Fairfaxes; _Say and seal_, of the house of -Fiennes; _Vero nil verius_, of the De Veres. To be king of their word, -is their pride. When they unmask cant, they say, "The English of this -is," etc.; and to give the lie is the extreme insult. The phrase of the -lowest of the people is "honor-bright," and their vulgar praise, "his -word is as good as his bond." They hate shuffling and equivocation, and -the cause is damaged in the public opinion, on which any paltering can -be fixed. Even Lord Chesterfield, with his French breeding, when he came -to define a gentleman, declared that truth made his distinction; and -nothing ever spoken by him would find so hearty a suffrage from his -nation. The Duke of Wellington, who had the best right to say so, -advises the French General Kellermann, that he may rely on the parole of -an English officer. The English, of all classes, value themselves on -this trait, as distinguishing them from the French, who, in the popular -belief, are more polite than true. An Englishman understates, avoids -the superlative, checks himself in compliments, alleging, that in the -French language, one cannot speak without lying. - -They love reality in wealth, power, hospitality, and do not easily learn -to make a show, and take the world as it goes. They are not fond of -ornaments, and if they wear them, they must be gems. They read gladly -in old Fuller, that a lady, in the reign of Elizabeth, "would have as -patiently digested a lie, as the wearing of false stones or pendants of -counterfeit pearl." They have the earth-hunger, or preference for -property in land, which is said to mark the Teutonic nations. They -build of stone; public and private buildings are massive and durable. -In comparing their ships' houses, and public offices with the American, -it is commonly said, that they spend a pound, where we spend a dollar. -Plain rich clothes, plain rich equipage, plain rich finish throughout -their house and belongings, mark the English truth. - -They confide in each other,--English believes in English. The French -feel the superiority of this probity. The Englishman is not springing a -trap for his admiration, but is honestly minding his business. The -Frenchman is vain. Madame de Stal says, that the English irritated -Napoleon, mainly, because they have found out how to unite success with -honesty. She was not aware how wide an application her foreign readers -would give to the remark. Wellington discovered the ruin of Bonaparte's -affairs, by his own probity. He augured ill of the empire, as soon as -he saw that it was mendacious, and lived by war. If war do not bring in -its sequel new trade, better agriculture and manufactures, but only -games, fireworks, and spectacles,--no prosperity could support it; much -less, a nation decimated for conscripts, and out of pocket, like France. -So he drudged for years on his military works at Lisbon, and from this -base at last extended his gigantic lines to Waterloo, believing in his -countrymen and their syllogisms above all the rhodomontade of Europe. - -At a St. George's festival, in Montreal, where I happened to be a guest, -since my return home, I observed that the chairman complimented his -compatriots, by saying, "they confided that wherever they met an -Englishman, they found a man who would speak the truth." And one cannot -think this festival fruitless, if, all over the world, on the 23d of -April, wherever two or three English are found, they meet to encourage -each other in the nationality of veracity. - -In the power of saying rude truth, sometimes in the lion's mouth, no men -surpass them. On the king's birthday, when each bishop was expected to -offer the king a purse of gold, Latimer gave Henry VIII. a copy of the -Vulgate, with a mark at the passage, "Whoremongers and adulterers God -will judge"; and they so honor stoutness in each other, that the king -passed it over. They are tenacious of their belief, and cannot easily -change their opinions to suit the hour. They are like ships with too -much head on to come quickly about, nor will prosperity or even -adversity be allowed to shake their habitual view of conduct. Whilst I -was in London, M. Guizot arrived there on his escape from Paris, in -February, 1843. Many private friends called on him. His name was -immediately proposed as an honorary member to the Athenum. M. Guizot -was blackballed. Certainly, they knew the distinction of his name. But -the Englishman is not fickle. He had really made up his mind, now for -years as he read his newspaper, to hate and despise M. Guizot; and the -altered position of the man as an illustrious exile, and a guest in the -country, makes no difference to him, as it would instantly, to an -American. - -They require the same adherence, thorough conviction and reality in -public men. It is the want of character which makes the low reputation -of the Irish members. "See them," they said, "one hundred and -twenty-seven all voting like sheep, never proposing anything, and all -but four voting the income tax,"--which was an ill-judged concession of -the government, relieving Irish property from the burdens charged on -English. - -They have a horror of adventurers in or out of Parliament. The ruling -passion of Englishmen, in these days, is a terror of humbug. In the -same proportion, they value honesty, stoutness, and adherence to your -own. They like a man committed to his objects. They hate the French, as -frivolous; they hate the Irish, as aimless; they hate the Germans, as -professors. In February, 1848, they said, Look, the French king and his -party fell for want of a shot; they had not conscience to shoot, so -entirely was the pith and heart of monarchy eaten out. - -They attack their own politicians every day, on the same grounds, as -adventurers. They love stoutness in standing for your right, in -declining money or promotion that costs any concession. The barrister -refuses the silk gown of Queen's Counsel, if his junior have it one day -earlier. Lord Collingwood would not accept his medal for victory on -14th February, 1797, if he did not receive one for victory on 1st June, -1794; and the long-withholden medal was accorded. When Castlereagh -dissuaded Lord Wellington from going to the king's levee, until the -unpopular Cintra business had been explained, he replied: "You furnish -me a reason for going. I will go to this, or I will never go to a -king's levee." The radical mob at Oxford cried after the tory Lord -Eldon, "There's old Eldon; cheer him; he never ratted." They have given -the parliamentary nickname of _Trimmers_ to the time-servers, whom -English character does not love.[9] - - [9] It is an unlucky moment to remember these sparkles of solitary - virtue in the face of the honors lately paid in England to the - Emperor Louis Napoleon. I am sure that no Englishman whom I had - the happiness to know, consented, when the aristocracy and the - commons of London cringed like a Neapolitan rabble, before a - successful thief. But--how to resist one step, though odious, in - a linked series of state necessities?--Governments must always - learn too late, that the use of dishonest agents is as ruinous for - nations as for single men. - -They are very liable in their politics to extraordinary delusions, thus, -to believe what stands recorded in the gravest books, that the movement -of 10th April, 1848, was urged or assisted by foreigners: which, to be -sure, is paralleled by the democratic whimsey in this country, which I -have noticed to be shared by men sane on other points, that the English -are at the bottom of the agitation of slavery, in American politics: and -then again to the French popular legends on the subject of _perfidious -Albion_. But suspicion will make fools of nations as of citizens. - -A slow temperament makes them less rapid and ready than other -countrymen, and has given occasion to the observation that English wit -comes afterwards,--which the French denote as _esprit d'escalier_. This -dulness makes their attachment to home, and their adherence in all -foreign countries to home habits. The Englishman who visits Mount Etna -will carry his teakettle to the top. The old Italian author of the -"Relation of England" (in 1500) says: "I have it on the best -information, that, when the war is actually raging most furiously, they -will seek for good eating, and all their other comforts, without -thinking what harm might befall them." Then their eyes seem to be set -at the bottom of a tunnel, and they affirm the one small fact they know, -with the best faith in the world that nothing else exists. And, as -their own belief in guineas is perfect, they readily, on all occasions, -apply the pecuniary argument as final. Thus when the Rochester rappings -began to be heard of in England, a man deposited 100 in a sealed box in -the Dublin Bank, and then advertised in the newspapers to all -somnambulists, mesmerizers, and others, that whoever could tell him the -number of his note should have the money. He let it lie there six -months, the newspapers now and then, at his instance, stimulating the -attention of the adepts; but none could ever tell him; and he said, "Now -let me never be bothered more with this proven lie." It is told of a -good Sir John, that he heard a case stated by counsel, and made up his -mind; then the counsel for the other side taking their turn to speak, he -found himself so unsettled and perplexed, that he exclaimed, "So help me -God! I will never listen to evidence again." Any number of delightful -examples of this English stolidity are the anecdotes of Europe. I knew -a very worthy man,--a magistrate, I believe he was, in the town of -Derby,--who went to the opera, to see Malibrau. In one scene, the -heroine was to rush across a ruined bridge. Mr. B. arose, and mildly -yet firmly called the attention of the audience and the performers to -the fact that, in his judgment, the bridge was unsafe! This English -stolidity contrasts with French wit and tact. The French, it is -commonly said, have greatly more influence in Europe than the English. -What influence the English have is by brute force of wealth and power; -that of the French by affinity and talent. The Italian is subtle, the -Spaniard treacherous: tortures, it was said, could never wrest from an -Egyptian the confession of a secret. None of these traits belong to the -Englishman. His choler and conceit force everything out. Defoe, who -knew his countrymen well, says of them:-- - - "In close intrigue, their faculty 's but weak, - For generally whate'er they know, they speak, - And often their own counsels undermine - By mere infirmity without design; - From whence, the learned say, it doth proceed, - That English treasons never can succeed; - For they 're so open-hearted, you may know - Their own most secret thoughts, and others' too." - - - - -CHAPTER VIII.--CHARACTER. - - -The English race are reputed morose. I do not know that they have -sadder brows than their neighbors of northern climates. They are sad by -comparison with the singing and dancing nations: not sadder, but slow -and staid, as finding their joys at home. They, too, believe that where -there is no enjoyment of life, there can be no vigor and art in speech -or thought; that your merry heart goes all the way, your sad one tires -in a mile. This trait of gloom has been fixed on them by French -travellers, who, from Froissart, Voltaire, Le Sage, Mirabeau, down to -the lively journalists of the _feuilletous_, have spent their wit on the -solemnity of their neighbors. The French say, gay conversation is -unknown in their island: the Englishman finds no relief from reflection -except in reflection: when he wishes for amusement, he goes to work: his -hilarity is like an attack of fever. Religion, the theatre, and the -reading the books of his country, all feed and increase his natural -melancholy. The police does not interfere with public diversions. It -thinks itself bound in duty to respect the pleasures and rare gayety of -this inconsolable nation; and their well-known courage is entirely -attributable to their disgust of life. - -I suppose their gravity of demeanor and their few words have obtained -this reputation. As compared with the Americans, I think them cheerful -and contented. Young people, in our country, are much more prone to -melancholy. The English have a mild aspect, and a ringing, cheerful -voice. They are large-natured, and not so easily amused as the -southerners, and are among them as grown people among children, -requiring war, or trade, or engineering, or science, instead of -frivolous games. They are proud and private, and, even if disposed to -recreation, will avoid an open garden. They sported sadly; _ils -s'amusaient tristement, selon la coutume de leur pays_, said Froissart; -and, I suppose, never nation built their party walls so thick, or their -garden fences so high. Meat and wine produce no effect on them: they are -just as cold, quiet, and composed, at the end, as at the beginning of -dinner. - -The reputation of taciturnity they have enjoyed for six or seven hundred -years; and a kind of pride in bad public speaking is noted in the House -of Commons, as if they were willing to show that they did not live by -their tongues, or thought they spoke well enough if they had the tone of -gentlemen. In mixed company, they shut their mouths. A Yorkshire -mill-owner told me, he had ridden more than once all the way from London -to Leeds, in the first-class carriage, with the same persons, and no -word exchanged. The club-houses were established to cultivate social -habits, and it is rare that more than two eat together, and oftenest one -eats alone. Was it then a stroke of humor in the serious Swedenborg, or -was it only his pitiless logic, that made him shut up the English souls -in a heaven by themselves? - -They are contradictorily described as sour, splenetic, and -stubborn,--and as mild, sweet, and sensible. The truth is, they have -great range and variety of character. Commerce sends abroad multitudes -of different classes. The choleric Welshman, the fervid Scot, the -bilious resident in the East or West Indies, are wide of the perfect -behavior of the educated and dignified man of family. So is the burly -farmer; so is the country 'squire, with his narrow and violent life. In -every inn, is the Commercial-Room, in which 'travellers,' or bagmen who -carry patterns, and solicit orders, for the manufacturers, are wont to -be entertained. It easily happens that this class should characterize -England to the foreigner, who meets them on the road, and at every -public house, whilst the gentry avoid the taverns, or seclude themselves -whilst in them. - -But these classes are the right English stock, and may fairly show the -national qualities, before yet art and education have dealt with them. -They are good lovers, good haters, slow but obstinate admirers, and, in -all things, very much steeped in their temperament, like men hardly -awaked from deep sleep, which they enjoy. Their habits and instincts -cleave to nature. They are of the earth, earthy; and of the sea, as the -sea-kinds, attached to it for what it yields them, and not from any -sentiment. They are full of coarse strength, rude exercise, butcher's -meat, and sound sleep; and suspect any poetic insinuation or any hint -for the conduct of life which reflects on this animal existence, as if -somebody were fumbling at the umbilical cord and might stop their -supplies. They doubt a man's sound judgment, if he does not eat with -appetite, and shake their heads if he is particularly chaste. Take them -as they come, you shall find in the common people a surly indifference, -sometimes gruffness and ill temper; and, in minds of more power, -magazines of inexhaustible war, challenging - - "The ruggedest hour that time and spite dare bring - To frown upon the enraged Northumberland." - -They are headstrong believers and defenders of their opinion, and not -less resolute in maintaining their whim and perversity. Hezekiah -Woodward wrote a book against the Lord's Prayer. And one can believe -that Burton the Anatomist of Melancholy, having predicted from the stars -the hour of his death, slipped the knot himself round his own neck, not -to falsify his horoscope. - -Their looks bespeak an invincible stoutness; they have extreme -difficulty to run away, and will die game. Wellington said of the young -coxcombs of the Life-Guards delicately brought up, "But the puppies -fight well"; and Nelson said of his sailors, "They really mind shot no -more than peas." Of absolute stoutness no nation has more or better -examples. They are good at storming redoubts, at boarding frigates, at -dying in the last ditch, or any desperate service which has daylight and -honor in it; but not, I think, at enduring the rack, or any passive -obedience, like jumping off a castle-roof at the word of a czar. Being -both vascular and highly organized, so as to be very sensible of pain; -and intellectual, so as to see reason and glory in a matter. - -Of that constitutional force, which yields the supplies of the day, they -have the more than enough, the excess which creates courage on -fortitude, genius in poetry, invention in mechanics, enterprise in -trade, magnificence in wealth, splendor in ceremonies, petulance and -projects in youth. The young men have a rude health which runs into -peccant humors. They drink brandy like water, cannot expend their -quantities of waste strength on riding, hunting, swimming, and fencing, -and run into absurd frolics with the gravity of the Eumenides. They -stoutly carry into every nook and corner of the earth their turbulent -sense; leaving no lie uncontradicted, no pretension unexamined. They -chew hasheesh; cut themselves with poisoned creases; swing their hammock -in the boughs of the Bohon Upas; taste every poison; buy every secret; -at Naples, they put St. Januarius's blood in an alembic; they saw a hole -into the head of the "winking Virgin," to know why she winks; measure -with an English foot-rule every cell of the Inquisition, every Turkish -caaba, every Holy of holies; translate and send to Bantley the arcanum -bribed and bullied away from shuddering Bramins; and measure their own -strength by the terror they cause. These travellers are of every class, -the best and the worst; and it may easily happen that those of rudest -behavior are taken notice of and remembered. The Saxon melancholy in -the vulgar rich and poor appears as gushes of ill-humor, which every -check exasperates into sarcasm and vituperation. There are multitudes -of rude young English who have the self-sufficiency and bluntness of -their nation, and who, with their disdain of the rest of mankind, and -with this indigestion and choler, have made the English traveller a -proverb for uncomfortable and offensive manners. It was no bad -description of the Briton generically, what was said two hundred years -ago, of one particular Oxford scholar: "He was a very bold man, uttered -anything that came into his mind, not only among his companions, but in -public coffee-houses, and would often speak his mind of particular -persons then accidentally present, without examining the company he was -in; for which he was often reprimanded, and several times threatened to -be kicked and beaten." - -The common Englishman is prone to forget a cardinal article in the bill -of social rights, that every man has a right to his own ears. No man -can claim to usurp more than a few cubic feet of the audibilities of a -public room, or to put upon the company the loud statements of his -crotchets or personalities. - -But it is in the deep traits of race that the fortunes of nations are -written, and however derived, whether a happier tribe or mixture of -tribes, the air, or what circumstance, that mixed for them the golden -mean of temperament,--here exists the best stock in the world, -broad-fronted, broad-bottomed, best for depth, range, and equability, -men of aplomb and reserves, great range and many moods, strong -instincts, yet apt for culture; war-class as well as clerks; earls and -tradesmen; wise minority, as well as foolish majority; abysmal -temperament, hiding wells of wrath, and glooms on which no sunshine -settles; alternated with a common-sense and humanity which hold them -fast to every piece of cheerful duty; making this temperament a sea to -which all storms are superficial; a race to which their fortunes flow, -as if they alone had the elastic organization at once fine and robust -enough for dominion; as if the burly, inexpressive, now mute and -contumacious, now fierce and sharp-tongued dragon, which once made the -island light with his fiery breath, had bequeathed his ferocity to his -conqueror. They hide virtues under vices, or the semblance of them. It -is the misshapen hairy Scandinavian troll again, who lifts the cart out -of the mire, or "threshes the corn that ten day-laborers could not end," -but it is done in the dark, and with muttered maledictions. He is a -churl with a soft place in his heart, whose speech is a brash of bitter -waters, but who loves to help you at a pinch. He says no, but serves -you, and your thanks disgust him. Here was lately a cross-grained -miser, odd and ugly, resembling in countenance the portrait of Punch, -with the laugh left out; rich by his own industry; sulking in a lonely -house; who never gave a dinner to any man, and disdained all courtesies; -yet as true a worshipper of beauty in form and color as ever existed, -and profusely pouring over the cold mind of his countrymen creations of -grace and truth, removing the reproach of sterility from English art, -catching from their savage climate every fine hint, and importing into -their galleries every tint and trait of sunnier cities and skies; making -an era in painting; and, when he saw that the splendor of one of his -pictures in the Exhibition dimmed his rival's that hung next it, -secretly took a brush and blackened his own. - -They do not wear their heart in their sleeve for daws to peck at. They -have that phlegm or staidness, which it is a compliment to disturb. -"Great men," said Aristotle, "are always of a nature originally -melancholy." 'T is the habit of a mind which attaches to abstractions -with a passion which gives vast results. They dare to displease, they -do not speak to expectation. They like the sayers of No, better than -the sayers of Yes. Each of them has an opinion which he feels it -becomes him to express all the more that it differs from yours. They -are meditating opposition. This gravity is inseparable from minds of -great resources. - -There is an English hero superior to the French, the German, the -Italian, or the Greek. When he is brought to the strife with fate, he -sacrifices a richer material possession, and on more purely metaphysical -grounds. He is there with his own consent, face to face with fortune, -which he defies. On deliberate choice, and from grounds of character, -he has elected his part to live and die for, and dies with grandeur. -This race has added new elements to humanity, and has a deeper root in -the world. - -They have great range of scale, from ferocity to exquisite refinement. -With larger scale, they have great retrieving power. After running each -tendency to an extreme, they try another tack with equal heat. More -intellectual than other races, when they live with other races, they do -not take their language, but bestow their own. They subsidize other -nations, and are not subsidized. They proselyte, and are not -proselyted. They assimilate other races to themselves, and are not -assimilated. The English did not calculate the conquest of the Indies. -It fell to their character. So they administer in different parts of -the world, the codes of every empire and race: in Canada, old French -law; in the Mauritius, the Code Napoleon; in the West Indies, the edicts -of the Spanish Cortes; in the East Indies, the Laws of Menu; in the Isle -of Man, of the Scandinavian Thing; at the Cape of Good Hope, of the Old -Netherlands; and in the Ionian Islands, the Pandects of Justinian. - -They are very conscious of their advantageous position in history. -England is the lawgiver, the patron, the instructor, the ally. Compare -the tone of the French and of the English press: the first querulous, -captious, sensitive, about English opinion; the English press is never -timorous about French opinion, but arrogant and contemptuous. - -They are testy and headstrong through an excess of will and bias; -churlish as men sometimes please to be who do not forget a debt, who ask -no favors, and who will do what they like with their own. With -education and intercourse these asperities wear off, and leave the -good-will pure. If anatomy is reformed according to national -tendencies, I suppose, the spleen will hereafter be found in the -Englishman, not found in the American, and differencing the one from the -other. I anticipate another anatomical discovery, that this organ will -be found to be cortical and caducous, that they are superficially -morose, but at last tender-hearted, herein differing from Rome and the -Latin nations. Nothing savage, nothing mean resides in the English -heart. They are subject to panics of credulity and of rage, but the -temper of the nation, however disturbed, settles itself soon and easily, -as, in this temperate zone, the sky after whatever storms clears again, -and serenity is its normal condition. - -A saving stupidity masks and protects their perception as the curtain of -the eagle's eye. Our swifter Americans, when they first deal with -English, pronounce them stupid; but, later, do them justice as people -who wear well, or hide their strength. To understand the power of -performance that is in their finest wits, in the patient Newton, or in -the versatile transcendent poets, or in the Dugdales, Gibbons, Hallams, -Eldons, and Peels, one should see how English day-laborers hold out. -High and low, they are of an unctuous texture. There is an adipocere in -their constitution, as if they had oil also for their mental wheels, and -could perform vast amounts of work without damaging themselves. - -Even the scale of expense on which people live, and to which scholars -and professional men conform, proves the tension of their muscle, when -vast numbers are found who can each lift this enormous load. I might -even add, their daily feasts argue a savage vigor of body. - -No nation was ever so rich in able men: "Gentlemen," as Charles I. said -of Strafford, "whose abilities might make a prince rather afraid than -ashamed in the greatest affairs of state": men of such temper, that, -like Baron Vere, "had one seen him returning from a victory, he would by -his silence have suspected that he had lost the day; and, had he beheld -him in a retreat, he would have collected him a conqueror by the -cheerfulness of his spirit."[10] - - [10] Fuller. Worthies of England. - -The following passage from the Heimskringla might almost stand as a -portrait of the modern Englishman: "Haldor was very stout and strong, -and remarkably handsome in appearances. King Harold gave him this -testimony, that he, among all his men, cared least about doubtful -circumstances, whether they betokened danger or pleasure; for, whatever -turned up, he was never in higher nor in lower spirits, never slept less -nor more on account of them, nor ate nor drank but according to his -custom. Haldor was not a man of many words, but short in conversation, -told his opinion bluntly, and was obstinate and hard; and this could not -please the king, who had many clever people about him, zealous in his -service. Haldor remained a short time with the king, and then came to -Iceland, where he took up his abode in Hiardaholt, and dwelt in that -farm to a very advanced age."[#] - -[#] Heimskringla, Laing's translation, Vol. III. p. 37. - -The national temper, in the civil history, is not flashy or whiffling. -The slow, deep, English mass smoulders with fire, which at last sets all -its borders in flame. The wrath of London is not French wrath, but has -a long memory, and, in its hottest heat, a register and rule. - -Half their strength they put not forth. They are capable of a sublime -resolution, and if hereafter the war of races, often predicted, and -making itself a war of opinions also (a question of despotism and -liberty coming from Eastern Europe), should menace the English -civilization, these sea-kings may take once again to their floating -castles, and find a new home and a second millennium of power in their -colonies. - -The stability of England is the security of the modern world. If the -English race were as mutable as the French, what reliance? But the -English stand for liberty. The conservative, money-loving, lord-loving -English are yet liberty-loving; and so freedom is safe: for they have -more personal force than other people. The nation always resist the -immoral action of their government. They think humanely on the affairs -of France, of Turkey, of Poland, of Hungary, of Schleswig Holstein, -though overborne by the statecraft of the rulers at last. - -Does the early history of each tribe show the permanent bias, which, -though not less potent, is masked, as the tribe spreads its activity -into colonies, commerce, codes, arts, letters? The early history shows -it, as the musician plays the air which he proceeds to conceal in a -tempest of variations. In Alfred, in the Northmen, one may read the -genius of the English society, namely, that private life is the place of -honor. Glory, a career, and ambition, words familiar to the longitude -of Paris, are seldom heard in English speech. Nelson wrote from their -hearts his homely telegraph, "England expects every man to do his duty." - -For actual service, for the dignity of a profession, or to appease -diseased or inflamed talent, the army and navy may be entered (the worst -boys doing well in the navy); and the civil service, in departments -where serious official work is done; and they hold in esteem the -barrister engaged in the severer studies of the law. But the calm, -sound, and most British Briton shrinks from public life, as -charlatanism, and respects an economy founded on agriculture, -coal-mines, manufactures, or trade, which secures an independence -through the creation of real values. - -They wish neither to command or obey, but to be kings in their own -houses. They are intellectual and deeply enjoy literature; they like -well to have the world served up to them in books, maps, models, and -every mode of exact information, and, though not creators in the art, -they value its refinement. They are ready for leisure, can direct and -fill their own day, nor need so much as others the constraint of a -necessity. But the history of the nation discloses, at every turn, this -original predilection for private independence, and, however this -inclination may have been disturbed by the bribes with which their vast -colonial power has warped men out of orbit, the inclination endures, and -forms and reforms the laws, letters, manners, and occupations. They -choose that welfare which is compatible with the commonwealth, knowing -that such alone is stable; as wise merchants prefer investments in three -per cents. - - - - -CHAPTER IX.--COCKAYNE. - - -The English are a nation of humorists. Individual right is pushed to -the uttermost bound compatible with public order. Property is so -perfect, that it seems the craft of that race, and not to exist -elsewhere. The king cannot step on an acre which the peasant refuses to -sell. A testator endows a dog or a rookery, and Europe cannot interfere -with his absurdity. Every individual has his particular way of living, -which he pushes to folly, and the decided sympathy of his compatriots is -engaged to back up Mr. Crump's whim by statutes, and chancellors, and -horse-guards. There is no freak so ridiculous but some Englishman has -attempted to immortalize by money and law. British citizenship is as -omnipotent as Roman was. Mr. Cockayne is very sensible of this. The -pursy man means by freedom the right to do as he pleases, and does wrong -in order to feel his freedom, and makes a conscience of persisting in -it. - -He is intensely patriotic, for his country is so small. His confidence -in the power and performance of his nation makes him provokingly -incurious about other nations. He dislikes foreigners. Swedenborg, who -lived much in England, notes "the similitude of minds among the English, -in consequence of which they contract familiarity with friends who are -of that nation, and seldom with others; and they regard foreigners, as -one looking through a telescope from the top of a palace regards those -who dwell or wander about out of the city." A much older traveller, the -Venetian who wrote the "Relation of England,"[11] in 1500, says: "The -English are great lovers of themselves, and of everything belonging to -them. They think that there are no other men than themselves, and no -other world but England; and, whenever they see a handsome foreigner, -they say that he looks like an Englishman, and it is a great pity he -should not be an Englishman; and whenever they partake of any delicacy -with a foreigner, they ask him whether such a thing is made in his -country." When he adds epithets of praise, his climax is "so English"; -and when he wishes to pay you the highest compliment, he says, I should -not know you from an Englishman. France is, by its natural contrast, a -kind of blackboard on which English character draws its own traits in -chalk. This arrogance habitually exhibits itself in allusions to the -French. I suppose that all men of English blood in America, Europe, or -Asia have a secret feeling of joy that they are not French natives. Mr. -Coleridge is said to have given public thanks to God, at the close of a -lecture, that he had defended him from being able to utter a single -sentence in the French language. I have found that Englishmen have such -a good opinion of England, that the ordinary phrases, in all good -society, of postponing or disparaging one's own things in talking with a -stranger, are seriously mistaken by them for an insuppressible homage to -the merits of their nation; and the New-Yorker or Pennsylvanian who -modestly laments the disadvantage of a new country, log-huts, and -savages, is surprised by the instant and unfeigned commiseration of the -whole company, who plainly account all the world out of England a heap -of rubbish. - - [11] Printed by the Camden Society. - -The same insular limitation pinches his foreign politics. He sticks to -his traditions and usages, and, so help him God! he will force his -island by-laws down the throat of great countries, like India, China, -Canada, Australia, and not only so, but impose Wapping on the Congress -of Vienna, and trample down all nationalities with his taxed boots. -Lord Chatham goes for liberty, and no taxation without -representation;--for that is British law; but not a hobnail shall they -dare make in America, but buy their nails in England,--for that also is -British law; and the fact that British commerce was to be re-created by -the independence of America, took them all by surprise. - -In short, I am afraid that English nature is so rank and aggressive as -to be a little incompatible with every other. The world is not wide -enough for two. - -But, beyond this nationality, it must be admitted, the island offers a -daily worship to the old Norse god Brage, celebrated among our -Scandinavian forefathers, for his eloquence and majestic air. The -English have a steady courage, that fits them for great attempts and -endurance: they have also a petty courage, through which every man -delights in showing himself for what he is, and in doing what he can; so -that, in all companies, each of them has too good an opinion of himself -to imitate anybody. He hides no defect of his form, features, dress, -connection, or birthplace, for he thinks every circumstance belonging to -him comes recommended to you. If one of them have a bald, or a red, or -a green head, or bow legs, or a scar, or mark, or a paunch, or a -squeaking or a raven voice, he has persuaded himself that there is -something modish and becoming in it, and that it sits well on him. - -But nature makes nothing in vain, and this little superfluity of -self-regard in the English brain is one of the secrets of their power -and history. It sets every man on being and doing what he really is and -can. It takes away a dodging, skulking, secondary air, and encourages a -frank and manly bearing, so that each man makes the most of himself, and -loses no opportunity for want of pushing. A man's personal defects will -commonly have with the rest of the world precisely that importance which -they have to himself. If he makes light of them, so will other men. We -all find in these a convenient meter of character, since a little man -would be ruined by the vexation. I remember a shrewd politician, in one -of our Western cities, told me "that he had known several successful -statesmen made by their foible." And another, an ex-governor of -Illinois, said to me: "If a man knew anything, he would sit in a corner -and be modest; but he is such an ignorant peacock, that he goes bustling -up and down, and hits on extraordinary discoveries." - -There is also this benefit in brag, that the speaker is unconsciously -expressing his own ideal. Humor him by all means, draw it all out, and -hold him to it. Their culture generally enables the travelled English -to avoid any ridiculous extremes of this self-pleasing, and to give it -an agreeable air. Then the natural disposition is fostered by the -respect which they find entertained in the world for English ability. -It was said of Louis XIV., that his gait and air were becoming enough in -so great a monarch, yet would have been ridiculous in another man; so -the prestige of the English name warrants a certain confident bearing, -which a Frenchman or Belgian could not carry. At all events, they feel -themselves at liberty to assume the most extraordinary tone on the -subject of English merits. - -An English lady on the Rhine hearing a German speaking of her party as -foreigners, exclaimed, "No, we are not foreigners; we are English: it is -you that are foreigners." They tell you daily, in London, the story of -the Frenchman and Englishman who quarrelled. Both were unwilling to -fight, but their companions put them up to it; at last, it was agreed, -that they should fight alone, in the dark, and with pistols: the candles -were put out, and the Englishman, to make sure not to hit anybody, fired -up the chimney, and brought down the Frenchman. They have no curiosity -about foreigners, and answer any information you may volunteer, with -"Oh! Oh!" until the informant makes up his mind, that they shall die in -their ignorance, for any help he will offer. There are really no limits -to this conceit, though brighter men among them make painful efforts to -be candid. - -The habit of brag runs through all classes, from the _Times_ newspaper -through politicians and poets, through Wordsworth, Carlyle, Mill, and -Sydney Smith, down to the boys of Eton. In the gravest treatise on -political economy, in a philosophical essay, in books of science, one is -surprised by the most innocent exhibition of unflinching nationality. -In a tract on Corn, a most amiable and accomplished gentleman writes -thus: "Though Britain, according to Bishop Berkeley's idea, were -surrounded by a wall of brass ten thousand cubits in height, still, she -would as far excel the rest of the globe in riches, as she now does, -both in this secondary quality, and in the more important ones of -freedom, virtue, and science."[12] - - [12] William Spence. - -The English dislike the American structure of society, whilst yet trade, -mills, public education, and chartism are doing what they can to create -in England the same social condition. America is the paradise of the -economists; is the favorable exception invariably quoted to the rules of -ruin; but when he speaks directly of the Americans, the islander forgets -his philosophy, and remembers his disparaging anecdotes. - -But this childish patriotism costs something, like all narrowness. The -English sway of their colonies has no root of kindness. They govern by -their arts and ability; they are more just than kind; and, whenever an -abatement of their power is felt, they have not conciliated the -affection on which to rely. - -Coarse local distinctions, as those of nation, province, or town, are -useful in the absence of real ones; but we must not insist on these -accidental lines. Individual traits are always triumphing over national -ones. There is no fence in metaphysics discriminating Greek, or -English, or Spanish science. sop and Montaigne, Cervantes and Saadi, -are men of the world; and to wave our own flag at the dinner-table or in -the University, is to carry the boisterous dulness of a fire-club into a -polite circle. Nature and destiny are always on the watch for our -follies. Nature trips us up when we strut; and there are curious -examples in history on this very point of national pride. - -George of Cappadocia, born at Epiphania in Cilicia, was a low parasite, -who got a lucrative contract to supply the army with bacon. A rogue and -informer, he got rich, and was forced to run from justice. He saved his -money, embraced Arianism, collected a library, and got promoted by a -faction to the episcopal throne of Alexandria. When Julian came, A.D. -301, George was dragged to prison; the prison was burst open by the mob, -and George was lynched, as he deserved. And this precious knave became, -in good time, Saint George of England, patron of chivalry, emblem of -victory and civility, and the pride of the best blood of the modern -world. - -Strange, that the solid truth-speaking Briton should derive from an -impostor. Strange, that the New World should have no better luck,--that -broad America must wear the name of a thief. Amerigo Vespucci, the -pickle-dealer at Seville, who went out, in 1499, a subaltern with -Hojeda, and whose highest naval rank was boatswain's mate in an -expedition that never sailed, managed in this lying world to supplant -Columbus, and baptize half the earth with his own dishonest name. Thus -nobody can throw stones. We are equally badly off in our founders; and -the false pickle-dealer is an offset to the false bacon-seller. - - - - -CHAPTER X.--WEALTH. - - -There is no country in which so absolute a homage is paid to wealth. In -America, there is a touch of shame when a man exhibits the evidences of -large property, as if, after all, it needed apology. But the Englishman -has pure pride in his wealth, and esteems it a final certificate. A -coarse logic rules throughout all English souls;--if you have merit, can -you not show it by your good clothes, and coach, and horses? How can a -man be a gentleman without a pipe of wine? Haydon says, "There is a -fierce resolution to make every man live according to the means he -possesses." There is a mixture of religion in it. They are under the -Jewish law, and read with sonorous emphasis that their days shall be -long in the land, they shall have sous and daughters, flocks and herds, -wine and oil. In exact proportion is the reproach of poverty. They do -not wish to be represented except by opulent men. An Englishman who has -lost his fortune is said to have died of a broken heart. The last term -of insult is, "a beggar." Nelson said, "The want of fortune is a crime -which I can never get over." Sydney Smith said, "Poverty is infamous in -England." And one of their recent writers speaks, in reference to a -private and scholastic life, of "the grave moral deterioration which -follows an empty exchequer." You shall find this sentiment, if not so -frankly put, yet deeply implied, in the novels and romances of the -present century, and not only in these, but in biography, and in the -votes of public assemblies, in the tone of the preaching, and in the -table-talk. - -I was lately turning over Wood's _Athen Oxonienses_, and looking -naturally for another standard in a chronicle of the scholars of Oxford -for two hundred years. But I found the two disgraces in that, as in -most English books, are, first, disloyalty to Church and State, and, -second, to be born poor, or to come to poverty. A natural fruit of -England is the brutal political economy. Malthus finds no cover laid at -nature's table for the laborer's son. In 1809, the majority in -Parliament expressed itself by the language of Mr. Fuller in the House -of Commons, "If you do not like the country, damn you, you can leave -it." When Sir S. Romilly proposed his bill forbidding parish officers -to bind children apprentices at a greater distance than forty miles from -their home, Peel opposed, and Mr. Wortley said, "though, in the higher -ranks, to cultivate family affections was a good thing, 't was not so -among the lower orders. Better take them away from those who might -deprave them. And it was highly injurious to trade to stop binding to -manufacturers, as it must raise the price of labor, and of manufactured -goods." - -The respect for truth of facts in England is equalled only by the -respect for wealth. It is at once the pride of art of the Saxon, as he -is a wealth-maker, and his passion for independence. The Englishman -believes that every man must take care of himself, and has himself to -thank, if he do not mend his condition. To pay their debts is their -national point of honor. From the Exchequer and the East India House to -the huckster's shop, everything prospers, because it is solvent. The -British armies are solvent, and pay for what they take. The British -empire is solvent; for, in spite of the huge national debt, the -valuation mounts. During the war from 1789 to 1815, whilst they -complained that they were taxed within an inch of their lives, and, by -dint of enormous taxes, were subsidizing all the continent against -France, the English were growing rich every year faster than any people -ever grew before. It is their maxim, that the weight of taxes must be -calculated, not by what is taken, but by what is left. Solvency is in -the ideas and mechanism of an Englishman. The Crystal Palace is not -considered honest until it pays; no matter how much convenience, beauty, -or _clat_, it must be self-supporting. They are contented with slower -steamers, as long as they know that swifter boats lose money. They -proceed logically by the double method of labor and thrift. Every -household exhibits an exact economy, and nothing of that uncalculated -headlong expenditure which families use in America. If they cannot pay, -they do not buy; for they have no presumption of better fortunes next -year, as our people have; and they say without shame, I cannot afford -it. Gentlemen do not hesitate to ride in the second-class cars, or in -the second cabin. An economist, or a man who can proportion his means -and his ambition, or bring the year round with expenditure which -expresses his character, without embarrassing one day of his future, is -already a master of life, and a freeman. Lord Burleigh writes to his -son, "that one ought never to devote more than two thirds of his income -to the ordinary expenses of life, since the extraordinary will be -certain to absorb the other third." - -The ambition to create value evokes every kind of ability, government -becomes a manufacturing corporation, and every house a mill. The -headlong bias to utility will let no talent lie in a napkin,--if -possible, will teach spiders to weave silk stockings. An Englishman, -while he eats and drinks no more, or not much more than another man, -labors three times as many hours in the course of a year, as an other -European; or, his life as a workman is three lives. He works fast. -Everything in England is at a quick pace. They have reinforced their -own productivity, by the creation of that marvellous machinery which -differences this age from any other age. - -'T is a curious chapter in modern history, the growth of the -machine-shop. Six hundred years ago, Roger Bacon explained the -precession of the equinoxes, the consequent necessity of the reform of -the calendar; measured the length of the year, invented gunpowder; and -announced (as if looking from his lofty cell, over five centuries, into -ours) "that machines can be constructed to drive ships more rapidly than -a whole galley of rowers could do; nor would they need anything but a -pilot to steer them. Carriages also might be constructed to move with -an incredible speed, without the aid of any animal. Finally, it would -not be impossible to make machines, which, by means of a suit of wings, -should fly in the air in the manner of birds." But the secret slept -with Bacon. The six hundred years have not yet fulfilled his words. -Two centuries ago, the sawing of timber was done by hand; the -carriage-wheels ran on wooden axles; the land was tilled by wooden -ploughs. And it was to little purpose that they had pit-coal or that -looms were improved, unless Watt and Stephenson had taught them to work -force-pumps and power-looms by steam. The great strides were all taken -within the last hundred years. The life of Sir Robert Peel, in his day -the model Englishman, very properly has, for a frontispiece, a drawing -of the spinning-jenny, which wove the web of his fortunes. Hargreaves -invented the spinning-jenny, and died in a workhouse. Arkwright -improved the invention; and the machine dispensed with the work of -ninety-nine men: that is, one spinner could do as much work as one -hundred had done before. The loom was improved further. But the men -would sometimes strike for wages, and combine against the masters, and, -about 1829-30, much fear was felt, lest the trade would be drawn away by -these interruptions, and the emigration of the spinners, to Belgium and -the United States. Iron and steel are very obedient. Whether it were -not possible to make a spinner that would not rebel, nor mutter, nor -scowl, nor strike for wages, nor emigrate? At the solicitation of the -masters, after a mob and riot at Staley Bridge, Mr. Roberts of -Manchester undertook to create this peaceful fellow, instead of the -quarrelsome fellow God had made. After a few trials, he succeeded, and, -in 1830, procured a patent for his self-acting mule; a creation, the -delight of mill-owners, and "destined," they said, "to restore order -among the industrious classes"; a machine requiring only a child's hand -to piece the broken yarns. As Arkwright had destroyed domestic -spinning, so Roberts destroyed the factory spinner. The power of -machinery in Great Britain, in mills, has been computed to be equal to -600,000,000 men, one man being able by the aid of steam to do the work -which required two hundred and fifty men to accomplish fifty years ago. -The production has been commensurate. England already had this -laborious race, rich soil, water, wood, coal, iron, and favorable -climate. Eight hundred years ago, commerce had made it rich, and it was -recorded, "England is the richest of all the northern nations." The -Norman historians recite, that "in 1067, William carried with him into -Normandy, from England, more gold and silver than had ever before been -seen in Gaul." But when, to this labor and trade and these native -resources was added this goblin of steam, with his myriad arms, never -tired, working night and day everlastingly, the amassing of property has -run out of all figures. It makes the motor of the last ninety years. -The steam-pipe has added to her population and wealth the equivalent of -four or five Englands. Forty thousand ships are entered in Lloyd's -lists. The yield of wheat has gone on from 2,000,000 quarters in the -time of the Stuarts, to 13,000,000 in 1854. A thousand million pounds -sterling are said to compose the floating money of commerce. In 1848, -Lord John Russell stated that the people of this country had laid out -300,000,000 of capital in railways, in the last four years. But a -better measure than these sounding figures is the estimate, that there -is wealth enough in England to support the entire population in idleness -for one year. - -The wise, versatile, all-giving machinery makes chisels, roads, -locomotives, telegraphs. Whitworth divides a bar to a millionth of an -inch. Steam twines huge cannon into wreaths, as easily as it braids -straw, and vies with the volcanic forces which twisted the strata. It -can clothe shingle mountains with ship-oaks, make sword-blades that will -cut gun-barrels in two. In Egypt, it can plant forests, and bring rain -after three thousand years. Already it is ruddering the balloon, and -the next war will be fought in the air. But another machine more potent -in England than steam is the Bank. - -It votes an issue of bills, population is stimulated, and cities rise; -it refuses loans, and emigration empties the country; trade sinks; -revolutions break out; kings are dethroned. By these new agents our -social system is moulded. By dint of steam and of money, war and -commerce are changed. Nations have lost their old omnipotence; the -patriotic tie does not hold. Nations are getting obsolete, we go and -live where we will. Steam has enabled men to choose what law they will -live under. Money makes place for them. The telegraph is a limp-band -that will hold the Fenris-wolf of war. For now, that a telegraph line -runs through France and Europe, from London, every message it transmits -makes stronger by one thread the band which war will have to cut. - -The introduction of these elements gives new resources to existing -proprietors. A sporting duke may fancy that the state depends on the -House of Lords, but the engineer sees, that every stroke of the -steam-piston gives value to the duke's land, fills it with tenants; -doubles, quadruples, centuples the duke's capital, and creates new -measures and new necessities for the culture of his children. Of -course, it draws the nobility into the competition as stockholders in -the mine, the canal, the railway, in the application of steam to -agriculture, and sometimes into trade. But it also introduces large -classes into the same competition; the old energy of the Norse race arms -itself with these magnificent powers; new men prove an overmatch for the -land-owner, and the mill buys out the castle. Scandinavian Thor, who -once forged his bolts in icy Hecla, and built galleys by lonely fiords, -in England, has advanced with the times, has shorn his beard, enters -Parliament, sits down at a desk in the India House, and lends Miollnir -to Birmingham for a steam-hammer. - -The creation of wealth in England in the last ninety years is a main -fact in modern history. The wealth of London determines prices all over -the globe. All things precious, or useful, or amusing, or intoxicating, -are sucked into this commerce and floated to London. Some English -private fortunes reach, and some exceed, a million of dollars a year. A -hundred thousand palaces adorn the island. All that can feed the senses -and passions, all that can succor the talent, or arm the hands of the -intelligent middle class who never spare in what they buy for their own -consumption; all that can aid science, gratify taste, or soothe comfort, -is in open market. Whatever is excellent and beautiful in civil, rural, -or ecclesiastic architecture; in fountain, garden, or grounds; the -English noble crosses sea and land to see and to copy at home. The -taste and science of thirty peaceful generations; the gardens which -Evelyn planted; the temples and pleasure-houses which Inigo Jones and -Christopher Wren built; the wood that Gibbons carved; the taste of -foreign and domestic artists, Shenstone, Pope, Brown, Loudon, Paxton, -are in the vast auction, and the hereditary principle heaps on the owner -of to-day the benefit of ages of owners. The present possessors are to -the full as absolute as any of their fathers, in choosing and procuring -what they like. This comfort and splendor, the breadth of lake and -mountain, tillage, pasture, and park, sumptuous castle and modern -villa,--all consist with perfect order. They have no revolutions; no -horse-guards dictating to the crown; no Parisian _poissardes_ and -barricades; no mob; but drowsy habitude, daily dress-dinners, wine, and -ale, and beer, and gin, and sleep. - -With this power of creation, and this passion for independence, property -has reached an ideal perfection. It is felt and treated as the national -life-blood. The laws are framed to give property the securest possible -basis, and the provisions to lock and transmit it have exercised the -cunningest heads in a profession which never admits a fool. The rights -of property nothing but felony and treason can override. The house is a -castle which the king cannot enter. The Bank is a strong-box to which -the king has no key. Whatever surly sweetness possession can give, is -tasted in England to the dregs. Vested rights are awful things, and -absolute possession gives the smallest freeholder identity of interest -with the duke. High stone fences and padlocked garden gates announce -the absolute will of the owner to be alone. Every whim of exaggerated -egotism is put into stone and iron, into silver and gold, with costly -deliberation and detail. - -An Englishman hears that the Queen Dowager wishes to establish some -claim to put her park paling a rod forward into his grounds, so as to -get a coachway, and save her a mile to the avenue. Instantly he -transforms his paling into stone masonry, solid as the walls of Cuma, -and all Europe cannot prevail on him to sell or compound for an inch of -the land. They delight in a freak as the proof of their sovereign -freedom. Sir Edward Boynton, at Spic Park, at Cadenham, on a precipice -of incomparable prospect, built a house like a long barn, which had not -a window on the prospect side. Strawberry Hill of Horace Walpole, -Fonthill Abbey of Mr. Beckford, were freaks; and Newstead Abbey became -one in the hands of Lord Byron. - -But the proudest result of this creation has been the great and refined -forces it has put at the disposal of the private citizen. In the social -world, an Englishman to-day has the best lot. He is a king in a plain -coat. He goes with the most powerful protection, keeps the best -company, is armed by the best education, is seconded by wealth; and his -English name and accidents are like a flourish of trumpets announcing -him. This, with his quiet style of manners, gives him the power of a -sovereign, without the inconveniences which belong to that rank. I much -prefer the condition of an English gentleman of the better class, to -that of any potentate in Europe,--whether for travel, or for opportunity -of society, or for access to means of science or study, or for mere -comfort and easy healthy relation to people at home. - -Such, as we have seen, is the wealth of England, a mighty mass, and made -good in whatever details we care to explore. The cause and spring of it -is the wealth of temperament in the people. The wonder of Britain is -this plenteous nature. Her worthies are ever surrounded by as good men -as themselves; each is a captain a hundred strong, and that wealth of -men is represented again in the faculty of each individual,--that he has -waste strength, power to spare. The English are so rich, and seem to -have established a taproot in the bowels of the planet, because they are -constitutionally fertile and creative. - -But a man must keep an eye on his servants, if he would not have them -rule him. Man is a shrewd inventor, and is ever taking the hint of a -new machine from his own structure, adapting some secret of his own -anatomy in iron, wood, and leather, to some required function in the -work of the world. But it is found that the machine unmans the user. -What he gains in making cloth, he loses in general power. There should -be temperance in making cloth, as well as in eating. A man should not -be a silkworm; nor a nation a tent of caterpillars. The robust rural -Saxon degenerates in the mills to the Leicester stockinger, to the -imbecile Manchester spinner,--far on the way to be spiders and needles. -The incessant repetition of the same hand-work dwarfs the man, robs him -of his strength, wit, and versatility, to make a pin-polisher, a -buckle-maker, or any other specialty; and presently, in a change of -industry, whole towns are sacrificed like ant-hills, when, the fashion -of shoestrings supersedes buckles, when cotton takes the place of linen, -or railways of turnpikes, or when commons are enclosed by landlords. -Then society is admonished of the mischief of the division of labor, and -that the best political economy is care and culture of men; for, in -these crises, all are ruined except such as are proper individuals, -capable of thought, and of new choice and the application of their -talent to new labor. Then again come in new calamities. England is -aghast at the disclosure of her fraud in the adulteration of food, of -drugs, and of almost every fabric in her mills and shops; finding that -milk will not nourish, nor sugar sweeten, nor bread satisfy, nor pepper -bite the tongue, nor glue stick. In true England all is false and -forged. This too is the reaction of machinery, but of the larger -machinery of commerce. 'T is not, I suppose, want of probity, so much -as the tyranny of trade, which necessitates a perpetual competition of -underselling, and that again a perpetual deterioration of the fabric. - -The machinery has proved, like the balloon, unmanageable, and flies away -with the aeronaut. Steam from the first hissed and screamed to warn -him; it was dreadful with its explosion, and crushed the engineer. The -machinist has wrought and watched, engineers and firemen without number -have been sacrificed in learning to tame and guide the monster. But -harder still it has proved to resist and rule the dragon Money, with his -paper wings. Chancellors and Boards of Trade, Pitt, Peel, and Robinson, -and their Parliaments, and their whole generation, adopted false -principles, and went to their graves in the belief that they were -enriching the country which they were impoverishing. They congratulated -each other on ruinous expedients. It is rare to find a merchant who -knows why a crisis occurs in trade, why prices rise or fall, or who -knows the mischief of paper-money. In the culmination of national -prosperity, in the annexation of countries; building of ships, depots, -towns; in the influx of tons of gold and silver; amid the chuckle of -chancellors and financiers, it was found that bread rose to famine -prices, that the yeoman was forced to sell his cow and pig, his tools, -and his acre of land; and the dreadful barometer of the poor-rates was -touching the point of ruin. The poor-rate was sucking in the solvent -classes, and forcing an exodus of farmers and mechanics. What befalls -from the violence of financial crises, befalls daily in the violence of -artificial legislation. - - -Such a wealth has England earned, ever new, bounteous, and augmenting. -But the question recurs, does she take the step beyond, namely, to the -wise use, in view of the supreme wealth of nations? We estimate the -wisdom of nations by seeing what they did with their surplus capital. -And, in view of these injuries, some compensation has been attempted in -England. A part of the money earned returns to the brain to buy -schools, libraries, bishops, astronomers, chemists, and artists with; -and a part to repair the wrongs of this intemperate weaving, by -hospitals, savings-banks, Mechanics' Institutes, public grounds, and -other charities and amenities. But the antidotes are frightfully -inadequate, and the evil requires a deeper cure, which time and a -simpler social organization must supply. At present, she does not rule -her wealth. She is simply a good England, but no divinity, or wise and -instructed soul. She too is in the stream of fate, one victim more in a -common catastrophe. - -But being in the fault, she has the misfortune of greatness to be held -as the chief offender. England must be held responsible for the -despotism of expense. Her prosperity, the splendor which so much -manhood and talent and perseverance has thrown upon vulgar aims, is the -very argument of materialism. Her success strengthens the hands of base -wealth. Who can propose to youth poverty and wisdom, when mean gain has -arrived at the conquest of letters and arts; when English success has -grown out of the very renunciation of principles, and the dedication to -outsides. A civility of trifles, of money and expense, an erudition of -sensation takes place, and the putting as many impediments as we can, -between the man and his objects. Hardly the bravest among them have the -manliness to resist it successfully. Hence, it has come, that not the -aims of a manly life, but the means of meeting a certain ponderous -expense, is that which is to be considered by a youth in England, -emerging from his minority. A large family is reckoned a misfortune. -And it is a consolation in the death of the young, that a source of -expense is closed. - - - - -CHAPTER XI.--ARISTOCRACY. - - -The feudal character of the English state, now that it is getting -obsolete, glares a little, in contrast with the democratic tendencies. -The inequality of power and property shocks republican nerves. Palaces, -halls, villas, walled parks, all over England, rival the splendor of -royal seats. Many of the halls, like Haddon, or Kedleston, are -beautiful desolations. The proprietor never saw them, or never lived in -them. Primogeniture built these sumptuous piles, and, I suppose, it is -the sentiment of every traveller, as it was mine, 'T was well to come -ere these were gone. Primogeniture is a cardinal rule of English -property and institutions. Laws, customs, manners, the very persons and -faces, affirm it. - -The frame of society is aristocratic, the taste of the people is loyal. -The estates, names, and manners of the nobles flatter the fancy of the -people, and conciliate the necessary support. In spite of broken faith, -stolen charters, and the devastation of society by the profligacy of the -court, we take sides as we read for the loyal England and King Charles's -"return to his right" with his Cavaliers,--knowing what a heartless -trifler he is, and what a crew of God-forsaken robbers they are. The -people of England knew as much. But the fair idea of a settled -government connecting itself with heraldic names, with the written and -oral history of Europe, and, at last, with the Hebrew religion, and the -oldest traditions of the world, was too pleasing a vision to be -shattered by a few offensive realities, and the politics of shoemakers -and costermongers. The hopes of the commoners take the same direction -with the interest of the patricians. Every man who becomes rich buys -land, and does what he can to fortify the nobility, into which he hopes -to rise. The Anglican clergy are identified with the aristocracy. Time -and law have made the joining and moulding perfect in every part. The -Cathedrals, the Universities, the national music, the popular romances, -conspire to uphold the heraldry, which the current politics of the day -are sapping. The taste of the people is conservative. They are proud -of the castles, and of the language and symbol of chivalry. Even the -word "lord" is the luckiest style that is used in any language to -designate a patrician. The superior education and manners of the nobles -recommend them to the country. - -The Norwegian pirate got what he could, and held it for his eldest son. -The Norman noble, who was the Norwegian pirate baptized, did likewise. -There was this advantage of Western over Oriental nobility, that this -was recruited from below. English history is aristocracy with the doors -open. Who has courage and faculty, let him come in. Of course, the -terms of admission to this club are hard and high. The selfishness of -the nobles comes in aid of the interest of the nation to require signal -merit. Piracy and war gave place to trade, politics, and letters; the -war-lord to the law-lord; the law-lord to the merchant and the -mill-owner; but the privilege was kept, whilst the means of obtaining it -were changed. - -The foundations of these families lie deep in Norwegian exploits by sea, -and Saxon sturdiness on land. All nobility in its beginnings was -somebody's natural superiority. The things these English have done were -not done without peril of life, nor without wisdom and conduct; and the -first hands, it may be presumed, were often challenged to show their -right to their honors, or yield them to better men. "He that will be a -head, let him be a bridge," said the Welsh chief Benegridran, when he -carried all his men over the river on his back. "He shall have the -book," said the mother of Alfred, "who can read it"; and Alfred won it -by that title: and I make no doubt that feudal tenure was no sinecure, -but baron, knight, and tenant often had their memories refreshed, in -regard to the service by which they held their lands. The De Veres, -Bohuns, Mowbrays, and Plantagenets were not addicted to contemplation. -The Middle Age adorned itself with proofs of manhood and devotion. Of -Richard Beauchamp, Earl of Warwick, the Emperor told Henry V. that no -Christian king had such another knight for wisdom, nurture, and manhood, -and caused him to be named, "Father of curtesie." "Our success in -France," says the historian, "lived and died with him."[13] - - [13] Fuller's Worthies, II. p. 472. - -The war-lord earned his honors, and no donation of land was large, as -long as it brought the duty of protecting it, hour by hour, against a -terrible enemy. In France and in England, the nobles were, down to a -late day, born and bred to war; and the duel, which in peace still held -them to the risks of war, diminished the envy that, in trading and -studious nations, would else have pried into their title. They were -looked on as men who played high for a great stake. - -Great estates are not sinecures, if they are to be kept great. A -creative economy is the fuel of magnificence. In the same line of -Warwick, the successor next but one to Beauchamp was the stout earl of -Henry VI. and Edward IV. Few esteemed themselves in the mode, whose -heads were not adorned with the black ragged staff, his badge. At his -house in London, six oxen were daily eaten at a breakfast; and every -tavern was full of his meat; and who had any acquaintance in his family, -should have as much boiled and roast as he could carry on a long dagger. - -The new age brings new qualities into request, the virtues of pirates -gave way to those of planters, merchants, senators, and scholars. -Comity, social talent, and fine manners, no doubt, have had their part -also. I have met somewhere with a historiette, which, whether more or -less true in its particulars, carries a general truth. "How came the -Duke of Bedford by his great landed estates? His ancestor having -travelled on the continent, a lively, pleasant man, became the companion -of a foreign prince wrecked on the Dorsetshire coast, where Mr. Russell -lived. The prince recommended him to Henry VIII., who, liking his -company, gave him a large share of the plundered church lands." - -The pretence is that the noble is of unbroken descent from the Norman, -and has never worked for eight hundred years. But the fact is -otherwise. Where is Bohun? where is De Vere? The lawyer, the farmer, -the silk-mercer, lies _perdu_ under the coronet, and winks to the -antiquary to say nothing; especially skilful lawyers, nobody's sons, who -did some piece of work at a nice moment for government, and were -rewarded with ermine. - -The national tastes of the English do not lead them to the life of the -courtier, but to secure the comfort and independence of their homes. -The aristocracy are marked by their predilection for country-life. They -are called the county-families. They have often no residence in London, -and only go thither for a short time, during the season, to see the -opera; but they concentrate the love and labor of many generations on -the building, planting, and decoration of their homesteads. Some of -them are too old and too proud to wear titles, or, as Sheridan said of -Coke, "disdain to hide their head in a coronet"; and some curious -examples are cited to show the stability of English families. Their -proverb is, that, fifty miles from London, a family will last a hundred -years; at a hundred miles, two hundred years; and so on; but I doubt -that steam, the enemy of time, as well as of space, will disturb these -ancient rules. Sir Henry Wotton says of the first Duke of Buckingham: -"He was born at Brookeby in Leicestershire, where his ancestors had -chiefly continued about the space of four hundred years, rather without -obscurity, than with any great lustre."[14] Wraxall says, that, in -1781, Lord Surrey, afterwards Duke of Norfolk, told him, that when the -year 1783 should arrive, he meant to give a grand festival to all the -descendants of the body of Jockey of Norfolk, to mark the day when the -dukedom should have remained three hundred years in their house, since -its creation by Richard III. Pepys tells us, in writing of an Earl -Oxford, in 1666, that the honor had now remained in that name and blood -six hundred years. - - [14] Reliqui Wottonian, p. 208. - -This long descent of families and this cleaving through ages to the same -spot of ground captivates the imagination. It has too a connection with -the names of the towns and districts of the country. - -The names are excellent,--an atmosphere of legendary melody spread over -the land. Older than all epics and histories, which clothe a nation, -this undershirt sits close to the body. What history too, and what -stores of primitive and savage observation, it infolds! Cambridge is -the bridge of the Cam; Sheffield, the field of the river Sheaf; -Leicester, the _castra_ or camp of the Lear or Leir (now Soar); -Rochdale, of the Roch; Exeter or Excester, the _castra_ of the Ex; -Exmouth, Dartmouth, Sidmouth, Teignmouth, the mouths of the Ex, Dart, -Sid, and Teign Rivers. Waltham is strong town; Radcliffe is red cliff; -and so on;--a sincerity and use in naming very striking to an American, -whose country is whitewashed all over by unmeaning names, the cast-off -clothes of the country from which its emigrants came; or, named at a -pinch from a psalm-tune. But the English are those "barbarians" of -Jamblichus, who "are stable in their manners, and firmly continue to -employ the same words, which also are dear to the gods." - -'T is an old sneer, that the Irish peerage drew their names from -playbooks. The English lords do not call their lands after their own -names, but call themselves after their lands; as if the man represented -the country that bred him; and they rightly wear the token of the glebe -that gave them birth; suggesting that the tie is not cut, but that there -in London,--the crags of Argyle, the kail of Cornwall, the downs of -Devon, the iron of Wales, the clays of Stafford, are neither forgetting -nor forgotten, but know the man who was born by them, and who, like the -long line of his fathers, has carried that crag, that shore, dale, fen, -or woodland in his blood and manners. It has, too, the advantage of -suggesting responsibleness. A susceptible man could not wear a name -which represented in a strict sense a city or a county of England, -without hearing in it a challenge to duty and honor. - -The predilection of the patricians for residence in the country, -combined with the degree of liberty possessed by the peasant, makes the -safety of the English hall. Mirabeau wrote prophetically from England, -in 1784: "If revolution break out in France, I tremble for the -aristocracy: their chaeaux will be reduced to ashes, and their blood -spilt in torrents. The English tenant would defend his lord to the last -extremity." The English go to their estates for grandeur. The French -live at court, and exile themselves to their estates for economy. As -they do not mean to live with their tenants, they do not conciliate -them, but wring from them the last sous. Evelyn writes from Blois, in -1644: "The wolves are here in such numbers, that they often come and -take children out of the streets; yet will not the Duke, who is -sovereign here, permit them to be destroyed." - -In evidence of the wealth amassed by ancient families, the traveller is -shown the palaces in Piccadilly, Burlington House, Devonshire House, -Lansdowne House in Berkshire Square, and, lower down in the city, a few -noble houses which still withstand in all their amplitude the -encroachment of streets. The Duke of Bedford includes or included a -mile square in the heart of London, where the British Museum, once -Montague House, now stands, and the land occupied by Woburn Square, -Bedford Square, Russell Square. The Marquis of Westminster built within -a few years the series of squares called Belgravia. Stafford House is -the noblest palace in London. Northumberland House holds its place by -Charing Cross. Chesterfield House remains in Audley Street. Sion House -and Holland House are in the suburbs. But most of the historical houses -are masked or lost in the modern uses to which trade or charity has -converted them. A multitude of town palaces contain inestimable -galleries of art. - -In the country, the size of private estates is more impressive. From -Barnard Castle I rode on the highway twenty-three miles from High Force, -a fall of the Tees, towards Darlington, past Raby Castle, through the -estate of the Duke of Cleveland. The Marquis of Breadalbane rides out -of his house a hundred miles in a straight line to the sea, on his own -property. The Duke of Sutherland owns the county of Sutherland, -stretching across Scotland from sea to sea. The Duke of Devonshire, -besides his other estates, owns 96,000 acres in the county of Derby. -The Duke of Richmond has 40,000 acres at Goodwood, and 300,000 at Gordon -Castle. The Duke of Norfolk's park in Sussex is fifteen miles in -circuit. An agriculturist bought lately the island of Lewes, in -Hebrides, containing 500,000 acres. The possessions of the Earl of -Lonsdale gave him eight seats in Parliament. This is the Heptarchy -again; and before the Reform of 1832, one hundred and fifty-four persons -sent three hundred and seven members to Parliament. The borough-mongers -governed England. - -These large domains are growing larger. The great estates are absorbing -the small freeholds. In 1786, the soil of England was owned by 250,000 -corporations and proprietors; and, in 1822, by 32,000. These broad -estates find room in this narrow island. All over England, scattered at -short intervals among ship-yards, mills, mines, and forges, are the -paradises of the nobles, where the livelong repose and refinement are -heightened by the contrast with the roar of industry and necessity, out -of which you have stepped aside. - - -I was surprised to observe the very small attendance usually in the -House of Lords. Out of 573 peers, on ordinary days, only twenty or -thirty. Where are they? I asked. "At home on their estates, devoured -by _ennui_, or in the Alps, or up the Rhine, in the Harz Mountains, or -in Egypt, or in India, on the Ghauts." But, with such interests at -stake, how can these men afford to neglect them? "O," replied my -friend, "why should they work for themselves, when every man in England -works for them, and will suffer before they come to harm?" The hardest -radical instantly uncovers, and changes his tone to a lord. It was -remarked on the 10th April, 1848 (the day of the Chartist -demonstration), that the upper classes were, for the first time, -actively interesting themselves in their own defence, and men of rank -were sworn special constables, with the rest. "Besides, why need they -sit out the debate? Has not the Duke of Wellington, at this moment, -their proxies,--the proxies of fifty peers in his pocket, to vote for -them, if there be an emergency?" - -It is however true, that the existence of the House of Peers as a branch -of the government entitles them to fill half the Cabinet; and their -weight of property and station gives them a virtual nomination of the -other half; whilst they have their share in the subordinate offices, as -a school of training. This monopoly of political power has given them -their intellectual and social eminence in Europe. A few law lords and a -few political lords take the brunt of public business. In the army, the -nobility fill a large part of the high commissions, and give to these a -tone of expense and splendor, and also of exclusiveness. They have -borne their full share of duty and danger in this service; and there are -few noble families which have not paid in some of their members, the -debt of life or limb, in the sacrifices of the Russian war. For the -rest, the nobility have the lead in matters of state, and of expense; in -questions of taste, in social usages, in convivial and domestic -hospitalities. In general, all that is required of them is to sit -securely, to preside at public meetings, to countenance charities, and -to give the example of that decorum so dear to the British heart. - -If one asks, in the critical spirit of the day, what service this class -have rendered?--uses appear, or they would have perished long ago. Some -of these are easily enumerated, others more subtle make a part of -unconscious history. Their institution is one step in the progress of -society. For a race yields a nobility in some form, however we name the -lords, as surely as it yields women. - -The English nobles are high-spirited, active, educated men, born to -wealth and power, who have run through every country, and kept in every -country the best company, have seen every secret of art and nature, and, -when men of any ability or ambition, have been consulted in the conduct -of every important action. You cannot wield great agencies without -lending yourself to them, and when it happens that the spirit of the -earl meets his rank and duties, we have the best examples of behavior. -Power of any kind readily appears in the manners; and beneficent power, -_le talent de bien faire_, gives a majesty which cannot be concealed or -resisted. - -These people seem to gain as much as they lose by their position. They -survey society, as from the top of St. Paul's, and if they never hear -plain truth from men, they see the best of everything, in every kind, -and they see things so grouped and amassed as to infer easily the sum -and genius, instead of tedious particularities. Their good behavior -deserves all its fame, and they have that simplicity, and that air of -repose, which are the finest ornament of greatness. - -The upper classes have only birth, say the people here, and not -thoughts. Yes, but they have manners, and 't is wonderful, how much -talent runs into manners:--nowhere and never so much as in England. -They have the sense of superiority, the absence of all the ambitious -effort which disgusts in the aspiring classes, a pure tone of thought -and feeling, and the power to command, among their other luxuries, the -presence of the most accomplished men in their festive meetings. - -Loyalty is in the English a sub-religion. They wear the laws as -ornaments, and walk by their faith in their painted May-Fair, as if -among the forms of gods. The economist of 1855 who asks, of what use -are the lords? may learn of Franklin to ask, of what use is a baby? They -have been a social church proper to inspire sentiments mutually honoring -the lover and the loved. Politeness is the ritual of society, as prayers -are of the church; a school of manners, and a gentle blessing to the age -in which it grew. 'T is a romance adorning English life with a larger -horizon; a midway heaven, fulfilling to their sense their fairy tales -and poetry. This, just as far as the breeding of the nobleman, really -made him brave, handsome, accomplished, and great-hearted. - -On general grounds, whatever tends to form manners, or to finish men, -has a great value. Every one who has tasted the delight of friendship, -will respect every social guard which our manners can establish, tending -to secure from the intrusion of frivolous and distasteful people. The -jealousy of every class to guard itself, is a testimony to the reality -they have found in life. When a man once knows that he has done justice -to himself, let him dismiss all terrors of aristocracy as superstitions, -so far as he is concerned. He who keeps the door of a mine, whether of -cobalt, or mercury, or nickel, or plumbago, securely knows that the -world cannot do without him. Everybody who is real is open and ready for -that which is also real. - -Besides, these are they who make England that strongbox and museum it -is; who gather and protect works of art, dragged from amidst burning -cities and revolutionary countries, and brought hither out of all the -world. I look with respect at houses six, seven, eight hundred, or, -like Warwick Castle, nine hundred years old. I pardoned high park -fences, when I saw, that, besides does and pheasants, these have -preserved Arundel marbles, Townley galleries, Howard and Spenserian -libraries, Warwick and Portland vases, Saxon manuscripts, monastic -architectures, millennial trees, and breeds of cattle elsewhere extinct. -In these manors, after the frenzy of war and destruction subsides a -little, the antiquary finds the frailest Roman jar, or crumbling -Egyptian mummy-case, without so much as a new layer of dust, keeping the -series of history unbroken, and waiting for its interpreter, who is sure -to arrive. These lords are the treasurers and librarians of mankind, -engaged by their pride and wealth to this function. - -Yet there were other works for British dukes to do. George Loudon, -Quintinye, Evelyn, had taught them to make gardens. Arthur Young, -Bakewell, and Mechi have made them agricultural. Scotland was a camp -until the day of Culloden. The Dukes of Athol, Sutherland, Buccleugh, -and the Marquis of Breadalbane have introduced the rape-culture, the -sheep-farm, wheat, drainage, the plantation of forests, the artificial -replenishment of lakes and ponds with fish, the renting of -game-preserves. Against the cry of the old tenantry, and the sympathetic -cry of the English press, they have rooted out and planted anew, and now -six millions of people live, and live better on the same land that fed -three millions. - -The English barons, in every period, have been brave and great, after -the estimate and opinion of their times. The grand old halls scattered -up and down in England are dumb vouchers to the state and broad -hospitality of their ancient lords. Shakspeare's portraits of good Duke -Humphrey, of Warwick, of Northumberland, of Talbot, were drawn in strict -consonance with the traditions. A sketch of the Earl of Shrewsbury, -from the pen of Queen Elizabeth's Archbishop Parker;[15] Lord Herbert of -Cherbury's autobiography; the letters and essays of Sir Philip Sidney; -the anecdotes preserved by the antiquaries Fuller and Collins; some -glimpses at the interiors of noble houses, which we owe to Pepys and -Evelyn; the details which Ben Jonson's masques (performed at Kenilworth, -Althorpe, Belvoir, and other noble houses) record or suggest; down to -Aubrey's passages of the life of Hobbes in the house of the Earl of -Devon, are favorable pictures of a romantic style of manners. Penshurst -still shines for us, and its Christmas revels, "where logs not burn, but -men." At Wilton House, the "Arcadia" was written, amidst conversations -with Fulke Greville, Lord Brooke, a man of no vulgar mind, as his own -poems declare him. I must hold Ludlow Castle an honest house, for which -Milton's "Comus" was written, and the company nobly bred which performed -it with knowledge and sympathy. In the roll of nobles are found poets, -philosophers, chemists, astronomers, also men of solid virtues and of -lofty sentiments; often they have been the friends and patrons of genius -and learning, and especially of the fine arts; and at this moment, -almost every great house has its sumptuous picture-gallery. - - [15] Dibdin's Literary Reminiscences, Vol. I. xii. - -Of course, there is another side to this gorgeous show. Every victory -was the defeat of a party only less worthy. Castles are proud things, -but 't is safest to be outside of them. War is a foul game, and yet war -is not the worst part of aristocratic history. In later times, when the -baron, educated only for war, with his brains paralyzed by his stomach, -found himself idle at home, he grew fat and wanton, and a sorry brute. -Grammont, Pepys, and Evelyn show the kennels to which the king and court -went in quest of pleasure. Prostitutes taken from the theatres were -made duchesses, their bastards dukes and earls. "The young men sat -uppermost, the old serious lords were out of favor." The discourse that -the king's companions had with him was "poor and frothy." No man who -valued his head might do what these pot-companions familiarly did with -the king. In logical sequence of these dignified revels, Pepys can tell -the beggarly shifts to which the king was reduced, who could not find -paper at his council table, and "no handkerchers" in his wardrobe, "and -but three bands to his neck," and the linen-draper and the stationer -were out of pocket, and refusing to trust him, and the baker will not -bring bread any longer. Meantime, the English Channel was swept, and -London threatened by the Dutch fleet, manned too by English sailors, -who, having been cheated of their pay for years by the king, enlisted -with the enemy. - -The Selwyn correspondence in the reign of George III. discloses a -rottenness in the aristocracy, which threatened to decompose the state. -The sycophancy and sale of votes and honor, for place and title; -lewdness, gaming, smuggling, bribery, and cheating; the sneer at the -childish indiscretion of quarrelling with ten thousand a year; the want -of ideas; the splendor of the titles, and the apathy of the nation, are -instructive, and make the reader pause and explore the firm bounds which -confined these vices to a handful of rich men. In the reign of the -Fourth George, things do not seem to have mended, and the rotten -debauchee let down from a window by an inclined plane into his coach to -take the air, was a scandal to Europe which the ill fame of his queen -and of his family did nothing to retrieve. - -Under the present reign, the perfect decorum of the Court is thought to -have put a check on the gross vices of the aristocracy; yet gaming, -racing, drinking, and mistresses bring them down, and the democrat can -still gather scandals, if he will. Dismal anecdotes abound, verifying -the gossip of the last generation of dukes served by bailiffs, with all -their plate in pawn; of great lords living by the showing of their -houses; and of an old man wheeled in his chair from room to room, whilst -his chambers are exhibited to the visitor for money: of ruined dukes and -earls living in exile for debt. The historic names of the Buckinghams, -Beauforts, Marlboroughs, and Hertfords have gained no new lustre, and -now and then darker scandals break out, ominous as the new chapters -added under the Orleans dynasty to the "_Causes Clbres_" in France. -Even peers, who are men of worth and public spirit, are overtaken and -embarrassed by their vast expense. The respectable Duke of Devonshire, -willing to be the Mecnas and Lucullus of his island, is reported to -have said that he cannot live at Chatsworth but one month in the year. -Their many houses eat them up. They cannot sell them, because they are -entailed. They will not let them, for pride's sake, but keep them -empty, aired, and the grounds mown and dressed, at a cost of four or -five thousand pounds a year. The spending is for a great part in -servants, in many houses exceeding a hundred. - -Most of them are only chargeable with idleness, which, because it -squanders such vast power of benefit, has the mischief of crime. "They -might be little Providences on earth," said my friend, "and they are, -for the most part, jockeys and fops." Campbell says: "Acquaintance with -the nobility, I could never keep up. It requires a life of idleness, -dressing, and attendance on their parties." I suppose, too, that a -feeling of self-respect is driving cultivated men out of this society, -as if the noble were slow to receive the lessons of the times, and had -not learned to disguise his pride of place. A man of wit, who is also -one of the celebrities of wealth and fashion, confessed to his friend, -that he could not enter their houses without being made to feel that -they were great lords, and he a low plebeian. With the tribe of -_artistes_, including the musical tribe, the patrician morgue keeps no -terms, but excludes them. When Julia Grisi and Mario sang at the houses -of the Duke of Wellington and other grandees, a ribbon was stretched -between the singer and the company. - -When every noble was a soldier, they were carefully bred to great -personal prowess. The education of a soldier is a simpler affair than -that of an earl in the nineteenth century. And this was very seriously -pursued; they were expert in every species of equitation, to the most -dangerous practices, and this down to the accession of William of -Orange. But graver men appear to have trained their sons for civil -affairs. Elizabeth extended her thought to the future; and Sir Philip -Sidney in his letter to his brother, and Milton and Evelyn, gave plain -and hearty counsel. Already, too, the English noble and squire were -preparing for the career of the country-gentleman, and his peaceable -expense. They went from city to city, learning receipts to make -perfumes, sweet powders, pomanders, antidotes, gathering seeds, gems, -coins, and divers curiosities, preparing for a private life thereafter, -in which they should take pleasure in these recreations. - -All advantages given to absolve the young patrician from intellectual -labor are of course mistaken. "In the university, noblemen are exempted -from the public exercises for the degree, etc., by which they attain a -degree called honorary. At the same time the fees they must pay for -matriculation, and on all other occasions, are much higher."[16] Fuller -records "the observation of foreigners, that Englishmen, by making their -children gentlemen, before they are men, cause they are so seldom wise -men." This cockering justifies Dr. Johnson's bitter apology for -primogeniture, "that it makes but one fool in a family." - - [16] Huber, History of English Universities. - -The revolution in society has reached this class. The great powers of -industrial art have no exclusion of name or blood. The tools of our -time, namely, steam, ships, printing, money, and popular education, -belong to those who can handle them; and their effect has been, that -advantages once confined to men of family are now open to the whole -middle class. The road that grandeur levels for his coach, toil can -travel in his cart. - -This is more manifest every day, but I think it is true throughout -English history. English history, wisely read, is the vindication of -the brain of that people. Here, at last, were climate and condition -friendly to the working faculty. Who now will work and dare, shall -rule. This is the charter, or the chartism, which fogs, and seas, and -rains proclaimed,--that intellect and personal force should make the -law; that industry and administrative talent should administer; that -work should wear the crown. I know that not this, but something else is -pretended. The fiction with which the noble and the bystander equally -please themselves is, that the former is of unbroken descent from the -Norman, and so has never worked for eight hundred years. All the -families are new, but the name is old, and they have made a covenant -with their memories not to disturb it. But the analysis of the peerage -and gentry shows the rapid decay and extinction of old families, the -continual recruiting of these from new blood. The doors, though -ostentatiously guarded, are really open, and hence the power of the -bribe. All the barriers to rank only whet the thirst, and enhance the -prize. "Now," said Nelson, when clearing for battle, "a peerage, or -Westminster Abbey!" "I have no illusion left," said Sidney Smith, "but -the Archbishop of Canterbury." "The lawyers," said Burke, "are only -birds of passage in this House of Commons," and then added, with a new -figure, "they have their best bower anchor in the House of Lords." - -Another stride that has been taken, appears in the perishing of -heraldry. Whilst the privileges of nobility are passing to the middle -class, the badge is discredited, and the titles of lordship are getting -musty and cumbersome. I wonder that sensible men have not been already -impatient of them. They belong, with wigs, powder, and scarlet coats, -to an earlier age, and may be advantageously consigned, with paint and -tattoo, to the dignitaries of Australia and Polynesia. - -A multitude of English, educated at the universities, bred into their -society with manners, ability, and the gifts of fortune, are every day -confronting the peers on a footing of equality, and outstripping them, -as often, in the race of honor and influence. That cultivated class is -large and ever enlarging. It is computed that, with titles and without, -there are seventy thousand of these people coming and going in London, -who make up what is called high society. They cannot shut their eyes to -the fact that an untitled nobility possess all the power without the -inconveniences that belong to rank, and the rich Englishman goes over -the world at the present day, drawing more than all the advantages which -the strongest of his kings could command. - - - - -CHAPTER XII.--UNIVERSITIES. - - -Of British universities, Cambridge has the most illustrious names on its -list. At the present day, too, it has the advantage of Oxford, counting -in its _alumni_ a greater number of distinguished scholars. I regret -that I had but a single day wherein to see King's College Chapel, the -beautiful lawns and gardens of the colleges, and a few of its gownsmen. - -But I availed myself of some repeated invitations to Oxford, where I had -introductions to Dr. Daubeny, Professor of Botany, and to the Regius -Professor of Divinity, as well as to a valued friend, a Fellow of Oriel, -and went thither on the last day of March, 1848. I was the guest of my -friend in Oriel, was housed close upon that college, and I lived on -college hospitalities. - -My new friends showed me their cloisters, the Bodleian Library, the -Randolph Gallery, Merton Hall, and the rest. I saw several faithful, -high-minded young men, some of them in the mood of making sacrifices for -peace of mind,--a topic, of course, on which I had no counsel to offer. -Their affectionate and gregarious ways reminded me at once of the habits -of _our_ Cambridge men, though I imputed to these English an advantage -in their secure and polished manners. The halls are rich with oaken -wainscoting and ceiling. The pictures of the founders hang from the -walls; the tables glitter with plate. A youth came forward to the upper -table, and pronounced the ancient form of grace before meals, which, I -suppose, has been in use here for ages, _Benedictus benedicat; -benedicitur, benedicatur_. - -It is a curious proof of the English use and wont, or of their -good-nature, that these young men are locked up every night at nine -o'clock, and the porter at each hall is required to give the name of any -belated student who is admitted after that hour. Still more descriptive -is the fact, that out of twelve hundred young men, comprising the most -spirited of the aristocracy, a duel has never occurred. - -Oxford is old, even in England, and conservative. Its foundations date -from Alfred, and even from Arthur, if, as is alleged, the Pheryllt of -the Druids had a seminary here. In the reign of Edward I., it is -pretended, here were thirty thousand students; and nineteen most noble -foundations were then established. Chaucer found it as firm as if it -had always stood; and it is in British story, rich with great names, the -school of the island, and the link of England to the learned of Europe. -Hither came Erasmus, with delight, in 1497. Albericus Gentilis, in -1580, was relieved and maintained by the university. Albert Alaskie, a -noble Polonian, Prince of Sirad, who visited England to admire the -wisdom of Queen Elizabeth, was entertained with stage-plays in the -Refectory of Christ-church, in 1583. Isaac Casaubon, coming from Henri -Quatre of France, by invitation of James I., was admitted to Christ's -College, in July, 1613. I saw the Ashmolean Museum, whither Elias -Ashmole, in 1682, sent twelve cart-loads of rarities. Here indeed was -the Olympia of all Antony Wood's and Aubrey's games and heroes, and -every inch of ground has its lustre. For Wood's _Athen Oxonienses_, or -calendar of the writers of Oxford for two hundred years, is a lively -record of English manners and merits, and as much a national monument as -Purchas's Pilgrims or Hansard's Register. On every side, Oxford is -redolent of age and authority. Its gates shut of themselves against -modern innovation. It is still governed by the statutes of Archbishop -Laud. The books in Merton Library are still chained to the wall. Here, -on August 27, 1660, John Milton's _Pro Populo Anglicano Defensio_ and -_Iconoclastes_ were committed to the flames. I saw the school-court or -quadrangle, where, in 1683, the Convocation caused the Leviathan of -Thomas Hobbes to be publicly burnt. I do not know whether this learned -body have yet heard of the Declaration of American Independence, or -whether the Ptolemaic astronomy does not still hold its ground against -the novelties of Copernicus. - -As many sons, almost so many benefactors. It is usual for a nobleman, -or indeed for almost every wealthy student, on quitting college, to -leave behind him some article of plate; and gifts of all values, from a -hall, or a fellowship, or a library, down to a picture or a spoon, are -continually accruing, in the course of a century. My friend Doctor J. -gave me the following anecdote. In Sir Thomas Lawrence's collection at -London were the cartoons of Raphael and Michel Angelo. This inestimable -prize was offered to Oxford University for seven thousand pounds. The -offer was accepted, and the committee charged with the affair had -collected three thousand pounds, when among other friends they called on -Lord Eldon. Instead of a hundred pounds, he surprised them by putting -down his name for three thousand pounds. They told him, they should now -very easily raise the remainder. "No," he said, "your men have probably -already contributed all they can spare; I can as well give the rest": -and he withdrew his check for three thousand, and wrote four thousand -pounds. I saw the whole collection in April, 1848. - -In the Bodleian Library, Dr. Bandinel showed me the manuscript Plato, of -the date of A.D. 896, brought by Dr. Clarke from Egypt; a manuscript -Virgil, of the same century; the first Bible printed at Mentz (I believe -in 1450); and a duplicate of the same, which had been deficient in about -twenty leaves at the end. But, one day, being in Venice, he bought a -room full of books and manuscripts--every scrap and fragment--for four -thousand louis d'ors, and had the doors locked and sealed by the consul. -On proceeding, afterwards, to examine his purchase, he found the twenty -deficient pages of his Mentz Bible, in perfect order; brought them to -Oxford, with the rest of his purchase, and placed them in the volume; -but has too much awe for the Providence that appears in bibliography -also, to suffer the reunited parts to be rebound. The oldest building -here is two hundred years younger than the frail manuscript brought by -Dr. Clarke from Egypt. No candle or fire is ever lighted in the -Bodleian. Its catalogue is the standard catalogue on the desk of every -library in Oxford. In each several college, they underscore in red ink -on this catalogue the titles of books contained in the library of that -college,--the theory being that the Bodleian has all books. This rich -library spent during the last year (1847) for the purchase of books -1,668. - -The logical English train a scholar as they train an engineer. Oxford -is a Greek factory, as Wilton mills weave carpet, and Sheffield grinds -steel. They know the use of a tutor, as they know the use of a horse; -and they draw the greatest amount of benefit out of both. The -reading-men are kept by hard walking, hard riding, and measured eating -and drinking, at the top of their condition, and two days before the -examination, do no work, but lounge, ride, or run, to be fresh on the -college doomsday. Seven years' residence is the theoretic period for a -master's degree. In point of fact, it has long been three years' -residence, and four years more of standing. This "three years" is about -twenty-one months in all.[17] - - [17] Huber, II. p. 304. - -"The whole expense," says Professor Sewel, "of ordinary college tuition -at Oxford, is about sixteen guineas a year." But this plausible -statement may deceive a reader unacquainted with the fact, that the -principal teaching relied on is private tuition. And the expenses of -private tuition are reckoned at from 50 to 70 a year, or $1,000 for -the whole course of three years and a half. At Cambridge $750 a year is -economical, and $1,500 not extravagant.[18] - - [18] Bristed, Five Years at an English University. - -The number of students and of residents, the dignity of the authorities, -the value of the foundations, the history and the architecture, the -known sympathy of entire Britain in what is done there, justify a -dedication to study in the undergraduate, such as cannot easily be in -America, where his college is half suspected by the Freshman to be -insignificant in the scale beside trade and politics. Oxford is a -little aristocracy in itself, numerous and dignified enough to rank with -other estates in the realm; and where fame and secular promotion are to -be had for study, and in a direction which has the unanimous respect of -all cultivated nations. - -This aristocracy, of course, repairs its own losses; fills places, as -they fall vacant, from the body of students. The number of fellowships -at Oxford is 540, averaging 200 a year, with lodging and diet at the -college. If a young American, loving learning, and hindered by poverty, -were offered a home, a table, the walks, and the library, in one of -these academical palaces, and a thousand dollars a year as long as he -chose to remain a bachelor, he would dance for joy. Yet these young men -thus happily placed, and paid to read, are impatient of their few -checks, and many of them preparing to resign their fellowships. They -shuddered at the prospect of dying a Fellow, and they pointed out to me -a paralytic old man, who was assisted into the hall. As the number of -undergraduates at Oxford is only about 1,200 or 1,300, and many of these -are never competitors, the chance of a fellowship is very great. The -income of the nineteen colleges is conjectured at 150,000 a year. - -The effect of this drill is the radical knowledge of Greek and Latin, -and of mathematics, and the solidity and taste of English criticism. -Whatever luck there may be in this or that award, an Eton captain can -write Latin longs and shorts, can turn the Court-Guide into hexameters, -and it is certain that a Senior Classic can quote correctly from the -_Corpus Poetarum_, and is critically learned in all the humanities. -Greek erudition exists on the Isis and Cam, whether the Maud man or the -Brazen Nose man be properly ranked or not; the atmosphere is loaded with -Greek learning; the whole river has reached a certain height, and kills -all that growth of weeds, which this Castalian water kills. The English -nature takes culture kindly. So Milton thought. It refines the -Norseman. Access to the Greek mind lifts his standard of taste. He has -enough to think of, and, unless of an impulsive nature, is indisposed -from writing or speaking, by the fulness of his mind, and the new -severity of his taste. The great silent crowd of thorough-bred Grecians -always known to be around him, the English writer cannot ignore. They -prune his orations, and point his pen. Hence, the style and tone of -English journalism. The men have learned accuracy and comprehension, -logic, and pace, or speed of working. They have bottom, endurance, -wind. When born with good constitutions, they make those eupeptic -studying-mills, the cast-iron men, the _dura ilia_, whose powers of -performance compare with ours, as the steam-hammer with the -music-box;--Cokes, Mansfields, Seldens, and Bentleys, and when it -happens that a superior brain puts a rider on this admirable horse, we -obtain those masters of the world who combine the highest energy in -affairs, with a supreme culture. - -It is contended by those who have been bred at Eton, Harrow, Rugby, and -Westminster, that the public sentiment within each of those schools is -high-toned and manly; that, in their playgrounds, courage is universally -admired, meanness despised, manly feelings and generous conduct are -encouraged; that an unwritten code of honor deals to the spoiled child -of rank and to the child of upstart wealth an even-handed justice, -purges their nonsense out of both, and does all that can be done to make -them gentlemen. - -Again, at the universities, it is urged, that all goes to form what -England values as the flower of its national life,--a well-educated -gentleman. The German Huber, in describing to his countrymen the -attributes of an English gentleman, frankly admits, that "in Germany, we -have nothing of the kind. A gentleman must possess a political -character, an independent and public position, or, at least, the right -of assuming it. He must have average opulence, either of his own, or in -his family. He should also have bodily activity and strength, -unattainable by our sedentary life in public offices. The race of -English gentlemen presents an appearance of manly vigor and form, not -elsewhere to be found among an equal number of persons. No other nation -produces the stock. And in England, it has deteriorated. The university -is a decided presumption in any man's favor. And so eminent are the -members that a glance at the calendars will show that in all the world -one cannot be in better company than on the books of one of the larger -Oxford or Cambridge colleges."[19] - - [19] Huber, History of the English Universities. Newman's Translation. - -These seminaries are finishing schools for the upper classes, and not -for the poor. The useful is exploded. The definition of a public school -is "a school which excludes all that could fit a man for standing behind -a counter."[20] - - [20] See Bristed, Five Years in an English University. New York, 1852. - -No doubt, the foundations have been perverted. Oxford, which equals in -wealth several of the smaller European states, shuts up the lectureships -which were made "public for all men thereunto to have concourse"; -misspends the revenues bestowed for such youths "as should be most meet -for towardness, poverty, and painfulness"; there is gross favoritism; -many chairs and many fellowships are made beds of ease; and 'tis likely -that the university will know how to resist and make inoperative the -terrors of parliamentary inquiry; no doubt, their learning is grown -obsolete; but Oxford also has its merits, and I found here also proof of -the national fidelity and thoroughness. Such knowledge as they prize -they possess and impart. Whether in course or by indirection, whether -by a cramming tutor or by examiners with prizes and foundation -scholarships, education according to the English notion of it is -acquired. I looked over the Examination Papers of the year 1848, for -the various scholarships and fellowships, the Lusby, the Hertford, the -Dean-Ireland, and the University (copies of which were kindly given me -by a Greek professor), containing the tasks which many competitors had -victoriously performed, and I believed they would prove too severe tests -for the candidates for a Bachelor's degree in Yale or Harvard. And, in -general, here was proof of a more searching study in the appointed -directions, and the knowledge pretended to be conveyed was conveyed. -Oxford sends out yearly twenty or thirty very able men, and three or -four hundred well-educated men. - -The diet and rough exercise secure a certain amount of old Norse power. -A fop will fight, and, in exigent circumstances, will play the manly -part. In seeing these youths, I believed I saw already an advantage in -vigor and color and general habit, over their contemporaries in the -American colleges. No doubt much of the power and brilliancy of the -reading-men is merely constitutional or hygienic. With a hardier habit -and resolute gymnastics, with five miles more walking, or five ounces -less eating, or with a saddle and gallop of twenty miles a day, with -skating and rowing matches, the American would arrive at as robust -exegesis, and cheery and hilarious tone. I should readily concede these -advantages, which it would be easy to acquire, if I did not find also -that they read better than we, and write better. - -English wealth falling on their school and university training, makes a -systematic reading of the best authors, and to the end of a knowledge -how the things whereof they treat really stand: whilst pamphleteer or -journalist reading for an argument for a party, or reading to write, or, -at all events, for some by end imposed on them, must read meanly and -fragmentarily. Charles I. said, that he understood English law as well -as a gentleman ought to understand it. - -Then they have access to books; the rich libraries collected at every -one of many thousands of houses, give an advantage not to be attained by -a youth in this country, when one thinks how much more and better may be -learned by a scholar, who, immediately on hearing of a book, can consult -it, than by one who is on the quest for years, and reads inferior books, -because he cannot find the best. - -Again, the great number of cultivated men keep each other up to a high -standard. The habit of meeting well-read and knowing men teaches the -art of omission and selection. - -Universities are, of course, hostile to geniuses, which seeing and using -ways of their own, discredit the routine: as churches and monasteries -persecute youthful saints. Yet we all send our sons to college, and, -though he be a genius, he must take his chance. The university must be -retrospective. The gale that gives direction to the vanes on all its -towers blows out of antiquity. Oxford is a library, and the professors -must be librarians. And I should as soon think of quarrelling with the -janitor for not magnifying his office by hostile sallies into the -street, like the Governor of Kertch or Kinburn, as of quarrelling with -the professors for not admiring the young neologists who pluck the -beards of Euclid and Aristotle, or for not attempting themselves to fill -their vacant shelves as original writers. - -It is easy to carp at colleges, and the college, if we will wait for it, -will have its own turn. Genius exists there also, but will not answer a -call of a committee of the House of Commons. It is rare, precarious, -eccentric, and darkling. England is the land of mixture and surprise, -and when you have settled it that the universities are moribund, out -comes a poetic influence from the heart of Oxford, to mould the opinions -of cities, to build their houses as simply as birds their nests, to give -veracity to art, and charm mankind, as an appeal to moral order always -must. But besides this restorative genius, the best poetry of England -of this age, in the old forms, comes from two graduates of Cambridge. - - - - -CHAPTER XIII.--RELIGION. - - -No people, at the present day, can be explained by their national -religion. They do not feel responsible for it; it lies far outside of -them. Their loyalty to truth and their labor and expenditure rest on -real foundations, and not on a national church. And English life, it is -evident, does not grow out of the Athanasian creed, or the Articles, or -the Eucharist. It is with religion as with marriage. A youth marries -in haste; afterwards, when his mind is opened to the reason of the -conduct of life, he is asked, what he thinks of the institution of -marriage, and of the right relations of the sexes. 'I should have much -to say,' he might reply, 'if the question were open, but I have a wife -and children, and all question is closed for me.' In the barbarous days -of a nation, some cultus is formed or imported; altars are built, tithes -are paid, priests ordained. The education and expenditure of the -country take that direction, and when wealth, refinement, great men, and -ties to the world supervene, its prudent men say, why fight against -Fate, or lift these absurdities which are now mountainous? Better find -some niche or crevice in this mountain of stone which religious ages -have quarried and carved, wherein to bestow yourself, than attempt -anything ridiculously and dangerously above your strength, like removing -it. - -In seeing old castles and cathedrals, I sometimes say, as to-day, in -front of Dundee Church tower, which is eight hundred years old, 'this -was built by another and a better race than any that now look on it.' -And, plainly, there has been great power of sentiment at work in this -island, of which these buildings are the proofs: as volcanic basalts -show the work of fire which has been extinguished for ages. England -felt the full heat of the Christianity which fermented Europe, and drew, -like the chemistry of fire, a firm line between barbarism and culture. -The power of the religious sentiment put an end to human sacrifices, -checked appetite, inspired the crusades, inspired resistance to tyrants, -inspired self-respect, set bounds to serfdom and slavery, founded -liberty, created the religious architecture,--York, Newstead, -Westminster, Fountains Abbey, Ripon, Beverley, and Dundee,--works to -which the key is lost, with the sentiment which created them; inspired -the English Bible, the liturgy, the monkish histories, the chronicle of -Richard of Devizes. The priest translated the Vulgate, and translated -the sanctities of old hagiology into English virtues on English ground. -It was a certain affirmative or aggressive state of the Caucasian races. -Man awoke refreshed by the sleep of ages. The violence of the Northern -savages exasperated Christianity into power. It lived by the love of the -people. Bishop Wilfrid manumitted two hundred and fifty serfs, whom he -found attached to the soil. The clergy obtained respite from labor for -the boor on the Sabbath, and on church festivals. "The lord who -compelled his boor to labor between sunset on Saturday and sunset on -Sunday, forfeited him altogether." The priest came out of the people, -and sympathized with his class. The church was the mediator, check, and -democratic principle in Europe. Latimer, Wicliffe, Arundel, Cobham, -Antony Parsons, Sir Harry Vane, George Fox, Penn, Bunyan, are the -democrats, as well as the saints of their times. The Catholic Church, -thrown on this toiling, serious people, has made in fourteen centuries a -massive system, close fitted to the manners and genius of the country, -at once domestical and stately. In the long time, it has blended with -everything in heaven above and the earth beneath. It moves through a -zodiac of feasts and fasts, names every day of the year, every town and -market and headland and monument, and has coupled itself with the -almanac, that no court can be held, no field ploughed, no horse shod, -without some leave from the church. All maxims of prudence or shop or -farm are fixed and dated by the church. Hence, its strength in the -agricultural districts. The distribution of land into parishes enforces -a church sanction to every civil privilege; and the gradation of the -clergy,--prelates for the rich, and curates for the poor,--with the fact -that a classical education has been secured to the clergyman, makes them -"the link which unites the sequestered peasantry with the intellectual -advancement of the age."[21] - - [21] Wordsworth. - -The English Church has many certificates to show, of humble effective -service in humanizing the people, in cheering and refining men, feeding, -healing, and educating. It has the seal of martyrs and confessors; the -noblest books; a sublime architecture; a ritual marked by the same -secular merits, nothing cheap or purchasable. - -From this slow-grown church important reactions proceed; much for -culture, much for giving a direction to the nation's affection and will -to-day. The carved and pictured chapel--its entire surface animated -with image and emblem--made the parish-church a sort of book and Bible -to the people's eye. - -Then, when the Saxon instinct had secured a service in the vernacular -tongue, it was the tutor and university of the people. In York minster, -on the day of the enthronization of the new archbishop, I heard the -service of evening prayer read and chanted in the choir. It was strange -to hear the pretty pastoral of the betrothal of Rebecca and Isaac, in -the morning of the world, read with circumstantiality in York minster, -on the 13th January, 1848, to the decorous English audience, just fresh -from the Times newspaper and their wine; and listening with all the -devotion of national pride. That was binding old and new to some -purpose. The reverence for the Scriptures is an element of -civilization, for thus has the history of the world, been preserved, and -is preserved. Here in England every day a chapter of Genesis, and a -leader in the Times. - -Another part of the same service on this occasion was not insignificant. -Handel's coronation anthem, _God save the King_, was played by Dr. -Camidge on the organ, with sublime effect. The minster and the music -were made for each other. It was a hint of the part the church plays as -a political engine. From his infancy, every Englishman is accustomed to -hear daily prayers for the queen, for the royal family, and the -Parliament, by name; and this lifelong consecration of these personages -cannot be without influence on his opinions. - -The universities, also, are parcel of the ecclesiastical system, and -their first design is to form the clergy. Thus the clergy for a -thousand years have been the scholars of the nation. - - -The national temperament deeply enjoys the unbroken order and tradition -of its church; the liturgy, ceremony, architecture; the sober grace, the -good company, the connection with the throne, and with history, which -adorn it. And whilst it endears itself thus to men of more taste than -activity, the stability of the English nation is passionately enlisted -to its support, from its inextricable connection with the cause of -public order, with politics, and with the funds. - -Good churches are not built by bad men; at least there must be probity -and enthusiasm somewhere in society. These minsters were neither built -nor filled by atheists. No church has had more learned, industrious, or -devoted men; plenty of "clerks and bishops, who, out of their gowns, -would turn their backs on no man."[22] Their architecture still glows -with faith in immortality. Heats and genial periods arrive in history, -or, shall we say, plenitudes of Divine Presence, by which high tides are -caused in the human spirit, and great virtues and talents appear, as in -the eleventh, twelfth, thirteenth, and again in the sixteenth and -seventeenth centuries, when the nation was full of genius and piety. - - [22] Fuller. - -But the age of the Wicliffes, Cobhams, Arundels, Beckets; of the -Latimers, Mores, Cranmers; of the Taylors, Leightons, Herberts; of the -Sherlocks, and Butlers, is gone. Silent revolutions in opinion have -made it impossible that men like these should return or find a place in -their once sacred stalls. The spirit that dwelt in this church has -glided away to animate other activities; and they who come to the old -shrines find apes and players rustling the old garments. - -The religion of England is part of good breeding. When you see on the -Continent the well-dressed Englishman come into his ambassador's chapel, -and put his face for silent prayer into his smooth-brushed hat, one -cannot help feeling how much national pride prays with him, and the -religion of a gentleman. So far is he from attaching any meaning to the -words, that he believes himself to have done almost the generous thing, -and that it is very condescending in him to pray to God. A great duke -said on the occasion of a victory, in the House of Lords, that he -thought the Almighty God had not been well used by them, and that it -would become their magnanimity, after so great successes, to take order -that a proper acknowledgment be made. It is the church of the gentry; -but it is not the church of the poor. The operatives do not own it, and -gentlemen lately testified in the House of Commons that in their lives -they never saw a poor man in a ragged coat inside a church. - -The torpidity on the side of religion of the vigorous English -understanding shows how much wit and folly can agree in one brain. -Their religion is a quotation; their church is a doll; and any -examination is interdicted with screams of terror. In good company, you -expect them to laugh at the fanaticism of the vulgar; but they do not; -they are the vulgar. - -The English, in common perhaps with Christendom in the nineteenth -century, do not respect power, but only performance; value ideas only -for an economic result. Wellington esteems a saint only as far as he can -be an army chaplain: "Mr. Briscoll, by his admirable conduct and good -sense, got the better of Methodism, which had appeared among the -soldiers, and once among the officers." They value a philosopher as -they value an apothecary who brings bark or a drench; and inspiration is -only some blowpipe, or a finer mechanical aid. - -I suspect that there is in an Englishman's brain a valve that can be -closed at pleasure, as an engineer shuts off steam. The most sensible -and well-informed men possess the power of thinking just so far as the -bishop in religious matters, and as the chancellor of the exchequer in -politics. They talk with courage and logic, and show you magnificent -results; but the same men who have brought free-trade or geology to -their present standing, look grave and lofty, and shut down their valve, -as soon as the conversation approaches the English Church. After that, -you talk with a box-turtle. - -The action of the university, both in what is taught, and in the spirit -of the place, is directed more on producing an English gentleman, than a -saint or a psychologist. It ripens a bishop, and extrudes a -philosopher. I do not know that there is more cabalism in the Anglican, -than in other churches, but the Anglican clergy are identified with the -aristocracy. They say, here, that, if you talk with a clergyman, you -are sure to find him well bred, informed, and candid, he entertains your -thought or your project with sympathy and praise. But if a second -clergyman come in, the sympathy is at an end: two together are -inaccessible to your thought, and, whenever it comes to action, the -clergyman invariably sides with his church. - -The Anglican church is marked by the grace and good sense of its forms, -by the manly grace of its clergy. The gospel it preaches is, 'By taste -are ye saved.' It keeps the old structures in repair, spends a world of -money in music and building; and in buying Pugin, and architectural -literature. It has a general good name for amenity and mildness. It is -not in ordinary a persecuting church; it is not inquisitorial, not even -inquisitive, is perfectly well bred, and can shut its eyes on all proper -occasions. If you let it alone, it will let you alone. But its instinct -is hostile to all change in politics, literature, or social arts. The -church has not been the founder of the London University, of the -Mechanics' Institutes, of the Free School, or whatever aims at diffusion -of knowledge. The Platonists of Oxford are as bitter against this -heresy, as Thomas Taylor. - -The doctrine of the Old Testament is the religion of England. The first -leaf of the New Testament it does not open. It believes in a Providence -which does not treat with levity a pound sterling. They are neither -transcendentalists nor Christians. They put up no Socratic prayer, much -less any saintly prayer for the queen's mind; ask neither for light nor -right, but say bluntly, "Grant her in health and wealth long to live." -And one traces this Jewish prayer in all English private history, from -the prayers of King Richard, in Richard of Devizes' Chronicle, to those -in the diaries of Sir Samuel Romilly, and of Haydon the painter. -"Abroad with my wife," writes Pepys piously, "the first time that ever I -rode in my own coach; which do make my heart rejoice and praise God, and -pray him to bless it to me, and continue it." The bill for the -naturalization of the Jews (in 1753) was resisted by petitions from all -parts of the kingdom, and by petition from the city of London, -reprobating this bill, as "tending extremely to the dishonor of the -Christian religion, and extremely injurious to the interests and -commerce of the kingdom in general, and of the city of London in -particular." - -But they have not been able to congeal humanity by act of Parliament. -"The heavens journey still and sojourn not," and arts, wars, -discoveries, and opinion go onward at their own pace. The new age has -new desires, new enemies, new trades, new charities, and reads the -Scriptures with new eyes. The chatter of French politics, the -steam-whistle, the hum of the mill, and the noise of embarking -emigrants, had quite put most of the old legends out of mind; so that -when you came to read the liturgy to a modern congregation, it was -almost absurd in its unfitness, and suggested a masquerade of old -costumes. - -No chemist has prospered in the attempt to crystallize a religion. It -is endogenous, like the skin, and other vital organs. A new statement -every day. The prophet and apostle knew this, and the non-conformist -confutes the conformists, by quoting the texts they must allow. It is -the condition of a religion, to require religion for its expositor. -Prophet and apostle can only be rightly understood by prophet and -apostle. The statesman knows that the religious element will not fail, -any more than the supply of fibrine and chyle; but it is in its nature -constructive, and will organize such a church as it wants. The wise -legislator will spend on temples, schools, libraries, colleges, but will -shun the enriching of priests. If, in any manner, he can leave the -election and paying of the priest to the people, he will do well. Like -the Quakers, he may resist the separation of a class of priests, and -create opportunity and expectation in the society, to run to meet -natural endowment, in this kind. But, when wealth accrues to a -chaplaincy, a bishopric, or rectorship, it requires moneyed men for its -stewards, who will give it another direction than to the mystics of -their day. Of course, money will do after its kind, and will steadily -work to unspiritualize and unchurch the people to whom it was -bequeathed. The class certain to be excluded from all preferment are -the religious,--and driven to other churches;--which is nature's _vis -medicatrix_. - -The curates are ill paid, and the prelates are overpaid. This abuse -draws into the church the children of the nobility, and other unfit -persons, who have a taste for expense. Thus a bishop is only a -surpliced merchant. Through his lawn, I can see the bright buttons of -the shopman's coat glitter. A wealth like that of Durham makes almost a -premium on felony. Brougham, in a speech in the House of Commons on the -Irish elective franchise, said, "How will the reverend bishops of the -other house be able to express their due abhorrence of the crime of -perjury, who solemnly declare in the presence of God, that when they are -called upon to accept a living, perhaps of 4,000 a year, at that very -instant, they are moved by the Holy Ghost to accept the office and -administration thereof, and for no other reason whatever?" The modes of -initiation are more damaging than custom-house oaths. The bishop is -elected by the Dean and Prebends of the cathedral. The Queen sends -these gentlemen a _cong d'lire_, or leave to elect; but also sends -them the name of the person whom they are to elect. They go into the -cathedral, chant and pray, and beseech the Holy Ghost to assist them in -their choice; and, after these invocations, invariably find that the -dictates of the Holy Ghost agree with the recommendations of the Queen. - -But you must pay for conformity. All goes well as long as you run with -conformists. But you, who are an honest man in other particulars, know, -that there is alive somewhere a man whose honesty reaches to this point -also, that he shall not kneel to false gods, and, on the day when you -meet him, you sink into the class of counterfeits. Besides, this -succumbing has grave penalties. If you take in a lie, you must take in -all that belongs to it. England accepts this ornamented national -church, and it glazes the eyes, bloats the flesh, gives the voice a -stertorous clang, and clouds the understanding of the receivers. - -The English Church, undermined by German criticism, had nothing left but -tradition, and was led logically back to Romanism. But that was an -element which only hot heads could breathe: in view of the educated -class, generally, it was not a fact to front the sun; and the alienation -of such men from the church became complete. - -Nature, to be sure, had her remedy. Religious persons are driven out of -the Established Church into sects, which instantly rise to credit, and -hold the Establishment in check. Nature has sharper remedies, also. -The English, abhorring change in all things, abhorring it most in -matters of religion, cling to the last rag of form, and are dreadfully -given to cant. The English (and I wish it were confined to them, but 't -is a taint in the Anglo-Saxon blood in both hemispheres), the English -and the Americans cant beyond all other nations. The French relinquish -all that industry to them. What is so odious as the polite bows to God, -in our books and newspapers? The popular press is flagitious in the -exact measure of its sanctimony, and the religion of the day is a -theatrical Sinai, where the thunders are supplied by the property-man. -The fanaticism and hypocrisy create satire. Punch finds an -inexhaustible material. Dickens writes novels on Exeter Hall humanity. -Thackeray exposes the heartless high life. Nature revenges herself more -summarily by the heathenism of the lower classes. Lord Shaftesbury -calls the poor thieves together, and reads sermons to them, and they -call it 'gas.' George Borrow summons the Gypsies to hear his discourse -on the Hebrews in Egypt, and reads to them the Apostles' creed in -Romany. "When I had concluded," he says, "I looked around me. The -features of the assembly were twisted, and the eyes of all turned upon -me with a frightful squint: not an individual present but squinted; the -genteel Pepa, the good-humored Chicharona, the Cosdami, all squinted: -the Gypsy jockey squinted worst of all." - -The church at this moment is much to be pitied. She has nothing left -but possession. If a bishop meets an intelligent gentleman, and reads -fatal interrogations in his eyes, he has no resource but to take wine -with him. False position introduces cant, perjury, simony, and ever a -lower class of mind and character into the clergy; and, when the -hierarchy is afraid of science and education, afraid of piety, afraid of -tradition, and afraid of theology, there is nothing left but to quit a -church which is no longer one. - -But the religion of England,--is it the Established Church? no; is it -the sects? no; they are only perpetuations of some private man's -dissent, and are to the Established Church as cabs are to a coach, -cheaper and more convenient, but really the same thing. Where dwells -the religion? Tell me first where dwells electricity, or motion, or -thought, or gesture. They do not dwell or stay at all. Electricity -cannot be made fast, mortared up and ended, like London Monument, or the -Tower, so that you shall know where to find it, and keep it fixed, as -the English do with their things, forevermore; it is passing, glancing, -gesticular; it is a traveller, a newness, a surprise, a secret, which -perplexes them, and puts them out. Yet, if religion be the doing of all -good, and for its sake the suffering of all evil, _souffrir de tout le -monde et ne faire souffrir personne_, that divine secret has existed in -England from the days of Alfred to those of Romilly, of Clarkson, and of -Florence Nightingale, and in thousands who have no fame. - - - - -CHAPTER XIV.--LITERATURE. - - -A strong common-sense, which it is not easy to unseat or disturb, marks -the English mind for a thousand years; a rude strength newly applied to -thought, as of sailors and soldiers who had lately learned to read. -They have no fancy, and never are surprised into a covert or witty word, -such as pleased the Athenians and Italians, and was convertible into a -fable not long after; but they delight in strong earthy expression, not -mistakable, coarsely true to the human body, and, though spoken among -princes, equally fit and welcome to the mob. This homeliness, veracity, -and plain style appear in the earliest extant works, and in the latest. -It imports into songs and ballads the smell of the earth, the breath of -cattle, and, like a Dutch painter, seeks a household charm, though by -pails and pans. They ask their constitutional utility in verse. The -kail and herrings are never out of sight. The poet nimbly recovers -himself from every sally of the imagination. The English muse loves the -farm-yard, the lane and market. She says, with De Stal, "I tramp in -the mire with wooden shoes, whenever they would force me into the -clouds." For, the Englishman has accurate perceptions; takes hold of -things by the right end, and there is no slipperiness in his grasp. He -loves the axe, the spade, the oar, the gun, the steam-pipe: he has built -the engine he uses. He is materialist, economical, mercantile. He must -be treated with sincerity and reality, with muffins and not the promise -of muffins; and prefers his hot chop, with perfect security and -convenience in the eating of it, to the chances of the amplest and -Frenchiest bill of fare, engraved on embossed paper. When he is -intellectual, and a poet or a philosopher, he carries the same hard -truth and the same keen machinery into the mental sphere. His mind must -stand on a fact. He will not be baffled, or catch at clouds, but the -mind must have a symbol palpable and resisting. What he relishes in -Dante, is the vice-like tenacity with which he holds a mental image -before the eyes, as if it were a scutcheon painted on a shield. Byron -"liked something craggy to break his mind upon." A taste for plain -strong speech, what is called a biblical style, marks the English. It is -in Alfred, and the Saxon Chronicle, and in the Sagas of the Northmen. -Latimer was homely. Hobbes was perfect in the "noble vulgar speech." -Donne, Bunyan, Milton, Taylor, Evelyn, Pepys, Hooker, Cotton, and the -translators, wrote it. How realistic or materialistic in treatment of -his subject is Swift. He describes his fictitious persons as if for the -police. Defoe has no insecurity or choice, Hudibras has the same hard -mentality,--keeping the truth at once to the senses, and to the -intellect. - -It is not less seen in poetry. Chaucer's hard painting of his -Canterbury pilgrims satisfies the senses. Shakspeare, Spenser, and -Milton, in their loftiest ascents, have this national grip and -exactitude of mind. This mental materialism makes the value of English -transcendental genius; in these writers, and in Herbert, Henry More, -Donne, and Sir Thomas Browne. The Saxon materialism and narrowness, -exalted into the sphere of intellect, makes the very genius of -Shakspeare and Milton. When it reaches the pure element, it treads the -clouds as securely as the adamant. Even in its elevations, -materialistic, its poetry is common-sense inspired; or iron raised to -white heat. - -The marriage of the two qualities is in their speech. It is a tacit rule -of the language to make the frame or skeleton of Saxon words, and, when -elevation or ornament is sought, to interweave Roman; but sparingly; nor -is a sentence made of Roman words alone, without loss of strength. The -children and laborers use the Saxon unmixed. The Latin unmixed is -abandoned to the colleges and Parliament. Mixture is a secret of the -English island; and, in their dialect, the male principle is the Saxon; -the female, the Latin; and they are combined in every discourse. A good -writer, if he has indulged in a Roman roundness, makes haste to chasten -and nerve his period by English monosyllables. - -When the Gothic nations came into Europe, they found it lighted with the -sun and moon of Hebrew and of Greek genius. The tablets of their brain, -long kept in the dark, were finely sensible to the double glory. To the -images from this twin source (of Christianity and art), the mind became -fruitful as by the incubation of the Holy Ghost. The English mind -flowered in every faculty. The common-sense was surprised and inspired. -For two centuries, England was philosophic, religious, poetic. The -mental furniture seemed of larger scale; the memory capacious like the -storehouse of the rains. The ardor and endurance of study; the boldness -and facility of their mental construction; their fancy, and imagination, -and easy spanning of vast distances of thought; the enterprise or -accosting of new subjects; and, generally, the easy exertion of power, -astonish, like the legendary feats of Guy of Warwick. The union of -Saxon precision and Oriental soaring, of which Shakspeare is the perfect -example, is shared in less degree by the writers of two centuries. I -find not only the great masters out of all rivalry and reach, but the -whole writing of the time charged with a masculine force and freedom. - -There is a hygienic simpleness, rough vigor, and closeness to the matter -in hand, even in the second and third class of writers; and, I think, in -the common style of the people, as one finds it in the citation of -wills, letters, and public documents, in proverbs, and forms of speech. -The more hearty and sturdy expression may indicate that the savageness -of the Norseman was not all gone. Their dynamic brains hurled off their -words, as the revolving stone hurls off scraps of grit. I could cite -from the seventeenth century sentences and phrases of edge not to be -matched in the nineteenth. Their poets by simple force of mind -equalized themselves with the accumulated science of ours. The country -gentlemen had a posset or drink they called October; and the poets, as -if by this hint, knew how to distil the whole season into their autumnal -verses: and, as nature, to pique the more, sometimes works up -deformities into beauty, in some rare Aspasia, or Cleopatra; and, as the -Greek art wrought many a vase or column, in which too long, or too -lithe, or nodes, or pits and flaws, are made a beauty of; so these were -so quick and vital, that they could charm and enrich by mean and vulgar -objects. - -A man must think that age well taught and thoughtful, by which masques -and poems, like those of Ben Jonson, full of heroic sentiment in a manly -style, were received with favor. The unique fact in literary history, -the unsurprised reception of Shakspeare,--the reception proved by his -making his fortune; and the apathy proved by the absence of all -contemporary panegyric,--seems to demonstrate an elevation in the mind -of the people. Judge of the splendor of a nation, by the insignificance -of great individuals in it. The manner in which they learned Greek and -Latin, before our modern facilities were yet ready, without -dictionaries, grammars, or indexes, by lectures of a professor, followed -by their own searchings,--required a more robust memory, and cooperation -of all the faculties; and their scholars, Camden, Usher, Selden, Mede, -Gataker, Hooker, Taylor, Burton, Bentley, Brian Walton, acquired the -solidity and method of engineers. - -The influence of Plato tinges the British genius. Their minds loved -analogy; were cognizant of resemblances, and climbers on the staircase -of unity. 'T is a very old strife between those who elect to see -identity, and those who elect to see discrepancies; and it renews itself -in Britain. The poets, of course, are of one part; the men of the -world, of the other. But Britain had many disciples of Plato,--More, -Hooker, Bacon, Sidney, Lord Brooke, Herbert, Browne, Donne, Spenser, -Chapman, Milton, Crashaw, Norris, Cudworth, Berkeley, Jeremy Taylor. - -Lord Bacon has the English duality. His centuries of observations, on -useful science, and his experiments, I suppose, were worth nothing. One -hint of Franklin, or Watt, or Dalton, or Davy, or any one who had a -talent for experiment, was worth all his lifetime of exquisite trifles. -But he drinks of a diviner stream, and marks the influx of idealism into -England. Where that goes, is poetry, health, and progress. The rules -of its genesis or its diffusion are not known. That knowledge, if we -had it, would supersede all we call science of the mind. It seems an -affair of race, or of meta-chemistry;--the vital point being,--how far -the sense of unity, or instinct of seeking resemblances predominated. -For, wherever the mind takes a step, it is, to put itself at one with a -larger class, discerned beyond the lesser class with which it has been -conversant. Hence, all poetry, and all affirmative action comes. - -Bacon, in the structure of his mind, held of the analogists, of the -idealists, or (as we popularly say, naming from the best example) -Platonists. Whoever discredits analogy, and requires heaps of facts, -before any theories can be attempted, has no poetic power, and nothing -original or beautiful will be produced by him. Locke is as surely the -influx of decomposition and of prose, as Bacon and the Platonists, of -growth. The Platonic is the poetic tendency; the so-called scientific -is the negative and poisonous. 'T is quite certain, that Spenser, -Burns, Byron, and Wordsworth will be Platonists; and that the dull men -will be Lockists. Then politics and commerce will absorb from the -educated class men of talents without genius, precisely because such -have no resistance. - -Bacon, capable of ideas, yet devoted to ends, required in his map of the -mind, first of all, universality, or _prima philosophia_, the receptacle -for all such profitable observations and axioms as fall not within the -compass of any of the special parts of philosophy, but are more common, -and of a higher stage. He held this element essential: it is never out -of mind: he never spares rebukes for such as neglect it; believing that -no perfect discovery can be made in a flat or level, but you must ascend -to a higher science. "If any man thinketh philosophy and universality -to be idle studies, he does not consider that all professions are from -thence served and supplied; and this I take to be a great cause that has -hindered the progression of learning, because these fundamental -knowledges have been studied but in passage." He explained himself by -giving various quaint examples of the summary or common laws, of which -each science has its own illustration. He complains, that "he finds -this part of learning very deficient, the profounder sort of wits -drawing a bucket now and then for their own use, but the spring-head -unvisited. This was the _dry light_ which did scorch and offend most -men's watery natures." Plato had signified the same sense, when he -said: "All the great arts require a subtle and speculative research into -the law of nature, since loftiness of thought and perfect mastery over -every subject seem to be derived from some such source as this. This -Pericles had, in addition to a great natural genius. For, meeting with -Anaxagoras, who was a person of this kind, he attached himself to him, -and nourished himself with sublime speculations on the absolute -intelligence; and imported thence into the oratorical art whatever could -be useful to it." - -A few generalizations always circulate in the world, whose authors we do -not rightly know, which astonish, and appear to be avenues to vast -kingdoms of thought, and these are in the world _constants_, like the -Copernican and Newtonian theories in physics. In England, these may be -traced usually to Shakspeare, Bacon, Milton, or Hooker, even to Van -Helmont and Behmen, and do all have a kind of filial retrospect to Plato -and the Greeks. Of this kind is Lord Bacon's sentence, that "Nature is -commanded by obeying her"; his doctrine of poetry, which "accommodates -the shows of things to the desires of the mind"; or the Zoroastrian -definition of poetry, mystical, yet exact, "apparent pictures of -unapparent natures"; Spenser's creed, that "soul is form, and doth the -body make"; the theory of Berkeley, that we have no certain assurance of -the existence of matter; Doctor Samuel Clarke's argument for theism from -the nature of space and time; Harrington's political rule, that power -must rest on land,--a rule which requires to be liberally interpreted; -the theory of Swedenborg, so cosmically applied by him, that the man -makes his heaven and hell; Hegel's study of civil history, as the -conflict of ideas and the victory of the deeper thought; the -identity-philosophy of Schelling, couched in the statement that "all -difference is quantitative." So the very announcement of the theory of -gravitation, of Kepler's three harmonic laws, and even of Dalton's -doctrine of definite proportions, finds a sudden response in the mind, -which remains a superior evidence to empirical demonstrations. I cite -these generalizations, some of which are more recent, merely to indicate -a class. Not these particulars, but the mental plane or the atmosphere -from which they emanate, was the home and element of the writers and -readers in what we loosely call the Elizabethan age (say in literary -history, the period from 1575 to 1625), yet a period almost short enough -to justify Ben Jonson's remark on Lord Bacon: "About his time, and -within his view, were born all the wits that could honor a nation, or -help study." - -Such richness of genius had not existed more than once before. These -heights could not be maintained. As we find stumps of vast trees in our -exhausted soils, and have received traditions of their ancient fertility -to tillage, so history reckons epochs in which the intellect of famed -races became effete. So it fared with English genius. These heights -were followed by a meanness, and a descent of the mind into lower -levels; the loss of wings; no high speculation. Locke, to whom the -meaning of ideas was unknown, became the type of philosophy, and his -"understanding" the measure, in all nations, of the English intellect. -His countrymen forsook the lofty sides of Parnassus, on which they had -once walked with echoing steps, and disused the studies once so beloved; -the powers of thought fell into neglect. The later English want the -faculty of Plato and Aristotle, of grouping men in natural classes by an -insight of general laws, so deep, that the rule is deduced with equal -precision from few subjects or from one, as from multitudes of lives. -Shakspeare is supreme in that, as in all the great mental energies. The -German's generalize: the English cannot interpret the German mind. -German science comprehends the English. The absence of the faculty in -England is shown by the timidity which accumulates mountains of facts, -as a bad general wants myriads of men and miles of redoubts, to -compensate the inspirations of courage and conduct. - -The English shrink from a generalization. "They do not look abroad into -universality, or they draw only a bucketful at the fountain of the First -Philosophy for their occasion, and do not go to the spring-head." -Bacon, who said this, is almost unique among his countrymen in that -faculty, at least among the prose-writers. Milton, who was the stair or -high table-land to let down the English genius from the summits of -Shakspeare, used this privilege sometimes in poetry, more rarely in -prose. For a long interval afterwards, it is not found. Burke was -addicted to generalizing, but his was a shorter line; as his thoughts -have less depth, they have less compass. Hume's abstractions are not -deep or wise. He owes his fame to one keen observation, that no copula -had been detected between any cause and effect, either in physics or in -thought; that the term cause and effect was loosely or gratuitously -applied to what we know only as consecutive, not at all as causal. Dr. -Johnson's written abstractions have little value: the tone of feeling in -them makes their chief worth. - -Mr. Hallam, a learned and elegant scholar, has written the history of -European literature for three centuries,--a performance of great -ambition, inasmuch as a judgment was to be attempted on every book. But -his eye does not reach to the ideal standards; the verdicts are all -dated from London: all new thought must be cast into the old moulds. -The expansive element which creates literature is steadily denied. -Plato is resisted, and his school. Hallam is uniformly polite, but with -deficient sympathy; writes with resolute generosity, but is unconscious -of the deep worth which lies in the mystics, and which often outvalues -as a seed of power and a source of revolution all the correct writers -and shining reputations of their day. He passes in silence, or -dismisses with a kind of contempt, the profounder masters: a lover of -ideas is not only uncongenial, but unintelligible. Hallam inspires -respect by his knowledge and fidelity, by his manifest love of good -books, and he lifts himself to own better than almost any the greatness -of Shakspeare, and better than Johnson he appreciates Milton. But in -Hallam, or in the firmer intellectual nerve of Mackintosh, one still -finds the same type of English genius. It is wise and rich, but it -lives on its capital. It is retrospective. How can it discern and hail -the new forms that are looming up on the horizon,--new and gigantic -thoughts which cannot dress themselves out of any old wardrobe of the -past? - -The essays, the fiction, and the poetry of the day have the like -municipal limits. Dickens, with preternatural apprehension of the -language of manners, and the varieties of street life, with pathos and -laughter, with patriotic and still enlarging generosity, writes London -tracts. He is a painter of English details, like Hogarth; local and -temporary in his tints and style, and local in his aims. Bulwer, an -industrious writer, with occasional ability, is distinguished for his -reverence of intellect as a temporality, and appeals to the worldly -ambition of the student. His romances tend to fan these low flames. -Their novelists despair of the heart. Thackeray finds that God has made -no allowance for the poor thing in his universe;--more 's the pity, he -thinks;--but 't is not for us to be wiser: we must renounce ideals, and -accept London. - -The brilliant Macaulay, who expresses the tone of the English governing -classes of the day, explicitly teaches, that good means good to eat, -good to wear, material commodity; that the glory of modern philosophy is -its direction on "fruit"; to yield economical inventions; and that its -merit is to avoid ideas, and avoid morals. He thinks it the distinctive -merit of the Baconian philosophy, in its triumph over the old Platonic, -its disentangling the intellect from theories of the all-Fair and -all-Good, and pinning it down to the making a better sick-chair and a -better wine-whey for an invalid;--this not ironically, but in good -faith;--that, "solid advantage," as he calls it, meaning always sensual -benefit, is the only good. The eminent benefit of astronomy is the -better navigation it creates to enable the fruit-ships to bring home -their lemons and wine to the London grocer. It was a curious result, in -which the civility and religion of England for a thousand years ends in -denying morals, and reducing the intellect to a saucepan. The critic -hides his scepticism under the English cant of practical. To convince -the reason, to touch the conscience, is romantic pretension. The fine -arts fall to the ground. Beauty, except as luxurious commodity, does not -exist. It is very certain, I may say in passing, that if Lord Bacon had -been only the sensualist his critic pretends, he would never have -acquired the fame which now entitles him to this patronage. It is -because he had imagination, the leisures of the spirit, and basked in an -element of contemplation out of all modern English atmospheric gauges, -that he is impressive to the imaginations of men, and has become a -potentate not to be ignored. Sir David Brewster sees the high place of -Bacon, without finding Newton indebted to him, and thinks it a mistake. -Bacon occupies it by specific gravity or levity, not by any feat he did, -or by any tutoring more or less of Newton, etc., but an effect of the -same cause which showed itself more pronounced afterwards in Hooke, -Boyle, and Halley. - -Coleridge, a catholic mind, with a hunger for ideas, with eyes looking -before and after to the highest bards and sages, and who wrote and spoke -the only high criticism in his time, is one of those who save England -from the reproach of no longer possessing the capacity to appreciate -what rarest wit the island has yielded. Yet the misfortune of his life, -his vast attempts but most inadequate performings, failing to accomplish -any one masterpiece, seems to mark the closing of an era. Even in him, -the traditional Englishman was too strong for the philosopher, and he -fell into _accommodations_: and, as Burke had striven to idealize the -English State, so Coleridge 'narrowed his mind' in the attempt to -reconcile the Gothic rule and dogma of the Anglican Church, with eternal -ideas. But for Coleridge, and a lurking taciturn minority, uttering -itself in occasional criticism, oftener in private discourse, one would -say, that in Germany and in America is the best mind in England rightly -respected. It is the surest sign of national decay, when the Bramins -can no longer read or understand the Braminical philosophy. - -In the decomposition and asphyxia that followed all this materialism, -Carlyle was driven by his disgust at the pettiness and the cant, into -the preaching of Fate. In comparison with all this rottenness, any -check, any cleansing, though by fire, seemed desirable and beautiful. He -saw little difference in the gladiators, or the "causes" for which they -combated; the one comfort was, that they were all going speedily into -the abyss together. And his imagination, finding no nutriment in any -creation, avenged itself by celebrating the majestic beauty of the laws -of decay. The necessities of mental structure force all minds into a -few categories, and where impatience of the tricks of men makes Nemesis -amiable, and builds altars to the negative Deity, the inevitable recoil -is to heroism or the gallantry of the private heart, which decks its -immolation with glory, in the unequal combat of will against fate. - -Wilkinson, the editor of Swedenborg, the annotator of Fourier, and the -champion of Halmeman, has brought to metaphysics and to physiology a -native vigor, with a catholic perception of relations, equal to the -highest attempts, and a rhetoric like the armory of the invincible -knights of old. There is in the action of his mind a long Atlantic roll -not known except in deepest waters, and only lacking what ought to -accompany such powers, a manifest centrality. If his mind does not rest -in immovable biases, perhaps the orbit is larger, and the return is not -yet: but a master should inspire a confidence that he will adhere to his -convictions, and give his present studies always the same high place. - -It would be easy to add exceptions to the limitary tone of English -thought, and much more easy to adduce examples of excellence in -particular veins; and if, going out of the region of dogma, we pass into -that of general culture, there is no end to the graces and amenities, -wit, sensibility, and erudition, of the learned class. But the -artificial succor which marks all English performance, appears in -letters also: much of their sthetic production is antiquarian and -manufactured, and literary reputations have been achieved by forcible -men, whose relation to literature was purely accidental, but who were -driven by tastes and modes they found in vogue into their several -careers. So, at this moment, every ambitious young man studies geology; -so members of Parliament are made, and churchmen. - -The bias of Englishmen to practical skill has reacted on the national -mind. They are incapable of an inutility, and respect the five mechanic -powers even in their song. The voice of their modern muse has a slight -hint of the steam-whistle, and the poem is created as an ornament and -finish of their monarchy, and by no means as the bird of a new morning -which forgets the past world in the full enjoyment of that which is -forming. They are with difficulty ideal; they are the most conditioned -men, as if, having the best conditions, they could not bring themselves -to forfeit them. Every one of them is a thousand years old, and lives -by his memory; and when you say this, they accept it as praise. - -Nothing comes to the book-shops but politics, travels, statistics, -tabulation, and engineering, and even what is called philosophy and -letters is mechanical in its structure, as if inspiration had ceased, as -if no vast hope, no religion, no song of joy, no wisdom, no analogy, -existed any more. The tone of colleges and of scholars and of literary -society has this mortal air. I seem to walk on a marble floor, where -nothing will grow. They exert every variety of talent on a lower -ground, and may be said to live and act in a sub-mind. They have lost -all commanding views in literature, philosophy, and science. A good -Englishman shuts himself out of three fourths of his mind, and confines -himself to one fourth. He has learning, good sense, power of labor, and -logic: but a faith in the laws of the mind like that of Archimedes; a -belief like that of Euler and Kepler, that experience must follow and -not lead the laws of the mind; a devotion to the theory of politics, -like that of Hooker, and Milton, and Harrington, the modern English mind -repudiates. - -I fear the same fault lies in their science, since they have known how -to make it repulsive, and bereave nature of its charm;--though perhaps -the complaint flies wider, and the vice attaches to many more than to -British physicists. The eye of the naturalist must have a scope like -nature itself, a susceptibility to all impressions, alive to the heart -as well as to the logic of creation. But English science puts humanity -to the door. It wants the connection which is the test of genius. The -science is false by not being poetic. It isolates the reptile or -mollusk it assumes to explain; whilst reptile or mollusk only exists in -system, in relation. The poet only sees it as an inevitable step in the -path of the Creator. But, in England, one hermit finds this fact, and -another finds that, and lives and dies ignorant of its value. There are -great exceptions, of John Hunter, a man of ideas; perhaps of Robert -Brown, the botanist; and of Richard Owen, who has imported into Britain -the German homologies, and enriched science with contributions of his -own, adding sometimes the divination of the old masters to the unbroken -power of labor in the English mind. But for the most part, the natural -science in England is out of its loyal alliance with morals, and is as -void of imagination and free play of thought, as conveyancing. It -stands in strong contrast with the genius of the Germans, those -semi-Greeks, who love analogy, and, by means of their height of view, -preserve their enthusiasm, and think for Europe. - -No hope, no sublime augury, cheers the student, no secure striding from -experiment onward to a foreseen law, but only a casual dipping here and -there, like diggers in California "prospecting for a placer" that will -pay. A horizon of brass of the diameter of his umbrella shuts down -around his senses. Squalid contentment with conventions, satire at the -names of philosophy and religion, parochial and shop-till politics, and -idolatry of usage, betray the ebb of life and spirit. As they trample -on nationalities to reproduce London and Londoners in Europe and Asia, -so they fear the hostility of ideas, of poetry, of religion,--ghosts -which they cannot lay; and, having attempted to domesticate and dress -the Blessed Soul itself in English broadcloth and gaiters, they are -tormented with fear that herein lurks a force that will sweep their -system away. The artists say, "Nature puts us out"; the scholars have -become un-ideal. They parry earnest speech with banter and levity; they -laugh you down, or they change the subject. "The fact is," say they -over their wine, "all that about liberty, and so forth, is gone by; it -won't do any longer." The practical and comfortable oppress them with -inexorable claims, and the smallest fraction of power remains for -heroism and poetry. No poet dares murmur of beauty out of the precinct -of his rhymes. No priest dares hint at a Providence which does not -respect English utility. The island is a roaring volcano of fate, of -material values, of tariffs, and laws of repression, glutted markets and -low prices. - -In the absence of the highest aims, of the pure love of knowledge, and -the surrender to nature, there is the suppression of the imagination, -the priapism of the senses and the understanding; we have the factitious -instead of the natural; tasteless expense, arts of comfort, and the -rewarding as an illustrious inventor whosoever will contrive one -impediment more to interpose between the man and his objects. - -Thus poetry is degraded, and made ornamental. Pope and his school wrote -poetry fit to put round frosted cake. What did Walter Scott write -without stint? a rhymed traveller's guide to Scotland. And the -libraries of verses they print have this Birmingham character. How many -volumes of well-bred metre we must jingle through, before we can be -filled, taught, renewed! We want the miraculous; the beauty which we -can manufacture at no mill,--can give no account of; the beauty of which -Chaucer and Chapman had the secret. The poetry of course is low and -prosaic; only now and then, as in Wordsworth, conscientious; or in -Byron, passional; or in Tennyson, factitious. But if I should count the -poets who have contributed to the Bible of existing England sentences of -guidance and consolation which are still glowing and effective,--how -few! Shall I find my heavenly bread in the reigning poets? Where is -great design in modern English poetry? The English have lost sight of -the fact that poetry exists to speak the spiritual law, and that no -wealth of description or of fancy is yet essentially new, and out of the -limits of prose, until this condition is reached. Therefore the grave -old poets, like the Greek artists, heeded their designs, and less -considered the finish. It was their office to lead to the divine -sources, out of which all this, and much more, readily springs; and, if -this religion is in the poetry, it raises us to some purpose, and we can -well afford some staidness; or hardness, or want of popular tune in the -verses. - -The exceptional fact of the period is the genius of Wordsworth. He had -no master but nature and solitude. "He wrote a poem," says Landor, -"without the aid of war." His verse is the voice of sanity in a worldly -and ambitious age. One regrets that his temperament was not more liquid -and musical. He has written longer than he was inspired. But for the -rest, he has no competitor. - -Tennyson is endowed precisely in points where Wordsworth wanted. There -is no finer ear than Tennyson's, nor more command of the keys of -language. Color, like the dawn, flows over the horizon from his pencil, -in waves so rich that we do not miss the central form. Through all his -refinements, too, he has reached the public,--a certificate of good -sense and general power, since he who aspires to be the English poet -must be as large as London, not in the same kind as London, but in his -own kind. But he wants a subject, and climbs no mount of vision to -bring its secrets to the people. He contents himself with describing -the Englishman as he is, and proposes no better. There are all degrees -in poetry, and we must be thankful for every beautiful talent. But it -is only a first success, when the ear is gained. The best office of the -best poets has been to show how low and uninspired was their general -style, and that only once or twice they have struck the high chord. - -That expansiveness which is the essence of the poetic element, they have -not. It was no Oxonian, but Hafiz, who said: "Let us be crowned with -roses, let us drink wine, and break up the tiresome old roof of heaven -into new forms." A stanza of the song of nature the Oxonian has no ear -for, and he does not value the salient and curative influence of -intellectual action, studious of truth, without a by-end. - -By the law of contraries, I look for an irresistible taste for -Orientalism in Britain. For a self-conceited modish life, made up of -trifles, clinging to a corporeal civilization, hating ideas, there is no -remedy like the Oriental largeness. That astonishes and disconcerts -English decorum. For once there is thunder it never heard, light it -never saw, and power which trifles with time and space. I am not -surprised, then, to find an Englishman like Warren Hastings, who had -been struck with the grand style of thinking in the Indian writings, -deprecating the prejudices of his countrymen, while offering them a -translation of the Bhagvat. "Might I," he says, "an unlettered man, -venture to prescribe bounds to the latitude of criticism, I should -exclude, in estimating the merit of such a production, all rules drawn -from the ancient or modern literature of Europe, all references to such -sentiments or manners as are become the standards of propriety for -opinion and action in our own modes, and, equally, all appeals to our -revealed tenets, of religion and moral duty." [#] He goes on to bespeak -indulgence to "ornaments of fancy unsuited to our taste, and passages -elevated to a tract of sublimity into which our habits of judgment will -find it difficult to pursue them." - -[#] Preface to Wilkins's Translation of the Bhagvat Geeta. - -Meantime, I know that a retrieving power lies in the English race, which -seems to make any recoil possible; in other words, there is at all times -a minority of profound minds existing in the nation, capable of -appreciating every soaring of intellect and every hint of tendency. -While the constructive talent seems dwarfed and superficial, the -criticism is often in the noblest tone, and suggests the presence of the -invisible gods. I can well believe what I have often heard, that there -are two nations in England; but it is not the Poor and the Rich; nor is -it the Normans and Saxons; nor the Celt and the Goth. These are each -always becoming the other; for Robert Owen does not exaggerate the power -of circumstance. But the two complexions, or two styles of mind,--the -perceptive class, and the practical finality class,--are ever in -counterpoise, interacting mutually; one, in hopeless minorities; the -other, in huge masses; one studious, contemplative, experimenting; the -other, the ungrateful pupil, scornful of the source, whilst availing -itself of the knowledge for gain; these two nations, of genius and of -animal force, though the first consist of only a dozen souls, and the -second of twenty millions, forever by their discord and their accord -yield the power of the English State. - - - - -CHAPTER XV.--THE "TIMES." - - -The power of the newspaper is familiar in America, and in accordance -with our political system. In England, it stands in antagonism with the -feudal institutions, and it is all the more beneficent succor against -the secretive tendencies of a monarchy. The celebrated Lord Somers -"knew of no good law proposed and passed in his time, to which the -public papers had not directed his attention." There is no corner and -no night. A relentless inquisition drags every secret to the day, turns -the glare of this solar microscope on every malfaisance, so as to make -the public a more terrible spy than any foreigner; and no weakness can -be taken advantage of by an enemy, since the whole people are already -forewarned. Thus England rids herself of those incrustations which have -been the ruin of old states. Of course, this inspection is feared. No -antique privilege, no comfortable monopoly, but sees surely that its -days are counted; the people are familiarized with the reason of reform, -and, one by one, take away every argument of the obstructives. "So your -Grace likes the comfort of reading the newspapers," said Lord Mansfield -to the Duke of Northumberland; "mark my words; you and I shall not live -to see it, but this young gentleman (Lord Eldon) may, or it may be a -little later; but a little sooner or later, these newspapers will most -assuredly write the dukes of Northumberland out of their titles and -possessions, and the country out of its king." The tendency in England -towards social and political institutions like those of America, is -inevitable, and the ability of its journals is the driving force. - -England is full of manly, clever, well-bred men who possess the talent -of writing off-hand pungent paragraphs, expressing with clearness and -courage their opinion on any person or performance. Valuable or not, it -is a skill that is rarely found, out of the English journals. The -English do this, as they write poetry, as they ride and box, by being -educated to it. Hundreds of clever Praeds, and Freres, and Froudes, and -Hoods, and Hooks, and Maginns, and Mills, and Macaulays, make poems, or -short essays for a journal, as they make speeches in Parliament and on -the hustings, or, as they shoot and ride. It is a quite accidental and -arbitrary direction of their general ability. Rude health and spirits, -an Oxford education, and the habits of society are implied, but not a -ray of genius. It comes of the crowded state of the professions, the -violent interest which all men take in politics, the facility of -experimenting in the journals, and high pay. - -The most conspicuous result of this talent is the "Times" newspaper. No -power in England is more felt, more feared, or more obeyed. What you -read in the morning in that journal, you shall hear in the evening in -all society. It has ears everywhere, and its information is earliest, -completest, and surest. It has risen, year by year, and victory by -victory, to its present authority. I asked one of its old contributors, -whether it had once been abler than it is now. "Never," he said; "these -are its palmiest days." It has shown those qualities which are dear to -Englishmen, unflinching adherence to its objects, prodigal intellectual -ability, and a towering assurance, backed by the perfect organization in -its printing-house, and its world-wide network of correspondence and -reports. It has its own history and famous trophies. In 1820, it -adopted the cause of Queen Caroline, and carried it against the king. -It adopted a poor-law system, and almost alone lifted it through. When -Lord Brougham was in power, it decided against him, and pulled him down. -It declared war against Ireland, and conquered it. It adopted the -League against the Corn Laws, and, when Cobden had begun to despair, it -announced his triumph. It denounced and discredited the French Republic -of 1848, and checked every sympathy with it in England, until it had -enrolled 200,000 special constables to watch the Chartists, and make -them ridiculous on the 10th April. It first denounced and then adopted -the new French Empire, and urged the French Alliance and its results. It -has entered into each municipal, literary, and social question, almost -with a controlling voice. It has done bold and seasonable service in -exposing frauds which threatened the commercial community. Meantime, it -attacks its rivals by perfecting its printing machinery, and will drive -them out of circulation; for the only limit to the circulation of the -"Times" is the impossibility of printing copies fast enough; since a -daily paper can only be new and seasonable for a few hours. It will -kill all but that paper which is diametrically in opposition; since many -papers, first and last, have lived by their attacks on the leading -journal. - -The late Mr. Walter was printer of the "Times," and had gradually -arranged the whole _materiel_ of it in perfect system. It is told, that -when he demanded a small share in the proprietary, and was refused, he -said, "As you please, gentlemen; and you may take away the 'Times' from -this office when you will; I shall publish the 'New Times' next Monday -morning." The proprietors, who had already complained that his charges -for printing were excessive, found that they were in his power, and gave -him whatever he wished. - -I went one day with a good friend to the "Times": office, which was -entered through a pretty garden-yard, in Printing-House Square. We -walked with some circumspection, as if we were entering a powder-mill; -but the door was opened by a mild old woman, and, by dint of some -transmission of cards, we were at last conducted into the parlor of Mr. -Morris, a very gentle person, with no hostile appearances. The -statistics are now quite out of date, but I remember he told us that the -daily printing was then 35,000 copies; that on the 1st March, 1848, the -greatest number ever printed,--54,000 were issued; that, since February, -the daily circulation had increased by 8,000 copies. The old press they -were then using printed five or six thousand sheets per hour; the new -machine, for which they were then building an engine, would print twelve -thousand per hour. Our entertainer confided us to a courteous assistant -to show us the establishment, in which, I think, they employed a hundred -and twenty men. I remember, I saw the reporters' room, in which they -redact their hasty stenographs, but the editor's room, and who is in it, -I did not see, though I shared the curiosity of mankind respecting it. - -The staff of the "Times" has always been made up of able men. Old -Walter, Sterling, Bacon, Barnes, Alsiger, Horace Twiss, Jones Loyd, John -Oxenford, Mr. Mosely, Mr. Bailey, have contributed to its renown in -their special departments. But it has never wanted the first pens for -occasional assistance. Its private information is inexplicable, and -recalls the stories of Fouch's police, whose omniscience made it -believed that the Empress Josephine must be in his pay. It has -mercantile and political correspondents in every foreign city; and its -expresses outrun the despatches of the government. One hears anecdotes -of the rise of its servants, as of the functionaries of the India House. -I was told of the dexterity of one of its reporters, who, finding -himself, on one occasion, where the magistrates had strictly forbidden -reporters, put his hands into his coat-pocket, and with pencil in one -hand, and tablet in the other, did his work. - -The influence of this journal is a recognized power in Europe, and, of -course, none is more conscious of it than its conductors. The tone of -its articles has often been the occasion of comment from the official -organs of the continental courts, and sometimes the ground of diplomatic -complaint. What would the "Times" say? is a terror in Paris, in Berlin, -in Vienna, in Copenhagen, and in Nepaul. Its consummate discretion and -success exhibit the English skill of combination. The daily paper is -the work of many hands, chiefly, it is said, of young men recently from -the University, and perhaps reading law in chambers in London. Hence -the academic elegance, and classic allusion, which adorn its columns. -Hence, too, the heat and gallantry of its onset. But the steadiness of -the aim suggests the belief that this fire is directed and fed by older -engineers; as if persons of exact information, and with settled views of -policy, supplied the writers with the basis of fact, and the object to -be attained, and availed themselves of their younger energy and -eloquence to plead the cause. Both the council and the executive -departments gain by this division. Of two men of equal ability, the one -who does not write, but keeps his eye on the course of public affairs, -will have the higher judicial wisdom. But the parts are kept in -concert; all the articles appear to proceed from a single will. The -"Times" never disapproves of what itself has said, or cripples itself by -apology for the absence of the editor, or the indiscretion of him who -held the pen. It speaks out bluff and bold, and sticks to what it says. -It draws from any number of learned and skilful contributors; but a more -learned and skilful person supervises, corrects, and co-ordinates. Of -this closet, the secret does not transpire. No writer is suffered to -claim the authorship of any paper; everything good, from whatever -quarter, comes out editorially; and thus, by making the paper -everything, and those who write it nothing, the character and the awe of -the journal gain. - -The English like it for its complete information. A statement of fact -in the "Times" is as reliable as a citation from Hansard. Then, they -like its independence; they do not know, when they take it up, what -their paper is going to say; but, above all, for the nationality and -confidence of its tone. It thinks for them all; it is their -understanding and day's ideal daguerreotyped. When I see them reading -its columns, they seem to me becoming every moment more British. It has -the national courage, not rash and petulant, but considerate and -determined. No dignity or wealth is a shield from its assault. It -attacks a duke as readily as a policeman, and with the most provoking -airs of condescension. It makes rude work with the Board of Admiralty. -The Bench of Bishops is still less safe. One bishop fares badly for his -rapacity, and another for his bigotry, and a third for his courtliness. -It addresses occasionally a hint to majesty itself, and sometimes a hint -which is taken. There is an air of freedom even in their advertising -columns, which speaks well for England to a foreigner. On the days when -I arrived in London in 1847, I read among the daily announcements, one -offering a reward of fifty pounds to any person who would put a -nobleman, described by name and title, late a member of Parliament, into -any county jail in England, he having been convicted of obtaining money -under false pretences. - -Was never such arrogancy as the tone of this paper. Every slip of an -Oxonian or Cantabrigian who writes his first leader assumes that we -subdued the earth before we sat down to write this particular "Times." -One would think the world was on its knees to the "Times" Office, for -its daily breakfast. But this arrogance is calculated. Who would care -for it, if it "surmised," or "dared to confess," or "ventured to -predict," etc.? No; _it is so_, and so it shall be. - -The morality and patriotism of the "Times" claims only to be -representative, and by no means ideal. It gives the argument, not of -the majority, but of the commanding class. Its editors know better than -to defend Russia, or Austria, or English vested rights, on abstract -grounds. But they give a voice to the class who, at the moment, take -the lead; and they have an instinct for finding where the power now -lies, which is eternally shifting its banks. Sympathizing with, and -speaking for the class that rules the hour, yet, being apprised of every -ground-swell, every Chartist resolution, every Church squabble, every -strike in the mills, they detect the first tremblings of change. They -watch the hard and bitter struggles of the authors of each liberal -movement, year by year,--watching them only to taunt and obstruct -them,--until, at last, when they see that these have established their -fact, that power is on the point of passing to them, they strike in, -with the voice of a monarch, astonish those whom they succor, as much as -those whom they desert, and make victory sure. Of course, the aspirants -see that the "Times" is one of the goods of fortune, not to be won but -by winning their cause. - -"Punch" is equally an expression of English good sense, as the "London -Times." It is the comic version of the same sense. Many of its -caricatures are equal to the best pamphlets, and will convey to the eye -in an instant the popular view which was taken of each turn of public -affairs. Its sketches are usually made by masterly hands, and sometimes -with genius; the delight of every class, because uniformly guided by -that taste which is tyrannical in England. It is a new trait of the -nineteenth century, that the wit and humor of England, as in Punch, so -in the humorists, Jerrold, Dickens, Thackeray, Hood, have taken the -direction of humanity and freedom. - -The "Times," like every important institution, shows the way to a -better. It is a living index of the colossal British power. Its -existence honors the people who dare to print all they know, dare to -know all the facts, and do not wish to be flattered by hiding the extent -of the public disaster. There is always safety in valor. I wish I -could add, that this journal aspired to deserve the power it wields, by -guidance of the public sentiment to the right. It is usually pretended, -in Parliament and elsewhere, that the English press has a high -tone,--which it has not. It has an imperial tone, as of a powerful and -independent nation. But as with other empires, its tone is prone to be -official, and even officinal. The "Times" shares all the limitations of -the governing classes, and wishes never to be in a minority. If only it -dared to cleave to the right, to show the right to be the only -expedient, and feed its batteries from the central heart of humanity, it -might not have so many men of rank among its contributors, but genius -would be its cordial and invincible ally; it might now and then bear the -brunt of formidable combinations, but no journal is ruined by wise -courage. It would be the natural leader of British reform; its proud -function, that of being the voice of Europe, the defender of the exile -and patriot against despots, would be more effectually discharged; it -would have the authority which is claimed for that dream of good men not -yet come to pass, an International Congress; and the least of its -victories would be to give to England a new millennium of beneficent -power. - - - - -CHAPTER XVI.--STONEHENGE. - - -It had been agreed between my friend Mr. C. and me, that before I left -England we should make an excursion together to Stonehenge, which -neither of us had seen; and the project pleased my fancy with the double -attraction of the monument and the companion. It seemed a bringing -together of extreme points, to visit the oldest religious monument in -Britain in company with her latest thinker, and one whose influence may -be traced in every contemporary book. I was glad to sum up a little my -experiences, and to exchange a few reasonable words on the aspects of -England, with a man on whose genius I set a very high value, and who had -as much penetration, and as severe a theory of duty as any person in it. -On Friday, 7th July, we took the South-western Railway through Hampshire -to Salisbury, where we found a carriage to convey us to Amesbury. The -fine weather and my friend's local knowledge of Hampshire, in which he -is wont to spend a part of every summer, made the way short. There was -much to say, too, of the travelling Americans, and their usual objects -in London. I thought it natural that they should give some time to -works of art collected here, which they cannot find at home, and a -little to scientific clubs and museums, which, at this moment, make -London very attractive. But my philosopher was not contented. Art and -'high art' is a favorite target for his wit. "Yes, _Kunst_ is a great -delusion, and Goethe and Schiller wasted a great deal of good time on -it":--and he thinks he discovers that old Goethe found this out, and, in -his later writings, changed his tone. As soon as men begin to talk of -art, architecture, and antiquities, nothing good comes of it. He wishes -to go through the British Museum in silence, and thinks a sincere man -will see something, and say nothing. In these days, he thought, it -would become an architect to consult only the grim necessity, and say, -'I can build you a coffin for such dead persons as you are, and for such -dead purposes as you have, but you shall have no ornament.' For the -science, he had, if possible, even less tolerance, and compared the -savans of Somerset House to the boy who asked Confucius "how many stars -in the sky?" Confucius replied, "he minded things near him"; then said -the boy, "how many hairs are there in your eyebrows?" Confucius said, -"he didn't know and didn't care." - -Still speaking of the Americans, C. complained that they dislike the -coldness and exclusiveness of the English, and run away to France, and -go with their countrymen, and are amused, instead of manfully staying in -London, and confronting Englishmen, and acquiring their culture, who -really have much to teach them. - -I told C. that I was easily dazzled, and was accustomed to concede -readily all that an Englishman would ask; I saw everywhere in the -country proofs of sense and spirit, and success of every sort: I like -the people: they are as good as they are handsome; they have everything, -and can do everything: but meantime, I surely know, that, as soon as I -return to Massachusetts, I shall lapse at once into the feeling, which -the geography of America inevitably inspires, that we play the game with -immense advantage; that there and not here is the seat and centre of the -British race; and that no skill or activity can long compete with the -prodigious natural advantages of that country, in the hands of the same -race; and that England, an old and exhausted island, must one day be -contented, like other parents, to be strong only in her children. But -this was a proposition which no Englishman of whatever condition can -easily entertain. - -We left the train at Salisbury, and took a carriage to Amesbury, passing -by Old Sarum, a bare, treeless hill, once containing the town which sent -two members to Parliament,--now, not a hut,--and, arriving at Amesbury, -stopped at the George Inn. After dinner, we walked to Salisbury Plain. -On the broad downs, under the gray sky, not a house was visible, nothing -but Stonehenge, which looked like a group of brown dwarfs in the wide -expanse,--Stonehenge and the barrows, which rose like green bosses about -the plain, and a few hay-ricks. On the top of a mountain, the old -temple would not be more impressive. Far and wide a few shepherds with -their flocks sprinkled the plain, and a bagman drove along the road. It -looked as if the wide margin given in this crowded isle to this primeval -temple were accorded by the veneration of the British race to the old -egg out of which all their ecclesiastical structures and history had -proceeded. Stonehenge is a circular colonnade with a diameter of a -hundred feet, and enclosing a second and a third colonnade within. We -walked round the stones, and clambered over them, to wont ourselves with -their strange aspect and groupings, and found a nook sheltered from the -wind among them, where C. lighted his cigar. It was pleasant to see, -that just this simplest of all simple structures--two upright stones and -a lintel laid across--had long outstood all later churches, and all -history, and were like what is most permanent on the face of the planet: -these, and the barrows,--mere mounds (of which there are a hundred and -sixty within a circle of three miles about Stonehenge), like the same -mound on the plain of Troy, which still makes good to the passing -mariner on Hellespont, the vaunt of Homer and the fame of Achilles. -Within the enclosure grow buttercups, nettles, and, all around, wild -thyme, daisy, meadow-sweet, golden-rod, thistle, and the carpeting -grass. Over us, larks were soaring and singing,--as my friend said: -"the larks which were hatched last year, and the wind which was hatched -many thousand years ago." We counted and measured by paces the biggest -stones, and soon knew as much as any man can suddenly know of the -inscrutable temple. There are ninety-four stones, and there were once -probably one hundred and sixty. The temple is circular, and uncovered, -and the situation fixed astronomically;--the grand entrances here, and -at Abury, being placed exactly north-east, "as all the gates of the old -cavern temples are." How came the stones here? for these _sarsens_ or -Druidical sandstones are not found in this neighborhood. The -_sacrificial stone_, as it is called, is the only one in all these -blocks, that can resist the action of fire, and as I read in the books, -must have been brought one hundred and fifty miles. - -On almost every stone we found the marks of the mineralogist's hammer -and chisel. The nineteen smaller stones of the inner circle are of -granite. I, who had just come from Professor Sedgwick's Cambridge -Museum of megatheria and mastodons, was ready to maintain that some -cleverer elephants or mylodonta had borne off and laid these rocks one -on another. Only the good beasts must have known how to cut a -well-wrought tenon and mortise, and to smooth the surface of some of the -stones. The chief mystery is, that any mystery should have been allowed -to settle on so remarkable a monument, in a country on which all the -muses have kept their eyes now for eighteen hundred years. We are not -yet too late to learn much more than is known of this structure. Some -diligent Fellowes or Layard will arrive, stone by stone, at the whole -history, by that exhaustive British sense and perseverance, so whimsical -in its choice of objects, which leaves its own Stonehenge or Choir Gaur -to the rabbits, whilst it opens pyramids, and uncovers Nineveh. -Stonehenge, in virtue of the simplicity of its plan, and its good -preservation, is as if new and recent; and, a thousand years hence, men -will thank this age for the accurate history it will yet eliminate. We -walked in and out, and took again and again a fresh look at the uncanny -stones. The old sphinx put our petty differences of nationality out of -sight. To these conscious stones we two pilgrims were alike known and -near. We could equally well revere their old British meaning. My -philosopher was subdued and gentle. In this quiet house of destiny, he -happened to say, "I plant cypresses wherever I go, and if I am in search -of pain, I cannot go wrong." The spot, the gray blocks, and their rude -order, which refuses to be disposed of, suggested to him the flight of -ages, and the succession of religious. The old times of England impress -C. much; he reads little, he says, in these last years, but "_Acta -Sanctorum_," the fifty-three volumes of which are in the "London -Library." He finds all English history therein. He can see, as he -reads, the old saint of Iona sitting there, and writing, a man to men. -The _Acta Sanctorum_ show plainly that the men of those times believed -in God, and in the immortality of the soul, as their abbeys and -cathedrals testify: now, even the puritanism is all gone. London is -pagan. He fancied that greater men had lived in England than any of her -writers; and, in fact, about the time when those writers appeared, the -last of these were already gone. - -We left the mound in the twilight, with the design to return the next -morning, and coming back two miles to our inn, we were met by little -showers, and late as it was, men and women were out attempting to -protect their spread windrows. The grass grows rank and dark in the -showery England. At the inn, there was only milk for one cup of tea. -When we called for more, the girl brought us three drops. My friend was -annoyed who stood for the credit of an English inn, and still more, the -next morning, by the dog-cart, sole procurable vehicle, in which we were -to be sent to Wilton. I engaged the local antiquary, Mr. Brown, to go -with us to Stonehenge, on our way, and show us what he knew of the -"astronomical" and "sacrificial" stones. I stood on the last, and he -pointed to the upright, or rather, inclined stone, called the -"astronomical," and bade me notice that its top ranged with the -sky-line. "Yes." Very well. Now, at the summer solstice, the sun -rises exactly over the top of that stone, and, at the Druidical temple -at Abury, there is also an astronomical stone, in the same relative -positions. - -In the silence of tradition, this one relation to science becomes an -important clew; but we were content to leave the problem, with the -rocks. Was this the "Giants' Dance" which Merlin brought from -Killaraus, in Ireland, to be Uther Pendragon's monument to the British -nobles whom Hengist slaughtered here, as Geoffrey of Monmouth relates? -or was it a Roman work, as Inigo Jones explained to King James; or -identical in design and style with the East Indian temples of the sun; -as Davies in the Celtic Researches maintains? Of all the writers, -Stukeley is the best. The heroic antiquary, charmed with the geometric -perfections of his ruin, connects it with the oldest monuments and -religion of the world, and, with the courage of his tribe, does not -stick to say, "the Deity who made the world by the scheme of -Stonehenge." He finds that the _cursus_[23] on Salisbury Plain -stretches across the downs, like a line of latitude upon the globe, and -the meridian line of Stonehenge passes exactly through the middle of -this _cursus_. But here is the high point of the theory: the Druids had -the magnet; laid their courses by it; their cardinal points in -Stonehenge, Ambresbury, and elsewhere, which vary a little from true -east and west, followed the variations of the compass. The Druids were -Phoenicians. The name of the magnet is _lapis Heracleus_, and Hercules -was the god of the Phoenicians. Hercules, in the legend, drew his bow -at the sun, and the sun-god gave him a golden cup, with which he sailed -over the ocean. What was this, but a compass-box? This cup or little -boat, in which the magnet was made to float on water, and so show the -north, was probably its first form, before it was suspended on a pin. -But science was an _arcanum_, and, as Britain was a Phoenician secret, -so they kept their compass a secret, and it was lost with the Tyrian -commerce. The golden fleece, again, of Jason, was the compass,--a bit -of loadstone, easily supposed to be the only one in the world, and -therefore naturally awakening the cupidity and ambition of the young -heroes of a maritime nation to join in an expedition to obtain -possession of this wise stone. Hence the fable that the ship Argo was -loquacious and oracular. There is also some curious coincidence in the -names. Apollodorus makes _Magnes_ the son of _olus_, who married -_Nais_. On hints like these, Stukeley builds again the grand colonnade -into historic harmony, and computing backward by the known variations of -the compass, bravely assigns the year 406 before Christ for the date of -the temple. - - [23] Connected with Stonehenge are an avenue and a _cursus_. The avenue - is a narrow road of raised earth, extending 594 yards in a - straight line from the grand entrance, then dividing into two - branches, which lead, severally, to a row of barrows: and to the - cursus,--an artificially formed flat tract of ground. This is - half a mile northeast from Stonehenge, bounded by banks and - ditches, 3,036 yards long, by 110 broad. - -For the difficulty of handling and carrying stones of this size, the -like is done in all cities, every day, with no other aid than -horse-power. I chanced to see a year ago men at work on the -substructure of a house in Bowdoin Square, in Boston, swinging a block -of granite of the size of the largest of the Stonehenge columns with an -ordinary derrick. The men were common masons, with paddies to help, nor -did they think they were doing anything remarkable. I suppose there -were as good men a thousand years ago. And we wonder how Stonehenge was -built and forgotten. After spending half an hour on the spot, we set -forth in our dog-cart over the downs for Wilton, C. not suppressing some -threats and evil omens on the proprietors, for keeping these broad -plains a wretched sheep-walk when so many thousands of Englishmen were -hungry and wanted labor. But I heard afterwards that it is not an -economy to cultivate this land, which only yields one crop on being -broken up, and is then spoiled. - -We came to Wilton and to Wilton Hall,--the renowned seat of the Earls of -Pembroke, a house known to Shakspeare and Massinger, the frequent home -of Sir Philip Sidney, where he wrote the Arcadia; where he conversed -with Lord Brooke, a man of deep thought, and a poet, who caused to be -engraved on his tombstone, "Here lies Fulke Greville Lord Brooke, the -friend of Sir Philip Sidney." It is now the property of the Earl of -Pembroke, and the residence of his brother, Sidney Herbert, Esq., and is -esteemed a noble specimen of the English manor-hall. My friend had a -letter from Mr. Herbert to his housekeeper, and the house was shown. The -state drawing-room is a double cube, thirty feet high, by thirty wide, -by sixty feet long: the adjoining room is a single cube, of thirty feet -every way. Although these apartments and the long library were full of -good family portraits, Vandykes and other; and though there were some -good pictures, and a quadrangle cloister full of antique and modern -statuary,--to which C., catalogue in hand, did all too much -justice,--yet the eye was still drawn to the windows, to a magnificent -lawn, on which grew the finest cedars in England. I had not seen more -charming grounds. We went out, and walked over the estate. We crossed -a bridge built by Inigo Jones over a stream, of which the gardener did -not know the name, (_Qu._ Alph?) watched the deer; climbed to the lonely -sculptured summer-house, on a hill backed by a wood; came down into the -Italian garden, and into a French pavilion, garnished with French busts; -and so, again to the house, where we found a table laid for us with -bread, meats, peaches, grapes, and wine. - -On leaving Wilton House, we took the coach for Salisbury. The Cathedral -which was finished six hundred years ago has even a spruce and modern -air, and its spire is the highest in England. I know not why, but I had -been more struck with one of no fame at Coventry, which rises three -hundred feet from the ground, with the lightness of a mullein-plant, and -not at all implicated with the church. Salisbury is now esteemed the -culmination of the Gothic art in England, as the buttresses are fully -unmasked, and honestly detailed from the sides of the pile. The -interior of the Cathedral is obstructed by the organ in the middle, -acting like a screen. I know not why in real architecture the hunger of -the eye for length of line is so rarely gratified. The rule of art is -that a colonnade is more beautiful the longer it is, and that _ad -infinitum_. And the nave of a church is seldom so long that it need be -divided by a screen. - -We loitered in the church, outside the choir, whilst service was said. -Whilst we listened to the organ, my friend remarked, the music is good -and yet not quite religious, but somewhat as if a monk were panting to -some fine Queen of Heaven. C. was unwilling, and we did not ask to have -the choir shown us, but returned to our inn, after seeing another old -church of the place. We passed in the train Clarendon Park, but could -see little but the edge of a wood, though C. had wished to pay closer -attention to the birthplace of the Decrees of Clarendon. At Bishopstoke -we stopped, and found Mr. H., who received us in his carriage, and took -us to his house at Bishops Waltham. - -On Sunday, we had much discourse on a very rainy day. My friends ask, -whether there were any Americans?--any with an American idea,--any -theory of the right future of that country? Thus challenged, I -bethought myself neither of caucuses nor congress, neither of presidents -nor of cabinet-ministers, nor of such as would make of America another -Europe. I thought only of the simplest and purest minds; I said, -'Certainly yes; but those who hold it are fanatics of a dream which I -should hardly care to relate to your English ears, to which it might be -only ridiculous,--and yet it is the only true.' So I opened the dogma -of no government and non-resistance, and anticipated the objections and -the fun, and procured a kind of hearing for it. I said, it is true that -I have never seen in any country a man of sufficient valor to stand for -this truth, and yet it is plain to me that no less valor than this can -command my respect. I can easily see the bankruptcy of the vulgar -musket-worship,--though great men be musket-worshippers; and 't is -certain, as God liveth, the gun that does not need another gun, the law -of love and justice alone, can effect a clean revolution. I fancied -that one or two of my anecdotes made some impression on C., and I -insisted that the manifest absurdity of the view to English feasibility -could make no difference to a gentleman; that as to our secure tenure of -our mutton-chop and spinage in London or in Boston, the soul might quote -Talleyrand, "_Monsieur, je n'en vois pas la ncessit_."[24] As I had -thus taken in the conversation the saint's part, when dinner was -announced, C. refused to go out before me,--"he was altogether too -wicked." I planted my back against the wall, and our host wittily -rescued us from the dilemma, by saying, he was the wickedest, and would -walk out first, then C. followed, and I went last. - - [24] "Mais, Monseigneur, il faut que j'existe." - -On the way to Winchester, whither our host accompanied us in the -afternoon, my friends asked many questions respecting American -landscape, forests, houses,--my house, for example. It is not easy to -answer these queries well. There I thought, in America, lies nature -sleeping, overgrowing, almost conscious, too much by half for man in the -picture, and so giving a certain tristesse, like the rank vegetation of -swamps and forests seen at night, steeped in dews and rains, which it -loves; and on it man seems not able to make much impression. There, in -that great sloven continent, in high Alleghany pastures, in the -sea-wide, sky-skirted prairie, still sleeps and murmurs and hides the -great mother, long since driven away from the trim hedge-rows and -over-cultivated garden of England. And, in England, I am quite too -sensible of this. Every one is on his good behavior, and must be -dressed for dinner at six. So I put off my friends with very inadequate -details, as best I could. - -Just before entering Winchester, we stopped at the Church of Saint -Cross, and, after looking through the quaint antiquity, we demanded a -piece of bread and a draught of beer, which the founder, Henry de Blois, -in 1136, commanded should be given to every one who should ask it at the -gate. We had both, from the old couple who take care of the church. -Some twenty people, every day, they said, make the same demand. This -hospitality of seven hundred years' standing did not hinder C. from -pronouncing a malediction on the priest who receives 2,000 a year, that -were meant for the poor, and spends a pittance on this small-beer and -crumbs. - -In the Cathedral, I was gratified, at least by the ample dimensions. -The length of line exceeds that of any other English church; being 556 -feet by 250 in breadth of transept. I think I prefer this church to all -I have seen, except Westminster and York. Here was Canute buried, and -here Alfred the Great was crowned and buried, and here the Saxon kings: -and, later, in his own church, William of Wykeham. It is very old: part -of the crypt into which we went down and saw the Saxon and Norman arches -of the old church on which the present stands, was built fourteen or -fifteen hundred years ago. Sharon Turner says: "Alfred was buried at -Winchester, in the Abbey he had founded there, but his remains were -removed by Henry I. to the new Abbey in the meadows at Hyde, on the -northern quarter of the city, and laid under the high altar. The -building was destroyed at the Reformation, and what is left of Alfred's -body now lies covered by modern buildings, or buried in the ruins of the -old."[25] William of Wykeham's shrine tomb was unlocked for us, and C. -took hold of the recumbent statue's marble hands, and patted them -affectionately, for he rightly values the brave man who built Windsor, -and this Cathedral, and the School here, and New College at Oxford. But -it was growing late in the afternoon. Slowly we left the old house, and -parting with our host, we took the train for London. - - [25] History of the Anglo-Saxons, I. 599. - - - - -CHAPTER XVII.--PERSONAL. - - -In these comments on an old journey now revised after seven busy years -have much changed men and things in England, I have abstained from -reference to persons, except in the last chapter, and in one or two -cases where the fame of the parties seemed to have given the public a -property in all that concerned them. I must further allow myself a few -notices, if only as an acknowledgment of debts that cannot be paid. My -journeys were cheered by so much kindness from new friends, that my -impression of the island is bright with agreeable memories both of -public societies and of households; and, what is nowhere better found -than in England, a cultivated person fitly surrounded by a happy home, -"with honor, love, obedience, troops of friends," is of all institutions -the best. At the landing in Liverpool, I found my Manchester -correspondent awaiting me, a gentleman whose kind reception was followed -by a train of friendly and effective attentions which never rested -whilst I remained in the country. A man of sense and of letters, the -editor of a powerful local journal, he added to solid virtues an -infinite sweetness and _bonhommie_. There seemed a pool of honey about -his heart which lubricated all his speech and action with fine jets of -mead. An equal good-fortune attended many later accidents of my -journey, until the sincerity of English kindness ceased to surprise. My -visit fell in the fortunate days when Mr. Bancroft was the American -Minister in London, and at his house, or through his good offices, I had -easy access to excellent persons and to privileged places. At the house -of Mr. Carlyle, I met persons eminent in society and in letters. The -privileges of the Athenum and of the Reform Clubs were hospitably -opened to me, and I found much advantage in the circles of the -"Geologic," the "Antiquarian," and the "Royal Societies." Every day in -London gave me new opportunities of meeting men and women who give -splendor to society. I saw Rogers, Hallam, Macaulay, Milnes, Milman, -Barry Cornwall, Dickens, Thackeray, Tennyson, Leigh Hunt, D'Israeli, -Helps, Wilkinson, Bailey, Kenyon, and Forster: the younger poets, -Clough, Arnold, and Patmore; and, among the men of science, Robert -Brown, Owen, Sedgwick, Faraday, Buckland, Lyell, De la Beche, Hooker, -Carpenter, Babbage, and Edward Forbes. It was my privilege also to -converse with Miss Baillie, with Lady Morgan, with Mrs. Jameson, and -Mrs. Somerville. A finer hospitality made many private houses not less -known and dear. It is not in distinguished circles that wisdom and -elevated characters are usually found, or, if found, not confined -thereto; and my recollections of the best hours go back to private -conversations in different parts of the kingdom, with persons little -known. Nor am I insensible to the courtesy which frankly opened to me -some noble mansions, if I do not adorn my page with their names. Among -the privileges of London, I recall with pleasure two or three signal -days, one at Kew, where Sir William Hooker showed me all the riches of -the vast botanic garden; one at the Museum, where Sir Charles Fellowes -explained in detail the history of his Ionic trophy-monument; and still -another, on which Mr. Owen accompanied my countryman Mr. H. and myself -through the Hunterian Museum. - -The like frank hospitality, bent on real service, I found among the -great and the humble, wherever I went; in Birmingham, in Oxford, in -Leicester, in Nottingham, in Sheffield, in Manchester, in Liverpool. At -Edinburgh, through the kindness of Dr. Samuel Brown, I made the -acquaintance of De Quincey, of Lord Jeffrey, of Wilson, of Mrs. Crowe, -of the Messrs. Chambers, and of a man of high character and genius, the -short-lived painter David Scott. - -At Ambleside, in March, 1848, I was for a couple of days the guest of -Miss Martineau, then newly returned from her Egyptian tour. On Sunday -afternoon, I accompanied her to Rydal Mount. And as I have recorded a -visit to Wordsworth, many years before, I must not forget this second -interview. We found Mr. Wordsworth asleep on the sofa. He was at first -silent and indisposed, as an old man, suddenly waked, before he had -ended his nap; but soon became full of talk on the French news. He was -nationally bitter on the French: bitter on Scotchmen, too. No -Scotchman, he said, can write English. He detailed the two models, on -one or the other of which all the sentences of the historian Robertson -are framed. Nor could Jeffrey, nor the Edinburgh Reviewers write -English, nor can .... who is a pest to the English tongue. Incidentally -he added, Gibbon cannot write English. The _Edinburgh Review_ wrote -what would tell and what would sell. It had however changed the tone of -its literary criticism from the time when a certain letter was written -to the editor by Coleridge. Mrs. W. had the Editor's answer in her -possession. Tennyson he thinks a right poetic genius, though with some -affectation. He had thought an elder brother of Tennyson at first the -better poet, but must now reckon Alfred the true one..... In speaking of -I know not what style, he said, "To be sure it was the manner, but then -you know the matter always comes out of the manner." .... He thought Rio -Janeiro the best place in the world for a great capital city..... We -talked of English national character. I told him it was not creditable -that no one in all the country knew anything of Thomas Taylor, the -Platonist, whilst in every American library his translations are found. -I said, if Plato's Republic were published in England as a new book -to-day, do you think it would find any readers?--he confessed, it would -not: "And yet," he added after a pause, with that complacency which -never deserts a true-born Englishman,--"and yet we have embodied it -all." - -His opinions of French, English, Irish, and Scotch seemed rashly -formulized from little anecdotes of what had befallen himself and -members of his family, in a diligence or stage-coach. His face -sometimes lighted up, but his conversation was not marked by special -force or elevation. Yet perhaps it is a high compliment to the -cultivation of the English generally, when we find such a man not -distinguished. He had a healthy look, with a weather-beaten face, his -face corrugated, especially the large nose. - -Miss Martineau, who lived near him, praised him to me, not for his -poetry, but for thrift and economy; for having afforded to his country -neighbors an example of a modest household, where comfort and culture -were secured without any display. She said, that, in his early -housekeeping at the cottage where he first lived, he was accustomed to -offer his friends bread and plainest fare: if they wanted anything more, -they must pay him for their board. It was the rule of the house. I -replied, that it evinced English pluck more than any anecdote I knew. A -gentleman in the neighborhood told the story of Walter Scott's once -staying a week with Wordsworth, and slipping out every day under -pretence of a walk, to the Swan Inn, for a cold cut and porter; and one -day passing with Wordsworth the inn, he was betrayed by the landlord's -asking him if he had come for his porter. Of course, this trait would -have another look in London, and there you will hear from different -literary men, that Wordsworth had no personal friend, that he was not -amiable, that he was parsimonious, etc. Landor, always generous, says -that he never praised anybody. A gentleman in London showed me a watch -that once belonged to Milton, whose initials are engraved on its face. -He said, he once showed this to Wordsworth, who took it in one hand, -then drew out his own watch, and held it up with the other, before the -company, but no one making the expected remark, he put back his own in -silence. I do not attach much importance to the disparagement of -Wordsworth among London scholars. Who reads him well will know, that in -following the strong bent of his genius, he was careless of the many, -careless also of the few, self-assured that he should "create the taste -by which he is to be enjoyed." He lived long enough to witness the -revolution he had wrought, and "to see what he foresaw." There are -torpid places in his mind, there is something hard and sterile in his -poetry, want of grace and variety, want of due catholicity and -cosmopolitan scope: he had conformities to English politics and -traditions; he had egotistic puerilities in the choice and treatment of -his subjects; but let us say of him, that, alone in his time, he treated -the human mind well, and with an absolute trust. His adherence to his -poetic creed rested on real inspirations. The Ode on Immortality is the -high-water mark which the intellect has reached in this age. New means -were employed, and new realms added to the empire of the muse, by his -courage. - - - - -CHAPTER XVIII.--RESULT. - - -England is the best of actual nations. It is no ideal framework, it is -an old pile built in different ages, with repairs, additions, and -makeshifts; but you see the poor best you have got. London is the -epitome of our times, and the Rome of to-day. Broad-fronted, -broad-bottomed Teutons, they stand in solid phalanx foursquare to the -points of compass; they constitute the modern world, they have earned -their vantage-ground, and held it through ages of adverse possession. -They are well marked and differing from other leading races. England is -tender-hearted. Rome was not. England is not so public in its bias; -private life is its place of honor. Truth in private life, untruth in -public, marks these home-loving men. Their political conduct is not -decided by general views, but by internal intrigues and personal and -family interest. They cannot readily see beyond England. The history -of Rome and Greece, when written by their scholars, degenerates into -English party pamphlets. They cannot see beyond England, nor in England -can they transcend the interests of the governing classes. "English -principles" mean a primary regard to the interests of property. -England, Scotland, and Ireland combine to check the colonies. England -and Scotland combine to check Irish manufactures and trade. England -rallies at home to check Scotland. In England, the strong classes check -the weaker. In the home population of near thirty millions, there are -but one million voters. The Church punishes dissent, punishes -education. Down to a late day, marriages performed by dissenters were -illegal. A bitter class-legislation gives power to those who are rich -enough to buy a law. The game-laws are a proverb of oppression. -Pauperism incrusts and clogs the state, and in hard times becomes -hideous. In bad seasons, the porridge was diluted. Multitudes lived -miserably by shell-fish and sea-ware. In cities, the children are -trained to beg, until they shall be old enough to rob. Men and women -were convicted of poisoning scores of children for burial fees. In -Irish districts, men deteriorated in size and shape. The nose sunk, the -gums were exposed, with diminished brain and brutal form. During the -Australian emigration, multitudes were rejected by the commissioners as -being too emaciated for useful colonists. During the Russian war, few -of those that offered as recruits were found up to the medical standard, -though it had been reduced. - -The foreign policy of England, though ambitious and lavish of money, has -not often been generous or just. It has a principal regard to the -interest of trade, checked however by the aristocratic bias of the -ambassador, which usually puts him in sympathy with the continental -Courts. It sanctioned the partition of Poland, it betrayed Genoa, -Sicily, Parga, Greece, Turkey, Rome, and Hungary. - -Some public regards they have. They have abolished slavery in the West -Indies, and put an end to human sacrifices in the East. At home they -have a certain statute hospitality. England keeps open doors, as a -trading country must, to all nations. It is one of their fixed ideas, -and wrathfully supported by their laws in unbroken sequence for a -thousand years. In _Magna Charta_ it was ordained, that all "merchants -shall have safe and secure conduct to go out and come into England, and -to stay there, and to pass as well by land as by water, to buy and sell -by the ancient allowed customs, without any evil toll, except in time of -war, or when they shall be of any nation at war with us." It is a -statute and obliged hospitality, and peremptorily maintained. But this -shop-rule had one magnificent effect. It extends its cold unalterable -courtesy to political exiles of every opinion, and is a fact which might -give additional light to that portion of the planet seen from the -farthest star. But this perfunctory hospitality puts no sweetness into -their unaccommodating manners, no check on that puissant nationality -which makes their existence incompatible with all that is not English. - -What we must say about a nation is a superficial dealing with symptoms. -We cannot go deep enough into the biography of the spirit who never -throws himself entire into one hero, but delegates his energy in parts -or spasms to vicious and defective individuals. But the wealth of the -source is seen in the plenitude of English nature. What variety of -power and talent; what facility and plenteousness of knighthood, -lordship, ladyship, royalty, loyalty; what a proud chivalry is indicated -in "Collins's Peerage," through eight hundred years! What dignity -resting on what reality and stoutness! What courage in war, what sinew -in labor, what cunning workmen, what inventors and engineers, what -seamen and pilots, what clerks and scholars! No one man and no few men -can represent them. It is a people of myriad personalities. Their -many-headedness is owing to the advantageous position of the middle -class, who are always the source of letters and science. Hence the vast -plenty of their sthetic production. As they are many-headed, so they -are many-nationed; their colonization annexes archipelagoes and -continents, and their speech seems destined to be the universal language -of men. I have noted the reserve of power in the English temperament. -In the island, they never let out all the length of all the reins, there -is no Berserkir rage, no abandonment or ecstasy of will or intellect, -like that of the Arabs in the time of Mahomet, or like that which -intoxicated France in 1789. But who would see the uncoiling of that -tremendous spring, the explosion of their well-husbanded forces, must -follow the swarms which, pouring now for two hundred years from the -British islands, have sailed, and rode, and traded, and planted, through -all climates, mainly following the belt of empire, the temperate zones, -carrying the Saxon seed, with its instinct for liberty and law, for arts -and for thought,--acquiring under some skies a more electric energy than -the native air allows,--to the conquest of the globe. Their colonial -policy, obeying the necessities of a vast empire, has become liberal. -Canada and Australia have been contented with substantial independence. -They are expiating the wrongs of India, by benefits: first, in works for -the irrigation of the peninsula, and roads and telegraphs; and secondly, -in the instruction of the people, to qualify them for self-government, -when the British power shall be finally called home. - -Their mind is in a state of arrested development,--a divine cripple like -Vulcan; a blind _savant_ like Huber and Sanderson. They do not occupy -themselves on matters of general and lasting import, but on a corporeal -civilization, on goods that perish in the using. But they read with -good intent, and what they learn they incarnate. The English mind turns -every abstraction it can receive into a portable utensil, or a working -institution. Such is their tenacity, and such their practical turn, that -they hold all they gain. Hence we say, that only the English race can -be trusted with freedom,--freedom which is double-edged and dangerous to -any but the wise and robust. The English designate the kingdoms emulous -of free institutions as the sentimental nations. Their own culture is -not an outside varnish, but is thorough and secular in families and the -race. They are oppressive with their temperament, and all the more that -they are refined. I have sometimes seen them walk with my countrymen, -when I was forced to allow them every advantage, and their companions -seemed bags of bones. There is cramp limitation in their habit of -thought, sleepy routine, and a tortoise's instinct to hold hard to the -ground with his claws, lest he should be thrown on his back. There is a -drag of inertia which resists reform in every shape; law-reform, -army-reform, extension of suffrage, Jewish franchise, Catholic -emancipation,--the abolition of slavery, of impressment, penal code, and -entails. They praise this drag, under the formula, that it is the -excellence of the British constitution, that no law can anticipate the -public opinion. These poor tortoises must hold hard, for they feel no -wings sprouting at their shoulders. Yet somewhat divine warms at their -heart, and waits a happier hour. It hides in their sturdy will. -"Will," said the old philosophy, "is the measure of power," and -personality is the token of this race. _Quid vult valde vult_. What -they do they do with a will. You cannot account for their success by -their Christianity, commerce, charter, common law, Parliament, or -letters, but by the contumacious sharp-tongued energy of English -_naturel_, with a poise impossible to disturb, which makes all these its -instruments. They are slow and reticent, and are like a dull good horse -which lets every nag pass him, but with whip and spur will run down -every racer in the field. They are right in their feeling, though wrong -in their speculation. - -The feudal system survives in the steep inequality of property and -privilege, in the limited franchise, in the social barriers which -confine patronage and promotion to a caste, and still more in the -submissive ideas pervading these people. The fagging of the schools is -repeated in the social classes. An Englishman shows no mercy to those -below him in the social scale, as he looks for none from those above -him; any forbearance from his superiors surprises him, and they suffer -in his good opinion. But the feudal system can be seen with less pain -on large historical grounds. It was pleaded in mitigation of the rotten -borough, that it worked well, that substantial justice was done. Fox, -Burke, Pitt, Erskine, Wilberforce, Sheridan, Romilly, or whatever -national men, were by this means sent to Parliament, when their return -by large constituencies would have been doubtful. So now we say, that -the right measures of England are the men it bred; that it has yielded -more able men in five hundred years than any other nation; and, though -we must not play Providence, and balance the chances of producing ten -great men against the comfort of ten thousand mean men, yet -retrospectively we may strike the balance, and prefer one Alfred, one -Shakspeare, one Milton, one Sidney, one Raleigh, one Wellington, to a -million foolish democrats. - -The American system is more democratic, more humane; yet the American -people do not yield better or more able men, or more inventions or books -or benefits, than the English. Congress is not wiser or better than -Parliament. France has abolished its suffocating old _rgime_, but is -not recently marked by any more wisdom or virtue. - -The power of performance has not been exceeded,--the creation of value. -The English have given importance to individuals, a principal end and -fruit of every society. Every man is allowed and encouraged to be what -he is, and is guarded in the indulgence of his whim. "Magna Charta," -said Rushworth, "is such a fellow that he will have no sovereign." By -this general activity, and by this sacredness of individuals, they have -in seven hundred years evolved the principles of freedom. It is the -land of patriots, martyrs, sages, and bards, and if the ocean out of -which it emerged should wash it away, it will be remembered as an island -famous for immortal laws, for the announcements of original right which -make the stone tables of liberty. - - - - -A few days after my arrival at Manchester, in November, 1847, the -Manchester Athenum gave its annual Banquet in the Free-Trade Hall. -With other guests, I was invited to be present, and to address the -company. In looking over recently a newspaper report of my remarks, I -incline to reprint it, as fitly expressing the feeling with which I -entered England, and which agrees well enough with the more deliberate -results of better acquaintance recorded in the foregoing pages. Sir -Archibald Alison, the historian, presided, and opened the meeting with a -speech. He was followed by Mr. Cobden, Lord Brackley, and others, among -whom was Mr. Cruikshank, one of the contributors to "Punch." Mr. -Dickens's letter of apology for his absence was read. Mr. Jerrold, who -had been announced, did not appear. On being introduced to the meeting -I said:-- - - -Mr. Chairman and Gentlemen: It is pleasant to me to meet this great and -brilliant company, and doubly pleasant to see the faces of so many -distinguished persons on this platform. But I have known all these -persons already. When I was at home, they were as near to me as they -are to you. The arguments of the League and its leader are known to all -the friends of free trade. The gayeties and genius, the political, the -social, the parietal wit of "Punch" go duly every fortnight to every boy -and girl in Boston and New York. Sir, when I came to sea, I found the -"History of Europe"[26] on the ship's cabin table, the property of the -captain;--a sort of programme or play-bill to tell the seafaring -New-Englander what he shall find on his landing here. And as for -Dombey, sir, there is no land where paper exists to print on, where it -is not found; no man who can read, that does not read it, and, if he -cannot, he finds some charitable pair of eyes that can, and hears it. - - [26] By Sir A. Alison. - -But these things are not for me to say; these compliments, though true, -would better come from one who felt and understood these merits more. I -am not here to exchange civilities with you, but rather to speak of that -which I am sure interests these gentlemen more than their own praises; -of that which is good in holidays and working-days, the same in one -century and in another century. That which lures a solitary American in -the woods with the wish to see England, is the moral peculiarity of the -Saxon race,--its commanding sense of right and wrong,--the love and -devotion to that,--this is the imperial trait, which arms them with the -sceptre of the globe. It is this which lies at the foundation of that -aristocratic character, which certainly wanders into strange vagaries, -so that its origin is often lost sight of, but which, if it should lose -this, would find itself paralyzed; and in trade, and in the mechanic's -shop, gives that honesty in performance, that thoroughness and solidity -of work, which is a national characteristic. This conscience is one -element, and the other is that loyal adhesion, that habit of friendship, -that homage of man to man, running through all classes,--the electing of -worthy persons to a certain fraternity, to acts of kindness and warm and -stanch support, from year to year, from youth to age,--which is alike -lovely and honorable to those who render and those who receive -it;--which stands in strong contrast with the superficial attachments of -other races, their excessive courtesy, and short-lived connection. - -You will think me very pedantic, gentlemen, but holiday though it be, I -have not the smallest interest in any holiday, except as it celebrates -real and not pretended joys; and I think it just, in this time of gloom -and commercial disaster, of affliction and beggary in these districts, -that on these very accounts I speak of, you should not fail to keep your -literary anniversary. I seem to hear you say, that, for all that is -come and gone yet, we will not reduce by one chaplet or one oak-leaf the -braveries of our annual feast. For I must tell you, I was given to -understand in my childhood, that the British island from which my -forefathers came, was no lotus-garden, no paradise of serene sky and -roses and music and merriment all the year round, no, but a cold, foggy, -mournful country, where nothing grew well in the open air, but robust -men and virtuous women, and these of a wonderful fibre and endurance; -that their best parts were slowly revealed; their virtues did not come -out until they quarrelled: they did not strike twelve the first time; -good lovers, good haters, and you could know little about them till you -had seen them long, and little good of them till you had seen them in -action; that in prosperity they were moody and dumpish, but in adversity -they were grand. Is it not true, sir, that the wise ancients did not -praise the ship parting with flying colors from the port, but only that -brave sailer which came back with torn sheets and battered sides, stript -of her banners, but having ridden out the storm? And so, gentlemen, I -feel in regard to this aged England, with the possessions, honors, and -trophies, and also with the infirmities of a thousand years gathering -around her, irretrievably committed as she now is to many old customs -which cannot be suddenly changed; pressed upon by the transitions of -trade, and new and all incalculable modes, fabrics, arts, machines, and -competing populations,--I see her not dispirited, not weak, but well -remembering that she has seen dark days before; indeed, with a kind of -instinct that she sees a little better in a cloudy day, and that in -storm of battle and calamity, she has a secret vigor and a pulse like a -cannon. I see her in her old age, not decrepit, but young, and still -daring to believe in her power of endurance and expansion. Seeing this, -I say, All hail! mother of nations, mother of heroes, with strength -still equal to the time; still wise to entertain and swift to execute -the policy which the mind and heart of mankind require in the present -hour, and thus only hospitable to the foreigner, and truly a home to the -thoughtful and generous who are born in the soil. So be it! so let it -be! If it be not so, if the courage of England goes with the chances of -a commercial crisis, I will go back to the capes of Massachusetts, and -my own Indian stream, and say to my countrymen, the old race are all -gone, and the elasticity and hope of mankind must henceforth remain on -the Alleghauy ranges, or nowhere. - - - - - THE END. - - - - - Cambridge: Electrotyped and Printed by Welch, Bigelow, & Co. - - - - - - -*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ENGLISH TRAITS *** - - - - -A Word from Project Gutenberg - - -We will update this book if we find any errors. - -This book can be found under: http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/39862 - -Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no one -owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation (and -you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without permission -and without paying copyright royalties. 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You may copy it, give it away or -re-use it under the terms of the <a class="reference internal" href="#project-gutenberg-license">Project Gutenberg License</a> -included with this eBook or online at -<a class="reference external" href="http://www.gutenberg.org/license">http://www.gutenberg.org/license</a>.</p> -<p class="noindent pnext"></p> -<div class="noindent vspace" style="height: 2em"> -</div> -<div class="align-None container noindent white-space-pre-line" id="pg-machine-header"> -<p class="noindent pfirst white-space-pre-line"><span class="white-space-pre-line">Title: English Traits<br /> -<br /> -Author: Ralph Waldo Emerson<br /> -<br /> -Release Date: May 30, 2012 [EBook #39862]<br /> -<br /> -Language: English<br /> -<br /> -Character set encoding: UTF-8</span></p> -</div> -<div class="noindent vspace" style="height: 2em"> -</div> -<p class="noindent pfirst" id="pg-start-line">*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK <span>ENGLISH TRAITS</span> ***</p> <div class="noindent vspace" style="height: 4em"> </div> <p class="noindent pfirst" id="pg-produced-by"><span>Produced by Al Haines.</span></p> @@ -7745,347 +7718,6 @@ bounded by banks and ditches, 3,036 yards long, by 110 broad.</p> <!-- -*- encoding: utf-8 -*- --> <div class="backmatter"> </div> -<p class="pfirst" id="pg-end-line">*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK <span>ENGLISH TRAITS</span> ***</p> -<div class="cleardoublepage"> -</div> -</div> -<div class="language-en level-2 pgfooter section" id="a-word-from-project-gutenberg" xml:lang="en" lang="en"> -<span id="pg-footer"></span><h2 class="level-2 pfirst section-title title">A Word from Project Gutenberg</h2> -<p class="pfirst">We will update this book if we find any errors.</p> -<p class="pnext">This book can be found under: <a class="reference external" href="http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/39862"><span>http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/39862</span></a></p> -<p class="pnext">Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no one -owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation (and -you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without -permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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-
-.. meta::
- :PG.Id: 39862
- :PG.Title: English Traits
- :PG.Released: 2012-05-30
- :PG.Rights: Public Domain
- :PG.Producer: Al Haines
- :DC.Creator: Ralph Waldo Emerson
- :DC.Title: English Traits
- :DC.Language: en
- :DC.Created: 1876
-
-==============
-ENGLISH TRAITS
-==============
-
-.. clearpage::
-
-.. pgheader::
-
-.. vspace:: 4
-
-.. container:: titlepage center white-space-pre-line
-
- .. class:: x-large
-
- ENGLISH TRAITS.
-
- .. vspace:: 3
-
- .. class:: medium
-
- BY
-
- .. vspace:: 2
-
- RALPH WALDO EMERSON.
-
- .. vspace:: 4
-
- .. class:: center medium
-
- NEW AND REVISED EDITION.
-
- .. vspace:: 3
-
- BOSTON:
- JAMES R. OSGOOD AND COMPANY,
- Late Ticknor & Fields, and Fields, Osgood, & Co.
- 1876.
-
- .. vspace:: 4
-
-.. container:: verso center white-space-pre-line
-
- .. class:: center small
-
- COPYRIGHT, 1856 AND 1876,
- BY RALPH WALDO EMERSON.
-
- .. vspace:: 3
-
- UNIVERSITY PRESS: WELCH, BIGELOW, & Co., CAMBRIDGE.
-
-.. vspace:: 3
-
-----
-
-.. contents:: CONTENTS
- :depth: 1
- :backlinks: entry
-
-----
-
-.. class:: center x-large
-
- .. vspace:: 4
-
- ENGLISH TRAITS.
-
-.. vspace:: 4
-
-..
-
-CHAPTER I.--FIRST VISIT TO ENGLAND.
-===================================
-
-I have been twice in England. In 1833, on my
-return from a short tour in Sicily, Italy, and France, I
-crossed from Boulogne, and landed in London at the
-Tower stairs. It was a dark Sunday morning; there
-were few people in the streets; and I remember the
-pleasure of that first walk on English ground, with my
-companion, an American artist, from the Tower up
-through Cheapside and the Strand, to a house in Russell
-Square, whither we had been recommended to good
-chambers. For the first time for many months we were
-forced to check the saucy habit of travellers' criticism,
-as we could no longer speak aloud in the streets without
-being understood. The shop-signs spoke our language;
-our country names were on the door-plates; and the
-public and private buildings wore a more native and
-wonted front.
-
-Like most young men at that time, I was much
-indebted to the men of Edinburgh, and of the Edinburgh
-Review,--to Jeffrey, Mackintosh, Hallam, and to Scott,
-Playfair, and De Quincey; and my narrow and desultory
-reading had inspired the wish to see the faces of
-three or four writers,--Coleridge, Wordsworth,
-Landor, De Quincey, and the latest and strongest
-contributor to the critical journals, Carlyle; and I suppose if
-I had sifted the reasons that led me to Europe, when I
-was ill and was advised to travel, it was mainly the
-attraction of these persons. If Goethe had been still
-living, I might have wandered into Germany also.
-Besides those I have named (for Scott was dead), there was
-not in Britain the man living whom I cared to behold,
-unless it were the Duke of Wellington, whom I
-afterwards saw at Westminster Abbey, at the funeral of
-Wilberforce. The young scholar fancies it happiness
-enough to live with people who can give an inside to
-the world; without reflecting that they are prisoners,
-too, of their own thought, and cannot apply themselves
-to yours. The conditions of literary success are almost
-destructive of the best social power, as they do not leave
-that frolic liberty which only can encounter a companion
-on the best terms. It is probable you left some obscure
-comrade at a tavern, or in the farms, with right
-mother-wit, and equality to life, when you crossed sea and land
-to play bo-peep with celebrated scribes. I have,
-however, found writers superior to their books, and I cling
-to my first belief, that a strong head will dispose fast
-enough of these impediments, and give one the satisfaction
-of reality, the sense of having been met, and a
-larger horizon.
-
-On looking over the diary of my journey in 1833, I
-find nothing to publish in my memoranda of visits to
-places. But I have copied the few notes I made of
-visits to persons, as they respect parties quite too good
-and too transparent to the whole world to make it
-needful to affect any prudery of suppression about a few
-hints of those bright personalities.
-
-At Florence, chief among artists, I found Horatio
-Greenough, the American sculptor. His face was so
-handsome, and his person so well formed, that he might
-be pardoned, if, as was alleged, the face of his Medora,
-and the figure of a colossal Achilles in clay, were
-idealizations of his own. Greenough was a superior man,
-ardent and eloquent, and all his opinions had elevation
-and magnanimity. He believed that the Greeks had
-wrought in schools or fraternities,--the genius of the
-master imparting his design to his friends, and inflaming
-them with it, and when his strength was spent, a new
-hand, with equal heat, continued the work; and so by
-relays, until it was finished in every part with equal fire.
-This was necessary in so refractory a material as stone;
-and he thought art would never prosper until we left our
-shy jealous ways, and worked in society as they. All his
-thoughts breathed the same generosity. He was an
-accurate and a deep man. He was a votary of the Greeks,
-and impatient of Gothic art. His paper on Architecture,
-published in 1843, announced in advance the leading
-thoughts of Mr. Ruskin on the *morality* in architecture,
-notwithstanding the antagonism in their views of the
-history of art. I have a private letter from him,--later,
-but respecting the same period,--in which he roughly
-sketches his own theory. "Here is my theory of
-structure: A scientific arrangement of spaces and forms to
-functions and to site; an emphasis of features
-proportioned to their *gradated* importance in function; color
-and ornament to be decided and arranged and varied by
-strictly organic laws, having a distinct reason for each
-decision; the entire and immediate banishment of all
-makeshift and make-believe."
-
-Greenough brought me, through a common friend, an
-invitation from Mr. Landor, who lived at San Domenica
-di Fiesole. On the 15th May I dined with Mr. Landor.
-I found him noble and courteous, living in a cloud of
-pictures at his Villa Gherardesca, a fine house commanding
-a beautiful landscape. I had inferred from his books, or
-magnified from some anecdotes, an impression of
-Achillean wrath,--an untamable petulance. I do not know
-whether the imputation were just or not, but certainly on
-this May day his courtesy veiled that haughty mind, and
-he was the most patient and gentle of hosts. He praised
-the beautiful cyclamen which grows all about Florence;
-he admired Washington; talked of Wordsworth, Byron,
-Massinger, Beaumont and Fletcher. To be sure, he is
-decided in his opinions, likes to surprise, and is well
-content to impress, if possible, his English whim upon the
-immutable past. No great man ever had a great son, if
-Philip and Alexander be not an exception; and Philip he
-calls the greater man. In art, he loves the Greeks, and
-in sculpture, them only. He prefers the Venus to
-everything else, and, after that, the head of Alexander, in the
-gallery here. He prefers John of Bologna to Michel
-Angelo; in painting, Raffaelle; and shares the growing
-taste for Perugino and the early masters. The Greek
-histories he thought the only good; and after them,
-Voltaire's. I could not make him praise Mackintosh, nor
-my more recent friends; Montaigne very cordially,--and
-Charron also, which seemed undiscriminating. He
-thought Degerando indebted to "Lucas on Happiness"
-and "Lucas on Holiness"! He pestered me with
-Southey; but who is Southey?
-
-He invited me to breakfast on Friday. On Friday I
-did not fail to go, and this time with Greenough. He
-entertained us at once with reciting half a dozen
-hexameter lines of Julius Cæsar's!--from Donatus, he said.
-He glorified Lord Chesterfield more than was necessary,
-and undervalued Burke, and undervalued Socrates;
-designated as three of the greatest of men, Washington,
-Phocion, and Timoleon; much as our pomologists, in
-their lists, select the three or the six best pears "for a
-small orchard"; and did not even omit to remark the
-similar termination of their names. "A great man," he
-said, "should make great sacrifices, and kill his hundred
-oxen, without knowing whether they would be consumed
-by gods and heroes, or whether the flies would eat
-them." I had visited Professor Amici, who had shown me his
-microscopes, magnifying (it was said) two thousand
-diameters; and I spoke of the uses to which they were applied.
-Landor despised entomology, yet, in the same breath,
-said, "the sublime was in a grain of dust." I suppose I
-teased him about recent writers, but he professed never
-to have heard of Herschel, *not even by name*. One room
-was full of pictures, which he likes to show, especially
-one piece, standing before which, he said "he would give
-fifty guineas to the man that would swear it was a
-Pomenichino." I was more curious to see his library, but
-Mr. H----, one of the guests, told me that Mr. Landor
-gives away his books, and has never more than a dozen
-at a time in his house.
-
-Mr. Landor carries to its height the love of freak which
-the English delight to indulge, as if to signalize their
-commanding freedom. He has a wonderful brain,
-despotic, violent, and inexhaustible, meant for a soldier, by
-what chance converted to letters, in which there is not a
-style nor a tint not known to him, yet with an English
-appetite for action and heroes. The thing done avails,
-and not what is said about it. An original sentence,
-a step forward, is worth more than all the censures.
-Landor is strangely undervalued in England; usually
-ignored; and sometimes savagely attacked in the Reviews.
-The criticism may be right or wrong, and is quickly
-forgotten; but year after year the scholar must still
-go back to Landor for a multitude of elegant sentences,--for
-wisdom, wit, and indignation that are unforgetable.
-
-.. vspace:: 2
-
-From London, on the 5th August, I went to Highgate,
-and wrote a note to Mr. Coleridge, requesting leave to
-pay my respects to him. It was near noon. Mr. Coleridge
-sent a verbal message, that he was in bed, but if
-I would call after one o'clock, he would see me. I
-returned at one, and he appeared, a short, thick old man,
-with bright blue eyes and fine clear complexion, leaning
-on his cane. He took snuff freely, which presently soiled
-his cravat and neat black suit. He asked whether I knew
-Allston, and spoke warmly of his merits and doings when
-he knew him in Rome; what a master of the Titianesque
-he was, etc., etc. He spoke of Dr. Channing. It was
-an unspeakable misfortune that he should have turned
-out a Unitarian after all. On this, he burst into a
-declamation on the folly and ignorance of Unitarianism,--its
-high unreasonableness; and taking up Bishop
-Waterland's book, which lay on the table, he read with
-vehemence two or three pages written by himself in the
-fly-leaves,--passages, too, which, I believe, are printed
-in the "Aids to Reflection." When he stopped to take
-breath, I interposed, that, "whilst I highly valued all his
-explanations, I was bound to tell him that I was born
-and bred a Unitarian." "Yes," he said, "I supposed
-so"; and continued as before. "It was a wonder, that
-after so many ages of unquestioning acquiescence in the
-doctrine of St. Paul,--the doctrine of the Trinity, which
-was also, according to Philo Judæus, the doctrine of the
-Jews before Christ,--this handful of Priestleians should
-take on themselves to deny it, etc., etc. He was very
-sorry that Dr. Channing,--a man to whom he looked
-up,--no, to say that he looked *up* to him would be to
-speak falsely; but a man whom he looked *at* with so
-much interest,--should embrace such views. When he
-saw Dr. Channing, he had hinted to him that he was
-afraid he loved Christianity for what was lovely and
-excellent,--he loved the good in it, and not the true; and I
-tell you, sir, that I have known ten persons who loved
-the good, for one person who loved the true; but it is a
-far greater virtue to love the true for itself alone, than to
-love the good for itself alone. He (Coleridge) knew all
-about Unitarianism perfectly well, because he had once
-been a Unitarian, and knew what quackery it was. He
-had been called "the rising star of Unitarianism."' He
-went on defining, or rather refining: 'The Trinitarian
-doctrine was realism; the idea of God was not essential,
-but super-essential'; talked of *trinism* and *tetrakism*, and
-much more, of which I only caught this: 'that the will
-was that by which a person is a person; because, if one
-should push me in the street, and so I should force the
-man next me into the kennel, I should at once exclaim,
-"I did not do it, sir," meaning it was not my will.' And
-this also: 'that if you should insist on your faith here in
-England, and I on mine, mine would be the hotter side of
-the fagot.'
-
-I took advantage of a pause to say, that he had many
-readers of all religious opinions in America, and I
-proceeded to inquire if the "extract" from the Independent's
-pamphlet, in the third volume of the Friend, were
-a veritable quotation. He replied that it was really taken
-from a pamphlet in his possession, entitled "A Protest
-of one of the Independents," or something to that effect.
-I told him how excellent I thought it, and how much I
-wished to see the entire work. "Yes," he said, "the
-man was a chaos of truths, but lacked the knowledge that
-God was a god of order. Yet the passage would no
-doubt strike you more in the quotation than in the
-original, for I have filtered it."
-
-When I rose to go, he said, "I do not know whether
-you care about poetry, but I will repeat some verses I
-lately made on my baptismal anniversary"; and he
-recited with strong emphasis, standing, ten or twelve lines,
-beginning,--
-
- | Born unto God in Christ--
- |
-
-He inquired where I had been travelling; and on learning
-that I had been in Malta and Sicily, he compared one
-island with the other, 'repeating what he had said to the
-Bishop of London when he returned from that country,
-that Sicily was an excellent school of political economy;
-for, in any town there, it only needed to ask what the
-government enacted, and reverse *that* to know what
-ought to be done; it was the most felicitously opposite
-legislation to anything good and wise. There were only
-three things which the government had brought into
-that garden of delights, namely, itch, pox, and famine;
-whereas, in Malta, the force of law and mind was seen,
-in making that barren rock of semi-Saracen inhabitants
-the seat of population and plenty.' Going out, he
-showed me in the next apartment a picture of Allston's,
-and told me 'that Montague, a picture-dealer, once came
-to see him, and, glancing towards this, said, "Well, you
-have got a picture!" thinking it the work of an old
-master; afterwards, Montague, still talking with his back to
-the canvas, put up his hand and touched it, and exclaimed,
-"By Heaven! this picture is not ten years old":--so
-delicate and skilful was that man's touch.'
-
-I was in his company for about an hour, but find it
-impossible to recall the largest part of his discourse,
-which was often like so many printed paragraphs in his
-book,--perhaps the same,--so readily did he fall into
-certain commonplaces. As I might have foreseen, the
-visit was rather a spectacle than a conversation, of no use
-beyond the satisfaction of my curiosity. He was old and
-preoccupied, and could not bend to a new companion and
-think with him.
-
-From Edinburgh I went to the Highlands. On my
-return, I came from Glasgow to Dumfries, and being
-intent on delivering a letter which I had brought from
-Rome, inquired for Cragenputtock. It was a farm in
-Nithsdale, in the parish of Dunscore, sixteen miles
-distant. No public coach passed near it, so I took a private
-carriage from the inn. I found the house amid desolate
-heathery hills, where the lonely scholar nourished his
-mighty heart. Carlyle was a man from his youth, an
-author who did not need to hide from his readers, and as
-absolute a man of the world, unknown and exiled on that
-hill-farm, as if holding on his own terms what is best in
-London. He was tall and gaunt, with a cliff-like brow,
-self-possessed, and holding his extraordinary powers of
-conversation in easy command; clinging to his northern
-accent with evident relish; full of lively anecdote, and
-with a streaming humor, which floated everything he
-looked upon. His talk playfully exalting the familiar
-objects, put the companion at once into an acquaintance
-with his Lars and Lemurs, and it was very pleasant to
-learn what was predestined to be a pretty mythology.
-Few were the objects and lonely the man, "not a person
-to speak to within sixteen miles except the minister of
-Dunscore"; so that books inevitably made his topics.
-
-He had names of his own for all the matters familiar
-to his discourse. "Blackwood's" was the "sand magazine";
-"Fraser's" nearer approach to possibility of life
-was the "mud magazine"; a piece of road near by that
-marked some failed enterprise was the "grave of the last
-sixpence." When too much praise of any genius annoyed
-him, he professed hugely to admire the talent shown by
-his pig. He had spent much time and contrivance in
-confining the poor beast to one enclosure in his pen, but
-pig, by great strokes of judgment, had found out how to
-let a board down, and had foiled him. For all that, he
-still thought man the most plastic little fellow in the
-planet, and he liked Nero's death, "*Qualis artifex pereo!*"
-better than most history. He worships a man that will
-manifest any truth to him. At one time he had inquired
-and read a good deal about America. Landor's principle
-was mere rebellion, and *that* he feared was the American
-principle. The best thing he knew of that country was,
-that in it a man can have meat for his labor. He had
-read in Stewart's book, that when he inquired in a New
-York hotel for the Boots, he had been shown across the
-street and had found Mungo in his own house dining on
-roast turkey.
-
-We talked of books. Plato he does not read, and he
-disparaged Socrates; and, when pressed, persisted in
-making Mirabeau a hero. Gibbon he called the splendid
-bridge from the old world to the new. His own
-reading had been multifarious. Tristram Shandy was one of
-his first books after Robinson Crusoe, and Robertson's
-America an early favorite. Rousseau's Confessions had
-discovered to him that he was not a dunce; and it was
-now ten years since he had learned German, by the advice
-of a man who told him he would find in that language
-what he wanted.
-
-He took despairing or satirical views of literature at
-this moment; recounted the incredible sums paid in one
-year by the great booksellers for puffing. Hence it
-comes that no newspaper is trusted now, no books are
-bought, and the booksellers are on the eve of bankruptcy.
-
-He still returned to English pauperism, the crowded
-country, the selfish abdication by public men of all that
-public persons should perform. 'Government should
-direct poor men what to do. Poor Irish folk come
-wandering over these moors. My dame makes it a rule to
-give to every son of Adam bread to eat, and supplies his
-wants to the next house. But here are thousands of
-acres which might give them all meat, and nobody to bid
-these poor Irish go to the moor and till it. They burned
-the stacks, and so found a way to force the rich people
-to attend to them.'
-
-We went out to walk over long hills, and looked at
-Criffel, then without his cap, and down into Wordsworth's
-country. There we sat down, and talked of the
-immortality of the soul. It was not Carlyle's fault that
-we talked on that topic, for he had the natural disinclination
-of every nimble spirit to bruise itself against walls,
-and did not like to place himself where no step can be
-taken. But he was honest and true, and cognizant of
-the subtile links that bind ages together, and saw how
-every event affects all the future. 'Christ died on the
-tree: that built Dunscore kirk yonder: that brought you
-and me together. Time has only a relative existence.'
-
-He was already turning his eyes towards London with
-a scholar's appreciation. London is the heart of the
-world, he said, wonderful only from the mass of human
-beings. He liked the huge machine. Each keeps its
-own round. The baker's boy brings muffins to the
-window at a fixed hour every day, and that is all the
-Londoner knows or wishes to know on the subject. But
-it turned out good men. He named certain individuals,
-especially one man of letters, his friend, the best mind he
-knew, whom London had well served.
-
-.. vspace:: 2
-
-On the 23th August, I went to Rydal Mount, to pay
-my respects to Mr. Wordsworth. His daughters called
-in their father, a plain, elderly, white-haired man, not
-prepossessing, and disfigured by green goggles. He sat
-down, and talked with great simplicity. He had just
-returned from a journey. His health was good, but he had
-broken a tooth by a fall, when walking with two lawyers,
-and had said, that he was glad it did not happen forty
-years ago; whereupon they had praised his philosophy.
-
-He had much to say of America, the more that it gave
-occasion for his favorite topic,--that society is being
-enlightened by a superficial tuition, out of all proportion to
-its being restrained by moral culture. Schools do no
-good. Tuition is not education. He thinks more of the
-education of circumstances than of tuition. 'T is not a
-question whether there are offences of which the law takes
-cognizance, but whether there are offences of which the
-law does not take cognizance. Sin is what he fears, and
-how society is to escape without gravest mischiefs from
-this source--? He has even said, what seemed a paradox,
-that they needed a civil war in America, to teach the
-necessity of knitting the social ties stronger. 'There
-may be,' he said, 'in America some vulgarity in manner,
-but that 's not important. That comes of the
-pioneer state of things. But I fear they are too much given
-to the making of money; and secondly, to politics; that
-they make political distinction the end, and not the
-means. And I fear they lack a class of men of leisure,--in
-short, of gentlemen,--to give a tone of honor to the
-community. I am told that things are boasted of in the
-second class of society there, which, in England,--God
-knows, are done in England every day,--but would
-never be spoken of. In America I wish to know not how
-many churches or schools, but what newspapers? My
-friend, Colonel Hamilton, at the foot of the hill, who was
-a year in America, assures me that the newspapers are
-atrocious, and accuse members of Congress of stealing
-spoons!' He was against taking off the tax on
-newspapers in England, which the reformers represent as a
-tax upon knowledge, for this reason, that they would be
-inundated with base prints. He said, he talked on political
-aspects, for he wished to impress on me and all good
-Americans to cultivate the moral, the conservative, etc.,
-etc., and never to call into action the physical strength of
-the people, as had just now been done in England in the
-Reform Bill,--a thing prophesied by Delolme. He
-alluded once or twice to his conversation with Dr. Channing,
-who had recently visited him (laying his hand on a
-particular chair in which the Doctor had sat).
-
-The conversation turned on books. Lucretius he
-esteems a far higher poet than Virgil: not in his system,
-which is nothing, but in his power of illustration. Faith
-is necessary to explain anything, and to reconcile the
-foreknowledge of God with human evil. Of Cousin
-(whose lectures we had all been reading in Boston) he
-knew only the name.
-
-I inquired if he had read Carlyle's critical articles and
-translations. He said he thought him sometimes insane.
-He proceeded to abuse Goethe's Wilhelm Meister heartily.
-It was full of all manner of fornication. It was
-like the crossing of flies in the air. He had never gone
-further than the first part; so disgusted was he that he
-threw the book across the room. I deprecated this
-wrath, and said what I could for the better parts of the
-book; and he courteously promised to look at it again.
-Carlyle, he said, wrote most obscurely. He was clever
-and deep, but he defied the sympathies of everybody.
-Even Mr. Coleridge wrote more clearly, though he had
-always wished Coleridge would write more to be
-understood. He led me out into his garden, and showed me
-the gravel-walk in which thousands of his lines were
-composed. His eyes are much inflamed. This is no
-loss, except for reading, because he never writes prose,
-and of poetry he carries even hundreds of lines in his
-head before writing them. He had just returned from a
-visit to Staffa, and within three days had made three
-sonnets on Fingal's Cave, and was composing a fourth,
-when he was called in to see me. He said, "If you are
-interested in my verses, perhaps you will like to hear
-these lines." I gladly assented; and he recollected
-himself for a few moments, and then stood forth and
-repeated, one after the other, the three entire sonnets with
-great animation. I fancied the second and third more
-beautiful than his poems are wont to be. The third is
-addressed to the flowers, which, he said, especially the
-ox-eye daisy, are very abundant on the top of the rock.
-The second alludes to the name of the cave, which is
-"Cave of Music"; the first to the circumstance of its
-being visited by the promiscuous company of the steamboat.
-
-This recitation was so unlooked for and surprising,--he,
-the old Wordsworth, standing apart, and reciting to
-me in a garden-walk, like a school-boy declaiming,--that
-I at first was near to laugh; but recollecting
-myself, that I had come thus far to see a poet, and he was
-chanting poems to me, I saw that he was right and I was
-wrong, and gladly gave myself up to hear. I told him
-how much the few printed extracts had quickened the
-desire to possess his unpublished poems. He replied, he
-never was in haste to publish; partly, because he
-corrected a good deal, and every alteration is ungraciously
-received after printing; but what he had written would
-be printed, whether he lived or died. I said, "Tintern
-Abbey" appeared to be the favorite poem with the
-public, but more contemplative readers preferred the first
-books of the "Excursion," and the Sonnets. He said,
-"Yes, they are better." He preferred such of his poems
-as touched the affections, to any others; for whatever is
-didactic--what theories of society, and so on--might
-perish quickly; but whatever combined a truth with an
-affection was [Greek: *chtêma es aei*], good to-day and good forever.
-He cited the sonnet "On the feelings of a high-minded
-Spaniard," which he preferred to any other (I so
-understood him), and the "Two Voices"; and quoted, with
-evident pleasure, the verses addressed "To the Skylark."
-In this connection, he said of the Newtonian theory, that
-it might yet be superseded and forgotten; and Dalton's
-atomic theory.
-
-When I prepared to depart, he said he wished to show
-me what a common person in England could do, and he
-led me into the enclosure of his clerk, a young man, to
-whom he had given this slip of ground, which was laid
-out, or its natural capabilities shown, with much taste.
-He then said he would show me a better way towards
-the inn; and he walked a good part of a mile, talking,
-and ever and anon stopping short to impress the word or
-the verse, and finally parted from me with great kindness,
-and returned across the fields.
-
-Wordsworth honored himself by his simple adherence
-to truth, and was very willing not to shine; but he
-surprised by the hard limits of his thought. To judge from
-a single conversation, he made the impression of a
-narrow and very English mind; of one who paid for his
-rare elevation by general tameness and conformity. Off
-his own beat, his opinions were of no value. It is not
-very rare to find persons loving sympathy and ease, who
-expiate their departure from the common in one
-direction, by their conformity in every other.
-
-.. vspace:: 4
-
-CHAPTER II.--VOYAGE TO ENGLAND.
-===============================
-
-The occasion of my second visit to England was an
-invitation from some Mechanics' Institutes in Lancashire
-and Yorkshire, which separately are organized much in
-the same way as our New England Lyceums, but, in
-1847, had been linked into a "Union," which embraced
-twenty or thirty towns and cities, and presently extended
-into the middle counties, and northward into Scotland.
-I was invited, on liberal terms, to read a series of
-lectures in them all. The request was urged with every
-kind suggestion, and every assurance of aid and comfort,
-by friendliest parties in Manchester, who, in the sequel,
-amply redeemed their word. The remuneration was
-equivalent to the fees at that time paid in this country
-for the like services. At all events, it was sufficient to
-cover any travelling expenses, and the proposal offered
-an excellent opportunity of seeing the interior of England
-and Scotland, by means of a home, and a committee of
-intelligent friends, awaiting me in every town.
-
-I did not go very willingly. I am not a good traveller,
-nor have I found that long journeys yield a fair
-share of reasonable hours. But the invitation was
-repeated and pressed at a moment of more leisure, and
-when I was a little spent by some unusual studies. I
-wanted a change and a tonic, and England was proposed
-to me. Besides, there were, at least, the dread
-attraction and salutary influences of the sea. So I took my
-berth in the packet-ship Washington Irving, and sailed
-from Boston on Tuesday, 5th October, 1847.
-
-On Friday, at noon, we had only made one hundred
-and thirty-four miles. A nimble Indian would have
-swum as far; but the captain affirmed that the ship
-would show us in time all her paces, and we crept along
-through the floating drift of boards, logs, and chips,
-which the rivers of Maine and New Brunswick pour into
-the sea after a freshet.
-
-At last, on Sunday night, after doing one day's work in
-four, the storm came, the winds blew, and we flew before
-a northwester, which strained every rope and sail. The
-good ship darts through the water all day, all night, like
-a fish, quivering with speed, gliding through liquid
-leagues, sliding from horizon to horizon. She has passed
-Cape Sable; she has reached the Banks; the land-birds
-are left; gulls, haglets, ducks, petrels, swim, dive, and
-hover around; no fishermen; she has passed the Banks;
-left five sail behind her, far on the edge of the west at
-sundown, which were far east of us at morn,--though
-they say at sea a stern chase is a long race,--and still
-we fly for our lives. The shortest sea-line from Boston
-to Liverpool is 2,850 miles. This a steamer keeps, and
-saves 150 miles. A sailing ship can never go in a shorter
-line than 3,000, and usually it is much longer. Our good
-master keeps his kites up to the last moment, studding-sails
-alow and aloft, and, by incessant straight steering,
-never loses a rod of way. Watchfulness is the law of
-the ship,--watch on watch, for advantage and for life.
-Since the ship was built, it seems, the master never slept
-but in his day-clothes whilst on board. "There are
-many advantages," says Saadi, "in sea-voyaging, but
-security is not one of them." Yet in hurrying over these
-abysses, whatever dangers we are running into, we are
-certainly running out of the risks of hundreds of miles
-every day, which have their own chances of squall,
-collision, sea-stroke, piracy, cold, and thunder. Hour for
-hour, the risk on a steamboat is greater; but the speed
-is safety, or twelve days of danger, instead of twenty-four.
-
-Our ship was registered 750 tons, and weighed perhaps,
-with all her freight, 1,500 tons. The mainmast,
-from the deck to the top-button, measured 115 feet; the
-length of the deck, from stem to stern, 155. It is
-impossible not to personify a ship; everybody does in
-everything they say:--she behaves well; she minds her
-rudder; she swims like a duck; she runs her nose into the
-water; she looks into a port. Then that wonderful *esprit
-du corps*, by which we adopt into our self-love everything
-we touch, makes us all champions of her sailing-qualities.
-
-The conscious ship hears all the praise. In one week
-she has made 1,467 miles, and now, at night, seems to
-hear the steamer behind her, which left Boston to-day at
-two, has mended her speed, and is flying before the gray
-south-wind eleven and a half knots the hour. The
-sea-fire shines in her wake, and far around wherever a wave
-breaks. I read the hour, 9h. 45', on my watch by this
-light. Near the equator, you can read small print by
-it; and the mate describes the phosphoric insects, when
-taken up in a pail, as shaped like a Carolina potato.
-
-I find the sea-life an acquired taste, like that for
-tomatoes and olives. The confinement, cold, motion, noise,
-and odor are not to be dispensed with. The floor of
-your room is sloped at an angle of twenty or thirty
-degrees, and I waked every morning with the belief that
-some one was tipping up my berth. Nobody likes to be
-treated ignominiously, upset, shoved against the side of
-the house, rolled over, suffocated with bilge, mephitis,
-and stewing oil. We get used to these annoyances at
-last, but the dread of the sea remains longer. The sea is
-masculine, the type of active strength. Look, what eggshells
-are drifting all over it, each one, like ours, filled
-with men in ecstasies of terror, alternating with cockney
-conceit, as the sea is rough or smooth. Is this sad-colored
-circle an eternal cemetery? In our graveyards we
-scoop a pit, but this aggressive water opens mile-wide
-pits and chasms, and makes a mouthful of a fleet. To
-the geologist, the sea is the only firmament; the land is
-in perpetual flux and change, now blown up like a tumor,
-now sunk in a chasm, and the registered observations of
-a few hundred years find it in a perpetual tilt, rising and
-falling. The sea keeps its old level; and 't is no wonder
-that the history of our race is so recent, if the roar of the
-ocean is silencing our traditions. A rising of the sea,
-such as has been observed, say an inch in a century, from
-east to west on the land, will bury all the towns,
-monuments, bones, and knowledge of mankind, steadily and
-insensibly. If it is capable of these great and secular
-mischiefs, it is quite as ready at private and local
-damage; and of this no landsman seems so fearful as the
-seaman. Such discomfort and such danger as the narratives
-of the captain and mate disclose are bad enough as the
-costly fee we pay for entrance to Europe; but the
-wonder is always new that any sane man can be a sailor.
-And here, on the second day of our voyage, stepped out
-a little boy in his shirt-sleeves, who had hid himself,
-whilst the ship was in port, in the bread-closet, having
-no money, and wishing to go to England. The sailors
-have dressed him in Guernsey frock, with a knife in his
-belt, and he is climbing nimbly about after them, "likes
-the work first-rate, and, if the captain will take him, means
-now to come back again in the ship." The mate avers
-that this is the history of all sailors; nine out of ten are
-runaway boys; and adds, that all of them are sick of the
-sea, but stay in it out of pride. Jack has a life of risks,
-incessant abuse, and the worst pay. It is a little better
-with the mate, and not very much better with the
-captain. A hundred dollars a month is reckoned high pay.
-If sailors were contented, if they had not resolved again
-and again not to go to sea any more, I should respect them.
-
-Of course, the inconveniences and terrors of the sea
-are not of any account to those whose minds are
-preoccupied. The water-laws, arctic frost, the mountain,
-the mine, only shatter cockneyism; every noble activity
-makes room for itself. A great mind is a good sailor,
-as a great heart is. And the sea is not slow in disclosing
-inestimable secrets to a good naturalist.
-
-'Tis a good rule in every journey to provide some
-piece of liberal study to rescue the hours which bad
-weather, bad company, and taverns steal from the best
-economist. Classics which at home are drowsily read
-have a strange charm in a country inn, or in the transom
-of a merchant brig. I remember that some of the
-happiest and most valuable hours I have owed to books,
-passed, many years ago, on shipboard. The worst
-impediment I have found at sea is the want of light in the
-cabin.
-
-We found on board the usual cabin library; Basil
-Hall, Dumas, Dickens, Bulwer, Balzac, and Sand were
-our sea-gods. Among the passengers, there was some
-variety of talent and profession; we exchanged our
-experiences, and all learned something. The busiest
-talk with leisure and convenience at sea, and sometimes
-a memorable fact turns up, which you have long had a
-vacant niche for, and seize with the joy of a collector.
-But, under the best conditions, a voyage is one of the
-severest tests to try a man. A college examination is
-nothing to it. Sea-days are long,--these lack-lustre,
-joyless days which whistled over us; but they were
-few,--only fifteen, as the captain counted, sixteen according
-to me. Reckoned from the time when we left soundings,
-our speed was such that the captain drew the line of his
-course in red ink on his chart, for the encouragement
-or envy of future navigators.
-
-It has been said that the King of England would
-consult his dignity by giving audience to foreign
-ambassadors in the cabin of a man-of-war. And I think the
-white path of an Atlantic ship the right avenue to the
-palace front of this sea-faring people, who for hundreds
-of years claimed the strict sovereignty of the sea, and
-exacted toll and the striking sail from the ships of all
-other peoples. When their privilege was disputed by
-the Dutch and other junior marines, on the plea that you
-could never anchor on the same wave, or hold property in
-what was always flowing, the English did not stick to
-claim the channel, or bottom of all the main. "As if,"
-said they, "we contended for the drops of the sea, and
-not for its situation, or the bed of those waters. The sea
-is bounded by his Majesty's empire."
-
-As we neared the land, its genius was felt. This was
-inevitably the British side. In every man's thought
-arises now a new system, English sentiments, English
-loves and fears, English history and social modes.
-Yesterday, every passenger had measured the speed of the
-ship by watching the bubbles over the ship's bulwarks.
-To-day, instead of bubbles, we measure by Kinsale, Cork,
-Waterford, and Ardmore. There lay the green shore of
-Ireland, like some coast of plenty. We could see towns,
-towers, churches, harvests; but the curse of eight
-hundred years we could not discern.
-
-.. vspace:: 4
-
-CHAPTER III.--LAND.
-===================
-
-Alfieri thought Italy and England the only countries
-worth living in: the former, because there Nature
-vindicates her rights, and triumphs over the evils inflicted
-by the governments; the latter, because art conquers
-nature, and transforms a rude, ungenial land into a
-paradise of comfort and plenty. England is a garden.
-Under an ash-colored sky, the fields have been combed and
-rolled till they appear to have been finished with a pencil
-instead of a plough. The solidity of the structures that
-compose the towns speaks the industry of ages. Nothing
-is left as it was made. Rivers, hills, valleys, the sea
-itself, feel the hand of a master. The long habitation of
-a powerful and ingenious race has turned every rood of
-land to its best use, has found all the capabilities, the
-arable soil, the quarriable rock, the highways, the
-byways, the fords, the navigable waters; and the new arts
-of intercourse meet you everywhere; so that England is
-a huge phalanstery, where all that man wants is provided
-within the precinct. Cushioned and comforted in every
-manner, the traveller rides as on a cannon-ball, high and
-low, over rivers and towns, through mountains, in
-tunnels of three or four miles, at near twice the speed of our
-trains; and reads quietly the *Times* newspaper, which,
-by its immense correspondence and reporting, seems to
-have machinized the rest of the world for his occasion.
-
-The problem of the traveller landing at Liverpool is,
-Why England is England. What are the elements of
-that power which the English hold over other nations?
-If there be one test of national genius universally
-accepted, it is success; and if there be one successful
-country in the universe for the last millennium, that
-country is England.
-
-A wise traveller will naturally choose to visit the best
-of actual nations; and an American has more reasons
-than another to draw him to Britain. In all that is done
-or begun by the Americans towards right thinking or
-practice, we are met by a civilization already settled and
-overpowering. The culture of the day, the thoughts and
-aims of men, are English thoughts and aims. A nation
-considerable for a thousand years since Egbert, it has, in
-the last centuries, obtained the ascendant, and stamped
-the knowledge, activity, and power of mankind with its
-impress. Those who resist it do not feel it or obey it
-less. The Russian in his snows is aiming to be English.
-The Turk and Chinese also are making awkward efforts
-to be English. The practical common-sense of modern
-society, the utilitarian direction which labor, laws,
-opinion, religion, take, is the natural genius of the British
-mind. The influence of France is a constituent of modern
-civility, but not enough opposed to the English for the
-most wholesome effect. The American is only the
-continuation of the English genius into new conditions, more
-or less propitious.
-
-See what books fill our libraries. Every book we read,
-every biography, play, romance, in whatever form, is still
-English history and manners. So that a sensible
-Englishman once said to me, "As long as you do not grant us
-copyright, we shall have the teaching of you."
-
-But we have the same difficulty in making a social or
-moral estimate of England, as the sheriff finds in drawing
-a jury to try some cause which has agitated the whole
-community, and on which everybody finds himself an
-interested party. Officers, jurors, judges, have all taken
-sides. England has inoculated all nations with her civilization,
-intelligence, and tastes; and, to resist the tyranny
-and prepossession of the British element, a serious man
-must aid himself, by comparing with it the civilizations
-of the farthest east and west, the old Greek, the Oriental,
-and, much more, the ideal standard, if only by means of
-the very impatience which English forms are sure to
-awaken in independent minds.
-
-Besides, if we will visit London, the present time is
-the best time, as some signs portend that it has reached
-its highest point. It is observed that the English interest
-us a little less within a few years; and hence the
-impression that the British power has culminated, is in
-solstice, or already declining.
-
-As soon as you enter England, which, with Wales, is
-no larger than the State of Georgia, [#]_ this little land
-stretches by an illusion to the dimensions of an empire.
-The innumerable details, the crowded succession of
-towns, cities, cathedrals, castles, and great and decorated
-estates, the number and power of the trades and guilds,
-the military strength and splendor, the multitudes of rich
-and of remarkable people, the servants and equipages,--all
-these catching the eye, and never allowing it to pause,
-hide all boundaries, by the impression of magnificence
-and endless wealth.
-
-.. [#] Add South Carolina, and you have more than an equivalent
- for the area of Scotland.
-
-I reply to all the urgencies that refer me to this and
-that object indispensably to be seen,--Yes, to see
-England well needs a hundred years; for, what they told me
-was the merit of Sir John Soane's Museum, in London,--that
-it was well packed and well saved,--is the merit
-of England;--it is stuffed full, in all corners and crevices,
-with towns, towers, churches, villas, palaces, hospitals,
-and charity-houses. In the history of art, it is a long
-way from a cromlech to York minster; yet all the
-intermediate steps may still be traced in this all-preserving
-island.
-
-The territory has a singular perfection. The climate
-is warmer by many degrees than it is entitled to by
-latitude. Neither hot nor cold, there is no hour in the
-whole year when one cannot work. Here is no winter,
-but such days as we have in Massachusetts in November,
-a temperature which makes no exhausting demand on
-human strength, but allows the attainment of the largest
-stature. Charles the Second said, "It invited men
-abroad more days in the year and more hours in the day
-than another country." Then England has all the
-materials of a working country except wood. The constant
-rain--a rain with every tide, in some parts of the
-island--keeps its multitude of rivers full, and brings
-agricultural production up to the highest point. It has plenty
-of water, of stone, of potter's clay, of coal, of salt, and of
-iron. The land naturally abounds with game, immense
-heaths and downs are paved with quails, grouse, and
-woodcock, and the shores are animated by water-birds.
-The rivers and the surrounding sea spawn with fish;
-there are salmon for the rich, and sprats and herrings for
-the poor. In the northern lochs, the herring are in
-innumerable shoals; at one season, the country people
-say, the lakes contain one part water and two parts fish.
-
-The only drawback on this industrial conveniency is
-the darkness of its sky. The night and day are too nearly
-of a color. It strains the eyes to read and to write. Add
-the coal-smoke. In the manufacturing towns, the fine
-soot or blacks darken the day, give white sheep the color
-of black sheep, discolor the human saliva, contaminate
-the air, poison many plants, and corrode the monuments
-and buildings.
-
-The London fog aggravates the distempers of the sky,
-and sometimes justifies the epigram on the climate by an
-English wit, "in a fine day, looking up a chimney; in a
-foul day, looking down one." A gentleman in Liverpool
-told me that he found he could do without a fire in his
-parlor about one day in the year. It is however
-pretended, that the enormous consumption of coal in the
-island is also felt in modifying the general climate.
-
-Factitious climate, factitious position. England
-resembles a ship in its shape, and, if it were one, its best
-admiral could not have worked it, or anchored it in a
-more judicious or effective position. Sir John Herschel
-said, "London was the centre of the terrene globs." The
-shopkeeping nation, to use a shop word, has a *good
-stand*. The old Venetians pleased themselves with the
-flattery, that Venice was in 45°, midway between the
-poles and the line; as if that were an imperial centrality.
-Long of old, the Greeks fancied Delphi the navel of the
-earth, in their favorite mode of fabling the earth to be an
-animal. The Jews believed Jerusalem to be the centre.
-I have seen a kratometric chart designed to show that
-the city of Philadelphia was in the same thermic belt,
-and, by inference, in the same belt of empire, as the
-cities of Athens, Rome, and London. It was drawn by a
-patriotic Philadelphian, and was examined with pleasure,
-under his showing, by the inhabitants of Chestnut Street.
-But, when carried to Charleston, to New Orleans, and to
-Boston, it somehow failed to convince the ingenious
-scholars of all those capitals.
-
-But England is anchored at the side of Europe, and
-right in the heart of the modern world. The sea, which,
-according to Virgil's famous line, divided the poor
-Britons utterly from the world, proved to be the ring of
-marriage with all nations. It is not down in the
-books,--it is written only in the geologic strata,--that
-fortunate day when a wave of the German Ocean burst the old
-isthmus which joined Kent and Cornwall to France, and
-gave to this fragment of Europe its impregnable sea-wall,
-cutting off an island of eight hundred miles in length,
-with an irregular breadth reaching to three hundred
-miles; a territory large enough for independence enriched
-with every seed of national power, so near, that it
-can see the harvests of the continent; and so far, that
-who would cross the strait must be an expert mariner,
-ready for tempests. As America, Europe, and Asia lie,
-these Britons have precisely the best commercial position
-in the whole planet, and are sure of a market for all the
-goods they can manufacture. And to make these advantages
-avail, the river Thames must dig its spacious outlet
-to the sea from the heart of the kingdom, giving road and
-landing to innumerable ships, and all the conveniency to
-trade, that a people so skilful and sufficient in economizing
-water-front by docks, warehouses, and lighters
-required. When James the First declared his purpose of
-punishing London by removing his Court, the Lord
-Mayor replied, "that, in removing his royal presence from
-his lieges, they hoped he would leave them the Thames."
-
-In the variety of surface, Britain is a miniature of
-Europe, having plain, forest, marsh, river, sea-shore;
-mines in Cornwall; caves in Matlock and Derbyshire;
-delicious landscape in Dovedale, delicious sea-view at Tor
-Bay, Highlands in Scotland, Snowdon in Wales; and,
-in Westmoreland and Cumberland, a pocket Switzerland,
-in which the lakes and mountains are on a sufficient scale
-to fill the eye and touch the imagination. It is a nation
-conveniently small. Fontenelle thought, that nature had
-sometimes a little affectation; and there is such an artificial
-completeness in this nation of artificers, as if there
-were a design from the beginning to elaborate a bigger
-Birmingham. Nature held counsel with herself, and said,
-'My Romans are gone. To build my new empire, I will
-choose a rude race, all masculine, with brutish strength.
-I will not grudge a competition of the roughest males.
-Let buffalo gore buffalo, and the pasture to the
-strongest! For I have work that requires the best will and
-sinew. Sharp and temperate northern breezes shall blow,
-to keep that will alive and alert. The sea shall disjoin
-the people from others, and knit them to a fierce
-nationality. It shall give them markets on every side. Long
-time I will keep them on their feet, by poverty, border-wars,
-sea-faring, sea-risks, and the stimulus of gain. An
-island,--but not so large, the people not so many as to
-glut the great markets and depress one another, but
-proportioned to the size of Europe and the continents.'
-
-With its fruits, and wares, and money, must its civil
-influence radiate. It is a singular coincidence to this
-geographic centrality, the spiritual centrality, which
-Emanuel Swedenborg ascribes to the people. "For the
-English nation, the best of them are in the centre of all
-Christians, because they have interior intellectual light.
-This appears conspicuously in the spiritual world. This
-light they derive from the liberty of speaking and writing,
-and thereby of thinking."
-
-.. vspace:: 4
-
-CHAPTER IV.--RACE.
-==================
-
-An ingenious anatomist has written a book [#]_ to prove
-that races are imperishable, but nations are pliant political
-constructions, easily changed or destroyed. But this
-writer did not found his assumed races on any necessary
-law, disclosing their ideal or metaphysical necessity; nor
-did he, on the other hand, count with precision the
-existing races, and settle the true bounds; a point of nicety,
-and the popular test of the theory. The individuals at
-the extremes of divergence in one race of men are as
-unlike as the wolf to the lapdog. Yet each variety shades
-down imperceptibly into the next, and you cannot draw
-the line where a race begins or ends. Hence every writer
-makes a different count. Blumenbach reckons five races;
-Humboldt, three; and Mr. Pickering, who lately, in our
-Exploring Expedition, thinks he saw all the kinds of men
-that can be on the planet, makes eleven.
-
-
-.. [#] The Races, a Fragment. By Robert Knox. London: 1830.
-
-
-The British Empire is reckoned to contain (in 1848)
-222,000,000 souls,--perhaps a fifth of the population
-of the globe; and to comprise a territory of 5,000,000
-square miles. So far have British people predominated.
-Perhaps forty of these millions are of British stock. Add
-the United States of America, which reckon (in the same
-year), exclusive of slaves, 20,000,000 of people, on a
-territory of 3,000,000 square miles, and in which the
-foreign element, however considerable, is rapidly
-assimilated, and you have a population of English descent and
-language, of 60,000,000, and governing a population of
-245,000,000 souls.
-
-The British census proper reckons twenty-seven and a
-half millions in the home countries. What makes this
-census important is the quality of the units that compose
-it. They are free forcible men, in a country where life is
-safe, and has reached the greatest value. They give the
-bias to the current age; and that, not by chance or by
-mass, but by their character, and by the number of
-individuals among them of personal ability. It has been
-denied that the English have genius. Be it as it may, men
-of vast intellect have been born on their soil, and they
-have made or applied the principal inventions. They
-have sound bodies, and supreme endurance in war and in
-labor. The spawning force of the race has sufficed to
-the colonization of great parts of the world; yet it
-remains to be seen whether they can make good the exodus
-of millions from Great Britain, amounting, in 1852, to
-more than a thousand a day. They have assimilating
-force, since they are imitated by their foreign subjects;
-and they are still aggressive and propagandist, enlarging
-the dominion of their arts and liberty. Their laws are
-hospitable, and slavery does not exist under them. What
-oppression exists is incidental and temporary; their
-success is not sudden or fortunate, but they have maintained
-constancy and self-equality for many ages.
-
-Is this power due to their race, or to some other cause?
-Men hear gladly of the power of blood or race. Everybody
-likes to know that his advantages cannot be attributed
-to air, soil, sea, or to local wealth, as mines and
-quarries, nor to laws and traditions, nor to fortune, but to
-superior brain, as it makes the praise more personal to him.
-
-We anticipate in the doctrine of race something like
-that law of physiology, that, whatever bone, muscle, or
-essential organ is found in one healthy individual, the
-same part or organ may be found in or near the same
-place in its congener; and we look to find in the son
-every mental and moral property that existed in the
-ancestor. In race, it is not the broad shoulders, or
-litheness, or stature that give advantage, but a symmetry that
-reaches as far as to the wit. Then the miracle and
-renown begin. Then first we care to examine the pedigree,
-and copy needfully the training,--what food they ate,
-what nursing, school, and exercises they had, which
-resulted in this mother-wit, delicacy of thought, and robust
-wisdom. How came such men as King Alfred, and
-Roger Bacon, William of Wykeham, Walter Raleigh,
-Philip Sidney, Isaac Newton, William Shakspeare, George
-Chapman, Francis Bacon, George Herbert, Henry Vane,
-to exist here? What made these delicate natures? was
-it the air? was it the sea? was it the parentage? For
-it is certain that these men are samples of their
-contemporaries. The hearing ear is always found close to the
-speaking tongue; and no genius can long or often utter
-anything which is not invited and gladly entertained by
-men around him.
-
-It is race, is it not? that puts the hundred millions of
-India under the dominion of a remote island in the north
-of Europe. Race avails much, if that be true, which is
-alleged, that all Celts are Catholics, and all Saxons are
-Protestants; that Celts love unity of power, and Saxons
-the representative principle. Race is a controlling
-influence in the Jew, who, for two millenniums, under
-every climate, has preserved the same character and
-employments. Race in the negro is of appalling
-importance. The French in Canada, cut off from all
-intercourse with the parent people, have held their national
-traits. I chanced to read Tacitus "on the Manners of
-the Germans," not long since, in Missouri, and the
-heart of Illinois, and I found abundant points of
-resemblance between the Germans of the Hercynian forest,
-and our *Hoosiers*, *Suckers*, and *Badgers* of the American
-woods.
-
-But whilst race works immortally to keep its own, it
-is resisted by other forces. Civilization is a re-agent,
-and eats away the old traits. The Arabs of to-day are
-the Arabs of Pharaoh; but the Briton of to-day is a very
-different person from Cassibelaunus or Ossian. Each
-religious sect has its physiognomy. The Methodists
-have acquired a face; the Quakers, a face; the nuns, a
-face. An Englishman will pick out a dissenter by his
-manners. Trades and professions carve their own lines
-on face and form. Certain circumstances of English
-life are not less effective: as, personal liberty; plenty of
-food; good ale and mutton; open market, or good wages
-for every kind of labor; high bribes to talent and skill;
-the island life, or the million opportunities and outlets
-for expanding and misplaced talent; readiness of
-combination among themselves for politics or for business;
-strikes; and sense of superiority founded on habit of
-victory in labor and in war; and the appetite for
-superiority grows by feeding.
-
-It is easy to add to the counteracting forces to race.
-Credence is a main element. 'T is said, that the views of
-nature held by any people determine all their institutions.
-Whatever influences add to mental or moral faculty, take
-men out of nationality, as out of other conditions, and
-make the national life a culpable compromise.
-
-These limitations of the formidable doctrine of race
-suggest others which threaten to undermine it, as not
-sufficiently based. The fixity or inconvertibleness of
-races as we see them, is a weak argument for the
-eternity of these frail boundaries, since all our historical
-period is a point to the duration in which nature has
-wrought. Any the least and solitariest fact in our
-natural history, such as the melioration of fruits and of
-animal stocks, has the worth of a *power* in the opportunity
-of geologic periods. Moreover, though we flatter the
-self-love of men and nations by the legend of pure races,
-all our experience is of the gradation and resolution of
-races, and strange resemblances meet us everywhere. It
-need not puzzle us that Malay and Papuan, Celt and
-Itonian, Saxon and Tartar, should mix, when we see the
-rudiments of tiger and baboon in our human form, and
-know that the barriers of races are not so firm, but that
-some spray sprinkles us from the antediluvian seas.
-
-The low organizations are simplest; a mere mouth,
-a jelly, or a straight worm. As the scale mounts, the
-organizations become complex. We are piqued with
-pure descent, but nature loves inoculation. A child
-blends in his face the faces of both parents, and some
-feature from every ancestor whose face hangs on the
-wall. The best nations are those most widely related;
-and navigation, as effecting a world-wide mixture, is the
-most potent advancer of nations.
-
-The English composite character betrays a mixed
-origin. Everything English is a fusion of distant and
-antagonistic elements. The language is mixed; the names
-of men are of different nations,--three languages, three
-or four nations;--the currents of thought are counter:
-contemplation and practical skill; active intellect and
-dead conservatism; world-wide enterprise, and devoted
-use and wont; aggressive freedom and hospitable law,
-with bitter class legislation; a people scattered by their
-wars and affairs over the face of the whole earth, and
-homesick to a man; a country of extremes,--dukes and
-chartists, Bishops of Durham and naked heathen
-colliers;--nothing can be praised in it without damning
-exceptions, and nothing denounced without salvos of cordial
-praise.
-
-Neither do this people appear to be of one stem; but
-collectively a better race than any from which they are
-derived. Nor is it easy to trace it home to its original
-seats. Who can call by right names what races are in
-Britain? Who can trace them historically? Who can
-discriminate them anatomically, or metaphysically?
-
-In the impossibility of arriving at satisfaction on the
-historical question of race, and--come of whatever
-disputable ancestry--the indisputable Englishman before
-me, himself very well marked, and nowhere else to be
-found,--I fancied I could leave quite aside the choice of
-a tribe as his lineal progenitors. Defoe said in his wrath,
-"the Englishman was the mud of all races." I incline
-to the belief that, as water, lime, and sand make mortar,
-so certain temperaments marry well, and, by well-managed
-contrarieties, develop as drastic a character as the
-English. On the whole, it is not so much a history of
-one or of certain tribes of Saxons, Jutes, or Frisians,
-coming from one place, and genetically identical, as it is
-an anthology of temperaments out of them all. Certain
-temperaments suit the sky and soil of England, say eight
-or ten or twenty varieties, as, out of a hundred pear-trees,
-eight or ten suit the soil of an orchard, and thrive,
-whilst all the unadapted temperaments die out.
-
-The English derive their pedigree from such a range
-of nationalities, that there needs sea-room and land-room
-to unfold the varieties of talent and character. Perhaps
-the ocean serves as a galvanic battery to distribute acids
-at one pole, and alkalies at the other. So England
-tends to accumulate her Liberals in America, and her
-conservatives at London. The Scandinavians in her race
-still hear in every age the murmurs of their mother, the
-ocean; the Briton in the blood hugs the homestead still.
-
-Again, as if to intensate the influences that are not of
-race, what we think of when we talk of English traits
-really narrows itself to a small district. It excludes
-Ireland, and Scotland, and Wales, and reduces itself
-at last to London, that is, to those who come and
-go thither. The portraits that hang on the walls in the
-Academy Exhibition at London, the figures in Punch's
-drawings of the public men, or of the club-houses, the
-prints in the shop-windows, are distinctive English, and
-not American, no, nor Scotch, nor Irish: but 't is a very
-restricted nationality. As you go north into the
-manufacturing and agricultural districts, and to the population
-that never travels, as you go into Yorkshire, as you enter
-Scotland, the world's Englishman is no longer found.
-In Scotland, there is a rapid loss of all grandeur of mien
-and manners; a provincial eagerness and acuteness
-appear; the poverty of the country makes itself remarked,
-and a coarseness of manners; and, among the intellectual,
-is the insanity of dialectics. In Ireland, are the
-same climate and soil as in England, but less food, no
-right relation to the land, political dependence, small
-tenantry, and an inferior or misplaced race.
-
-These queries concerning ancestry and blood may be
-well allowed, for there is no prosperity that seems more
-to depend on the kind of man than British prosperity.
-Only a hardy and wise people could have made this small
-territory great. We say, in a regatta or yacht-race, that
-if the boats are anywhere nearly matched, it is the man
-that wins. Put the best sailing-master into either boat,
-and he will win.
-
-Yet it is fine for us to speculate in face of unbroken
-traditions, though vague, and losing themselves in fable.
-The traditions have got footing, and refuse to be
-disturbed. The kitchen clock is more convenient than
-sidereal time. We must use the popular category, as we
-do by the Linnæan classification, for convenience, and not
-as exact and final. Otherwise, we are presently
-confounded, when the best-settled traits of one race are
-claimed by some new ethnologist as precisely
-characteristic of the rival tribe.
-
-I found plenty of well-marked English types, the
-ruddy complexion fair and plump, robust men, with faces
-cut like a die, and a strong island speech and accent;
-a Norman type, with the complacency that belongs to
-that constitution. Others, who might be Americans, for
-anything that appeared in their complexion or form: and
-their speech was much less marked, and their thought
-much less bound. We will call them Saxons. Then
-the Roman has implanted his dark complexion in the
-trinity or quaternity of bloods.
-
-.. vspace:: 2
-
-1. The sources from which tradition derives their
-stock are mainly three. And, first, they are of the
-oldest blood of the world,--the Celtic. Some peoples
-are deciduous or transitory. Where are the Greeks? where
-the Etrurians? where the Romans? But the
-Celts or Sidonides are an old family, of whose beginning
-there is no memory, and their end is likely to be still
-more remote in the future; for they have endurance and
-productiveness. They planted Britain, and gave to the
-seas and mountains names which are poems, and imitate
-the pure voices of nature. They are favorably
-remembered in the oldest records of Europe. They had no
-violent feudal tenure, but the husbandman owned the
-land. They had an alphabet, astronomy, priestly culture,
-and a sublime creed. They have a hidden and precarious
-genius. They made the best popular literature of the
-Middle Ages in the songs of Merlin, and the tender and
-delicious mythology of Arthur.
-
-2. The English come mainly from the Germans, whom
-the Romans found hard to conquer in two hundred and
-ten years,--say, impossible to conquer,--when one
-remembers the long sequel; a people about whom, in the
-old empire, the rumor ran, there was never any that
-meddled with them that repented it not.
-
-3. Charlemagne, halting one day in a town of
-Narbonnese Gaul, looked out of a window, and saw a fleet
-of Northmen cruising in the Mediterranean. They even
-entered the port of the town where he was, causing no
-small alarm and sudden manning and arming of his
-galleys. As they put out to sea again, the emperor gazed
-long after them, his eyes bathed in tears. "I am
-tormented with sorrow," he said, "when I foresee the evils
-they will bring on my posterity." There was reason
-for these Xerxes' tears. The men who have built a ship
-and invented the rig,--cordage, sail, compass, and
-pump,--the working in and out of port, have acquired
-much more than a ship. Now arm them, and every
-shore is at their mercy. For, if they have not numerical
-superiority where they anchor, they have only to sail a
-mile or two to find it. Bonaparte's art of war, namely,
-of concentrating force on the point of attack, must always
-be theirs who have the choice of the battle-ground. Of
-course they come into the fight from a higher ground of
-power than the land-nations; and can engage them on
-shore with a victorious advantage in the retreat. As
-soon as the shores are sufficiently peopled to make
-piracy a losing business, the same skill and courage are
-ready for the service of trade.
-
-The *Heimskringla*, [#]_ or Sagas of the Kings of Norway,
-collected by Snorro Sturleson, is the Iliad and Odyssey
-of English history. Its portraits, like Homer's, are
-strongly individualized. The Sagas describe a monarchical
-republic like Sparta. The government disappears
-before the importance of citizens. In Norway, no
-Persian masses fight and perish to aggrandize a king, but
-the actors are bonders or landholders, every one of
-whom is named and personally and patronymically
-described, as the king's friend and companion. A sparse
-population gives this high worth to every man. Individuals
-are often noticed as very handsome persons, which
-trait only brings the story nearer to the English race.
-Then the solid material interest predominates, so dear to
-English understanding, wherein the association is logical,
-between merit and land. The heroes of the Sagas are
-not the knights of South Europe. No vaporing of
-France and Spain has corrupted them. They are
-substantial farmers, whom the rough times have forced to
-defend their properties. They have weapons which they
-use in a determined manner, by no means for chivalry,
-but for their acres. They are people considerably
-advanced in rural arts, living amphibiously on a rough
-coast, and drawing half their food from the sea, and half
-from the land. They have herds of cows, and malt,
-wheat, bacon, butter, and cheese. They fish in the fiord,
-and hunt the deer. A king among these farmers has a
-varying power, sometimes not exceeding the authority of
-a sheriff. A king was maintained much as, in some of
-our country districts, a winter-schoolmaster is quartered,
-a week here, a week there, and a fortnight on the next
-farm,--on all the farms in rotation. This the king calls
-going into guest-quarters; and it was the only way in
-which, in a poor country, a poor king, with many retainers,
-could be kept alive, when he leaves his own farm to
-collect his dues through the kingdom.
-
-.. [#] Heimskringla. Translated by Samuel Laing, Esq. London: 1844.
-
-These Norsemen are excellent persons in the main,
-with good sense, steadiness, wise speech, and prompt
-action. But they have a singular turn for homicide;
-their chief end of man is to murder or to be murdered;
-oars, scythes, harpoons, crow-bars, peat-knives, and
-hay-forks are tools valued by them all the more for their
-charming aptitude for assassinations. A pair of kings,
-after dinner, will divert themselves by thrusting each his
-sword through the other's body, as did Yngve and Alf.
-Another pair ride out on a morning for a frolic, and,
-finding no weapon near, will take the bits out of their
-horses' mouths, and crush each other's heads with them,
-as did Alric and Eric. The sight of a tent-cord or a
-cloak-string puts them on hanging somebody, a wife, or
-a husband, or, best of all, a king. If a farmer has so
-much as a hayfork, he sticks it into a King Dag. King
-Ingiald finds it vastly amusing to burn up half a dozen
-kings in a hall, after getting them drunk. Never was
-poor gentleman so surfeited with life, so furious to be rid
-of it, as the Northman. If he cannot pick any other
-quarrel, he will get himself comfortably gored by a bull's
-horns, like Egil, or slain by a land-slide, like the
-agricultural King Onund. Odin died in his bed, in Sweden;
-but it was a proverb of ill condition, to die the death of
-old age. King Hake of Sweden cuts and slashes in
-battle, as long as he can stand, then orders his war-ship,
-loaded with his dead men and their weapons, to be taken
-out to sea, the tiller shipped, and the sails spread; being
-left alone, he sets fire to some tar-wood, and lies down
-contented on deck. The wind blew off the land, the ship
-flew burning in clear flame, out between the islets into the
-ocean, and there was the right end of King Hake.
-
-The early Sagas are sanguinary and piratical; the later
-are of a noble strain. History rarely yields us better
-passages than the conversation between King Sigurd the
-Crusader, and King Eystein, his brother, on their respective
-merits,--one, the soldier, and the other, a lover of
-the arts of peace.
-
-But the reader of the Norman history must steel
-himself by holding fast the remote compensations which
-result from animal vigor. As the old fossil world shows
-that the first steps of reducing the chaos were confided
-to saurians and other huge and horrible animals, so the
-foundations of the new civility were to be laid by the
-most savage men.
-
-The Normans came out of France into England worse
-men than they went into it, one hundred and sixty years
-before. They had lost their own language, and learned
-the Romance or barbarous Latin of the Gauls; and had
-acquired, with the language, all the vices it had names
-for. The conquest has obtained, in the chronicles, the
-name of the "memory of sorrow." Twenty thousand
-thieves landed at Hastings. These founders of the
-House of Lords were greedy and ferocious dragoons,
-sons of greedy and ferocious pirates. They were all
-alike, they took everything they could carry, they burned,
-harried, violated, tortured, and killed, until everything
-English was brought to the verge of ruin. Such, however,
-is the illusion of antiquity and wealth, that decent
-and dignified men now existing boast their descent from
-these filthy thieves, who showed a far juster conviction
-of their own merits, by assuming for their types the
-swine, goat, jackal, leopard, wolf, and snake, which they
-severally resembled.
-
-England yielded to the Danes and Northmen in the
-tenth and eleventh centuries, and was the receptacle into
-which all the mettle of that strenuous population was
-poured. The continued draught of the best men in
-Norway, Sweden, and Denmark, to these piratical expeditions,
-exhausted those countries, like a tree which bears
-much fruit when young, and these have been second-rate
-powers ever since. The power of the race migrated, and
-left Norway void. King Olaf said: "When King
-Harold, my father, went westward to England, the chosen
-men in Norway followed him; but Norway was so
-emptied then, that such men have not since been to find
-in the country, nor especially such a leader as King
-Harold was for wisdom and bravery."
-
-It was a tardy recoil of these invasions, when, in 1801,
-the British government sent Nelson to bombard the
-Danish forts in the Sound; and, in 1807, Lord Cathcart, at
-Copenhagen, took the entire Danish fleet, as it lay in the
-basins, and all the equipments from the Arsenal, and
-carried them to England. Konghelle, the town where
-the kings of Norway, Sweden, and Denmark were wont
-to meet, is now rented to a private English gentleman
-for a hunting-ground.
-
-It took many generations to trim, and comb, and
-perfume the first boat-load of Norse pirates into royal
-highnesses and most noble Knights of the Garter: but every
-sparkle of ornament dates back to the Norse boat.
-There will be time enough to mellow this strength into
-civility and religion. It is a medical fact, that the
-children of the blind see; the children of felons have a
-healthy conscience. Many a mean, dastardly boy is, at
-the age of puberty, transformed into a serious and
-generous youth.
-
-The mildness of the following ages has not quite
-effaced these traits of Odin; as the rudiment of a
-structure matured in the tiger is said to be still found
-unabsorbed in the Caucasian man. The nation has a tough,
-acrid, animal nature, which centuries of churching and
-civilizing have not been able to sweeten. Alfiori said,
-"the crimes of Italy were the proof of the superiority of
-the stock"; and one may say of England, that this
-watch moves on a splinter of adamant. The English
-uncultured are a brutal nation. The crimes recorded in
-their calendars leave nothing to be desired in the way of
-cold malignity. Dear to the English heart is a fair
-stand-up fight. The brutality of the manners in the
-lower class appears in the boxing, bear-baiting,
-cock-fighting, love of executions, and in the readiness for a
-set-to in the streets, delightful to the English of all
-classes. The costermongers of London streets hold
-cowardice in loathing:--"we must work our fists well; we
-are all handy with our fists." The public schools are
-charged with being bear-gardens of brutal strength, and
-are liked by the people for that cause. The fagging is a
-trait of the same quality. Medwin, in the Life of Shelley,
-relates, that, at a military school, they rolled up a young
-man in a snowball, and left him so in his room, while the
-other cadets went to church;--and crippled him for life.
-They have retained impressment, deck-flogging,
-army-flogging, and school-flogging. Such is the ferocity of
-the army discipline, that a soldier sentenced to flogging,
-sometimes prays that his sentence may be commuted to
-death. Flogging, banished from the armies of Western
-Europe, remains here by the sanction of the Duke of
-Wellington. The right of the husband to sell the wife
-has been retained down to our times. The Jews have
-been the favorite victims of royal and popular persecution.
-Henry III. mortgaged all the Jews in the kingdom
-to his brother, the Earl of Cornwall, as security for
-money which he borrowed. The torture of criminals,
-and the rack for extorting evidence, were slowly disused.
-Of the criminal statutes, Sir Samuel Romilly said, "I
-have examined the codes of all nations, and ours is the
-worst, and worthy of the Anthropophagi." In the last
-session (18:18), the House of Commons was listening to
-details of flogging and torture practised in the jails.
-
-As soon as this land, thus geographically posted, got a
-hardy people into it, they could not help becoming the
-sailors and factors of the globe. From childhood, they
-dabbled in water, they swum like fishes, their playthings
-were boats. In the case of the ship-money, the judges
-delivered it for law, that "England being an island, the
-very midland shires therein are all to be accounted
-maritime": and Fuller adds, "the genius even of land-locked
-countries driving the natives with a maritime dexterity." As
-early as the conquest, it is remarked in explanation
-of the wealth of England, that its merchants trade to all
-countries.
-
-The English, at the present day, have great vigor of
-body and endurance. Other countrymen look slight and
-undersized beside them, and invalids. They are bigger
-men than the Americans. I suppose a hundred English
-taken at random out of the street would weigh a fourth
-more than so many Americans. Yet, I am told, the
-skeleton is not larger. They are round, ruddy, and
-handsome; at least, the whole bust is well formed; and
-there is a tendency to stout and powerful frames. I
-remarked the stoutness, on my first landing at Liverpool;
-porter, drayman, coachman, guard,--what substantial,
-respectable, grandfatherly figures, with costume and
-manners to suit. The American has arrived at the old
-mansion-house, and finds himself among uncles, aunts,
-and grandsires. The pictures on the chimney-tiles of his
-nursery were pictures of these people. Here they are in
-the identical costumes and air, which so took him.
-
-It is the fault of their forms that they grow stocky,
-and the women have that disadvantage,--few tall,
-slender figures of flowing shape, but stunted and thickset
-persons. The French say, that the Englishwomen have
-two left hands. But, in all ages, they are a handsome
-race. The bronze monuments of crusaders lying
-cross-legged, in the Temple Church at London, and those in
-Worcester and in Salisbury Cathedrals, which are seven
-hundred years old, are of the same type as the best
-youthful heads of men now in England;--please by
-beauty of the same character, an expression blending
-good-nature, valor, and refinement, and, mainly, by that
-uncorrupt youth in the face of manhood, which is daily
-seen in the streets of London.
-
-Both branches of the Scandinavian race are
-distinguished for beauty. The anecdote of the handsome
-captives which Saint Gregory found at Rome, A.D. 600, is
-matched by the testimony of the Norman chroniclers, five
-centuries later, who wondered at the beauty and long
-flowing hair of the young English captives. Meantime,
-the Heimskringla has frequent occasion to speak of the
-personal beauty of its heroes. When it is considered
-what humanity, what resources of mental and moral
-power, the traits of the blond race betoken,--its
-accession to empire marks a new and finer epoch, wherein the
-old mineral force shall be subjugated at last by humanity,
-and shall plough in its furrow henceforward. It is not
-a final race, once a crab always crab, but a race with a
-future.
-
-On the English face are combined decision and nerve,
-with the fair complexion, blue eyes, and open and florid
-aspect. Hence the love of truth, hence the sensibility,
-the fine perception, and poetic construction. The fair
-Saxon man, with open front, and honest meaning,
-domestic, affectionate, is not the wood out of which
-cannibal, or inquisitor, or assassin is made. But he is
-moulded for law, lawful trade, civility, marriage, the
-nurture of children, for colleges, churches, charities, and
-colonies.
-
-They are rather manly than warlike. When the war
-is over, the mask falls from the affectionate and domestic
-tastes, which make them women in kindness. This
-union of qualities is fabled in their national legend of
-*Beauty and the Beast*, or long before, in the Greek legend
-of *Hermaphrodite*. The two sexes are co-present in the
-English mind. I apply to Britannia, queen of seas and
-colonies, the words in which her latest novelist portrays
-his heroine: "She is as mild as she is game, and as game
-as she is mild." The English delight in the antagonism
-which combines in one person the extremes of courage
-and tenderness. Nelson, dying at Trafalgar, sends his
-love to Lord Collingwood, and, like an innocent
-school-boy that goes to bed, says, "Kiss me, Hardy," and
-turns to sleep. Lord Collingwood, his comrade, was of
-a nature the most affectionate and domestic. Admiral
-Rodney's figure approached to delicacy and effeminacy,
-and he declared himself very sensible to fear, which he
-surmounted only by considerations of honor and public
-duty. Clarendon says, the Duke of Buckingham was so
-modest and gentle, that some courtiers attempted to
-put affronts on him, until they found that this modesty
-and effeminacy was only a mask for the most terrible
-determination. And Sir Edward Parry said of Sir John
-Franklin, that, "if he found Wellington Sound open,
-he explored it; for he was a man who never turned
-his back on a danger, yet of that tenderness, that he
-would not brush away a mosquito." Even for their
-highwaymen the same virtue is claimed, and Robin Hood
-comes described to us as *mitissimus prædonum*, the
-gentlest thief. But they know where their war-dogs lie.
-Cromwell, Blake, Marlborough, Chatham, Nelson, and
-Wellington are not to be trifled with, and the brutal
-strength which lies at the bottom of society, the animal
-ferocity of the quays and cock-pits, the bullies of the
-costermongers of Shoreditch, Seven Dials, and Spitalfields,
-they know how to wake up.
-
-They have a vigorous health, and last well into middle
-and old age. The old men are as red as roses, and still
-handsome. A clear skin, a peach-bloom complexion,
-and good teeth are found all over the island. They use
-a plentiful and nutritious diet. The operative cannot
-subsist on water-cresses. Beef, mutton, wheat-bread, and
-malt-liquors are universal among the first-class laborers.
-Good feeding is a chief point of national pride among
-the vulgar, and, in their caricatures, they represent the
-Frenchman as a poor, starved body. It is curious that
-Tacitus found the English beer already in use among the
-Germans: "They make from barley or wheat a drink
-corrupted into some resemblance to wine." Lord Chief
-Justice Fortescue in Henry VI.'s time, says, "The
-inhabitants of England drink no water, unless at certain
-times, on a religious score, and by way of penance." The
-extremes of poverty and ascetic penance, it would
-seem, never reach cold water in England. Wood, the
-antiquary, in describing the poverty and maceration of
-Father Lacey, an English Jesuit, does not deny him
-beer. He says, "his bed was under a thatching, and the
-way to it up a ladder; his fare was coarse; his drink, of
-a penny a gawn, or gallon."
-
-They have more constitutional energy than any other
-people. They think, with Henri Quatre, that manly
-exercises are the foundation of that elevation of mind
-which gives one nature ascendant over another; or, with
-the Arabs, that the days spent in the chase are not
-counted in the length of life. They box, run, shoot,
-ride, row, and sail from pole to pole. They eat and
-drink, and live jolly in the open air, putting a bar of
-solid sleep between day and day. They walk and ride
-as fast as they can, their heads bent forward, as if urged
-on some pressing affair. The French say, that Englishmen
-in the street always walk straight before them like
-mad dogs. Men and women walk with infatuation. As
-soon as he can handle a gun, hunting is the fine art of
-every Englishman of condition. They are the most
-voracious people of prey that ever existed. Every season
-turns out the aristocracy into the country, to shoot and
-fish. The more vigorous run out of the island to
-Europe, to America, to Asia, to Africa, and Australia, to
-hunt with fury by gun, by trap, by harpoon, by lasso,
-with clog, with horse, with elephant, or with dromedary,
-all the game that is in nature. These men have written
-the game-books of all countries, as Hawker, Scrope,
-Murray, Herbert, Maxwell, Gumming, and a host of
-travellers. The people at home are addicted to boxing,
-running, leaping, and rowing matches.
-
-I suppose, the dogs and horses must be thanked for the
-fact, that the men have muscles almost as tough and
-supple as their own. If in every efficient man, there is
-first a fine animal, in the English race it is of the best
-breed, a wealthy, juicy, broad-chested creature, steeped
-in ale and good cheer, and a little overloaded by his
-flesh. Men of animal nature rely, like animals, on their
-instincts. The Englishman associates well with dogs and
-horses. His attachment to the horse arises from the
-courage and address required to manage it. The horse
-finds out who is afraid of it, and does not disguise its
-opinion. Their young boiling clerks and lusty collegians
-like the company of horses better than the company of
-professors. I suppose, the horses are better company
-for them. The horse has more uses than Buffon noted.
-If you go into the streets, every driver in bus or dray
-is a bully, and, if I wanted a good troop of soldiers, I
-should recruit among the stables. Add a certain degree
-of refinement to the vivacity of these riders, and you
-obtain the precise quality which makes the men and
-women of polite society formidable.
-
-They come honestly by their horsemanship, with *Hengst*
-and *Horsa* for their Saxon founders. The other branch
-of their race had been Tartar nomads. The horse was all
-their wealth. The children were fed on mares' milk.
-The pastures of Tartary were still remembered by the
-tenacious practice of the Norsemen to eat horse-flesh at
-religious feasts. In the Danish invasions, the marauders
-seized upon horses where they landed, and were at once
-converted into a body of expert cavalry.
-
-At one time, this skill seems to have declined. Two
-centuries ago, the English horse never performed any
-eminent service beyond the seas; and the reason
-assigned was, that the genius of the English hath always
-more inclined them to foot-service, as pure and proper
-manhood, without any mixture; whilst, in a victory
-on horseback, the credit ought to be divided betwixt
-the man and his horse. But in two hundred years, a
-change has taken place. Now, they boast that they
-understand horses better than any other people in the world,
-and that their horses are become their second selves.
-
-"William the Conqueror being," says Camden, "better
-affected to beasts than to men, imposed heavy fines and
-punishments on those that should meddle with his game." The
-Saxon Chronicle says, "he loved the tall deer as if
-he were their father." And rich Englishmen have
-followed his example, according to their ability, ever since,
-in encroaching on the tillage and commons with their
-game-preserves. It is a proverb in England, that it is
-safer to shoot a man than a hare. The severity of the
-game-laws certainly indicates an extravagant sympathy of
-the nation with horses and hunters. The gentlemen are
-always on horseback, and have brought horses to an ideal
-perfection,--the English racer is a factitious breed. A
-score or two of mounted gentlemen may frequently be
-seen running like centaurs down a hill nearly as steep
-as the roof of a house. Every inn-room is lined with
-pictures of races; telegraphs communicate, every hour,
-tidings of the heats from Newmarket and Ascot: and the
-House of Commons adjourns over the 'Derby Day.'
-
-.. vspace:: 4
-
-CHAPTER V.--ABILITY.
-====================
-
-The Saxon and the Northman are both Scandinavians.
-History does not allow us to fix the limits of the
-application of these names with any accuracy; but from the
-residence of a portion of these people in France, and from
-some effect of that powerful soil on their blood and
-manners, the Norman has come popularly to represent in
-England the aristocratic, and the Saxon the democratic
-principle. And though, I doubt not, the nobles are of
-both tribes, and the workers of both, yet we are forced
-to use the names a little mythically, one to represent the
-worker, and the other the enjoyer.
-
-The island was a prize for the best race. Each of the
-dominant races tried its fortune in turn. The Phoenician,
-the Celt, and the Goth had already got in. The Roman
-came, but in the very day when his fortune culminated.
-He looked in the eyes of a new people that was to
-supplant his own. He disembarked his legions, erected his
-camps and towers,--presently he heard bad news from
-Italy, and worse and worse, every year: at last, he made
-a handsome compliment of roads and walls, and departed.
-But the Saxon seriously settled in the land, builded,
-tilled, fished, and traded, with German truth and
-adhesiveness. The Dane came, and divided with him. Last
-of all, the Norman, or French-Dane, arrived, and formally
-conquered, harried, and ruled the kingdom. A century
-later, it came out, that the Saxon had the most bottom
-and longevity, had managed to make the victor speak the
-language and accept the law and usage of the victim;
-forced the baron to dictate Saxon terms to Norman
-kings; and, step by step, got all the essential securities
-of civil liberty invented and confirmed. The genius of
-the race and the genius of the place conspired to this
-effect. The island is lucrative to free labor, but not
-worth possession on other terms. The race was so
-intellectual, that a feudal or military tenure could not last
-longer than the war. The power of the Saxon-Danes, so
-thoroughly beaten in the war, that the name of English
-and villein were synonymous, yet so vivacious as to extort
-charters from the kings, stood on the strong personality
-of these people. Sense and economy must rule in a world
-which is made of sense and economy, and the banker,
-with his seven per cent, drives the earl out of his castle.
-A nobility of soldiers cannot keep down a commonalty
-of shrewd scientific persons. What signifies a pedigree
-of a hundred links, against a cotton-spinner with steam
-in his mill; or, against a company of broad-shouldered
-Liverpool merchants, for whom Stephenson and Brunel
-are contriving locomotives and a tubular bridge?
-
-These Saxons are the hands of mankind. They have
-the taste for toil, a distaste for pleasure or repose,
-and the telescopic appreciation of distant gain. They
-are the wealth-makers,--and by dint of mental faculty
-which has its own conditions. The Saxon works after
-liking, or, only for himself; and to set him at work, and
-to begin to draw his monstrous values out of barren
-Britain, all dishonor, fret, and barrier must be removed,
-and then his energies begin to play.
-
-The Scandinavian fancied himself surrounded by Trolls,--a
-kind of goblin men, with vast power of work and
-skilful production,--divine stevedores, carpenters,
-reapers, smiths, and masons, swift to reward every kindness
-done them, with gifts of gold and silver. In all English
-history, this dream comes to pass. Certain Trolls or
-working brains, under the names of Alfred, Bede, Caxton,
-Bracton, Camden, Drake, Selden, Dugdale, Newton,
-Gibbon, Brindley, Watt, Wedgwood, dwell in the
-troll-mounts of Britain, and turn the sweat of their face to
-power and renown.
-
-If the race is good, so is the place. Nobody landed
-on this spell-bound island with impunity. The
-enchantments of barren shingle and rough weather transformed
-every adventurer into a laborer. Each vagabond that
-arrived bent his neck to the yoke of gain, or found the
-air too tense for him. The strong survived, the weaker
-went to the ground. Even the pleasure-hunters and sots
-of England are of a tougher texture. A hard
-temperament had been formed by Saxon and Saxon-Dane, and
-such of these French or Normans as could reach it, were
-naturalized in every sense.
-
-All the admirable expedients or means hit upon in
-England must be looked at as growths or irresistible
-offshoots of the expanding mind of the race. A man of that
-brain thinks and acts thus; and his neighbor, being
-afflicted with the same kind of brain, though he is rich,
-and called a baron, or a duke, thinks the same thing, and
-is ready to allow the justice of the thought and act in his
-retainer or tenant, though sorely against his baronial or
-ducal will.
-
-The island was renowned in antiquity for its breed of
-mastiffs, so fierce, that when their teeth were set, you
-must cut their heads off to part them. The man was
-like his dog. The people have that nervous bilious
-temperament, which is known by medical men to resist
-every means employed to make its possessor subservient
-to the will of others. The English game is main force to
-main force, the planting of foot to foot, fair play and
-open field,--a rough tug without trick or dodging, till
-one or both come to pieces. King Ethelwald spoke the
-language of his race, when he planted himself at
-Wimborne, and said, 'he would do one of two things, or there
-live, or there lie.' They hate craft and subtlety. They
-neither poison, nor waylay, nor assassinate; and, when
-they have pounded each other to a poultice, they will
-shake hands and be friends for the remainder of their
-lives.
-
-You shall trace these Gothic touches at school, at
-country fairs, at the hustings, and in parliament. No
-artifice, no breach of truth and plain dealing,--not so
-much as secret ballot, is suffered in the island. In
-parliament, the tactics of the opposition is to resist every
-step of the government, by a pitiless attack; and in a
-bargain, no prospect of advantage is so dear to the
-merchant, as the thought of being tricked is mortifying.
-
-Sir Kenelm Digby, a courtier of Charles and James,
-who won the sea-fight of Scanderoon, was a model
-Englishman in his day. "His person was handsome and
-gigantic, he had so graceful elocution and noble address,
-that, had he been dropt out of the clouds in any part
-of the world, he would have made himself respected:
-he was skilled in six tongues, and master of arts and
-arms." [#]_ Sir Kenelm wrote a book, "Of Bodies and
-of Souls," in which he propounds, that "syllogisms do
-breed or rather are all the variety of man's life. They
-are the steps by which we walk in all our businesses.
-Man, as he is man, doth nothing else but weave such
-chains. Whatsoever he doth, swarving from this work,
-lie doth as deficient from the nature of man: and, if he
-do aught beyond this, by breaking out into divers sorts
-of exterior actions, he findeth, nevertheless, in this linked
-sequel of simple discourses, the art, the cause, the rule,
-the bounds, and the model of it." [#]_
-
-
-.. [#] Antony Wood.
-
-.. [#] Man's Soule, p. 29.
-
-
-There spoke the genius of the English people. There
-is a necessity on them to be logical. They would hardly
-greet the good that did not logically fall,--as if it
-excluded their own merit, or shook their understandings.
-They are jealous of minds that have much facility
-of association, from an instinctive fear that the seeing
-many relations to their thought might impair this serial
-continuity and lucrative concentration. They are
-impatient of genius, or of minds addicted to contemplation,
-and cannot conceal their contempt for sallies of thought,
-however lawful, whose steps they cannot count by their
-wonted rule. Neither do they reckon better a syllogism
-that ends in syllogism. For they have a supreme eye to
-facts, and theirs is a logic that brings salt to soup,
-hammer to nail, oar to boat, the logic of cooks, carpenters,
-and chemists, following the sequence of nature, and one
-on which words make no impression. Their mind is not
-dazzled by its own means, but locked and bolted to
-results. They love men, who, like Samuel Johnson, a
-doctor in the schools, would jump out of his syllogism
-the instant his major proposition was in danger, to save
-that, at all hazards. Their practical vision is spacious,
-and they can hold many threads without entangling
-them. All the steps they orderly take; but with the
-high logic of never confounding the minor and major
-proposition; keeping their eye on their aim, in all the
-complicity and delay incident to the several series of
-means they employ. There is room in their minds for
-this and that,--a science of degrees. In the courts, the
-independence of the judges and the loyalty of the suitors
-are equally excellent. In Parliament, they have hit on
-that capital invention of freedom, a constitutional
-opposition. And when courts and Parliament are both deaf,
-the plaintiff is not silenced. Calm, patient, his weapon
-of defence from year to year is the obstinate reproduction
-of the grievance, with calculations and estimates.
-But, meantime, he is drawing numbers and money to his
-opinion, resolved that if all remedy fails, right of
-revolution is at the bottom of his charter-box. They are
-bound to see their measure carried, and stick to it
-through ages of defeat.
-
-Into this English logic, however, an infusion of justice
-enters, not so apparent in other races,--a belief in the
-existence of two sides, and the resolution to see fair play.
-There is on every question an appeal from the assertion
-of the parties to the proof of what is asserted. They are
-impious in their scepticism of a theory, but kiss the dust
-before a fact. Is it a machine, is it a charter, is it a
-boxer in the ring, is it a candidate on the hustings,--the
-universe of Englishmen will suspend their judgment,
-until the trial can be had. They are not to be led by
-a phrase, they want a working plan, a working machine, a
-working constitution, and will sit out the trial, and abide
-by the issue, and reject all preconceived theories. In
-politics they put blunt questions, which must be
-answered; who is to pay the taxes? what will you do for
-trade? what for corn? what for the spinner?
-
-This singular fairness and its results strike the French
-with surprise. Philip de Commines says: "Now, in my
-opinion, among all the sovereignties I know in the world,
-that in which the public good is best attended to, and the
-least violence exercised on the people, is that of
-England." Life is safe, and personal rights; and what is
-freedom, without security? whilst, in France, 'fraternity,'
-'equality,' and 'indivisible unity' are names for
-assassination. Montesquieu said: "England is the
-freest country in the world. If a man in England had
-as many enemies as hairs on his head, no harm would
-happen to him."
-
-Their self-respect, their faith in causation, and their
-realistic logic or coupling of means to ends, have given
-them the leadership of the modern world. Montesquieu
-said, "No people have true common-sense but those who
-are born in England." This common-sense is a perception
-of all the conditions of our earthly existence, of
-laws that can be stated, and of laws that cannot be
-stated, or that are learned only by practice, in which
-allowance for friction is made. They are impious in
-their scepticism of theory, and in high departments they
-are cramped and sterile. But the unconditional surrender
-to facts, and the choice of means to reach their ends,
-are as admirable as with ants and bees.
-
-The bias of the nation is a passion for utility. They
-love the lever, the screw, and pulley, the Flanders
-draught-horse, the waterfall, wind-mills, tide-mills; the sea and
-the wind to bear their freight-ships. More than the
-diamond Koh-i-noor, which glitters among their
-crown-jewels, they prize that dull pebble which is wiser than
-a man, whose poles turn themselves to the poles of the
-world, and whose axis is parallel to the axis of the
-world. Now, their toys are steam and galvanism. They
-are heavy at the fine arts, but adroit at the coarse; not
-good in jewelry or mosaics, but the best iron-masters,
-colliers, wool-combers, and tanners in Europe. They
-apply themselves to agriculture, to draining, to resisting
-encroachments of sea, wind, travelling sands, cold and
-wet subsoil; to fishery, to manufacture of indispensable
-staples,--salt, plumbago, leather, wool, glass, pottery,
-and brick,--to bees and silk-worms; and by their
-steady combinations they succeed. A manufacturer sits
-down to dinner in a suit of clothes which was wool on
-a sheep's back at sunrise. You dine with a gentleman on
-venison, pheasant, quail, pigeons, poultry, mushrooms, and
-pineapples, all the growth of his estate. They are neat
-husbands for ordering all their tools pertaining to house
-and field. All are well kept. There is no want and no
-waste. They study use and fitness in their building, in
-the order of their dwellings, and in their dress. The
-Frenchman invented the ruffle, the Englishman added
-the shirt. The Englishman wears a sensible coat
-buttoned to the chin, of rough but solid and lasting texture.
-If he is a lord, he dresses a little worse than a commoner.
-They have diffused the taste for plain substantial hats,
-shoes, and coats through Europe. They think him the
-best dressed man, whose dress is so fit for his use that
-you cannot notice or remember to describe it.
-
-They secure the essentials in their diet, in their arts
-and manufactures. Every article of cutlery shows, in its
-shape, thought and long experience of workmen. They
-put the expense in the right place, as, in their sea-steamers,
-in the solidity of the machinery and the strength of
-the boat. The admirable equipment of their arctic ships
-carries London to the pole. They build roads, aqueducts,
-warm and ventilate houses. And they have impressed
-their directness and practical habit on modern civilization.
-
-In trade, the Englishman believes that nobody breaks
-who ought not to break; and, that, if he do not make
-trade everything, it will make him nothing; and acts on
-this belief. The spirit of system, attention to details, and
-the subordination of details, or, the not driving things too
-finely (which is charged on the Germans), constitute that
-despatch of business, which makes the mercantile power
-of England.
-
-In war, the Englishman looks to his means. He is of
-the opinion of Civilis, his German ancestor, whom Tacitus
-reports as holding "that the gods are on the side of the
-strongest";--a sentence which Bonaparte unconsciously
-translated, when he said, "that he had noticed, that
-Providence always favored the heaviest battalion." Their
-military science propounds that if the weight of the advancing
-column is greater than that of the resisting, the latter is
-destroyed. Therefore Wellington, when he came to the
-army in Spain, had every man weighed, first with
-accoutrements, and then without; believing that the force of
-an army depended on the weight and power of the
-individual soldiers, in spite of cannon. Lord Palmerston
-told the House of Commons, that more care is taken of
-the health and comfort of English troops than of any
-other troops in the world; and that hence the English can
-put more men into the ranks, on the day of action, on the
-field of battle, than any other army. Before the bombardment
-of the Danish forts in the Baltic, Nelson spent day
-after day, himself in the boats, on the exhausting service
-of sounding the channel. Clerk of Eldin's celebrated
-manoeuvre of breaking the line of sea-battle, and Nelson's
-feat of *doubling*, or stationing his ships one on the outer
-bow, and another on the outer quarter of each of the
-enemy's, were only translations into naval tactics of
-Bonaparte's rule of concentration. Lord Collingwood
-was accustomed to tell his men, that, if they could fire
-three well-directed broadsides in five minutes, no vessel
-could resist them; and, from constant practice, they came
-to do it in three minutes and a half.
-
-But conscious that no race of better men exists, they
-rely most on the simplest means; and do not like
-ponderous and difficult tactics, but delight to bring the affair
-hand to hand, where the victory lies with the strength,
-courage, and endurance of the individual combatants.
-They adopt every improvement in rig, in motor, in
-weapons, but they fundamentally believe that the best
-stratagem in naval war is to lay your ship close alongside of
-the enemy's ship, and bring all your guns to bear on him,
-until you or he go to the bottom. This is the old fashion,
-which never goes out of fashion, neither in nor out of
-England.
-
-It is not usually a point of honor, nor a religious
-sentiment, and never any whim that they will shed their
-blood for; but usually property, and right measured by
-property, that breeds revolution. They have no Indian
-taste for a tomahawk-dance, no French taste for a badge
-or a proclamation. The Englishman is peaceably
-minding his business and earning his day's wages. But if
-you offer to lay hand on his day's wages, on his cow, or
-his right in common, or his shop, he will fight to the
-Judgment. Magna-charta, jury-trial, *habeas-corpus*,
-star-chamber, ship-money, Popery, Plymouth colony, American
-Revolution, are all questions involving a yeoman's right
-to his dinner, and, except as touching that, would not
-have lashed the British nation to rage and revolt.
-
-Whilst they are thus instinct with a spirit of order,
-and of calculation, it must be owned they are capable of
-larger views; but the indulgence is expensive to them,
-costs great crises, or accumulations of mental power.
-In common, the horse works best with blinders.
-Nothing is more in the line of English thought, than our
-unvarnished Connecticut question, "Pray, sir, how do
-you get your living when you are at home?" The
-questions of freedom, of taxation, of privilege, are money
-questions. Heavy fellows, steeped in beer and fleshpots,
-they are hard of hearing and dim of sight. Their
-drowsy minds need to be flagellated by war and trade and
-politics and persecution. They cannot well read a
-principle, except by the light of fagots and of burning towns.
-
-Tacitus says of the Germans, "powerful only in sudden
-efforts, they are impatient of toil and labor." This highly
-destined race, if it had not somewhere added the chamber
-of patience to its brain, would not have built London.
-I know not from which of the tribes and temperaments
-that went to the composition of the people this tenacity
-was supplied, but they clinch every nail they drive.
-They have no running for luck, and no immoderate
-speed. They spend largely on their fabric, and await the
-slow return. Their leather lies tanning seven years in
-the vat. At Rogers's mills, in Sheffield, where I was
-shown the process of making a razor and a penknife, I
-was told there is no luck in making good steel; that
-they make no mistakes, every blade in the hundred and
-in the thousand is good. And that is characteristic of
-all their work,--no more is attempted than is done.
-
-When Thor and his companions arrive at Utgard, he
-is told that "nobody is permitted to remain here, unless
-he understand some art, and excel in it all other men." The
-same question is still put to the posterity of Thor.
-A nation of laborers, every man is trained to some one
-art or detail, and aims at perfection in that: not content
-unless he has something in which he thinks he surpasses
-all other men. He would rather not do anything at all,
-than not do it well. I suppose no people have such
-thoroughness: from the highest to the lowest, every man
-meaning to be master of his art.
-
-"To show capacity," a Frenchman described as the
-end of a speech in debate: "no," said an Englishman,
-"but to set your shoulder at the wheel,--to advance the
-business." Sir Samuel Romilly refused to speak in
-popular assemblies, confining himself to the House of
-Commons, where a measure can be carried by a speech. The
-business of the House of Commons is conducted by a few
-persons, but these are hard-worked. Sir Robert Peel
-"knew the Blue Books by heart." His colleagues and
-rivals carry Hansard in their heads. The high civil and
-legal offices are not beds of ease, but posts which exact
-frightful amounts of mental labor. Many of the great
-leaders, like Pitt, Canning, Castlereagh, Romilly, are
-soon worked to death. They are excellent judges in
-England of a good worker, and when they find one, like
-Clarendon, Sir Philip Warwick, Sir William Coventry,
-Ashley, Burke, Thurlow, Mansfield, Pitt, Eldon, Peel, or
-Russell, there is nothing too good or too high for him.
-
-They have a wonderful heat in the pursuit of a public
-aim. Private persons exhibit, in scientific and antiquarian
-researches, the same pertinacity as the nation showed in
-the coalitions in which it yoked Europe against the
-Empire of Bonaparte, one after the other defeated, and
-still renewed, until the sixth hurled him from his seat.
-
-Sir John Herschel, in completion of the work of his
-father, who had made the catalogue of the stars of the
-northern hemisphere, expatriated himself for years at the
-Cape of Good Hope, finished his inventory of the southern
-heaven, came home, and redacted it in eight years more;--a
-work whose value does not begin until thirty years
-have elapsed, and thenceforward a record to all ages of
-the highest import. The Admiralty sent out the Arctic
-expeditions year after year, in search of Sir John
-Franklin, until, at last, they have threaded their way through
-polar pack and Behring's Straits, and solved the
-geographical problem. Lord Elgin, at Athens, saw the
-imminent ruin of the Greek remains, set up his scaffoldings,
-in spite of epigrams, and, after five years' labor to
-collect them, got his marbles on shipboard. The ship
-struck a rock, and went to the bottom. He had them
-all fished up, by divers, at a vast expense, and brought
-to London; not knowing that Haydon, Fuseli, and
-Canova, and all good heads in all the world, were to be
-his applauders. In the same spirit, were the excavation
-and research by Sir Charles Fellowes, for the Xanthian
-monument; and of Layard, for his Nineveh sculptures.
-
-The nation sits in the immense city they have builded,
-a London extended into every man's mind, though he
-live in Van Dieman's Land or Capetown. Faithful
-performance of what is undertaken to be performed, they
-honor in themselves, and exact in others, as certificate of
-equality with themselves. The modern world is theirs.
-They have made and make it day by day. The commercial
-relations of the world are so intimately drawn to
-London, that every dollar on earth contributes to the
-strength of the English government. And if all the
-wealth in the planet should perish by war or deluge, they
-know themselves competent to replace it.
-
-They have approved their Saxon blood, by their
-sea-going qualities; their descent from Odin's smiths, by
-their hereditary skill in working in iron; their British
-birth, by husbandry and immense wheat harvests; and
-justified their occupancy of the centre of habitable land,
-by their supreme ability and cosmopolitan spirit. They
-have tilled, builded, forged, spun, and woven. They have
-made the island a thoroughfare; and London a shop, a
-law-court, a record-office, and scientific bureau, inviting
-to strangers; a sanctuary to refugees of every political
-and religious opinion; and such a city, that almost every
-active man, in any nation, finds himself, at one time or
-other, forced to visit it.
-
-In every path of practical activity, they have gone even
-with the best. There is no secret of war, in which they
-have not shown mastery. The steam-chamber of Watt,
-the locomotive of Stephenson, the cotton-mule of Roberts,
-perform the labor of the world. There is no department
-of literature, of science, or of useful art, in which they
-have not produced a first-rate book. It is England,
-whose opinion is waited for on the merit of a new
-invention, an improved science. And in the complications of
-the trade and politics of their vast empire, they have been
-equal to every exigency, with counsel and with conduct.
-Is it their luck, or is it in the chambers of their brain,--it
-is their commercial advantage, that whatever light
-appears in better method or happy invention, breaks out *in
-their race*. They are a family to which a destiny attaches,
-and the Banshee has sworn that a male heir shall never
-be wanting. They have a wealth of men to fill important
-posts, and the vigilance of party criticism insures the
-selection of a competent person.
-
-A proof of the energy of the British people is the
-highly artificial construction of the whole fabric. The
-climate and geography, I said, were factitious, as if
-the hands of man had arranged the conditions. The
-same character pervades the whole kingdom. Bacon
-said, "Rome was a state not subject to paradoxes"; but
-England subsists by antagonisms and contradictions.
-The foundations of its greatness are the rolling waves;
-and, from first to last, it is a museum of anomalies. This
-foggy and rainy country furnishes the world with
-astronomical observations. Its short rivers do not afford
-water-power, but the land shakes under the thunder of
-the mills. There is no gold-mine of any importance, but
-there is more gold in England than in all other countries.
-It is too far north for the culture of the vine, but the
-wines of all countries are in its docks. The French
-Comte de Lauraguais said, "no fruit ripens in England
-but a baked apple"; but oranges and pineapples are as
-cheap in London as in the Mediterranean. The
-Mark-Lane Express, or the Custom-House Returns bear out
-to the letter the vaunt of Pope,--
-
- | "Let India boast her palms, nor envy we
- | The weeping amber, nor the spicy tree,
- | While, by our oaks, those precious loads are borne,
- | And realms commanded which those trees adorn."
- |
-
-The native cattle are extinct, but the island is full
-of artificial breeds. The agriculturist Bakewell created
-sheep and cows and horses to order, and breeds in which
-everything was omitted but what is economical. The cow
-is sacrificed to her bag, the ox to his surloin.
-Stall-feeding makes sperm-mills of the cattle, and converts the
-stable to a chemical factory. The rivers, lakes, and ponds,
-too much fished, or obstructed by factories, are artificially
-filled with the eggs of salmon, turbot, and herring.
-
-Chat Moss and the fens of Lincolnshire and Cambridgeshire
-are unhealthy and too barren to pay rent. By
-cylindrical tiles, and gutta-percha tubes, five millions of
-acres of bad land have been drained and put on equality
-with the best, for rape-culture and grass. The climate
-too, which was already believed to have become, milder
-and drier by the enormous consumption of coal, is so far
-reached by this new action, that fogs and storms are said
-to disappear. In due course, all England will be drained,
-and rise a second time out of the waters. The latest step
-was to call in the aid of steam to agriculture. Steam is
-almost an Englishman. I do not know but they will
-send him to Parliament, next, to make laws. He weaves,
-forges, saws, pounds, fans, and now he must pump, grind,
-dig, and plough for the farmer. The markets created by
-the manufacturing population have erected agriculture
-into a great thriving and spending industry. The value
-of the houses in Britain is equal to the value of the soil.
-Artificial aids of all kinds are cheaper than the natural
-resources. No man can afford to walk, when the parliamentary
-train carries him for a penny a mile. Gas-burners
-are cheaper than daylight in numberless floors in
-the cities. All the houses in London buy their water.
-The English trade does not exist for the exportation of
-native products, but on its manufactures, or the making
-well everything which is ill made elsewhere. They make
-ponchos for the Mexican, bandannas for the Hindoo,
-ginseng for the Chinese, beads for the Indian, laces for the
-Flemings, telescopes for astronomers, cannons for kings.
-
-The Board of Trade caused the best models of Greece
-and Italy to be placed within the reach of every
-manufacturing population. They caused to be translated from
-foreign languages and illustrated by elaborate drawings,
-the most approved works of Munich, Berlin, and Paris.
-They have ransacked Italy to find new forms, to add a
-grace to the products of their looms, their potteries, and
-their foundries. [#]_
-
-.. [#] See Memorial of H. Greenough, p. 66, New York, 1853.
-
-The nearer we look, the more artificial is their social
-system. Their law is a network of fictions. Their
-property, a scrip or certificate of right to interest on money
-that no man ever saw. Their social classes are made by
-statute. Their ratios of power and representation are
-historical and legal. The last reform-bill took away
-political power from a mound, a ruin, and a stone-wall, whilst
-Birmingham and Manchester, whose mills paid for the
-wars of Europe, had no representative. Purity in the
-elective Parliament is secured by the purchase of
-seats. [#]_ Foreign power is kept by armed colonies; power at home,
-by a standing army of police. The pauper lives better
-than the free laborer; the thief better than the pauper;
-and the transported felon better than the one under
-imprisonment. The crimes are factitious, as smuggling,
-poaching, non-conformity, heresy, and treason. Better,
-they say in England, kill a man than a hare. The
-sovereignty of the seas is maintained by the impressment
-of seamen. "The impressment of seamen," said Lord
-Eldon, "is the life of our navy." Solvency is maintained
-by means of a national debt, on the principle, "if you
-will not lend me the money, how can I pay you?" For
-the administration of justice, Sir Samuel Romilly's
-expedient for clearing the arrears of business in Chancery,
-was, the chancellor's staying away entirely from his
-court. Their system of education is factitious. The
-Universities galvanize dead languages into a semblance
-of life. Their church is artificial. The manners and
-customs of society are artificial;--made-up men with
-made-up manners;--and thus the whole is Birminghamized,
-and we have a nation whose existence is a work of
-art;--a cold, barren, almost arctic isle, being made the
-most fruitful, luxurious, and imperial land in the whole
-earth.
-
-.. [#] Sir S. Romilly, purest of English patriots, decided that
- the only independent mode of entering Parliament was to buy
- a seat, and he bought Horsham.
-
-Man in England submits to be a product of political
-economy. On a bleak moor, a mill is built, a banking-house
-is opened, and men come in, as water in a
-sluice-way, and towns and cities rise. Man is made as a
-Birmingham button. The rapid doubling of the population
-dates from Watt's steam-engine. A landlord, who owns
-a province, says, "the tenantry are unprofitable; let me
-have sheep." He unroofs the houses, and ships the
-population to America. The nation is accustomed to the
-instantaneous creation of wealth. It is the maxim of their
-economists, "that the greater part in value of the wealth
-now existing in England has been produced by human
-hands within the last twelve months." Meantime, three or
-four days' rain will reduce hundreds to starving in London.
-
-One secret of their power is their mutual good
-understanding. Not only good minds are born among them,
-but all the people have good minds. Every nation has
-yielded some good wit, if, as has chanced to many tribes,
-only one. But the intellectual organization of the
-English admits a communicableness of knowledge and ideas
-among them all. An electric touch by any of their
-national ideas, melts them into one family, and brings
-the hoards of power which their individuality is always
-hiving, into use and play for all. Is it the smallness of
-the country, or is it the pride and affection of race,--they
-have solidarity, or responsibleness, and trust in each
-other.
-
-Their minds, like wool, admit of a dye which is more
-lasting than the cloth. They embrace their cause with
-more tenacity than their life. Though not military, yet
-every common subject by the poll is fit to make a
-soldier of. These private reserved mute family-men can
-adopt a public end with all their heat, and this strength
-of affection makes the romance of their heroes. The
-difference of rank does not divide the national heart.
-The Danish poet Oehlenschlager complains, that who
-writes in Danish writes to two hundred readers. In
-Germany, there is one speech for the learned, and another
-for the masses, to that extent, that, it is said, no
-sentiment or phrase from the works of any great German
-writer is ever heard among the lower classes. But in
-England, the language of the noble is the language of
-the poor. In Parliament, in pulpits, in theatres, when
-the speakers rise to thought and passion, the language
-becomes idiomatic; the people in the street best
-understand the best words. And their language seems drawn
-from the Bible, the common law, and the works of
-Shakspeare, Bacon, Milton, Pope, Young, Cowper, Burns, and
-Scott. The island has produced two or three of the
-greatest men that ever existed, but they were not solitary
-in their own time. Men quickly embodied what Newton
-found out, in Greenwich observatories, and practical
-navigation. The boys knew all that Hutton knew of
-strata, or Dalton of atoms, or Harvey of blood-vessels;
-and these studies, once dangerous, are in fashion. So
-what is invented or known in agriculture, or in trade, or
-in war, or in art, or in literature, and antiquities. A
-great ability, not amassed on a few giants, but poured
-into the general mind, so that each of them could at a
-pinch stand in the shoes of the other; and they are more
-bound in character than differenced in ability or in rank.
-The laborer is a possible lord. The lord is a possible
-basket-maker. Every man carries the English system in
-his brain, knows what is confided to him, and does
-therein the best he can. The chancellor carries England
-on his mace, the midshipman at the point of his dirk, the
-smith on his hammer, the cook in the bowl of his spoon;
-the postilion cracks his whip for England, and the sailor
-times his oars to "God save the King!" The very
-felons have their pride in each other's English stanchness.
-In politics and in war, they hold together as by
-hooks of steel. The charm in Nelson's history is, the
-unselfish greatness; the assurance of being supported to
-the uttermost by those whom he supports to the uttermost.
-Whilst they are some ages ahead of the rest of
-the world in the art of living; whilst in some directions
-they do not represent the modern spirit, but constitute
-it,--this vanguard of civility and power they coldly hold,
-marching in phalanx, lock-step, foot after foot, file after
-file of heroes, ten thousand deep.
-
-.. vspace:: 4
-
-CHAPTER VI.--MANNERS.
-=====================
-
-I find the Englishman to be him of all men who
-stands firmest in his shoes. They have in themselves
-what they value in their horses, mettle and bottom. On
-the day of my arrival at Liverpool, a gentleman, in
-describing to me the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, happened
-to say, "Lord Clarendon has pluck like a cock, and will
-fight till he dies"; and, what I heard first I heard last,
-and the one thing the English value, is *pluck*. The
-word is not beautiful, but on the quality they signify by
-it the nation is unanimous. The cabmen have it; the
-merchants have it; the bishops have it; the women have
-it; the journals have it; the Times newspaper, they say,
-is the pluckiest thing in England, and Sidney Smith had
-made it a proverb, that little Lord John Russell, the
-minister, would take the command of the Channel fleet
-to-morrow.
-
-They require you to dare to be of your own opinion,
-and they hate the practical cowards who cannot in affairs
-answer directly yes or no. They dare to displease, nay,
-they will let you break all the commandments, if you do
-it natively, and with spirit. You must be somebody;
-then you may do this or that, as you will.
-
-Machinery has been applied to all work, and carried to
-such perfection, that little is left for the men but to mind
-the engines and feed the furnaces. But the machines
-require punctual service, and as they never tire, they
-prove too much for their tenders. Mines, forges, mills,
-breweries, railroads, steam-pump, steam-plough, drill of
-regiments, drill of police, rule of court, and shop-rule,
-have operated to give a mechanical regularity to all the
-habit and action of men. A terrible machine has
-possessed itself of the ground, the air, the men and women,
-and hardly even thought is free.
-
-The mechanical might and organization require in the
-people constitution and answering spirits; and he who
-goes among them must have some weight of metal. At
-last, you take your hint from the fury of life you find,
-and say, one thing is plain, this is no country for
-faint-hearted people: don't creep about diffidently; make up
-your mind; take your own course, and you shall find
-respect and furtherance.
-
-It requires, men say, a good constitution to travel in
-Spain. I say as much of England, for other cause,
-simply on account of the vigor and brawn of the people.
-Nothing but the most serious business could give
-one any counterweight to these Baresarks, though they
-were only to order eggs and muffins for their breakfast.
-The Englishman speaks with all his body. His elocution
-is stomachic,--as the American's is labial. The
-Englishman is very petulant and precise about his
-accommodation at inns, and on the roads; a quiddle about his
-toast and his chop, and every species of convenience,
-and loud and pungent in his expressions of impatience at
-any neglect. His vivacity betrays itself, at all points, in
-his manners, in his respiration, and the inarticulate noises
-he makes in clearing the throat,--all significant of burly
-strength. He has stamina; he can take the initiative in
-emergencies. He has that *aplomb*, which results from a
-good adjustment of the moral and physical nature, and
-the obedience of all the powers to the will; as if the
-axes of his eyes were united to his backbone, and only
-moved with the trunk.
-
-This vigor appears in the incuriosity, and stony neglect,
-each of every other. Each man walks, eats, drinks,
-shaves, dresses, gesticulates, and, in every manner, acts,
-and suffers without reference to the bystanders, in his own
-fashion, only careful not to interfere with them, or annoy
-them; not that he is trained to neglect the eyes of his
-neighbors,--he is really occupied with his own affair,
-and does not think of them. Every man in this polished
-country consults only his convenience, as much as a
-solitary pioneer in Wisconsin. I know not where any
-personal eccentricity is so freely allowed, and no man gives
-himself any concern with it. An Englishman walks in
-a pouring rain, swinging his closed umbrella like a
-walking-stick; wears a wig, or a shawl, or a saddle, or stands
-on his head, and no remark is made. And as he has
-been doing this for several generations, it is now in the
-blood.
-
-In short, every one of these islanders is an island
-himself, safe, tranquil, incommunicable. In a company of
-strangers, you would think him deaf; his eyes never
-wander from his table and newspaper. He is never betrayed
-into any curiosity or unbecoming emotion. They have
-all been trained in one severe school of manners, and
-never put off the harness. He does not give his hand.
-He does not let you meet his eye. It is almost an
-affront to look a man in the face, without being
-introduced. In mixed or in select companies they do not
-introduce persons; so that a presentation is a
-circumstance as valid as a contract. Introductions are
-sacraments. He withholds his name. At the hotel, he is
-hardly willing to whisper it to the clerk at the
-book-office. If he give you his private address on a card,
-it is like an avowal of friendship; and his bearing on
-being introduced is cold, even though he is seeking
-your acquaintance, and is studying how he shall serve
-you.
-
-It was an odd proof of this impressive energy, that,
-in my lectures, I hesitated to read and threw out for its
-impertinence many a disparaging phrase, which I had
-been accustomed to spin, about poor, thin, unable
-mortals; so much had the fine physique and the personal
-vigor of this robust race worked on my imagination.
-
-I happened to arrive in England at the moment of
-a commercial crisis. But it was evident that, let who
-will fail, England will not. These people have sat here
-a thousand years, and here will continue to sit. They
-will not break up, or arrive at any desperate revolution,
-like their neighbors; for they have as much energy, as
-much continence of character, as they ever had. The
-power and possession which surround them are their own
-creation, and they exert the same commanding industry
-at this moment.
-
-They are positive, methodical, cleanly, and formal,
-loving routine, and conventional ways; loving truth and
-religion, to be sure, but inexorable on points of form.
-All the world praises the comfort and private
-appointments of an English inn, and of English households.
-You are sure of neatness and of personal decorum. A
-Frenchman may possibly be clean: an Englishman is
-conscientiously clean. A certain order and complete
-propriety is found in his dress and in his belongings.
-
-Born in a harsh and wet climate, which keeps him in
-doors whenever he is at rest, and being of an affectionate
-and loyal temper, he dearly loves his house. If he is
-rich, he buys a demesne, and builds a hall; if he is in
-middle condition, he spares no expense on his house.
-Without, it is all planted; within, it is wainscoted,
-carved, curtained, hung with pictures, and filled with
-good furniture. 'T is a passion which survives all others,
-to deck and improve it. Hither he brings all that is rare
-and costly, and with the national tendency to sit fast in
-the same spot for many generations, it comes to be, in
-the course of time, a museum of heirlooms, gifts, and
-trophies of the adventures and exploits of the family.
-He is very fond of silver plate, and, though he have no
-gallery of portraits of his ancestors, he has of their
-punch-bowls and porringers. Incredible amounts of
-plate are found in good houses, and the poorest have
-some spoon or saucepan, gift of a godmother, saved out
-of better times.
-
-An English family consists of a few persons, who,
-from youth to age, are found revolving within a few feet
-of each other, as if tied by some invisible ligature, tense
-as that cartilage which we have seen attaching the two
-Siamese. England produces under favorable conditions
-of ease and culture the finest women in the world.
-And, as the men are affectionate and true-hearted, the
-women inspire and refine them. Nothing can be more
-delicate without being fantastical, nothing more firm and
-based in nature and sentiment, than the courtship and
-mutual carriage of the sexes. The song of 1596 says,
-"The wife of every Englishman is counted blest." The
-sentiment of Imogen in Cymbeline is copied from
-English nature; and not less the Portia of Brutus, the Kate
-Percy, and the Desdemona. The romance does not
-exceed the height of noble passion in Mrs. Lucy
-Hutchinson, or in Lady Russell, or even as one discerns
-through the plain prose of Pepys's Diary, the sacred habit
-of an English wife. Sir Samuel Romilly could not bear
-the death of his wife. Every class has its noble and
-tender examples.
-
-Domesticity is the taproot which enables the nation to
-branch wide and high. The motive and end of their
-trade and empire is to guard the independence and
-privacy of their homes. Nothing so much marks their
-manners as the concentration on their household ties.
-This domesticity is carried into court and camp.
-Wellington governed India and Spain and his own troops,
-and fought battles like a good family-man, paid his debts,
-and, though general of an army in Spain, could not stir
-abroad for fear of public creditors. This taste for house
-and parish merits has of course its doting and foolish
-side. Mr. Cobbett attributes the huge popularity of
-Perceval, prime minister in 1810, to the fact that he
-was wont to go to church every Sunday, with a large
-quarto gilt prayer-book under one arm, his wife hanging
-on the other, and followed by a long brood of children.
-
-They keep their old customs, costumes, and pomps,
-their wig and mace, sceptre and crown. The Middle
-Ages still lurk in the streets of London. The Knights
-of the Bath take oath to defend injured ladies; the
-gold-stick-in-waiting survives. They repeated the ceremonies
-of the eleventh century in the coronation of the present
-Queen. A hereditary tenure is natural to them. Offices,
-farms, trades, and traditions descend so. Their leases
-run for a hundred and a thousand years. Terms of
-service and partnership are lifelong, or are inherited.
-"Holdship has been with me," said Lord Eldon,
-"eight-and-twenty years, knows all my business and
-books." Antiquity of usage is sanction enough. Wordsworth
-says of the small freeholders of Westmoreland, "Many
-of these humble sons of the hills had a consciousness that
-the land which they tilled had for more than five
-hundred years been possessed by men of the same name
-and blood." The ship-carpenter in the public yards, my
-lord's gardener and porter, have been there for more
-than a hundred years, grandfather, father, and son.
-
-The English power resides also in their dislike of
-change. They have difficulty in bringing their reason to
-act, and on all occasions use their memory first. As
-soon as they have rid themselves of some grievance, and
-settled the better practice, they make haste to fix it as
-a finality, and never wish to hear of alteration more.
-
-Every Englishman is an embryonic chancellor: his
-instinct is to search for a precedent. The favorite phrase
-of their law is, "a custom whereof the memory of man
-runneth not back to the contrary." The barons say,
-"Nolumus mutari"; and the cockneys stifle the curiosity
-of the foreigner on the reason of any practice, with,
-"Lord, sir, it was always so." They hate innovation.
-Bacon told them, Time was the right reformer;
-Chatham, that "confidence was a plant of slow growth";
-Canning, to "advance with the times"; and Wellington,
-that "habit was ten times nature." All their
-statesmen learn the irresistibility of the tide of custom,
-and have invented many fine phrases to cover this
-slowness of perception, and prehensility of tail.
-
-A sea-shell should be the crest of England, not only
-because it represents a power built on the waves, but
-also the hard finish of the men. The Englishman is
-finished like a cowry or a murex. After the spire and
-the spines are formed, or, with the formation, a juice
-exudes, and a hard enamel varnishes every part. The
-keeping of the proprieties is as indispensable as clean,
-linen. No merit quite countervails the want of this,
-whilst this sometimes stands in lieu of all. "'T is in
-bad taste," is the most formidable word an Englishman
-can pronounce. But this japan costs them dear.
-There is a prose in certain Englishmen, which exceeds
-in wooden deadness all rivalry with other countrymen.
-There is a knell in the conceit and externality of their
-voice, which seems to say, *Leave all hope behind*. In
-this Gibraltar of propriety, mediocrity gets intrenched,
-and consolidated, and founded in adamant. An Englishman
-of fashion is like one of those souvenirs, bound in
-gold vellum, enriched with delicate engravings, on thick
-hot-pressed paper, fit for the hands of ladies and princes,
-but with nothing in it worth reading or remembering.
-
-A severe decorum rules the court and the cottage.
-When Thalberg, the pianist, was one evening performing
-before the Queen, at Windsor, in a private party, the
-Queen accompanied him with her voice. The circumstance
-took air, and all England shuddered from sea to
-sea. The indecorum was never repeated. Cold, repressive
-manners prevail. No enthusiasm is permitted except
-at the opera. They avoid everything marked. They
-require a tone of voice that excites no attention in the
-room. Sir Philip Sidney is one of the patron saints of
-England, of whom Wotton said, "His wit was the
-measure of congruity."
-
-Pretension and vaporing are once for all distasteful.
-They keep to the other extreme of low tone in dress and
-manners. They avoid pretension and go right to the
-heart of the thing. They hate nonsense, sentimentalism,
-and highflown expression; they use a studied plainness.
-Even Brummell their fop was marked by the severest
-simplicity in dress. They value themselves on the
-absence of everything theatrical in the public business, and
-on conciseness and going to the point, in private affairs.
-
-In an aristocratical country, like England, not the
-Trial by Jury, but the dinner is the capital institution.
-It is the mode of doing honor to a stranger, to invite him
-to eat,--and has been for many hundred years. "And
-they think," says the Venetian traveller of 1500, "no
-greater honor can be conferred or received, than to invite
-others to eat with them, or to be invited themselves, and
-they would sooner give five or six ducats to provide an
-entertainment for a person, than a groat to assist him in
-any distress." [#]_ It is reserved to the end of the day, the
-family-hour being generally six, in London, and, if any
-company is expected, one or two hours later. Every one
-dresses for dinner, in his own house, or in another man's.
-The guests are expected to arrive within half an hour of
-the time fixed by card of invitation, and nothing but death
-or mutilation is permitted to detain them. The English
-dinner is precisely the model on which our own are
-constructed in the Atlantic cities. The company sit one or
-two hours, before the ladies leave the table. The
-gentlemen remain over their wine an hour longer, and
-rejoin the ladies in the drawing-room, and take coffee.
-The dress dinner generates a talent of table-talk, which
-reaches great perfection: the stories are so good, that
-one is sure they must have been often told before, to
-have got such happy turns. Hither come all manner of
-clever projects, bits of popular science, of practical
-invention, of miscellaneous humor; political, literary, and
-personal news; railroads, horses, diamonds, agriculture,
-horticulture, pisciculture, and wine.
-
-.. [#] "Relation of England." Printed by the Caraden Society.
-
-English stories, *bon-mots*, and the recorded table-talk
-of their wits, are as good as the best of the French. In
-America, we are apt scholars, but have not yet attained
-the same perfection: for the range of nations from which
-London draws, and the steep contrasts of condition, create
-the picturesque in society, as broken country makes
-picturesque landscape, whilst our prevailing equality makes
-a prairie tameness: and secondly, because the usage of a
-dress-dinner every day at dark has a tendency to hive and
-produce to advantage everything good. Much attrition
-has worn every sentence into a bullet. Also one meets
-now and then with polished men, who know everything,
-have tried everything, can do everything, and are quite
-superior to letters and science. What could they not, if
-only they would?
-
-.. vspace:: 4
-
-CHAPTER VII.--TRUTH.
-====================
-
-The Teutonic tribes have a national singleness of heart,
-which contrasts with the Latin races. The German name
-has a proverbial significance of sincerity and honest
-meaning. The arts bear testimony to it. The faces of clergy
-and laity in old sculptures and illuminated missals are
-charged with earnest belief. Add to this hereditary
-rectitude, the punctuality and precise dealing which
-commerce creates, and you have the English truth and credit.
-The government strictly performs its engagements. The
-subjects do not understand trifling on its part. When
-any breach of promise occurred, in the old days of
-prerogative, it was resented by the people as an intolerable
-grievance. And, in modern times, any slipperiness in the
-government of political faith, or any repudiation or
-crookedness in matters of finance, would bring the whole nation
-to a committee of inquiry and reform. Private men keep
-their promises, never so trivial. Down goes the flying
-word on the tablets, and is indelible as Domesday Book.
-
-Their practical power rests on their national sincerity.
-Veracity derives from instinct, and marks superiority in
-organization. Nature has endowed some animals with
-cunning, as a compensation for strength withheld; but
-it has provoked the malice of all others, as if avengers of
-public wrong. In the nobler kinds, where strength could
-be afforded, her races are loyal to truth, as truth is the
-foundation of the social state. Beasts that make no
-truce with man, do not break faith with each other.
-'T is said, that the wolf, who makes a *cache* of his prey,
-and brings his fellows with him to the spot, if, on digging
-it is not found, is instantly and unresistingly torn in pieces.
-English veracity seems to result on a sounder animal
-structure, as if they could afford it. They are blunt in saying
-what they think, sparing of promises, and they require
-plain dealing of others. We will not have to do with
-a man in a mask. Let us know the truth. Draw a
-straight line, hit whom and where it will. Alfred, whom
-the affection of the nation makes the type of their race, is
-called by a writer at the Norman Conquest, the
-*truth-speaker; Alueredus veridicus*. Geoffrey of Monmouth
-says of King Aurelius, uncle of Arthur, that "above all
-things he hated a lie." The Northman Guttorm said to
-King Olaf, "It is royal work to fulfil royal words." The
-mottoes of their families are monitory proverbs, as,
-*Fare fac*,--Say, do,--of the Fairfaxes; *Say and seal*, of
-the house of Fiennes; *Vero nil verius*, of the De Veres.
-To be king of their word, is their pride. When they
-unmask cant, they say, "The English of this is," etc.; and
-to give the lie is the extreme insult. The phrase of the
-lowest of the people is "honor-bright," and their vulgar
-praise, "his word is as good as his bond." They hate
-shuffling and equivocation, and the cause is damaged in
-the public opinion, on which any paltering can be fixed.
-Even Lord Chesterfield, with his French breeding, when
-he came to define a gentleman, declared that truth made
-his distinction; and nothing ever spoken by him would
-find so hearty a suffrage from his nation. The Duke of
-Wellington, who had the best right to say so, advises the
-French General Kellermann, that he may rely on the
-parole of an English officer. The English, of all classes,
-value themselves on this trait, as distinguishing them
-from the French, who, in the popular belief, are more
-polite than true. An Englishman understates, avoids the
-superlative, checks himself in compliments, alleging, that
-in the French language, one cannot speak without lying.
-
-They love reality in wealth, power, hospitality, and do
-not easily learn to make a show, and take the world as
-it goes. They are not fond of ornaments, and if they
-wear them, they must be gems. They read gladly in old
-Fuller, that a lady, in the reign of Elizabeth, "would
-have as patiently digested a lie, as the wearing of false
-stones or pendants of counterfeit pearl." They have the
-earth-hunger, or preference for property in land, which
-is said to mark the Teutonic nations. They build of
-stone; public and private buildings are massive and
-durable. In comparing their ships' houses, and public
-offices with the American, it is commonly said, that they
-spend a pound, where we spend a dollar. Plain rich
-clothes, plain rich equipage, plain rich finish throughout
-their house and belongings, mark the English truth.
-
-They confide in each other,--English believes in
-English. The French feel the superiority of this probity.
-The Englishman is not springing a trap for his
-admiration, but is honestly minding his business. The
-Frenchman is vain. Madame de Staël says, that the English
-irritated Napoleon, mainly, because they have found out
-how to unite success with honesty. She was not aware
-how wide an application her foreign readers would give
-to the remark. Wellington discovered the ruin of
-Bonaparte's affairs, by his own probity. He augured ill of the
-empire, as soon as he saw that it was mendacious, and
-lived by war. If war do not bring in its sequel new
-trade, better agriculture and manufactures, but only
-games, fireworks, and spectacles,--no prosperity could
-support it; much less, a nation decimated for conscripts,
-and out of pocket, like France. So he drudged for years
-on his military works at Lisbon, and from this base at last
-extended his gigantic lines to Waterloo, believing in his
-countrymen and their syllogisms above all the rhodomontade
-of Europe.
-
-At a St. George's festival, in Montreal, where I
-happened to be a guest, since my return home, I observed
-that the chairman complimented his compatriots, by
-saying, "they confided that wherever they met an
-Englishman, they found a man who would speak the truth." And
-one cannot think this festival fruitless, if, all over
-the world, on the 23d of April, wherever two or three
-English are found, they meet to encourage each other in
-the nationality of veracity.
-
-In the power of saying rude truth, sometimes in the
-lion's mouth, no men surpass them. On the king's
-birthday, when each bishop was expected to offer the king a
-purse of gold, Latimer gave Henry VIII. a copy of the
-Vulgate, with a mark at the passage, "Whoremongers
-and adulterers God will judge"; and they so honor
-stoutness in each other, that the king passed it over.
-They are tenacious of their belief, and cannot easily
-change their opinions to suit the hour. They are like
-ships with too much head on to come quickly about, nor
-will prosperity or even adversity be allowed to shake
-their habitual view of conduct. Whilst I was in
-London, M. Guizot arrived there on his escape from Paris,
-in February, 1843. Many private friends called on him.
-His name was immediately proposed as an honorary
-member to the Athenæum. M. Guizot was blackballed.
-Certainly, they knew the distinction of his name. But
-the Englishman is not fickle. He had really made up his
-mind, now for years as he read his newspaper, to hate
-and despise M. Guizot; and the altered position of the
-man as an illustrious exile, and a guest in the country,
-makes no difference to him, as it would instantly, to an
-American.
-
-They require the same adherence, thorough conviction
-and reality in public men. It is the want of character
-which makes the low reputation of the Irish members.
-"See them," they said, "one hundred and twenty-seven
-all voting like sheep, never proposing anything, and all
-but four voting the income tax,"--which was an
-ill-judged concession of the government, relieving Irish
-property from the burdens charged on English.
-
-They have a horror of adventurers in or out of Parliament.
-The ruling passion of Englishmen, in these days,
-is a terror of humbug. In the same proportion, they
-value honesty, stoutness, and adherence to your own.
-They like a man committed to his objects. They hate
-the French, as frivolous; they hate the Irish, as aimless;
-they hate the Germans, as professors. In February,
-1848, they said, Look, the French king and his party
-fell for want of a shot; they had not conscience to shoot,
-so entirely was the pith and heart of monarchy eaten out.
-
-They attack their own politicians every day, on the
-same grounds, as adventurers. They love stoutness in
-standing for your right, in declining money or promotion
-that costs any concession. The barrister refuses the silk
-gown of Queen's Counsel, if his junior have it one day
-earlier. Lord Collingwood would not accept his medal
-for victory on 14th February, 1797, if he did not receive
-one for victory on 1st June, 1794; and the long-withholden
-medal was accorded. When Castlereagh dissuaded
-Lord Wellington from going to the king's levee,
-until the unpopular Cintra business had been explained,
-he replied: "You furnish me a reason for going. I will
-go to this, or I will never go to a king's levee." The
-radical mob at Oxford cried after the tory Lord Eldon,
-"There's old Eldon; cheer him; he never ratted." They
-have given the parliamentary nickname of *Trimmers*
-to the time-servers, whom English character does not
-love. [#]_
-
-
-.. [#] It is an unlucky moment to remember these sparkles of
- solitary virtue in the face of the honors lately paid in England
- to the Emperor Louis Napoleon. I am sure that no
- Englishman whom I had the happiness to know, consented, when the
- aristocracy and the commons of London cringed like a Neapolitan
- rabble, before a successful thief. But--how to resist one
- step, though odious, in a linked series of state
- necessities?--Governments must
- always learn too late, that the use of
- dishonest agents is as ruinous for nations as for single men.
-
-They are very liable in their politics to extraordinary
-delusions, thus, to believe what stands recorded in the
-gravest books, that the movement of 10th April, 1848,
-was urged or assisted by foreigners: which, to be sure,
-is paralleled by the democratic whimsey in this country,
-which I have noticed to be shared by men sane on other
-points, that the English are at the bottom of the
-agitation of slavery, in American politics: and then again to
-the French popular legends on the subject of *perfidious
-Albion*. But suspicion will make fools of nations as of
-citizens.
-
-A slow temperament makes them less rapid and ready
-than other countrymen, and has given occasion to the
-observation that English wit comes afterwards,--which
-the French denote as *esprit d'escalier*. This dulness
-makes their attachment to home, and their adherence in
-all foreign countries to home habits. The Englishman
-who visits Mount Etna will carry his teakettle to the
-top. The old Italian author of the "Relation of
-England" (in 1500) says: "I have it on the best information,
-that, when the war is actually raging most furiously,
-they will seek for good eating, and all their other
-comforts, without thinking what harm might befall them." Then
-their eyes seem to be set at the bottom of a tunnel,
-and they affirm the one small fact they know, with the
-best faith in the world that nothing else exists. And,
-as their own belief in guineas is perfect, they readily, on
-all occasions, apply the pecuniary argument as final.
-Thus when the Rochester rappings began to be heard of
-in England, a man deposited £100 in a sealed box in the
-Dublin Bank, and then advertised in the newspapers to
-all somnambulists, mesmerizers, and others, that whoever
-could tell him the number of his note should have the
-money. He let it lie there six months, the newspapers
-now and then, at his instance, stimulating the attention
-of the adepts; but none could ever tell him; and he
-said, "Now let me never be bothered more with this
-proven lie." It is told of a good Sir John, that he heard
-a case stated by counsel, and made up his mind; then
-the counsel for the other side taking their turn to speak,
-he found himself so unsettled and perplexed, that he
-exclaimed, "So help me God! I will never listen to
-evidence again." Any number of delightful examples of
-this English stolidity are the anecdotes of Europe. I
-knew a very worthy man,--a magistrate, I believe he was,
-in the town of Derby,--who went to the opera, to see
-Malibrau. In one scene, the heroine was to rush across
-a ruined bridge. Mr. B. arose, and mildly yet firmly
-called the attention of the audience and the performers
-to the fact that, in his judgment, the bridge was unsafe!
-This English stolidity contrasts with French wit and
-tact. The French, it is commonly said, have greatly
-more influence in Europe than the English. What
-influence the English have is by brute force of wealth and
-power; that of the French by affinity and talent. The
-Italian is subtle, the Spaniard treacherous: tortures, it
-was said, could never wrest from an Egyptian the confession
-of a secret. None of these traits belong to the
-Englishman. His choler and conceit force everything
-out. Defoe, who knew his countrymen well, says of
-them:--
-
- | "In close intrigue, their faculty 's but weak,
- | For generally whate'er they know, they speak,
- | And often their own counsels undermine
- | By mere infirmity without design;
- | From whence, the learned say, it doth proceed,
- | That English treasons never can succeed;
- | For they 're so open-hearted, you may know
- | Their own most secret thoughts, and others' too."
-
-.. vspace:: 4
-
-CHAPTER VIII.--CHARACTER.
-=========================
-
-The English race are reputed morose. I do not
-know that they have sadder brows than their neighbors
-of northern climates. They are sad by comparison with
-the singing and dancing nations: not sadder, but slow
-and staid, as finding their joys at home. They, too,
-believe that where there is no enjoyment of life, there
-can be no vigor and art in speech or thought; that your
-merry heart goes all the way, your sad one tires in a
-mile. This trait of gloom has been fixed on them by
-French travellers, who, from Froissart, Voltaire, Le Sage,
-Mirabeau, down to the lively journalists of the *feuilletous*,
-have spent their wit on the solemnity of their neighbors.
-The French say, gay conversation is unknown in their
-island: the Englishman finds no relief from reflection
-except in reflection: when he wishes for amusement, he
-goes to work: his hilarity is like an attack of fever.
-Religion, the theatre, and the reading the books of his
-country, all feed and increase his natural melancholy.
-The police does not interfere with public diversions. It
-thinks itself bound in duty to respect the pleasures and
-rare gayety of this inconsolable nation; and their
-well-known courage is entirely attributable to their disgust
-of life.
-
-I suppose their gravity of demeanor and their few
-words have obtained this reputation. As compared with
-the Americans, I think them cheerful and contented.
-Young people, in our country, are much more prone to
-melancholy. The English have a mild aspect, and a
-ringing, cheerful voice. They are large-natured, and not
-so easily amused as the southerners, and are among them
-as grown people among children, requiring war, or trade,
-or engineering, or science, instead of frivolous games.
-They are proud and private, and, even if disposed to
-recreation, will avoid an open garden. They sported
-sadly; *ils s'amusaient tristement, selon la coutume de leur
-pays*, said Froissart; and, I suppose, never nation built
-their party walls so thick, or their garden fences so high.
-Meat and wine produce no effect on them: they are just
-as cold, quiet, and composed, at the end, as at the
-beginning of dinner.
-
-The reputation of taciturnity they have enjoyed for six
-or seven hundred years; and a kind of pride in bad
-public speaking is noted in the House of Commons, as
-if they were willing to show that they did not live by
-their tongues, or thought they spoke well enough if they
-had the tone of gentlemen. In mixed company, they
-shut their mouths. A Yorkshire mill-owner told me, he
-had ridden more than once all the way from London to
-Leeds, in the first-class carriage, with the same persons,
-and no word exchanged. The club-houses were established
-to cultivate social habits, and it is rare that more
-than two eat together, and oftenest one eats alone. Was
-it then a stroke of humor in the serious Swedenborg, or
-was it only his pitiless logic, that made him shut up the
-English souls in a heaven by themselves?
-
-They are contradictorily described as sour, splenetic,
-and stubborn,--and as mild, sweet, and sensible. The
-truth is, they have great range and variety of character.
-Commerce sends abroad multitudes of different classes.
-The choleric Welshman, the fervid Scot, the bilious
-resident in the East or West Indies, are wide of the perfect
-behavior of the educated and dignified man of family. So
-is the burly farmer; so is the country 'squire, with his
-narrow and violent life. In every inn, is the
-Commercial-Room, in which 'travellers,' or bagmen who carry
-patterns, and solicit orders, for the manufacturers, are
-wont to be entertained. It easily happens that this class
-should characterize England to the foreigner, who meets
-them on the road, and at every public house, whilst the
-gentry avoid the taverns, or seclude themselves whilst
-in them.
-
-But these classes are the right English stock, and may
-fairly show the national qualities, before yet art and
-education have dealt with them. They are good lovers,
-good haters, slow but obstinate admirers, and, in all
-things, very much steeped in their temperament, like
-men hardly awaked from deep sleep, which they enjoy.
-Their habits and instincts cleave to nature. They are of
-the earth, earthy; and of the sea, as the sea-kinds,
-attached to it for what it yields them, and not from any
-sentiment. They are full of coarse strength, rude
-exercise, butcher's meat, and sound sleep; and suspect any
-poetic insinuation or any hint for the conduct of life
-which reflects on this animal existence, as if somebody
-were fumbling at the umbilical cord and might stop their
-supplies. They doubt a man's sound judgment, if he
-does not eat with appetite, and shake their heads if he is
-particularly chaste. Take them as they come, you shall
-find in the common people a surly indifference, sometimes
-gruffness and ill temper; and, in minds of more power,
-magazines of inexhaustible war, challenging
-
- | "The ruggedest hour that time and spite dare bring
- | To frown upon the enraged Northumberland."
-
-They are headstrong believers and defenders of their
-opinion, and not less resolute in maintaining their whim
-and perversity. Hezekiah Woodward wrote a book
-against the Lord's Prayer. And one can believe that
-Burton the Anatomist of Melancholy, having predicted
-from the stars the hour of his death, slipped the knot
-himself round his own neck, not to falsify his horoscope.
-
-Their looks bespeak an invincible stoutness; they have
-extreme difficulty to run away, and will die game.
-Wellington said of the young coxcombs of the Life-Guards
-delicately brought up, "But the puppies fight well";
-and Nelson said of his sailors, "They really mind shot
-no more than peas." Of absolute stoutness no nation
-has more or better examples. They are good at storming
-redoubts, at boarding frigates, at dying in the last
-ditch, or any desperate service which has daylight and
-honor in it; but not, I think, at enduring the rack, or any
-passive obedience, like jumping off a castle-roof at the
-word of a czar. Being both vascular and highly organized,
-so as to be very sensible of pain; and intellectual,
-so as to see reason and glory in a matter.
-
-Of that constitutional force, which yields the supplies
-of the day, they have the more than enough, the excess
-which creates courage on fortitude, genius in poetry,
-invention in mechanics, enterprise in trade, magnificence
-in wealth, splendor in ceremonies, petulance and projects
-in youth. The young men have a rude health which
-runs into peccant humors. They drink brandy like water,
-cannot expend their quantities of waste strength on
-riding, hunting, swimming, and fencing, and run into
-absurd frolics with the gravity of the Eumenides. They
-stoutly carry into every nook and corner of the earth their
-turbulent sense; leaving no lie uncontradicted, no
-pretension unexamined. They chew hasheesh; cut
-themselves with poisoned creases; swing their hammock in
-the boughs of the Bohon Upas; taste every poison; buy
-every secret; at Naples, they put St. Januarius's blood
-in an alembic; they saw a hole into the head of the
-"winking Virgin," to know why she winks; measure
-with an English foot-rule every cell of the Inquisition,
-every Turkish caaba, every Holy of holies; translate and
-send to Bantley the arcanum bribed and bullied away from
-shuddering Bramins; and measure their own strength by
-the terror they cause. These travellers are of every class,
-the best and the worst; and it may easily happen that
-those of rudest behavior are taken notice of and
-remembered. The Saxon melancholy in the vulgar rich and
-poor appears as gushes of ill-humor, which every check
-exasperates into sarcasm and vituperation. There are
-multitudes of rude young English who have the self-sufficiency
-and bluntness of their nation, and who, with their
-disdain of the rest of mankind, and with this indigestion
-and choler, have made the English traveller a proverb for
-uncomfortable and offensive manners. It was no bad
-description of the Briton generically, what was said two
-hundred years ago, of one particular Oxford scholar:
-"He was a very bold man, uttered anything that came
-into his mind, not only among his companions, but in
-public coffee-houses, and would often speak his mind of
-particular persons then accidentally present, without
-examining the company he was in; for which he was
-often reprimanded, and several times threatened to be
-kicked and beaten."
-
-The common Englishman is prone to forget a cardinal
-article in the bill of social rights, that every man has a
-right to his own ears. No man can claim to usurp more
-than a few cubic feet of the audibilities of a public room,
-or to put upon the company the loud statements of his
-crotchets or personalities.
-
-But it is in the deep traits of race that the fortunes
-of nations are written, and however derived, whether a
-happier tribe or mixture of tribes, the air, or what
-circumstance, that mixed for them the golden mean of
-temperament,--here exists the best stock in the world,
-broad-fronted, broad-bottomed, best for depth, range,
-and equability, men of aplomb and reserves, great range
-and many moods, strong instincts, yet apt for culture;
-war-class as well as clerks; earls and tradesmen; wise
-minority, as well as foolish majority; abysmal
-temperament, hiding wells of wrath, and glooms on which no
-sunshine settles; alternated with a common-sense and
-humanity which hold them fast to every piece of cheerful
-duty; making this temperament a sea to which all storms
-are superficial; a race to which their fortunes flow, as if
-they alone had the elastic organization at once fine and
-robust enough for dominion; as if the burly, inexpressive,
-now mute and contumacious, now fierce and sharp-tongued
-dragon, which once made the island light with
-his fiery breath, had bequeathed his ferocity to his
-conqueror. They hide virtues under vices, or the semblance
-of them. It is the misshapen hairy Scandinavian troll
-again, who lifts the cart out of the mire, or "threshes
-the corn that ten day-laborers could not end," but it is
-done in the dark, and with muttered maledictions. He
-is a churl with a soft place in his heart, whose speech is
-a brash of bitter waters, but who loves to help you at a
-pinch. He says no, but serves you, and your thanks
-disgust him. Here was lately a cross-grained miser, odd
-and ugly, resembling in countenance the portrait of
-Punch, with the laugh left out; rich by his own
-industry; sulking in a lonely house; who never gave a dinner
-to any man, and disdained all courtesies; yet as true a
-worshipper of beauty in form and color as ever existed,
-and profusely pouring over the cold mind of his countrymen
-creations of grace and truth, removing the reproach
-of sterility from English art, catching from their savage
-climate every fine hint, and importing into their galleries
-every tint and trait of sunnier cities and skies; making
-an era in painting; and, when he saw that the splendor
-of one of his pictures in the Exhibition dimmed his
-rival's that hung next it, secretly took a brush and
-blackened his own.
-
-They do not wear their heart in their sleeve for daws
-to peck at. They have that phlegm or staidness, which
-it is a compliment to disturb. "Great men," said
-Aristotle, "are always of a nature originally melancholy." 'T
-is the habit of a mind which attaches to abstractions
-with a passion which gives vast results. They dare to
-displease, they do not speak to expectation. They like
-the sayers of No, better than the sayers of Yes. Each
-of them has an opinion which he feels it becomes him to
-express all the more that it differs from yours. They are
-meditating opposition. This gravity is inseparable from
-minds of great resources.
-
-There is an English hero superior to the French, the
-German, the Italian, or the Greek. When he is brought
-to the strife with fate, he sacrifices a richer material
-possession, and on more purely metaphysical grounds. He
-is there with his own consent, face to face with fortune,
-which he defies. On deliberate choice, and from grounds
-of character, he has elected his part to live and die for,
-and dies with grandeur. This race has added new
-elements to humanity, and has a deeper root in the world.
-
-They have great range of scale, from ferocity to
-exquisite refinement. With larger scale, they have great
-retrieving power. After running each tendency to an
-extreme, they try another tack with equal heat. More
-intellectual than other races, when they live with other
-races, they do not take their language, but bestow their
-own. They subsidize other nations, and are not
-subsidized. They proselyte, and are not proselyted. They
-assimilate other races to themselves, and are not
-assimilated. The English did not calculate the conquest of
-the Indies. It fell to their character. So they
-administer in different parts of the world, the codes of every
-empire and race: in Canada, old French law; in the
-Mauritius, the Code Napoleon; in the West Indies, the
-edicts of the Spanish Cortes; in the East Indies, the Laws
-of Menu; in the Isle of Man, of the Scandinavian Thing;
-at the Cape of Good Hope, of the Old Netherlands; and
-in the Ionian Islands, the Pandects of Justinian.
-
-They are very conscious of their advantageous position
-in history. England is the lawgiver, the patron, the
-instructor, the ally. Compare the tone of the French
-and of the English press: the first querulous, captious,
-sensitive, about English opinion; the English press is
-never timorous about French opinion, but arrogant and
-contemptuous.
-
-They are testy and headstrong through an excess of
-will and bias; churlish as men sometimes please to be
-who do not forget a debt, who ask no favors, and who
-will do what they like with their own. With education
-and intercourse these asperities wear off, and leave the
-good-will pure. If anatomy is reformed according to
-national tendencies, I suppose, the spleen will hereafter
-be found in the Englishman, not found in the American,
-and differencing the one from the other. I anticipate
-another anatomical discovery, that this organ will be
-found to be cortical and caducous, that they are
-superficially morose, but at last tender-hearted, herein
-differing from Rome and the Latin nations. Nothing savage,
-nothing mean resides in the English heart. They are
-subject to panics of credulity and of rage, but the
-temper of the nation, however disturbed, settles itself soon
-and easily, as, in this temperate zone, the sky after
-whatever storms clears again, and serenity is its normal
-condition.
-
-A saving stupidity masks and protects their perception
-as the curtain of the eagle's eye. Our swifter Americans,
-when they first deal with English, pronounce them
-stupid; but, later, do them justice as people who wear
-well, or hide their strength. To understand the power
-of performance that is in their finest wits, in the patient
-Newton, or in the versatile transcendent poets, or in the
-Dugdales, Gibbons, Hallams, Eldons, and Peels, one
-should see how English day-laborers hold out. High
-and low, they are of an unctuous texture. There is an
-adipocere in their constitution, as if they had oil also for
-their mental wheels, and could perform vast amounts of
-work without damaging themselves.
-
-Even the scale of expense on which people live, and
-to which scholars and professional men conform, proves
-the tension of their muscle, when vast numbers are
-found who can each lift this enormous load. I might
-even add, their daily feasts argue a savage vigor of
-body.
-
-No nation was ever so rich in able men: "Gentlemen,"
-as Charles I. said of Strafford, "whose abilities
-might make a prince rather afraid than ashamed in the
-greatest affairs of state": men of such temper, that,
-like Baron Vere, "had one seen him returning from a
-victory, he would by his silence have suspected that he
-had lost the day; and, had he beheld him in a retreat,
-he would have collected him a conqueror by the
-cheerfulness of his spirit." [#]_
-
-.. [#] Fuller. Worthies of England.
-
-The following passage from the Heimskringla might
-almost stand as a portrait of the modern Englishman:
-"Haldor was very stout and strong, and remarkably
-handsome in appearances. King Harold gave him this
-testimony, that he, among all his men, cared least about
-doubtful circumstances, whether they betokened danger
-or pleasure; for, whatever turned up, he was never in
-higher nor in lower spirits, never slept less nor more on
-account of them, nor ate nor drank but according to his
-custom. Haldor was not a man of many words, but
-short in conversation, told his opinion bluntly, and was
-obstinate and hard; and this could not please the king,
-who had many clever people about him, zealous in his
-service. Haldor remained a short time with the king,
-and then came to Iceland, where he took up his abode in
-Hiardaholt, and dwelt in that farm to a very advanced
-age."[#]
-
-
-[#] Heimskringla, Laing's translation, Vol. III. p. 37.
-
-
-The national temper, in the civil history, is not flashy
-or whiffling. The slow, deep, English mass smoulders
-with fire, which at last sets all its borders in flame. The
-wrath of London is not French wrath, but has a long
-memory, and, in its hottest heat, a register and rule.
-
-Half their strength they put not forth. They are
-capable of a sublime resolution, and if hereafter the war
-of races, often predicted, and making itself a war of
-opinions also (a question of despotism and liberty
-coming from Eastern Europe), should menace the English
-civilization, these sea-kings may take once again to their
-floating castles, and find a new home and a second
-millennium of power in their colonies.
-
-The stability of England is the security of the modern
-world. If the English race were as mutable as the
-French, what reliance? But the English stand for
-liberty. The conservative, money-loving, lord-loving
-English are yet liberty-loving; and so freedom is safe: for
-they have more personal force than other people. The
-nation always resist the immoral action of their
-government. They think humanely on the affairs of France, of
-Turkey, of Poland, of Hungary, of Schleswig Holstein,
-though overborne by the statecraft of the rulers at last.
-
-Does the early history of each tribe show the permanent
-bias, which, though not less potent, is masked, as
-the tribe spreads its activity into colonies, commerce,
-codes, arts, letters? The early history shows it, as the
-musician plays the air which he proceeds to conceal in
-a tempest of variations. In Alfred, in the Northmen,
-one may read the genius of the English society, namely,
-that private life is the place of honor. Glory, a career,
-and ambition, words familiar to the longitude of Paris,
-are seldom heard in English speech. Nelson wrote from
-their hearts his homely telegraph, "England expects
-every man to do his duty."
-
-For actual service, for the dignity of a profession, or
-to appease diseased or inflamed talent, the army and navy
-may be entered (the worst boys doing well in the navy);
-and the civil service, in departments where serious
-official work is done; and they hold in esteem the
-barrister engaged in the severer studies of the law. But
-the calm, sound, and most British Briton shrinks from
-public life, as charlatanism, and respects an economy
-founded on agriculture, coal-mines, manufactures, or
-trade, which secures an independence through the
-creation of real values.
-
-They wish neither to command or obey, but to be
-kings in their own houses. They are intellectual and
-deeply enjoy literature; they like well to have the world
-served up to them in books, maps, models, and every
-mode of exact information, and, though not creators in
-the art, they value its refinement. They are ready for
-leisure, can direct and fill their own day, nor need so
-much as others the constraint of a necessity. But the
-history of the nation discloses, at every turn, this
-original predilection for private independence, and, however
-this inclination may have been disturbed by the bribes
-with which their vast colonial power has warped men out
-of orbit, the inclination endures, and forms and reforms
-the laws, letters, manners, and occupations. They choose
-that welfare which is compatible with the commonwealth,
-knowing that such alone is stable; as wise merchants
-prefer investments in three per cents.
-
-.. vspace:: 4
-
-CHAPTER IX.--COCKAYNE.
-======================
-
-The English are a nation of humorists. Individual
-right is pushed to the uttermost bound compatible with
-public order. Property is so perfect, that it seems the
-craft of that race, and not to exist elsewhere. The king
-cannot step on an acre which the peasant refuses to sell.
-A testator endows a dog or a rookery, and Europe
-cannot interfere with his absurdity. Every individual has
-his particular way of living, which he pushes to folly, and
-the decided sympathy of his compatriots is engaged to
-back up Mr. Crump's whim by statutes, and chancellors,
-and horse-guards. There is no freak so ridiculous but
-some Englishman has attempted to immortalize by money
-and law. British citizenship is as omnipotent as Roman
-was. Mr. Cockayne is very sensible of this. The pursy
-man means by freedom the right to do as he pleases,
-and does wrong in order to feel his freedom, and makes
-a conscience of persisting in it.
-
-He is intensely patriotic, for his country is so small.
-His confidence in the power and performance of his
-nation makes him provokingly incurious about other
-nations. He dislikes foreigners. Swedenborg, who lived
-much in England, notes "the similitude of minds among
-the English, in consequence of which they contract
-familiarity with friends who are of that nation, and seldom
-with others; and they regard foreigners, as one looking
-through a telescope from the top of a palace regards
-those who dwell or wander about out of the city." A
-much older traveller, the Venetian who wrote the
-"Relation of England," [#]_ in 1500, says: "The English are
-great lovers of themselves, and of everything belonging
-to them. They think that there are no other men than
-themselves, and no other world but England; and,
-whenever they see a handsome foreigner, they say that he
-looks like an Englishman, and it is a great pity he should
-not be an Englishman; and whenever they partake of
-any delicacy with a foreigner, they ask him whether such
-a thing is made in his country." When he adds epithets
-of praise, his climax is "so English"; and when he
-wishes to pay you the highest compliment, he says, I
-should not know you from an Englishman. France is,
-by its natural contrast, a kind of blackboard on which
-English character draws its own traits in chalk. This
-arrogance habitually exhibits itself in allusions to the
-French. I suppose that all men of English blood in
-America, Europe, or Asia have a secret feeling of joy
-that they are not French natives. Mr. Coleridge is said
-to have given public thanks to God, at the close of a
-lecture, that he had defended him from being able to
-utter a single sentence in the French language. I have
-found that Englishmen have such a good opinion of
-England, that the ordinary phrases, in all good society,
-of postponing or disparaging one's own things in talking
-with a stranger, are seriously mistaken by them for an
-insuppressible homage to the merits of their nation; and
-the New-Yorker or Pennsylvanian who modestly laments
-the disadvantage of a new country, log-huts, and savages,
-is surprised by the instant and unfeigned commiseration
-of the whole company, who plainly account all the world
-out of England a heap of rubbish.
-
-.. [#] Printed by the Camden Society.
-
-The same insular limitation pinches his foreign
-politics. He sticks to his traditions and usages, and, so
-help him God! he will force his island by-laws down the
-throat of great countries, like India, China, Canada,
-Australia, and not only so, but impose Wapping on the
-Congress of Vienna, and trample down all nationalities
-with his taxed boots. Lord Chatham goes for liberty,
-and no taxation without representation;--for that is
-British law; but not a hobnail shall they dare make in
-America, but buy their nails in England,--for that also
-is British law; and the fact that British commerce was
-to be re-created by the independence of America, took
-them all by surprise.
-
-In short, I am afraid that English nature is so rank
-and aggressive as to be a little incompatible with every
-other. The world is not wide enough for two.
-
-But, beyond this nationality, it must be admitted, the
-island offers a daily worship to the old Norse god Brage,
-celebrated among our Scandinavian forefathers, for his
-eloquence and majestic air. The English have a steady
-courage, that fits them for great attempts and endurance:
-they have also a petty courage, through which every man
-delights in showing himself for what he is, and in doing
-what he can; so that, in all companies, each of them has
-too good an opinion of himself to imitate anybody. He
-hides no defect of his form, features, dress, connection,
-or birthplace, for he thinks every circumstance belonging
-to him comes recommended to you. If one of them
-have a bald, or a red, or a green head, or bow legs, or a
-scar, or mark, or a paunch, or a squeaking or a raven
-voice, he has persuaded himself that there is something
-modish and becoming in it, and that it sits well on him.
-
-But nature makes nothing in vain, and this little
-superfluity of self-regard in the English brain is one of
-the secrets of their power and history. It sets every
-man on being and doing what he really is and can. It
-takes away a dodging, skulking, secondary air, and
-encourages a frank and manly bearing, so that each man
-makes the most of himself, and loses no opportunity for
-want of pushing. A man's personal defects will
-commonly have with the rest of the world precisely that
-importance which they have to himself. If he makes
-light of them, so will other men. We all find in these a
-convenient meter of character, since a little man would
-be ruined by the vexation. I remember a shrewd politician,
-in one of our Western cities, told me "that he had
-known several successful statesmen made by their
-foible." And another, an ex-governor of Illinois, said to
-me: "If a man knew anything, he would sit in a corner
-and be modest; but he is such an ignorant peacock, that
-he goes bustling up and down, and hits on extraordinary
-discoveries."
-
-There is also this benefit in brag, that the speaker
-is unconsciously expressing his own ideal. Humor
-him by all means, draw it all out, and hold him to
-it. Their culture generally enables the travelled English
-to avoid any ridiculous extremes of this self-pleasing,
-and to give it an agreeable air. Then the natural
-disposition is fostered by the respect which they find
-entertained in the world for English ability. It was said of
-Louis XIV., that his gait and air were becoming enough
-in so great a monarch, yet would have been ridiculous in
-another man; so the prestige of the English name
-warrants a certain confident bearing, which a Frenchman or
-Belgian could not carry. At all events, they feel
-themselves at liberty to assume the most extraordinary tone
-on the subject of English merits.
-
-An English lady on the Rhine hearing a German
-speaking of her party as foreigners, exclaimed, "No, we
-are not foreigners; we are English: it is you that are
-foreigners." They tell you daily, in London, the story
-of the Frenchman and Englishman who quarrelled.
-Both were unwilling to fight, but their companions put
-them up to it; at last, it was agreed, that they should
-fight alone, in the dark, and with pistols: the candles
-were put out, and the Englishman, to make sure not to
-hit anybody, fired up the chimney, and brought down the
-Frenchman. They have no curiosity about foreigners,
-and answer any information you may volunteer, with
-"Oh! Oh!" until the informant makes up his mind,
-that they shall die in their ignorance, for any help he
-will offer. There are really no limits to this conceit,
-though brighter men among them make painful efforts to
-be candid.
-
-The habit of brag runs through all classes, from the
-*Times* newspaper through politicians and poets, through
-Wordsworth, Carlyle, Mill, and Sydney Smith, down to
-the boys of Eton. In the gravest treatise on political
-economy, in a philosophical essay, in books of science, one
-is surprised by the most innocent exhibition of unflinching
-nationality. In a tract on Corn, a most amiable and
-accomplished gentleman writes thus: "Though Britain,
-according to Bishop Berkeley's idea, were surrounded by
-a wall of brass ten thousand cubits in height, still, she
-would as far excel the rest of the globe in riches, as she
-now does, both in this secondary quality, and in the
-more important ones of freedom, virtue, and science." [#]_
-
-.. [#] William Spence.
-
-The English dislike the American structure of society,
-whilst yet trade, mills, public education, and chartism
-are doing what they can to create in England the same
-social condition. America is the paradise of the
-economists; is the favorable exception invariably quoted to
-the rules of ruin; but when he speaks directly of the
-Americans, the islander forgets his philosophy, and
-remembers his disparaging anecdotes.
-
-But this childish patriotism costs something, like all
-narrowness. The English sway of their colonies has no
-root of kindness. They govern by their arts and ability;
-they are more just than kind; and, whenever an abatement
-of their power is felt, they have not conciliated the
-affection on which to rely.
-
-Coarse local distinctions, as those of nation, province,
-or town, are useful in the absence of real ones; but we
-must not insist on these accidental lines. Individual
-traits are always triumphing over national ones. There
-is no fence in metaphysics discriminating Greek, or
-English, or Spanish science. Æsop and Montaigne,
-Cervantes and Saadi, are men of the world; and to wave our
-own flag at the dinner-table or in the University, is to
-carry the boisterous dulness of a fire-club into a polite
-circle. Nature and destiny are always on the watch for
-our follies. Nature trips us up when we strut; and
-there are curious examples in history on this very point
-of national pride.
-
-George of Cappadocia, born at Epiphania in Cilicia,
-was a low parasite, who got a lucrative contract to
-supply the army with bacon. A rogue and informer, he
-got rich, and was forced to run from justice. He saved
-his money, embraced Arianism, collected a library, and
-got promoted by a faction to the episcopal throne of
-Alexandria. When Julian came, A.D. 301, George was
-dragged to prison; the prison was burst open by the
-mob, and George was lynched, as he deserved. And this
-precious knave became, in good time, Saint George of
-England, patron of chivalry, emblem of victory and
-civility, and the pride of the best blood of the modern world.
-
-Strange, that the solid truth-speaking Briton should
-derive from an impostor. Strange, that the New World
-should have no better luck,--that broad America must
-wear the name of a thief. Amerigo Vespucci, the
-pickle-dealer at Seville, who went out, in 1499, a subaltern
-with Hojeda, and whose highest naval rank was boatswain's
-mate in an expedition that never sailed, managed
-in this lying world to supplant Columbus, and baptize
-half the earth with his own dishonest name. Thus
-nobody can throw stones. We are equally badly off in our
-founders; and the false pickle-dealer is an offset to the
-false bacon-seller.
-
-.. vspace:: 4
-
-CHAPTER X.--WEALTH.
-===================
-
-There is no country in which so absolute a homage
-is paid to wealth. In America, there is a touch of shame
-when a man exhibits the evidences of large property, as
-if, after all, it needed apology. But the Englishman has
-pure pride in his wealth, and esteems it a final certificate.
-A coarse logic rules throughout all English souls;--if
-you have merit, can you not show it by your good
-clothes, and coach, and horses? How can a man be a
-gentleman without a pipe of wine? Haydon says,
-"There is a fierce resolution to make every man live
-according to the means he possesses." There is a
-mixture of religion in it. They are under the Jewish law,
-and read with sonorous emphasis that their days shall be
-long in the land, they shall have sous and daughters,
-flocks and herds, wine and oil. In exact proportion is
-the reproach of poverty. They do not wish to be
-represented except by opulent men. An Englishman who has
-lost his fortune is said to have died of a broken heart.
-The last term of insult is, "a beggar." Nelson said,
-"The want of fortune is a crime which I can never get
-over." Sydney Smith said, "Poverty is infamous in
-England." And one of their recent writers speaks, in
-reference to a private and scholastic life, of "the grave
-moral deterioration which follows an empty exchequer." You
-shall find this sentiment, if not so frankly put, yet
-deeply implied, in the novels and romances of the present
-century, and not only in these, but in biography, and in
-the votes of public assemblies, in the tone of the
-preaching, and in the table-talk.
-
-I was lately turning over Wood's *Athenæ Oxonienses*,
-and looking naturally for another standard in a chronicle
-of the scholars of Oxford for two hundred years. But
-I found the two disgraces in that, as in most English
-books, are, first, disloyalty to Church and State, and,
-second, to be born poor, or to come to poverty. A
-natural fruit of England is the brutal political economy.
-Malthus finds no cover laid at nature's table for the
-laborer's son. In 1809, the majority in Parliament
-expressed itself by the language of Mr. Fuller in the
-House of Commons, "If you do not like the country,
-damn you, you can leave it." When Sir S. Romilly
-proposed his bill forbidding parish officers to bind
-children apprentices at a greater distance than forty miles
-from their home, Peel opposed, and Mr. Wortley said,
-"though, in the higher ranks, to cultivate family
-affections was a good thing, 't was not so among the lower
-orders. Better take them away from those who might
-deprave them. And it was highly injurious to trade to
-stop binding to manufacturers, as it must raise the price
-of labor, and of manufactured goods."
-
-The respect for truth of facts in England is equalled
-only by the respect for wealth. It is at once the pride of
-art of the Saxon, as he is a wealth-maker, and his passion
-for independence. The Englishman believes that every
-man must take care of himself, and has himself to thank,
-if he do not mend his condition. To pay their debts is
-their national point of honor. From the Exchequer and
-the East India House to the huckster's shop, everything
-prospers, because it is solvent. The British armies are
-solvent, and pay for what they take. The British empire
-is solvent; for, in spite of the huge national debt, the
-valuation mounts. During the war from 1789 to 1815,
-whilst they complained that they were taxed within an
-inch of their lives, and, by dint of enormous taxes, were
-subsidizing all the continent against France, the English
-were growing rich every year faster than any people ever
-grew before. It is their maxim, that the weight of taxes
-must be calculated, not by what is taken, but by what is
-left. Solvency is in the ideas and mechanism of an
-Englishman. The Crystal Palace is not considered honest
-until it pays; no matter how much convenience, beauty,
-or *éclat*, it must be self-supporting. They are contented
-with slower steamers, as long as they know that swifter
-boats lose money. They proceed logically by the double
-method of labor and thrift. Every household exhibits
-an exact economy, and nothing of that uncalculated
-headlong expenditure which families use in America. If
-they cannot pay, they do not buy; for they have no
-presumption of better fortunes next year, as our people
-have; and they say without shame, I cannot afford it.
-Gentlemen do not hesitate to ride in the second-class
-cars, or in the second cabin. An economist, or a man
-who can proportion his means and his ambition, or bring
-the year round with expenditure which expresses his
-character, without embarrassing one day of his future, is
-already a master of life, and a freeman. Lord Burleigh
-writes to his son, "that one ought never to devote more
-than two thirds of his income to the ordinary expenses of
-life, since the extraordinary will be certain to absorb the
-other third."
-
-The ambition to create value evokes every kind of
-ability, government becomes a manufacturing corporation,
-and every house a mill. The headlong bias to utility
-will let no talent lie in a napkin,--if possible, will
-teach spiders to weave silk stockings. An Englishman,
-while he eats and drinks no more, or not much more than
-another man, labors three times as many hours in the
-course of a year, as an other European; or, his life as
-a workman is three lives. He works fast. Everything
-in England is at a quick pace. They have reinforced
-their own productivity, by the creation of that marvellous
-machinery which differences this age from any other age.
-
-'T is a curious chapter in modern history, the growth
-of the machine-shop. Six hundred years ago, Roger
-Bacon explained the precession of the equinoxes, the
-consequent necessity of the reform of the calendar;
-measured the length of the year, invented gunpowder; and
-announced (as if looking from his lofty cell, over five
-centuries, into ours) "that machines can be constructed to
-drive ships more rapidly than a whole galley of rowers
-could do; nor would they need anything but a pilot
-to steer them. Carriages also might be constructed to
-move with an incredible speed, without the aid of any
-animal. Finally, it would not be impossible to make
-machines, which, by means of a suit of wings, should fly
-in the air in the manner of birds." But the secret slept
-with Bacon. The six hundred years have not yet
-fulfilled his words. Two centuries ago, the sawing of
-timber was done by hand; the carriage-wheels ran on
-wooden axles; the land was tilled by wooden ploughs.
-And it was to little purpose that they had pit-coal or that
-looms were improved, unless Watt and Stephenson had
-taught them to work force-pumps and power-looms by
-steam. The great strides were all taken within the
-last hundred years. The life of Sir Robert Peel, in
-his day the model Englishman, very properly has, for
-a frontispiece, a drawing of the spinning-jenny, which
-wove the web of his fortunes. Hargreaves invented the
-spinning-jenny, and died in a workhouse. Arkwright
-improved the invention; and the machine dispensed with
-the work of ninety-nine men: that is, one spinner could
-do as much work as one hundred had done before. The
-loom was improved further. But the men would
-sometimes strike for wages, and combine against the masters,
-and, about 1829-30, much fear was felt, lest the trade
-would be drawn away by these interruptions, and the
-emigration of the spinners, to Belgium and the United
-States. Iron and steel are very obedient. Whether it
-were not possible to make a spinner that would not
-rebel, nor mutter, nor scowl, nor strike for wages, nor
-emigrate? At the solicitation of the masters, after a
-mob and riot at Staley Bridge, Mr. Roberts of Manchester
-undertook to create this peaceful fellow, instead of
-the quarrelsome fellow God had made. After a few
-trials, he succeeded, and, in 1830, procured a patent for
-his self-acting mule; a creation, the delight of mill-owners,
-and "destined," they said, "to restore order among
-the industrious classes"; a machine requiring only a
-child's hand to piece the broken yarns. As Arkwright
-had destroyed domestic spinning, so Roberts destroyed
-the factory spinner. The power of machinery in Great
-Britain, in mills, has been computed to be equal to
-600,000,000 men, one man being able by the aid of steam
-to do the work which required two hundred and fifty men
-to accomplish fifty years ago. The production has been
-commensurate. England already had this laborious race,
-rich soil, water, wood, coal, iron, and favorable climate.
-Eight hundred years ago, commerce had made it rich, and
-it was recorded, "England is the richest of all the
-northern nations." The Norman historians recite, that "in
-1067, William carried with him into Normandy, from
-England, more gold and silver than had ever before been
-seen in Gaul." But when, to this labor and trade and
-these native resources was added this goblin of steam,
-with his myriad arms, never tired, working night and
-day everlastingly, the amassing of property has run out
-of all figures. It makes the motor of the last ninety
-years. The steam-pipe has added to her population and
-wealth the equivalent of four or five Englands. Forty
-thousand ships are entered in Lloyd's lists. The yield
-of wheat has gone on from 2,000,000 quarters in the
-time of the Stuarts, to 13,000,000 in 1854. A thousand
-million pounds sterling are said to compose the
-floating money of commerce. In 1848, Lord John Russell
-stated that the people of this country had laid out
-£300,000,000 of capital in railways, in the last four
-years. But a better measure than these sounding
-figures is the estimate, that there is wealth enough in
-England to support the entire population in idleness for
-one year.
-
-The wise, versatile, all-giving machinery makes chisels,
-roads, locomotives, telegraphs. Whitworth divides a bar
-to a millionth of an inch. Steam twines huge cannon
-into wreaths, as easily as it braids straw, and vies with
-the volcanic forces which twisted the strata. It can
-clothe shingle mountains with ship-oaks, make sword-blades
-that will cut gun-barrels in two. In Egypt, it
-can plant forests, and bring rain after three thousand
-years. Already it is ruddering the balloon, and the
-next war will be fought in the air. But another
-machine more potent in England than steam is the Bank.
-
-It votes an issue of bills, population is stimulated, and
-cities rise; it refuses loans, and emigration empties the
-country; trade sinks; revolutions break out; kings are
-dethroned. By these new agents our social system is
-moulded. By dint of steam and of money, war and
-commerce are changed. Nations have lost their old
-omnipotence; the patriotic tie does not hold. Nations are
-getting obsolete, we go and live where we will. Steam
-has enabled men to choose what law they will live under.
-Money makes place for them. The telegraph is a
-limp-band that will hold the Fenris-wolf of war. For now,
-that a telegraph line runs through France and
-Europe, from London, every message it transmits makes
-stronger by one thread the band which war will have
-to cut.
-
-The introduction of these elements gives new resources
-to existing proprietors. A sporting duke may fancy that
-the state depends on the House of Lords, but the
-engineer sees, that every stroke of the steam-piston gives
-value to the duke's land, fills it with tenants; doubles,
-quadruples, centuples the duke's capital, and creates new
-measures and new necessities for the culture of his
-children. Of course, it draws the nobility into the
-competition as stockholders in the mine, the canal, the railway,
-in the application of steam to agriculture, and sometimes
-into trade. But it also introduces large classes into the
-same competition; the old energy of the Norse race arms
-itself with these magnificent powers; new men prove an
-overmatch for the land-owner, and the mill buys out the
-castle. Scandinavian Thor, who once forged his bolts in
-icy Hecla, and built galleys by lonely fiords, in England,
-has advanced with the times, has shorn his beard, enters
-Parliament, sits down at a desk in the India House, and
-lends Miollnir to Birmingham for a steam-hammer.
-
-The creation of wealth in England in the last ninety
-years is a main fact in modern history. The wealth of
-London determines prices all over the globe. All things
-precious, or useful, or amusing, or intoxicating, are
-sucked into this commerce and floated to London. Some
-English private fortunes reach, and some exceed, a
-million of dollars a year. A hundred thousand palaces
-adorn the island. All that can feed the senses and
-passions, all that can succor the talent, or arm the hands of
-the intelligent middle class who never spare in what they
-buy for their own consumption; all that can aid
-science, gratify taste, or soothe comfort, is in open market.
-Whatever is excellent and beautiful in civil, rural, or
-ecclesiastic architecture; in fountain, garden, or grounds;
-the English noble crosses sea and land to see and to copy
-at home. The taste and science of thirty peaceful
-generations; the gardens which Evelyn planted; the temples
-and pleasure-houses which Inigo Jones and Christopher
-Wren built; the wood that Gibbons carved; the taste
-of foreign and domestic artists, Shenstone, Pope, Brown,
-Loudon, Paxton, are in the vast auction, and the
-hereditary principle heaps on the owner of to-day the benefit
-of ages of owners. The present possessors are to the
-full as absolute as any of their fathers, in choosing and
-procuring what they like. This comfort and splendor,
-the breadth of lake and mountain, tillage, pasture, and
-park, sumptuous castle and modern villa,--all consist
-with perfect order. They have no revolutions; no
-horse-guards dictating to the crown; no Parisian *poissardes*
-and barricades; no mob; but drowsy habitude, daily
-dress-dinners, wine, and ale, and beer, and gin, and
-sleep.
-
-With this power of creation, and this passion for
-independence, property has reached an ideal perfection.
-It is felt and treated as the national life-blood. The
-laws are framed to give property the securest possible
-basis, and the provisions to lock and transmit it have
-exercised the cunningest heads in a profession which
-never admits a fool. The rights of property nothing but
-felony and treason can override. The house is a castle
-which the king cannot enter. The Bank is a strong-box
-to which the king has no key. Whatever surly
-sweetness possession can give, is tasted in England to the
-dregs. Vested rights are awful things, and absolute
-possession gives the smallest freeholder identity of
-interest with the duke. High stone fences and padlocked
-garden gates announce the absolute will of the owner to
-be alone. Every whim of exaggerated egotism is put
-into stone and iron, into silver and gold, with costly
-deliberation and detail.
-
-An Englishman hears that the Queen Dowager wishes
-to establish some claim to put her park paling a rod
-forward into his grounds, so as to get a coachway, and save
-her a mile to the avenue. Instantly he transforms his
-paling into stone masonry, solid as the walls of Cuma,
-and all Europe cannot prevail on him to sell or
-compound for an inch of the land. They delight in a freak
-as the proof of their sovereign freedom. Sir Edward
-Boynton, at Spic Park, at Cadenham, on a precipice of
-incomparable prospect, built a house like a long barn,
-which had not a window on the prospect side. Strawberry
-Hill of Horace Walpole, Fonthill Abbey of
-Mr. Beckford, were freaks; and Newstead Abbey became
-one in the hands of Lord Byron.
-
-But the proudest result of this creation has been the
-great and refined forces it has put at the disposal of the
-private citizen. In the social world, an Englishman
-to-day has the best lot. He is a king in a plain coat. He
-goes with the most powerful protection, keeps the best
-company, is armed by the best education, is seconded by
-wealth; and his English name and accidents are like
-a flourish of trumpets announcing him. This, with his
-quiet style of manners, gives him the power of a
-sovereign, without the inconveniences which belong to that
-rank. I much prefer the condition of an English
-gentleman of the better class, to that of any potentate in
-Europe,--whether for travel, or for opportunity of
-society, or for access to means of science or study, or
-for mere comfort and easy healthy relation to people at
-home.
-
-Such, as we have seen, is the wealth of England, a
-mighty mass, and made good in whatever details we care
-to explore. The cause and spring of it is the wealth
-of temperament in the people. The wonder of Britain
-is this plenteous nature. Her worthies are ever
-surrounded by as good men as themselves; each is a
-captain a hundred strong, and that wealth of men is
-represented again in the faculty of each individual,--that
-he has waste strength, power to spare. The English
-are so rich, and seem to have established a taproot
-in the bowels of the planet, because they are
-constitutionally fertile and creative.
-
-But a man must keep an eye on his servants, if he
-would not have them rule him. Man is a shrewd inventor,
-and is ever taking the hint of a new machine from his
-own structure, adapting some secret of his own anatomy
-in iron, wood, and leather, to some required function in
-the work of the world. But it is found that the machine
-unmans the user. What he gains in making cloth, he
-loses in general power. There should be temperance
-in making cloth, as well as in eating. A man should
-not be a silkworm; nor a nation a tent of caterpillars.
-The robust rural Saxon degenerates in the mills to the
-Leicester stockinger, to the imbecile Manchester
-spinner,--far on the way to be spiders and needles. The
-incessant repetition of the same hand-work dwarfs the man,
-robs him of his strength, wit, and versatility, to make a
-pin-polisher, a buckle-maker, or any other specialty; and
-presently, in a change of industry, whole towns are
-sacrificed like ant-hills, when, the fashion of shoestrings
-supersedes buckles, when cotton takes the place of linen,
-or railways of turnpikes, or when commons are enclosed
-by landlords. Then society is admonished of the
-mischief of the division of labor, and that the best political
-economy is care and culture of men; for, in these crises,
-all are ruined except such as are proper individuals,
-capable of thought, and of new choice and the application
-of their talent to new labor. Then again come in
-new calamities. England is aghast at the disclosure of her
-fraud in the adulteration of food, of drugs, and of almost
-every fabric in her mills and shops; finding that milk will
-not nourish, nor sugar sweeten, nor bread satisfy, nor
-pepper bite the tongue, nor glue stick. In true England
-all is false and forged. This too is the reaction of
-machinery, but of the larger machinery of commerce. 'T is
-not, I suppose, want of probity, so much as the tyranny
-of trade, which necessitates a perpetual competition of
-underselling, and that again a perpetual deterioration of
-the fabric.
-
-The machinery has proved, like the balloon, unmanageable,
-and flies away with the aeronaut. Steam from the
-first hissed and screamed to warn him; it was dreadful
-with its explosion, and crushed the engineer. The
-machinist has wrought and watched, engineers and firemen
-without number have been sacrificed in learning to tame
-and guide the monster. But harder still it has proved
-to resist and rule the dragon Money, with his paper
-wings. Chancellors and Boards of Trade, Pitt, Peel,
-and Robinson, and their Parliaments, and their whole
-generation, adopted false principles, and went to their
-graves in the belief that they were enriching the country
-which they were impoverishing. They congratulated
-each other on ruinous expedients. It is rare to find
-a merchant who knows why a crisis occurs in trade, why
-prices rise or fall, or who knows the mischief of
-paper-money. In the culmination of national prosperity, in
-the annexation of countries; building of ships, depots,
-towns; in the influx of tons of gold and silver; amid the
-chuckle of chancellors and financiers, it was found that
-bread rose to famine prices, that the yeoman was forced
-to sell his cow and pig, his tools, and his acre of land;
-and the dreadful barometer of the poor-rates was
-touching the point of ruin. The poor-rate was sucking in the
-solvent classes, and forcing an exodus of farmers and
-mechanics. What befalls from the violence of financial
-crises, befalls daily in the violence of artificial legislation.
-
-.. vspace:: 2
-
-Such a wealth has England earned, ever new, bounteous,
-and augmenting. But the question recurs, does she
-take the step beyond, namely, to the wise use, in view
-of the supreme wealth of nations? We estimate the
-wisdom of nations by seeing what they did with their
-surplus capital. And, in view of these injuries, some
-compensation has been attempted in England. A part
-of the money earned returns to the brain to buy schools,
-libraries, bishops, astronomers, chemists, and artists with;
-and a part to repair the wrongs of this intemperate
-weaving, by hospitals, savings-banks, Mechanics' Institutes,
-public grounds, and other charities and amenities. But
-the antidotes are frightfully inadequate, and the evil
-requires a deeper cure, which time and a simpler social
-organization must supply. At present, she does not rule
-her wealth. She is simply a good England, but no
-divinity, or wise and instructed soul. She too is in the
-stream of fate, one victim more in a common catastrophe.
-
-But being in the fault, she has the misfortune of
-greatness to be held as the chief offender. England must
-be held responsible for the despotism of expense. Her
-prosperity, the splendor which so much manhood and
-talent and perseverance has thrown upon vulgar aims, is the
-very argument of materialism. Her success strengthens
-the hands of base wealth. Who can propose to youth
-poverty and wisdom, when mean gain has arrived at the
-conquest of letters and arts; when English success has
-grown out of the very renunciation of principles, and the
-dedication to outsides. A civility of trifles, of money
-and expense, an erudition of sensation takes place, and
-the putting as many impediments as we can, between the
-man and his objects. Hardly the bravest among them
-have the manliness to resist it successfully. Hence, it
-has come, that not the aims of a manly life, but the
-means of meeting a certain ponderous expense, is that
-which is to be considered by a youth in England,
-emerging from his minority. A large family is reckoned a
-misfortune. And it is a consolation in the death of the
-young, that a source of expense is closed.
-
-.. vspace:: 4
-
-CHAPTER XI.--ARISTOCRACY.
-=========================
-
-The feudal character of the English state, now that it
-is getting obsolete, glares a little, in contrast with the
-democratic tendencies. The inequality of power and
-property shocks republican nerves. Palaces, halls, villas,
-walled parks, all over England, rival the splendor of
-royal seats. Many of the halls, like Haddon, or
-Kedleston, are beautiful desolations. The proprietor never saw
-them, or never lived in them. Primogeniture built these
-sumptuous piles, and, I suppose, it is the sentiment of
-every traveller, as it was mine, 'T was well to come ere
-these were gone. Primogeniture is a cardinal rule of
-English property and institutions. Laws, customs,
-manners, the very persons and faces, affirm it.
-
-The frame of society is aristocratic, the taste of the
-people is loyal. The estates, names, and manners of
-the nobles flatter the fancy of the people, and conciliate
-the necessary support. In spite of broken faith, stolen
-charters, and the devastation of society by the profligacy
-of the court, we take sides as we read for the loyal
-England and King Charles's "return to his right" with
-his Cavaliers,--knowing what a heartless trifler he is,
-and what a crew of God-forsaken robbers they are. The
-people of England knew as much. But the fair idea of
-a settled government connecting itself with heraldic
-names, with the written and oral history of Europe, and,
-at last, with the Hebrew religion, and the oldest
-traditions of the world, was too pleasing a vision to be
-shattered by a few offensive realities, and the politics of
-shoemakers and costermongers. The hopes of the
-commoners take the same direction with the interest of the
-patricians. Every man who becomes rich buys land, and
-does what he can to fortify the nobility, into which he
-hopes to rise. The Anglican clergy are identified with
-the aristocracy. Time and law have made the joining
-and moulding perfect in every part. The Cathedrals,
-the Universities, the national music, the popular
-romances, conspire to uphold the heraldry, which the
-current politics of the day are sapping. The taste of
-the people is conservative. They are proud of the
-castles, and of the language and symbol of chivalry. Even
-the word "lord" is the luckiest style that is used in
-any language to designate a patrician. The superior
-education and manners of the nobles recommend them
-to the country.
-
-The Norwegian pirate got what he could, and held it
-for his eldest son. The Norman noble, who was the
-Norwegian pirate baptized, did likewise. There was this
-advantage of Western over Oriental nobility, that this was
-recruited from below. English history is aristocracy
-with the doors open. Who has courage and faculty, let
-him come in. Of course, the terms of admission to this
-club are hard and high. The selfishness of the nobles
-comes in aid of the interest of the nation to require signal
-merit. Piracy and war gave place to trade, politics, and
-letters; the war-lord to the law-lord; the law-lord to the
-merchant and the mill-owner; but the privilege was kept,
-whilst the means of obtaining it were changed.
-
-The foundations of these families lie deep in Norwegian
-exploits by sea, and Saxon sturdiness on land. All
-nobility in its beginnings was somebody's natural superiority.
-The things these English have done were not done
-without peril of life, nor without wisdom and conduct;
-and the first hands, it may be presumed, were often
-challenged to show their right to their honors, or yield them
-to better men. "He that will be a head, let him be a
-bridge," said the Welsh chief Benegridran, when he
-carried all his men over the river on his back. "He shall
-have the book," said the mother of Alfred, "who can
-read it"; and Alfred won it by that title: and I make
-no doubt that feudal tenure was no sinecure, but baron,
-knight, and tenant often had their memories refreshed,
-in regard to the service by which they held their lands.
-The De Veres, Bohuns, Mowbrays, and Plantagenets
-were not addicted to contemplation. The Middle Age
-adorned itself with proofs of manhood and devotion. Of
-Richard Beauchamp, Earl of Warwick, the Emperor told
-Henry V. that no Christian king had such another knight
-for wisdom, nurture, and manhood, and caused him to be
-named, "Father of curtesie." "Our success in France,"
-says the historian, "lived and died with him." [#]_
-
-.. [#] Fuller's Worthies, II. p. 472.
-
-The war-lord earned his honors, and no donation of
-land was large, as long as it brought the duty of protecting
-it, hour by hour, against a terrible enemy. In France
-and in England, the nobles were, down to a late day, born
-and bred to war; and the duel, which in peace still held
-them to the risks of war, diminished the envy that, in
-trading and studious nations, would else have pried into
-their title. They were looked on as men who played high
-for a great stake.
-
-Great estates are not sinecures, if they are to be kept
-great. A creative economy is the fuel of magnificence.
-In the same line of Warwick, the successor next but one
-to Beauchamp was the stout earl of Henry VI. and
-Edward IV. Few esteemed themselves in the mode,
-whose heads were not adorned with the black ragged
-staff, his badge. At his house in London, six oxen were
-daily eaten at a breakfast; and every tavern was full of
-his meat; and who had any acquaintance in his family,
-should have as much boiled and roast as he could carry
-on a long dagger.
-
-The new age brings new qualities into request, the
-virtues of pirates gave way to those of planters,
-merchants, senators, and scholars. Comity, social talent,
-and fine manners, no doubt, have had their part also. I
-have met somewhere with a historiette, which, whether
-more or less true in its particulars, carries a general truth.
-"How came the Duke of Bedford by his great landed
-estates? His ancestor having travelled on the continent,
-a lively, pleasant man, became the companion of a foreign
-prince wrecked on the Dorsetshire coast, where
-Mr. Russell lived. The prince recommended him to Henry
-VIII., who, liking his company, gave him a large share
-of the plundered church lands."
-
-The pretence is that the noble is of unbroken descent
-from the Norman, and has never worked for eight
-hundred years. But the fact is otherwise. Where is
-Bohun? where is De Vere? The lawyer, the farmer, the
-silk-mercer, lies *perdu* under the coronet, and winks to the
-antiquary to say nothing; especially skilful lawyers,
-nobody's sons, who did some piece of work at a nice
-moment for government, and were rewarded with ermine.
-
-The national tastes of the English do not lead them
-to the life of the courtier, but to secure the comfort
-and independence of their homes. The aristocracy are
-marked by their predilection for country-life. They are
-called the county-families. They have often no residence
-in London, and only go thither for a short time, during
-the season, to see the opera; but they concentrate the love
-and labor of many generations on the building, planting,
-and decoration of their homesteads. Some of them are
-too old and too proud to wear titles, or, as Sheridan said
-of Coke, "disdain to hide their head in a coronet"; and
-some curious examples are cited to show the stability of
-English families. Their proverb is, that, fifty miles from
-London, a family will last a hundred years; at a hundred
-miles, two hundred years; and so on; but I doubt that
-steam, the enemy of time, as well as of space, will
-disturb these ancient rules. Sir Henry Wotton says of the
-first Duke of Buckingham: "He was born at Brookeby
-in Leicestershire, where his ancestors had chiefly
-continued about the space of four hundred years, rather
-without obscurity, than with any great lustre." [#]_ Wraxall
-says, that, in 1781, Lord Surrey, afterwards Duke of
-Norfolk, told him, that when the year 1783 should arrive,
-he meant to give a grand festival to all the descendants
-of the body of Jockey of Norfolk, to mark the day when
-the dukedom should have remained three hundred years
-in their house, since its creation by Richard III. Pepys
-tells us, in writing of an Earl Oxford, in 1666, that the
-honor had now remained in that name and blood six
-hundred years.
-
-.. [#] Reliquiæ Wottonianæ, p. 208.
-
-This long descent of families and this cleaving through
-ages to the same spot of ground captivates the imagination.
-It has too a connection with the names of the
-towns and districts of the country.
-
-The names are excellent,--an atmosphere of legendary
-melody spread over the land. Older than all epics
-and histories, which clothe a nation, this undershirt sits
-close to the body. What history too, and what stores of
-primitive and savage observation, it infolds! Cambridge
-is the bridge of the Cam; Sheffield, the field of the river
-Sheaf; Leicester, the *castra* or camp of the Lear or Leir
-(now Soar); Rochdale, of the Roch; Exeter or Excester,
-the *castra* of the Ex; Exmouth, Dartmouth, Sidmouth,
-Teignmouth, the mouths of the Ex, Dart, Sid, and Teign
-Rivers. Waltham is strong town; Radcliffe is red cliff;
-and so on;--a sincerity and use in naming very striking
-to an American, whose country is whitewashed all over
-by unmeaning names, the cast-off clothes of the country
-from which its emigrants came; or, named at a pinch
-from a psalm-tune. But the English are those "barbarians"
-of Jamblichus, who "are stable in their manners,
-and firmly continue to employ the same words, which also
-are dear to the gods."
-
-'T is an old sneer, that the Irish peerage drew their
-names from playbooks. The English lords do not call
-their lands after their own names, but call themselves
-after their lands; as if the man represented the country
-that bred him; and they rightly wear the token of the
-glebe that gave them birth; suggesting that the tie is not
-cut, but that there in London,--the crags of Argyle, the
-kail of Cornwall, the downs of Devon, the iron of Wales,
-the clays of Stafford, are neither forgetting nor forgotten,
-but know the man who was born by them, and who, like
-the long line of his fathers, has carried that crag, that
-shore, dale, fen, or woodland in his blood and manners.
-It has, too, the advantage of suggesting responsibleness.
-A susceptible man could not wear a name which represented
-in a strict sense a city or a county of England,
-without hearing in it a challenge to duty and honor.
-
-The predilection of the patricians for residence in the
-country, combined with the degree of liberty possessed
-by the peasant, makes the safety of the English hall.
-Mirabeau wrote prophetically from England, in 1784:
-"If revolution break out in France, I tremble for the
-aristocracy: their chaâeaux will be reduced to ashes, and
-their blood spilt in torrents. The English tenant would
-defend his lord to the last extremity." The English go
-to their estates for grandeur. The French live at court,
-and exile themselves to their estates for economy. As
-they do not mean to live with their tenants, they do not
-conciliate them, but wring from them the last sous.
-Evelyn writes from Blois, in 1644: "The wolves are
-here in such numbers, that they often come and take
-children out of the streets; yet will not the Duke, who is
-sovereign here, permit them to be destroyed."
-
-In evidence of the wealth amassed by ancient families,
-the traveller is shown the palaces in Piccadilly,
-Burlington House, Devonshire House, Lansdowne House in
-Berkshire Square, and, lower down in the city, a few
-noble houses which still withstand in all their amplitude
-the encroachment of streets. The Duke of Bedford
-includes or included a mile square in the heart of London,
-where the British Museum, once Montague House, now
-stands, and the land occupied by Woburn Square,
-Bedford Square, Russell Square. The Marquis of Westminster
-built within a few years the series of squares called
-Belgravia. Stafford House is the noblest palace in
-London. Northumberland House holds its place by Charing
-Cross. Chesterfield House remains in Audley Street.
-Sion House and Holland House are in the suburbs. But
-most of the historical houses are masked or lost in the
-modern uses to which trade or charity has converted
-them. A multitude of town palaces contain inestimable
-galleries of art.
-
-In the country, the size of private estates is more
-impressive. From Barnard Castle I rode on the highway
-twenty-three miles from High Force, a fall of the
-Tees, towards Darlington, past Raby Castle, through
-the estate of the Duke of Cleveland. The Marquis of
-Breadalbane rides out of his house a hundred miles in
-a straight line to the sea, on his own property. The
-Duke of Sutherland owns the county of Sutherland,
-stretching across Scotland from sea to sea. The Duke
-of Devonshire, besides his other estates, owns 96,000
-acres in the county of Derby. The Duke of Richmond
-has 40,000 acres at Goodwood, and 300,000 at Gordon
-Castle. The Duke of Norfolk's park in Sussex is fifteen
-miles in circuit. An agriculturist bought lately the
-island of Lewes, in Hebrides, containing 500,000 acres.
-The possessions of the Earl of Lonsdale gave him eight
-seats in Parliament. This is the Heptarchy again; and
-before the Reform of 1832, one hundred and fifty-four
-persons sent three hundred and seven members to
-Parliament. The borough-mongers governed England.
-
-These large domains are growing larger. The great
-estates are absorbing the small freeholds. In 1786, the
-soil of England was owned by 250,000 corporations and
-proprietors; and, in 1822, by 32,000. These broad
-estates find room in this narrow island. All over
-England, scattered at short intervals among ship-yards, mills,
-mines, and forges, are the paradises of the nobles, where
-the livelong repose and refinement are heightened by the
-contrast with the roar of industry and necessity, out of
-which you have stepped aside.
-
-.. vspace:: 2
-
-I was surprised to observe the very small attendance
-usually in the House of Lords. Out of 573 peers, on
-ordinary days, only twenty or thirty. Where are they? I
-asked. "At home on their estates, devoured by *ennui*,
-or in the Alps, or up the Rhine, in the Harz Mountains,
-or in Egypt, or in India, on the Ghauts." But, with
-such interests at stake, how can these men afford to
-neglect them? "O," replied my friend, "why should
-they work for themselves, when every man in England
-works for them, and will suffer before they come to
-harm?" The hardest radical instantly uncovers, and
-changes his tone to a lord. It was remarked on the
-10th April, 1848 (the day of the Chartist demonstration),
-that the upper classes were, for the first time, actively
-interesting themselves in their own defence, and men of
-rank were sworn special constables, with the rest.
-"Besides, why need they sit out the debate? Has not the
-Duke of Wellington, at this moment, their proxies,--the
-proxies of fifty peers in his pocket, to vote for them, if
-there be an emergency?"
-
-It is however true, that the existence of the House of
-Peers as a branch of the government entitles them to fill
-half the Cabinet; and their weight of property and station
-gives them a virtual nomination of the other half; whilst
-they have their share in the subordinate offices, as a school
-of training. This monopoly of political power has given
-them their intellectual and social eminence in Europe.
-A few law lords and a few political lords take the brunt
-of public business. In the army, the nobility fill a large
-part of the high commissions, and give to these a tone of
-expense and splendor, and also of exclusiveness. They
-have borne their full share of duty and danger in this
-service; and there are few noble families which have not
-paid in some of their members, the debt of life or limb,
-in the sacrifices of the Russian war. For the rest, the
-nobility have the lead in matters of state, and of expense;
-in questions of taste, in social usages, in convivial and
-domestic hospitalities. In general, all that is required of
-them is to sit securely, to preside at public meetings, to
-countenance charities, and to give the example of that
-decorum so dear to the British heart.
-
-If one asks, in the critical spirit of the day, what
-service this class have rendered?--uses appear, or they
-would have perished long ago. Some of these are easily
-enumerated, others more subtle make a part of unconscious
-history. Their institution is one step in the progress
-of society. For a race yields a nobility in some form,
-however we name the lords, as surely as it yields women.
-
-The English nobles are high-spirited, active, educated
-men, born to wealth and power, who have run through
-every country, and kept in every country the best
-company, have seen every secret of art and nature, and, when
-men of any ability or ambition, have been consulted in
-the conduct of every important action. You cannot wield
-great agencies without lending yourself to them, and
-when it happens that the spirit of the earl meets his
-rank and duties, we have the best examples of behavior.
-Power of any kind readily appears in the manners; and
-beneficent power, *le talent de bien faire*, gives a majesty
-which cannot be concealed or resisted.
-
-These people seem to gain as much as they lose by
-their position. They survey society, as from the top of
-St. Paul's, and if they never hear plain truth from men,
-they see the best of everything, in every kind, and they
-see things so grouped and amassed as to infer easily the
-sum and genius, instead of tedious particularities. Their
-good behavior deserves all its fame, and they have that
-simplicity, and that air of repose, which are the finest
-ornament of greatness.
-
-The upper classes have only birth, say the people here,
-and not thoughts. Yes, but they have manners, and 't is
-wonderful, how much talent runs into manners:--nowhere
-and never so much as in England. They have the
-sense of superiority, the absence of all the ambitious
-effort which disgusts in the aspiring classes, a pure tone
-of thought and feeling, and the power to command,
-among their other luxuries, the presence of the most
-accomplished men in their festive meetings.
-
-Loyalty is in the English a sub-religion. They wear
-the laws as ornaments, and walk by their faith in their
-painted May-Fair, as if among the forms of gods. The
-economist of 1855 who asks, of what use are the lords? may
-learn of Franklin to ask, of what use is a baby?
-They have been a social church proper to inspire
-sentiments mutually honoring the lover and the loved.
-Politeness is the ritual of society, as prayers are of the
-church; a school of manners, and a gentle blessing to
-the age in which it grew. 'T is a romance adorning
-English life with a larger horizon; a midway heaven,
-fulfilling to their sense their fairy tales and poetry. This,
-just as far as the breeding of the nobleman, really made
-him brave, handsome, accomplished, and great-hearted.
-
-On general grounds, whatever tends to form manners,
-or to finish men, has a great value. Every one who has
-tasted the delight of friendship, will respect every social
-guard which our manners can establish, tending to secure
-from the intrusion of frivolous and distasteful people.
-The jealousy of every class to guard itself, is a testimony
-to the reality they have found in life. When a man once
-knows that he has done justice to himself, let him
-dismiss all terrors of aristocracy as superstitions, so far as
-he is concerned. He who keeps the door of a mine,
-whether of cobalt, or mercury, or nickel, or plumbago,
-securely knows that the world cannot do without him.
-Everybody who is real is open and ready for that which
-is also real.
-
-Besides, these are they who make England that strongbox
-and museum it is; who gather and protect works of
-art, dragged from amidst burning cities and revolutionary
-countries, and brought hither out of all the world. I
-look with respect at houses six, seven, eight hundred, or,
-like Warwick Castle, nine hundred years old. I
-pardoned high park fences, when I saw, that, besides does
-and pheasants, these have preserved Arundel marbles,
-Townley galleries, Howard and Spenserian libraries,
-Warwick and Portland vases, Saxon manuscripts, monastic
-architectures, millennial trees, and breeds of cattle
-elsewhere extinct. In these manors, after the frenzy of
-war and destruction subsides a little, the antiquary finds
-the frailest Roman jar, or crumbling Egyptian mummy-case,
-without so much as a new layer of dust, keeping
-the series of history unbroken, and waiting for its
-interpreter, who is sure to arrive. These lords are the
-treasurers and librarians of mankind, engaged by their pride
-and wealth to this function.
-
-Yet there were other works for British dukes to do.
-George Loudon, Quintinye, Evelyn, had taught them to
-make gardens. Arthur Young, Bakewell, and Mechi
-have made them agricultural. Scotland was a camp
-until the day of Culloden. The Dukes of Athol,
-Sutherland, Buccleugh, and the Marquis of Breadalbane have
-introduced the rape-culture, the sheep-farm, wheat, drainage,
-the plantation of forests, the artificial replenishment
-of lakes and ponds with fish, the renting of game-preserves.
-Against the cry of the old tenantry, and the
-sympathetic cry of the English press, they have rooted
-out and planted anew, and now six millions of people live,
-and live better on the same land that fed three millions.
-
-The English barons, in every period, have been brave
-and great, after the estimate and opinion of their times.
-The grand old halls scattered up and down in England
-are dumb vouchers to the state and broad hospitality of
-their ancient lords. Shakspeare's portraits of good Duke
-Humphrey, of Warwick, of Northumberland, of Talbot,
-were drawn in strict consonance with the traditions. A
-sketch of the Earl of Shrewsbury, from the pen of Queen
-Elizabeth's Archbishop Parker; [#]_ Lord Herbert of
-Cherbury's autobiography; the letters and essays of Sir
-Philip Sidney; the anecdotes preserved by the antiquaries
-Fuller and Collins; some glimpses at the interiors of
-noble houses, which we owe to Pepys and Evelyn; the
-details which Ben Jonson's masques (performed at
-Kenilworth, Althorpe, Belvoir, and other noble houses) record
-or suggest; down to Aubrey's passages of the life of
-Hobbes in the house of the Earl of Devon, are favorable
-pictures of a romantic style of manners. Penshurst still
-shines for us, and its Christmas revels, "where logs not
-burn, but men." At Wilton House, the "Arcadia" was
-written, amidst conversations with Fulke Greville, Lord
-Brooke, a man of no vulgar mind, as his own poems
-declare him. I must hold Ludlow Castle an honest house,
-for which Milton's "Comus" was written, and the
-company nobly bred which performed it with knowledge and
-sympathy. In the roll of nobles are found poets,
-philosophers, chemists, astronomers, also men of solid virtues
-and of lofty sentiments; often they have been the friends
-and patrons of genius and learning, and especially of the
-fine arts; and at this moment, almost every great house
-has its sumptuous picture-gallery.
-
-.. [#] Dibdin's Literary Reminiscences, Vol. I. xii.
-
-Of course, there is another side to this gorgeous show.
-Every victory was the defeat of a party only less worthy.
-Castles are proud things, but 't is safest to be outside of
-them. War is a foul game, and yet war is not the worst
-part of aristocratic history. In later times, when the
-baron, educated only for war, with his brains paralyzed
-by his stomach, found himself idle at home, he grew fat
-and wanton, and a sorry brute. Grammont, Pepys, and
-Evelyn show the kennels to which the king and court
-went in quest of pleasure. Prostitutes taken from the
-theatres were made duchesses, their bastards dukes and
-earls. "The young men sat uppermost, the old serious
-lords were out of favor." The discourse that the king's
-companions had with him was "poor and frothy." No
-man who valued his head might do what these pot-companions
-familiarly did with the king. In logical sequence
-of these dignified revels, Pepys can tell the beggarly shifts
-to which the king was reduced, who could not find paper
-at his council table, and "no handkerchers" in his
-wardrobe, "and but three bands to his neck," and the
-linen-draper and the stationer were out of pocket, and refusing
-to trust him, and the baker will not bring bread any
-longer. Meantime, the English Channel was swept, and
-London threatened by the Dutch fleet, manned too by
-English sailors, who, having been cheated of their pay for
-years by the king, enlisted with the enemy.
-
-The Selwyn correspondence in the reign of George
-III. discloses a rottenness in the aristocracy, which
-threatened to decompose the state. The sycophancy and
-sale of votes and honor, for place and title; lewdness,
-gaming, smuggling, bribery, and cheating; the sneer at
-the childish indiscretion of quarrelling with ten thousand
-a year; the want of ideas; the splendor of the titles, and
-the apathy of the nation, are instructive, and make the
-reader pause and explore the firm bounds which confined
-these vices to a handful of rich men. In the reign of the
-Fourth George, things do not seem to have mended, and
-the rotten debauchee let down from a window by an
-inclined plane into his coach to take the air, was a scandal
-to Europe which the ill fame of his queen and of his
-family did nothing to retrieve.
-
-Under the present reign, the perfect decorum of the
-Court is thought to have put a check on the gross vices
-of the aristocracy; yet gaming, racing, drinking, and
-mistresses bring them down, and the democrat can still gather
-scandals, if he will. Dismal anecdotes abound, verifying
-the gossip of the last generation of dukes served by bailiffs,
-with all their plate in pawn; of great lords living by
-the showing of their houses; and of an old man wheeled
-in his chair from room to room, whilst his chambers are
-exhibited to the visitor for money: of ruined dukes and
-earls living in exile for debt. The historic names of the
-Buckinghams, Beauforts, Marlboroughs, and Hertfords
-have gained no new lustre, and now and then darker
-scandals break out, ominous as the new chapters added
-under the Orleans dynasty to the "*Causes Célèbres*" in
-France. Even peers, who are men of worth and public
-spirit, are overtaken and embarrassed by their vast
-expense. The respectable Duke of Devonshire, willing to
-be the Mecænas and Lucullus of his island, is reported
-to have said that he cannot live at Chatsworth but one
-month in the year. Their many houses eat them up.
-They cannot sell them, because they are entailed. They
-will not let them, for pride's sake, but keep them empty,
-aired, and the grounds mown and dressed, at a cost of
-four or five thousand pounds a year. The spending is
-for a great part in servants, in many houses exceeding a
-hundred.
-
-Most of them are only chargeable with idleness, which,
-because it squanders such vast power of benefit, has the
-mischief of crime. "They might be little Providences
-on earth," said my friend, "and they are, for the most
-part, jockeys and fops." Campbell says: "Acquaintance
-with the nobility, I could never keep up. It requires a
-life of idleness, dressing, and attendance on their parties." I
-suppose, too, that a feeling of self-respect is driving
-cultivated men out of this society, as if the noble were
-slow to receive the lessons of the times, and had not
-learned to disguise his pride of place. A man of wit,
-who is also one of the celebrities of wealth and fashion,
-confessed to his friend, that he could not enter their
-houses without being made to feel that they were great
-lords, and he a low plebeian. With the tribe of *artistes*,
-including the musical tribe, the patrician morgue keeps
-no terms, but excludes them. When Julia Grisi and
-Mario sang at the houses of the Duke of Wellington and
-other grandees, a ribbon was stretched between the
-singer and the company.
-
-When every noble was a soldier, they were carefully
-bred to great personal prowess. The education of a
-soldier is a simpler affair than that of an earl in the
-nineteenth century. And this was very seriously pursued;
-they were expert in every species of equitation, to the
-most dangerous practices, and this down to the accession
-of William of Orange. But graver men appear to have
-trained their sons for civil affairs. Elizabeth extended
-her thought to the future; and Sir Philip Sidney in his
-letter to his brother, and Milton and Evelyn, gave plain
-and hearty counsel. Already, too, the English noble
-and squire were preparing for the career of the
-country-gentleman, and his peaceable expense. They went from
-city to city, learning receipts to make perfumes, sweet
-powders, pomanders, antidotes, gathering seeds, gems,
-coins, and divers curiosities, preparing for a private life
-thereafter, in which they should take pleasure in these
-recreations.
-
-All advantages given to absolve the young patrician
-from intellectual labor are of course mistaken. "In the
-university, noblemen are exempted from the public
-exercises for the degree, etc., by which they attain a degree
-called honorary. At the same time the fees they must
-pay for matriculation, and on all other occasions, are
-much higher." [#]_ Fuller records "the observation of
-foreigners, that Englishmen, by making their children
-gentlemen, before they are men, cause they are so seldom
-wise men." This cockering justifies Dr. Johnson's bitter
-apology for primogeniture, "that it makes but one fool
-in a family."
-
-.. [#] Huber, History of English Universities.
-
-The revolution in society has reached this class. The
-great powers of industrial art have no exclusion of name
-or blood. The tools of our time, namely, steam, ships,
-printing, money, and popular education, belong to those
-who can handle them; and their effect has been, that
-advantages once confined to men of family are now open to
-the whole middle class. The road that grandeur levels
-for his coach, toil can travel in his cart.
-
-This is more manifest every day, but I think it is true
-throughout English history. English history, wisely
-read, is the vindication of the brain of that people. Here,
-at last, were climate and condition friendly to the
-working faculty. Who now will work and dare, shall rule.
-This is the charter, or the chartism, which fogs, and seas,
-and rains proclaimed,--that intellect and personal force
-should make the law; that industry and administrative
-talent should administer; that work should wear the
-crown. I know that not this, but something else is
-pretended. The fiction with which the noble and the
-bystander equally please themselves is, that the former is of
-unbroken descent from the Norman, and so has never
-worked for eight hundred years. All the families are
-new, but the name is old, and they have made a covenant
-with their memories not to disturb it. But the analysis
-of the peerage and gentry shows the rapid decay and
-extinction of old families, the continual recruiting of these
-from new blood. The doors, though ostentatiously
-guarded, are really open, and hence the power of the
-bribe. All the barriers to rank only whet the thirst, and
-enhance the prize. "Now," said Nelson, when clearing
-for battle, "a peerage, or Westminster Abbey!" "I have
-no illusion left," said Sidney Smith, "but the Archbishop
-of Canterbury." "The lawyers," said Burke, "are only
-birds of passage in this House of Commons," and then
-added, with a new figure, "they have their best bower
-anchor in the House of Lords."
-
-Another stride that has been taken, appears in the
-perishing of heraldry. Whilst the privileges of nobility
-are passing to the middle class, the badge is discredited,
-and the titles of lordship are getting musty and
-cumbersome. I wonder that sensible men have not been already
-impatient of them. They belong, with wigs, powder, and
-scarlet coats, to an earlier age, and may be advantageously
-consigned, with paint and tattoo, to the dignitaries
-of Australia and Polynesia.
-
-A multitude of English, educated at the universities,
-bred into their society with manners, ability, and the
-gifts of fortune, are every day confronting the peers on
-a footing of equality, and outstripping them, as often, in
-the race of honor and influence. That cultivated class is
-large and ever enlarging. It is computed that, with titles
-and without, there are seventy thousand of these people
-coming and going in London, who make up what is
-called high society. They cannot shut their eyes to the
-fact that an untitled nobility possess all the power
-without the inconveniences that belong to rank, and the rich
-Englishman goes over the world at the present day,
-drawing more than all the advantages which the strongest
-of his kings could command.
-
-.. vspace:: 4
-
-CHAPTER XII.--UNIVERSITIES.
-===========================
-
-Of British universities, Cambridge has the most
-illustrious names on its list. At the present day, too, it has
-the advantage of Oxford, counting in its *alumni* a greater
-number of distinguished scholars. I regret that I had
-but a single day wherein to see King's College Chapel,
-the beautiful lawns and gardens of the colleges, and a few
-of its gownsmen.
-
-But I availed myself of some repeated invitations to
-Oxford, where I had introductions to Dr. Daubeny,
-Professor of Botany, and to the Regius Professor of Divinity,
-as well as to a valued friend, a Fellow of Oriel, and went
-thither on the last day of March, 1848. I was the guest
-of my friend in Oriel, was housed close upon that college,
-and I lived on college hospitalities.
-
-My new friends showed me their cloisters, the Bodleian
-Library, the Randolph Gallery, Merton Hall, and the
-rest. I saw several faithful, high-minded young men,
-some of them in the mood of making sacrifices for peace
-of mind,--a topic, of course, on which I had no
-counsel to offer. Their affectionate and gregarious ways
-reminded me at once of the habits of *our* Cambridge men,
-though I imputed to these English an advantage in their
-secure and polished manners. The halls are rich with
-oaken wainscoting and ceiling. The pictures of the
-founders hang from the walls; the tables glitter with
-plate. A youth came forward to the upper table, and
-pronounced the ancient form of grace before meals,
-which, I suppose, has been in use here for ages,
-*Benedictus benedicat; benedicitur, benedicatur*.
-
-It is a curious proof of the English use and wont, or
-of their good-nature, that these young men are locked up
-every night at nine o'clock, and the porter at each hall is
-required to give the name of any belated student who is
-admitted after that hour. Still more descriptive is the
-fact, that out of twelve hundred young men, comprising
-the most spirited of the aristocracy, a duel has never
-occurred.
-
-Oxford is old, even in England, and conservative. Its
-foundations date from Alfred, and even from Arthur, if,
-as is alleged, the Pheryllt of the Druids had a seminary
-here. In the reign of Edward I., it is pretended, here
-were thirty thousand students; and nineteen most noble
-foundations were then established. Chaucer found it as
-firm as if it had always stood; and it is in British story,
-rich with great names, the school of the island, and the
-link of England to the learned of Europe. Hither came
-Erasmus, with delight, in 1497. Albericus Gentilis, in
-1580, was relieved and maintained by the university.
-Albert Alaskie, a noble Polonian, Prince of Sirad, who
-visited England to admire the wisdom of Queen Elizabeth,
-was entertained with stage-plays in the Refectory
-of Christ-church, in 1583. Isaac Casaubon, coming from
-Henri Quatre of France, by invitation of James I., was
-admitted to Christ's College, in July, 1613. I saw the
-Ashmolean Museum, whither Elias Ashmole, in 1682,
-sent twelve cart-loads of rarities. Here indeed was the
-Olympia of all Antony Wood's and Aubrey's games and
-heroes, and every inch of ground has its lustre. For
-Wood's *Athenæ Oxonienses*, or calendar of the writers
-of Oxford for two hundred years, is a lively record of
-English manners and merits, and as much a national
-monument as Purchas's Pilgrims or Hansard's Register.
-On every side, Oxford is redolent of age and authority.
-Its gates shut of themselves against modern innovation.
-It is still governed by the statutes of Archbishop Laud.
-The books in Merton Library are still chained to the
-wall. Here, on August 27, 1660, John Milton's *Pro
-Populo Anglicano Defensio* and *Iconoclastes* were
-committed to the flames. I saw the school-court or quadrangle,
-where, in 1683, the Convocation caused the Leviathan
-of Thomas Hobbes to be publicly burnt. I do not know
-whether this learned body have yet heard of the Declaration
-of American Independence, or whether the Ptolemaic
-astronomy does not still hold its ground against the
-novelties of Copernicus.
-
-As many sons, almost so many benefactors. It is
-usual for a nobleman, or indeed for almost every wealthy
-student, on quitting college, to leave behind him some
-article of plate; and gifts of all values, from a hall, or a
-fellowship, or a library, down to a picture or a spoon, are
-continually accruing, in the course of a century. My
-friend Doctor J. gave me the following anecdote. In
-Sir Thomas Lawrence's collection at London were the
-cartoons of Raphael and Michel Angelo. This inestimable
-prize was offered to Oxford University for seven
-thousand pounds. The offer was accepted, and the
-committee charged with the affair had collected three
-thousand pounds, when among other friends they called on
-Lord Eldon. Instead of a hundred pounds, he surprised
-them by putting down his name for three thousand
-pounds. They told him, they should now very easily
-raise the remainder. "No," he said, "your men have
-probably already contributed all they can spare; I can
-as well give the rest": and he withdrew his check for
-three thousand, and wrote four thousand pounds. I saw
-the whole collection in April, 1848.
-
-In the Bodleian Library, Dr. Bandinel showed me the
-manuscript Plato, of the date of A.D. 896, brought by
-Dr. Clarke from Egypt; a manuscript Virgil, of the same
-century; the first Bible printed at Mentz (I believe in
-1450); and a duplicate of the same, which had been
-deficient in about twenty leaves at the end. But, one day,
-being in Venice, he bought a room full of books and
-manuscripts--every scrap and fragment--for four
-thousand louis d'ors, and had the doors locked and
-sealed by the consul. On proceeding, afterwards, to
-examine his purchase, he found the twenty deficient
-pages of his Mentz Bible, in perfect order; brought
-them to Oxford, with the rest of his purchase, and
-placed them in the volume; but has too much awe for
-the Providence that appears in bibliography also, to
-suffer the reunited parts to be rebound. The oldest
-building here is two hundred years younger than the frail
-manuscript brought by Dr. Clarke from Egypt. No
-candle or fire is ever lighted in the Bodleian. Its
-catalogue is the standard catalogue on the desk of every
-library in Oxford. In each several college, they
-underscore in red ink on this catalogue the titles of books
-contained in the library of that college,--the theory
-being that the Bodleian has all books. This rich library
-spent during the last year (1847) for the purchase of
-books £1,668.
-
-The logical English train a scholar as they train an
-engineer. Oxford is a Greek factory, as Wilton mills
-weave carpet, and Sheffield grinds steel. They know the
-use of a tutor, as they know the use of a horse; and they
-draw the greatest amount of benefit out of both. The
-reading-men are kept by hard walking, hard riding, and
-measured eating and drinking, at the top of their
-condition, and two days before the examination, do no work,
-but lounge, ride, or run, to be fresh on the college
-doomsday. Seven years' residence is the theoretic
-period for a master's degree. In point of fact, it has
-long been three years' residence, and four years more
-of standing. This "three years" is about twenty-one
-months in all. [#]_
-
-.. [#] Huber, II. p. 304.
-
-"The whole expense," says Professor Sewel, "of
-ordinary college tuition at Oxford, is about sixteen guineas
-a year." But this plausible statement may deceive a
-reader unacquainted with the fact, that the principal
-teaching relied on is private tuition. And the expenses
-of private tuition are reckoned at from £50 to £70 a
-year, or $1,000 for the whole course of three years and
-a half. At Cambridge $750 a year is economical, and
-$1,500 not extravagant. [#]_
-
-.. [#] Bristed, Five Years at an English University.
-
-The number of students and of residents, the dignity
-of the authorities, the value of the foundations, the
-history and the architecture, the known sympathy of entire
-Britain in what is done there, justify a dedication to
-study in the undergraduate, such as cannot easily be in
-America, where his college is half suspected by the
-Freshman to be insignificant in the scale beside trade
-and politics. Oxford is a little aristocracy in itself,
-numerous and dignified enough to rank with other estates
-in the realm; and where fame and secular promotion are
-to be had for study, and in a direction which has the
-unanimous respect of all cultivated nations.
-
-This aristocracy, of course, repairs its own losses; fills
-places, as they fall vacant, from the body of students.
-The number of fellowships at Oxford is 540, averaging
-£200 a year, with lodging and diet at the college. If a
-young American, loving learning, and hindered by
-poverty, were offered a home, a table, the walks, and the
-library, in one of these academical palaces, and a thousand
-dollars a year as long as he chose to remain a bachelor,
-he would dance for joy. Yet these young men thus
-happily placed, and paid to read, are impatient of their few
-checks, and many of them preparing to resign their fellowships.
-They shuddered at the prospect of dying a Fellow,
-and they pointed out to me a paralytic old man, who was
-assisted into the hall. As the number of undergraduates
-at Oxford is only about 1,200 or 1,300, and many of these
-are never competitors, the chance of a fellowship is very
-great. The income of the nineteen colleges is
-conjectured at £150,000 a year.
-
-The effect of this drill is the radical knowledge of
-Greek and Latin, and of mathematics, and the solidity
-and taste of English criticism. Whatever luck there may
-be in this or that award, an Eton captain can write Latin
-longs and shorts, can turn the Court-Guide into
-hexameters, and it is certain that a Senior Classic can quote
-correctly from the *Corpus Poetarum*, and is critically
-learned in all the humanities. Greek erudition exists on
-the Isis and Cam, whether the Maud man or the Brazen
-Nose man be properly ranked or not; the atmosphere is
-loaded with Greek learning; the whole river has reached
-a certain height, and kills all that growth of weeds, which
-this Castalian water kills. The English nature takes
-culture kindly. So Milton thought. It refines the
-Norseman. Access to the Greek mind lifts his standard of
-taste. He has enough to think of, and, unless of an
-impulsive nature, is indisposed from writing or speaking,
-by the fulness of his mind, and the new severity of his
-taste. The great silent crowd of thorough-bred Grecians
-always known to be around him, the English writer
-cannot ignore. They prune his orations, and point his
-pen. Hence, the style and tone of English journalism.
-The men have learned accuracy and comprehension,
-logic, and pace, or speed of working. They have
-bottom, endurance, wind. When born with good constitutions,
-they make those eupeptic studying-mills, the cast-iron
-men, the *dura ilia*, whose powers of performance
-compare with ours, as the steam-hammer with the
-music-box;--Cokes, Mansfields, Seldens, and Bentleys, and
-when it happens that a superior brain puts a rider on
-this admirable horse, we obtain those masters of the
-world who combine the highest energy in affairs, with
-a supreme culture.
-
-It is contended by those who have been bred at Eton,
-Harrow, Rugby, and Westminster, that the public
-sentiment within each of those schools is high-toned and
-manly; that, in their playgrounds, courage is universally
-admired, meanness despised, manly feelings and
-generous conduct are encouraged; that an unwritten code of
-honor deals to the spoiled child of rank and to the child
-of upstart wealth an even-handed justice, purges their
-nonsense out of both, and does all that can be done to
-make them gentlemen.
-
-Again, at the universities, it is urged, that all goes to
-form what England values as the flower of its national
-life,--a well-educated gentleman. The German Huber,
-in describing to his countrymen the attributes of an
-English gentleman, frankly admits, that "in Germany,
-we have nothing of the kind. A gentleman must possess
-a political character, an independent and public position,
-or, at least, the right of assuming it. He must have
-average opulence, either of his own, or in his family.
-He should also have bodily activity and strength,
-unattainable by our sedentary life in public offices. The race
-of English gentlemen presents an appearance of manly
-vigor and form, not elsewhere to be found among an equal
-number of persons. No other nation produces the stock.
-And in England, it has deteriorated. The university is
-a decided presumption in any man's favor. And so
-eminent are the members that a glance at the calendars will
-show that in all the world one cannot be in better
-company than on the books of one of the larger Oxford or
-Cambridge colleges." [#]_
-
-.. [#] Huber, History of the English Universities. Newman's
- Translation.
-
-These seminaries are finishing schools for the upper
-classes, and not for the poor. The useful is exploded.
-The definition of a public school is "a school which
-excludes all that could fit a man for standing behind a
-counter." [#]_
-
-.. [#] See Bristed, Five Years in an English University. New
- York, 1852.
-
-No doubt, the foundations have been perverted.
-Oxford, which equals in wealth several of the smaller
-European states, shuts up the lectureships which were made
-"public for all men thereunto to have concourse";
-misspends the revenues bestowed for such youths "as should
-be most meet for towardness, poverty, and painfulness";
-there is gross favoritism; many chairs and many fellowships
-are made beds of ease; and 'tis likely that the
-university will know how to resist and make inoperative
-the terrors of parliamentary inquiry; no doubt, their
-learning is grown obsolete; but Oxford also has its
-merits, and I found here also proof of the national fidelity
-and thoroughness. Such knowledge as they prize they
-possess and impart. Whether in course or by indirection,
-whether by a cramming tutor or by examiners with
-prizes and foundation scholarships, education according to
-the English notion of it is acquired. I looked over the
-Examination Papers of the year 1848, for the various
-scholarships and fellowships, the Lusby, the Hertford,
-the Dean-Ireland, and the University (copies of which
-were kindly given me by a Greek professor), containing
-the tasks which many competitors had victoriously
-performed, and I believed they would prove too severe tests
-for the candidates for a Bachelor's degree in Yale or
-Harvard. And, in general, here was proof of a more
-searching study in the appointed directions, and the
-knowledge pretended to be conveyed was conveyed.
-Oxford sends out yearly twenty or thirty very able
-men, and three or four hundred well-educated men.
-
-The diet and rough exercise secure a certain amount
-of old Norse power. A fop will fight, and, in exigent
-circumstances, will play the manly part. In seeing these
-youths, I believed I saw already an advantage in vigor
-and color and general habit, over their contemporaries in
-the American colleges. No doubt much of the power
-and brilliancy of the reading-men is merely constitutional
-or hygienic. With a hardier habit and resolute gymnastics,
-with five miles more walking, or five ounces less
-eating, or with a saddle and gallop of twenty miles a day,
-with skating and rowing matches, the American would
-arrive at as robust exegesis, and cheery and hilarious
-tone. I should readily concede these advantages, which
-it would be easy to acquire, if I did not find also that
-they read better than we, and write better.
-
-English wealth falling on their school and university
-training, makes a systematic reading of the best authors,
-and to the end of a knowledge how the things whereof
-they treat really stand: whilst pamphleteer or journalist
-reading for an argument for a party, or reading to write,
-or, at all events, for some by end imposed on them, must
-read meanly and fragmentarily. Charles I. said, that he
-understood English law as well as a gentleman ought to
-understand it.
-
-Then they have access to books; the rich libraries
-collected at every one of many thousands of houses, give
-an advantage not to be attained by a youth in this
-country, when one thinks how much more and better may be
-learned by a scholar, who, immediately on hearing of
-a book, can consult it, than by one who is on the quest
-for years, and reads inferior books, because he cannot
-find the best.
-
-Again, the great number of cultivated men keep each
-other up to a high standard. The habit of meeting
-well-read and knowing men teaches the art of omission and
-selection.
-
-Universities are, of course, hostile to geniuses, which
-seeing and using ways of their own, discredit the
-routine: as churches and monasteries persecute youthful
-saints. Yet we all send our sons to college, and, though
-he be a genius, he must take his chance. The university
-must be retrospective. The gale that gives direction to
-the vanes on all its towers blows out of antiquity.
-Oxford is a library, and the professors must be librarians.
-And I should as soon think of quarrelling with the
-janitor for not magnifying his office by hostile sallies into
-the street, like the Governor of Kertch or Kinburn, as
-of quarrelling with the professors for not admiring the
-young neologists who pluck the beards of Euclid and
-Aristotle, or for not attempting themselves to fill their
-vacant shelves as original writers.
-
-It is easy to carp at colleges, and the college, if we
-will wait for it, will have its own turn. Genius exists
-there also, but will not answer a call of a committee of
-the House of Commons. It is rare, precarious, eccentric,
-and darkling. England is the land of mixture and
-surprise, and when you have settled it that the
-universities are moribund, out comes a poetic influence from
-the heart of Oxford, to mould the opinions of cities, to
-build their houses as simply as birds their nests, to give
-veracity to art, and charm mankind, as an appeal to
-moral order always must. But besides this restorative
-genius, the best poetry of England of this age, in the
-old forms, comes from two graduates of Cambridge.
-
-.. vspace:: 4
-
-CHAPTER XIII.--RELIGION.
-========================
-
-No people, at the present day, can be explained by
-their national religion. They do not feel responsible for
-it; it lies far outside of them. Their loyalty to truth
-and their labor and expenditure rest on real foundations,
-and not on a national church. And English life, it is
-evident, does not grow out of the Athanasian creed, or
-the Articles, or the Eucharist. It is with religion as
-with marriage. A youth marries in haste; afterwards,
-when his mind is opened to the reason of the conduct of
-life, he is asked, what he thinks of the institution of
-marriage, and of the right relations of the sexes. 'I should
-have much to say,' he might reply, 'if the question were
-open, but I have a wife and children, and all question is
-closed for me.' In the barbarous days of a nation, some
-cultus is formed or imported; altars are built, tithes are
-paid, priests ordained. The education and expenditure
-of the country take that direction, and when wealth,
-refinement, great men, and ties to the world supervene, its
-prudent men say, why fight against Fate, or lift these
-absurdities which are now mountainous? Better find
-some niche or crevice in this mountain of stone which
-religious ages have quarried and carved, wherein to
-bestow yourself, than attempt anything ridiculously and
-dangerously above your strength, like removing it.
-
-In seeing old castles and cathedrals, I sometimes say,
-as to-day, in front of Dundee Church tower, which is
-eight hundred years old, 'this was built by another and
-a better race than any that now look on it.' And, plainly,
-there has been great power of sentiment at work in this
-island, of which these buildings are the proofs: as
-volcanic basalts show the work of fire which has been
-extinguished for ages. England felt the full heat of the
-Christianity which fermented Europe, and drew, like the
-chemistry of fire, a firm line between barbarism and
-culture. The power of the religious sentiment put an end
-to human sacrifices, checked appetite, inspired the
-crusades, inspired resistance to tyrants, inspired self-respect,
-set bounds to serfdom and slavery, founded liberty,
-created the religious architecture,--York, Newstead,
-Westminster, Fountains Abbey, Ripon, Beverley, and
-Dundee,--works to which the key is lost, with the
-sentiment which created them; inspired the English Bible,
-the liturgy, the monkish histories, the chronicle of
-Richard of Devizes. The priest translated the Vulgate, and
-translated the sanctities of old hagiology into English
-virtues on English ground. It was a certain affirmative
-or aggressive state of the Caucasian races. Man awoke
-refreshed by the sleep of ages. The violence of the
-Northern savages exasperated Christianity into power.
-It lived by the love of the people. Bishop Wilfrid
-manumitted two hundred and fifty serfs, whom he found
-attached to the soil. The clergy obtained respite from
-labor for the boor on the Sabbath, and on church
-festivals. "The lord who compelled his boor to labor
-between sunset on Saturday and sunset on Sunday, forfeited
-him altogether." The priest came out of the people, and
-sympathized with his class. The church was the mediator,
-check, and democratic principle in Europe. Latimer,
-Wicliffe, Arundel, Cobham, Antony Parsons, Sir Harry
-Vane, George Fox, Penn, Bunyan, are the democrats, as
-well as the saints of their times. The Catholic Church,
-thrown on this toiling, serious people, has made in
-fourteen centuries a massive system, close fitted to the
-manners and genius of the country, at once domestical and
-stately. In the long time, it has blended with
-everything in heaven above and the earth beneath. It moves
-through a zodiac of feasts and fasts, names every day of
-the year, every town and market and headland and
-monument, and has coupled itself with the almanac, that no
-court can be held, no field ploughed, no horse shod,
-without some leave from the church. All maxims of
-prudence or shop or farm are fixed and dated by the church.
-Hence, its strength in the agricultural districts. The
-distribution of land into parishes enforces a church
-sanction to every civil privilege; and the gradation of the
-clergy,--prelates for the rich, and curates for the
-poor,--with the fact that a classical education has been
-secured to the clergyman, makes them "the link which
-unites the sequestered peasantry with the intellectual
-advancement of the age." [#]_
-
-.. [#] Wordsworth.
-
-The English Church has many certificates to show, of
-humble effective service in humanizing the people, in
-cheering and refining men, feeding, healing, and
-educating. It has the seal of martyrs and confessors; the
-noblest books; a sublime architecture; a ritual marked
-by the same secular merits, nothing cheap or purchasable.
-
-From this slow-grown church important reactions
-proceed; much for culture, much for giving a direction to
-the nation's affection and will to-day. The carved and
-pictured chapel--its entire surface animated with image
-and emblem--made the parish-church a sort of book
-and Bible to the people's eye.
-
-Then, when the Saxon instinct had secured a service
-in the vernacular tongue, it was the tutor and university
-of the people. In York minster, on the day of the
-enthronization of the new archbishop, I heard the
-service of evening prayer read and chanted in the choir.
-It was strange to hear the pretty pastoral of the betrothal
-of Rebecca and Isaac, in the morning of the world, read
-with circumstantiality in York minster, on the 13th
-January, 1848, to the decorous English audience, just fresh
-from the Times newspaper and their wine; and listening
-with all the devotion of national pride. That was
-binding old and new to some purpose. The reverence for
-the Scriptures is an element of civilization, for thus has
-the history of the world, been preserved, and is
-preserved. Here in England every day a chapter of
-Genesis, and a leader in the Times.
-
-Another part of the same service on this occasion was
-not insignificant. Handel's coronation anthem, *God save
-the King*, was played by Dr. Camidge on the organ, with
-sublime effect. The minster and the music were made
-for each other. It was a hint of the part the church
-plays as a political engine. From his infancy, every
-Englishman is accustomed to hear daily prayers for the
-queen, for the royal family, and the Parliament, by name;
-and this lifelong consecration of these personages cannot
-be without influence on his opinions.
-
-The universities, also, are parcel of the ecclesiastical
-system, and their first design is to form the clergy. Thus
-the clergy for a thousand years have been the scholars of
-the nation.
-
-.. vspace:: 2
-
-The national temperament deeply enjoys the unbroken
-order and tradition of its church; the liturgy, ceremony,
-architecture; the sober grace, the good company, the
-connection with the throne, and with history, which
-adorn it. And whilst it endears itself thus to men of
-more taste than activity, the stability of the English
-nation is passionately enlisted to its support, from its
-inextricable connection with the cause of public order,
-with politics, and with the funds.
-
-Good churches are not built by bad men; at least
-there must be probity and enthusiasm somewhere in
-society. These minsters were neither built nor filled by
-atheists. No church has had more learned, industrious,
-or devoted men; plenty of "clerks and bishops, who,
-out of their gowns, would turn their backs on no man." [#]_
-Their architecture still glows with faith in immortality.
-Heats and genial periods arrive in history, or, shall we
-say, plenitudes of Divine Presence, by which high tides
-are caused in the human spirit, and great virtues and
-talents appear, as in the eleventh, twelfth, thirteenth, and
-again in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, when
-the nation was full of genius and piety.
-
-.. [#] Fuller.
-
-But the age of the Wicliffes, Cobhams, Arundels,
-Beckets; of the Latimers, Mores, Cranmers; of the Taylors,
-Leightons, Herberts; of the Sherlocks, and Butlers, is
-gone. Silent revolutions in opinion have made it
-impossible that men like these should return or find a place in
-their once sacred stalls. The spirit that dwelt in this
-church has glided away to animate other activities; and
-they who come to the old shrines find apes and players
-rustling the old garments.
-
-The religion of England is part of good breeding.
-When you see on the Continent the well-dressed Englishman
-come into his ambassador's chapel, and put his face
-for silent prayer into his smooth-brushed hat, one cannot
-help feeling how much national pride prays with him,
-and the religion of a gentleman. So far is he from
-attaching any meaning to the words, that he believes
-himself to have done almost the generous thing, and that
-it is very condescending in him to pray to God. A great
-duke said on the occasion of a victory, in the House of
-Lords, that he thought the Almighty God had not been
-well used by them, and that it would become their
-magnanimity, after so great successes, to take order that a
-proper acknowledgment be made. It is the church of
-the gentry; but it is not the church of the poor. The
-operatives do not own it, and gentlemen lately testified
-in the House of Commons that in their lives they never
-saw a poor man in a ragged coat inside a church.
-
-The torpidity on the side of religion of the vigorous
-English understanding shows how much wit and folly
-can agree in one brain. Their religion is a quotation;
-their church is a doll; and any examination is interdicted
-with screams of terror. In good company, you expect
-them to laugh at the fanaticism of the vulgar; but they
-do not; they are the vulgar.
-
-The English, in common perhaps with Christendom in
-the nineteenth century, do not respect power, but only
-performance; value ideas only for an economic result.
-Wellington esteems a saint only as far as he can be an
-army chaplain: "Mr. Briscoll, by his admirable conduct
-and good sense, got the better of Methodism, which had
-appeared among the soldiers, and once among the
-officers." They value a philosopher as they value an
-apothecary who brings bark or a drench; and inspiration is only
-some blowpipe, or a finer mechanical aid.
-
-I suspect that there is in an Englishman's brain a valve
-that can be closed at pleasure, as an engineer shuts off
-steam. The most sensible and well-informed men possess
-the power of thinking just so far as the bishop in
-religious matters, and as the chancellor of the exchequer in
-politics. They talk with courage and logic, and show
-you magnificent results; but the same men who have
-brought free-trade or geology to their present standing,
-look grave and lofty, and shut down their valve, as soon
-as the conversation approaches the English Church.
-After that, you talk with a box-turtle.
-
-The action of the university, both in what is taught, and
-in the spirit of the place, is directed more on producing
-an English gentleman, than a saint or a psychologist. It
-ripens a bishop, and extrudes a philosopher. I do not
-know that there is more cabalism in the Anglican, than
-in other churches, but the Anglican clergy are identified
-with the aristocracy. They say, here, that, if you talk
-with a clergyman, you are sure to find him well bred,
-informed, and candid, he entertains your thought or
-your project with sympathy and praise. But if a second
-clergyman come in, the sympathy is at an end: two
-together are inaccessible to your thought, and, whenever it
-comes to action, the clergyman invariably sides with his
-church.
-
-The Anglican church is marked by the grace and good
-sense of its forms, by the manly grace of its clergy. The
-gospel it preaches is, 'By taste are ye saved.' It keeps
-the old structures in repair, spends a world of money in
-music and building; and in buying Pugin, and architectural
-literature. It has a general good name for amenity
-and mildness. It is not in ordinary a persecuting church;
-it is not inquisitorial, not even inquisitive, is perfectly
-well bred, and can shut its eyes on all proper occasions.
-If you let it alone, it will let you alone. But its instinct
-is hostile to all change in politics, literature, or social
-arts. The church has not been the founder of the
-London University, of the Mechanics' Institutes, of the Free
-School, or whatever aims at diffusion of knowledge. The
-Platonists of Oxford are as bitter against this heresy, as
-Thomas Taylor.
-
-The doctrine of the Old Testament is the religion of
-England. The first leaf of the New Testament it does
-not open. It believes in a Providence which does not
-treat with levity a pound sterling. They are neither
-transcendentalists nor Christians. They put up no
-Socratic prayer, much less any saintly prayer for the queen's
-mind; ask neither for light nor right, but say bluntly,
-"Grant her in health and wealth long to live." And
-one traces this Jewish prayer in all English private
-history, from the prayers of King Richard, in Richard of
-Devizes' Chronicle, to those in the diaries of Sir Samuel
-Romilly, and of Haydon the painter. "Abroad with my
-wife," writes Pepys piously, "the first time that ever I
-rode in my own coach; which do make my heart rejoice
-and praise God, and pray him to bless it to me, and
-continue it." The bill for the naturalization of the Jews (in
-1753) was resisted by petitions from all parts of the
-kingdom, and by petition from the city of London, reprobating
-this bill, as "tending extremely to the dishonor of
-the Christian religion, and extremely injurious to the
-interests and commerce of the kingdom in general, and of
-the city of London in particular."
-
-But they have not been able to congeal humanity by
-act of Parliament. "The heavens journey still and
-sojourn not," and arts, wars, discoveries, and opinion go
-onward at their own pace. The new age has new
-desires, new enemies, new trades, new charities, and reads
-the Scriptures with new eyes. The chatter of French
-politics, the steam-whistle, the hum of the mill, and the
-noise of embarking emigrants, had quite put most of
-the old legends out of mind; so that when you came to
-read the liturgy to a modern congregation, it was almost
-absurd in its unfitness, and suggested a masquerade of
-old costumes.
-
-No chemist has prospered in the attempt to crystallize
-a religion. It is endogenous, like the skin, and other
-vital organs. A new statement every day. The prophet
-and apostle knew this, and the non-conformist confutes
-the conformists, by quoting the texts they must allow.
-It is the condition of a religion, to require religion for
-its expositor. Prophet and apostle can only be rightly
-understood by prophet and apostle. The statesman
-knows that the religious element will not fail, any more
-than the supply of fibrine and chyle; but it is in its
-nature constructive, and will organize such a church as
-it wants. The wise legislator will spend on temples,
-schools, libraries, colleges, but will shun the enriching of
-priests. If, in any manner, he can leave the election and
-paying of the priest to the people, he will do well. Like
-the Quakers, he may resist the separation of a class of
-priests, and create opportunity and expectation in the
-society, to run to meet natural endowment, in this kind.
-But, when wealth accrues to a chaplaincy, a bishopric, or
-rectorship, it requires moneyed men for its stewards, who
-will give it another direction than to the mystics of their
-day. Of course, money will do after its kind, and will
-steadily work to unspiritualize and unchurch the people
-to whom it was bequeathed. The class certain to be
-excluded from all preferment are the religious,--and
-driven to other churches;--which is nature's *vis medicatrix*.
-
-The curates are ill paid, and the prelates are overpaid.
-This abuse draws into the church the children of the
-nobility, and other unfit persons, who have a taste for
-expense. Thus a bishop is only a surpliced merchant.
-Through his lawn, I can see the bright buttons of the
-shopman's coat glitter. A wealth like that of Durham
-makes almost a premium on felony. Brougham, in a
-speech in the House of Commons on the Irish elective
-franchise, said, "How will the reverend bishops of the
-other house be able to express their due abhorrence of
-the crime of perjury, who solemnly declare in the
-presence of God, that when they are called upon to accept a
-living, perhaps of £4,000 a year, at that very instant, they
-are moved by the Holy Ghost to accept the office and
-administration thereof, and for no other reason
-whatever?" The modes of initiation are more damaging
-than custom-house oaths. The bishop is elected by the
-Dean and Prebends of the cathedral. The Queen sends
-these gentlemen a *congé d'élire*, or leave to elect; but
-also sends them the name of the person whom they are
-to elect. They go into the cathedral, chant and pray,
-and beseech the Holy Ghost to assist them in their
-choice; and, after these invocations, invariably find that
-the dictates of the Holy Ghost agree with the
-recommendations of the Queen.
-
-But you must pay for conformity. All goes well as
-long as you run with conformists. But you, who are an
-honest man in other particulars, know, that there is alive
-somewhere a man whose honesty reaches to this point
-also, that he shall not kneel to false gods, and, on the
-day when you meet him, you sink into the class of
-counterfeits. Besides, this succumbing has grave penalties.
-If you take in a lie, you must take in all that belongs to
-it. England accepts this ornamented national church,
-and it glazes the eyes, bloats the flesh, gives the voice a
-stertorous clang, and clouds the understanding of the
-receivers.
-
-The English Church, undermined by German criticism,
-had nothing left but tradition, and was led logically back
-to Romanism. But that was an element which only hot
-heads could breathe: in view of the educated class,
-generally, it was not a fact to front the sun; and the
-alienation of such men from the church became complete.
-
-Nature, to be sure, had her remedy. Religious
-persons are driven out of the Established Church into sects,
-which instantly rise to credit, and hold the Establishment
-in check. Nature has sharper remedies, also. The
-English, abhorring change in all things, abhorring it most in
-matters of religion, cling to the last rag of form, and are
-dreadfully given to cant. The English (and I wish it
-were confined to them, but 't is a taint in the
-Anglo-Saxon blood in both hemispheres), the English and the
-Americans cant beyond all other nations. The French
-relinquish all that industry to them. What is so odious
-as the polite bows to God, in our books and newspapers?
-The popular press is flagitious in the exact measure of its
-sanctimony, and the religion of the day is a theatrical
-Sinai, where the thunders are supplied by the property-man.
-The fanaticism and hypocrisy create satire. Punch
-finds an inexhaustible material. Dickens writes novels
-on Exeter Hall humanity. Thackeray exposes the
-heartless high life. Nature revenges herself more summarily
-by the heathenism of the lower classes. Lord Shaftesbury
-calls the poor thieves together, and reads sermons
-to them, and they call it 'gas.' George Borrow
-summons the Gypsies to hear his discourse on the Hebrews
-in Egypt, and reads to them the Apostles' creed in
-Romany. "When I had concluded," he says, "I looked
-around me. The features of the assembly were twisted,
-and the eyes of all turned upon me with a frightful
-squint: not an individual present but squinted; the
-genteel Pepa, the good-humored Chicharona, the Cosdami,
-all squinted: the Gypsy jockey squinted worst of all."
-
-The church at this moment is much to be pitied. She
-has nothing left but possession. If a bishop meets an
-intelligent gentleman, and reads fatal interrogations in
-his eyes, he has no resource but to take wine with him.
-False position introduces cant, perjury, simony, and ever
-a lower class of mind and character into the clergy; and,
-when the hierarchy is afraid of science and education,
-afraid of piety, afraid of tradition, and afraid of theology,
-there is nothing left but to quit a church which is no
-longer one.
-
-But the religion of England,--is it the Established
-Church? no; is it the sects? no; they are only
-perpetuations of some private man's dissent, and are to the
-Established Church as cabs are to a coach, cheaper and
-more convenient, but really the same thing. Where
-dwells the religion? Tell me first where dwells
-electricity, or motion, or thought, or gesture. They do not
-dwell or stay at all. Electricity cannot be made fast,
-mortared up and ended, like London Monument, or the
-Tower, so that you shall know where to find it, and keep
-it fixed, as the English do with their things, forevermore;
-it is passing, glancing, gesticular; it is a traveller, a
-newness, a surprise, a secret, which perplexes them, and
-puts them out. Yet, if religion be the doing of all good,
-and for its sake the suffering of all evil, *souffrir de tout le
-monde et ne faire souffrir personne*, that divine secret has
-existed in England from the days of Alfred to those of
-Romilly, of Clarkson, and of Florence Nightingale, and in
-thousands who have no fame.
-
-.. vspace:: 4
-
-CHAPTER XIV.--LITERATURE.
-=========================
-
-A strong common-sense, which it is not easy to unseat
-or disturb, marks the English mind for a thousand years;
-a rude strength newly applied to thought, as of sailors
-and soldiers who had lately learned to read. They have
-no fancy, and never are surprised into a covert or witty
-word, such as pleased the Athenians and Italians, and
-was convertible into a fable not long after; but they
-delight in strong earthy expression, not mistakable, coarsely
-true to the human body, and, though spoken among
-princes, equally fit and welcome to the mob. This
-homeliness, veracity, and plain style appear in the earliest
-extant works, and in the latest. It imports into songs
-and ballads the smell of the earth, the breath of cattle,
-and, like a Dutch painter, seeks a household charm,
-though by pails and pans. They ask their constitutional
-utility in verse. The kail and herrings are never out of
-sight. The poet nimbly recovers himself from every
-sally of the imagination. The English muse loves the
-farm-yard, the lane and market. She says, with De
-Staël, "I tramp in the mire with wooden shoes,
-whenever they would force me into the clouds." For, the
-Englishman has accurate perceptions; takes hold of
-things by the right end, and there is no slipperiness in
-his grasp. He loves the axe, the spade, the oar, the
-gun, the steam-pipe: he has built the engine he uses.
-He is materialist, economical, mercantile. He must be
-treated with sincerity and reality, with muffins and not
-the promise of muffins; and prefers his hot chop, with
-perfect security and convenience in the eating of it, to
-the chances of the amplest and Frenchiest bill of fare,
-engraved on embossed paper. When he is intellectual,
-and a poet or a philosopher, he carries the same hard
-truth and the same keen machinery into the mental
-sphere. His mind must stand on a fact. He will not
-be baffled, or catch at clouds, but the mind must have
-a symbol palpable and resisting. What he relishes in
-Dante, is the vice-like tenacity with which he holds a
-mental image before the eyes, as if it were a scutcheon
-painted on a shield. Byron "liked something craggy
-to break his mind upon." A taste for plain strong
-speech, what is called a biblical style, marks the English.
-It is in Alfred, and the Saxon Chronicle, and in the
-Sagas of the Northmen. Latimer was homely. Hobbes
-was perfect in the "noble vulgar speech." Donne,
-Bunyan, Milton, Taylor, Evelyn, Pepys, Hooker, Cotton,
-and the translators, wrote it. How realistic or materialistic
-in treatment of his subject is Swift. He describes
-his fictitious persons as if for the police. Defoe has no
-insecurity or choice, Hudibras has the same hard
-mentality,--keeping the truth at once to the senses, and to
-the intellect.
-
-It is not less seen in poetry. Chaucer's hard painting
-of his Canterbury pilgrims satisfies the senses.
-Shakspeare, Spenser, and Milton, in their loftiest ascents,
-have this national grip and exactitude of mind. This
-mental materialism makes the value of English
-transcendental genius; in these writers, and in Herbert, Henry
-More, Donne, and Sir Thomas Browne. The Saxon
-materialism and narrowness, exalted into the sphere of
-intellect, makes the very genius of Shakspeare and
-Milton. When it reaches the pure element, it treads the
-clouds as securely as the adamant. Even in its elevations,
-materialistic, its poetry is common-sense inspired;
-or iron raised to white heat.
-
-The marriage of the two qualities is in their speech.
-It is a tacit rule of the language to make the frame or
-skeleton of Saxon words, and, when elevation or
-ornament is sought, to interweave Roman; but sparingly;
-nor is a sentence made of Roman words alone, without
-loss of strength. The children and laborers use the Saxon
-unmixed. The Latin unmixed is abandoned to the
-colleges and Parliament. Mixture is a secret of the
-English island; and, in their dialect, the male principle is
-the Saxon; the female, the Latin; and they are
-combined in every discourse. A good writer, if he has
-indulged in a Roman roundness, makes haste to chasten and
-nerve his period by English monosyllables.
-
-When the Gothic nations came into Europe, they
-found it lighted with the sun and moon of Hebrew and
-of Greek genius. The tablets of their brain, long kept
-in the dark, were finely sensible to the double glory. To
-the images from this twin source (of Christianity and art),
-the mind became fruitful as by the incubation of the Holy
-Ghost. The English mind flowered in every faculty.
-The common-sense was surprised and inspired. For two
-centuries, England was philosophic, religious, poetic.
-The mental furniture seemed of larger scale; the memory
-capacious like the storehouse of the rains. The ardor and
-endurance of study; the boldness and facility of their
-mental construction; their fancy, and imagination, and
-easy spanning of vast distances of thought; the
-enterprise or accosting of new subjects; and, generally, the
-easy exertion of power, astonish, like the legendary feats
-of Guy of Warwick. The union of Saxon precision and
-Oriental soaring, of which Shakspeare is the perfect
-example, is shared in less degree by the writers of two
-centuries. I find not only the great masters out of all
-rivalry and reach, but the whole writing of the time
-charged with a masculine force and freedom.
-
-There is a hygienic simpleness, rough vigor, and
-closeness to the matter in hand, even in the second and third
-class of writers; and, I think, in the common style of
-the people, as one finds it in the citation of wills, letters,
-and public documents, in proverbs, and forms of speech.
-The more hearty and sturdy expression may indicate
-that the savageness of the Norseman was not all gone.
-Their dynamic brains hurled off their words, as the revolving
-stone hurls off scraps of grit. I could cite from the
-seventeenth century sentences and phrases of edge not to
-be matched in the nineteenth. Their poets by simple
-force of mind equalized themselves with the accumulated
-science of ours. The country gentlemen had a posset or
-drink they called October; and the poets, as if by this
-hint, knew how to distil the whole season into their
-autumnal verses: and, as nature, to pique the more,
-sometimes works up deformities into beauty, in some rare
-Aspasia, or Cleopatra; and, as the Greek art wrought
-many a vase or column, in which too long, or too lithe,
-or nodes, or pits and flaws, are made a beauty of; so
-these were so quick and vital, that they could charm and
-enrich by mean and vulgar objects.
-
-A man must think that age well taught and thoughtful,
-by which masques and poems, like those of Ben
-Jonson, full of heroic sentiment in a manly style, were
-received with favor. The unique fact in literary history,
-the unsurprised reception of Shakspeare,--the reception
-proved by his making his fortune; and the apathy
-proved by the absence of all contemporary panegyric,--seems
-to demonstrate an elevation in the mind of the
-people. Judge of the splendor of a nation, by the
-insignificance of great individuals in it. The manner in which
-they learned Greek and Latin, before our modern
-facilities were yet ready, without dictionaries, grammars, or
-indexes, by lectures of a professor, followed by their own
-searchings,--required a more robust memory, and
-cooperation of all the faculties; and their scholars,
-Camden, Usher, Selden, Mede, Gataker, Hooker, Taylor,
-Burton, Bentley, Brian Walton, acquired the solidity
-and method of engineers.
-
-The influence of Plato tinges the British genius.
-Their minds loved analogy; were cognizant of resemblances,
-and climbers on the staircase of unity. 'T is a
-very old strife between those who elect to see identity,
-and those who elect to see discrepancies; and it renews
-itself in Britain. The poets, of course, are of one part;
-the men of the world, of the other. But Britain had
-many disciples of Plato,--More, Hooker, Bacon, Sidney,
-Lord Brooke, Herbert, Browne, Donne, Spenser,
-Chapman, Milton, Crashaw, Norris, Cudworth, Berkeley,
-Jeremy Taylor.
-
-Lord Bacon has the English duality. His centuries
-of observations, on useful science, and his experiments,
-I suppose, were worth nothing. One hint of Franklin,
-or Watt, or Dalton, or Davy, or any one who had a
-talent for experiment, was worth all his lifetime of
-exquisite trifles. But he drinks of a diviner stream, and
-marks the influx of idealism into England. Where that
-goes, is poetry, health, and progress. The rules of its
-genesis or its diffusion are not known. That knowledge,
-if we had it, would supersede all we call science of the
-mind. It seems an affair of race, or of
-meta-chemistry;--the vital point being,--how far the sense of
-unity, or instinct of seeking resemblances predominated.
-For, wherever the mind takes a step, it is, to put itself at
-one with a larger class, discerned beyond the lesser class
-with which it has been conversant. Hence, all poetry,
-and all affirmative action comes.
-
-Bacon, in the structure of his mind, held of the analogists,
-of the idealists, or (as we popularly say, naming
-from the best example) Platonists. Whoever discredits
-analogy, and requires heaps of facts, before any theories
-can be attempted, has no poetic power, and nothing
-original or beautiful will be produced by him. Locke
-is as surely the influx of decomposition and of prose, as
-Bacon and the Platonists, of growth. The Platonic is
-the poetic tendency; the so-called scientific is the
-negative and poisonous. 'T is quite certain, that Spenser,
-Burns, Byron, and Wordsworth will be Platonists; and
-that the dull men will be Lockists. Then politics and
-commerce will absorb from the educated class men of
-talents without genius, precisely because such have no
-resistance.
-
-Bacon, capable of ideas, yet devoted to ends, required
-in his map of the mind, first of all, universality, or *prima
-philosophia*, the receptacle for all such profitable
-observations and axioms as fall not within the compass of any
-of the special parts of philosophy, but are more common,
-and of a higher stage. He held this element essential:
-it is never out of mind: he never spares rebukes for
-such as neglect it; believing that no perfect discovery
-can be made in a flat or level, but you must ascend to a
-higher science. "If any man thinketh philosophy and
-universality to be idle studies, he does not consider that
-all professions are from thence served and supplied; and
-this I take to be a great cause that has hindered the
-progression of learning, because these fundamental
-knowledges have been studied but in passage." He explained
-himself by giving various quaint examples of the
-summary or common laws, of which each science has its own
-illustration. He complains, that "he finds this part of
-learning very deficient, the profounder sort of wits
-drawing a bucket now and then for their own use, but the
-spring-head unvisited. This was the *dry light* which did
-scorch and offend most men's watery natures." Plato had
-signified the same sense, when he said: "All the great
-arts require a subtle and speculative research into the
-law of nature, since loftiness of thought and perfect
-mastery over every subject seem to be derived from
-some such source as this. This Pericles had, in
-addition to a great natural genius. For, meeting with
-Anaxagoras, who was a person of this kind, he attached
-himself to him, and nourished himself with sublime
-speculations on the absolute intelligence; and imported thence
-into the oratorical art whatever could be useful to it."
-
-A few generalizations always circulate in the world,
-whose authors we do not rightly know, which astonish,
-and appear to be avenues to vast kingdoms of thought,
-and these are in the world *constants*, like the Copernican
-and Newtonian theories in physics. In England, these
-may be traced usually to Shakspeare, Bacon, Milton, or
-Hooker, even to Van Helmont and Behmen, and do all
-have a kind of filial retrospect to Plato and the Greeks.
-Of this kind is Lord Bacon's sentence, that "Nature is
-commanded by obeying her"; his doctrine of poetry,
-which "accommodates the shows of things to the desires
-of the mind"; or the Zoroastrian definition of poetry,
-mystical, yet exact, "apparent pictures of unapparent
-natures"; Spenser's creed, that "soul is form, and doth
-the body make"; the theory of Berkeley, that we have
-no certain assurance of the existence of matter; Doctor
-Samuel Clarke's argument for theism from the nature of
-space and time; Harrington's political rule, that power
-must rest on land,--a rule which requires to be liberally
-interpreted; the theory of Swedenborg, so cosmically
-applied by him, that the man makes his heaven and hell;
-Hegel's study of civil history, as the conflict of ideas and
-the victory of the deeper thought; the identity-philosophy
-of Schelling, couched in the statement that "all
-difference is quantitative." So the very announcement of the
-theory of gravitation, of Kepler's three harmonic laws,
-and even of Dalton's doctrine of definite proportions,
-finds a sudden response in the mind, which remains a
-superior evidence to empirical demonstrations. I cite
-these generalizations, some of which are more recent,
-merely to indicate a class. Not these particulars, but
-the mental plane or the atmosphere from which they
-emanate, was the home and element of the writers and
-readers in what we loosely call the Elizabethan age (say
-in literary history, the period from 1575 to 1625), yet
-a period almost short enough to justify Ben Jonson's
-remark on Lord Bacon: "About his time, and within
-his view, were born all the wits that could honor a
-nation, or help study."
-
-Such richness of genius had not existed more than once
-before. These heights could not be maintained. As we
-find stumps of vast trees in our exhausted soils, and have
-received traditions of their ancient fertility to tillage, so
-history reckons epochs in which the intellect of famed
-races became effete. So it fared with English genius.
-These heights were followed by a meanness, and a
-descent of the mind into lower levels; the loss of wings;
-no high speculation. Locke, to whom the meaning of
-ideas was unknown, became the type of philosophy, and
-his "understanding" the measure, in all nations, of the
-English intellect. His countrymen forsook the lofty
-sides of Parnassus, on which they had once walked with
-echoing steps, and disused the studies once so beloved;
-the powers of thought fell into neglect. The later
-English want the faculty of Plato and Aristotle, of grouping
-men in natural classes by an insight of general laws, so
-deep, that the rule is deduced with equal precision from
-few subjects or from one, as from multitudes of lives.
-Shakspeare is supreme in that, as in all the great mental
-energies. The German's generalize: the English cannot
-interpret the German mind. German science
-comprehends the English. The absence of the faculty in
-England is shown by the timidity which accumulates
-mountains of facts, as a bad general wants myriads of
-men and miles of redoubts, to compensate the
-inspirations of courage and conduct.
-
-The English shrink from a generalization. "They do
-not look abroad into universality, or they draw only a
-bucketful at the fountain of the First Philosophy for
-their occasion, and do not go to the spring-head." Bacon,
-who said this, is almost unique among his
-countrymen in that faculty, at least among the prose-writers.
-Milton, who was the stair or high table-land to let down
-the English genius from the summits of Shakspeare, used
-this privilege sometimes in poetry, more rarely in prose.
-For a long interval afterwards, it is not found. Burke
-was addicted to generalizing, but his was a shorter line;
-as his thoughts have less depth, they have less compass.
-Hume's abstractions are not deep or wise. He owes his
-fame to one keen observation, that no copula had been
-detected between any cause and effect, either in physics
-or in thought; that the term cause and effect was loosely
-or gratuitously applied to what we know only as consecutive,
-not at all as causal. Dr. Johnson's written abstractions
-have little value: the tone of feeling in them makes
-their chief worth.
-
-Mr. Hallam, a learned and elegant scholar, has written
-the history of European literature for three centuries,--a
-performance of great ambition, inasmuch as a judgment
-was to be attempted on every book. But his eye does
-not reach to the ideal standards; the verdicts are all
-dated from London: all new thought must be cast into
-the old moulds. The expansive element which creates
-literature is steadily denied. Plato is resisted, and his
-school. Hallam is uniformly polite, but with deficient
-sympathy; writes with resolute generosity, but is
-unconscious of the deep worth which lies in the mystics, and
-which often outvalues as a seed of power and a source of
-revolution all the correct writers and shining reputations
-of their day. He passes in silence, or dismisses with a
-kind of contempt, the profounder masters: a lover of
-ideas is not only uncongenial, but unintelligible. Hallam
-inspires respect by his knowledge and fidelity, by his
-manifest love of good books, and he lifts himself to own
-better than almost any the greatness of Shakspeare, and
-better than Johnson he appreciates Milton. But in
-Hallam, or in the firmer intellectual nerve of Mackintosh, one
-still finds the same type of English genius. It is wise
-and rich, but it lives on its capital. It is retrospective.
-How can it discern and hail the new forms that are
-looming up on the horizon,--new and gigantic thoughts
-which cannot dress themselves out of any old wardrobe
-of the past?
-
-The essays, the fiction, and the poetry of the day have
-the like municipal limits. Dickens, with preternatural
-apprehension of the language of manners, and the varieties
-of street life, with pathos and laughter, with patriotic
-and still enlarging generosity, writes London tracts. He
-is a painter of English details, like Hogarth; local and
-temporary in his tints and style, and local in his aims.
-Bulwer, an industrious writer, with occasional ability, is
-distinguished for his reverence of intellect as a temporality,
-and appeals to the worldly ambition of the student.
-His romances tend to fan these low flames. Their
-novelists despair of the heart. Thackeray finds that God has
-made no allowance for the poor thing in his universe;--more
-'s the pity, he thinks;--but 't is not for us to be
-wiser: we must renounce ideals, and accept London.
-
-The brilliant Macaulay, who expresses the tone of the
-English governing classes of the day, explicitly teaches,
-that good means good to eat, good to wear, material
-commodity; that the glory of modern philosophy is its
-direction on "fruit"; to yield economical inventions;
-and that its merit is to avoid ideas, and avoid morals.
-He thinks it the distinctive merit of the Baconian
-philosophy, in its triumph over the old Platonic, its
-disentangling the intellect from theories of the all-Fair and
-all-Good, and pinning it down to the making a better
-sick-chair and a better wine-whey for an invalid;--this
-not ironically, but in good faith;--that, "solid advantage,"
-as he calls it, meaning always sensual benefit, is
-the only good. The eminent benefit of astronomy is the
-better navigation it creates to enable the fruit-ships to
-bring home their lemons and wine to the London grocer.
-It was a curious result, in which the civility and religion
-of England for a thousand years ends in denying morals,
-and reducing the intellect to a saucepan. The critic
-hides his scepticism under the English cant of practical.
-To convince the reason, to touch the conscience, is
-romantic pretension. The fine arts fall to the ground.
-Beauty, except as luxurious commodity, does not exist.
-It is very certain, I may say in passing, that if Lord
-Bacon had been only the sensualist his critic pretends,
-he would never have acquired the fame which now
-entitles him to this patronage. It is because he had
-imagination, the leisures of the spirit, and basked in an
-element of contemplation out of all modern English
-atmospheric gauges, that he is impressive to the
-imaginations of men, and has become a potentate not to be
-ignored. Sir David Brewster sees the high place of
-Bacon, without finding Newton indebted to him, and
-thinks it a mistake. Bacon occupies it by specific
-gravity or levity, not by any feat he did, or by any tutoring
-more or less of Newton, etc., but an effect of the same
-cause which showed itself more pronounced afterwards
-in Hooke, Boyle, and Halley.
-
-Coleridge, a catholic mind, with a hunger for ideas,
-with eyes looking before and after to the highest bards
-and sages, and who wrote and spoke the only high
-criticism in his time, is one of those who save England
-from the reproach of no longer possessing the capacity
-to appreciate what rarest wit the island has yielded.
-Yet the misfortune of his life, his vast attempts but most
-inadequate performings, failing to accomplish any one
-masterpiece, seems to mark the closing of an era. Even
-in him, the traditional Englishman was too strong for
-the philosopher, and he fell into *accommodations*: and,
-as Burke had striven to idealize the English State, so
-Coleridge 'narrowed his mind' in the attempt to reconcile
-the Gothic rule and dogma of the Anglican Church,
-with eternal ideas. But for Coleridge, and a lurking
-taciturn minority, uttering itself in occasional criticism,
-oftener in private discourse, one would say, that in
-Germany and in America is the best mind in England
-rightly respected. It is the surest sign of national decay,
-when the Bramins can no longer read or understand the
-Braminical philosophy.
-
-In the decomposition and asphyxia that followed all
-this materialism, Carlyle was driven by his disgust at the
-pettiness and the cant, into the preaching of Fate. In
-comparison with all this rottenness, any check, any
-cleansing, though by fire, seemed desirable and beautiful.
-He saw little difference in the gladiators, or the "causes"
-for which they combated; the one comfort was, that they
-were all going speedily into the abyss together. And
-his imagination, finding no nutriment in any creation,
-avenged itself by celebrating the majestic beauty of the
-laws of decay. The necessities of mental structure force
-all minds into a few categories, and where impatience of
-the tricks of men makes Nemesis amiable, and builds
-altars to the negative Deity, the inevitable recoil is to
-heroism or the gallantry of the private heart, which
-decks its immolation with glory, in the unequal combat
-of will against fate.
-
-Wilkinson, the editor of Swedenborg, the annotator of
-Fourier, and the champion of Halmeman, has brought
-to metaphysics and to physiology a native vigor, with a
-catholic perception of relations, equal to the highest
-attempts, and a rhetoric like the armory of the invincible
-knights of old. There is in the action of his mind a long
-Atlantic roll not known except in deepest waters, and
-only lacking what ought to accompany such powers, a
-manifest centrality. If his mind does not rest in immovable
-biases, perhaps the orbit is larger, and the return is
-not yet: but a master should inspire a confidence that
-he will adhere to his convictions, and give his present
-studies always the same high place.
-
-It would be easy to add exceptions to the limitary tone
-of English thought, and much more easy to adduce
-examples of excellence in particular veins; and if, going
-out of the region of dogma, we pass into that of general
-culture, there is no end to the graces and amenities, wit,
-sensibility, and erudition, of the learned class. But the
-artificial succor which marks all English performance,
-appears in letters also: much of their æsthetic production
-is antiquarian and manufactured, and literary
-reputations have been achieved by forcible men, whose
-relation to literature was purely accidental, but who
-were driven by tastes and modes they found in vogue
-into their several careers. So, at this moment, every
-ambitious young man studies geology; so members of
-Parliament are made, and churchmen.
-
-The bias of Englishmen to practical skill has reacted
-on the national mind. They are incapable of an inutility,
-and respect the five mechanic powers even in their song.
-The voice of their modern muse has a slight hint of the
-steam-whistle, and the poem is created as an ornament
-and finish of their monarchy, and by no means as the
-bird of a new morning which forgets the past world in
-the full enjoyment of that which is forming. They are
-with difficulty ideal; they are the most conditioned men,
-as if, having the best conditions, they could not bring
-themselves to forfeit them. Every one of them is a
-thousand years old, and lives by his memory; and when
-you say this, they accept it as praise.
-
-Nothing comes to the book-shops but politics, travels,
-statistics, tabulation, and engineering, and even what is
-called philosophy and letters is mechanical in its
-structure, as if inspiration had ceased, as if no vast hope, no
-religion, no song of joy, no wisdom, no analogy, existed
-any more. The tone of colleges and of scholars and of
-literary society has this mortal air. I seem to walk on
-a marble floor, where nothing will grow. They exert
-every variety of talent on a lower ground, and may be
-said to live and act in a sub-mind. They have lost all
-commanding views in literature, philosophy, and science.
-A good Englishman shuts himself out of three fourths
-of his mind, and confines himself to one fourth. He has
-learning, good sense, power of labor, and logic: but a
-faith in the laws of the mind like that of Archimedes; a
-belief like that of Euler and Kepler, that experience must
-follow and not lead the laws of the mind; a devotion to
-the theory of politics, like that of Hooker, and Milton,
-and Harrington, the modern English mind repudiates.
-
-I fear the same fault lies in their science, since they
-have known how to make it repulsive, and bereave nature
-of its charm;--though perhaps the complaint flies wider,
-and the vice attaches to many more than to British
-physicists. The eye of the naturalist must have a scope like
-nature itself, a susceptibility to all impressions, alive to
-the heart as well as to the logic of creation. But
-English science puts humanity to the door. It wants the
-connection which is the test of genius. The science is
-false by not being poetic. It isolates the reptile or
-mollusk it assumes to explain; whilst reptile or mollusk only
-exists in system, in relation. The poet only sees it as an
-inevitable step in the path of the Creator. But, in
-England, one hermit finds this fact, and another finds that,
-and lives and dies ignorant of its value. There are great
-exceptions, of John Hunter, a man of ideas; perhaps of
-Robert Brown, the botanist; and of Richard Owen, who
-has imported into Britain the German homologies, and
-enriched science with contributions of his own, adding
-sometimes the divination of the old masters to the
-unbroken power of labor in the English mind. But for the
-most part, the natural science in England is out of its
-loyal alliance with morals, and is as void of imagination
-and free play of thought, as conveyancing. It stands in
-strong contrast with the genius of the Germans, those
-semi-Greeks, who love analogy, and, by means of their
-height of view, preserve their enthusiasm, and think for
-Europe.
-
-No hope, no sublime augury, cheers the student, no
-secure striding from experiment onward to a foreseen law,
-but only a casual dipping here and there, like diggers in
-California "prospecting for a placer" that will pay. A
-horizon of brass of the diameter of his umbrella shuts
-down around his senses. Squalid contentment with
-conventions, satire at the names of philosophy and religion,
-parochial and shop-till politics, and idolatry of usage,
-betray the ebb of life and spirit. As they trample on
-nationalities to reproduce London and Londoners in
-Europe and Asia, so they fear the hostility of ideas, of
-poetry, of religion,--ghosts which they cannot lay; and,
-having attempted to domesticate and dress the Blessed
-Soul itself in English broadcloth and gaiters, they are
-tormented with fear that herein lurks a force that will
-sweep their system away. The artists say, "Nature puts
-us out"; the scholars have become un-ideal. They parry
-earnest speech with banter and levity; they laugh you
-down, or they change the subject. "The fact is," say
-they over their wine, "all that about liberty, and so forth,
-is gone by; it won't do any longer." The practical and
-comfortable oppress them with inexorable claims, and the
-smallest fraction of power remains for heroism and poetry.
-No poet dares murmur of beauty out of the precinct of
-his rhymes. No priest dares hint at a Providence which
-does not respect English utility. The island is a roaring
-volcano of fate, of material values, of tariffs, and laws of
-repression, glutted markets and low prices.
-
-In the absence of the highest aims, of the pure love of
-knowledge, and the surrender to nature, there is the
-suppression of the imagination, the priapism of the
-senses and the understanding; we have the factitious
-instead of the natural; tasteless expense, arts of comfort,
-and the rewarding as an illustrious inventor whosoever
-will contrive one impediment more to interpose between
-the man and his objects.
-
-Thus poetry is degraded, and made ornamental. Pope
-and his school wrote poetry fit to put round frosted
-cake. What did Walter Scott write without stint? a
-rhymed traveller's guide to Scotland. And the libraries
-of verses they print have this Birmingham character.
-How many volumes of well-bred metre we must jingle
-through, before we can be filled, taught, renewed! We
-want the miraculous; the beauty which we can manufacture
-at no mill,--can give no account of; the beauty of
-which Chaucer and Chapman had the secret. The poetry
-of course is low and prosaic; only now and then, as in
-Wordsworth, conscientious; or in Byron, passional; or
-in Tennyson, factitious. But if I should count the poets
-who have contributed to the Bible of existing England
-sentences of guidance and consolation which are still
-glowing and effective,--how few! Shall I find my
-heavenly bread in the reigning poets? Where is great
-design in modern English poetry? The English have
-lost sight of the fact that poetry exists to speak the
-spiritual law, and that no wealth of description or of
-fancy is yet essentially new, and out of the limits of
-prose, until this condition is reached. Therefore the
-grave old poets, like the Greek artists, heeded their
-designs, and less considered the finish. It was their
-office to lead to the divine sources, out of which all this,
-and much more, readily springs; and, if this religion is
-in the poetry, it raises us to some purpose, and we can
-well afford some staidness; or hardness, or want of
-popular tune in the verses.
-
-The exceptional fact of the period is the genius of
-Wordsworth. He had no master but nature and
-solitude. "He wrote a poem," says Landor, "without the
-aid of war." His verse is the voice of sanity in a
-worldly and ambitious age. One regrets that his
-temperament was not more liquid and musical. He has
-written longer than he was inspired. But for the rest,
-he has no competitor.
-
-Tennyson is endowed precisely in points where Wordsworth
-wanted. There is no finer ear than Tennyson's,
-nor more command of the keys of language. Color, like
-the dawn, flows over the horizon from his pencil, in
-waves so rich that we do not miss the central form.
-Through all his refinements, too, he has reached the
-public,--a certificate of good sense and general power,
-since he who aspires to be the English poet must be as
-large as London, not in the same kind as London, but in
-his own kind. But he wants a subject, and climbs no
-mount of vision to bring its secrets to the people. He
-contents himself with describing the Englishman as he is,
-and proposes no better. There are all degrees in poetry,
-and we must be thankful for every beautiful talent. But
-it is only a first success, when the ear is gained. The
-best office of the best poets has been to show how low
-and uninspired was their general style, and that only
-once or twice they have struck the high chord.
-
-That expansiveness which is the essence of the poetic
-element, they have not. It was no Oxonian, but Hafiz,
-who said: "Let us be crowned with roses, let us drink
-wine, and break up the tiresome old roof of heaven into
-new forms." A stanza of the song of nature the
-Oxonian has no ear for, and he does not value the salient
-and curative influence of intellectual action, studious of
-truth, without a by-end.
-
-By the law of contraries, I look for an irresistible taste
-for Orientalism in Britain. For a self-conceited modish
-life, made up of trifles, clinging to a corporeal civilization,
-hating ideas, there is no remedy like the Oriental
-largeness. That astonishes and disconcerts English
-decorum. For once there is thunder it never heard,
-light it never saw, and power which trifles with time
-and space. I am not surprised, then, to find an
-Englishman like Warren Hastings, who had been struck with
-the grand style of thinking in the Indian writings,
-deprecating the prejudices of his countrymen, while
-offering them a translation of the Bhagvat. "Might I," he
-says, "an unlettered man, venture to prescribe bounds
-to the latitude of criticism, I should exclude, in
-estimating the merit of such a production, all rules drawn from
-the ancient or modern literature of Europe, all references
-to such sentiments or manners as are become the
-standards of propriety for opinion and action in our own
-modes, and, equally, all appeals to our revealed tenets,
-of religion and moral duty." [#] He goes on to bespeak
-indulgence to "ornaments of fancy unsuited to our taste,
-and passages elevated to a tract of sublimity into which
-our habits of judgment will find it difficult to pursue them."
-
-
-[#] Preface to Wilkins's Translation of the Bhagvat Geeta.
-
-
-Meantime, I know that a retrieving power lies in the
-English race, which seems to make any recoil possible;
-in other words, there is at all times a minority of
-profound minds existing in the nation, capable of appreciating
-every soaring of intellect and every hint of tendency.
-While the constructive talent seems dwarfed and superficial,
-the criticism is often in the noblest tone, and suggests
-the presence of the invisible gods. I can well
-believe what I have often heard, that there are two
-nations in England; but it is not the Poor and the Rich;
-nor is it the Normans and Saxons; nor the Celt and the
-Goth. These are each always becoming the other; for
-Robert Owen does not exaggerate the power of circumstance.
-But the two complexions, or two styles of mind,--the
-perceptive class, and the practical finality class,--are
-ever in counterpoise, interacting mutually; one, in
-hopeless minorities; the other, in huge masses; one
-studious, contemplative, experimenting; the other, the
-ungrateful pupil, scornful of the source, whilst availing itself
-of the knowledge for gain; these two nations, of genius
-and of animal force, though the first consist of only a
-dozen souls, and the second of twenty millions, forever
-by their discord and their accord yield the power of the
-English State.
-
-.. vspace:: 4
-
-CHAPTER XV.--THE "TIMES."
-=========================
-
-The power of the newspaper is familiar in America,
-and in accordance with our political system. In
-England, it stands in antagonism with the feudal institutions,
-and it is all the more beneficent succor against the
-secretive tendencies of a monarchy. The celebrated Lord
-Somers "knew of no good law proposed and passed in
-his time, to which the public papers had not directed his
-attention." There is no corner and no night. A
-relentless inquisition drags every secret to the day, turns the
-glare of this solar microscope on every malfaisance, so
-as to make the public a more terrible spy than any
-foreigner; and no weakness can be taken advantage of by
-an enemy, since the whole people are already forewarned.
-Thus England rids herself of those incrustations which
-have been the ruin of old states. Of course, this
-inspection is feared. No antique privilege, no comfortable
-monopoly, but sees surely that its days are counted; the
-people are familiarized with the reason of reform, and,
-one by one, take away every argument of the obstructives.
-"So your Grace likes the comfort of reading the
-newspapers," said Lord Mansfield to the Duke of
-Northumberland; "mark my words; you and I shall not live to
-see it, but this young gentleman (Lord Eldon) may, or
-it may be a little later; but a little sooner or later, these
-newspapers will most assuredly write the dukes of
-Northumberland out of their titles and possessions, and the
-country out of its king." The tendency in England
-towards social and political institutions like those of
-America, is inevitable, and the ability of its journals is
-the driving force.
-
-England is full of manly, clever, well-bred men who
-possess the talent of writing off-hand pungent
-paragraphs, expressing with clearness and courage their
-opinion on any person or performance. Valuable or not, it
-is a skill that is rarely found, out of the English journals.
-The English do this, as they write poetry, as they ride
-and box, by being educated to it. Hundreds of clever
-Praeds, and Freres, and Froudes, and Hoods, and Hooks,
-and Maginns, and Mills, and Macaulays, make poems, or
-short essays for a journal, as they make speeches in
-Parliament and on the hustings, or, as they shoot and ride.
-It is a quite accidental and arbitrary direction of their
-general ability. Rude health and spirits, an Oxford
-education, and the habits of society are implied, but not a
-ray of genius. It comes of the crowded state of the
-professions, the violent interest which all men take in
-politics, the facility of experimenting in the journals, and
-high pay.
-
-The most conspicuous result of this talent is the
-"Times" newspaper. No power in England is more
-felt, more feared, or more obeyed. What you read in
-the morning in that journal, you shall hear in the
-evening in all society. It has ears everywhere, and its
-information is earliest, completest, and surest. It has risen,
-year by year, and victory by victory, to its present
-authority. I asked one of its old contributors, whether it
-had once been abler than it is now. "Never," he said;
-"these are its palmiest days." It has shown those
-qualities which are dear to Englishmen, unflinching
-adherence to its objects, prodigal intellectual ability, and a
-towering assurance, backed by the perfect organization
-in its printing-house, and its world-wide network of
-correspondence and reports. It has its own history
-and famous trophies. In 1820, it adopted the cause of
-Queen Caroline, and carried it against the king. It
-adopted a poor-law system, and almost alone lifted it
-through. When Lord Brougham was in power, it
-decided against him, and pulled him down. It declared
-war against Ireland, and conquered it. It adopted the
-League against the Corn Laws, and, when Cobden had
-begun to despair, it announced his triumph. It
-denounced and discredited the French Republic of 1848,
-and checked every sympathy with it in England, until
-it had enrolled 200,000 special constables to watch the
-Chartists, and make them ridiculous on the 10th April.
-It first denounced and then adopted the new French
-Empire, and urged the French Alliance and its results.
-It has entered into each municipal, literary, and social
-question, almost with a controlling voice. It has done
-bold and seasonable service in exposing frauds which
-threatened the commercial community. Meantime, it
-attacks its rivals by perfecting its printing machinery,
-and will drive them out of circulation; for the only limit
-to the circulation of the "Times" is the impossibility of
-printing copies fast enough; since a daily paper can only
-be new and seasonable for a few hours. It will kill all
-but that paper which is diametrically in opposition; since
-many papers, first and last, have lived by their attacks on
-the leading journal.
-
-The late Mr. Walter was printer of the "Times," and
-had gradually arranged the whole *materiel* of it in
-perfect system. It is told, that when he demanded a small
-share in the proprietary, and was refused, he said, "As
-you please, gentlemen; and you may take away the
-'Times' from this office when you will; I shall publish
-the 'New Times' next Monday morning." The proprietors,
-who had already complained that his charges for
-printing were excessive, found that they were in his
-power, and gave him whatever he wished.
-
-I went one day with a good friend to the "Times":
-office, which was entered through a pretty garden-yard,
-in Printing-House Square. We walked with some
-circumspection, as if we were entering a powder-mill; but
-the door was opened by a mild old woman, and, by dint
-of some transmission of cards, we were at last conducted
-into the parlor of Mr. Morris, a very gentle person,
-with no hostile appearances. The statistics are now
-quite out of date, but I remember he told us that the
-daily printing was then 35,000 copies; that on the 1st
-March, 1848, the greatest number ever printed,--54,000
-were issued; that, since February, the daily circulation
-had increased by 8,000 copies. The old press they
-were then using printed five or six thousand sheets per
-hour; the new machine, for which they were then
-building an engine, would print twelve thousand per hour.
-Our entertainer confided us to a courteous assistant to
-show us the establishment, in which, I think, they
-employed a hundred and twenty men. I remember, I saw
-the reporters' room, in which they redact their hasty
-stenographs, but the editor's room, and who is in it, I
-did not see, though I shared the curiosity of mankind
-respecting it.
-
-The staff of the "Times" has always been made up
-of able men. Old Walter, Sterling, Bacon, Barnes,
-Alsiger, Horace Twiss, Jones Loyd, John Oxenford,
-Mr. Mosely, Mr. Bailey, have contributed to its renown in
-their special departments. But it has never wanted the
-first pens for occasional assistance. Its private information
-is inexplicable, and recalls the stories of Fouché's
-police, whose omniscience made it believed that the
-Empress Josephine must be in his pay. It has mercantile
-and political correspondents in every foreign city; and its
-expresses outrun the despatches of the government. One
-hears anecdotes of the rise of its servants, as of the
-functionaries of the India House. I was told of the dexterity
-of one of its reporters, who, finding himself, on one
-occasion, where the magistrates had strictly forbidden
-reporters, put his hands into his coat-pocket, and with pencil
-in one hand, and tablet in the other, did his work.
-
-The influence of this journal is a recognized power in
-Europe, and, of course, none is more conscious of it
-than its conductors. The tone of its articles has often
-been the occasion of comment from the official organs of
-the continental courts, and sometimes the ground of
-diplomatic complaint. What would the "Times" say? is
-a terror in Paris, in Berlin, in Vienna, in Copenhagen,
-and in Nepaul. Its consummate discretion and success
-exhibit the English skill of combination. The daily
-paper is the work of many hands, chiefly, it is said, of
-young men recently from the University, and perhaps
-reading law in chambers in London. Hence the
-academic elegance, and classic allusion, which adorn its
-columns. Hence, too, the heat and gallantry of its onset.
-But the steadiness of the aim suggests the belief that
-this fire is directed and fed by older engineers; as if
-persons of exact information, and with settled views of
-policy, supplied the writers with the basis of fact, and
-the object to be attained, and availed themselves of
-their younger energy and eloquence to plead the cause.
-Both the council and the executive departments gain by
-this division. Of two men of equal ability, the one who
-does not write, but keeps his eye on the course of public
-affairs, will have the higher judicial wisdom. But the
-parts are kept in concert; all the articles appear to
-proceed from a single will. The "Times" never disapproves
-of what itself has said, or cripples itself by apology for
-the absence of the editor, or the indiscretion of him who
-held the pen. It speaks out bluff and bold, and sticks
-to what it says. It draws from any number of learned
-and skilful contributors; but a more learned and skilful
-person supervises, corrects, and co-ordinates. Of this
-closet, the secret does not transpire. No writer is
-suffered to claim the authorship of any paper; everything
-good, from whatever quarter, comes out editorially; and
-thus, by making the paper everything, and those who write
-it nothing, the character and the awe of the journal gain.
-
-The English like it for its complete information. A
-statement of fact in the "Times" is as reliable as a citation
-from Hansard. Then, they like its independence; they
-do not know, when they take it up, what their paper is
-going to say; but, above all, for the nationality and
-confidence of its tone. It thinks for them all; it is their
-understanding and day's ideal daguerreotyped. When I
-see them reading its columns, they seem to me becoming
-every moment more British. It has the national courage,
-not rash and petulant, but considerate and determined.
-No dignity or wealth is a shield from its assault. It
-attacks a duke as readily as a policeman, and with the
-most provoking airs of condescension. It makes rude
-work with the Board of Admiralty. The Bench of
-Bishops is still less safe. One bishop fares badly for his
-rapacity, and another for his bigotry, and a third for his
-courtliness. It addresses occasionally a hint to majesty
-itself, and sometimes a hint which is taken. There is an
-air of freedom even in their advertising columns, which
-speaks well for England to a foreigner. On the days
-when I arrived in London in 1847, I read among the
-daily announcements, one offering a reward of fifty
-pounds to any person who would put a nobleman,
-described by name and title, late a member of Parliament,
-into any county jail in England, he having been
-convicted of obtaining money under false pretences.
-
-Was never such arrogancy as the tone of this paper.
-Every slip of an Oxonian or Cantabrigian who writes his
-first leader assumes that we subdued the earth before we
-sat down to write this particular "Times." One would
-think the world was on its knees to the "Times" Office,
-for its daily breakfast. But this arrogance is calculated.
-Who would care for it, if it "surmised," or "dared to
-confess," or "ventured to predict," etc.? No; *it is so*,
-and so it shall be.
-
-The morality and patriotism of the "Times" claims
-only to be representative, and by no means ideal. It
-gives the argument, not of the majority, but of the
-commanding class. Its editors know better than to defend
-Russia, or Austria, or English vested rights, on abstract
-grounds. But they give a voice to the class who, at the
-moment, take the lead; and they have an instinct for
-finding where the power now lies, which is eternally
-shifting its banks. Sympathizing with, and speaking for
-the class that rules the hour, yet, being apprised of every
-ground-swell, every Chartist resolution, every Church
-squabble, every strike in the mills, they detect the first
-tremblings of change. They watch the hard and bitter
-struggles of the authors of each liberal movement, year
-by year,--watching them only to taunt and obstruct
-them,--until, at last, when they see that these have
-established their fact, that power is on the point of
-passing to them, they strike in, with the voice of a monarch,
-astonish those whom they succor, as much as those whom
-they desert, and make victory sure. Of course, the
-aspirants see that the "Times" is one of the goods of
-fortune, not to be won but by winning their cause.
-
-"Punch" is equally an expression of English good
-sense, as the "London Times." It is the comic version
-of the same sense. Many of its caricatures are equal to
-the best pamphlets, and will convey to the eye in an
-instant the popular view which was taken of each turn of
-public affairs. Its sketches are usually made by
-masterly hands, and sometimes with genius; the delight of
-every class, because uniformly guided by that taste
-which is tyrannical in England. It is a new trait of the
-nineteenth century, that the wit and humor of England,
-as in Punch, so in the humorists, Jerrold, Dickens,
-Thackeray, Hood, have taken the direction of humanity
-and freedom.
-
-The "Times," like every important institution, shows
-the way to a better. It is a living index of the colossal
-British power. Its existence honors the people who
-dare to print all they know, dare to know all the facts,
-and do not wish to be flattered by hiding the extent of
-the public disaster. There is always safety in valor. I
-wish I could add, that this journal aspired to deserve the
-power it wields, by guidance of the public sentiment to
-the right. It is usually pretended, in Parliament and
-elsewhere, that the English press has a high tone,--which
-it has not. It has an imperial tone, as of a
-powerful and independent nation. But as with other
-empires, its tone is prone to be official, and even officinal.
-The "Times" shares all the limitations of the governing
-classes, and wishes never to be in a minority. If only it
-dared to cleave to the right, to show the right to be the
-only expedient, and feed its batteries from the central
-heart of humanity, it might not have so many men of
-rank among its contributors, but genius would be its
-cordial and invincible ally; it might now and then bear the
-brunt of formidable combinations, but no journal is ruined
-by wise courage. It would be the natural leader of
-British reform; its proud function, that of being the voice of
-Europe, the defender of the exile and patriot against
-despots, would be more effectually discharged; it would
-have the authority which is claimed for that dream of
-good men not yet come to pass, an International
-Congress; and the least of its victories would be to give to
-England a new millennium of beneficent power.
-
-.. vspace:: 4
-
-CHAPTER XVI.--STONEHENGE.
-=========================
-
-It had been agreed between my friend Mr. C. and
-me, that before I left England we should make an
-excursion together to Stonehenge, which neither of us had
-seen; and the project pleased my fancy with the double
-attraction of the monument and the companion. It
-seemed a bringing together of extreme points, to visit
-the oldest religious monument in Britain in company
-with her latest thinker, and one whose influence may be
-traced in every contemporary book. I was glad to sum
-up a little my experiences, and to exchange a few
-reasonable words on the aspects of England, with a man on
-whose genius I set a very high value, and who had as
-much penetration, and as severe a theory of duty as any
-person in it. On Friday, 7th July, we took the
-South-western Railway through Hampshire to Salisbury, where
-we found a carriage to convey us to Amesbury. The
-fine weather and my friend's local knowledge of
-Hampshire, in which he is wont to spend a part of every
-summer, made the way short. There was much to say,
-too, of the travelling Americans, and their usual objects
-in London. I thought it natural that they should give
-some time to works of art collected here, which they
-cannot find at home, and a little to scientific clubs and
-museums, which, at this moment, make London very
-attractive. But my philosopher was not contented.
-Art and 'high art' is a favorite target for his wit.
-"Yes, *Kunst* is a great delusion, and Goethe and Schiller
-wasted a great deal of good time on it":--and he thinks
-he discovers that old Goethe found this out, and, in his
-later writings, changed his tone. As soon as men begin
-to talk of art, architecture, and antiquities, nothing good
-comes of it. He wishes to go through the British
-Museum in silence, and thinks a sincere man will see
-something, and say nothing. In these days, he thought, it
-would become an architect to consult only the grim
-necessity, and say, 'I can build you a coffin for such dead
-persons as you are, and for such dead purposes as you
-have, but you shall have no ornament.' For the science,
-he had, if possible, even less tolerance, and compared
-the savans of Somerset House to the boy who asked
-Confucius "how many stars in the sky?" Confucius
-replied, "he minded things near him"; then said the
-boy, "how many hairs are there in your eyebrows?" Confucius
-said, "he didn't know and didn't care."
-
-Still speaking of the Americans, C. complained that
-they dislike the coldness and exclusiveness of the
-English, and run away to France, and go with their
-countrymen, and are amused, instead of manfully staying in
-London, and confronting Englishmen, and acquiring
-their culture, who really have much to teach them.
-
-I told C. that I was easily dazzled, and was
-accustomed to concede readily all that an Englishman would
-ask; I saw everywhere in the country proofs of sense
-and spirit, and success of every sort: I like the people:
-they are as good as they are handsome; they have
-everything, and can do everything: but meantime, I surely
-know, that, as soon as I return to Massachusetts, I shall
-lapse at once into the feeling, which the geography of
-America inevitably inspires, that we play the game with
-immense advantage; that there and not here is the seat
-and centre of the British race; and that no skill or
-activity can long compete with the prodigious natural
-advantages of that country, in the hands of the same race; and
-that England, an old and exhausted island, must one day
-be contented, like other parents, to be strong only in her
-children. But this was a proposition which no
-Englishman of whatever condition can easily entertain.
-
-We left the train at Salisbury, and took a carriage
-to Amesbury, passing by Old Sarum, a bare, treeless hill,
-once containing the town which sent two members to
-Parliament,--now, not a hut,--and, arriving at
-Amesbury, stopped at the George Inn. After dinner, we
-walked to Salisbury Plain. On the broad downs, under
-the gray sky, not a house was visible, nothing but
-Stonehenge, which looked like a group of brown dwarfs
-in the wide expanse,--Stonehenge and the barrows,
-which rose like green bosses about the plain, and a few
-hay-ricks. On the top of a mountain, the old temple
-would not be more impressive. Far and wide a few
-shepherds with their flocks sprinkled the plain, and a
-bagman drove along the road. It looked as if the wide
-margin given in this crowded isle to this primeval temple
-were accorded by the veneration of the British race to
-the old egg out of which all their ecclesiastical structures
-and history had proceeded. Stonehenge is a circular
-colonnade with a diameter of a hundred feet, and
-enclosing a second and a third colonnade within. We walked
-round the stones, and clambered over them, to wont
-ourselves with their strange aspect and groupings, and
-found a nook sheltered from the wind among them,
-where C. lighted his cigar. It was pleasant to see, that
-just this simplest of all simple structures--two upright
-stones and a lintel laid across--had long outstood all later
-churches, and all history, and were like what is most
-permanent on the face of the planet: these, and the
-barrows,--mere mounds (of which there are a hundred and
-sixty within a circle of three miles about Stonehenge),
-like the same mound on the plain of Troy, which still
-makes good to the passing mariner on Hellespont, the
-vaunt of Homer and the fame of Achilles. Within the
-enclosure grow buttercups, nettles, and, all around, wild
-thyme, daisy, meadow-sweet, golden-rod, thistle, and the
-carpeting grass. Over us, larks were soaring and
-singing,--as my friend said: "the larks which were hatched
-last year, and the wind which was hatched many
-thousand years ago." We counted and measured by paces
-the biggest stones, and soon knew as much as any man
-can suddenly know of the inscrutable temple. There are
-ninety-four stones, and there were once probably one
-hundred and sixty. The temple is circular, and
-uncovered, and the situation fixed astronomically;--the grand
-entrances here, and at Abury, being placed exactly
-north-east, "as all the gates of the old cavern temples are." How
-came the stones here? for these *sarsens* or Druidical
-sandstones are not found in this neighborhood. The
-*sacrificial stone*, as it is called, is the only one in all these
-blocks, that can resist the action of fire, and as I read in
-the books, must have been brought one hundred and fifty
-miles.
-
-On almost every stone we found the marks of the
-mineralogist's hammer and chisel. The nineteen smaller
-stones of the inner circle are of granite. I, who had
-just come from Professor Sedgwick's Cambridge Museum
-of megatheria and mastodons, was ready to maintain
-that some cleverer elephants or mylodonta had borne off
-and laid these rocks one on another. Only the good
-beasts must have known how to cut a well-wrought tenon
-and mortise, and to smooth the surface of some of the
-stones. The chief mystery is, that any mystery should
-have been allowed to settle on so remarkable a
-monument, in a country on which all the muses have kept
-their eyes now for eighteen hundred years. We are not
-yet too late to learn much more than is known of this
-structure. Some diligent Fellowes or Layard will arrive,
-stone by stone, at the whole history, by that exhaustive
-British sense and perseverance, so whimsical in its choice
-of objects, which leaves its own Stonehenge or Choir
-Gaur to the rabbits, whilst it opens pyramids, and
-uncovers Nineveh. Stonehenge, in virtue of the simplicity of
-its plan, and its good preservation, is as if new and
-recent; and, a thousand years hence, men will thank
-this age for the accurate history it will yet eliminate.
-We walked in and out, and took again and again a fresh
-look at the uncanny stones. The old sphinx put our
-petty differences of nationality out of sight. To these
-conscious stones we two pilgrims were alike known and
-near. We could equally well revere their old British
-meaning. My philosopher was subdued and gentle. In
-this quiet house of destiny, he happened to say, "I
-plant cypresses wherever I go, and if I am in search of
-pain, I cannot go wrong." The spot, the gray blocks,
-and their rude order, which refuses to be disposed of,
-suggested to him the flight of ages, and the succession
-of religious. The old times of England impress C. much;
-he reads little, he says, in these last years, but
-"*Acta Sanctorum*," the fifty-three volumes of which are
-in the "London Library." He finds all English history
-therein. He can see, as he reads, the old saint of Iona
-sitting there, and writing, a man to men. The *Acta
-Sanctorum* show plainly that the men of those times
-believed in God, and in the immortality of the soul, as
-their abbeys and cathedrals testify: now, even the
-puritanism is all gone. London is pagan. He fancied that
-greater men had lived in England than any of her
-writers; and, in fact, about the time when those writers
-appeared, the last of these were already gone.
-
-We left the mound in the twilight, with the design to
-return the next morning, and coming back two miles to
-our inn, we were met by little showers, and late as it
-was, men and women were out attempting to protect
-their spread windrows. The grass grows rank and dark
-in the showery England. At the inn, there was only
-milk for one cup of tea. When we called for more, the
-girl brought us three drops. My friend was annoyed
-who stood for the credit of an English inn, and still
-more, the next morning, by the dog-cart, sole procurable
-vehicle, in which we were to be sent to Wilton. I
-engaged the local antiquary, Mr. Brown, to go with us to
-Stonehenge, on our way, and show us what he knew of
-the "astronomical" and "sacrificial" stones. I stood
-on the last, and he pointed to the upright, or rather,
-inclined stone, called the "astronomical," and bade me
-notice that its top ranged with the sky-line. "Yes." Very
-well. Now, at the summer solstice, the sun rises
-exactly over the top of that stone, and, at the Druidical
-temple at Abury, there is also an astronomical stone, in
-the same relative positions.
-
-In the silence of tradition, this one relation to science
-becomes an important clew; but we were content to
-leave the problem, with the rocks. Was this the
-"Giants' Dance" which Merlin brought from Killaraus,
-in Ireland, to be Uther Pendragon's monument to the
-British nobles whom Hengist slaughtered here, as
-Geoffrey of Monmouth relates? or was it a Roman work, as
-Inigo Jones explained to King James; or identical in
-design and style with the East Indian temples of the
-sun; as Davies in the Celtic Researches maintains? Of
-all the writers, Stukeley is the best. The heroic
-antiquary, charmed with the geometric perfections of his
-ruin, connects it with the oldest monuments and religion
-of the world, and, with the courage of his tribe, does not
-stick to say, "the Deity who made the world by the
-scheme of Stonehenge." He finds that the *cursus* [#]_ on
-Salisbury Plain stretches across the downs, like a line of
-latitude upon the globe, and the meridian line of
-Stonehenge passes exactly through the middle of this *cursus*.
-But here is the high point of the theory: the Druids had
-the magnet; laid their courses by it; their cardinal points
-in Stonehenge, Ambresbury, and elsewhere, which vary
-a little from true east and west, followed the variations
-of the compass. The Druids were Phoenicians. The
-name of the magnet is *lapis Heracleus*, and Hercules was
-the god of the Phoenicians. Hercules, in the legend,
-drew his bow at the sun, and the sun-god gave him a
-golden cup, with which he sailed over the ocean. What
-was this, but a compass-box? This cup or little boat,
-in which the magnet was made to float on water, and so
-show the north, was probably its first form, before it was
-suspended on a pin. But science was an *arcanum*, and,
-as Britain was a Phoenician secret, so they kept their
-compass a secret, and it was lost with the Tyrian
-commerce. The golden fleece, again, of Jason, was the
-compass,--a bit of loadstone, easily supposed to be the
-only one in the world, and therefore naturally awakening
-the cupidity and ambition of the young heroes of a
-maritime nation to join in an expedition to obtain possession
-of this wise stone. Hence the fable that the ship Argo
-was loquacious and oracular. There is also some curious
-coincidence in the names. Apollodorus makes *Magnes*
-the son of *Æolus*, who married *Nais*. On hints like
-these, Stukeley builds again the grand colonnade into
-historic harmony, and computing backward by the known
-variations of the compass, bravely assigns the year 406
-before Christ for the date of the temple.
-
-.. [#] Connected with Stonehenge are an avenue and a *cursus*.
- The avenue is a narrow road of raised earth, extending
- 594 yards in a straight line from the grand entrance, then
- dividing into two branches, which lead, severally, to a row of
- barrows: and to the cursus,--an artificially formed flat tract
- of ground. This is half a mile northeast from Stonehenge,
- bounded by banks and ditches, 3,036 yards long, by 110 broad.
-
-For the difficulty of handling and carrying stones of
-this size, the like is done in all cities, every day, with no
-other aid than horse-power. I chanced to see a year ago
-men at work on the substructure of a house in Bowdoin
-Square, in Boston, swinging a block of granite of the
-size of the largest of the Stonehenge columns with an
-ordinary derrick. The men were common masons, with
-paddies to help, nor did they think they were doing
-anything remarkable. I suppose there were as good men a
-thousand years ago. And we wonder how Stonehenge
-was built and forgotten. After spending half an hour
-on the spot, we set forth in our dog-cart over the downs
-for Wilton, C. not suppressing some threats and evil
-omens on the proprietors, for keeping these broad plains
-a wretched sheep-walk when so many thousands of
-Englishmen were hungry and wanted labor. But I heard
-afterwards that it is not an economy to cultivate this
-land, which only yields one crop on being broken up,
-and is then spoiled.
-
-We came to Wilton and to Wilton Hall,--the renowned
-seat of the Earls of Pembroke, a house known
-to Shakspeare and Massinger, the frequent home of Sir
-Philip Sidney, where he wrote the Arcadia; where he
-conversed with Lord Brooke, a man of deep thought,
-and a poet, who caused to be engraved on his tombstone,
-"Here lies Fulke Greville Lord Brooke, the friend of
-Sir Philip Sidney." It is now the property of the Earl
-of Pembroke, and the residence of his brother, Sidney
-Herbert, Esq., and is esteemed a noble specimen of the
-English manor-hall. My friend had a letter from
-Mr. Herbert to his housekeeper, and the house was shown.
-The state drawing-room is a double cube, thirty feet
-high, by thirty wide, by sixty feet long: the adjoining
-room is a single cube, of thirty feet every way. Although
-these apartments and the long library were full of good
-family portraits, Vandykes and other; and though there
-were some good pictures, and a quadrangle cloister full
-of antique and modern statuary,--to which C., catalogue
-in hand, did all too much justice,--yet the eye was still
-drawn to the windows, to a magnificent lawn, on which
-grew the finest cedars in England. I had not seen more
-charming grounds. We went out, and walked over the
-estate. We crossed a bridge built by Inigo Jones over a
-stream, of which the gardener did not know the name,
-(*Qu.* Alph?) watched the deer; climbed to the lonely
-sculptured summer-house, on a hill backed by a wood;
-came down into the Italian garden, and into a French
-pavilion, garnished with French busts; and so, again to
-the house, where we found a table laid for us with bread,
-meats, peaches, grapes, and wine.
-
-On leaving Wilton House, we took the coach for
-Salisbury. The Cathedral which was finished six
-hundred years ago has even a spruce and modern air, and its
-spire is the highest in England. I know not why, but I
-had been more struck with one of no fame at Coventry,
-which rises three hundred feet from the ground, with the
-lightness of a mullein-plant, and not at all implicated
-with the church. Salisbury is now esteemed the
-culmination of the Gothic art in England, as the buttresses
-are fully unmasked, and honestly detailed from the sides
-of the pile. The interior of the Cathedral is obstructed
-by the organ in the middle, acting like a screen. I know
-not why in real architecture the hunger of the eye for
-length of line is so rarely gratified. The rule of art is
-that a colonnade is more beautiful the longer it is, and
-that *ad infinitum*. And the nave of a church is seldom
-so long that it need be divided by a screen.
-
-We loitered in the church, outside the choir, whilst
-service was said. Whilst we listened to the organ, my
-friend remarked, the music is good and yet not quite
-religious, but somewhat as if a monk were panting to
-some fine Queen of Heaven. C. was unwilling, and we
-did not ask to have the choir shown us, but returned to
-our inn, after seeing another old church of the place.
-We passed in the train Clarendon Park, but could see
-little but the edge of a wood, though C. had wished to
-pay closer attention to the birthplace of the Decrees of
-Clarendon. At Bishopstoke we stopped, and found
-Mr. H., who received us in his carriage, and took us to his
-house at Bishops Waltham.
-
-On Sunday, we had much discourse on a very rainy
-day. My friends ask, whether there were any
-Americans?--any with an American idea,--any theory of the
-right future of that country? Thus challenged, I
-bethought myself neither of caucuses nor congress, neither
-of presidents nor of cabinet-ministers, nor of such as
-would make of America another Europe. I thought only
-of the simplest and purest minds; I said, 'Certainly yes;
-but those who hold it are fanatics of a dream which I
-should hardly care to relate to your English ears, to
-which it might be only ridiculous,--and yet it is the
-only true.' So I opened the dogma of no government
-and non-resistance, and anticipated the objections and
-the fun, and procured a kind of hearing for it. I said, it
-is true that I have never seen in any country a man of
-sufficient valor to stand for this truth, and yet it is plain
-to me that no less valor than this can command my
-respect. I can easily see the bankruptcy of the vulgar
-musket-worship,--though great men be musket-worshippers;
-and 't is certain, as God liveth, the gun that
-does not need another gun, the law of love and justice
-alone, can effect a clean revolution. I fancied that one
-or two of my anecdotes made some impression on C.,
-and I insisted that the manifest absurdity of the view to
-English feasibility could make no difference to a
-gentleman; that as to our secure tenure of our mutton-chop
-and spinage in London or in Boston, the soul might
-quote Talleyrand, "*Monsieur, je n'en vois pas la
-nécessité*." [#]_ As I had thus taken in the conversation the
-saint's part, when dinner was announced, C. refused to
-go out before me,--"he was altogether too wicked." I
-planted my back against the wall, and our host wittily
-rescued us from the dilemma, by saying, he was the
-wickedest, and would walk out first, then C. followed,
-and I went last.
-
-.. [#] "Mais, Monseigneur, il faut que j'existe."
-
-On the way to Winchester, whither our host
-accompanied us in the afternoon, my friends asked many
-questions respecting American landscape, forests, houses,--my
-house, for example. It is not easy to answer these
-queries well. There I thought, in America, lies nature
-sleeping, overgrowing, almost conscious, too much by
-half for man in the picture, and so giving a certain
-tristesse, like the rank vegetation of swamps and forests
-seen at night, steeped in dews and rains, which it loves;
-and on it man seems not able to make much impression.
-There, in that great sloven continent, in high Alleghany
-pastures, in the sea-wide, sky-skirted prairie, still sleeps
-and murmurs and hides the great mother, long since
-driven away from the trim hedge-rows and over-cultivated
-garden of England. And, in England, I am quite
-too sensible of this. Every one is on his good behavior,
-and must be dressed for dinner at six. So I put off my
-friends with very inadequate details, as best I could.
-
-Just before entering Winchester, we stopped at the
-Church of Saint Cross, and, after looking through the
-quaint antiquity, we demanded a piece of bread and a
-draught of beer, which the founder, Henry de Blois, in
-1136, commanded should be given to every one who
-should ask it at the gate. We had both, from the old
-couple who take care of the church. Some twenty
-people, every day, they said, make the same demand. This
-hospitality of seven hundred years' standing did not
-hinder C. from pronouncing a malediction on the priest who
-receives £2,000 a year, that were meant for the poor,
-and spends a pittance on this small-beer and crumbs.
-
-In the Cathedral, I was gratified, at least by the
-ample dimensions. The length of line exceeds that of
-any other English church; being 556 feet by 250 in
-breadth of transept. I think I prefer this church to all
-I have seen, except Westminster and York. Here was
-Canute buried, and here Alfred the Great was crowned
-and buried, and here the Saxon kings: and, later, in
-his own church, William of Wykeham. It is very old:
-part of the crypt into which we went down and saw the
-Saxon and Norman arches of the old church on which
-the present stands, was built fourteen or fifteen hundred
-years ago. Sharon Turner says: "Alfred was buried at
-Winchester, in the Abbey he had founded there, but his
-remains were removed by Henry I. to the new Abbey in
-the meadows at Hyde, on the northern quarter of the
-city, and laid under the high altar. The building was
-destroyed at the Reformation, and what is left of Alfred's
-body now lies covered by modern buildings, or buried in
-the ruins of the old." [#]_ William of Wykeham's shrine
-tomb was unlocked for us, and C. took hold of the
-recumbent statue's marble hands, and patted them
-affectionately, for he rightly values the brave man who built
-Windsor, and this Cathedral, and the School here, and
-New College at Oxford. But it was growing late in the
-afternoon. Slowly we left the old house, and parting
-with our host, we took the train for London.
-
-.. [#] History of the Anglo-Saxons, I. 599.
-
-.. vspace:: 4
-
-CHAPTER XVII.--PERSONAL.
-========================
-
-In these comments on an old journey now revised
-after seven busy years have much changed men and
-things in England, I have abstained from reference to
-persons, except in the last chapter, and in one or two cases
-where the fame of the parties seemed to have given the
-public a property in all that concerned them. I must
-further allow myself a few notices, if only as an
-acknowledgment of debts that cannot be paid. My journeys
-were cheered by so much kindness from new friends,
-that my impression of the island is bright with agreeable
-memories both of public societies and of households;
-and, what is nowhere better found than in England, a
-cultivated person fitly surrounded by a happy home,
-"with honor, love, obedience, troops of friends," is of
-all institutions the best. At the landing in Liverpool, I
-found my Manchester correspondent awaiting me, a
-gentleman whose kind reception was followed by a train of
-friendly and effective attentions which never rested whilst
-I remained in the country. A man of sense and of letters,
-the editor of a powerful local journal, he added to solid
-virtues an infinite sweetness and *bonhommie*. There
-seemed a pool of honey about his heart which lubricated
-all his speech and action with fine jets of mead. An
-equal good-fortune attended many later accidents of my
-journey, until the sincerity of English kindness ceased to
-surprise. My visit fell in the fortunate days when
-Mr. Bancroft was the American Minister in London, and at
-his house, or through his good offices, I had easy access
-to excellent persons and to privileged places. At the
-house of Mr. Carlyle, I met persons eminent in society
-and in letters. The privileges of the Athenæum and of
-the Reform Clubs were hospitably opened to me, and I
-found much advantage in the circles of the "Geologic,"
-the "Antiquarian," and the "Royal Societies." Every
-day in London gave me new opportunities of meeting
-men and women who give splendor to society. I saw
-Rogers, Hallam, Macaulay, Milnes, Milman, Barry
-Cornwall, Dickens, Thackeray, Tennyson, Leigh Hunt,
-D'Israeli, Helps, Wilkinson, Bailey, Kenyon, and
-Forster: the younger poets, Clough, Arnold, and Patmore;
-and, among the men of science, Robert Brown, Owen,
-Sedgwick, Faraday, Buckland, Lyell, De la Beche,
-Hooker, Carpenter, Babbage, and Edward Forbes. It
-was my privilege also to converse with Miss Baillie, with
-Lady Morgan, with Mrs. Jameson, and Mrs. Somerville.
-A finer hospitality made many private houses not less
-known and dear. It is not in distinguished circles that
-wisdom and elevated characters are usually found, or, if
-found, not confined thereto; and my recollections of the
-best hours go back to private conversations in different
-parts of the kingdom, with persons little known. Nor
-am I insensible to the courtesy which frankly opened to
-me some noble mansions, if I do not adorn my page with
-their names. Among the privileges of London, I recall
-with pleasure two or three signal days, one at Kew,
-where Sir William Hooker showed me all the riches of
-the vast botanic garden; one at the Museum, where Sir
-Charles Fellowes explained in detail the history of his
-Ionic trophy-monument; and still another, on which
-Mr. Owen accompanied my countryman Mr. H. and myself
-through the Hunterian Museum.
-
-The like frank hospitality, bent on real service, I found
-among the great and the humble, wherever I went; in
-Birmingham, in Oxford, in Leicester, in Nottingham, in
-Sheffield, in Manchester, in Liverpool. At Edinburgh,
-through the kindness of Dr. Samuel Brown, I made the
-acquaintance of De Quincey, of Lord Jeffrey, of Wilson,
-of Mrs. Crowe, of the Messrs. Chambers, and of a man of
-high character and genius, the short-lived painter David
-Scott.
-
-At Ambleside, in March, 1848, I was for a couple of
-days the guest of Miss Martineau, then newly returned
-from her Egyptian tour. On Sunday afternoon, I
-accompanied her to Rydal Mount. And as I have recorded a
-visit to Wordsworth, many years before, I must not
-forget this second interview. We found Mr. Wordsworth
-asleep on the sofa. He was at first silent and indisposed,
-as an old man, suddenly waked, before he had ended his
-nap; but soon became full of talk on the French news.
-He was nationally bitter on the French: bitter on
-Scotchmen, too. No Scotchman, he said, can write English.
-He detailed the two models, on one or the other of which
-all the sentences of the historian Robertson are framed.
-Nor could Jeffrey, nor the Edinburgh Reviewers write
-English, nor can .... who is a pest to the English
-tongue. Incidentally he added, Gibbon cannot write
-English. The *Edinburgh Review* wrote what would tell
-and what would sell. It had however changed the tone
-of its literary criticism from the time when a certain letter
-was written to the editor by Coleridge. Mrs. W. had the
-Editor's answer in her possession. Tennyson he thinks
-a right poetic genius, though with some affectation. He
-had thought an elder brother of Tennyson at first the
-better poet, but must now reckon Alfred the true one.....
-In speaking of I know not what style, he said,
-"To be sure it was the manner, but then you know the
-matter always comes out of the manner." .... He
-thought Rio Janeiro the best place in the world for a
-great capital city..... We talked of English national
-character. I told him it was not creditable that no one
-in all the country knew anything of Thomas Taylor, the
-Platonist, whilst in every American library his translations
-are found. I said, if Plato's Republic were published in
-England as a new book to-day, do you think it would find
-any readers?--he confessed, it would not: "And yet,"
-he added after a pause, with that complacency which
-never deserts a true-born Englishman,--"and yet we
-have embodied it all."
-
-His opinions of French, English, Irish, and Scotch
-seemed rashly formulized from little anecdotes of what
-had befallen himself and members of his family, in a
-diligence or stage-coach. His face sometimes lighted up,
-but his conversation was not marked by special force or
-elevation. Yet perhaps it is a high compliment to the
-cultivation of the English generally, when we find such
-a man not distinguished. He had a healthy look, with a
-weather-beaten face, his face corrugated, especially the
-large nose.
-
-Miss Martineau, who lived near him, praised him to
-me, not for his poetry, but for thrift and economy; for
-having afforded to his country neighbors an example of a
-modest household, where comfort and culture were
-secured without any display. She said, that, in his early
-housekeeping at the cottage where he first lived, he was
-accustomed to offer his friends bread and plainest fare:
-if they wanted anything more, they must pay him for
-their board. It was the rule of the house. I replied,
-that it evinced English pluck more than any anecdote I
-knew. A gentleman in the neighborhood told the story
-of Walter Scott's once staying a week with Wordsworth,
-and slipping out every day under pretence of a walk, to
-the Swan Inn, for a cold cut and porter; and one day
-passing with Wordsworth the inn, he was betrayed by
-the landlord's asking him if he had come for his porter.
-Of course, this trait would have another look in London,
-and there you will hear from different literary men, that
-Wordsworth had no personal friend, that he was not
-amiable, that he was parsimonious, etc. Landor, always
-generous, says that he never praised anybody. A gentleman
-in London showed me a watch that once belonged
-to Milton, whose initials are engraved on its face. He
-said, he once showed this to Wordsworth, who took it in
-one hand, then drew out his own watch, and held it up
-with the other, before the company, but no one making
-the expected remark, he put back his own in silence. I
-do not attach much importance to the disparagement of
-Wordsworth among London scholars. Who reads him
-well will know, that in following the strong bent of his
-genius, he was careless of the many, careless also of the
-few, self-assured that he should "create the taste by
-which he is to be enjoyed." He lived long enough to
-witness the revolution he had wrought, and "to see what
-he foresaw." There are torpid places in his mind, there
-is something hard and sterile in his poetry, want of grace
-and variety, want of due catholicity and cosmopolitan
-scope: he had conformities to English politics and
-traditions; he had egotistic puerilities in the choice and
-treatment of his subjects; but let us say of him, that, alone
-in his time, he treated the human mind well, and with an
-absolute trust. His adherence to his poetic creed rested
-on real inspirations. The Ode on Immortality is the
-high-water mark which the intellect has reached in this
-age. New means were employed, and new realms added
-to the empire of the muse, by his courage.
-
-.. vspace:: 4
-
-CHAPTER XVIII.--RESULT.
-=======================
-
-England is the best of actual nations. It is no ideal
-framework, it is an old pile built in different ages, with
-repairs, additions, and makeshifts; but you see the poor
-best you have got. London is the epitome of our times,
-and the Rome of to-day. Broad-fronted, broad-bottomed
-Teutons, they stand in solid phalanx foursquare to the
-points of compass; they constitute the modern world,
-they have earned their vantage-ground, and held it
-through ages of adverse possession. They are well
-marked and differing from other leading races. England
-is tender-hearted. Rome was not. England is not so
-public in its bias; private life is its place of honor.
-Truth in private life, untruth in public, marks these
-home-loving men. Their political conduct is not decided
-by general views, but by internal intrigues and personal
-and family interest. They cannot readily see beyond
-England. The history of Rome and Greece, when
-written by their scholars, degenerates into English party
-pamphlets. They cannot see beyond England, nor in
-England can they transcend the interests of the
-governing classes. "English principles" mean a primary
-regard to the interests of property. England, Scotland,
-and Ireland combine to check the colonies. England
-and Scotland combine to check Irish manufactures and
-trade. England rallies at home to check Scotland. In
-England, the strong classes check the weaker. In the
-home population of near thirty millions, there are but
-one million voters. The Church punishes dissent,
-punishes education. Down to a late day, marriages performed
-by dissenters were illegal. A bitter class-legislation gives
-power to those who are rich enough to buy a law. The
-game-laws are a proverb of oppression. Pauperism
-incrusts and clogs the state, and in hard times becomes
-hideous. In bad seasons, the porridge was diluted.
-Multitudes lived miserably by shell-fish and sea-ware.
-In cities, the children are trained to beg, until they shall
-be old enough to rob. Men and women were convicted
-of poisoning scores of children for burial fees. In Irish
-districts, men deteriorated in size and shape. The nose
-sunk, the gums were exposed, with diminished brain and
-brutal form. During the Australian emigration,
-multitudes were rejected by the commissioners as being too
-emaciated for useful colonists. During the Russian war,
-few of those that offered as recruits were found up to the
-medical standard, though it had been reduced.
-
-The foreign policy of England, though ambitious and
-lavish of money, has not often been generous or just. It
-has a principal regard to the interest of trade, checked
-however by the aristocratic bias of the ambassador, which
-usually puts him in sympathy with the continental Courts.
-It sanctioned the partition of Poland, it betrayed Genoa,
-Sicily, Parga, Greece, Turkey, Rome, and Hungary.
-
-Some public regards they have. They have abolished
-slavery in the West Indies, and put an end to human
-sacrifices in the East. At home they have a certain
-statute hospitality. England keeps open doors, as a
-trading country must, to all nations. It is one of their
-fixed ideas, and wrathfully supported by their laws in
-unbroken sequence for a thousand years. In *Magna
-Charta* it was ordained, that all "merchants shall have
-safe and secure conduct to go out and come into
-England, and to stay there, and to pass as well by land as
-by water, to buy and sell by the ancient allowed customs,
-without any evil toll, except in time of war, or when
-they shall be of any nation at war with us." It is a
-statute and obliged hospitality, and peremptorily
-maintained. But this shop-rule had one magnificent effect.
-It extends its cold unalterable courtesy to political exiles
-of every opinion, and is a fact which might give
-additional light to that portion of the planet seen from the
-farthest star. But this perfunctory hospitality puts no
-sweetness into their unaccommodating manners, no check
-on that puissant nationality which makes their existence
-incompatible with all that is not English.
-
-What we must say about a nation is a superficial
-dealing with symptoms. We cannot go deep enough into
-the biography of the spirit who never throws himself
-entire into one hero, but delegates his energy in parts or
-spasms to vicious and defective individuals. But the
-wealth of the source is seen in the plenitude of English
-nature. What variety of power and talent; what facility
-and plenteousness of knighthood, lordship, ladyship,
-royalty, loyalty; what a proud chivalry is indicated in
-"Collins's Peerage," through eight hundred years!
-What dignity resting on what reality and stoutness!
-What courage in war, what sinew in labor, what cunning
-workmen, what inventors and engineers, what seamen
-and pilots, what clerks and scholars! No one man and
-no few men can represent them. It is a people of myriad
-personalities. Their many-headedness is owing to the
-advantageous position of the middle class, who are always
-the source of letters and science. Hence the vast plenty
-of their æsthetic production. As they are many-headed,
-so they are many-nationed; their colonization annexes
-archipelagoes and continents, and their speech seems
-destined to be the universal language of men. I have
-noted the reserve of power in the English temperament.
-In the island, they never let out all the length of all the
-reins, there is no Berserkir rage, no abandonment or
-ecstasy of will or intellect, like that of the Arabs in the
-time of Mahomet, or like that which intoxicated France in
-1789. But who would see the uncoiling of that tremendous
-spring, the explosion of their well-husbanded forces,
-must follow the swarms which, pouring now for two
-hundred years from the British islands, have sailed, and
-rode, and traded, and planted, through all climates,
-mainly following the belt of empire, the temperate zones,
-carrying the Saxon seed, with its instinct for liberty and
-law, for arts and for thought,--acquiring under some
-skies a more electric energy than the native air allows,--to
-the conquest of the globe. Their colonial policy,
-obeying the necessities of a vast empire, has become
-liberal. Canada and Australia have been contented with
-substantial independence. They are expiating the wrongs
-of India, by benefits: first, in works for the irrigation of
-the peninsula, and roads and telegraphs; and secondly,
-in the instruction of the people, to qualify them for
-self-government, when the British power shall be finally
-called home.
-
-Their mind is in a state of arrested development,--a
-divine cripple like Vulcan; a blind *savant* like Huber
-and Sanderson. They do not occupy themselves on
-matters of general and lasting import, but on a corporeal
-civilization, on goods that perish in the using. But they
-read with good intent, and what they learn they
-incarnate. The English mind turns every abstraction it can
-receive into a portable utensil, or a working institution.
-Such is their tenacity, and such their practical turn, that
-they hold all they gain. Hence we say, that only the
-English race can be trusted with freedom,--freedom
-which is double-edged and dangerous to any but the
-wise and robust. The English designate the kingdoms
-emulous of free institutions as the sentimental nations.
-Their own culture is not an outside varnish, but is
-thorough and secular in families and the race. They are
-oppressive with their temperament, and all the more that
-they are refined. I have sometimes seen them walk with
-my countrymen, when I was forced to allow them every
-advantage, and their companions seemed bags of bones.
-There is cramp limitation in their habit of thought,
-sleepy routine, and a tortoise's instinct to hold hard to
-the ground with his claws, lest he should be thrown on
-his back. There is a drag of inertia which resists reform
-in every shape; law-reform, army-reform, extension of
-suffrage, Jewish franchise, Catholic emancipation,--the
-abolition of slavery, of impressment, penal code, and
-entails. They praise this drag, under the formula, that
-it is the excellence of the British constitution, that no
-law can anticipate the public opinion. These poor
-tortoises must hold hard, for they feel no wings sprouting
-at their shoulders. Yet somewhat divine warms at their
-heart, and waits a happier hour. It hides in their sturdy
-will. "Will," said the old philosophy, "is the measure
-of power," and personality is the token of this race.
-*Quid vult valde vult*. What they do they do with a will.
-You cannot account for their success by their
-Christianity, commerce, charter, common law, Parliament, or
-letters, but by the contumacious sharp-tongued energy
-of English *naturel*, with a poise impossible to disturb,
-which makes all these its instruments. They are slow and
-reticent, and are like a dull good horse which lets every
-nag pass him, but with whip and spur will run down
-every racer in the field. They are right in their feeling,
-though wrong in their speculation.
-
-The feudal system survives in the steep inequality of
-property and privilege, in the limited franchise, in the
-social barriers which confine patronage and promotion to
-a caste, and still more in the submissive ideas pervading
-these people. The fagging of the schools is repeated in
-the social classes. An Englishman shows no mercy to
-those below him in the social scale, as he looks for none
-from those above him; any forbearance from his superiors
-surprises him, and they suffer in his good opinion. But
-the feudal system can be seen with less pain on large
-historical grounds. It was pleaded in mitigation of the
-rotten borough, that it worked well, that substantial
-justice was done. Fox, Burke, Pitt, Erskine, Wilberforce,
-Sheridan, Romilly, or whatever national men, were by
-this means sent to Parliament, when their return by large
-constituencies would have been doubtful. So now we say,
-that the right measures of England are the men it bred;
-that it has yielded more able men in five hundred years
-than any other nation; and, though we must not play
-Providence, and balance the chances of producing ten
-great men against the comfort of ten thousand mean men,
-yet retrospectively we may strike the balance, and prefer
-one Alfred, one Shakspeare, one Milton, one Sidney, one
-Raleigh, one Wellington, to a million foolish democrats.
-
-The American system is more democratic, more
-humane; yet the American people do not yield better or
-more able men, or more inventions or books or benefits,
-than the English. Congress is not wiser or better than
-Parliament. France has abolished its suffocating old
-*régime*, but is not recently marked by any more wisdom
-or virtue.
-
-The power of performance has not been exceeded,--the
-creation of value. The English have given importance
-to individuals, a principal end and fruit of every society.
-Every man is allowed and encouraged to be what he is,
-and is guarded in the indulgence of his whim. "Magna
-Charta," said Rushworth, "is such a fellow that he will
-have no sovereign." By this general activity, and by
-this sacredness of individuals, they have in seven
-hundred years evolved the principles of freedom. It is the
-land of patriots, martyrs, sages, and bards, and if the
-ocean out of which it emerged should wash it away, it
-will be remembered as an island famous for immortal
-laws, for the announcements of original right which
-make the stone tables of liberty.
-
-.. vspace:: 4
-
-CHAPTER XIX.--SPEECH AT MANCHESTER.
-===================================
-
-A few days after my arrival at Manchester, in
-November, 1847, the Manchester Athenæum gave its annual
-Banquet in the Free-Trade Hall. With other guests, I
-was invited to be present, and to address the company.
-In looking over recently a newspaper report of my
-remarks, I incline to reprint it, as fitly expressing the
-feeling with which I entered England, and which agrees
-well enough with the more deliberate results of better
-acquaintance recorded in the foregoing pages. Sir
-Archibald Alison, the historian, presided, and opened the
-meeting with a speech. He was followed by Mr. Cobden,
-Lord Brackley, and others, among whom was
-Mr. Cruikshank, one of the contributors to
-"Punch." Mr. Dickens's letter of apology for his absence was
-read. Mr. Jerrold, who had been announced, did not
-appear. On being introduced to the meeting I said:--
-
-.. vspace:: 2
-
-Mr. Chairman and Gentlemen: It is pleasant to me
-to meet this great and brilliant company, and doubly
-pleasant to see the faces of so many distinguished persons
-on this platform. But I have known all these persons
-already. When I was at home, they were as near to me
-as they are to you. The arguments of the League and
-its leader are known to all the friends of free trade.
-The gayeties and genius, the political, the social, the
-parietal wit of "Punch" go duly every fortnight to
-every boy and girl in Boston and New York. Sir, when
-I came to sea, I found the "History of Europe" [#]_ on
-the ship's cabin table, the property of the captain;--a
-sort of programme or play-bill to tell the seafaring
-New-Englander what he shall find on his landing here. And
-as for Dombey, sir, there is no land where paper exists to
-print on, where it is not found; no man who can read,
-that does not read it, and, if he cannot, he finds some
-charitable pair of eyes that can, and hears it.
-
-.. [#] By Sir A. Alison.
-
-But these things are not for me to say; these
-compliments, though true, would better come from one who
-felt and understood these merits more. I am not here
-to exchange civilities with you, but rather to speak of
-that which I am sure interests these gentlemen more
-than their own praises; of that which is good in holidays
-and working-days, the same in one century and in another
-century. That which lures a solitary American in the
-woods with the wish to see England, is the moral
-peculiarity of the Saxon race,--its commanding sense of
-right and wrong,--the love and devotion to that,--this
-is the imperial trait, which arms them with the sceptre
-of the globe. It is this which lies at the foundation of
-that aristocratic character, which certainly wanders into
-strange vagaries, so that its origin is often lost sight of,
-but which, if it should lose this, would find itself
-paralyzed; and in trade, and in the mechanic's shop, gives
-that honesty in performance, that thoroughness and
-solidity of work, which is a national characteristic. This
-conscience is one element, and the other is that loyal
-adhesion, that habit of friendship, that homage of man
-to man, running through all classes,--the electing of
-worthy persons to a certain fraternity, to acts of
-kindness and warm and stanch support, from year to year,
-from youth to age,--which is alike lovely and honorable
-to those who render and those who receive it;--which
-stands in strong contrast with the superficial attachments
-of other races, their excessive courtesy, and short-lived
-connection.
-
-You will think me very pedantic, gentlemen, but holiday
-though it be, I have not the smallest interest in any
-holiday, except as it celebrates real and not pretended
-joys; and I think it just, in this time of gloom and
-commercial disaster, of affliction and beggary in these
-districts, that on these very accounts I speak of, you should
-not fail to keep your literary anniversary. I seem to
-hear you say, that, for all that is come and gone yet, we
-will not reduce by one chaplet or one oak-leaf the
-braveries of our annual feast. For I must tell you, I was
-given to understand in my childhood, that the British
-island from which my forefathers came, was no lotus-garden,
-no paradise of serene sky and roses and music
-and merriment all the year round, no, but a cold, foggy,
-mournful country, where nothing grew well in the open
-air, but robust men and virtuous women, and these of a
-wonderful fibre and endurance; that their best parts were
-slowly revealed; their virtues did not come out until
-they quarrelled: they did not strike twelve the first time;
-good lovers, good haters, and you could know little about
-them till you had seen them long, and little good of them
-till you had seen them in action; that in prosperity they
-were moody and dumpish, but in adversity they were
-grand. Is it not true, sir, that the wise ancients did not
-praise the ship parting with flying colors from the port,
-but only that brave sailer which came back with torn
-sheets and battered sides, stript of her banners, but
-having ridden out the storm? And so, gentlemen, I feel
-in regard to this aged England, with the possessions,
-honors, and trophies, and also with the infirmities of a
-thousand years gathering around her, irretrievably
-committed as she now is to many old customs which cannot
-be suddenly changed; pressed upon by the transitions of
-trade, and new and all incalculable modes, fabrics, arts,
-machines, and competing populations,--I see her not
-dispirited, not weak, but well remembering that she has
-seen dark days before; indeed, with a kind of instinct
-that she sees a little better in a cloudy day, and that
-in storm of battle and calamity, she has a secret vigor
-and a pulse like a cannon. I see her in her old age,
-not decrepit, but young, and still daring to believe in
-her power of endurance and expansion. Seeing this, I
-say, All hail! mother of nations, mother of heroes, with
-strength still equal to the time; still wise to entertain
-and swift to execute the policy which the mind and heart
-of mankind require in the present hour, and thus only
-hospitable to the foreigner, and truly a home to the
-thoughtful and generous who are born in the soil. So
-be it! so let it be! If it be not so, if the courage of
-England goes with the chances of a commercial crisis,
-I will go back to the capes of Massachusetts, and my
-own Indian stream, and say to my countrymen, the old
-race are all gone, and the elasticity and hope of
-mankind must henceforth remain on the Alleghauy ranges,
-or nowhere.
-
-.. vspace:: 4
-
-.. class:: center small
-
- THE END.
-
-.. vspace:: 4
-
-.. class:: center small
-
- Cambridge: Electrotyped and Printed by Welch, Bigelow, & Co.
-
-.. vspace:: 4
-
-.. footnotes::
- :class: smaller
-
-.. vspace:: 6
-
-.. pgfooter::
diff --git a/39862.txt b/39862.txt deleted file mode 100644 index eda0b75..0000000 --- a/39862.txt +++ /dev/null @@ -1,6573 +0,0 @@ - ENGLISH TRAITS - - - - -This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost -no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it -under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this -eBook or online at http://www.gutenberg.org/license. - - -Title: English Traits - -Author: Ralph Waldo Emerson - -Release Date: May 30, 2012 [EBook #39862] - -Language: English - -Character set encoding: US-ASCII - - -*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ENGLISH TRAITS *** - - - - -Produced by Al Haines. - - - - - - ENGLISH TRAITS. - - - - BY - - - RALPH WALDO EMERSON. - - - - - NEW AND REVISED EDITION. - - - - BOSTON: - JAMES R. OSGOOD AND COMPANY, - Late Ticknor & Fields, and Fields, Osgood, & Co. - 1876. - - - - - COPYRIGHT, 1856 AND 1876, - BY RALPH WALDO EMERSON. - - - - UNIVERSITY PRESS: WELCH, BIGELOW, & Co., CAMBRIDGE. - - - - ---- - - - - -CONTENTS - - - CHAPTER I.--FIRST VISIT TO ENGLAND. - CHAPTER II.--VOYAGE TO ENGLAND. - CHAPTER III.--LAND. - CHAPTER IV.--RACE. - CHAPTER V.--ABILITY. - CHAPTER VI.--MANNERS. - CHAPTER VII.--TRUTH. - CHAPTER VIII.--CHARACTER. - CHAPTER IX.--COCKAYNE. - CHAPTER X.--WEALTH. - CHAPTER XI.--ARISTOCRACY. - CHAPTER XII.--UNIVERSITIES. - CHAPTER XIII.--RELIGION. - CHAPTER XIV.--LITERATURE. - CHAPTER XV.--THE "TIMES." - CHAPTER XVI.--STONEHENGE. - CHAPTER XVII.--PERSONAL. - CHAPTER XVIII.--RESULT. - - ---- - - - - - ENGLISH TRAITS. - - - - -CHAPTER I.--FIRST VISIT TO ENGLAND. - - -I have been twice in England. In 1833, on my return from a short tour -in Sicily, Italy, and France, I crossed from Boulogne, and landed in -London at the Tower stairs. It was a dark Sunday morning; there were -few people in the streets; and I remember the pleasure of that first -walk on English ground, with my companion, an American artist, from the -Tower up through Cheapside and the Strand, to a house in Russell Square, -whither we had been recommended to good chambers. For the first time -for many months we were forced to check the saucy habit of travellers' -criticism, as we could no longer speak aloud in the streets without -being understood. The shop-signs spoke our language; our country names -were on the door-plates; and the public and private buildings wore a -more native and wonted front. - -Like most young men at that time, I was much indebted to the men of -Edinburgh, and of the Edinburgh Review,--to Jeffrey, Mackintosh, Hallam, -and to Scott, Playfair, and De Quincey; and my narrow and desultory -reading had inspired the wish to see the faces of three or four -writers,--Coleridge, Wordsworth, Landor, De Quincey, and the latest and -strongest contributor to the critical journals, Carlyle; and I suppose -if I had sifted the reasons that led me to Europe, when I was ill and -was advised to travel, it was mainly the attraction of these persons. -If Goethe had been still living, I might have wandered into Germany -also. Besides those I have named (for Scott was dead), there was not in -Britain the man living whom I cared to behold, unless it were the Duke -of Wellington, whom I afterwards saw at Westminster Abbey, at the -funeral of Wilberforce. The young scholar fancies it happiness enough -to live with people who can give an inside to the world; without -reflecting that they are prisoners, too, of their own thought, and -cannot apply themselves to yours. The conditions of literary success -are almost destructive of the best social power, as they do not leave -that frolic liberty which only can encounter a companion on the best -terms. It is probable you left some obscure comrade at a tavern, or in -the farms, with right mother-wit, and equality to life, when you crossed -sea and land to play bo-peep with celebrated scribes. I have, however, -found writers superior to their books, and I cling to my first belief, -that a strong head will dispose fast enough of these impediments, and -give one the satisfaction of reality, the sense of having been met, and -a larger horizon. - -On looking over the diary of my journey in 1833, I find nothing to -publish in my memoranda of visits to places. But I have copied the few -notes I made of visits to persons, as they respect parties quite too -good and too transparent to the whole world to make it needful to affect -any prudery of suppression about a few hints of those bright -personalities. - -At Florence, chief among artists, I found Horatio Greenough, the -American sculptor. His face was so handsome, and his person so well -formed, that he might be pardoned, if, as was alleged, the face of his -Medora, and the figure of a colossal Achilles in clay, were -idealizations of his own. Greenough was a superior man, ardent and -eloquent, and all his opinions had elevation and magnanimity. He -believed that the Greeks had wrought in schools or fraternities,--the -genius of the master imparting his design to his friends, and inflaming -them with it, and when his strength was spent, a new hand, with equal -heat, continued the work; and so by relays, until it was finished in -every part with equal fire. This was necessary in so refractory a -material as stone; and he thought art would never prosper until we left -our shy jealous ways, and worked in society as they. All his thoughts -breathed the same generosity. He was an accurate and a deep man. He -was a votary of the Greeks, and impatient of Gothic art. His paper on -Architecture, published in 1843, announced in advance the leading -thoughts of Mr. Ruskin on the _morality_ in architecture, -notwithstanding the antagonism in their views of the history of art. I -have a private letter from him,--later, but respecting the same -period,--in which he roughly sketches his own theory. "Here is my -theory of structure: A scientific arrangement of spaces and forms to -functions and to site; an emphasis of features proportioned to their -_gradated_ importance in function; color and ornament to be decided and -arranged and varied by strictly organic laws, having a distinct reason -for each decision; the entire and immediate banishment of all makeshift -and make-believe." - -Greenough brought me, through a common friend, an invitation from Mr. -Landor, who lived at San Domenica di Fiesole. On the 15th May I dined -with Mr. Landor. I found him noble and courteous, living in a cloud of -pictures at his Villa Gherardesca, a fine house commanding a beautiful -landscape. I had inferred from his books, or magnified from some -anecdotes, an impression of Achillean wrath,--an untamable petulance. I -do not know whether the imputation were just or not, but certainly on -this May day his courtesy veiled that haughty mind, and he was the most -patient and gentle of hosts. He praised the beautiful cyclamen which -grows all about Florence; he admired Washington; talked of Wordsworth, -Byron, Massinger, Beaumont and Fletcher. To be sure, he is decided in -his opinions, likes to surprise, and is well content to impress, if -possible, his English whim upon the immutable past. No great man ever -had a great son, if Philip and Alexander be not an exception; and Philip -he calls the greater man. In art, he loves the Greeks, and in -sculpture, them only. He prefers the Venus to everything else, and, -after that, the head of Alexander, in the gallery here. He prefers John -of Bologna to Michel Angelo; in painting, Raffaelle; and shares the -growing taste for Perugino and the early masters. The Greek histories -he thought the only good; and after them, Voltaire's. I could not make -him praise Mackintosh, nor my more recent friends; Montaigne very -cordially,--and Charron also, which seemed undiscriminating. He thought -Degerando indebted to "Lucas on Happiness" and "Lucas on Holiness"! He -pestered me with Southey; but who is Southey? - -He invited me to breakfast on Friday. On Friday I did not fail to go, -and this time with Greenough. He entertained us at once with reciting -half a dozen hexameter lines of Julius Caesar's!--from Donatus, he said. -He glorified Lord Chesterfield more than was necessary, and undervalued -Burke, and undervalued Socrates; designated as three of the greatest of -men, Washington, Phocion, and Timoleon; much as our pomologists, in -their lists, select the three or the six best pears "for a small -orchard"; and did not even omit to remark the similar termination of -their names. "A great man," he said, "should make great sacrifices, and -kill his hundred oxen, without knowing whether they would be consumed by -gods and heroes, or whether the flies would eat them." I had visited -Professor Amici, who had shown me his microscopes, magnifying (it was -said) two thousand diameters; and I spoke of the uses to which they were -applied. Landor despised entomology, yet, in the same breath, said, "the -sublime was in a grain of dust." I suppose I teased him about recent -writers, but he professed never to have heard of Herschel, _not even by -name_. One room was full of pictures, which he likes to show, -especially one piece, standing before which, he said "he would give -fifty guineas to the man that would swear it was a Pomenichino." I was -more curious to see his library, but Mr. H----, one of the guests, told -me that Mr. Landor gives away his books, and has never more than a dozen -at a time in his house. - -Mr. Landor carries to its height the love of freak which the English -delight to indulge, as if to signalize their commanding freedom. He has -a wonderful brain, despotic, violent, and inexhaustible, meant for a -soldier, by what chance converted to letters, in which there is not a -style nor a tint not known to him, yet with an English appetite for -action and heroes. The thing done avails, and not what is said about -it. An original sentence, a step forward, is worth more than all the -censures. Landor is strangely undervalued in England; usually ignored; -and sometimes savagely attacked in the Reviews. The criticism may be -right or wrong, and is quickly forgotten; but year after year the -scholar must still go back to Landor for a multitude of elegant -sentences,--for wisdom, wit, and indignation that are unforgetable. - - -From London, on the 5th August, I went to Highgate, and wrote a note to -Mr. Coleridge, requesting leave to pay my respects to him. It was near -noon. Mr. Coleridge sent a verbal message, that he was in bed, but if I -would call after one o'clock, he would see me. I returned at one, and -he appeared, a short, thick old man, with bright blue eyes and fine -clear complexion, leaning on his cane. He took snuff freely, which -presently soiled his cravat and neat black suit. He asked whether I -knew Allston, and spoke warmly of his merits and doings when he knew him -in Rome; what a master of the Titianesque he was, etc., etc. He spoke -of Dr. Channing. It was an unspeakable misfortune that he should have -turned out a Unitarian after all. On this, he burst into a declamation -on the folly and ignorance of Unitarianism,--its high unreasonableness; -and taking up Bishop Waterland's book, which lay on the table, he read -with vehemence two or three pages written by himself in the -fly-leaves,--passages, too, which, I believe, are printed in the "Aids -to Reflection." When he stopped to take breath, I interposed, that, -"whilst I highly valued all his explanations, I was bound to tell him -that I was born and bred a Unitarian." "Yes," he said, "I supposed so"; -and continued as before. "It was a wonder, that after so many ages of -unquestioning acquiescence in the doctrine of St. Paul,--the doctrine of -the Trinity, which was also, according to Philo Judaeus, the doctrine of -the Jews before Christ,--this handful of Priestleians should take on -themselves to deny it, etc., etc. He was very sorry that Dr. -Channing,--a man to whom he looked up,--no, to say that he looked _up_ -to him would be to speak falsely; but a man whom he looked _at_ with so -much interest,--should embrace such views. When he saw Dr. Channing, he -had hinted to him that he was afraid he loved Christianity for what was -lovely and excellent,--he loved the good in it, and not the true; and I -tell you, sir, that I have known ten persons who loved the good, for one -person who loved the true; but it is a far greater virtue to love the -true for itself alone, than to love the good for itself alone. He -(Coleridge) knew all about Unitarianism perfectly well, because he had -once been a Unitarian, and knew what quackery it was. He had been -called "the rising star of Unitarianism."' He went on defining, or -rather refining: 'The Trinitarian doctrine was realism; the idea of God -was not essential, but super-essential'; talked of _trinism_ and -_tetrakism_, and much more, of which I only caught this: 'that the will -was that by which a person is a person; because, if one should push me -in the street, and so I should force the man next me into the kennel, I -should at once exclaim, "I did not do it, sir," meaning it was not my -will.' And this also: 'that if you should insist on your faith here in -England, and I on mine, mine would be the hotter side of the fagot.' - -I took advantage of a pause to say, that he had many readers of all -religious opinions in America, and I proceeded to inquire if the -"extract" from the Independent's pamphlet, in the third volume of the -Friend, were a veritable quotation. He replied that it was really taken -from a pamphlet in his possession, entitled "A Protest of one of the -Independents," or something to that effect. I told him how excellent I -thought it, and how much I wished to see the entire work. "Yes," he -said, "the man was a chaos of truths, but lacked the knowledge that God -was a god of order. Yet the passage would no doubt strike you more in -the quotation than in the original, for I have filtered it." - -When I rose to go, he said, "I do not know whether you care about -poetry, but I will repeat some verses I lately made on my baptismal -anniversary"; and he recited with strong emphasis, standing, ten or -twelve lines, beginning,-- - - Born unto God in Christ-- - - -He inquired where I had been travelling; and on learning that I had been -in Malta and Sicily, he compared one island with the other, 'repeating -what he had said to the Bishop of London when he returned from that -country, that Sicily was an excellent school of political economy; for, -in any town there, it only needed to ask what the government enacted, -and reverse _that_ to know what ought to be done; it was the most -felicitously opposite legislation to anything good and wise. There were -only three things which the government had brought into that garden of -delights, namely, itch, pox, and famine; whereas, in Malta, the force of -law and mind was seen, in making that barren rock of semi-Saracen -inhabitants the seat of population and plenty.' Going out, he showed me -in the next apartment a picture of Allston's, and told me 'that -Montague, a picture-dealer, once came to see him, and, glancing towards -this, said, "Well, you have got a picture!" thinking it the work of an -old master; afterwards, Montague, still talking with his back to the -canvas, put up his hand and touched it, and exclaimed, "By Heaven! this -picture is not ten years old":--so delicate and skilful was that man's -touch.' - -I was in his company for about an hour, but find it impossible to recall -the largest part of his discourse, which was often like so many printed -paragraphs in his book,--perhaps the same,--so readily did he fall into -certain commonplaces. As I might have foreseen, the visit was rather a -spectacle than a conversation, of no use beyond the satisfaction of my -curiosity. He was old and preoccupied, and could not bend to a new -companion and think with him. - -From Edinburgh I went to the Highlands. On my return, I came from -Glasgow to Dumfries, and being intent on delivering a letter which I had -brought from Rome, inquired for Cragenputtock. It was a farm in -Nithsdale, in the parish of Dunscore, sixteen miles distant. No public -coach passed near it, so I took a private carriage from the inn. I -found the house amid desolate heathery hills, where the lonely scholar -nourished his mighty heart. Carlyle was a man from his youth, an author -who did not need to hide from his readers, and as absolute a man of the -world, unknown and exiled on that hill-farm, as if holding on his own -terms what is best in London. He was tall and gaunt, with a cliff-like -brow, self-possessed, and holding his extraordinary powers of -conversation in easy command; clinging to his northern accent with -evident relish; full of lively anecdote, and with a streaming humor, -which floated everything he looked upon. His talk playfully exalting -the familiar objects, put the companion at once into an acquaintance -with his Lars and Lemurs, and it was very pleasant to learn what was -predestined to be a pretty mythology. Few were the objects and lonely -the man, "not a person to speak to within sixteen miles except the -minister of Dunscore"; so that books inevitably made his topics. - -He had names of his own for all the matters familiar to his discourse. -"Blackwood's" was the "sand magazine"; "Fraser's" nearer approach to -possibility of life was the "mud magazine"; a piece of road near by that -marked some failed enterprise was the "grave of the last sixpence." -When too much praise of any genius annoyed him, he professed hugely to -admire the talent shown by his pig. He had spent much time and -contrivance in confining the poor beast to one enclosure in his pen, but -pig, by great strokes of judgment, had found out how to let a board -down, and had foiled him. For all that, he still thought man the most -plastic little fellow in the planet, and he liked Nero's death, "_Qualis -artifex pereo!_" better than most history. He worships a man that will -manifest any truth to him. At one time he had inquired and read a good -deal about America. Landor's principle was mere rebellion, and _that_ -he feared was the American principle. The best thing he knew of that -country was, that in it a man can have meat for his labor. He had read -in Stewart's book, that when he inquired in a New York hotel for the -Boots, he had been shown across the street and had found Mungo in his -own house dining on roast turkey. - -We talked of books. Plato he does not read, and he disparaged Socrates; -and, when pressed, persisted in making Mirabeau a hero. Gibbon he -called the splendid bridge from the old world to the new. His own -reading had been multifarious. Tristram Shandy was one of his first -books after Robinson Crusoe, and Robertson's America an early favorite. -Rousseau's Confessions had discovered to him that he was not a dunce; -and it was now ten years since he had learned German, by the advice of a -man who told him he would find in that language what he wanted. - -He took despairing or satirical views of literature at this moment; -recounted the incredible sums paid in one year by the great booksellers -for puffing. Hence it comes that no newspaper is trusted now, no books -are bought, and the booksellers are on the eve of bankruptcy. - -He still returned to English pauperism, the crowded country, the selfish -abdication by public men of all that public persons should perform. -'Government should direct poor men what to do. Poor Irish folk come -wandering over these moors. My dame makes it a rule to give to every -son of Adam bread to eat, and supplies his wants to the next house. But -here are thousands of acres which might give them all meat, and nobody -to bid these poor Irish go to the moor and till it. They burned the -stacks, and so found a way to force the rich people to attend to them.' - -We went out to walk over long hills, and looked at Criffel, then without -his cap, and down into Wordsworth's country. There we sat down, and -talked of the immortality of the soul. It was not Carlyle's fault that -we talked on that topic, for he had the natural disinclination of every -nimble spirit to bruise itself against walls, and did not like to place -himself where no step can be taken. But he was honest and true, and -cognizant of the subtile links that bind ages together, and saw how -every event affects all the future. 'Christ died on the tree: that -built Dunscore kirk yonder: that brought you and me together. Time has -only a relative existence.' - -He was already turning his eyes towards London with a scholar's -appreciation. London is the heart of the world, he said, wonderful only -from the mass of human beings. He liked the huge machine. Each keeps -its own round. The baker's boy brings muffins to the window at a fixed -hour every day, and that is all the Londoner knows or wishes to know on -the subject. But it turned out good men. He named certain individuals, -especially one man of letters, his friend, the best mind he knew, whom -London had well served. - - -On the 23th August, I went to Rydal Mount, to pay my respects to Mr. -Wordsworth. His daughters called in their father, a plain, elderly, -white-haired man, not prepossessing, and disfigured by green goggles. -He sat down, and talked with great simplicity. He had just returned -from a journey. His health was good, but he had broken a tooth by a -fall, when walking with two lawyers, and had said, that he was glad it -did not happen forty years ago; whereupon they had praised his -philosophy. - -He had much to say of America, the more that it gave occasion for his -favorite topic,--that society is being enlightened by a superficial -tuition, out of all proportion to its being restrained by moral culture. -Schools do no good. Tuition is not education. He thinks more of the -education of circumstances than of tuition. 'T is not a question -whether there are offences of which the law takes cognizance, but -whether there are offences of which the law does not take cognizance. -Sin is what he fears, and how society is to escape without gravest -mischiefs from this source--? He has even said, what seemed a paradox, -that they needed a civil war in America, to teach the necessity of -knitting the social ties stronger. 'There may be,' he said, 'in America -some vulgarity in manner, but that 's not important. That comes of the -pioneer state of things. But I fear they are too much given to the -making of money; and secondly, to politics; that they make political -distinction the end, and not the means. And I fear they lack a class of -men of leisure,--in short, of gentlemen,--to give a tone of honor to the -community. I am told that things are boasted of in the second class of -society there, which, in England,--God knows, are done in England every -day,--but would never be spoken of. In America I wish to know not how -many churches or schools, but what newspapers? My friend, Colonel -Hamilton, at the foot of the hill, who was a year in America, assures me -that the newspapers are atrocious, and accuse members of Congress of -stealing spoons!' He was against taking off the tax on newspapers in -England, which the reformers represent as a tax upon knowledge, for this -reason, that they would be inundated with base prints. He said, he -talked on political aspects, for he wished to impress on me and all good -Americans to cultivate the moral, the conservative, etc., etc., and -never to call into action the physical strength of the people, as had -just now been done in England in the Reform Bill,--a thing prophesied by -Delolme. He alluded once or twice to his conversation with Dr. -Channing, who had recently visited him (laying his hand on a particular -chair in which the Doctor had sat). - -The conversation turned on books. Lucretius he esteems a far higher -poet than Virgil: not in his system, which is nothing, but in his power -of illustration. Faith is necessary to explain anything, and to -reconcile the foreknowledge of God with human evil. Of Cousin (whose -lectures we had all been reading in Boston) he knew only the name. - -I inquired if he had read Carlyle's critical articles and translations. -He said he thought him sometimes insane. He proceeded to abuse Goethe's -Wilhelm Meister heartily. It was full of all manner of fornication. It -was like the crossing of flies in the air. He had never gone further -than the first part; so disgusted was he that he threw the book across -the room. I deprecated this wrath, and said what I could for the better -parts of the book; and he courteously promised to look at it again. -Carlyle, he said, wrote most obscurely. He was clever and deep, but he -defied the sympathies of everybody. Even Mr. Coleridge wrote more -clearly, though he had always wished Coleridge would write more to be -understood. He led me out into his garden, and showed me the -gravel-walk in which thousands of his lines were composed. His eyes are -much inflamed. This is no loss, except for reading, because he never -writes prose, and of poetry he carries even hundreds of lines in his -head before writing them. He had just returned from a visit to Staffa, -and within three days had made three sonnets on Fingal's Cave, and was -composing a fourth, when he was called in to see me. He said, "If you -are interested in my verses, perhaps you will like to hear these lines." -I gladly assented; and he recollected himself for a few moments, and -then stood forth and repeated, one after the other, the three entire -sonnets with great animation. I fancied the second and third more -beautiful than his poems are wont to be. The third is addressed to the -flowers, which, he said, especially the ox-eye daisy, are very abundant -on the top of the rock. The second alludes to the name of the cave, -which is "Cave of Music"; the first to the circumstance of its being -visited by the promiscuous company of the steamboat. - -This recitation was so unlooked for and surprising,--he, the old -Wordsworth, standing apart, and reciting to me in a garden-walk, like a -school-boy declaiming,--that I at first was near to laugh; but -recollecting myself, that I had come thus far to see a poet, and he was -chanting poems to me, I saw that he was right and I was wrong, and -gladly gave myself up to hear. I told him how much the few printed -extracts had quickened the desire to possess his unpublished poems. He -replied, he never was in haste to publish; partly, because he corrected -a good deal, and every alteration is ungraciously received after -printing; but what he had written would be printed, whether he lived or -died. I said, "Tintern Abbey" appeared to be the favorite poem with the -public, but more contemplative readers preferred the first books of the -"Excursion," and the Sonnets. He said, "Yes, they are better." He -preferred such of his poems as touched the affections, to any others; -for whatever is didactic--what theories of society, and so on--might -perish quickly; but whatever combined a truth with an affection was -[Greek: _chtema es aei_], good to-day and good forever. He cited the -sonnet "On the feelings of a high-minded Spaniard," which he preferred -to any other (I so understood him), and the "Two Voices"; and quoted, -with evident pleasure, the verses addressed "To the Skylark." In this -connection, he said of the Newtonian theory, that it might yet be -superseded and forgotten; and Dalton's atomic theory. - -When I prepared to depart, he said he wished to show me what a common -person in England could do, and he led me into the enclosure of his -clerk, a young man, to whom he had given this slip of ground, which was -laid out, or its natural capabilities shown, with much taste. He then -said he would show me a better way towards the inn; and he walked a good -part of a mile, talking, and ever and anon stopping short to impress the -word or the verse, and finally parted from me with great kindness, and -returned across the fields. - -Wordsworth honored himself by his simple adherence to truth, and was -very willing not to shine; but he surprised by the hard limits of his -thought. To judge from a single conversation, he made the impression of -a narrow and very English mind; of one who paid for his rare elevation -by general tameness and conformity. Off his own beat, his opinions were -of no value. It is not very rare to find persons loving sympathy and -ease, who expiate their departure from the common in one direction, by -their conformity in every other. - - - - -CHAPTER II.--VOYAGE TO ENGLAND. - - -The occasion of my second visit to England was an invitation from some -Mechanics' Institutes in Lancashire and Yorkshire, which separately are -organized much in the same way as our New England Lyceums, but, in 1847, -had been linked into a "Union," which embraced twenty or thirty towns -and cities, and presently extended into the middle counties, and -northward into Scotland. I was invited, on liberal terms, to read a -series of lectures in them all. The request was urged with every kind -suggestion, and every assurance of aid and comfort, by friendliest -parties in Manchester, who, in the sequel, amply redeemed their word. -The remuneration was equivalent to the fees at that time paid in this -country for the like services. At all events, it was sufficient to -cover any travelling expenses, and the proposal offered an excellent -opportunity of seeing the interior of England and Scotland, by means of -a home, and a committee of intelligent friends, awaiting me in every -town. - -I did not go very willingly. I am not a good traveller, nor have I -found that long journeys yield a fair share of reasonable hours. But -the invitation was repeated and pressed at a moment of more leisure, and -when I was a little spent by some unusual studies. I wanted a change -and a tonic, and England was proposed to me. Besides, there were, at -least, the dread attraction and salutary influences of the sea. So I -took my berth in the packet-ship Washington Irving, and sailed from -Boston on Tuesday, 5th October, 1847. - -On Friday, at noon, we had only made one hundred and thirty-four miles. -A nimble Indian would have swum as far; but the captain affirmed that -the ship would show us in time all her paces, and we crept along through -the floating drift of boards, logs, and chips, which the rivers of Maine -and New Brunswick pour into the sea after a freshet. - -At last, on Sunday night, after doing one day's work in four, the storm -came, the winds blew, and we flew before a northwester, which strained -every rope and sail. The good ship darts through the water all day, all -night, like a fish, quivering with speed, gliding through liquid -leagues, sliding from horizon to horizon. She has passed Cape Sable; -she has reached the Banks; the land-birds are left; gulls, haglets, -ducks, petrels, swim, dive, and hover around; no fishermen; she has -passed the Banks; left five sail behind her, far on the edge of the west -at sundown, which were far east of us at morn,--though they say at sea a -stern chase is a long race,--and still we fly for our lives. The -shortest sea-line from Boston to Liverpool is 2,850 miles. This a -steamer keeps, and saves 150 miles. A sailing ship can never go in a -shorter line than 3,000, and usually it is much longer. Our good master -keeps his kites up to the last moment, studding-sails alow and aloft, -and, by incessant straight steering, never loses a rod of way. -Watchfulness is the law of the ship,--watch on watch, for advantage and -for life. Since the ship was built, it seems, the master never slept but -in his day-clothes whilst on board. "There are many advantages," says -Saadi, "in sea-voyaging, but security is not one of them." Yet in -hurrying over these abysses, whatever dangers we are running into, we -are certainly running out of the risks of hundreds of miles every day, -which have their own chances of squall, collision, sea-stroke, piracy, -cold, and thunder. Hour for hour, the risk on a steamboat is greater; -but the speed is safety, or twelve days of danger, instead of -twenty-four. - -Our ship was registered 750 tons, and weighed perhaps, with all her -freight, 1,500 tons. The mainmast, from the deck to the top-button, -measured 115 feet; the length of the deck, from stem to stern, 155. It -is impossible not to personify a ship; everybody does in everything they -say:--she behaves well; she minds her rudder; she swims like a duck; she -runs her nose into the water; she looks into a port. Then that -wonderful _esprit du corps_, by which we adopt into our self-love -everything we touch, makes us all champions of her sailing-qualities. - -The conscious ship hears all the praise. In one week she has made 1,467 -miles, and now, at night, seems to hear the steamer behind her, which -left Boston to-day at two, has mended her speed, and is flying before -the gray south-wind eleven and a half knots the hour. The sea-fire -shines in her wake, and far around wherever a wave breaks. I read the -hour, 9h. 45', on my watch by this light. Near the equator, you can -read small print by it; and the mate describes the phosphoric insects, -when taken up in a pail, as shaped like a Carolina potato. - -I find the sea-life an acquired taste, like that for tomatoes and -olives. The confinement, cold, motion, noise, and odor are not to be -dispensed with. The floor of your room is sloped at an angle of twenty -or thirty degrees, and I waked every morning with the belief that some -one was tipping up my berth. Nobody likes to be treated ignominiously, -upset, shoved against the side of the house, rolled over, suffocated -with bilge, mephitis, and stewing oil. We get used to these annoyances -at last, but the dread of the sea remains longer. The sea is masculine, -the type of active strength. Look, what eggshells are drifting all over -it, each one, like ours, filled with men in ecstasies of terror, -alternating with cockney conceit, as the sea is rough or smooth. Is -this sad-colored circle an eternal cemetery? In our graveyards we scoop -a pit, but this aggressive water opens mile-wide pits and chasms, and -makes a mouthful of a fleet. To the geologist, the sea is the only -firmament; the land is in perpetual flux and change, now blown up like a -tumor, now sunk in a chasm, and the registered observations of a few -hundred years find it in a perpetual tilt, rising and falling. The sea -keeps its old level; and 't is no wonder that the history of our race is -so recent, if the roar of the ocean is silencing our traditions. A -rising of the sea, such as has been observed, say an inch in a century, -from east to west on the land, will bury all the towns, monuments, -bones, and knowledge of mankind, steadily and insensibly. If it is -capable of these great and secular mischiefs, it is quite as ready at -private and local damage; and of this no landsman seems so fearful as -the seaman. Such discomfort and such danger as the narratives of the -captain and mate disclose are bad enough as the costly fee we pay for -entrance to Europe; but the wonder is always new that any sane man can -be a sailor. And here, on the second day of our voyage, stepped out a -little boy in his shirt-sleeves, who had hid himself, whilst the ship -was in port, in the bread-closet, having no money, and wishing to go to -England. The sailors have dressed him in Guernsey frock, with a knife -in his belt, and he is climbing nimbly about after them, "likes the work -first-rate, and, if the captain will take him, means now to come back -again in the ship." The mate avers that this is the history of all -sailors; nine out of ten are runaway boys; and adds, that all of them -are sick of the sea, but stay in it out of pride. Jack has a life of -risks, incessant abuse, and the worst pay. It is a little better with -the mate, and not very much better with the captain. A hundred dollars -a month is reckoned high pay. If sailors were contented, if they had not -resolved again and again not to go to sea any more, I should respect -them. - -Of course, the inconveniences and terrors of the sea are not of any -account to those whose minds are preoccupied. The water-laws, arctic -frost, the mountain, the mine, only shatter cockneyism; every noble -activity makes room for itself. A great mind is a good sailor, as a -great heart is. And the sea is not slow in disclosing inestimable -secrets to a good naturalist. - -'Tis a good rule in every journey to provide some piece of liberal study -to rescue the hours which bad weather, bad company, and taverns steal -from the best economist. Classics which at home are drowsily read have -a strange charm in a country inn, or in the transom of a merchant brig. -I remember that some of the happiest and most valuable hours I have owed -to books, passed, many years ago, on shipboard. The worst impediment I -have found at sea is the want of light in the cabin. - -We found on board the usual cabin library; Basil Hall, Dumas, Dickens, -Bulwer, Balzac, and Sand were our sea-gods. Among the passengers, there -was some variety of talent and profession; we exchanged our experiences, -and all learned something. The busiest talk with leisure and -convenience at sea, and sometimes a memorable fact turns up, which you -have long had a vacant niche for, and seize with the joy of a collector. -But, under the best conditions, a voyage is one of the severest tests to -try a man. A college examination is nothing to it. Sea-days are -long,--these lack-lustre, joyless days which whistled over us; but they -were few,--only fifteen, as the captain counted, sixteen according to -me. Reckoned from the time when we left soundings, our speed was such -that the captain drew the line of his course in red ink on his chart, -for the encouragement or envy of future navigators. - -It has been said that the King of England would consult his dignity by -giving audience to foreign ambassadors in the cabin of a man-of-war. -And I think the white path of an Atlantic ship the right avenue to the -palace front of this sea-faring people, who for hundreds of years -claimed the strict sovereignty of the sea, and exacted toll and the -striking sail from the ships of all other peoples. When their privilege -was disputed by the Dutch and other junior marines, on the plea that you -could never anchor on the same wave, or hold property in what was always -flowing, the English did not stick to claim the channel, or bottom of -all the main. "As if," said they, "we contended for the drops of the -sea, and not for its situation, or the bed of those waters. The sea is -bounded by his Majesty's empire." - -As we neared the land, its genius was felt. This was inevitably the -British side. In every man's thought arises now a new system, English -sentiments, English loves and fears, English history and social modes. -Yesterday, every passenger had measured the speed of the ship by -watching the bubbles over the ship's bulwarks. To-day, instead of -bubbles, we measure by Kinsale, Cork, Waterford, and Ardmore. There lay -the green shore of Ireland, like some coast of plenty. We could see -towns, towers, churches, harvests; but the curse of eight hundred years -we could not discern. - - - - -CHAPTER III.--LAND. - - -Alfieri thought Italy and England the only countries worth living in: -the former, because there Nature vindicates her rights, and triumphs -over the evils inflicted by the governments; the latter, because art -conquers nature, and transforms a rude, ungenial land into a paradise of -comfort and plenty. England is a garden. Under an ash-colored sky, the -fields have been combed and rolled till they appear to have been -finished with a pencil instead of a plough. The solidity of the -structures that compose the towns speaks the industry of ages. Nothing -is left as it was made. Rivers, hills, valleys, the sea itself, feel -the hand of a master. The long habitation of a powerful and ingenious -race has turned every rood of land to its best use, has found all the -capabilities, the arable soil, the quarriable rock, the highways, the -byways, the fords, the navigable waters; and the new arts of intercourse -meet you everywhere; so that England is a huge phalanstery, where all -that man wants is provided within the precinct. Cushioned and comforted -in every manner, the traveller rides as on a cannon-ball, high and low, -over rivers and towns, through mountains, in tunnels of three or four -miles, at near twice the speed of our trains; and reads quietly the -_Times_ newspaper, which, by its immense correspondence and reporting, -seems to have machinized the rest of the world for his occasion. - -The problem of the traveller landing at Liverpool is, Why England is -England. What are the elements of that power which the English hold -over other nations? If there be one test of national genius universally -accepted, it is success; and if there be one successful country in the -universe for the last millennium, that country is England. - -A wise traveller will naturally choose to visit the best of actual -nations; and an American has more reasons than another to draw him to -Britain. In all that is done or begun by the Americans towards right -thinking or practice, we are met by a civilization already settled and -overpowering. The culture of the day, the thoughts and aims of men, are -English thoughts and aims. A nation considerable for a thousand years -since Egbert, it has, in the last centuries, obtained the ascendant, and -stamped the knowledge, activity, and power of mankind with its impress. -Those who resist it do not feel it or obey it less. The Russian in his -snows is aiming to be English. The Turk and Chinese also are making -awkward efforts to be English. The practical common-sense of modern -society, the utilitarian direction which labor, laws, opinion, religion, -take, is the natural genius of the British mind. The influence of -France is a constituent of modern civility, but not enough opposed to -the English for the most wholesome effect. The American is only the -continuation of the English genius into new conditions, more or less -propitious. - -See what books fill our libraries. Every book we read, every biography, -play, romance, in whatever form, is still English history and manners. -So that a sensible Englishman once said to me, "As long as you do not -grant us copyright, we shall have the teaching of you." - -But we have the same difficulty in making a social or moral estimate of -England, as the sheriff finds in drawing a jury to try some cause which -has agitated the whole community, and on which everybody finds himself -an interested party. Officers, jurors, judges, have all taken sides. -England has inoculated all nations with her civilization, intelligence, -and tastes; and, to resist the tyranny and prepossession of the British -element, a serious man must aid himself, by comparing with it the -civilizations of the farthest east and west, the old Greek, the -Oriental, and, much more, the ideal standard, if only by means of the -very impatience which English forms are sure to awaken in independent -minds. - -Besides, if we will visit London, the present time is the best time, as -some signs portend that it has reached its highest point. It is -observed that the English interest us a little less within a few years; -and hence the impression that the British power has culminated, is in -solstice, or already declining. - -As soon as you enter England, which, with Wales, is no larger than the -State of Georgia,[1] this little land stretches by an illusion to the -dimensions of an empire. The innumerable details, the crowded succession -of towns, cities, cathedrals, castles, and great and decorated estates, -the number and power of the trades and guilds, the military strength and -splendor, the multitudes of rich and of remarkable people, the servants -and equipages,--all these catching the eye, and never allowing it to -pause, hide all boundaries, by the impression of magnificence and -endless wealth. - - [1] Add South Carolina, and you have more than an equivalent for the - area of Scotland. - -I reply to all the urgencies that refer me to this and that object -indispensably to be seen,--Yes, to see England well needs a hundred -years; for, what they told me was the merit of Sir John Soane's Museum, -in London,--that it was well packed and well saved,--is the merit of -England;--it is stuffed full, in all corners and crevices, with towns, -towers, churches, villas, palaces, hospitals, and charity-houses. In -the history of art, it is a long way from a cromlech to York minster; -yet all the intermediate steps may still be traced in this -all-preserving island. - -The territory has a singular perfection. The climate is warmer by many -degrees than it is entitled to by latitude. Neither hot nor cold, there -is no hour in the whole year when one cannot work. Here is no winter, -but such days as we have in Massachusetts in November, a temperature -which makes no exhausting demand on human strength, but allows the -attainment of the largest stature. Charles the Second said, "It invited -men abroad more days in the year and more hours in the day than another -country." Then England has all the materials of a working country -except wood. The constant rain--a rain with every tide, in some parts -of the island--keeps its multitude of rivers full, and brings -agricultural production up to the highest point. It has plenty of -water, of stone, of potter's clay, of coal, of salt, and of iron. The -land naturally abounds with game, immense heaths and downs are paved -with quails, grouse, and woodcock, and the shores are animated by -water-birds. The rivers and the surrounding sea spawn with fish; there -are salmon for the rich, and sprats and herrings for the poor. In the -northern lochs, the herring are in innumerable shoals; at one season, -the country people say, the lakes contain one part water and two parts -fish. - -The only drawback on this industrial conveniency is the darkness of its -sky. The night and day are too nearly of a color. It strains the eyes -to read and to write. Add the coal-smoke. In the manufacturing towns, -the fine soot or blacks darken the day, give white sheep the color of -black sheep, discolor the human saliva, contaminate the air, poison many -plants, and corrode the monuments and buildings. - -The London fog aggravates the distempers of the sky, and sometimes -justifies the epigram on the climate by an English wit, "in a fine day, -looking up a chimney; in a foul day, looking down one." A gentleman in -Liverpool told me that he found he could do without a fire in his parlor -about one day in the year. It is however pretended, that the enormous -consumption of coal in the island is also felt in modifying the general -climate. - -Factitious climate, factitious position. England resembles a ship in -its shape, and, if it were one, its best admiral could not have worked -it, or anchored it in a more judicious or effective position. Sir John -Herschel said, "London was the centre of the terrene globs." The -shopkeeping nation, to use a shop word, has a _good stand_. The old -Venetians pleased themselves with the flattery, that Venice was in 45 -deg., midway between the poles and the line; as if that were an imperial -centrality. Long of old, the Greeks fancied Delphi the navel of the -earth, in their favorite mode of fabling the earth to be an animal. The -Jews believed Jerusalem to be the centre. I have seen a kratometric -chart designed to show that the city of Philadelphia was in the same -thermic belt, and, by inference, in the same belt of empire, as the -cities of Athens, Rome, and London. It was drawn by a patriotic -Philadelphian, and was examined with pleasure, under his showing, by the -inhabitants of Chestnut Street. But, when carried to Charleston, to New -Orleans, and to Boston, it somehow failed to convince the ingenious -scholars of all those capitals. - -But England is anchored at the side of Europe, and right in the heart of -the modern world. The sea, which, according to Virgil's famous line, -divided the poor Britons utterly from the world, proved to be the ring -of marriage with all nations. It is not down in the books,--it is -written only in the geologic strata,--that fortunate day when a wave of -the German Ocean burst the old isthmus which joined Kent and Cornwall to -France, and gave to this fragment of Europe its impregnable sea-wall, -cutting off an island of eight hundred miles in length, with an -irregular breadth reaching to three hundred miles; a territory large -enough for independence enriched with every seed of national power, so -near, that it can see the harvests of the continent; and so far, that -who would cross the strait must be an expert mariner, ready for -tempests. As America, Europe, and Asia lie, these Britons have -precisely the best commercial position in the whole planet, and are sure -of a market for all the goods they can manufacture. And to make these -advantages avail, the river Thames must dig its spacious outlet to the -sea from the heart of the kingdom, giving road and landing to -innumerable ships, and all the conveniency to trade, that a people so -skilful and sufficient in economizing water-front by docks, warehouses, -and lighters required. When James the First declared his purpose of -punishing London by removing his Court, the Lord Mayor replied, "that, -in removing his royal presence from his lieges, they hoped he would -leave them the Thames." - -In the variety of surface, Britain is a miniature of Europe, having -plain, forest, marsh, river, sea-shore; mines in Cornwall; caves in -Matlock and Derbyshire; delicious landscape in Dovedale, delicious -sea-view at Tor Bay, Highlands in Scotland, Snowdon in Wales; and, in -Westmoreland and Cumberland, a pocket Switzerland, in which the lakes -and mountains are on a sufficient scale to fill the eye and touch the -imagination. It is a nation conveniently small. Fontenelle thought, -that nature had sometimes a little affectation; and there is such an -artificial completeness in this nation of artificers, as if there were a -design from the beginning to elaborate a bigger Birmingham. Nature held -counsel with herself, and said, 'My Romans are gone. To build my new -empire, I will choose a rude race, all masculine, with brutish strength. -I will not grudge a competition of the roughest males. Let buffalo gore -buffalo, and the pasture to the strongest! For I have work that -requires the best will and sinew. Sharp and temperate northern breezes -shall blow, to keep that will alive and alert. The sea shall disjoin -the people from others, and knit them to a fierce nationality. It shall -give them markets on every side. Long time I will keep them on their -feet, by poverty, border-wars, sea-faring, sea-risks, and the stimulus -of gain. An island,--but not so large, the people not so many as to -glut the great markets and depress one another, but proportioned to the -size of Europe and the continents.' - -With its fruits, and wares, and money, must its civil influence radiate. -It is a singular coincidence to this geographic centrality, the -spiritual centrality, which Emanuel Swedenborg ascribes to the people. -"For the English nation, the best of them are in the centre of all -Christians, because they have interior intellectual light. This appears -conspicuously in the spiritual world. This light they derive from the -liberty of speaking and writing, and thereby of thinking." - - - - -CHAPTER IV.--RACE. - - -An ingenious anatomist has written a book[2] to prove that races are -imperishable, but nations are pliant political constructions, easily -changed or destroyed. But this writer did not found his assumed races -on any necessary law, disclosing their ideal or metaphysical necessity; -nor did he, on the other hand, count with precision the existing races, -and settle the true bounds; a point of nicety, and the popular test of -the theory. The individuals at the extremes of divergence in one race -of men are as unlike as the wolf to the lapdog. Yet each variety shades -down imperceptibly into the next, and you cannot draw the line where a -race begins or ends. Hence every writer makes a different count. -Blumenbach reckons five races; Humboldt, three; and Mr. Pickering, who -lately, in our Exploring Expedition, thinks he saw all the kinds of men -that can be on the planet, makes eleven. - - [2] The Races, a Fragment. By Robert Knox. London: 1830. - -The British Empire is reckoned to contain (in 1848) 222,000,000 -souls,--perhaps a fifth of the population of the globe; and to comprise -a territory of 5,000,000 square miles. So far have British people -predominated. Perhaps forty of these millions are of British stock. Add -the United States of America, which reckon (in the same year), exclusive -of slaves, 20,000,000 of people, on a territory of 3,000,000 square -miles, and in which the foreign element, however considerable, is -rapidly assimilated, and you have a population of English descent and -language, of 60,000,000, and governing a population of 245,000,000 -souls. - -The British census proper reckons twenty-seven and a half millions in -the home countries. What makes this census important is the quality of -the units that compose it. They are free forcible men, in a country -where life is safe, and has reached the greatest value. They give the -bias to the current age; and that, not by chance or by mass, but by -their character, and by the number of individuals among them of personal -ability. It has been denied that the English have genius. Be it as it -may, men of vast intellect have been born on their soil, and they have -made or applied the principal inventions. They have sound bodies, and -supreme endurance in war and in labor. The spawning force of the race -has sufficed to the colonization of great parts of the world; yet it -remains to be seen whether they can make good the exodus of millions -from Great Britain, amounting, in 1852, to more than a thousand a day. -They have assimilating force, since they are imitated by their foreign -subjects; and they are still aggressive and propagandist, enlarging the -dominion of their arts and liberty. Their laws are hospitable, and -slavery does not exist under them. What oppression exists is incidental -and temporary; their success is not sudden or fortunate, but they have -maintained constancy and self-equality for many ages. - -Is this power due to their race, or to some other cause? Men hear gladly -of the power of blood or race. Everybody likes to know that his -advantages cannot be attributed to air, soil, sea, or to local wealth, -as mines and quarries, nor to laws and traditions, nor to fortune, but -to superior brain, as it makes the praise more personal to him. - -We anticipate in the doctrine of race something like that law of -physiology, that, whatever bone, muscle, or essential organ is found in -one healthy individual, the same part or organ may be found in or near -the same place in its congener; and we look to find in the son every -mental and moral property that existed in the ancestor. In race, it is -not the broad shoulders, or litheness, or stature that give advantage, -but a symmetry that reaches as far as to the wit. Then the miracle and -renown begin. Then first we care to examine the pedigree, and copy -needfully the training,--what food they ate, what nursing, school, and -exercises they had, which resulted in this mother-wit, delicacy of -thought, and robust wisdom. How came such men as King Alfred, and Roger -Bacon, William of Wykeham, Walter Raleigh, Philip Sidney, Isaac Newton, -William Shakspeare, George Chapman, Francis Bacon, George Herbert, Henry -Vane, to exist here? What made these delicate natures? was it the air? -was it the sea? was it the parentage? For it is certain that these men -are samples of their contemporaries. The hearing ear is always found -close to the speaking tongue; and no genius can long or often utter -anything which is not invited and gladly entertained by men around him. - -It is race, is it not? that puts the hundred millions of India under the -dominion of a remote island in the north of Europe. Race avails much, -if that be true, which is alleged, that all Celts are Catholics, and all -Saxons are Protestants; that Celts love unity of power, and Saxons the -representative principle. Race is a controlling influence in the Jew, -who, for two millenniums, under every climate, has preserved the same -character and employments. Race in the negro is of appalling -importance. The French in Canada, cut off from all intercourse with the -parent people, have held their national traits. I chanced to read -Tacitus "on the Manners of the Germans," not long since, in Missouri, -and the heart of Illinois, and I found abundant points of resemblance -between the Germans of the Hercynian forest, and our _Hoosiers_, -_Suckers_, and _Badgers_ of the American woods. - -But whilst race works immortally to keep its own, it is resisted by -other forces. Civilization is a re-agent, and eats away the old traits. -The Arabs of to-day are the Arabs of Pharaoh; but the Briton of to-day -is a very different person from Cassibelaunus or Ossian. Each religious -sect has its physiognomy. The Methodists have acquired a face; the -Quakers, a face; the nuns, a face. An Englishman will pick out a -dissenter by his manners. Trades and professions carve their own lines -on face and form. Certain circumstances of English life are not less -effective: as, personal liberty; plenty of food; good ale and mutton; -open market, or good wages for every kind of labor; high bribes to -talent and skill; the island life, or the million opportunities and -outlets for expanding and misplaced talent; readiness of combination -among themselves for politics or for business; strikes; and sense of -superiority founded on habit of victory in labor and in war; and the -appetite for superiority grows by feeding. - -It is easy to add to the counteracting forces to race. Credence is a -main element. 'T is said, that the views of nature held by any people -determine all their institutions. Whatever influences add to mental or -moral faculty, take men out of nationality, as out of other conditions, -and make the national life a culpable compromise. - -These limitations of the formidable doctrine of race suggest others -which threaten to undermine it, as not sufficiently based. The fixity -or inconvertibleness of races as we see them, is a weak argument for the -eternity of these frail boundaries, since all our historical period is a -point to the duration in which nature has wrought. Any the least and -solitariest fact in our natural history, such as the melioration of -fruits and of animal stocks, has the worth of a _power_ in the -opportunity of geologic periods. Moreover, though we flatter the -self-love of men and nations by the legend of pure races, all our -experience is of the gradation and resolution of races, and strange -resemblances meet us everywhere. It need not puzzle us that Malay and -Papuan, Celt and Itonian, Saxon and Tartar, should mix, when we see the -rudiments of tiger and baboon in our human form, and know that the -barriers of races are not so firm, but that some spray sprinkles us from -the antediluvian seas. - -The low organizations are simplest; a mere mouth, a jelly, or a straight -worm. As the scale mounts, the organizations become complex. We are -piqued with pure descent, but nature loves inoculation. A child blends -in his face the faces of both parents, and some feature from every -ancestor whose face hangs on the wall. The best nations are those most -widely related; and navigation, as effecting a world-wide mixture, is -the most potent advancer of nations. - -The English composite character betrays a mixed origin. Everything -English is a fusion of distant and antagonistic elements. The language -is mixed; the names of men are of different nations,--three languages, -three or four nations;--the currents of thought are counter: -contemplation and practical skill; active intellect and dead -conservatism; world-wide enterprise, and devoted use and wont; -aggressive freedom and hospitable law, with bitter class legislation; a -people scattered by their wars and affairs over the face of the whole -earth, and homesick to a man; a country of extremes,--dukes and -chartists, Bishops of Durham and naked heathen colliers;--nothing can be -praised in it without damning exceptions, and nothing denounced without -salvos of cordial praise. - -Neither do this people appear to be of one stem; but collectively a -better race than any from which they are derived. Nor is it easy to -trace it home to its original seats. Who can call by right names what -races are in Britain? Who can trace them historically? Who can -discriminate them anatomically, or metaphysically? - -In the impossibility of arriving at satisfaction on the historical -question of race, and--come of whatever disputable ancestry--the -indisputable Englishman before me, himself very well marked, and nowhere -else to be found,--I fancied I could leave quite aside the choice of a -tribe as his lineal progenitors. Defoe said in his wrath, "the -Englishman was the mud of all races." I incline to the belief that, as -water, lime, and sand make mortar, so certain temperaments marry well, -and, by well-managed contrarieties, develop as drastic a character as -the English. On the whole, it is not so much a history of one or of -certain tribes of Saxons, Jutes, or Frisians, coming from one place, and -genetically identical, as it is an anthology of temperaments out of them -all. Certain temperaments suit the sky and soil of England, say eight -or ten or twenty varieties, as, out of a hundred pear-trees, eight or -ten suit the soil of an orchard, and thrive, whilst all the unadapted -temperaments die out. - -The English derive their pedigree from such a range of nationalities, -that there needs sea-room and land-room to unfold the varieties of -talent and character. Perhaps the ocean serves as a galvanic battery to -distribute acids at one pole, and alkalies at the other. So England -tends to accumulate her Liberals in America, and her conservatives at -London. The Scandinavians in her race still hear in every age the -murmurs of their mother, the ocean; the Briton in the blood hugs the -homestead still. - -Again, as if to intensate the influences that are not of race, what we -think of when we talk of English traits really narrows itself to a small -district. It excludes Ireland, and Scotland, and Wales, and reduces -itself at last to London, that is, to those who come and go thither. -The portraits that hang on the walls in the Academy Exhibition at -London, the figures in Punch's drawings of the public men, or of the -club-houses, the prints in the shop-windows, are distinctive English, -and not American, no, nor Scotch, nor Irish: but 't is a very restricted -nationality. As you go north into the manufacturing and agricultural -districts, and to the population that never travels, as you go into -Yorkshire, as you enter Scotland, the world's Englishman is no longer -found. In Scotland, there is a rapid loss of all grandeur of mien and -manners; a provincial eagerness and acuteness appear; the poverty of the -country makes itself remarked, and a coarseness of manners; and, among -the intellectual, is the insanity of dialectics. In Ireland, are the -same climate and soil as in England, but less food, no right relation to -the land, political dependence, small tenantry, and an inferior or -misplaced race. - -These queries concerning ancestry and blood may be well allowed, for -there is no prosperity that seems more to depend on the kind of man than -British prosperity. Only a hardy and wise people could have made this -small territory great. We say, in a regatta or yacht-race, that if the -boats are anywhere nearly matched, it is the man that wins. Put the -best sailing-master into either boat, and he will win. - -Yet it is fine for us to speculate in face of unbroken traditions, -though vague, and losing themselves in fable. The traditions have got -footing, and refuse to be disturbed. The kitchen clock is more -convenient than sidereal time. We must use the popular category, as we -do by the Linnaean classification, for convenience, and not as exact and -final. Otherwise, we are presently confounded, when the best-settled -traits of one race are claimed by some new ethnologist as precisely -characteristic of the rival tribe. - -I found plenty of well-marked English types, the ruddy complexion fair -and plump, robust men, with faces cut like a die, and a strong island -speech and accent; a Norman type, with the complacency that belongs to -that constitution. Others, who might be Americans, for anything that -appeared in their complexion or form: and their speech was much less -marked, and their thought much less bound. We will call them Saxons. -Then the Roman has implanted his dark complexion in the trinity or -quaternity of bloods. - - -1. The sources from which tradition derives their stock are mainly -three. And, first, they are of the oldest blood of the world,--the -Celtic. Some peoples are deciduous or transitory. Where are the -Greeks? where the Etrurians? where the Romans? But the Celts or -Sidonides are an old family, of whose beginning there is no memory, and -their end is likely to be still more remote in the future; for they have -endurance and productiveness. They planted Britain, and gave to the -seas and mountains names which are poems, and imitate the pure voices of -nature. They are favorably remembered in the oldest records of Europe. -They had no violent feudal tenure, but the husbandman owned the land. -They had an alphabet, astronomy, priestly culture, and a sublime creed. -They have a hidden and precarious genius. They made the best popular -literature of the Middle Ages in the songs of Merlin, and the tender and -delicious mythology of Arthur. - -2. The English come mainly from the Germans, whom the Romans found hard -to conquer in two hundred and ten years,--say, impossible to -conquer,--when one remembers the long sequel; a people about whom, in -the old empire, the rumor ran, there was never any that meddled with -them that repented it not. - -3. Charlemagne, halting one day in a town of Narbonnese Gaul, looked out -of a window, and saw a fleet of Northmen cruising in the Mediterranean. -They even entered the port of the town where he was, causing no small -alarm and sudden manning and arming of his galleys. As they put out to -sea again, the emperor gazed long after them, his eyes bathed in tears. -"I am tormented with sorrow," he said, "when I foresee the evils they -will bring on my posterity." There was reason for these Xerxes' tears. -The men who have built a ship and invented the rig,--cordage, sail, -compass, and pump,--the working in and out of port, have acquired much -more than a ship. Now arm them, and every shore is at their mercy. -For, if they have not numerical superiority where they anchor, they have -only to sail a mile or two to find it. Bonaparte's art of war, namely, -of concentrating force on the point of attack, must always be theirs who -have the choice of the battle-ground. Of course they come into the -fight from a higher ground of power than the land-nations; and can -engage them on shore with a victorious advantage in the retreat. As -soon as the shores are sufficiently peopled to make piracy a losing -business, the same skill and courage are ready for the service of trade. - -The _Heimskringla_,[3] or Sagas of the Kings of Norway, collected by -Snorro Sturleson, is the Iliad and Odyssey of English history. Its -portraits, like Homer's, are strongly individualized. The Sagas -describe a monarchical republic like Sparta. The government disappears -before the importance of citizens. In Norway, no Persian masses fight -and perish to aggrandize a king, but the actors are bonders or -landholders, every one of whom is named and personally and -patronymically described, as the king's friend and companion. A sparse -population gives this high worth to every man. Individuals are often -noticed as very handsome persons, which trait only brings the story -nearer to the English race. Then the solid material interest -predominates, so dear to English understanding, wherein the association -is logical, between merit and land. The heroes of the Sagas are not the -knights of South Europe. No vaporing of France and Spain has corrupted -them. They are substantial farmers, whom the rough times have forced to -defend their properties. They have weapons which they use in a -determined manner, by no means for chivalry, but for their acres. They -are people considerably advanced in rural arts, living amphibiously on a -rough coast, and drawing half their food from the sea, and half from the -land. They have herds of cows, and malt, wheat, bacon, butter, and -cheese. They fish in the fiord, and hunt the deer. A king among these -farmers has a varying power, sometimes not exceeding the authority of a -sheriff. A king was maintained much as, in some of our country -districts, a winter-schoolmaster is quartered, a week here, a week -there, and a fortnight on the next farm,--on all the farms in rotation. -This the king calls going into guest-quarters; and it was the only way -in which, in a poor country, a poor king, with many retainers, could be -kept alive, when he leaves his own farm to collect his dues through the -kingdom. - - [3] Heimskringla. Translated by Samuel Laing, Esq. London: 1844. - -These Norsemen are excellent persons in the main, with good sense, -steadiness, wise speech, and prompt action. But they have a singular -turn for homicide; their chief end of man is to murder or to be -murdered; oars, scythes, harpoons, crow-bars, peat-knives, and hay-forks -are tools valued by them all the more for their charming aptitude for -assassinations. A pair of kings, after dinner, will divert themselves -by thrusting each his sword through the other's body, as did Yngve and -Alf. Another pair ride out on a morning for a frolic, and, finding no -weapon near, will take the bits out of their horses' mouths, and crush -each other's heads with them, as did Alric and Eric. The sight of a -tent-cord or a cloak-string puts them on hanging somebody, a wife, or a -husband, or, best of all, a king. If a farmer has so much as a hayfork, -he sticks it into a King Dag. King Ingiald finds it vastly amusing to -burn up half a dozen kings in a hall, after getting them drunk. Never -was poor gentleman so surfeited with life, so furious to be rid of it, -as the Northman. If he cannot pick any other quarrel, he will get -himself comfortably gored by a bull's horns, like Egil, or slain by a -land-slide, like the agricultural King Onund. Odin died in his bed, in -Sweden; but it was a proverb of ill condition, to die the death of old -age. King Hake of Sweden cuts and slashes in battle, as long as he can -stand, then orders his war-ship, loaded with his dead men and their -weapons, to be taken out to sea, the tiller shipped, and the sails -spread; being left alone, he sets fire to some tar-wood, and lies down -contented on deck. The wind blew off the land, the ship flew burning in -clear flame, out between the islets into the ocean, and there was the -right end of King Hake. - -The early Sagas are sanguinary and piratical; the later are of a noble -strain. History rarely yields us better passages than the conversation -between King Sigurd the Crusader, and King Eystein, his brother, on -their respective merits,--one, the soldier, and the other, a lover of -the arts of peace. - -But the reader of the Norman history must steel himself by holding fast -the remote compensations which result from animal vigor. As the old -fossil world shows that the first steps of reducing the chaos were -confided to saurians and other huge and horrible animals, so the -foundations of the new civility were to be laid by the most savage men. - -The Normans came out of France into England worse men than they went -into it, one hundred and sixty years before. They had lost their own -language, and learned the Romance or barbarous Latin of the Gauls; and -had acquired, with the language, all the vices it had names for. The -conquest has obtained, in the chronicles, the name of the "memory of -sorrow." Twenty thousand thieves landed at Hastings. These founders of -the House of Lords were greedy and ferocious dragoons, sons of greedy -and ferocious pirates. They were all alike, they took everything they -could carry, they burned, harried, violated, tortured, and killed, until -everything English was brought to the verge of ruin. Such, however, is -the illusion of antiquity and wealth, that decent and dignified men now -existing boast their descent from these filthy thieves, who showed a far -juster conviction of their own merits, by assuming for their types the -swine, goat, jackal, leopard, wolf, and snake, which they severally -resembled. - -England yielded to the Danes and Northmen in the tenth and eleventh -centuries, and was the receptacle into which all the mettle of that -strenuous population was poured. The continued draught of the best men -in Norway, Sweden, and Denmark, to these piratical expeditions, -exhausted those countries, like a tree which bears much fruit when -young, and these have been second-rate powers ever since. The power of -the race migrated, and left Norway void. King Olaf said: "When King -Harold, my father, went westward to England, the chosen men in Norway -followed him; but Norway was so emptied then, that such men have not -since been to find in the country, nor especially such a leader as King -Harold was for wisdom and bravery." - -It was a tardy recoil of these invasions, when, in 1801, the British -government sent Nelson to bombard the Danish forts in the Sound; and, in -1807, Lord Cathcart, at Copenhagen, took the entire Danish fleet, as it -lay in the basins, and all the equipments from the Arsenal, and carried -them to England. Konghelle, the town where the kings of Norway, Sweden, -and Denmark were wont to meet, is now rented to a private English -gentleman for a hunting-ground. - -It took many generations to trim, and comb, and perfume the first -boat-load of Norse pirates into royal highnesses and most noble Knights -of the Garter: but every sparkle of ornament dates back to the Norse -boat. There will be time enough to mellow this strength into civility -and religion. It is a medical fact, that the children of the blind see; -the children of felons have a healthy conscience. Many a mean, -dastardly boy is, at the age of puberty, transformed into a serious and -generous youth. - -The mildness of the following ages has not quite effaced these traits of -Odin; as the rudiment of a structure matured in the tiger is said to be -still found unabsorbed in the Caucasian man. The nation has a tough, -acrid, animal nature, which centuries of churching and civilizing have -not been able to sweeten. Alfiori said, "the crimes of Italy were the -proof of the superiority of the stock"; and one may say of England, that -this watch moves on a splinter of adamant. The English uncultured are a -brutal nation. The crimes recorded in their calendars leave nothing to -be desired in the way of cold malignity. Dear to the English heart is a -fair stand-up fight. The brutality of the manners in the lower class -appears in the boxing, bear-baiting, cock-fighting, love of executions, -and in the readiness for a set-to in the streets, delightful to the -English of all classes. The costermongers of London streets hold -cowardice in loathing:--"we must work our fists well; we are all handy -with our fists." The public schools are charged with being bear-gardens -of brutal strength, and are liked by the people for that cause. The -fagging is a trait of the same quality. Medwin, in the Life of Shelley, -relates, that, at a military school, they rolled up a young man in a -snowball, and left him so in his room, while the other cadets went to -church;--and crippled him for life. They have retained impressment, -deck-flogging, army-flogging, and school-flogging. Such is the ferocity -of the army discipline, that a soldier sentenced to flogging, sometimes -prays that his sentence may be commuted to death. Flogging, banished -from the armies of Western Europe, remains here by the sanction of the -Duke of Wellington. The right of the husband to sell the wife has been -retained down to our times. The Jews have been the favorite victims of -royal and popular persecution. Henry III. mortgaged all the Jews in the -kingdom to his brother, the Earl of Cornwall, as security for money -which he borrowed. The torture of criminals, and the rack for extorting -evidence, were slowly disused. Of the criminal statutes, Sir Samuel -Romilly said, "I have examined the codes of all nations, and ours is the -worst, and worthy of the Anthropophagi." In the last session (18:18), -the House of Commons was listening to details of flogging and torture -practised in the jails. - -As soon as this land, thus geographically posted, got a hardy people -into it, they could not help becoming the sailors and factors of the -globe. From childhood, they dabbled in water, they swum like fishes, -their playthings were boats. In the case of the ship-money, the judges -delivered it for law, that "England being an island, the very midland -shires therein are all to be accounted maritime": and Fuller adds, "the -genius even of land-locked countries driving the natives with a maritime -dexterity." As early as the conquest, it is remarked in explanation of -the wealth of England, that its merchants trade to all countries. - -The English, at the present day, have great vigor of body and endurance. -Other countrymen look slight and undersized beside them, and invalids. -They are bigger men than the Americans. I suppose a hundred English -taken at random out of the street would weigh a fourth more than so many -Americans. Yet, I am told, the skeleton is not larger. They are round, -ruddy, and handsome; at least, the whole bust is well formed; and there -is a tendency to stout and powerful frames. I remarked the stoutness, -on my first landing at Liverpool; porter, drayman, coachman, -guard,--what substantial, respectable, grandfatherly figures, with -costume and manners to suit. The American has arrived at the old -mansion-house, and finds himself among uncles, aunts, and grandsires. -The pictures on the chimney-tiles of his nursery were pictures of these -people. Here they are in the identical costumes and air, which so took -him. - -It is the fault of their forms that they grow stocky, and the women have -that disadvantage,--few tall, slender figures of flowing shape, but -stunted and thickset persons. The French say, that the Englishwomen -have two left hands. But, in all ages, they are a handsome race. The -bronze monuments of crusaders lying cross-legged, in the Temple Church -at London, and those in Worcester and in Salisbury Cathedrals, which are -seven hundred years old, are of the same type as the best youthful heads -of men now in England;--please by beauty of the same character, an -expression blending good-nature, valor, and refinement, and, mainly, by -that uncorrupt youth in the face of manhood, which is daily seen in the -streets of London. - -Both branches of the Scandinavian race are distinguished for beauty. -The anecdote of the handsome captives which Saint Gregory found at Rome, -A.D. 600, is matched by the testimony of the Norman chroniclers, five -centuries later, who wondered at the beauty and long flowing hair of the -young English captives. Meantime, the Heimskringla has frequent -occasion to speak of the personal beauty of its heroes. When it is -considered what humanity, what resources of mental and moral power, the -traits of the blond race betoken,--its accession to empire marks a new -and finer epoch, wherein the old mineral force shall be subjugated at -last by humanity, and shall plough in its furrow henceforward. It is -not a final race, once a crab always crab, but a race with a future. - -On the English face are combined decision and nerve, with the fair -complexion, blue eyes, and open and florid aspect. Hence the love of -truth, hence the sensibility, the fine perception, and poetic -construction. The fair Saxon man, with open front, and honest meaning, -domestic, affectionate, is not the wood out of which cannibal, or -inquisitor, or assassin is made. But he is moulded for law, lawful -trade, civility, marriage, the nurture of children, for colleges, -churches, charities, and colonies. - -They are rather manly than warlike. When the war is over, the mask -falls from the affectionate and domestic tastes, which make them women -in kindness. This union of qualities is fabled in their national legend -of _Beauty and the Beast_, or long before, in the Greek legend of -_Hermaphrodite_. The two sexes are co-present in the English mind. I -apply to Britannia, queen of seas and colonies, the words in which her -latest novelist portrays his heroine: "She is as mild as she is game, -and as game as she is mild." The English delight in the antagonism -which combines in one person the extremes of courage and tenderness. -Nelson, dying at Trafalgar, sends his love to Lord Collingwood, and, -like an innocent school-boy that goes to bed, says, "Kiss me, Hardy," -and turns to sleep. Lord Collingwood, his comrade, was of a nature the -most affectionate and domestic. Admiral Rodney's figure approached to -delicacy and effeminacy, and he declared himself very sensible to fear, -which he surmounted only by considerations of honor and public duty. -Clarendon says, the Duke of Buckingham was so modest and gentle, that -some courtiers attempted to put affronts on him, until they found that -this modesty and effeminacy was only a mask for the most terrible -determination. And Sir Edward Parry said of Sir John Franklin, that, -"if he found Wellington Sound open, he explored it; for he was a man who -never turned his back on a danger, yet of that tenderness, that he would -not brush away a mosquito." Even for their highwaymen the same virtue -is claimed, and Robin Hood comes described to us as _mitissimus -praedonum_, the gentlest thief. But they know where their war-dogs lie. -Cromwell, Blake, Marlborough, Chatham, Nelson, and Wellington are not to -be trifled with, and the brutal strength which lies at the bottom of -society, the animal ferocity of the quays and cock-pits, the bullies of -the costermongers of Shoreditch, Seven Dials, and Spitalfields, they -know how to wake up. - -They have a vigorous health, and last well into middle and old age. The -old men are as red as roses, and still handsome. A clear skin, a -peach-bloom complexion, and good teeth are found all over the island. -They use a plentiful and nutritious diet. The operative cannot subsist -on water-cresses. Beef, mutton, wheat-bread, and malt-liquors are -universal among the first-class laborers. Good feeding is a chief point -of national pride among the vulgar, and, in their caricatures, they -represent the Frenchman as a poor, starved body. It is curious that -Tacitus found the English beer already in use among the Germans: "They -make from barley or wheat a drink corrupted into some resemblance to -wine." Lord Chief Justice Fortescue in Henry VI.'s time, says, "The -inhabitants of England drink no water, unless at certain times, on a -religious score, and by way of penance." The extremes of poverty and -ascetic penance, it would seem, never reach cold water in England. -Wood, the antiquary, in describing the poverty and maceration of Father -Lacey, an English Jesuit, does not deny him beer. He says, "his bed was -under a thatching, and the way to it up a ladder; his fare was coarse; -his drink, of a penny a gawn, or gallon." - -They have more constitutional energy than any other people. They think, -with Henri Quatre, that manly exercises are the foundation of that -elevation of mind which gives one nature ascendant over another; or, -with the Arabs, that the days spent in the chase are not counted in the -length of life. They box, run, shoot, ride, row, and sail from pole to -pole. They eat and drink, and live jolly in the open air, putting a bar -of solid sleep between day and day. They walk and ride as fast as they -can, their heads bent forward, as if urged on some pressing affair. The -French say, that Englishmen in the street always walk straight before -them like mad dogs. Men and women walk with infatuation. As soon as he -can handle a gun, hunting is the fine art of every Englishman of -condition. They are the most voracious people of prey that ever -existed. Every season turns out the aristocracy into the country, to -shoot and fish. The more vigorous run out of the island to Europe, to -America, to Asia, to Africa, and Australia, to hunt with fury by gun, by -trap, by harpoon, by lasso, with clog, with horse, with elephant, or -with dromedary, all the game that is in nature. These men have written -the game-books of all countries, as Hawker, Scrope, Murray, Herbert, -Maxwell, Gumming, and a host of travellers. The people at home are -addicted to boxing, running, leaping, and rowing matches. - -I suppose, the dogs and horses must be thanked for the fact, that the -men have muscles almost as tough and supple as their own. If in every -efficient man, there is first a fine animal, in the English race it is -of the best breed, a wealthy, juicy, broad-chested creature, steeped in -ale and good cheer, and a little overloaded by his flesh. Men of animal -nature rely, like animals, on their instincts. The Englishman -associates well with dogs and horses. His attachment to the horse -arises from the courage and address required to manage it. The horse -finds out who is afraid of it, and does not disguise its opinion. Their -young boiling clerks and lusty collegians like the company of horses -better than the company of professors. I suppose, the horses are better -company for them. The horse has more uses than Buffon noted. If you go -into the streets, every driver in bus or dray is a bully, and, if I -wanted a good troop of soldiers, I should recruit among the stables. -Add a certain degree of refinement to the vivacity of these riders, and -you obtain the precise quality which makes the men and women of polite -society formidable. - -They come honestly by their horsemanship, with _Hengst_ and _Horsa_ for -their Saxon founders. The other branch of their race had been Tartar -nomads. The horse was all their wealth. The children were fed on -mares' milk. The pastures of Tartary were still remembered by the -tenacious practice of the Norsemen to eat horse-flesh at religious -feasts. In the Danish invasions, the marauders seized upon horses where -they landed, and were at once converted into a body of expert cavalry. - -At one time, this skill seems to have declined. Two centuries ago, the -English horse never performed any eminent service beyond the seas; and -the reason assigned was, that the genius of the English hath always more -inclined them to foot-service, as pure and proper manhood, without any -mixture; whilst, in a victory on horseback, the credit ought to be -divided betwixt the man and his horse. But in two hundred years, a -change has taken place. Now, they boast that they understand horses -better than any other people in the world, and that their horses are -become their second selves. - -"William the Conqueror being," says Camden, "better affected to beasts -than to men, imposed heavy fines and punishments on those that should -meddle with his game." The Saxon Chronicle says, "he loved the tall -deer as if he were their father." And rich Englishmen have followed his -example, according to their ability, ever since, in encroaching on the -tillage and commons with their game-preserves. It is a proverb in -England, that it is safer to shoot a man than a hare. The severity of -the game-laws certainly indicates an extravagant sympathy of the nation -with horses and hunters. The gentlemen are always on horseback, and -have brought horses to an ideal perfection,--the English racer is a -factitious breed. A score or two of mounted gentlemen may frequently be -seen running like centaurs down a hill nearly as steep as the roof of a -house. Every inn-room is lined with pictures of races; telegraphs -communicate, every hour, tidings of the heats from Newmarket and Ascot: -and the House of Commons adjourns over the 'Derby Day.' - - - - -CHAPTER V.--ABILITY. - - -The Saxon and the Northman are both Scandinavians. History does not -allow us to fix the limits of the application of these names with any -accuracy; but from the residence of a portion of these people in France, -and from some effect of that powerful soil on their blood and manners, -the Norman has come popularly to represent in England the aristocratic, -and the Saxon the democratic principle. And though, I doubt not, the -nobles are of both tribes, and the workers of both, yet we are forced to -use the names a little mythically, one to represent the worker, and the -other the enjoyer. - -The island was a prize for the best race. Each of the dominant races -tried its fortune in turn. The Phoenician, the Celt, and the Goth had -already got in. The Roman came, but in the very day when his fortune -culminated. He looked in the eyes of a new people that was to supplant -his own. He disembarked his legions, erected his camps and -towers,--presently he heard bad news from Italy, and worse and worse, -every year: at last, he made a handsome compliment of roads and walls, -and departed. But the Saxon seriously settled in the land, builded, -tilled, fished, and traded, with German truth and adhesiveness. The -Dane came, and divided with him. Last of all, the Norman, or -French-Dane, arrived, and formally conquered, harried, and ruled the -kingdom. A century later, it came out, that the Saxon had the most -bottom and longevity, had managed to make the victor speak the language -and accept the law and usage of the victim; forced the baron to dictate -Saxon terms to Norman kings; and, step by step, got all the essential -securities of civil liberty invented and confirmed. The genius of the -race and the genius of the place conspired to this effect. The island -is lucrative to free labor, but not worth possession on other terms. -The race was so intellectual, that a feudal or military tenure could not -last longer than the war. The power of the Saxon-Danes, so thoroughly -beaten in the war, that the name of English and villein were synonymous, -yet so vivacious as to extort charters from the kings, stood on the -strong personality of these people. Sense and economy must rule in a -world which is made of sense and economy, and the banker, with his seven -per cent, drives the earl out of his castle. A nobility of soldiers -cannot keep down a commonalty of shrewd scientific persons. What -signifies a pedigree of a hundred links, against a cotton-spinner with -steam in his mill; or, against a company of broad-shouldered Liverpool -merchants, for whom Stephenson and Brunel are contriving locomotives and -a tubular bridge? - -These Saxons are the hands of mankind. They have the taste for toil, a -distaste for pleasure or repose, and the telescopic appreciation of -distant gain. They are the wealth-makers,--and by dint of mental -faculty which has its own conditions. The Saxon works after liking, or, -only for himself; and to set him at work, and to begin to draw his -monstrous values out of barren Britain, all dishonor, fret, and barrier -must be removed, and then his energies begin to play. - -The Scandinavian fancied himself surrounded by Trolls,--a kind of goblin -men, with vast power of work and skilful production,--divine stevedores, -carpenters, reapers, smiths, and masons, swift to reward every kindness -done them, with gifts of gold and silver. In all English history, this -dream comes to pass. Certain Trolls or working brains, under the names -of Alfred, Bede, Caxton, Bracton, Camden, Drake, Selden, Dugdale, -Newton, Gibbon, Brindley, Watt, Wedgwood, dwell in the troll-mounts of -Britain, and turn the sweat of their face to power and renown. - -If the race is good, so is the place. Nobody landed on this spell-bound -island with impunity. The enchantments of barren shingle and rough -weather transformed every adventurer into a laborer. Each vagabond that -arrived bent his neck to the yoke of gain, or found the air too tense -for him. The strong survived, the weaker went to the ground. Even the -pleasure-hunters and sots of England are of a tougher texture. A hard -temperament had been formed by Saxon and Saxon-Dane, and such of these -French or Normans as could reach it, were naturalized in every sense. - -All the admirable expedients or means hit upon in England must be looked -at as growths or irresistible offshoots of the expanding mind of the -race. A man of that brain thinks and acts thus; and his neighbor, being -afflicted with the same kind of brain, though he is rich, and called a -baron, or a duke, thinks the same thing, and is ready to allow the -justice of the thought and act in his retainer or tenant, though sorely -against his baronial or ducal will. - -The island was renowned in antiquity for its breed of mastiffs, so -fierce, that when their teeth were set, you must cut their heads off to -part them. The man was like his dog. The people have that nervous -bilious temperament, which is known by medical men to resist every means -employed to make its possessor subservient to the will of others. The -English game is main force to main force, the planting of foot to foot, -fair play and open field,--a rough tug without trick or dodging, till -one or both come to pieces. King Ethelwald spoke the language of his -race, when he planted himself at Wimborne, and said, 'he would do one of -two things, or there live, or there lie.' They hate craft and subtlety. -They neither poison, nor waylay, nor assassinate; and, when they have -pounded each other to a poultice, they will shake hands and be friends -for the remainder of their lives. - -You shall trace these Gothic touches at school, at country fairs, at the -hustings, and in parliament. No artifice, no breach of truth and plain -dealing,--not so much as secret ballot, is suffered in the island. In -parliament, the tactics of the opposition is to resist every step of the -government, by a pitiless attack; and in a bargain, no prospect of -advantage is so dear to the merchant, as the thought of being tricked is -mortifying. - -Sir Kenelm Digby, a courtier of Charles and James, who won the sea-fight -of Scanderoon, was a model Englishman in his day. "His person was -handsome and gigantic, he had so graceful elocution and noble address, -that, had he been dropt out of the clouds in any part of the world, he -would have made himself respected: he was skilled in six tongues, and -master of arts and arms."[4] Sir Kenelm wrote a book, "Of Bodies and of -Souls," in which he propounds, that "syllogisms do breed or rather are -all the variety of man's life. They are the steps by which we walk in -all our businesses. Man, as he is man, doth nothing else but weave such -chains. Whatsoever he doth, swarving from this work, lie doth as -deficient from the nature of man: and, if he do aught beyond this, by -breaking out into divers sorts of exterior actions, he findeth, -nevertheless, in this linked sequel of simple discourses, the art, the -cause, the rule, the bounds, and the model of it."[5] - - [4] Antony Wood. - - [5] Man's Soule, p. 29. - -There spoke the genius of the English people. There is a necessity on -them to be logical. They would hardly greet the good that did not -logically fall,--as if it excluded their own merit, or shook their -understandings. They are jealous of minds that have much facility of -association, from an instinctive fear that the seeing many relations to -their thought might impair this serial continuity and lucrative -concentration. They are impatient of genius, or of minds addicted to -contemplation, and cannot conceal their contempt for sallies of thought, -however lawful, whose steps they cannot count by their wonted rule. -Neither do they reckon better a syllogism that ends in syllogism. For -they have a supreme eye to facts, and theirs is a logic that brings salt -to soup, hammer to nail, oar to boat, the logic of cooks, carpenters, -and chemists, following the sequence of nature, and one on which words -make no impression. Their mind is not dazzled by its own means, but -locked and bolted to results. They love men, who, like Samuel Johnson, -a doctor in the schools, would jump out of his syllogism the instant his -major proposition was in danger, to save that, at all hazards. Their -practical vision is spacious, and they can hold many threads without -entangling them. All the steps they orderly take; but with the high -logic of never confounding the minor and major proposition; keeping -their eye on their aim, in all the complicity and delay incident to the -several series of means they employ. There is room in their minds for -this and that,--a science of degrees. In the courts, the independence -of the judges and the loyalty of the suitors are equally excellent. In -Parliament, they have hit on that capital invention of freedom, a -constitutional opposition. And when courts and Parliament are both -deaf, the plaintiff is not silenced. Calm, patient, his weapon of -defence from year to year is the obstinate reproduction of the -grievance, with calculations and estimates. But, meantime, he is drawing -numbers and money to his opinion, resolved that if all remedy fails, -right of revolution is at the bottom of his charter-box. They are bound -to see their measure carried, and stick to it through ages of defeat. - -Into this English logic, however, an infusion of justice enters, not so -apparent in other races,--a belief in the existence of two sides, and -the resolution to see fair play. There is on every question an appeal -from the assertion of the parties to the proof of what is asserted. -They are impious in their scepticism of a theory, but kiss the dust -before a fact. Is it a machine, is it a charter, is it a boxer in the -ring, is it a candidate on the hustings,--the universe of Englishmen -will suspend their judgment, until the trial can be had. They are not -to be led by a phrase, they want a working plan, a working machine, a -working constitution, and will sit out the trial, and abide by the -issue, and reject all preconceived theories. In politics they put blunt -questions, which must be answered; who is to pay the taxes? what will -you do for trade? what for corn? what for the spinner? - -This singular fairness and its results strike the French with surprise. -Philip de Commines says: "Now, in my opinion, among all the -sovereignties I know in the world, that in which the public good is best -attended to, and the least violence exercised on the people, is that of -England." Life is safe, and personal rights; and what is freedom, -without security? whilst, in France, 'fraternity,' 'equality,' and -'indivisible unity' are names for assassination. Montesquieu said: -"England is the freest country in the world. If a man in England had as -many enemies as hairs on his head, no harm would happen to him." - -Their self-respect, their faith in causation, and their realistic logic -or coupling of means to ends, have given them the leadership of the -modern world. Montesquieu said, "No people have true common-sense but -those who are born in England." This common-sense is a perception of -all the conditions of our earthly existence, of laws that can be stated, -and of laws that cannot be stated, or that are learned only by practice, -in which allowance for friction is made. They are impious in their -scepticism of theory, and in high departments they are cramped and -sterile. But the unconditional surrender to facts, and the choice of -means to reach their ends, are as admirable as with ants and bees. - -The bias of the nation is a passion for utility. They love the lever, -the screw, and pulley, the Flanders draught-horse, the waterfall, -wind-mills, tide-mills; the sea and the wind to bear their -freight-ships. More than the diamond Koh-i-noor, which glitters among -their crown-jewels, they prize that dull pebble which is wiser than a -man, whose poles turn themselves to the poles of the world, and whose -axis is parallel to the axis of the world. Now, their toys are steam -and galvanism. They are heavy at the fine arts, but adroit at the -coarse; not good in jewelry or mosaics, but the best iron-masters, -colliers, wool-combers, and tanners in Europe. They apply themselves to -agriculture, to draining, to resisting encroachments of sea, wind, -travelling sands, cold and wet subsoil; to fishery, to manufacture of -indispensable staples,--salt, plumbago, leather, wool, glass, pottery, -and brick,--to bees and silk-worms; and by their steady combinations -they succeed. A manufacturer sits down to dinner in a suit of clothes -which was wool on a sheep's back at sunrise. You dine with a gentleman -on venison, pheasant, quail, pigeons, poultry, mushrooms, and -pineapples, all the growth of his estate. They are neat husbands for -ordering all their tools pertaining to house and field. All are well -kept. There is no want and no waste. They study use and fitness in -their building, in the order of their dwellings, and in their dress. -The Frenchman invented the ruffle, the Englishman added the shirt. The -Englishman wears a sensible coat buttoned to the chin, of rough but -solid and lasting texture. If he is a lord, he dresses a little worse -than a commoner. They have diffused the taste for plain substantial -hats, shoes, and coats through Europe. They think him the best dressed -man, whose dress is so fit for his use that you cannot notice or -remember to describe it. - -They secure the essentials in their diet, in their arts and -manufactures. Every article of cutlery shows, in its shape, thought and -long experience of workmen. They put the expense in the right place, -as, in their sea-steamers, in the solidity of the machinery and the -strength of the boat. The admirable equipment of their arctic ships -carries London to the pole. They build roads, aqueducts, warm and -ventilate houses. And they have impressed their directness and -practical habit on modern civilization. - -In trade, the Englishman believes that nobody breaks who ought not to -break; and, that, if he do not make trade everything, it will make him -nothing; and acts on this belief. The spirit of system, attention to -details, and the subordination of details, or, the not driving things -too finely (which is charged on the Germans), constitute that despatch -of business, which makes the mercantile power of England. - -In war, the Englishman looks to his means. He is of the opinion of -Civilis, his German ancestor, whom Tacitus reports as holding "that the -gods are on the side of the strongest";--a sentence which Bonaparte -unconsciously translated, when he said, "that he had noticed, that -Providence always favored the heaviest battalion." Their military -science propounds that if the weight of the advancing column is greater -than that of the resisting, the latter is destroyed. Therefore -Wellington, when he came to the army in Spain, had every man weighed, -first with accoutrements, and then without; believing that the force of -an army depended on the weight and power of the individual soldiers, in -spite of cannon. Lord Palmerston told the House of Commons, that more -care is taken of the health and comfort of English troops than of any -other troops in the world; and that hence the English can put more men -into the ranks, on the day of action, on the field of battle, than any -other army. Before the bombardment of the Danish forts in the Baltic, -Nelson spent day after day, himself in the boats, on the exhausting -service of sounding the channel. Clerk of Eldin's celebrated manoeuvre -of breaking the line of sea-battle, and Nelson's feat of _doubling_, or -stationing his ships one on the outer bow, and another on the outer -quarter of each of the enemy's, were only translations into naval -tactics of Bonaparte's rule of concentration. Lord Collingwood was -accustomed to tell his men, that, if they could fire three well-directed -broadsides in five minutes, no vessel could resist them; and, from -constant practice, they came to do it in three minutes and a half. - -But conscious that no race of better men exists, they rely most on the -simplest means; and do not like ponderous and difficult tactics, but -delight to bring the affair hand to hand, where the victory lies with -the strength, courage, and endurance of the individual combatants. They -adopt every improvement in rig, in motor, in weapons, but they -fundamentally believe that the best stratagem in naval war is to lay -your ship close alongside of the enemy's ship, and bring all your guns -to bear on him, until you or he go to the bottom. This is the old -fashion, which never goes out of fashion, neither in nor out of England. - -It is not usually a point of honor, nor a religious sentiment, and never -any whim that they will shed their blood for; but usually property, and -right measured by property, that breeds revolution. They have no Indian -taste for a tomahawk-dance, no French taste for a badge or a -proclamation. The Englishman is peaceably minding his business and -earning his day's wages. But if you offer to lay hand on his day's -wages, on his cow, or his right in common, or his shop, he will fight to -the Judgment. Magna-charta, jury-trial, _habeas-corpus_, star-chamber, -ship-money, Popery, Plymouth colony, American Revolution, are all -questions involving a yeoman's right to his dinner, and, except as -touching that, would not have lashed the British nation to rage and -revolt. - -Whilst they are thus instinct with a spirit of order, and of -calculation, it must be owned they are capable of larger views; but the -indulgence is expensive to them, costs great crises, or accumulations of -mental power. In common, the horse works best with blinders. Nothing is -more in the line of English thought, than our unvarnished Connecticut -question, "Pray, sir, how do you get your living when you are at home?" -The questions of freedom, of taxation, of privilege, are money -questions. Heavy fellows, steeped in beer and fleshpots, they are hard -of hearing and dim of sight. Their drowsy minds need to be flagellated -by war and trade and politics and persecution. They cannot well read a -principle, except by the light of fagots and of burning towns. - -Tacitus says of the Germans, "powerful only in sudden efforts, they are -impatient of toil and labor." This highly destined race, if it had not -somewhere added the chamber of patience to its brain, would not have -built London. I know not from which of the tribes and temperaments that -went to the composition of the people this tenacity was supplied, but -they clinch every nail they drive. They have no running for luck, and no -immoderate speed. They spend largely on their fabric, and await the -slow return. Their leather lies tanning seven years in the vat. At -Rogers's mills, in Sheffield, where I was shown the process of making a -razor and a penknife, I was told there is no luck in making good steel; -that they make no mistakes, every blade in the hundred and in the -thousand is good. And that is characteristic of all their work,--no -more is attempted than is done. - -When Thor and his companions arrive at Utgard, he is told that "nobody -is permitted to remain here, unless he understand some art, and excel in -it all other men." The same question is still put to the posterity of -Thor. A nation of laborers, every man is trained to some one art or -detail, and aims at perfection in that: not content unless he has -something in which he thinks he surpasses all other men. He would -rather not do anything at all, than not do it well. I suppose no people -have such thoroughness: from the highest to the lowest, every man -meaning to be master of his art. - -"To show capacity," a Frenchman described as the end of a speech in -debate: "no," said an Englishman, "but to set your shoulder at the -wheel,--to advance the business." Sir Samuel Romilly refused to speak -in popular assemblies, confining himself to the House of Commons, where -a measure can be carried by a speech. The business of the House of -Commons is conducted by a few persons, but these are hard-worked. Sir -Robert Peel "knew the Blue Books by heart." His colleagues and rivals -carry Hansard in their heads. The high civil and legal offices are not -beds of ease, but posts which exact frightful amounts of mental labor. -Many of the great leaders, like Pitt, Canning, Castlereagh, Romilly, are -soon worked to death. They are excellent judges in England of a good -worker, and when they find one, like Clarendon, Sir Philip Warwick, Sir -William Coventry, Ashley, Burke, Thurlow, Mansfield, Pitt, Eldon, Peel, -or Russell, there is nothing too good or too high for him. - -They have a wonderful heat in the pursuit of a public aim. Private -persons exhibit, in scientific and antiquarian researches, the same -pertinacity as the nation showed in the coalitions in which it yoked -Europe against the Empire of Bonaparte, one after the other defeated, -and still renewed, until the sixth hurled him from his seat. - -Sir John Herschel, in completion of the work of his father, who had made -the catalogue of the stars of the northern hemisphere, expatriated -himself for years at the Cape of Good Hope, finished his inventory of -the southern heaven, came home, and redacted it in eight years more;--a -work whose value does not begin until thirty years have elapsed, and -thenceforward a record to all ages of the highest import. The Admiralty -sent out the Arctic expeditions year after year, in search of Sir John -Franklin, until, at last, they have threaded their way through polar -pack and Behring's Straits, and solved the geographical problem. Lord -Elgin, at Athens, saw the imminent ruin of the Greek remains, set up his -scaffoldings, in spite of epigrams, and, after five years' labor to -collect them, got his marbles on shipboard. The ship struck a rock, and -went to the bottom. He had them all fished up, by divers, at a vast -expense, and brought to London; not knowing that Haydon, Fuseli, and -Canova, and all good heads in all the world, were to be his applauders. -In the same spirit, were the excavation and research by Sir Charles -Fellowes, for the Xanthian monument; and of Layard, for his Nineveh -sculptures. - -The nation sits in the immense city they have builded, a London extended -into every man's mind, though he live in Van Dieman's Land or Capetown. -Faithful performance of what is undertaken to be performed, they honor -in themselves, and exact in others, as certificate of equality with -themselves. The modern world is theirs. They have made and make it day -by day. The commercial relations of the world are so intimately drawn -to London, that every dollar on earth contributes to the strength of the -English government. And if all the wealth in the planet should perish -by war or deluge, they know themselves competent to replace it. - -They have approved their Saxon blood, by their sea-going qualities; -their descent from Odin's smiths, by their hereditary skill in working -in iron; their British birth, by husbandry and immense wheat harvests; -and justified their occupancy of the centre of habitable land, by their -supreme ability and cosmopolitan spirit. They have tilled, builded, -forged, spun, and woven. They have made the island a thoroughfare; and -London a shop, a law-court, a record-office, and scientific bureau, -inviting to strangers; a sanctuary to refugees of every political and -religious opinion; and such a city, that almost every active man, in any -nation, finds himself, at one time or other, forced to visit it. - -In every path of practical activity, they have gone even with the best. -There is no secret of war, in which they have not shown mastery. The -steam-chamber of Watt, the locomotive of Stephenson, the cotton-mule of -Roberts, perform the labor of the world. There is no department of -literature, of science, or of useful art, in which they have not -produced a first-rate book. It is England, whose opinion is waited for -on the merit of a new invention, an improved science. And in the -complications of the trade and politics of their vast empire, they have -been equal to every exigency, with counsel and with conduct. Is it their -luck, or is it in the chambers of their brain,--it is their commercial -advantage, that whatever light appears in better method or happy -invention, breaks out _in their race_. They are a family to which a -destiny attaches, and the Banshee has sworn that a male heir shall never -be wanting. They have a wealth of men to fill important posts, and the -vigilance of party criticism insures the selection of a competent -person. - -A proof of the energy of the British people is the highly artificial -construction of the whole fabric. The climate and geography, I said, -were factitious, as if the hands of man had arranged the conditions. -The same character pervades the whole kingdom. Bacon said, "Rome was a -state not subject to paradoxes"; but England subsists by antagonisms and -contradictions. The foundations of its greatness are the rolling waves; -and, from first to last, it is a museum of anomalies. This foggy and -rainy country furnishes the world with astronomical observations. Its -short rivers do not afford water-power, but the land shakes under the -thunder of the mills. There is no gold-mine of any importance, but -there is more gold in England than in all other countries. It is too far -north for the culture of the vine, but the wines of all countries are in -its docks. The French Comte de Lauraguais said, "no fruit ripens in -England but a baked apple"; but oranges and pineapples are as cheap in -London as in the Mediterranean. The Mark-Lane Express, or the -Custom-House Returns bear out to the letter the vaunt of Pope,-- - - "Let India boast her palms, nor envy we - The weeping amber, nor the spicy tree, - While, by our oaks, those precious loads are borne, - And realms commanded which those trees adorn." - - -The native cattle are extinct, but the island is full of artificial -breeds. The agriculturist Bakewell created sheep and cows and horses to -order, and breeds in which everything was omitted but what is -economical. The cow is sacrificed to her bag, the ox to his surloin. -Stall-feeding makes sperm-mills of the cattle, and converts the stable -to a chemical factory. The rivers, lakes, and ponds, too much fished, -or obstructed by factories, are artificially filled with the eggs of -salmon, turbot, and herring. - -Chat Moss and the fens of Lincolnshire and Cambridgeshire are unhealthy -and too barren to pay rent. By cylindrical tiles, and gutta-percha -tubes, five millions of acres of bad land have been drained and put on -equality with the best, for rape-culture and grass. The climate too, -which was already believed to have become, milder and drier by the -enormous consumption of coal, is so far reached by this new action, that -fogs and storms are said to disappear. In due course, all England will -be drained, and rise a second time out of the waters. The latest step -was to call in the aid of steam to agriculture. Steam is almost an -Englishman. I do not know but they will send him to Parliament, next, -to make laws. He weaves, forges, saws, pounds, fans, and now he must -pump, grind, dig, and plough for the farmer. The markets created by the -manufacturing population have erected agriculture into a great thriving -and spending industry. The value of the houses in Britain is equal to -the value of the soil. Artificial aids of all kinds are cheaper than the -natural resources. No man can afford to walk, when the parliamentary -train carries him for a penny a mile. Gas-burners are cheaper than -daylight in numberless floors in the cities. All the houses in London -buy their water. The English trade does not exist for the exportation of -native products, but on its manufactures, or the making well everything -which is ill made elsewhere. They make ponchos for the Mexican, -bandannas for the Hindoo, ginseng for the Chinese, beads for the Indian, -laces for the Flemings, telescopes for astronomers, cannons for kings. - -The Board of Trade caused the best models of Greece and Italy to be -placed within the reach of every manufacturing population. They caused -to be translated from foreign languages and illustrated by elaborate -drawings, the most approved works of Munich, Berlin, and Paris. They -have ransacked Italy to find new forms, to add a grace to the products -of their looms, their potteries, and their foundries.[6] - - [6] See Memorial of H. Greenough, p. 66, New York, 1853. - -The nearer we look, the more artificial is their social system. Their -law is a network of fictions. Their property, a scrip or certificate of -right to interest on money that no man ever saw. Their social classes -are made by statute. Their ratios of power and representation are -historical and legal. The last reform-bill took away political power -from a mound, a ruin, and a stone-wall, whilst Birmingham and -Manchester, whose mills paid for the wars of Europe, had no -representative. Purity in the elective Parliament is secured by the -purchase of seats.[7] Foreign power is kept by armed colonies; power at -home, by a standing army of police. The pauper lives better than the -free laborer; the thief better than the pauper; and the transported -felon better than the one under imprisonment. The crimes are -factitious, as smuggling, poaching, non-conformity, heresy, and treason. -Better, they say in England, kill a man than a hare. The sovereignty of -the seas is maintained by the impressment of seamen. "The impressment -of seamen," said Lord Eldon, "is the life of our navy." Solvency is -maintained by means of a national debt, on the principle, "if you will -not lend me the money, how can I pay you?" For the administration of -justice, Sir Samuel Romilly's expedient for clearing the arrears of -business in Chancery, was, the chancellor's staying away entirely from -his court. Their system of education is factitious. The Universities -galvanize dead languages into a semblance of life. Their church is -artificial. The manners and customs of society are artificial;--made-up -men with made-up manners;--and thus the whole is Birminghamized, and we -have a nation whose existence is a work of art;--a cold, barren, almost -arctic isle, being made the most fruitful, luxurious, and imperial land -in the whole earth. - - [7] Sir S. Romilly, purest of English patriots, decided that the only - independent mode of entering Parliament was to buy a seat, and he - bought Horsham. - -Man in England submits to be a product of political economy. On a bleak -moor, a mill is built, a banking-house is opened, and men come in, as -water in a sluice-way, and towns and cities rise. Man is made as a -Birmingham button. The rapid doubling of the population dates from -Watt's steam-engine. A landlord, who owns a province, says, "the -tenantry are unprofitable; let me have sheep." He unroofs the houses, -and ships the population to America. The nation is accustomed to the -instantaneous creation of wealth. It is the maxim of their economists, -"that the greater part in value of the wealth now existing in England -has been produced by human hands within the last twelve months." -Meantime, three or four days' rain will reduce hundreds to starving in -London. - -One secret of their power is their mutual good understanding. Not only -good minds are born among them, but all the people have good minds. -Every nation has yielded some good wit, if, as has chanced to many -tribes, only one. But the intellectual organization of the English -admits a communicableness of knowledge and ideas among them all. An -electric touch by any of their national ideas, melts them into one -family, and brings the hoards of power which their individuality is -always hiving, into use and play for all. Is it the smallness of the -country, or is it the pride and affection of race,--they have -solidarity, or responsibleness, and trust in each other. - -Their minds, like wool, admit of a dye which is more lasting than the -cloth. They embrace their cause with more tenacity than their life. -Though not military, yet every common subject by the poll is fit to make -a soldier of. These private reserved mute family-men can adopt a public -end with all their heat, and this strength of affection makes the -romance of their heroes. The difference of rank does not divide the -national heart. The Danish poet Oehlenschlager complains, that who -writes in Danish writes to two hundred readers. In Germany, there is -one speech for the learned, and another for the masses, to that extent, -that, it is said, no sentiment or phrase from the works of any great -German writer is ever heard among the lower classes. But in England, -the language of the noble is the language of the poor. In Parliament, -in pulpits, in theatres, when the speakers rise to thought and passion, -the language becomes idiomatic; the people in the street best understand -the best words. And their language seems drawn from the Bible, the -common law, and the works of Shakspeare, Bacon, Milton, Pope, Young, -Cowper, Burns, and Scott. The island has produced two or three of the -greatest men that ever existed, but they were not solitary in their own -time. Men quickly embodied what Newton found out, in Greenwich -observatories, and practical navigation. The boys knew all that Hutton -knew of strata, or Dalton of atoms, or Harvey of blood-vessels; and -these studies, once dangerous, are in fashion. So what is invented or -known in agriculture, or in trade, or in war, or in art, or in -literature, and antiquities. A great ability, not amassed on a few -giants, but poured into the general mind, so that each of them could at -a pinch stand in the shoes of the other; and they are more bound in -character than differenced in ability or in rank. The laborer is a -possible lord. The lord is a possible basket-maker. Every man carries -the English system in his brain, knows what is confided to him, and does -therein the best he can. The chancellor carries England on his mace, -the midshipman at the point of his dirk, the smith on his hammer, the -cook in the bowl of his spoon; the postilion cracks his whip for -England, and the sailor times his oars to "God save the King!" The very -felons have their pride in each other's English stanchness. In politics -and in war, they hold together as by hooks of steel. The charm in -Nelson's history is, the unselfish greatness; the assurance of being -supported to the uttermost by those whom he supports to the uttermost. -Whilst they are some ages ahead of the rest of the world in the art of -living; whilst in some directions they do not represent the modern -spirit, but constitute it,--this vanguard of civility and power they -coldly hold, marching in phalanx, lock-step, foot after foot, file after -file of heroes, ten thousand deep. - - - - -CHAPTER VI.--MANNERS. - - -I find the Englishman to be him of all men who stands firmest in his -shoes. They have in themselves what they value in their horses, mettle -and bottom. On the day of my arrival at Liverpool, a gentleman, in -describing to me the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, happened to say, "Lord -Clarendon has pluck like a cock, and will fight till he dies"; and, what -I heard first I heard last, and the one thing the English value, is -_pluck_. The word is not beautiful, but on the quality they signify by -it the nation is unanimous. The cabmen have it; the merchants have it; -the bishops have it; the women have it; the journals have it; the Times -newspaper, they say, is the pluckiest thing in England, and Sidney Smith -had made it a proverb, that little Lord John Russell, the minister, -would take the command of the Channel fleet to-morrow. - -They require you to dare to be of your own opinion, and they hate the -practical cowards who cannot in affairs answer directly yes or no. They -dare to displease, nay, they will let you break all the commandments, if -you do it natively, and with spirit. You must be somebody; then you may -do this or that, as you will. - -Machinery has been applied to all work, and carried to such perfection, -that little is left for the men but to mind the engines and feed the -furnaces. But the machines require punctual service, and as they never -tire, they prove too much for their tenders. Mines, forges, mills, -breweries, railroads, steam-pump, steam-plough, drill of regiments, -drill of police, rule of court, and shop-rule, have operated to give a -mechanical regularity to all the habit and action of men. A terrible -machine has possessed itself of the ground, the air, the men and women, -and hardly even thought is free. - -The mechanical might and organization require in the people constitution -and answering spirits; and he who goes among them must have some weight -of metal. At last, you take your hint from the fury of life you find, -and say, one thing is plain, this is no country for faint-hearted -people: don't creep about diffidently; make up your mind; take your own -course, and you shall find respect and furtherance. - -It requires, men say, a good constitution to travel in Spain. I say as -much of England, for other cause, simply on account of the vigor and -brawn of the people. Nothing but the most serious business could give -one any counterweight to these Baresarks, though they were only to order -eggs and muffins for their breakfast. The Englishman speaks with all his -body. His elocution is stomachic,--as the American's is labial. The -Englishman is very petulant and precise about his accommodation at inns, -and on the roads; a quiddle about his toast and his chop, and every -species of convenience, and loud and pungent in his expressions of -impatience at any neglect. His vivacity betrays itself, at all points, -in his manners, in his respiration, and the inarticulate noises he makes -in clearing the throat,--all significant of burly strength. He has -stamina; he can take the initiative in emergencies. He has that -_aplomb_, which results from a good adjustment of the moral and physical -nature, and the obedience of all the powers to the will; as if the axes -of his eyes were united to his backbone, and only moved with the trunk. - -This vigor appears in the incuriosity, and stony neglect, each of every -other. Each man walks, eats, drinks, shaves, dresses, gesticulates, -and, in every manner, acts, and suffers without reference to the -bystanders, in his own fashion, only careful not to interfere with them, -or annoy them; not that he is trained to neglect the eyes of his -neighbors,--he is really occupied with his own affair, and does not -think of them. Every man in this polished country consults only his -convenience, as much as a solitary pioneer in Wisconsin. I know not -where any personal eccentricity is so freely allowed, and no man gives -himself any concern with it. An Englishman walks in a pouring rain, -swinging his closed umbrella like a walking-stick; wears a wig, or a -shawl, or a saddle, or stands on his head, and no remark is made. And -as he has been doing this for several generations, it is now in the -blood. - -In short, every one of these islanders is an island himself, safe, -tranquil, incommunicable. In a company of strangers, you would think -him deaf; his eyes never wander from his table and newspaper. He is -never betrayed into any curiosity or unbecoming emotion. They have all -been trained in one severe school of manners, and never put off the -harness. He does not give his hand. He does not let you meet his eye. -It is almost an affront to look a man in the face, without being -introduced. In mixed or in select companies they do not introduce -persons; so that a presentation is a circumstance as valid as a -contract. Introductions are sacraments. He withholds his name. At the -hotel, he is hardly willing to whisper it to the clerk at the -book-office. If he give you his private address on a card, it is like -an avowal of friendship; and his bearing on being introduced is cold, -even though he is seeking your acquaintance, and is studying how he -shall serve you. - -It was an odd proof of this impressive energy, that, in my lectures, I -hesitated to read and threw out for its impertinence many a disparaging -phrase, which I had been accustomed to spin, about poor, thin, unable -mortals; so much had the fine physique and the personal vigor of this -robust race worked on my imagination. - -I happened to arrive in England at the moment of a commercial crisis. -But it was evident that, let who will fail, England will not. These -people have sat here a thousand years, and here will continue to sit. -They will not break up, or arrive at any desperate revolution, like -their neighbors; for they have as much energy, as much continence of -character, as they ever had. The power and possession which surround -them are their own creation, and they exert the same commanding industry -at this moment. - -They are positive, methodical, cleanly, and formal, loving routine, and -conventional ways; loving truth and religion, to be sure, but inexorable -on points of form. All the world praises the comfort and private -appointments of an English inn, and of English households. You are sure -of neatness and of personal decorum. A Frenchman may possibly be clean: -an Englishman is conscientiously clean. A certain order and complete -propriety is found in his dress and in his belongings. - -Born in a harsh and wet climate, which keeps him in doors whenever he is -at rest, and being of an affectionate and loyal temper, he dearly loves -his house. If he is rich, he buys a demesne, and builds a hall; if he -is in middle condition, he spares no expense on his house. Without, it -is all planted; within, it is wainscoted, carved, curtained, hung with -pictures, and filled with good furniture. 'T is a passion which -survives all others, to deck and improve it. Hither he brings all that -is rare and costly, and with the national tendency to sit fast in the -same spot for many generations, it comes to be, in the course of time, a -museum of heirlooms, gifts, and trophies of the adventures and exploits -of the family. He is very fond of silver plate, and, though he have no -gallery of portraits of his ancestors, he has of their punch-bowls and -porringers. Incredible amounts of plate are found in good houses, and -the poorest have some spoon or saucepan, gift of a godmother, saved out -of better times. - -An English family consists of a few persons, who, from youth to age, are -found revolving within a few feet of each other, as if tied by some -invisible ligature, tense as that cartilage which we have seen attaching -the two Siamese. England produces under favorable conditions of ease -and culture the finest women in the world. And, as the men are -affectionate and true-hearted, the women inspire and refine them. -Nothing can be more delicate without being fantastical, nothing more -firm and based in nature and sentiment, than the courtship and mutual -carriage of the sexes. The song of 1596 says, "The wife of every -Englishman is counted blest." The sentiment of Imogen in Cymbeline is -copied from English nature; and not less the Portia of Brutus, the Kate -Percy, and the Desdemona. The romance does not exceed the height of -noble passion in Mrs. Lucy Hutchinson, or in Lady Russell, or even as -one discerns through the plain prose of Pepys's Diary, the sacred habit -of an English wife. Sir Samuel Romilly could not bear the death of his -wife. Every class has its noble and tender examples. - -Domesticity is the taproot which enables the nation to branch wide and -high. The motive and end of their trade and empire is to guard the -independence and privacy of their homes. Nothing so much marks their -manners as the concentration on their household ties. This domesticity -is carried into court and camp. Wellington governed India and Spain and -his own troops, and fought battles like a good family-man, paid his -debts, and, though general of an army in Spain, could not stir abroad -for fear of public creditors. This taste for house and parish merits -has of course its doting and foolish side. Mr. Cobbett attributes the -huge popularity of Perceval, prime minister in 1810, to the fact that he -was wont to go to church every Sunday, with a large quarto gilt -prayer-book under one arm, his wife hanging on the other, and followed -by a long brood of children. - -They keep their old customs, costumes, and pomps, their wig and mace, -sceptre and crown. The Middle Ages still lurk in the streets of London. -The Knights of the Bath take oath to defend injured ladies; the -gold-stick-in-waiting survives. They repeated the ceremonies of the -eleventh century in the coronation of the present Queen. A hereditary -tenure is natural to them. Offices, farms, trades, and traditions -descend so. Their leases run for a hundred and a thousand years. Terms -of service and partnership are lifelong, or are inherited. "Holdship has -been with me," said Lord Eldon, "eight-and-twenty years, knows all my -business and books." Antiquity of usage is sanction enough. Wordsworth -says of the small freeholders of Westmoreland, "Many of these humble -sons of the hills had a consciousness that the land which they tilled -had for more than five hundred years been possessed by men of the same -name and blood." The ship-carpenter in the public yards, my lord's -gardener and porter, have been there for more than a hundred years, -grandfather, father, and son. - -The English power resides also in their dislike of change. They have -difficulty in bringing their reason to act, and on all occasions use -their memory first. As soon as they have rid themselves of some -grievance, and settled the better practice, they make haste to fix it as -a finality, and never wish to hear of alteration more. - -Every Englishman is an embryonic chancellor: his instinct is to search -for a precedent. The favorite phrase of their law is, "a custom whereof -the memory of man runneth not back to the contrary." The barons say, -"Nolumus mutari"; and the cockneys stifle the curiosity of the foreigner -on the reason of any practice, with, "Lord, sir, it was always so." -They hate innovation. Bacon told them, Time was the right reformer; -Chatham, that "confidence was a plant of slow growth"; Canning, to -"advance with the times"; and Wellington, that "habit was ten times -nature." All their statesmen learn the irresistibility of the tide of -custom, and have invented many fine phrases to cover this slowness of -perception, and prehensility of tail. - -A sea-shell should be the crest of England, not only because it -represents a power built on the waves, but also the hard finish of the -men. The Englishman is finished like a cowry or a murex. After the -spire and the spines are formed, or, with the formation, a juice exudes, -and a hard enamel varnishes every part. The keeping of the proprieties -is as indispensable as clean, linen. No merit quite countervails the -want of this, whilst this sometimes stands in lieu of all. "'T is in -bad taste," is the most formidable word an Englishman can pronounce. -But this japan costs them dear. There is a prose in certain Englishmen, -which exceeds in wooden deadness all rivalry with other countrymen. -There is a knell in the conceit and externality of their voice, which -seems to say, _Leave all hope behind_. In this Gibraltar of propriety, -mediocrity gets intrenched, and consolidated, and founded in adamant. -An Englishman of fashion is like one of those souvenirs, bound in gold -vellum, enriched with delicate engravings, on thick hot-pressed paper, -fit for the hands of ladies and princes, but with nothing in it worth -reading or remembering. - -A severe decorum rules the court and the cottage. When Thalberg, the -pianist, was one evening performing before the Queen, at Windsor, in a -private party, the Queen accompanied him with her voice. The -circumstance took air, and all England shuddered from sea to sea. The -indecorum was never repeated. Cold, repressive manners prevail. No -enthusiasm is permitted except at the opera. They avoid everything -marked. They require a tone of voice that excites no attention in the -room. Sir Philip Sidney is one of the patron saints of England, of whom -Wotton said, "His wit was the measure of congruity." - -Pretension and vaporing are once for all distasteful. They keep to the -other extreme of low tone in dress and manners. They avoid pretension -and go right to the heart of the thing. They hate nonsense, -sentimentalism, and highflown expression; they use a studied plainness. -Even Brummell their fop was marked by the severest simplicity in dress. -They value themselves on the absence of everything theatrical in the -public business, and on conciseness and going to the point, in private -affairs. - -In an aristocratical country, like England, not the Trial by Jury, but -the dinner is the capital institution. It is the mode of doing honor to -a stranger, to invite him to eat,--and has been for many hundred years. -"And they think," says the Venetian traveller of 1500, "no greater honor -can be conferred or received, than to invite others to eat with them, or -to be invited themselves, and they would sooner give five or six ducats -to provide an entertainment for a person, than a groat to assist him in -any distress."[8] It is reserved to the end of the day, the family-hour -being generally six, in London, and, if any company is expected, one or -two hours later. Every one dresses for dinner, in his own house, or in -another man's. The guests are expected to arrive within half an hour of -the time fixed by card of invitation, and nothing but death or -mutilation is permitted to detain them. The English dinner is precisely -the model on which our own are constructed in the Atlantic cities. The -company sit one or two hours, before the ladies leave the table. The -gentlemen remain over their wine an hour longer, and rejoin the ladies -in the drawing-room, and take coffee. The dress dinner generates a -talent of table-talk, which reaches great perfection: the stories are so -good, that one is sure they must have been often told before, to have -got such happy turns. Hither come all manner of clever projects, bits -of popular science, of practical invention, of miscellaneous humor; -political, literary, and personal news; railroads, horses, diamonds, -agriculture, horticulture, pisciculture, and wine. - - [8] "Relation of England." Printed by the Caraden Society. - -English stories, _bon-mots_, and the recorded table-talk of their wits, -are as good as the best of the French. In America, we are apt scholars, -but have not yet attained the same perfection: for the range of nations -from which London draws, and the steep contrasts of condition, create -the picturesque in society, as broken country makes picturesque -landscape, whilst our prevailing equality makes a prairie tameness: and -secondly, because the usage of a dress-dinner every day at dark has a -tendency to hive and produce to advantage everything good. Much -attrition has worn every sentence into a bullet. Also one meets now and -then with polished men, who know everything, have tried everything, can -do everything, and are quite superior to letters and science. What -could they not, if only they would? - - - - -CHAPTER VII.--TRUTH. - - -The Teutonic tribes have a national singleness of heart, which contrasts -with the Latin races. The German name has a proverbial significance of -sincerity and honest meaning. The arts bear testimony to it. The faces -of clergy and laity in old sculptures and illuminated missals are -charged with earnest belief. Add to this hereditary rectitude, the -punctuality and precise dealing which commerce creates, and you have the -English truth and credit. The government strictly performs its -engagements. The subjects do not understand trifling on its part. When -any breach of promise occurred, in the old days of prerogative, it was -resented by the people as an intolerable grievance. And, in modern -times, any slipperiness in the government of political faith, or any -repudiation or crookedness in matters of finance, would bring the whole -nation to a committee of inquiry and reform. Private men keep their -promises, never so trivial. Down goes the flying word on the tablets, -and is indelible as Domesday Book. - -Their practical power rests on their national sincerity. Veracity -derives from instinct, and marks superiority in organization. Nature -has endowed some animals with cunning, as a compensation for strength -withheld; but it has provoked the malice of all others, as if avengers -of public wrong. In the nobler kinds, where strength could be afforded, -her races are loyal to truth, as truth is the foundation of the social -state. Beasts that make no truce with man, do not break faith with each -other. 'T is said, that the wolf, who makes a _cache_ of his prey, and -brings his fellows with him to the spot, if, on digging it is not found, -is instantly and unresistingly torn in pieces. English veracity seems to -result on a sounder animal structure, as if they could afford it. They -are blunt in saying what they think, sparing of promises, and they -require plain dealing of others. We will not have to do with a man in a -mask. Let us know the truth. Draw a straight line, hit whom and where -it will. Alfred, whom the affection of the nation makes the type of -their race, is called by a writer at the Norman Conquest, the -_truth-speaker; Alueredus veridicus_. Geoffrey of Monmouth says of King -Aurelius, uncle of Arthur, that "above all things he hated a lie." The -Northman Guttorm said to King Olaf, "It is royal work to fulfil royal -words." The mottoes of their families are monitory proverbs, as, _Fare -fac_,--Say, do,--of the Fairfaxes; _Say and seal_, of the house of -Fiennes; _Vero nil verius_, of the De Veres. To be king of their word, -is their pride. When they unmask cant, they say, "The English of this -is," etc.; and to give the lie is the extreme insult. The phrase of the -lowest of the people is "honor-bright," and their vulgar praise, "his -word is as good as his bond." They hate shuffling and equivocation, and -the cause is damaged in the public opinion, on which any paltering can -be fixed. Even Lord Chesterfield, with his French breeding, when he came -to define a gentleman, declared that truth made his distinction; and -nothing ever spoken by him would find so hearty a suffrage from his -nation. The Duke of Wellington, who had the best right to say so, -advises the French General Kellermann, that he may rely on the parole of -an English officer. The English, of all classes, value themselves on -this trait, as distinguishing them from the French, who, in the popular -belief, are more polite than true. An Englishman understates, avoids -the superlative, checks himself in compliments, alleging, that in the -French language, one cannot speak without lying. - -They love reality in wealth, power, hospitality, and do not easily learn -to make a show, and take the world as it goes. They are not fond of -ornaments, and if they wear them, they must be gems. They read gladly -in old Fuller, that a lady, in the reign of Elizabeth, "would have as -patiently digested a lie, as the wearing of false stones or pendants of -counterfeit pearl." They have the earth-hunger, or preference for -property in land, which is said to mark the Teutonic nations. They -build of stone; public and private buildings are massive and durable. -In comparing their ships' houses, and public offices with the American, -it is commonly said, that they spend a pound, where we spend a dollar. -Plain rich clothes, plain rich equipage, plain rich finish throughout -their house and belongings, mark the English truth. - -They confide in each other,--English believes in English. The French -feel the superiority of this probity. The Englishman is not springing a -trap for his admiration, but is honestly minding his business. The -Frenchman is vain. Madame de Stael says, that the English irritated -Napoleon, mainly, because they have found out how to unite success with -honesty. She was not aware how wide an application her foreign readers -would give to the remark. Wellington discovered the ruin of Bonaparte's -affairs, by his own probity. He augured ill of the empire, as soon as -he saw that it was mendacious, and lived by war. If war do not bring in -its sequel new trade, better agriculture and manufactures, but only -games, fireworks, and spectacles,--no prosperity could support it; much -less, a nation decimated for conscripts, and out of pocket, like France. -So he drudged for years on his military works at Lisbon, and from this -base at last extended his gigantic lines to Waterloo, believing in his -countrymen and their syllogisms above all the rhodomontade of Europe. - -At a St. George's festival, in Montreal, where I happened to be a guest, -since my return home, I observed that the chairman complimented his -compatriots, by saying, "they confided that wherever they met an -Englishman, they found a man who would speak the truth." And one cannot -think this festival fruitless, if, all over the world, on the 23d of -April, wherever two or three English are found, they meet to encourage -each other in the nationality of veracity. - -In the power of saying rude truth, sometimes in the lion's mouth, no men -surpass them. On the king's birthday, when each bishop was expected to -offer the king a purse of gold, Latimer gave Henry VIII. a copy of the -Vulgate, with a mark at the passage, "Whoremongers and adulterers God -will judge"; and they so honor stoutness in each other, that the king -passed it over. They are tenacious of their belief, and cannot easily -change their opinions to suit the hour. They are like ships with too -much head on to come quickly about, nor will prosperity or even -adversity be allowed to shake their habitual view of conduct. Whilst I -was in London, M. Guizot arrived there on his escape from Paris, in -February, 1843. Many private friends called on him. His name was -immediately proposed as an honorary member to the Athenaeum. M. Guizot -was blackballed. Certainly, they knew the distinction of his name. But -the Englishman is not fickle. He had really made up his mind, now for -years as he read his newspaper, to hate and despise M. Guizot; and the -altered position of the man as an illustrious exile, and a guest in the -country, makes no difference to him, as it would instantly, to an -American. - -They require the same adherence, thorough conviction and reality in -public men. It is the want of character which makes the low reputation -of the Irish members. "See them," they said, "one hundred and -twenty-seven all voting like sheep, never proposing anything, and all -but four voting the income tax,"--which was an ill-judged concession of -the government, relieving Irish property from the burdens charged on -English. - -They have a horror of adventurers in or out of Parliament. The ruling -passion of Englishmen, in these days, is a terror of humbug. In the -same proportion, they value honesty, stoutness, and adherence to your -own. They like a man committed to his objects. They hate the French, as -frivolous; they hate the Irish, as aimless; they hate the Germans, as -professors. In February, 1848, they said, Look, the French king and his -party fell for want of a shot; they had not conscience to shoot, so -entirely was the pith and heart of monarchy eaten out. - -They attack their own politicians every day, on the same grounds, as -adventurers. They love stoutness in standing for your right, in -declining money or promotion that costs any concession. The barrister -refuses the silk gown of Queen's Counsel, if his junior have it one day -earlier. Lord Collingwood would not accept his medal for victory on -14th February, 1797, if he did not receive one for victory on 1st June, -1794; and the long-withholden medal was accorded. When Castlereagh -dissuaded Lord Wellington from going to the king's levee, until the -unpopular Cintra business had been explained, he replied: "You furnish -me a reason for going. I will go to this, or I will never go to a -king's levee." The radical mob at Oxford cried after the tory Lord -Eldon, "There's old Eldon; cheer him; he never ratted." They have given -the parliamentary nickname of _Trimmers_ to the time-servers, whom -English character does not love.[9] - - [9] It is an unlucky moment to remember these sparkles of solitary - virtue in the face of the honors lately paid in England to the - Emperor Louis Napoleon. I am sure that no Englishman whom I had - the happiness to know, consented, when the aristocracy and the - commons of London cringed like a Neapolitan rabble, before a - successful thief. But--how to resist one step, though odious, in - a linked series of state necessities?--Governments must always - learn too late, that the use of dishonest agents is as ruinous for - nations as for single men. - -They are very liable in their politics to extraordinary delusions, thus, -to believe what stands recorded in the gravest books, that the movement -of 10th April, 1848, was urged or assisted by foreigners: which, to be -sure, is paralleled by the democratic whimsey in this country, which I -have noticed to be shared by men sane on other points, that the English -are at the bottom of the agitation of slavery, in American politics: and -then again to the French popular legends on the subject of _perfidious -Albion_. But suspicion will make fools of nations as of citizens. - -A slow temperament makes them less rapid and ready than other -countrymen, and has given occasion to the observation that English wit -comes afterwards,--which the French denote as _esprit d'escalier_. This -dulness makes their attachment to home, and their adherence in all -foreign countries to home habits. The Englishman who visits Mount Etna -will carry his teakettle to the top. The old Italian author of the -"Relation of England" (in 1500) says: "I have it on the best -information, that, when the war is actually raging most furiously, they -will seek for good eating, and all their other comforts, without -thinking what harm might befall them." Then their eyes seem to be set -at the bottom of a tunnel, and they affirm the one small fact they know, -with the best faith in the world that nothing else exists. And, as -their own belief in guineas is perfect, they readily, on all occasions, -apply the pecuniary argument as final. Thus when the Rochester rappings -began to be heard of in England, a man deposited L100 in a sealed box in -the Dublin Bank, and then advertised in the newspapers to all -somnambulists, mesmerizers, and others, that whoever could tell him the -number of his note should have the money. He let it lie there six -months, the newspapers now and then, at his instance, stimulating the -attention of the adepts; but none could ever tell him; and he said, "Now -let me never be bothered more with this proven lie." It is told of a -good Sir John, that he heard a case stated by counsel, and made up his -mind; then the counsel for the other side taking their turn to speak, he -found himself so unsettled and perplexed, that he exclaimed, "So help me -God! I will never listen to evidence again." Any number of delightful -examples of this English stolidity are the anecdotes of Europe. I knew -a very worthy man,--a magistrate, I believe he was, in the town of -Derby,--who went to the opera, to see Malibrau. In one scene, the -heroine was to rush across a ruined bridge. Mr. B. arose, and mildly -yet firmly called the attention of the audience and the performers to -the fact that, in his judgment, the bridge was unsafe! This English -stolidity contrasts with French wit and tact. The French, it is -commonly said, have greatly more influence in Europe than the English. -What influence the English have is by brute force of wealth and power; -that of the French by affinity and talent. The Italian is subtle, the -Spaniard treacherous: tortures, it was said, could never wrest from an -Egyptian the confession of a secret. None of these traits belong to the -Englishman. His choler and conceit force everything out. Defoe, who -knew his countrymen well, says of them:-- - - "In close intrigue, their faculty 's but weak, - For generally whate'er they know, they speak, - And often their own counsels undermine - By mere infirmity without design; - From whence, the learned say, it doth proceed, - That English treasons never can succeed; - For they 're so open-hearted, you may know - Their own most secret thoughts, and others' too." - - - - -CHAPTER VIII.--CHARACTER. - - -The English race are reputed morose. I do not know that they have -sadder brows than their neighbors of northern climates. They are sad by -comparison with the singing and dancing nations: not sadder, but slow -and staid, as finding their joys at home. They, too, believe that where -there is no enjoyment of life, there can be no vigor and art in speech -or thought; that your merry heart goes all the way, your sad one tires -in a mile. This trait of gloom has been fixed on them by French -travellers, who, from Froissart, Voltaire, Le Sage, Mirabeau, down to -the lively journalists of the _feuilletous_, have spent their wit on the -solemnity of their neighbors. The French say, gay conversation is -unknown in their island: the Englishman finds no relief from reflection -except in reflection: when he wishes for amusement, he goes to work: his -hilarity is like an attack of fever. Religion, the theatre, and the -reading the books of his country, all feed and increase his natural -melancholy. The police does not interfere with public diversions. It -thinks itself bound in duty to respect the pleasures and rare gayety of -this inconsolable nation; and their well-known courage is entirely -attributable to their disgust of life. - -I suppose their gravity of demeanor and their few words have obtained -this reputation. As compared with the Americans, I think them cheerful -and contented. Young people, in our country, are much more prone to -melancholy. The English have a mild aspect, and a ringing, cheerful -voice. They are large-natured, and not so easily amused as the -southerners, and are among them as grown people among children, -requiring war, or trade, or engineering, or science, instead of -frivolous games. They are proud and private, and, even if disposed to -recreation, will avoid an open garden. They sported sadly; _ils -s'amusaient tristement, selon la coutume de leur pays_, said Froissart; -and, I suppose, never nation built their party walls so thick, or their -garden fences so high. Meat and wine produce no effect on them: they are -just as cold, quiet, and composed, at the end, as at the beginning of -dinner. - -The reputation of taciturnity they have enjoyed for six or seven hundred -years; and a kind of pride in bad public speaking is noted in the House -of Commons, as if they were willing to show that they did not live by -their tongues, or thought they spoke well enough if they had the tone of -gentlemen. In mixed company, they shut their mouths. A Yorkshire -mill-owner told me, he had ridden more than once all the way from London -to Leeds, in the first-class carriage, with the same persons, and no -word exchanged. The club-houses were established to cultivate social -habits, and it is rare that more than two eat together, and oftenest one -eats alone. Was it then a stroke of humor in the serious Swedenborg, or -was it only his pitiless logic, that made him shut up the English souls -in a heaven by themselves? - -They are contradictorily described as sour, splenetic, and -stubborn,--and as mild, sweet, and sensible. The truth is, they have -great range and variety of character. Commerce sends abroad multitudes -of different classes. The choleric Welshman, the fervid Scot, the -bilious resident in the East or West Indies, are wide of the perfect -behavior of the educated and dignified man of family. So is the burly -farmer; so is the country 'squire, with his narrow and violent life. In -every inn, is the Commercial-Room, in which 'travellers,' or bagmen who -carry patterns, and solicit orders, for the manufacturers, are wont to -be entertained. It easily happens that this class should characterize -England to the foreigner, who meets them on the road, and at every -public house, whilst the gentry avoid the taverns, or seclude themselves -whilst in them. - -But these classes are the right English stock, and may fairly show the -national qualities, before yet art and education have dealt with them. -They are good lovers, good haters, slow but obstinate admirers, and, in -all things, very much steeped in their temperament, like men hardly -awaked from deep sleep, which they enjoy. Their habits and instincts -cleave to nature. They are of the earth, earthy; and of the sea, as the -sea-kinds, attached to it for what it yields them, and not from any -sentiment. They are full of coarse strength, rude exercise, butcher's -meat, and sound sleep; and suspect any poetic insinuation or any hint -for the conduct of life which reflects on this animal existence, as if -somebody were fumbling at the umbilical cord and might stop their -supplies. They doubt a man's sound judgment, if he does not eat with -appetite, and shake their heads if he is particularly chaste. Take them -as they come, you shall find in the common people a surly indifference, -sometimes gruffness and ill temper; and, in minds of more power, -magazines of inexhaustible war, challenging - - "The ruggedest hour that time and spite dare bring - To frown upon the enraged Northumberland." - -They are headstrong believers and defenders of their opinion, and not -less resolute in maintaining their whim and perversity. Hezekiah -Woodward wrote a book against the Lord's Prayer. And one can believe -that Burton the Anatomist of Melancholy, having predicted from the stars -the hour of his death, slipped the knot himself round his own neck, not -to falsify his horoscope. - -Their looks bespeak an invincible stoutness; they have extreme -difficulty to run away, and will die game. Wellington said of the young -coxcombs of the Life-Guards delicately brought up, "But the puppies -fight well"; and Nelson said of his sailors, "They really mind shot no -more than peas." Of absolute stoutness no nation has more or better -examples. They are good at storming redoubts, at boarding frigates, at -dying in the last ditch, or any desperate service which has daylight and -honor in it; but not, I think, at enduring the rack, or any passive -obedience, like jumping off a castle-roof at the word of a czar. Being -both vascular and highly organized, so as to be very sensible of pain; -and intellectual, so as to see reason and glory in a matter. - -Of that constitutional force, which yields the supplies of the day, they -have the more than enough, the excess which creates courage on -fortitude, genius in poetry, invention in mechanics, enterprise in -trade, magnificence in wealth, splendor in ceremonies, petulance and -projects in youth. The young men have a rude health which runs into -peccant humors. They drink brandy like water, cannot expend their -quantities of waste strength on riding, hunting, swimming, and fencing, -and run into absurd frolics with the gravity of the Eumenides. They -stoutly carry into every nook and corner of the earth their turbulent -sense; leaving no lie uncontradicted, no pretension unexamined. They -chew hasheesh; cut themselves with poisoned creases; swing their hammock -in the boughs of the Bohon Upas; taste every poison; buy every secret; -at Naples, they put St. Januarius's blood in an alembic; they saw a hole -into the head of the "winking Virgin," to know why she winks; measure -with an English foot-rule every cell of the Inquisition, every Turkish -caaba, every Holy of holies; translate and send to Bantley the arcanum -bribed and bullied away from shuddering Bramins; and measure their own -strength by the terror they cause. These travellers are of every class, -the best and the worst; and it may easily happen that those of rudest -behavior are taken notice of and remembered. The Saxon melancholy in -the vulgar rich and poor appears as gushes of ill-humor, which every -check exasperates into sarcasm and vituperation. There are multitudes -of rude young English who have the self-sufficiency and bluntness of -their nation, and who, with their disdain of the rest of mankind, and -with this indigestion and choler, have made the English traveller a -proverb for uncomfortable and offensive manners. It was no bad -description of the Briton generically, what was said two hundred years -ago, of one particular Oxford scholar: "He was a very bold man, uttered -anything that came into his mind, not only among his companions, but in -public coffee-houses, and would often speak his mind of particular -persons then accidentally present, without examining the company he was -in; for which he was often reprimanded, and several times threatened to -be kicked and beaten." - -The common Englishman is prone to forget a cardinal article in the bill -of social rights, that every man has a right to his own ears. No man -can claim to usurp more than a few cubic feet of the audibilities of a -public room, or to put upon the company the loud statements of his -crotchets or personalities. - -But it is in the deep traits of race that the fortunes of nations are -written, and however derived, whether a happier tribe or mixture of -tribes, the air, or what circumstance, that mixed for them the golden -mean of temperament,--here exists the best stock in the world, -broad-fronted, broad-bottomed, best for depth, range, and equability, -men of aplomb and reserves, great range and many moods, strong -instincts, yet apt for culture; war-class as well as clerks; earls and -tradesmen; wise minority, as well as foolish majority; abysmal -temperament, hiding wells of wrath, and glooms on which no sunshine -settles; alternated with a common-sense and humanity which hold them -fast to every piece of cheerful duty; making this temperament a sea to -which all storms are superficial; a race to which their fortunes flow, -as if they alone had the elastic organization at once fine and robust -enough for dominion; as if the burly, inexpressive, now mute and -contumacious, now fierce and sharp-tongued dragon, which once made the -island light with his fiery breath, had bequeathed his ferocity to his -conqueror. They hide virtues under vices, or the semblance of them. It -is the misshapen hairy Scandinavian troll again, who lifts the cart out -of the mire, or "threshes the corn that ten day-laborers could not end," -but it is done in the dark, and with muttered maledictions. He is a -churl with a soft place in his heart, whose speech is a brash of bitter -waters, but who loves to help you at a pinch. He says no, but serves -you, and your thanks disgust him. Here was lately a cross-grained -miser, odd and ugly, resembling in countenance the portrait of Punch, -with the laugh left out; rich by his own industry; sulking in a lonely -house; who never gave a dinner to any man, and disdained all courtesies; -yet as true a worshipper of beauty in form and color as ever existed, -and profusely pouring over the cold mind of his countrymen creations of -grace and truth, removing the reproach of sterility from English art, -catching from their savage climate every fine hint, and importing into -their galleries every tint and trait of sunnier cities and skies; making -an era in painting; and, when he saw that the splendor of one of his -pictures in the Exhibition dimmed his rival's that hung next it, -secretly took a brush and blackened his own. - -They do not wear their heart in their sleeve for daws to peck at. They -have that phlegm or staidness, which it is a compliment to disturb. -"Great men," said Aristotle, "are always of a nature originally -melancholy." 'T is the habit of a mind which attaches to abstractions -with a passion which gives vast results. They dare to displease, they -do not speak to expectation. They like the sayers of No, better than -the sayers of Yes. Each of them has an opinion which he feels it -becomes him to express all the more that it differs from yours. They -are meditating opposition. This gravity is inseparable from minds of -great resources. - -There is an English hero superior to the French, the German, the -Italian, or the Greek. When he is brought to the strife with fate, he -sacrifices a richer material possession, and on more purely metaphysical -grounds. He is there with his own consent, face to face with fortune, -which he defies. On deliberate choice, and from grounds of character, -he has elected his part to live and die for, and dies with grandeur. -This race has added new elements to humanity, and has a deeper root in -the world. - -They have great range of scale, from ferocity to exquisite refinement. -With larger scale, they have great retrieving power. After running each -tendency to an extreme, they try another tack with equal heat. More -intellectual than other races, when they live with other races, they do -not take their language, but bestow their own. They subsidize other -nations, and are not subsidized. They proselyte, and are not -proselyted. They assimilate other races to themselves, and are not -assimilated. The English did not calculate the conquest of the Indies. -It fell to their character. So they administer in different parts of -the world, the codes of every empire and race: in Canada, old French -law; in the Mauritius, the Code Napoleon; in the West Indies, the edicts -of the Spanish Cortes; in the East Indies, the Laws of Menu; in the Isle -of Man, of the Scandinavian Thing; at the Cape of Good Hope, of the Old -Netherlands; and in the Ionian Islands, the Pandects of Justinian. - -They are very conscious of their advantageous position in history. -England is the lawgiver, the patron, the instructor, the ally. Compare -the tone of the French and of the English press: the first querulous, -captious, sensitive, about English opinion; the English press is never -timorous about French opinion, but arrogant and contemptuous. - -They are testy and headstrong through an excess of will and bias; -churlish as men sometimes please to be who do not forget a debt, who ask -no favors, and who will do what they like with their own. With -education and intercourse these asperities wear off, and leave the -good-will pure. If anatomy is reformed according to national -tendencies, I suppose, the spleen will hereafter be found in the -Englishman, not found in the American, and differencing the one from the -other. I anticipate another anatomical discovery, that this organ will -be found to be cortical and caducous, that they are superficially -morose, but at last tender-hearted, herein differing from Rome and the -Latin nations. Nothing savage, nothing mean resides in the English -heart. They are subject to panics of credulity and of rage, but the -temper of the nation, however disturbed, settles itself soon and easily, -as, in this temperate zone, the sky after whatever storms clears again, -and serenity is its normal condition. - -A saving stupidity masks and protects their perception as the curtain of -the eagle's eye. Our swifter Americans, when they first deal with -English, pronounce them stupid; but, later, do them justice as people -who wear well, or hide their strength. To understand the power of -performance that is in their finest wits, in the patient Newton, or in -the versatile transcendent poets, or in the Dugdales, Gibbons, Hallams, -Eldons, and Peels, one should see how English day-laborers hold out. -High and low, they are of an unctuous texture. There is an adipocere in -their constitution, as if they had oil also for their mental wheels, and -could perform vast amounts of work without damaging themselves. - -Even the scale of expense on which people live, and to which scholars -and professional men conform, proves the tension of their muscle, when -vast numbers are found who can each lift this enormous load. I might -even add, their daily feasts argue a savage vigor of body. - -No nation was ever so rich in able men: "Gentlemen," as Charles I. said -of Strafford, "whose abilities might make a prince rather afraid than -ashamed in the greatest affairs of state": men of such temper, that, -like Baron Vere, "had one seen him returning from a victory, he would by -his silence have suspected that he had lost the day; and, had he beheld -him in a retreat, he would have collected him a conqueror by the -cheerfulness of his spirit."[10] - - [10] Fuller. Worthies of England. - -The following passage from the Heimskringla might almost stand as a -portrait of the modern Englishman: "Haldor was very stout and strong, -and remarkably handsome in appearances. King Harold gave him this -testimony, that he, among all his men, cared least about doubtful -circumstances, whether they betokened danger or pleasure; for, whatever -turned up, he was never in higher nor in lower spirits, never slept less -nor more on account of them, nor ate nor drank but according to his -custom. Haldor was not a man of many words, but short in conversation, -told his opinion bluntly, and was obstinate and hard; and this could not -please the king, who had many clever people about him, zealous in his -service. Haldor remained a short time with the king, and then came to -Iceland, where he took up his abode in Hiardaholt, and dwelt in that -farm to a very advanced age."[#] - -[#] Heimskringla, Laing's translation, Vol. III. p. 37. - -The national temper, in the civil history, is not flashy or whiffling. -The slow, deep, English mass smoulders with fire, which at last sets all -its borders in flame. The wrath of London is not French wrath, but has -a long memory, and, in its hottest heat, a register and rule. - -Half their strength they put not forth. They are capable of a sublime -resolution, and if hereafter the war of races, often predicted, and -making itself a war of opinions also (a question of despotism and -liberty coming from Eastern Europe), should menace the English -civilization, these sea-kings may take once again to their floating -castles, and find a new home and a second millennium of power in their -colonies. - -The stability of England is the security of the modern world. If the -English race were as mutable as the French, what reliance? But the -English stand for liberty. The conservative, money-loving, lord-loving -English are yet liberty-loving; and so freedom is safe: for they have -more personal force than other people. The nation always resist the -immoral action of their government. They think humanely on the affairs -of France, of Turkey, of Poland, of Hungary, of Schleswig Holstein, -though overborne by the statecraft of the rulers at last. - -Does the early history of each tribe show the permanent bias, which, -though not less potent, is masked, as the tribe spreads its activity -into colonies, commerce, codes, arts, letters? The early history shows -it, as the musician plays the air which he proceeds to conceal in a -tempest of variations. In Alfred, in the Northmen, one may read the -genius of the English society, namely, that private life is the place of -honor. Glory, a career, and ambition, words familiar to the longitude -of Paris, are seldom heard in English speech. Nelson wrote from their -hearts his homely telegraph, "England expects every man to do his duty." - -For actual service, for the dignity of a profession, or to appease -diseased or inflamed talent, the army and navy may be entered (the worst -boys doing well in the navy); and the civil service, in departments -where serious official work is done; and they hold in esteem the -barrister engaged in the severer studies of the law. But the calm, -sound, and most British Briton shrinks from public life, as -charlatanism, and respects an economy founded on agriculture, -coal-mines, manufactures, or trade, which secures an independence -through the creation of real values. - -They wish neither to command or obey, but to be kings in their own -houses. They are intellectual and deeply enjoy literature; they like -well to have the world served up to them in books, maps, models, and -every mode of exact information, and, though not creators in the art, -they value its refinement. They are ready for leisure, can direct and -fill their own day, nor need so much as others the constraint of a -necessity. But the history of the nation discloses, at every turn, this -original predilection for private independence, and, however this -inclination may have been disturbed by the bribes with which their vast -colonial power has warped men out of orbit, the inclination endures, and -forms and reforms the laws, letters, manners, and occupations. They -choose that welfare which is compatible with the commonwealth, knowing -that such alone is stable; as wise merchants prefer investments in three -per cents. - - - - -CHAPTER IX.--COCKAYNE. - - -The English are a nation of humorists. Individual right is pushed to -the uttermost bound compatible with public order. Property is so -perfect, that it seems the craft of that race, and not to exist -elsewhere. The king cannot step on an acre which the peasant refuses to -sell. A testator endows a dog or a rookery, and Europe cannot interfere -with his absurdity. Every individual has his particular way of living, -which he pushes to folly, and the decided sympathy of his compatriots is -engaged to back up Mr. Crump's whim by statutes, and chancellors, and -horse-guards. There is no freak so ridiculous but some Englishman has -attempted to immortalize by money and law. British citizenship is as -omnipotent as Roman was. Mr. Cockayne is very sensible of this. The -pursy man means by freedom the right to do as he pleases, and does wrong -in order to feel his freedom, and makes a conscience of persisting in -it. - -He is intensely patriotic, for his country is so small. His confidence -in the power and performance of his nation makes him provokingly -incurious about other nations. He dislikes foreigners. Swedenborg, who -lived much in England, notes "the similitude of minds among the English, -in consequence of which they contract familiarity with friends who are -of that nation, and seldom with others; and they regard foreigners, as -one looking through a telescope from the top of a palace regards those -who dwell or wander about out of the city." A much older traveller, the -Venetian who wrote the "Relation of England,"[11] in 1500, says: "The -English are great lovers of themselves, and of everything belonging to -them. They think that there are no other men than themselves, and no -other world but England; and, whenever they see a handsome foreigner, -they say that he looks like an Englishman, and it is a great pity he -should not be an Englishman; and whenever they partake of any delicacy -with a foreigner, they ask him whether such a thing is made in his -country." When he adds epithets of praise, his climax is "so English"; -and when he wishes to pay you the highest compliment, he says, I should -not know you from an Englishman. France is, by its natural contrast, a -kind of blackboard on which English character draws its own traits in -chalk. This arrogance habitually exhibits itself in allusions to the -French. I suppose that all men of English blood in America, Europe, or -Asia have a secret feeling of joy that they are not French natives. Mr. -Coleridge is said to have given public thanks to God, at the close of a -lecture, that he had defended him from being able to utter a single -sentence in the French language. I have found that Englishmen have such -a good opinion of England, that the ordinary phrases, in all good -society, of postponing or disparaging one's own things in talking with a -stranger, are seriously mistaken by them for an insuppressible homage to -the merits of their nation; and the New-Yorker or Pennsylvanian who -modestly laments the disadvantage of a new country, log-huts, and -savages, is surprised by the instant and unfeigned commiseration of the -whole company, who plainly account all the world out of England a heap -of rubbish. - - [11] Printed by the Camden Society. - -The same insular limitation pinches his foreign politics. He sticks to -his traditions and usages, and, so help him God! he will force his -island by-laws down the throat of great countries, like India, China, -Canada, Australia, and not only so, but impose Wapping on the Congress -of Vienna, and trample down all nationalities with his taxed boots. -Lord Chatham goes for liberty, and no taxation without -representation;--for that is British law; but not a hobnail shall they -dare make in America, but buy their nails in England,--for that also is -British law; and the fact that British commerce was to be re-created by -the independence of America, took them all by surprise. - -In short, I am afraid that English nature is so rank and aggressive as -to be a little incompatible with every other. The world is not wide -enough for two. - -But, beyond this nationality, it must be admitted, the island offers a -daily worship to the old Norse god Brage, celebrated among our -Scandinavian forefathers, for his eloquence and majestic air. The -English have a steady courage, that fits them for great attempts and -endurance: they have also a petty courage, through which every man -delights in showing himself for what he is, and in doing what he can; so -that, in all companies, each of them has too good an opinion of himself -to imitate anybody. He hides no defect of his form, features, dress, -connection, or birthplace, for he thinks every circumstance belonging to -him comes recommended to you. If one of them have a bald, or a red, or -a green head, or bow legs, or a scar, or mark, or a paunch, or a -squeaking or a raven voice, he has persuaded himself that there is -something modish and becoming in it, and that it sits well on him. - -But nature makes nothing in vain, and this little superfluity of -self-regard in the English brain is one of the secrets of their power -and history. It sets every man on being and doing what he really is and -can. It takes away a dodging, skulking, secondary air, and encourages a -frank and manly bearing, so that each man makes the most of himself, and -loses no opportunity for want of pushing. A man's personal defects will -commonly have with the rest of the world precisely that importance which -they have to himself. If he makes light of them, so will other men. We -all find in these a convenient meter of character, since a little man -would be ruined by the vexation. I remember a shrewd politician, in one -of our Western cities, told me "that he had known several successful -statesmen made by their foible." And another, an ex-governor of -Illinois, said to me: "If a man knew anything, he would sit in a corner -and be modest; but he is such an ignorant peacock, that he goes bustling -up and down, and hits on extraordinary discoveries." - -There is also this benefit in brag, that the speaker is unconsciously -expressing his own ideal. Humor him by all means, draw it all out, and -hold him to it. Their culture generally enables the travelled English -to avoid any ridiculous extremes of this self-pleasing, and to give it -an agreeable air. Then the natural disposition is fostered by the -respect which they find entertained in the world for English ability. -It was said of Louis XIV., that his gait and air were becoming enough in -so great a monarch, yet would have been ridiculous in another man; so -the prestige of the English name warrants a certain confident bearing, -which a Frenchman or Belgian could not carry. At all events, they feel -themselves at liberty to assume the most extraordinary tone on the -subject of English merits. - -An English lady on the Rhine hearing a German speaking of her party as -foreigners, exclaimed, "No, we are not foreigners; we are English: it is -you that are foreigners." They tell you daily, in London, the story of -the Frenchman and Englishman who quarrelled. Both were unwilling to -fight, but their companions put them up to it; at last, it was agreed, -that they should fight alone, in the dark, and with pistols: the candles -were put out, and the Englishman, to make sure not to hit anybody, fired -up the chimney, and brought down the Frenchman. They have no curiosity -about foreigners, and answer any information you may volunteer, with -"Oh! Oh!" until the informant makes up his mind, that they shall die in -their ignorance, for any help he will offer. There are really no limits -to this conceit, though brighter men among them make painful efforts to -be candid. - -The habit of brag runs through all classes, from the _Times_ newspaper -through politicians and poets, through Wordsworth, Carlyle, Mill, and -Sydney Smith, down to the boys of Eton. In the gravest treatise on -political economy, in a philosophical essay, in books of science, one is -surprised by the most innocent exhibition of unflinching nationality. -In a tract on Corn, a most amiable and accomplished gentleman writes -thus: "Though Britain, according to Bishop Berkeley's idea, were -surrounded by a wall of brass ten thousand cubits in height, still, she -would as far excel the rest of the globe in riches, as she now does, -both in this secondary quality, and in the more important ones of -freedom, virtue, and science."[12] - - [12] William Spence. - -The English dislike the American structure of society, whilst yet trade, -mills, public education, and chartism are doing what they can to create -in England the same social condition. America is the paradise of the -economists; is the favorable exception invariably quoted to the rules of -ruin; but when he speaks directly of the Americans, the islander forgets -his philosophy, and remembers his disparaging anecdotes. - -But this childish patriotism costs something, like all narrowness. The -English sway of their colonies has no root of kindness. They govern by -their arts and ability; they are more just than kind; and, whenever an -abatement of their power is felt, they have not conciliated the -affection on which to rely. - -Coarse local distinctions, as those of nation, province, or town, are -useful in the absence of real ones; but we must not insist on these -accidental lines. Individual traits are always triumphing over national -ones. There is no fence in metaphysics discriminating Greek, or -English, or Spanish science. AEsop and Montaigne, Cervantes and Saadi, -are men of the world; and to wave our own flag at the dinner-table or in -the University, is to carry the boisterous dulness of a fire-club into a -polite circle. Nature and destiny are always on the watch for our -follies. Nature trips us up when we strut; and there are curious -examples in history on this very point of national pride. - -George of Cappadocia, born at Epiphania in Cilicia, was a low parasite, -who got a lucrative contract to supply the army with bacon. A rogue and -informer, he got rich, and was forced to run from justice. He saved his -money, embraced Arianism, collected a library, and got promoted by a -faction to the episcopal throne of Alexandria. When Julian came, A.D. -301, George was dragged to prison; the prison was burst open by the mob, -and George was lynched, as he deserved. And this precious knave became, -in good time, Saint George of England, patron of chivalry, emblem of -victory and civility, and the pride of the best blood of the modern -world. - -Strange, that the solid truth-speaking Briton should derive from an -impostor. Strange, that the New World should have no better luck,--that -broad America must wear the name of a thief. Amerigo Vespucci, the -pickle-dealer at Seville, who went out, in 1499, a subaltern with -Hojeda, and whose highest naval rank was boatswain's mate in an -expedition that never sailed, managed in this lying world to supplant -Columbus, and baptize half the earth with his own dishonest name. Thus -nobody can throw stones. We are equally badly off in our founders; and -the false pickle-dealer is an offset to the false bacon-seller. - - - - -CHAPTER X.--WEALTH. - - -There is no country in which so absolute a homage is paid to wealth. In -America, there is a touch of shame when a man exhibits the evidences of -large property, as if, after all, it needed apology. But the Englishman -has pure pride in his wealth, and esteems it a final certificate. A -coarse logic rules throughout all English souls;--if you have merit, can -you not show it by your good clothes, and coach, and horses? How can a -man be a gentleman without a pipe of wine? Haydon says, "There is a -fierce resolution to make every man live according to the means he -possesses." There is a mixture of religion in it. They are under the -Jewish law, and read with sonorous emphasis that their days shall be -long in the land, they shall have sous and daughters, flocks and herds, -wine and oil. In exact proportion is the reproach of poverty. They do -not wish to be represented except by opulent men. An Englishman who has -lost his fortune is said to have died of a broken heart. The last term -of insult is, "a beggar." Nelson said, "The want of fortune is a crime -which I can never get over." Sydney Smith said, "Poverty is infamous in -England." And one of their recent writers speaks, in reference to a -private and scholastic life, of "the grave moral deterioration which -follows an empty exchequer." You shall find this sentiment, if not so -frankly put, yet deeply implied, in the novels and romances of the -present century, and not only in these, but in biography, and in the -votes of public assemblies, in the tone of the preaching, and in the -table-talk. - -I was lately turning over Wood's _Athenae Oxonienses_, and looking -naturally for another standard in a chronicle of the scholars of Oxford -for two hundred years. But I found the two disgraces in that, as in -most English books, are, first, disloyalty to Church and State, and, -second, to be born poor, or to come to poverty. A natural fruit of -England is the brutal political economy. Malthus finds no cover laid at -nature's table for the laborer's son. In 1809, the majority in -Parliament expressed itself by the language of Mr. Fuller in the House -of Commons, "If you do not like the country, damn you, you can leave -it." When Sir S. Romilly proposed his bill forbidding parish officers -to bind children apprentices at a greater distance than forty miles from -their home, Peel opposed, and Mr. Wortley said, "though, in the higher -ranks, to cultivate family affections was a good thing, 't was not so -among the lower orders. Better take them away from those who might -deprave them. And it was highly injurious to trade to stop binding to -manufacturers, as it must raise the price of labor, and of manufactured -goods." - -The respect for truth of facts in England is equalled only by the -respect for wealth. It is at once the pride of art of the Saxon, as he -is a wealth-maker, and his passion for independence. The Englishman -believes that every man must take care of himself, and has himself to -thank, if he do not mend his condition. To pay their debts is their -national point of honor. From the Exchequer and the East India House to -the huckster's shop, everything prospers, because it is solvent. The -British armies are solvent, and pay for what they take. The British -empire is solvent; for, in spite of the huge national debt, the -valuation mounts. During the war from 1789 to 1815, whilst they -complained that they were taxed within an inch of their lives, and, by -dint of enormous taxes, were subsidizing all the continent against -France, the English were growing rich every year faster than any people -ever grew before. It is their maxim, that the weight of taxes must be -calculated, not by what is taken, but by what is left. Solvency is in -the ideas and mechanism of an Englishman. The Crystal Palace is not -considered honest until it pays; no matter how much convenience, beauty, -or _eclat_, it must be self-supporting. They are contented with slower -steamers, as long as they know that swifter boats lose money. They -proceed logically by the double method of labor and thrift. Every -household exhibits an exact economy, and nothing of that uncalculated -headlong expenditure which families use in America. If they cannot pay, -they do not buy; for they have no presumption of better fortunes next -year, as our people have; and they say without shame, I cannot afford -it. Gentlemen do not hesitate to ride in the second-class cars, or in -the second cabin. An economist, or a man who can proportion his means -and his ambition, or bring the year round with expenditure which -expresses his character, without embarrassing one day of his future, is -already a master of life, and a freeman. Lord Burleigh writes to his -son, "that one ought never to devote more than two thirds of his income -to the ordinary expenses of life, since the extraordinary will be -certain to absorb the other third." - -The ambition to create value evokes every kind of ability, government -becomes a manufacturing corporation, and every house a mill. The -headlong bias to utility will let no talent lie in a napkin,--if -possible, will teach spiders to weave silk stockings. An Englishman, -while he eats and drinks no more, or not much more than another man, -labors three times as many hours in the course of a year, as an other -European; or, his life as a workman is three lives. He works fast. -Everything in England is at a quick pace. They have reinforced their -own productivity, by the creation of that marvellous machinery which -differences this age from any other age. - -'T is a curious chapter in modern history, the growth of the -machine-shop. Six hundred years ago, Roger Bacon explained the -precession of the equinoxes, the consequent necessity of the reform of -the calendar; measured the length of the year, invented gunpowder; and -announced (as if looking from his lofty cell, over five centuries, into -ours) "that machines can be constructed to drive ships more rapidly than -a whole galley of rowers could do; nor would they need anything but a -pilot to steer them. Carriages also might be constructed to move with -an incredible speed, without the aid of any animal. Finally, it would -not be impossible to make machines, which, by means of a suit of wings, -should fly in the air in the manner of birds." But the secret slept -with Bacon. The six hundred years have not yet fulfilled his words. -Two centuries ago, the sawing of timber was done by hand; the -carriage-wheels ran on wooden axles; the land was tilled by wooden -ploughs. And it was to little purpose that they had pit-coal or that -looms were improved, unless Watt and Stephenson had taught them to work -force-pumps and power-looms by steam. The great strides were all taken -within the last hundred years. The life of Sir Robert Peel, in his day -the model Englishman, very properly has, for a frontispiece, a drawing -of the spinning-jenny, which wove the web of his fortunes. Hargreaves -invented the spinning-jenny, and died in a workhouse. Arkwright -improved the invention; and the machine dispensed with the work of -ninety-nine men: that is, one spinner could do as much work as one -hundred had done before. The loom was improved further. But the men -would sometimes strike for wages, and combine against the masters, and, -about 1829-30, much fear was felt, lest the trade would be drawn away by -these interruptions, and the emigration of the spinners, to Belgium and -the United States. Iron and steel are very obedient. Whether it were -not possible to make a spinner that would not rebel, nor mutter, nor -scowl, nor strike for wages, nor emigrate? At the solicitation of the -masters, after a mob and riot at Staley Bridge, Mr. Roberts of -Manchester undertook to create this peaceful fellow, instead of the -quarrelsome fellow God had made. After a few trials, he succeeded, and, -in 1830, procured a patent for his self-acting mule; a creation, the -delight of mill-owners, and "destined," they said, "to restore order -among the industrious classes"; a machine requiring only a child's hand -to piece the broken yarns. As Arkwright had destroyed domestic -spinning, so Roberts destroyed the factory spinner. The power of -machinery in Great Britain, in mills, has been computed to be equal to -600,000,000 men, one man being able by the aid of steam to do the work -which required two hundred and fifty men to accomplish fifty years ago. -The production has been commensurate. England already had this -laborious race, rich soil, water, wood, coal, iron, and favorable -climate. Eight hundred years ago, commerce had made it rich, and it was -recorded, "England is the richest of all the northern nations." The -Norman historians recite, that "in 1067, William carried with him into -Normandy, from England, more gold and silver than had ever before been -seen in Gaul." But when, to this labor and trade and these native -resources was added this goblin of steam, with his myriad arms, never -tired, working night and day everlastingly, the amassing of property has -run out of all figures. It makes the motor of the last ninety years. -The steam-pipe has added to her population and wealth the equivalent of -four or five Englands. Forty thousand ships are entered in Lloyd's -lists. The yield of wheat has gone on from 2,000,000 quarters in the -time of the Stuarts, to 13,000,000 in 1854. A thousand million pounds -sterling are said to compose the floating money of commerce. In 1848, -Lord John Russell stated that the people of this country had laid out -L300,000,000 of capital in railways, in the last four years. But a -better measure than these sounding figures is the estimate, that there -is wealth enough in England to support the entire population in idleness -for one year. - -The wise, versatile, all-giving machinery makes chisels, roads, -locomotives, telegraphs. Whitworth divides a bar to a millionth of an -inch. Steam twines huge cannon into wreaths, as easily as it braids -straw, and vies with the volcanic forces which twisted the strata. It -can clothe shingle mountains with ship-oaks, make sword-blades that will -cut gun-barrels in two. In Egypt, it can plant forests, and bring rain -after three thousand years. Already it is ruddering the balloon, and -the next war will be fought in the air. But another machine more potent -in England than steam is the Bank. - -It votes an issue of bills, population is stimulated, and cities rise; -it refuses loans, and emigration empties the country; trade sinks; -revolutions break out; kings are dethroned. By these new agents our -social system is moulded. By dint of steam and of money, war and -commerce are changed. Nations have lost their old omnipotence; the -patriotic tie does not hold. Nations are getting obsolete, we go and -live where we will. Steam has enabled men to choose what law they will -live under. Money makes place for them. The telegraph is a limp-band -that will hold the Fenris-wolf of war. For now, that a telegraph line -runs through France and Europe, from London, every message it transmits -makes stronger by one thread the band which war will have to cut. - -The introduction of these elements gives new resources to existing -proprietors. A sporting duke may fancy that the state depends on the -House of Lords, but the engineer sees, that every stroke of the -steam-piston gives value to the duke's land, fills it with tenants; -doubles, quadruples, centuples the duke's capital, and creates new -measures and new necessities for the culture of his children. Of -course, it draws the nobility into the competition as stockholders in -the mine, the canal, the railway, in the application of steam to -agriculture, and sometimes into trade. But it also introduces large -classes into the same competition; the old energy of the Norse race arms -itself with these magnificent powers; new men prove an overmatch for the -land-owner, and the mill buys out the castle. Scandinavian Thor, who -once forged his bolts in icy Hecla, and built galleys by lonely fiords, -in England, has advanced with the times, has shorn his beard, enters -Parliament, sits down at a desk in the India House, and lends Miollnir -to Birmingham for a steam-hammer. - -The creation of wealth in England in the last ninety years is a main -fact in modern history. The wealth of London determines prices all over -the globe. All things precious, or useful, or amusing, or intoxicating, -are sucked into this commerce and floated to London. Some English -private fortunes reach, and some exceed, a million of dollars a year. A -hundred thousand palaces adorn the island. All that can feed the senses -and passions, all that can succor the talent, or arm the hands of the -intelligent middle class who never spare in what they buy for their own -consumption; all that can aid science, gratify taste, or soothe comfort, -is in open market. Whatever is excellent and beautiful in civil, rural, -or ecclesiastic architecture; in fountain, garden, or grounds; the -English noble crosses sea and land to see and to copy at home. The -taste and science of thirty peaceful generations; the gardens which -Evelyn planted; the temples and pleasure-houses which Inigo Jones and -Christopher Wren built; the wood that Gibbons carved; the taste of -foreign and domestic artists, Shenstone, Pope, Brown, Loudon, Paxton, -are in the vast auction, and the hereditary principle heaps on the owner -of to-day the benefit of ages of owners. The present possessors are to -the full as absolute as any of their fathers, in choosing and procuring -what they like. This comfort and splendor, the breadth of lake and -mountain, tillage, pasture, and park, sumptuous castle and modern -villa,--all consist with perfect order. They have no revolutions; no -horse-guards dictating to the crown; no Parisian _poissardes_ and -barricades; no mob; but drowsy habitude, daily dress-dinners, wine, and -ale, and beer, and gin, and sleep. - -With this power of creation, and this passion for independence, property -has reached an ideal perfection. It is felt and treated as the national -life-blood. The laws are framed to give property the securest possible -basis, and the provisions to lock and transmit it have exercised the -cunningest heads in a profession which never admits a fool. The rights -of property nothing but felony and treason can override. The house is a -castle which the king cannot enter. The Bank is a strong-box to which -the king has no key. Whatever surly sweetness possession can give, is -tasted in England to the dregs. Vested rights are awful things, and -absolute possession gives the smallest freeholder identity of interest -with the duke. High stone fences and padlocked garden gates announce -the absolute will of the owner to be alone. Every whim of exaggerated -egotism is put into stone and iron, into silver and gold, with costly -deliberation and detail. - -An Englishman hears that the Queen Dowager wishes to establish some -claim to put her park paling a rod forward into his grounds, so as to -get a coachway, and save her a mile to the avenue. Instantly he -transforms his paling into stone masonry, solid as the walls of Cuma, -and all Europe cannot prevail on him to sell or compound for an inch of -the land. They delight in a freak as the proof of their sovereign -freedom. Sir Edward Boynton, at Spic Park, at Cadenham, on a precipice -of incomparable prospect, built a house like a long barn, which had not -a window on the prospect side. Strawberry Hill of Horace Walpole, -Fonthill Abbey of Mr. Beckford, were freaks; and Newstead Abbey became -one in the hands of Lord Byron. - -But the proudest result of this creation has been the great and refined -forces it has put at the disposal of the private citizen. In the social -world, an Englishman to-day has the best lot. He is a king in a plain -coat. He goes with the most powerful protection, keeps the best -company, is armed by the best education, is seconded by wealth; and his -English name and accidents are like a flourish of trumpets announcing -him. This, with his quiet style of manners, gives him the power of a -sovereign, without the inconveniences which belong to that rank. I much -prefer the condition of an English gentleman of the better class, to -that of any potentate in Europe,--whether for travel, or for opportunity -of society, or for access to means of science or study, or for mere -comfort and easy healthy relation to people at home. - -Such, as we have seen, is the wealth of England, a mighty mass, and made -good in whatever details we care to explore. The cause and spring of it -is the wealth of temperament in the people. The wonder of Britain is -this plenteous nature. Her worthies are ever surrounded by as good men -as themselves; each is a captain a hundred strong, and that wealth of -men is represented again in the faculty of each individual,--that he has -waste strength, power to spare. The English are so rich, and seem to -have established a taproot in the bowels of the planet, because they are -constitutionally fertile and creative. - -But a man must keep an eye on his servants, if he would not have them -rule him. Man is a shrewd inventor, and is ever taking the hint of a -new machine from his own structure, adapting some secret of his own -anatomy in iron, wood, and leather, to some required function in the -work of the world. But it is found that the machine unmans the user. -What he gains in making cloth, he loses in general power. There should -be temperance in making cloth, as well as in eating. A man should not -be a silkworm; nor a nation a tent of caterpillars. The robust rural -Saxon degenerates in the mills to the Leicester stockinger, to the -imbecile Manchester spinner,--far on the way to be spiders and needles. -The incessant repetition of the same hand-work dwarfs the man, robs him -of his strength, wit, and versatility, to make a pin-polisher, a -buckle-maker, or any other specialty; and presently, in a change of -industry, whole towns are sacrificed like ant-hills, when, the fashion -of shoestrings supersedes buckles, when cotton takes the place of linen, -or railways of turnpikes, or when commons are enclosed by landlords. -Then society is admonished of the mischief of the division of labor, and -that the best political economy is care and culture of men; for, in -these crises, all are ruined except such as are proper individuals, -capable of thought, and of new choice and the application of their -talent to new labor. Then again come in new calamities. England is -aghast at the disclosure of her fraud in the adulteration of food, of -drugs, and of almost every fabric in her mills and shops; finding that -milk will not nourish, nor sugar sweeten, nor bread satisfy, nor pepper -bite the tongue, nor glue stick. In true England all is false and -forged. This too is the reaction of machinery, but of the larger -machinery of commerce. 'T is not, I suppose, want of probity, so much -as the tyranny of trade, which necessitates a perpetual competition of -underselling, and that again a perpetual deterioration of the fabric. - -The machinery has proved, like the balloon, unmanageable, and flies away -with the aeronaut. Steam from the first hissed and screamed to warn -him; it was dreadful with its explosion, and crushed the engineer. The -machinist has wrought and watched, engineers and firemen without number -have been sacrificed in learning to tame and guide the monster. But -harder still it has proved to resist and rule the dragon Money, with his -paper wings. Chancellors and Boards of Trade, Pitt, Peel, and Robinson, -and their Parliaments, and their whole generation, adopted false -principles, and went to their graves in the belief that they were -enriching the country which they were impoverishing. They congratulated -each other on ruinous expedients. It is rare to find a merchant who -knows why a crisis occurs in trade, why prices rise or fall, or who -knows the mischief of paper-money. In the culmination of national -prosperity, in the annexation of countries; building of ships, depots, -towns; in the influx of tons of gold and silver; amid the chuckle of -chancellors and financiers, it was found that bread rose to famine -prices, that the yeoman was forced to sell his cow and pig, his tools, -and his acre of land; and the dreadful barometer of the poor-rates was -touching the point of ruin. The poor-rate was sucking in the solvent -classes, and forcing an exodus of farmers and mechanics. What befalls -from the violence of financial crises, befalls daily in the violence of -artificial legislation. - - -Such a wealth has England earned, ever new, bounteous, and augmenting. -But the question recurs, does she take the step beyond, namely, to the -wise use, in view of the supreme wealth of nations? We estimate the -wisdom of nations by seeing what they did with their surplus capital. -And, in view of these injuries, some compensation has been attempted in -England. A part of the money earned returns to the brain to buy -schools, libraries, bishops, astronomers, chemists, and artists with; -and a part to repair the wrongs of this intemperate weaving, by -hospitals, savings-banks, Mechanics' Institutes, public grounds, and -other charities and amenities. But the antidotes are frightfully -inadequate, and the evil requires a deeper cure, which time and a -simpler social organization must supply. At present, she does not rule -her wealth. She is simply a good England, but no divinity, or wise and -instructed soul. She too is in the stream of fate, one victim more in a -common catastrophe. - -But being in the fault, she has the misfortune of greatness to be held -as the chief offender. England must be held responsible for the -despotism of expense. Her prosperity, the splendor which so much -manhood and talent and perseverance has thrown upon vulgar aims, is the -very argument of materialism. Her success strengthens the hands of base -wealth. Who can propose to youth poverty and wisdom, when mean gain has -arrived at the conquest of letters and arts; when English success has -grown out of the very renunciation of principles, and the dedication to -outsides. A civility of trifles, of money and expense, an erudition of -sensation takes place, and the putting as many impediments as we can, -between the man and his objects. Hardly the bravest among them have the -manliness to resist it successfully. Hence, it has come, that not the -aims of a manly life, but the means of meeting a certain ponderous -expense, is that which is to be considered by a youth in England, -emerging from his minority. A large family is reckoned a misfortune. -And it is a consolation in the death of the young, that a source of -expense is closed. - - - - -CHAPTER XI.--ARISTOCRACY. - - -The feudal character of the English state, now that it is getting -obsolete, glares a little, in contrast with the democratic tendencies. -The inequality of power and property shocks republican nerves. Palaces, -halls, villas, walled parks, all over England, rival the splendor of -royal seats. Many of the halls, like Haddon, or Kedleston, are -beautiful desolations. The proprietor never saw them, or never lived in -them. Primogeniture built these sumptuous piles, and, I suppose, it is -the sentiment of every traveller, as it was mine, 'T was well to come -ere these were gone. Primogeniture is a cardinal rule of English -property and institutions. Laws, customs, manners, the very persons and -faces, affirm it. - -The frame of society is aristocratic, the taste of the people is loyal. -The estates, names, and manners of the nobles flatter the fancy of the -people, and conciliate the necessary support. In spite of broken faith, -stolen charters, and the devastation of society by the profligacy of the -court, we take sides as we read for the loyal England and King Charles's -"return to his right" with his Cavaliers,--knowing what a heartless -trifler he is, and what a crew of God-forsaken robbers they are. The -people of England knew as much. But the fair idea of a settled -government connecting itself with heraldic names, with the written and -oral history of Europe, and, at last, with the Hebrew religion, and the -oldest traditions of the world, was too pleasing a vision to be -shattered by a few offensive realities, and the politics of shoemakers -and costermongers. The hopes of the commoners take the same direction -with the interest of the patricians. Every man who becomes rich buys -land, and does what he can to fortify the nobility, into which he hopes -to rise. The Anglican clergy are identified with the aristocracy. Time -and law have made the joining and moulding perfect in every part. The -Cathedrals, the Universities, the national music, the popular romances, -conspire to uphold the heraldry, which the current politics of the day -are sapping. The taste of the people is conservative. They are proud -of the castles, and of the language and symbol of chivalry. Even the -word "lord" is the luckiest style that is used in any language to -designate a patrician. The superior education and manners of the nobles -recommend them to the country. - -The Norwegian pirate got what he could, and held it for his eldest son. -The Norman noble, who was the Norwegian pirate baptized, did likewise. -There was this advantage of Western over Oriental nobility, that this -was recruited from below. English history is aristocracy with the doors -open. Who has courage and faculty, let him come in. Of course, the -terms of admission to this club are hard and high. The selfishness of -the nobles comes in aid of the interest of the nation to require signal -merit. Piracy and war gave place to trade, politics, and letters; the -war-lord to the law-lord; the law-lord to the merchant and the -mill-owner; but the privilege was kept, whilst the means of obtaining it -were changed. - -The foundations of these families lie deep in Norwegian exploits by sea, -and Saxon sturdiness on land. All nobility in its beginnings was -somebody's natural superiority. The things these English have done were -not done without peril of life, nor without wisdom and conduct; and the -first hands, it may be presumed, were often challenged to show their -right to their honors, or yield them to better men. "He that will be a -head, let him be a bridge," said the Welsh chief Benegridran, when he -carried all his men over the river on his back. "He shall have the -book," said the mother of Alfred, "who can read it"; and Alfred won it -by that title: and I make no doubt that feudal tenure was no sinecure, -but baron, knight, and tenant often had their memories refreshed, in -regard to the service by which they held their lands. The De Veres, -Bohuns, Mowbrays, and Plantagenets were not addicted to contemplation. -The Middle Age adorned itself with proofs of manhood and devotion. Of -Richard Beauchamp, Earl of Warwick, the Emperor told Henry V. that no -Christian king had such another knight for wisdom, nurture, and manhood, -and caused him to be named, "Father of curtesie." "Our success in -France," says the historian, "lived and died with him."[13] - - [13] Fuller's Worthies, II. p. 472. - -The war-lord earned his honors, and no donation of land was large, as -long as it brought the duty of protecting it, hour by hour, against a -terrible enemy. In France and in England, the nobles were, down to a -late day, born and bred to war; and the duel, which in peace still held -them to the risks of war, diminished the envy that, in trading and -studious nations, would else have pried into their title. They were -looked on as men who played high for a great stake. - -Great estates are not sinecures, if they are to be kept great. A -creative economy is the fuel of magnificence. In the same line of -Warwick, the successor next but one to Beauchamp was the stout earl of -Henry VI. and Edward IV. Few esteemed themselves in the mode, whose -heads were not adorned with the black ragged staff, his badge. At his -house in London, six oxen were daily eaten at a breakfast; and every -tavern was full of his meat; and who had any acquaintance in his family, -should have as much boiled and roast as he could carry on a long dagger. - -The new age brings new qualities into request, the virtues of pirates -gave way to those of planters, merchants, senators, and scholars. -Comity, social talent, and fine manners, no doubt, have had their part -also. I have met somewhere with a historiette, which, whether more or -less true in its particulars, carries a general truth. "How came the -Duke of Bedford by his great landed estates? His ancestor having -travelled on the continent, a lively, pleasant man, became the companion -of a foreign prince wrecked on the Dorsetshire coast, where Mr. Russell -lived. The prince recommended him to Henry VIII., who, liking his -company, gave him a large share of the plundered church lands." - -The pretence is that the noble is of unbroken descent from the Norman, -and has never worked for eight hundred years. But the fact is -otherwise. Where is Bohun? where is De Vere? The lawyer, the farmer, -the silk-mercer, lies _perdu_ under the coronet, and winks to the -antiquary to say nothing; especially skilful lawyers, nobody's sons, who -did some piece of work at a nice moment for government, and were -rewarded with ermine. - -The national tastes of the English do not lead them to the life of the -courtier, but to secure the comfort and independence of their homes. -The aristocracy are marked by their predilection for country-life. They -are called the county-families. They have often no residence in London, -and only go thither for a short time, during the season, to see the -opera; but they concentrate the love and labor of many generations on -the building, planting, and decoration of their homesteads. Some of -them are too old and too proud to wear titles, or, as Sheridan said of -Coke, "disdain to hide their head in a coronet"; and some curious -examples are cited to show the stability of English families. Their -proverb is, that, fifty miles from London, a family will last a hundred -years; at a hundred miles, two hundred years; and so on; but I doubt -that steam, the enemy of time, as well as of space, will disturb these -ancient rules. Sir Henry Wotton says of the first Duke of Buckingham: -"He was born at Brookeby in Leicestershire, where his ancestors had -chiefly continued about the space of four hundred years, rather without -obscurity, than with any great lustre."[14] Wraxall says, that, in -1781, Lord Surrey, afterwards Duke of Norfolk, told him, that when the -year 1783 should arrive, he meant to give a grand festival to all the -descendants of the body of Jockey of Norfolk, to mark the day when the -dukedom should have remained three hundred years in their house, since -its creation by Richard III. Pepys tells us, in writing of an Earl -Oxford, in 1666, that the honor had now remained in that name and blood -six hundred years. - - [14] Reliquiae Wottonianae, p. 208. - -This long descent of families and this cleaving through ages to the same -spot of ground captivates the imagination. It has too a connection with -the names of the towns and districts of the country. - -The names are excellent,--an atmosphere of legendary melody spread over -the land. Older than all epics and histories, which clothe a nation, -this undershirt sits close to the body. What history too, and what -stores of primitive and savage observation, it infolds! Cambridge is -the bridge of the Cam; Sheffield, the field of the river Sheaf; -Leicester, the _castra_ or camp of the Lear or Leir (now Soar); -Rochdale, of the Roch; Exeter or Excester, the _castra_ of the Ex; -Exmouth, Dartmouth, Sidmouth, Teignmouth, the mouths of the Ex, Dart, -Sid, and Teign Rivers. Waltham is strong town; Radcliffe is red cliff; -and so on;--a sincerity and use in naming very striking to an American, -whose country is whitewashed all over by unmeaning names, the cast-off -clothes of the country from which its emigrants came; or, named at a -pinch from a psalm-tune. But the English are those "barbarians" of -Jamblichus, who "are stable in their manners, and firmly continue to -employ the same words, which also are dear to the gods." - -'T is an old sneer, that the Irish peerage drew their names from -playbooks. The English lords do not call their lands after their own -names, but call themselves after their lands; as if the man represented -the country that bred him; and they rightly wear the token of the glebe -that gave them birth; suggesting that the tie is not cut, but that there -in London,--the crags of Argyle, the kail of Cornwall, the downs of -Devon, the iron of Wales, the clays of Stafford, are neither forgetting -nor forgotten, but know the man who was born by them, and who, like the -long line of his fathers, has carried that crag, that shore, dale, fen, -or woodland in his blood and manners. It has, too, the advantage of -suggesting responsibleness. A susceptible man could not wear a name -which represented in a strict sense a city or a county of England, -without hearing in it a challenge to duty and honor. - -The predilection of the patricians for residence in the country, -combined with the degree of liberty possessed by the peasant, makes the -safety of the English hall. Mirabeau wrote prophetically from England, -in 1784: "If revolution break out in France, I tremble for the -aristocracy: their chaaeaux will be reduced to ashes, and their blood -spilt in torrents. The English tenant would defend his lord to the last -extremity." The English go to their estates for grandeur. The French -live at court, and exile themselves to their estates for economy. As -they do not mean to live with their tenants, they do not conciliate -them, but wring from them the last sous. Evelyn writes from Blois, in -1644: "The wolves are here in such numbers, that they often come and -take children out of the streets; yet will not the Duke, who is -sovereign here, permit them to be destroyed." - -In evidence of the wealth amassed by ancient families, the traveller is -shown the palaces in Piccadilly, Burlington House, Devonshire House, -Lansdowne House in Berkshire Square, and, lower down in the city, a few -noble houses which still withstand in all their amplitude the -encroachment of streets. The Duke of Bedford includes or included a -mile square in the heart of London, where the British Museum, once -Montague House, now stands, and the land occupied by Woburn Square, -Bedford Square, Russell Square. The Marquis of Westminster built within -a few years the series of squares called Belgravia. Stafford House is -the noblest palace in London. Northumberland House holds its place by -Charing Cross. Chesterfield House remains in Audley Street. Sion House -and Holland House are in the suburbs. But most of the historical houses -are masked or lost in the modern uses to which trade or charity has -converted them. A multitude of town palaces contain inestimable -galleries of art. - -In the country, the size of private estates is more impressive. From -Barnard Castle I rode on the highway twenty-three miles from High Force, -a fall of the Tees, towards Darlington, past Raby Castle, through the -estate of the Duke of Cleveland. The Marquis of Breadalbane rides out -of his house a hundred miles in a straight line to the sea, on his own -property. The Duke of Sutherland owns the county of Sutherland, -stretching across Scotland from sea to sea. The Duke of Devonshire, -besides his other estates, owns 96,000 acres in the county of Derby. -The Duke of Richmond has 40,000 acres at Goodwood, and 300,000 at Gordon -Castle. The Duke of Norfolk's park in Sussex is fifteen miles in -circuit. An agriculturist bought lately the island of Lewes, in -Hebrides, containing 500,000 acres. The possessions of the Earl of -Lonsdale gave him eight seats in Parliament. This is the Heptarchy -again; and before the Reform of 1832, one hundred and fifty-four persons -sent three hundred and seven members to Parliament. The borough-mongers -governed England. - -These large domains are growing larger. The great estates are absorbing -the small freeholds. In 1786, the soil of England was owned by 250,000 -corporations and proprietors; and, in 1822, by 32,000. These broad -estates find room in this narrow island. All over England, scattered at -short intervals among ship-yards, mills, mines, and forges, are the -paradises of the nobles, where the livelong repose and refinement are -heightened by the contrast with the roar of industry and necessity, out -of which you have stepped aside. - - -I was surprised to observe the very small attendance usually in the -House of Lords. Out of 573 peers, on ordinary days, only twenty or -thirty. Where are they? I asked. "At home on their estates, devoured -by _ennui_, or in the Alps, or up the Rhine, in the Harz Mountains, or -in Egypt, or in India, on the Ghauts." But, with such interests at -stake, how can these men afford to neglect them? "O," replied my -friend, "why should they work for themselves, when every man in England -works for them, and will suffer before they come to harm?" The hardest -radical instantly uncovers, and changes his tone to a lord. It was -remarked on the 10th April, 1848 (the day of the Chartist -demonstration), that the upper classes were, for the first time, -actively interesting themselves in their own defence, and men of rank -were sworn special constables, with the rest. "Besides, why need they -sit out the debate? Has not the Duke of Wellington, at this moment, -their proxies,--the proxies of fifty peers in his pocket, to vote for -them, if there be an emergency?" - -It is however true, that the existence of the House of Peers as a branch -of the government entitles them to fill half the Cabinet; and their -weight of property and station gives them a virtual nomination of the -other half; whilst they have their share in the subordinate offices, as -a school of training. This monopoly of political power has given them -their intellectual and social eminence in Europe. A few law lords and a -few political lords take the brunt of public business. In the army, the -nobility fill a large part of the high commissions, and give to these a -tone of expense and splendor, and also of exclusiveness. They have -borne their full share of duty and danger in this service; and there are -few noble families which have not paid in some of their members, the -debt of life or limb, in the sacrifices of the Russian war. For the -rest, the nobility have the lead in matters of state, and of expense; in -questions of taste, in social usages, in convivial and domestic -hospitalities. In general, all that is required of them is to sit -securely, to preside at public meetings, to countenance charities, and -to give the example of that decorum so dear to the British heart. - -If one asks, in the critical spirit of the day, what service this class -have rendered?--uses appear, or they would have perished long ago. Some -of these are easily enumerated, others more subtle make a part of -unconscious history. Their institution is one step in the progress of -society. For a race yields a nobility in some form, however we name the -lords, as surely as it yields women. - -The English nobles are high-spirited, active, educated men, born to -wealth and power, who have run through every country, and kept in every -country the best company, have seen every secret of art and nature, and, -when men of any ability or ambition, have been consulted in the conduct -of every important action. You cannot wield great agencies without -lending yourself to them, and when it happens that the spirit of the -earl meets his rank and duties, we have the best examples of behavior. -Power of any kind readily appears in the manners; and beneficent power, -_le talent de bien faire_, gives a majesty which cannot be concealed or -resisted. - -These people seem to gain as much as they lose by their position. They -survey society, as from the top of St. Paul's, and if they never hear -plain truth from men, they see the best of everything, in every kind, -and they see things so grouped and amassed as to infer easily the sum -and genius, instead of tedious particularities. Their good behavior -deserves all its fame, and they have that simplicity, and that air of -repose, which are the finest ornament of greatness. - -The upper classes have only birth, say the people here, and not -thoughts. Yes, but they have manners, and 't is wonderful, how much -talent runs into manners:--nowhere and never so much as in England. -They have the sense of superiority, the absence of all the ambitious -effort which disgusts in the aspiring classes, a pure tone of thought -and feeling, and the power to command, among their other luxuries, the -presence of the most accomplished men in their festive meetings. - -Loyalty is in the English a sub-religion. They wear the laws as -ornaments, and walk by their faith in their painted May-Fair, as if -among the forms of gods. The economist of 1855 who asks, of what use -are the lords? may learn of Franklin to ask, of what use is a baby? They -have been a social church proper to inspire sentiments mutually honoring -the lover and the loved. Politeness is the ritual of society, as prayers -are of the church; a school of manners, and a gentle blessing to the age -in which it grew. 'T is a romance adorning English life with a larger -horizon; a midway heaven, fulfilling to their sense their fairy tales -and poetry. This, just as far as the breeding of the nobleman, really -made him brave, handsome, accomplished, and great-hearted. - -On general grounds, whatever tends to form manners, or to finish men, -has a great value. Every one who has tasted the delight of friendship, -will respect every social guard which our manners can establish, tending -to secure from the intrusion of frivolous and distasteful people. The -jealousy of every class to guard itself, is a testimony to the reality -they have found in life. When a man once knows that he has done justice -to himself, let him dismiss all terrors of aristocracy as superstitions, -so far as he is concerned. He who keeps the door of a mine, whether of -cobalt, or mercury, or nickel, or plumbago, securely knows that the -world cannot do without him. Everybody who is real is open and ready for -that which is also real. - -Besides, these are they who make England that strongbox and museum it -is; who gather and protect works of art, dragged from amidst burning -cities and revolutionary countries, and brought hither out of all the -world. I look with respect at houses six, seven, eight hundred, or, -like Warwick Castle, nine hundred years old. I pardoned high park -fences, when I saw, that, besides does and pheasants, these have -preserved Arundel marbles, Townley galleries, Howard and Spenserian -libraries, Warwick and Portland vases, Saxon manuscripts, monastic -architectures, millennial trees, and breeds of cattle elsewhere extinct. -In these manors, after the frenzy of war and destruction subsides a -little, the antiquary finds the frailest Roman jar, or crumbling -Egyptian mummy-case, without so much as a new layer of dust, keeping the -series of history unbroken, and waiting for its interpreter, who is sure -to arrive. These lords are the treasurers and librarians of mankind, -engaged by their pride and wealth to this function. - -Yet there were other works for British dukes to do. George Loudon, -Quintinye, Evelyn, had taught them to make gardens. Arthur Young, -Bakewell, and Mechi have made them agricultural. Scotland was a camp -until the day of Culloden. The Dukes of Athol, Sutherland, Buccleugh, -and the Marquis of Breadalbane have introduced the rape-culture, the -sheep-farm, wheat, drainage, the plantation of forests, the artificial -replenishment of lakes and ponds with fish, the renting of -game-preserves. Against the cry of the old tenantry, and the sympathetic -cry of the English press, they have rooted out and planted anew, and now -six millions of people live, and live better on the same land that fed -three millions. - -The English barons, in every period, have been brave and great, after -the estimate and opinion of their times. The grand old halls scattered -up and down in England are dumb vouchers to the state and broad -hospitality of their ancient lords. Shakspeare's portraits of good Duke -Humphrey, of Warwick, of Northumberland, of Talbot, were drawn in strict -consonance with the traditions. A sketch of the Earl of Shrewsbury, -from the pen of Queen Elizabeth's Archbishop Parker;[15] Lord Herbert of -Cherbury's autobiography; the letters and essays of Sir Philip Sidney; -the anecdotes preserved by the antiquaries Fuller and Collins; some -glimpses at the interiors of noble houses, which we owe to Pepys and -Evelyn; the details which Ben Jonson's masques (performed at Kenilworth, -Althorpe, Belvoir, and other noble houses) record or suggest; down to -Aubrey's passages of the life of Hobbes in the house of the Earl of -Devon, are favorable pictures of a romantic style of manners. Penshurst -still shines for us, and its Christmas revels, "where logs not burn, but -men." At Wilton House, the "Arcadia" was written, amidst conversations -with Fulke Greville, Lord Brooke, a man of no vulgar mind, as his own -poems declare him. I must hold Ludlow Castle an honest house, for which -Milton's "Comus" was written, and the company nobly bred which performed -it with knowledge and sympathy. In the roll of nobles are found poets, -philosophers, chemists, astronomers, also men of solid virtues and of -lofty sentiments; often they have been the friends and patrons of genius -and learning, and especially of the fine arts; and at this moment, -almost every great house has its sumptuous picture-gallery. - - [15] Dibdin's Literary Reminiscences, Vol. I. xii. - -Of course, there is another side to this gorgeous show. Every victory -was the defeat of a party only less worthy. Castles are proud things, -but 't is safest to be outside of them. War is a foul game, and yet war -is not the worst part of aristocratic history. In later times, when the -baron, educated only for war, with his brains paralyzed by his stomach, -found himself idle at home, he grew fat and wanton, and a sorry brute. -Grammont, Pepys, and Evelyn show the kennels to which the king and court -went in quest of pleasure. Prostitutes taken from the theatres were -made duchesses, their bastards dukes and earls. "The young men sat -uppermost, the old serious lords were out of favor." The discourse that -the king's companions had with him was "poor and frothy." No man who -valued his head might do what these pot-companions familiarly did with -the king. In logical sequence of these dignified revels, Pepys can tell -the beggarly shifts to which the king was reduced, who could not find -paper at his council table, and "no handkerchers" in his wardrobe, "and -but three bands to his neck," and the linen-draper and the stationer -were out of pocket, and refusing to trust him, and the baker will not -bring bread any longer. Meantime, the English Channel was swept, and -London threatened by the Dutch fleet, manned too by English sailors, -who, having been cheated of their pay for years by the king, enlisted -with the enemy. - -The Selwyn correspondence in the reign of George III. discloses a -rottenness in the aristocracy, which threatened to decompose the state. -The sycophancy and sale of votes and honor, for place and title; -lewdness, gaming, smuggling, bribery, and cheating; the sneer at the -childish indiscretion of quarrelling with ten thousand a year; the want -of ideas; the splendor of the titles, and the apathy of the nation, are -instructive, and make the reader pause and explore the firm bounds which -confined these vices to a handful of rich men. In the reign of the -Fourth George, things do not seem to have mended, and the rotten -debauchee let down from a window by an inclined plane into his coach to -take the air, was a scandal to Europe which the ill fame of his queen -and of his family did nothing to retrieve. - -Under the present reign, the perfect decorum of the Court is thought to -have put a check on the gross vices of the aristocracy; yet gaming, -racing, drinking, and mistresses bring them down, and the democrat can -still gather scandals, if he will. Dismal anecdotes abound, verifying -the gossip of the last generation of dukes served by bailiffs, with all -their plate in pawn; of great lords living by the showing of their -houses; and of an old man wheeled in his chair from room to room, whilst -his chambers are exhibited to the visitor for money: of ruined dukes and -earls living in exile for debt. The historic names of the Buckinghams, -Beauforts, Marlboroughs, and Hertfords have gained no new lustre, and -now and then darker scandals break out, ominous as the new chapters -added under the Orleans dynasty to the "_Causes Celebres_" in France. -Even peers, who are men of worth and public spirit, are overtaken and -embarrassed by their vast expense. The respectable Duke of Devonshire, -willing to be the Mecaenas and Lucullus of his island, is reported to -have said that he cannot live at Chatsworth but one month in the year. -Their many houses eat them up. They cannot sell them, because they are -entailed. They will not let them, for pride's sake, but keep them -empty, aired, and the grounds mown and dressed, at a cost of four or -five thousand pounds a year. The spending is for a great part in -servants, in many houses exceeding a hundred. - -Most of them are only chargeable with idleness, which, because it -squanders such vast power of benefit, has the mischief of crime. "They -might be little Providences on earth," said my friend, "and they are, -for the most part, jockeys and fops." Campbell says: "Acquaintance with -the nobility, I could never keep up. It requires a life of idleness, -dressing, and attendance on their parties." I suppose, too, that a -feeling of self-respect is driving cultivated men out of this society, -as if the noble were slow to receive the lessons of the times, and had -not learned to disguise his pride of place. A man of wit, who is also -one of the celebrities of wealth and fashion, confessed to his friend, -that he could not enter their houses without being made to feel that -they were great lords, and he a low plebeian. With the tribe of -_artistes_, including the musical tribe, the patrician morgue keeps no -terms, but excludes them. When Julia Grisi and Mario sang at the houses -of the Duke of Wellington and other grandees, a ribbon was stretched -between the singer and the company. - -When every noble was a soldier, they were carefully bred to great -personal prowess. The education of a soldier is a simpler affair than -that of an earl in the nineteenth century. And this was very seriously -pursued; they were expert in every species of equitation, to the most -dangerous practices, and this down to the accession of William of -Orange. But graver men appear to have trained their sons for civil -affairs. Elizabeth extended her thought to the future; and Sir Philip -Sidney in his letter to his brother, and Milton and Evelyn, gave plain -and hearty counsel. Already, too, the English noble and squire were -preparing for the career of the country-gentleman, and his peaceable -expense. They went from city to city, learning receipts to make -perfumes, sweet powders, pomanders, antidotes, gathering seeds, gems, -coins, and divers curiosities, preparing for a private life thereafter, -in which they should take pleasure in these recreations. - -All advantages given to absolve the young patrician from intellectual -labor are of course mistaken. "In the university, noblemen are exempted -from the public exercises for the degree, etc., by which they attain a -degree called honorary. At the same time the fees they must pay for -matriculation, and on all other occasions, are much higher."[16] Fuller -records "the observation of foreigners, that Englishmen, by making their -children gentlemen, before they are men, cause they are so seldom wise -men." This cockering justifies Dr. Johnson's bitter apology for -primogeniture, "that it makes but one fool in a family." - - [16] Huber, History of English Universities. - -The revolution in society has reached this class. The great powers of -industrial art have no exclusion of name or blood. The tools of our -time, namely, steam, ships, printing, money, and popular education, -belong to those who can handle them; and their effect has been, that -advantages once confined to men of family are now open to the whole -middle class. The road that grandeur levels for his coach, toil can -travel in his cart. - -This is more manifest every day, but I think it is true throughout -English history. English history, wisely read, is the vindication of -the brain of that people. Here, at last, were climate and condition -friendly to the working faculty. Who now will work and dare, shall -rule. This is the charter, or the chartism, which fogs, and seas, and -rains proclaimed,--that intellect and personal force should make the -law; that industry and administrative talent should administer; that -work should wear the crown. I know that not this, but something else is -pretended. The fiction with which the noble and the bystander equally -please themselves is, that the former is of unbroken descent from the -Norman, and so has never worked for eight hundred years. All the -families are new, but the name is old, and they have made a covenant -with their memories not to disturb it. But the analysis of the peerage -and gentry shows the rapid decay and extinction of old families, the -continual recruiting of these from new blood. The doors, though -ostentatiously guarded, are really open, and hence the power of the -bribe. All the barriers to rank only whet the thirst, and enhance the -prize. "Now," said Nelson, when clearing for battle, "a peerage, or -Westminster Abbey!" "I have no illusion left," said Sidney Smith, "but -the Archbishop of Canterbury." "The lawyers," said Burke, "are only -birds of passage in this House of Commons," and then added, with a new -figure, "they have their best bower anchor in the House of Lords." - -Another stride that has been taken, appears in the perishing of -heraldry. Whilst the privileges of nobility are passing to the middle -class, the badge is discredited, and the titles of lordship are getting -musty and cumbersome. I wonder that sensible men have not been already -impatient of them. They belong, with wigs, powder, and scarlet coats, -to an earlier age, and may be advantageously consigned, with paint and -tattoo, to the dignitaries of Australia and Polynesia. - -A multitude of English, educated at the universities, bred into their -society with manners, ability, and the gifts of fortune, are every day -confronting the peers on a footing of equality, and outstripping them, -as often, in the race of honor and influence. That cultivated class is -large and ever enlarging. It is computed that, with titles and without, -there are seventy thousand of these people coming and going in London, -who make up what is called high society. They cannot shut their eyes to -the fact that an untitled nobility possess all the power without the -inconveniences that belong to rank, and the rich Englishman goes over -the world at the present day, drawing more than all the advantages which -the strongest of his kings could command. - - - - -CHAPTER XII.--UNIVERSITIES. - - -Of British universities, Cambridge has the most illustrious names on its -list. At the present day, too, it has the advantage of Oxford, counting -in its _alumni_ a greater number of distinguished scholars. I regret -that I had but a single day wherein to see King's College Chapel, the -beautiful lawns and gardens of the colleges, and a few of its gownsmen. - -But I availed myself of some repeated invitations to Oxford, where I had -introductions to Dr. Daubeny, Professor of Botany, and to the Regius -Professor of Divinity, as well as to a valued friend, a Fellow of Oriel, -and went thither on the last day of March, 1848. I was the guest of my -friend in Oriel, was housed close upon that college, and I lived on -college hospitalities. - -My new friends showed me their cloisters, the Bodleian Library, the -Randolph Gallery, Merton Hall, and the rest. I saw several faithful, -high-minded young men, some of them in the mood of making sacrifices for -peace of mind,--a topic, of course, on which I had no counsel to offer. -Their affectionate and gregarious ways reminded me at once of the habits -of _our_ Cambridge men, though I imputed to these English an advantage -in their secure and polished manners. The halls are rich with oaken -wainscoting and ceiling. The pictures of the founders hang from the -walls; the tables glitter with plate. A youth came forward to the upper -table, and pronounced the ancient form of grace before meals, which, I -suppose, has been in use here for ages, _Benedictus benedicat; -benedicitur, benedicatur_. - -It is a curious proof of the English use and wont, or of their -good-nature, that these young men are locked up every night at nine -o'clock, and the porter at each hall is required to give the name of any -belated student who is admitted after that hour. Still more descriptive -is the fact, that out of twelve hundred young men, comprising the most -spirited of the aristocracy, a duel has never occurred. - -Oxford is old, even in England, and conservative. Its foundations date -from Alfred, and even from Arthur, if, as is alleged, the Pheryllt of -the Druids had a seminary here. In the reign of Edward I., it is -pretended, here were thirty thousand students; and nineteen most noble -foundations were then established. Chaucer found it as firm as if it -had always stood; and it is in British story, rich with great names, the -school of the island, and the link of England to the learned of Europe. -Hither came Erasmus, with delight, in 1497. Albericus Gentilis, in -1580, was relieved and maintained by the university. Albert Alaskie, a -noble Polonian, Prince of Sirad, who visited England to admire the -wisdom of Queen Elizabeth, was entertained with stage-plays in the -Refectory of Christ-church, in 1583. Isaac Casaubon, coming from Henri -Quatre of France, by invitation of James I., was admitted to Christ's -College, in July, 1613. I saw the Ashmolean Museum, whither Elias -Ashmole, in 1682, sent twelve cart-loads of rarities. Here indeed was -the Olympia of all Antony Wood's and Aubrey's games and heroes, and -every inch of ground has its lustre. For Wood's _Athenae Oxonienses_, -or calendar of the writers of Oxford for two hundred years, is a lively -record of English manners and merits, and as much a national monument as -Purchas's Pilgrims or Hansard's Register. On every side, Oxford is -redolent of age and authority. Its gates shut of themselves against -modern innovation. It is still governed by the statutes of Archbishop -Laud. The books in Merton Library are still chained to the wall. Here, -on August 27, 1660, John Milton's _Pro Populo Anglicano Defensio_ and -_Iconoclastes_ were committed to the flames. I saw the school-court or -quadrangle, where, in 1683, the Convocation caused the Leviathan of -Thomas Hobbes to be publicly burnt. I do not know whether this learned -body have yet heard of the Declaration of American Independence, or -whether the Ptolemaic astronomy does not still hold its ground against -the novelties of Copernicus. - -As many sons, almost so many benefactors. It is usual for a nobleman, -or indeed for almost every wealthy student, on quitting college, to -leave behind him some article of plate; and gifts of all values, from a -hall, or a fellowship, or a library, down to a picture or a spoon, are -continually accruing, in the course of a century. My friend Doctor J. -gave me the following anecdote. In Sir Thomas Lawrence's collection at -London were the cartoons of Raphael and Michel Angelo. This inestimable -prize was offered to Oxford University for seven thousand pounds. The -offer was accepted, and the committee charged with the affair had -collected three thousand pounds, when among other friends they called on -Lord Eldon. Instead of a hundred pounds, he surprised them by putting -down his name for three thousand pounds. They told him, they should now -very easily raise the remainder. "No," he said, "your men have probably -already contributed all they can spare; I can as well give the rest": -and he withdrew his check for three thousand, and wrote four thousand -pounds. I saw the whole collection in April, 1848. - -In the Bodleian Library, Dr. Bandinel showed me the manuscript Plato, of -the date of A.D. 896, brought by Dr. Clarke from Egypt; a manuscript -Virgil, of the same century; the first Bible printed at Mentz (I believe -in 1450); and a duplicate of the same, which had been deficient in about -twenty leaves at the end. But, one day, being in Venice, he bought a -room full of books and manuscripts--every scrap and fragment--for four -thousand louis d'ors, and had the doors locked and sealed by the consul. -On proceeding, afterwards, to examine his purchase, he found the twenty -deficient pages of his Mentz Bible, in perfect order; brought them to -Oxford, with the rest of his purchase, and placed them in the volume; -but has too much awe for the Providence that appears in bibliography -also, to suffer the reunited parts to be rebound. The oldest building -here is two hundred years younger than the frail manuscript brought by -Dr. Clarke from Egypt. No candle or fire is ever lighted in the -Bodleian. Its catalogue is the standard catalogue on the desk of every -library in Oxford. In each several college, they underscore in red ink -on this catalogue the titles of books contained in the library of that -college,--the theory being that the Bodleian has all books. This rich -library spent during the last year (1847) for the purchase of books -L1,668. - -The logical English train a scholar as they train an engineer. Oxford -is a Greek factory, as Wilton mills weave carpet, and Sheffield grinds -steel. They know the use of a tutor, as they know the use of a horse; -and they draw the greatest amount of benefit out of both. The -reading-men are kept by hard walking, hard riding, and measured eating -and drinking, at the top of their condition, and two days before the -examination, do no work, but lounge, ride, or run, to be fresh on the -college doomsday. Seven years' residence is the theoretic period for a -master's degree. In point of fact, it has long been three years' -residence, and four years more of standing. This "three years" is about -twenty-one months in all.[17] - - [17] Huber, II. p. 304. - -"The whole expense," says Professor Sewel, "of ordinary college tuition -at Oxford, is about sixteen guineas a year." But this plausible -statement may deceive a reader unacquainted with the fact, that the -principal teaching relied on is private tuition. And the expenses of -private tuition are reckoned at from L50 to L70 a year, or $1,000 for -the whole course of three years and a half. At Cambridge $750 a year is -economical, and $1,500 not extravagant.[18] - - [18] Bristed, Five Years at an English University. - -The number of students and of residents, the dignity of the authorities, -the value of the foundations, the history and the architecture, the -known sympathy of entire Britain in what is done there, justify a -dedication to study in the undergraduate, such as cannot easily be in -America, where his college is half suspected by the Freshman to be -insignificant in the scale beside trade and politics. Oxford is a -little aristocracy in itself, numerous and dignified enough to rank with -other estates in the realm; and where fame and secular promotion are to -be had for study, and in a direction which has the unanimous respect of -all cultivated nations. - -This aristocracy, of course, repairs its own losses; fills places, as -they fall vacant, from the body of students. The number of fellowships -at Oxford is 540, averaging L200 a year, with lodging and diet at the -college. If a young American, loving learning, and hindered by poverty, -were offered a home, a table, the walks, and the library, in one of -these academical palaces, and a thousand dollars a year as long as he -chose to remain a bachelor, he would dance for joy. Yet these young men -thus happily placed, and paid to read, are impatient of their few -checks, and many of them preparing to resign their fellowships. They -shuddered at the prospect of dying a Fellow, and they pointed out to me -a paralytic old man, who was assisted into the hall. As the number of -undergraduates at Oxford is only about 1,200 or 1,300, and many of these -are never competitors, the chance of a fellowship is very great. The -income of the nineteen colleges is conjectured at L150,000 a year. - -The effect of this drill is the radical knowledge of Greek and Latin, -and of mathematics, and the solidity and taste of English criticism. -Whatever luck there may be in this or that award, an Eton captain can -write Latin longs and shorts, can turn the Court-Guide into hexameters, -and it is certain that a Senior Classic can quote correctly from the -_Corpus Poetarum_, and is critically learned in all the humanities. -Greek erudition exists on the Isis and Cam, whether the Maud man or the -Brazen Nose man be properly ranked or not; the atmosphere is loaded with -Greek learning; the whole river has reached a certain height, and kills -all that growth of weeds, which this Castalian water kills. The English -nature takes culture kindly. So Milton thought. It refines the -Norseman. Access to the Greek mind lifts his standard of taste. He has -enough to think of, and, unless of an impulsive nature, is indisposed -from writing or speaking, by the fulness of his mind, and the new -severity of his taste. The great silent crowd of thorough-bred Grecians -always known to be around him, the English writer cannot ignore. They -prune his orations, and point his pen. Hence, the style and tone of -English journalism. The men have learned accuracy and comprehension, -logic, and pace, or speed of working. They have bottom, endurance, -wind. When born with good constitutions, they make those eupeptic -studying-mills, the cast-iron men, the _dura ilia_, whose powers of -performance compare with ours, as the steam-hammer with the -music-box;--Cokes, Mansfields, Seldens, and Bentleys, and when it -happens that a superior brain puts a rider on this admirable horse, we -obtain those masters of the world who combine the highest energy in -affairs, with a supreme culture. - -It is contended by those who have been bred at Eton, Harrow, Rugby, and -Westminster, that the public sentiment within each of those schools is -high-toned and manly; that, in their playgrounds, courage is universally -admired, meanness despised, manly feelings and generous conduct are -encouraged; that an unwritten code of honor deals to the spoiled child -of rank and to the child of upstart wealth an even-handed justice, -purges their nonsense out of both, and does all that can be done to make -them gentlemen. - -Again, at the universities, it is urged, that all goes to form what -England values as the flower of its national life,--a well-educated -gentleman. The German Huber, in describing to his countrymen the -attributes of an English gentleman, frankly admits, that "in Germany, we -have nothing of the kind. A gentleman must possess a political -character, an independent and public position, or, at least, the right -of assuming it. He must have average opulence, either of his own, or in -his family. He should also have bodily activity and strength, -unattainable by our sedentary life in public offices. The race of -English gentlemen presents an appearance of manly vigor and form, not -elsewhere to be found among an equal number of persons. No other nation -produces the stock. And in England, it has deteriorated. The university -is a decided presumption in any man's favor. And so eminent are the -members that a glance at the calendars will show that in all the world -one cannot be in better company than on the books of one of the larger -Oxford or Cambridge colleges."[19] - - [19] Huber, History of the English Universities. Newman's Translation. - -These seminaries are finishing schools for the upper classes, and not -for the poor. The useful is exploded. The definition of a public school -is "a school which excludes all that could fit a man for standing behind -a counter."[20] - - [20] See Bristed, Five Years in an English University. New York, 1852. - -No doubt, the foundations have been perverted. Oxford, which equals in -wealth several of the smaller European states, shuts up the lectureships -which were made "public for all men thereunto to have concourse"; -misspends the revenues bestowed for such youths "as should be most meet -for towardness, poverty, and painfulness"; there is gross favoritism; -many chairs and many fellowships are made beds of ease; and 'tis likely -that the university will know how to resist and make inoperative the -terrors of parliamentary inquiry; no doubt, their learning is grown -obsolete; but Oxford also has its merits, and I found here also proof of -the national fidelity and thoroughness. Such knowledge as they prize -they possess and impart. Whether in course or by indirection, whether -by a cramming tutor or by examiners with prizes and foundation -scholarships, education according to the English notion of it is -acquired. I looked over the Examination Papers of the year 1848, for -the various scholarships and fellowships, the Lusby, the Hertford, the -Dean-Ireland, and the University (copies of which were kindly given me -by a Greek professor), containing the tasks which many competitors had -victoriously performed, and I believed they would prove too severe tests -for the candidates for a Bachelor's degree in Yale or Harvard. And, in -general, here was proof of a more searching study in the appointed -directions, and the knowledge pretended to be conveyed was conveyed. -Oxford sends out yearly twenty or thirty very able men, and three or -four hundred well-educated men. - -The diet and rough exercise secure a certain amount of old Norse power. -A fop will fight, and, in exigent circumstances, will play the manly -part. In seeing these youths, I believed I saw already an advantage in -vigor and color and general habit, over their contemporaries in the -American colleges. No doubt much of the power and brilliancy of the -reading-men is merely constitutional or hygienic. With a hardier habit -and resolute gymnastics, with five miles more walking, or five ounces -less eating, or with a saddle and gallop of twenty miles a day, with -skating and rowing matches, the American would arrive at as robust -exegesis, and cheery and hilarious tone. I should readily concede these -advantages, which it would be easy to acquire, if I did not find also -that they read better than we, and write better. - -English wealth falling on their school and university training, makes a -systematic reading of the best authors, and to the end of a knowledge -how the things whereof they treat really stand: whilst pamphleteer or -journalist reading for an argument for a party, or reading to write, or, -at all events, for some by end imposed on them, must read meanly and -fragmentarily. Charles I. said, that he understood English law as well -as a gentleman ought to understand it. - -Then they have access to books; the rich libraries collected at every -one of many thousands of houses, give an advantage not to be attained by -a youth in this country, when one thinks how much more and better may be -learned by a scholar, who, immediately on hearing of a book, can consult -it, than by one who is on the quest for years, and reads inferior books, -because he cannot find the best. - -Again, the great number of cultivated men keep each other up to a high -standard. The habit of meeting well-read and knowing men teaches the -art of omission and selection. - -Universities are, of course, hostile to geniuses, which seeing and using -ways of their own, discredit the routine: as churches and monasteries -persecute youthful saints. Yet we all send our sons to college, and, -though he be a genius, he must take his chance. The university must be -retrospective. The gale that gives direction to the vanes on all its -towers blows out of antiquity. Oxford is a library, and the professors -must be librarians. And I should as soon think of quarrelling with the -janitor for not magnifying his office by hostile sallies into the -street, like the Governor of Kertch or Kinburn, as of quarrelling with -the professors for not admiring the young neologists who pluck the -beards of Euclid and Aristotle, or for not attempting themselves to fill -their vacant shelves as original writers. - -It is easy to carp at colleges, and the college, if we will wait for it, -will have its own turn. Genius exists there also, but will not answer a -call of a committee of the House of Commons. It is rare, precarious, -eccentric, and darkling. England is the land of mixture and surprise, -and when you have settled it that the universities are moribund, out -comes a poetic influence from the heart of Oxford, to mould the opinions -of cities, to build their houses as simply as birds their nests, to give -veracity to art, and charm mankind, as an appeal to moral order always -must. But besides this restorative genius, the best poetry of England -of this age, in the old forms, comes from two graduates of Cambridge. - - - - -CHAPTER XIII.--RELIGION. - - -No people, at the present day, can be explained by their national -religion. They do not feel responsible for it; it lies far outside of -them. Their loyalty to truth and their labor and expenditure rest on -real foundations, and not on a national church. And English life, it is -evident, does not grow out of the Athanasian creed, or the Articles, or -the Eucharist. It is with religion as with marriage. A youth marries -in haste; afterwards, when his mind is opened to the reason of the -conduct of life, he is asked, what he thinks of the institution of -marriage, and of the right relations of the sexes. 'I should have much -to say,' he might reply, 'if the question were open, but I have a wife -and children, and all question is closed for me.' In the barbarous days -of a nation, some cultus is formed or imported; altars are built, tithes -are paid, priests ordained. The education and expenditure of the -country take that direction, and when wealth, refinement, great men, and -ties to the world supervene, its prudent men say, why fight against -Fate, or lift these absurdities which are now mountainous? Better find -some niche or crevice in this mountain of stone which religious ages -have quarried and carved, wherein to bestow yourself, than attempt -anything ridiculously and dangerously above your strength, like removing -it. - -In seeing old castles and cathedrals, I sometimes say, as to-day, in -front of Dundee Church tower, which is eight hundred years old, 'this -was built by another and a better race than any that now look on it.' -And, plainly, there has been great power of sentiment at work in this -island, of which these buildings are the proofs: as volcanic basalts -show the work of fire which has been extinguished for ages. England -felt the full heat of the Christianity which fermented Europe, and drew, -like the chemistry of fire, a firm line between barbarism and culture. -The power of the religious sentiment put an end to human sacrifices, -checked appetite, inspired the crusades, inspired resistance to tyrants, -inspired self-respect, set bounds to serfdom and slavery, founded -liberty, created the religious architecture,--York, Newstead, -Westminster, Fountains Abbey, Ripon, Beverley, and Dundee,--works to -which the key is lost, with the sentiment which created them; inspired -the English Bible, the liturgy, the monkish histories, the chronicle of -Richard of Devizes. The priest translated the Vulgate, and translated -the sanctities of old hagiology into English virtues on English ground. -It was a certain affirmative or aggressive state of the Caucasian races. -Man awoke refreshed by the sleep of ages. The violence of the Northern -savages exasperated Christianity into power. It lived by the love of the -people. Bishop Wilfrid manumitted two hundred and fifty serfs, whom he -found attached to the soil. The clergy obtained respite from labor for -the boor on the Sabbath, and on church festivals. "The lord who -compelled his boor to labor between sunset on Saturday and sunset on -Sunday, forfeited him altogether." The priest came out of the people, -and sympathized with his class. The church was the mediator, check, and -democratic principle in Europe. Latimer, Wicliffe, Arundel, Cobham, -Antony Parsons, Sir Harry Vane, George Fox, Penn, Bunyan, are the -democrats, as well as the saints of their times. The Catholic Church, -thrown on this toiling, serious people, has made in fourteen centuries a -massive system, close fitted to the manners and genius of the country, -at once domestical and stately. In the long time, it has blended with -everything in heaven above and the earth beneath. It moves through a -zodiac of feasts and fasts, names every day of the year, every town and -market and headland and monument, and has coupled itself with the -almanac, that no court can be held, no field ploughed, no horse shod, -without some leave from the church. All maxims of prudence or shop or -farm are fixed and dated by the church. Hence, its strength in the -agricultural districts. The distribution of land into parishes enforces -a church sanction to every civil privilege; and the gradation of the -clergy,--prelates for the rich, and curates for the poor,--with the fact -that a classical education has been secured to the clergyman, makes them -"the link which unites the sequestered peasantry with the intellectual -advancement of the age."[21] - - [21] Wordsworth. - -The English Church has many certificates to show, of humble effective -service in humanizing the people, in cheering and refining men, feeding, -healing, and educating. It has the seal of martyrs and confessors; the -noblest books; a sublime architecture; a ritual marked by the same -secular merits, nothing cheap or purchasable. - -From this slow-grown church important reactions proceed; much for -culture, much for giving a direction to the nation's affection and will -to-day. The carved and pictured chapel--its entire surface animated -with image and emblem--made the parish-church a sort of book and Bible -to the people's eye. - -Then, when the Saxon instinct had secured a service in the vernacular -tongue, it was the tutor and university of the people. In York minster, -on the day of the enthronization of the new archbishop, I heard the -service of evening prayer read and chanted in the choir. It was strange -to hear the pretty pastoral of the betrothal of Rebecca and Isaac, in -the morning of the world, read with circumstantiality in York minster, -on the 13th January, 1848, to the decorous English audience, just fresh -from the Times newspaper and their wine; and listening with all the -devotion of national pride. That was binding old and new to some -purpose. The reverence for the Scriptures is an element of -civilization, for thus has the history of the world, been preserved, and -is preserved. Here in England every day a chapter of Genesis, and a -leader in the Times. - -Another part of the same service on this occasion was not insignificant. -Handel's coronation anthem, _God save the King_, was played by Dr. -Camidge on the organ, with sublime effect. The minster and the music -were made for each other. It was a hint of the part the church plays as -a political engine. From his infancy, every Englishman is accustomed to -hear daily prayers for the queen, for the royal family, and the -Parliament, by name; and this lifelong consecration of these personages -cannot be without influence on his opinions. - -The universities, also, are parcel of the ecclesiastical system, and -their first design is to form the clergy. Thus the clergy for a -thousand years have been the scholars of the nation. - - -The national temperament deeply enjoys the unbroken order and tradition -of its church; the liturgy, ceremony, architecture; the sober grace, the -good company, the connection with the throne, and with history, which -adorn it. And whilst it endears itself thus to men of more taste than -activity, the stability of the English nation is passionately enlisted -to its support, from its inextricable connection with the cause of -public order, with politics, and with the funds. - -Good churches are not built by bad men; at least there must be probity -and enthusiasm somewhere in society. These minsters were neither built -nor filled by atheists. No church has had more learned, industrious, or -devoted men; plenty of "clerks and bishops, who, out of their gowns, -would turn their backs on no man."[22] Their architecture still glows -with faith in immortality. Heats and genial periods arrive in history, -or, shall we say, plenitudes of Divine Presence, by which high tides are -caused in the human spirit, and great virtues and talents appear, as in -the eleventh, twelfth, thirteenth, and again in the sixteenth and -seventeenth centuries, when the nation was full of genius and piety. - - [22] Fuller. - -But the age of the Wicliffes, Cobhams, Arundels, Beckets; of the -Latimers, Mores, Cranmers; of the Taylors, Leightons, Herberts; of the -Sherlocks, and Butlers, is gone. Silent revolutions in opinion have -made it impossible that men like these should return or find a place in -their once sacred stalls. The spirit that dwelt in this church has -glided away to animate other activities; and they who come to the old -shrines find apes and players rustling the old garments. - -The religion of England is part of good breeding. When you see on the -Continent the well-dressed Englishman come into his ambassador's chapel, -and put his face for silent prayer into his smooth-brushed hat, one -cannot help feeling how much national pride prays with him, and the -religion of a gentleman. So far is he from attaching any meaning to the -words, that he believes himself to have done almost the generous thing, -and that it is very condescending in him to pray to God. A great duke -said on the occasion of a victory, in the House of Lords, that he -thought the Almighty God had not been well used by them, and that it -would become their magnanimity, after so great successes, to take order -that a proper acknowledgment be made. It is the church of the gentry; -but it is not the church of the poor. The operatives do not own it, and -gentlemen lately testified in the House of Commons that in their lives -they never saw a poor man in a ragged coat inside a church. - -The torpidity on the side of religion of the vigorous English -understanding shows how much wit and folly can agree in one brain. -Their religion is a quotation; their church is a doll; and any -examination is interdicted with screams of terror. In good company, you -expect them to laugh at the fanaticism of the vulgar; but they do not; -they are the vulgar. - -The English, in common perhaps with Christendom in the nineteenth -century, do not respect power, but only performance; value ideas only -for an economic result. Wellington esteems a saint only as far as he can -be an army chaplain: "Mr. Briscoll, by his admirable conduct and good -sense, got the better of Methodism, which had appeared among the -soldiers, and once among the officers." They value a philosopher as -they value an apothecary who brings bark or a drench; and inspiration is -only some blowpipe, or a finer mechanical aid. - -I suspect that there is in an Englishman's brain a valve that can be -closed at pleasure, as an engineer shuts off steam. The most sensible -and well-informed men possess the power of thinking just so far as the -bishop in religious matters, and as the chancellor of the exchequer in -politics. They talk with courage and logic, and show you magnificent -results; but the same men who have brought free-trade or geology to -their present standing, look grave and lofty, and shut down their valve, -as soon as the conversation approaches the English Church. After that, -you talk with a box-turtle. - -The action of the university, both in what is taught, and in the spirit -of the place, is directed more on producing an English gentleman, than a -saint or a psychologist. It ripens a bishop, and extrudes a -philosopher. I do not know that there is more cabalism in the Anglican, -than in other churches, but the Anglican clergy are identified with the -aristocracy. They say, here, that, if you talk with a clergyman, you -are sure to find him well bred, informed, and candid, he entertains your -thought or your project with sympathy and praise. But if a second -clergyman come in, the sympathy is at an end: two together are -inaccessible to your thought, and, whenever it comes to action, the -clergyman invariably sides with his church. - -The Anglican church is marked by the grace and good sense of its forms, -by the manly grace of its clergy. The gospel it preaches is, 'By taste -are ye saved.' It keeps the old structures in repair, spends a world of -money in music and building; and in buying Pugin, and architectural -literature. It has a general good name for amenity and mildness. It is -not in ordinary a persecuting church; it is not inquisitorial, not even -inquisitive, is perfectly well bred, and can shut its eyes on all proper -occasions. If you let it alone, it will let you alone. But its instinct -is hostile to all change in politics, literature, or social arts. The -church has not been the founder of the London University, of the -Mechanics' Institutes, of the Free School, or whatever aims at diffusion -of knowledge. The Platonists of Oxford are as bitter against this -heresy, as Thomas Taylor. - -The doctrine of the Old Testament is the religion of England. The first -leaf of the New Testament it does not open. It believes in a Providence -which does not treat with levity a pound sterling. They are neither -transcendentalists nor Christians. They put up no Socratic prayer, much -less any saintly prayer for the queen's mind; ask neither for light nor -right, but say bluntly, "Grant her in health and wealth long to live." -And one traces this Jewish prayer in all English private history, from -the prayers of King Richard, in Richard of Devizes' Chronicle, to those -in the diaries of Sir Samuel Romilly, and of Haydon the painter. -"Abroad with my wife," writes Pepys piously, "the first time that ever I -rode in my own coach; which do make my heart rejoice and praise God, and -pray him to bless it to me, and continue it." The bill for the -naturalization of the Jews (in 1753) was resisted by petitions from all -parts of the kingdom, and by petition from the city of London, -reprobating this bill, as "tending extremely to the dishonor of the -Christian religion, and extremely injurious to the interests and -commerce of the kingdom in general, and of the city of London in -particular." - -But they have not been able to congeal humanity by act of Parliament. -"The heavens journey still and sojourn not," and arts, wars, -discoveries, and opinion go onward at their own pace. The new age has -new desires, new enemies, new trades, new charities, and reads the -Scriptures with new eyes. The chatter of French politics, the -steam-whistle, the hum of the mill, and the noise of embarking -emigrants, had quite put most of the old legends out of mind; so that -when you came to read the liturgy to a modern congregation, it was -almost absurd in its unfitness, and suggested a masquerade of old -costumes. - -No chemist has prospered in the attempt to crystallize a religion. It -is endogenous, like the skin, and other vital organs. A new statement -every day. The prophet and apostle knew this, and the non-conformist -confutes the conformists, by quoting the texts they must allow. It is -the condition of a religion, to require religion for its expositor. -Prophet and apostle can only be rightly understood by prophet and -apostle. The statesman knows that the religious element will not fail, -any more than the supply of fibrine and chyle; but it is in its nature -constructive, and will organize such a church as it wants. The wise -legislator will spend on temples, schools, libraries, colleges, but will -shun the enriching of priests. If, in any manner, he can leave the -election and paying of the priest to the people, he will do well. Like -the Quakers, he may resist the separation of a class of priests, and -create opportunity and expectation in the society, to run to meet -natural endowment, in this kind. But, when wealth accrues to a -chaplaincy, a bishopric, or rectorship, it requires moneyed men for its -stewards, who will give it another direction than to the mystics of -their day. Of course, money will do after its kind, and will steadily -work to unspiritualize and unchurch the people to whom it was -bequeathed. The class certain to be excluded from all preferment are -the religious,--and driven to other churches;--which is nature's _vis -medicatrix_. - -The curates are ill paid, and the prelates are overpaid. This abuse -draws into the church the children of the nobility, and other unfit -persons, who have a taste for expense. Thus a bishop is only a -surpliced merchant. Through his lawn, I can see the bright buttons of -the shopman's coat glitter. A wealth like that of Durham makes almost a -premium on felony. Brougham, in a speech in the House of Commons on the -Irish elective franchise, said, "How will the reverend bishops of the -other house be able to express their due abhorrence of the crime of -perjury, who solemnly declare in the presence of God, that when they are -called upon to accept a living, perhaps of L4,000 a year, at that very -instant, they are moved by the Holy Ghost to accept the office and -administration thereof, and for no other reason whatever?" The modes of -initiation are more damaging than custom-house oaths. The bishop is -elected by the Dean and Prebends of the cathedral. The Queen sends -these gentlemen a _conge d'elire_, or leave to elect; but also sends -them the name of the person whom they are to elect. They go into the -cathedral, chant and pray, and beseech the Holy Ghost to assist them in -their choice; and, after these invocations, invariably find that the -dictates of the Holy Ghost agree with the recommendations of the Queen. - -But you must pay for conformity. All goes well as long as you run with -conformists. But you, who are an honest man in other particulars, know, -that there is alive somewhere a man whose honesty reaches to this point -also, that he shall not kneel to false gods, and, on the day when you -meet him, you sink into the class of counterfeits. Besides, this -succumbing has grave penalties. If you take in a lie, you must take in -all that belongs to it. England accepts this ornamented national -church, and it glazes the eyes, bloats the flesh, gives the voice a -stertorous clang, and clouds the understanding of the receivers. - -The English Church, undermined by German criticism, had nothing left but -tradition, and was led logically back to Romanism. But that was an -element which only hot heads could breathe: in view of the educated -class, generally, it was not a fact to front the sun; and the alienation -of such men from the church became complete. - -Nature, to be sure, had her remedy. Religious persons are driven out of -the Established Church into sects, which instantly rise to credit, and -hold the Establishment in check. Nature has sharper remedies, also. -The English, abhorring change in all things, abhorring it most in -matters of religion, cling to the last rag of form, and are dreadfully -given to cant. The English (and I wish it were confined to them, but 't -is a taint in the Anglo-Saxon blood in both hemispheres), the English -and the Americans cant beyond all other nations. The French relinquish -all that industry to them. What is so odious as the polite bows to God, -in our books and newspapers? The popular press is flagitious in the -exact measure of its sanctimony, and the religion of the day is a -theatrical Sinai, where the thunders are supplied by the property-man. -The fanaticism and hypocrisy create satire. Punch finds an -inexhaustible material. Dickens writes novels on Exeter Hall humanity. -Thackeray exposes the heartless high life. Nature revenges herself more -summarily by the heathenism of the lower classes. Lord Shaftesbury -calls the poor thieves together, and reads sermons to them, and they -call it 'gas.' George Borrow summons the Gypsies to hear his discourse -on the Hebrews in Egypt, and reads to them the Apostles' creed in -Romany. "When I had concluded," he says, "I looked around me. The -features of the assembly were twisted, and the eyes of all turned upon -me with a frightful squint: not an individual present but squinted; the -genteel Pepa, the good-humored Chicharona, the Cosdami, all squinted: -the Gypsy jockey squinted worst of all." - -The church at this moment is much to be pitied. She has nothing left -but possession. If a bishop meets an intelligent gentleman, and reads -fatal interrogations in his eyes, he has no resource but to take wine -with him. False position introduces cant, perjury, simony, and ever a -lower class of mind and character into the clergy; and, when the -hierarchy is afraid of science and education, afraid of piety, afraid of -tradition, and afraid of theology, there is nothing left but to quit a -church which is no longer one. - -But the religion of England,--is it the Established Church? no; is it -the sects? no; they are only perpetuations of some private man's -dissent, and are to the Established Church as cabs are to a coach, -cheaper and more convenient, but really the same thing. Where dwells -the religion? Tell me first where dwells electricity, or motion, or -thought, or gesture. They do not dwell or stay at all. Electricity -cannot be made fast, mortared up and ended, like London Monument, or the -Tower, so that you shall know where to find it, and keep it fixed, as -the English do with their things, forevermore; it is passing, glancing, -gesticular; it is a traveller, a newness, a surprise, a secret, which -perplexes them, and puts them out. Yet, if religion be the doing of all -good, and for its sake the suffering of all evil, _souffrir de tout le -monde et ne faire souffrir personne_, that divine secret has existed in -England from the days of Alfred to those of Romilly, of Clarkson, and of -Florence Nightingale, and in thousands who have no fame. - - - - -CHAPTER XIV.--LITERATURE. - - -A strong common-sense, which it is not easy to unseat or disturb, marks -the English mind for a thousand years; a rude strength newly applied to -thought, as of sailors and soldiers who had lately learned to read. -They have no fancy, and never are surprised into a covert or witty word, -such as pleased the Athenians and Italians, and was convertible into a -fable not long after; but they delight in strong earthy expression, not -mistakable, coarsely true to the human body, and, though spoken among -princes, equally fit and welcome to the mob. This homeliness, veracity, -and plain style appear in the earliest extant works, and in the latest. -It imports into songs and ballads the smell of the earth, the breath of -cattle, and, like a Dutch painter, seeks a household charm, though by -pails and pans. They ask their constitutional utility in verse. The -kail and herrings are never out of sight. The poet nimbly recovers -himself from every sally of the imagination. The English muse loves the -farm-yard, the lane and market. She says, with De Stael, "I tramp in -the mire with wooden shoes, whenever they would force me into the -clouds." For, the Englishman has accurate perceptions; takes hold of -things by the right end, and there is no slipperiness in his grasp. He -loves the axe, the spade, the oar, the gun, the steam-pipe: he has built -the engine he uses. He is materialist, economical, mercantile. He must -be treated with sincerity and reality, with muffins and not the promise -of muffins; and prefers his hot chop, with perfect security and -convenience in the eating of it, to the chances of the amplest and -Frenchiest bill of fare, engraved on embossed paper. When he is -intellectual, and a poet or a philosopher, he carries the same hard -truth and the same keen machinery into the mental sphere. His mind must -stand on a fact. He will not be baffled, or catch at clouds, but the -mind must have a symbol palpable and resisting. What he relishes in -Dante, is the vice-like tenacity with which he holds a mental image -before the eyes, as if it were a scutcheon painted on a shield. Byron -"liked something craggy to break his mind upon." A taste for plain -strong speech, what is called a biblical style, marks the English. It is -in Alfred, and the Saxon Chronicle, and in the Sagas of the Northmen. -Latimer was homely. Hobbes was perfect in the "noble vulgar speech." -Donne, Bunyan, Milton, Taylor, Evelyn, Pepys, Hooker, Cotton, and the -translators, wrote it. How realistic or materialistic in treatment of -his subject is Swift. He describes his fictitious persons as if for the -police. Defoe has no insecurity or choice, Hudibras has the same hard -mentality,--keeping the truth at once to the senses, and to the -intellect. - -It is not less seen in poetry. Chaucer's hard painting of his -Canterbury pilgrims satisfies the senses. Shakspeare, Spenser, and -Milton, in their loftiest ascents, have this national grip and -exactitude of mind. This mental materialism makes the value of English -transcendental genius; in these writers, and in Herbert, Henry More, -Donne, and Sir Thomas Browne. The Saxon materialism and narrowness, -exalted into the sphere of intellect, makes the very genius of -Shakspeare and Milton. When it reaches the pure element, it treads the -clouds as securely as the adamant. Even in its elevations, -materialistic, its poetry is common-sense inspired; or iron raised to -white heat. - -The marriage of the two qualities is in their speech. It is a tacit rule -of the language to make the frame or skeleton of Saxon words, and, when -elevation or ornament is sought, to interweave Roman; but sparingly; nor -is a sentence made of Roman words alone, without loss of strength. The -children and laborers use the Saxon unmixed. The Latin unmixed is -abandoned to the colleges and Parliament. Mixture is a secret of the -English island; and, in their dialect, the male principle is the Saxon; -the female, the Latin; and they are combined in every discourse. A good -writer, if he has indulged in a Roman roundness, makes haste to chasten -and nerve his period by English monosyllables. - -When the Gothic nations came into Europe, they found it lighted with the -sun and moon of Hebrew and of Greek genius. The tablets of their brain, -long kept in the dark, were finely sensible to the double glory. To the -images from this twin source (of Christianity and art), the mind became -fruitful as by the incubation of the Holy Ghost. The English mind -flowered in every faculty. The common-sense was surprised and inspired. -For two centuries, England was philosophic, religious, poetic. The -mental furniture seemed of larger scale; the memory capacious like the -storehouse of the rains. The ardor and endurance of study; the boldness -and facility of their mental construction; their fancy, and imagination, -and easy spanning of vast distances of thought; the enterprise or -accosting of new subjects; and, generally, the easy exertion of power, -astonish, like the legendary feats of Guy of Warwick. The union of -Saxon precision and Oriental soaring, of which Shakspeare is the perfect -example, is shared in less degree by the writers of two centuries. I -find not only the great masters out of all rivalry and reach, but the -whole writing of the time charged with a masculine force and freedom. - -There is a hygienic simpleness, rough vigor, and closeness to the matter -in hand, even in the second and third class of writers; and, I think, in -the common style of the people, as one finds it in the citation of -wills, letters, and public documents, in proverbs, and forms of speech. -The more hearty and sturdy expression may indicate that the savageness -of the Norseman was not all gone. Their dynamic brains hurled off their -words, as the revolving stone hurls off scraps of grit. I could cite -from the seventeenth century sentences and phrases of edge not to be -matched in the nineteenth. Their poets by simple force of mind -equalized themselves with the accumulated science of ours. The country -gentlemen had a posset or drink they called October; and the poets, as -if by this hint, knew how to distil the whole season into their autumnal -verses: and, as nature, to pique the more, sometimes works up -deformities into beauty, in some rare Aspasia, or Cleopatra; and, as the -Greek art wrought many a vase or column, in which too long, or too -lithe, or nodes, or pits and flaws, are made a beauty of; so these were -so quick and vital, that they could charm and enrich by mean and vulgar -objects. - -A man must think that age well taught and thoughtful, by which masques -and poems, like those of Ben Jonson, full of heroic sentiment in a manly -style, were received with favor. The unique fact in literary history, -the unsurprised reception of Shakspeare,--the reception proved by his -making his fortune; and the apathy proved by the absence of all -contemporary panegyric,--seems to demonstrate an elevation in the mind -of the people. Judge of the splendor of a nation, by the insignificance -of great individuals in it. The manner in which they learned Greek and -Latin, before our modern facilities were yet ready, without -dictionaries, grammars, or indexes, by lectures of a professor, followed -by their own searchings,--required a more robust memory, and cooperation -of all the faculties; and their scholars, Camden, Usher, Selden, Mede, -Gataker, Hooker, Taylor, Burton, Bentley, Brian Walton, acquired the -solidity and method of engineers. - -The influence of Plato tinges the British genius. Their minds loved -analogy; were cognizant of resemblances, and climbers on the staircase -of unity. 'T is a very old strife between those who elect to see -identity, and those who elect to see discrepancies; and it renews itself -in Britain. The poets, of course, are of one part; the men of the -world, of the other. But Britain had many disciples of Plato,--More, -Hooker, Bacon, Sidney, Lord Brooke, Herbert, Browne, Donne, Spenser, -Chapman, Milton, Crashaw, Norris, Cudworth, Berkeley, Jeremy Taylor. - -Lord Bacon has the English duality. His centuries of observations, on -useful science, and his experiments, I suppose, were worth nothing. One -hint of Franklin, or Watt, or Dalton, or Davy, or any one who had a -talent for experiment, was worth all his lifetime of exquisite trifles. -But he drinks of a diviner stream, and marks the influx of idealism into -England. Where that goes, is poetry, health, and progress. The rules -of its genesis or its diffusion are not known. That knowledge, if we -had it, would supersede all we call science of the mind. It seems an -affair of race, or of meta-chemistry;--the vital point being,--how far -the sense of unity, or instinct of seeking resemblances predominated. -For, wherever the mind takes a step, it is, to put itself at one with a -larger class, discerned beyond the lesser class with which it has been -conversant. Hence, all poetry, and all affirmative action comes. - -Bacon, in the structure of his mind, held of the analogists, of the -idealists, or (as we popularly say, naming from the best example) -Platonists. Whoever discredits analogy, and requires heaps of facts, -before any theories can be attempted, has no poetic power, and nothing -original or beautiful will be produced by him. Locke is as surely the -influx of decomposition and of prose, as Bacon and the Platonists, of -growth. The Platonic is the poetic tendency; the so-called scientific -is the negative and poisonous. 'T is quite certain, that Spenser, -Burns, Byron, and Wordsworth will be Platonists; and that the dull men -will be Lockists. Then politics and commerce will absorb from the -educated class men of talents without genius, precisely because such -have no resistance. - -Bacon, capable of ideas, yet devoted to ends, required in his map of the -mind, first of all, universality, or _prima philosophia_, the receptacle -for all such profitable observations and axioms as fall not within the -compass of any of the special parts of philosophy, but are more common, -and of a higher stage. He held this element essential: it is never out -of mind: he never spares rebukes for such as neglect it; believing that -no perfect discovery can be made in a flat or level, but you must ascend -to a higher science. "If any man thinketh philosophy and universality -to be idle studies, he does not consider that all professions are from -thence served and supplied; and this I take to be a great cause that has -hindered the progression of learning, because these fundamental -knowledges have been studied but in passage." He explained himself by -giving various quaint examples of the summary or common laws, of which -each science has its own illustration. He complains, that "he finds -this part of learning very deficient, the profounder sort of wits -drawing a bucket now and then for their own use, but the spring-head -unvisited. This was the _dry light_ which did scorch and offend most -men's watery natures." Plato had signified the same sense, when he -said: "All the great arts require a subtle and speculative research into -the law of nature, since loftiness of thought and perfect mastery over -every subject seem to be derived from some such source as this. This -Pericles had, in addition to a great natural genius. For, meeting with -Anaxagoras, who was a person of this kind, he attached himself to him, -and nourished himself with sublime speculations on the absolute -intelligence; and imported thence into the oratorical art whatever could -be useful to it." - -A few generalizations always circulate in the world, whose authors we do -not rightly know, which astonish, and appear to be avenues to vast -kingdoms of thought, and these are in the world _constants_, like the -Copernican and Newtonian theories in physics. In England, these may be -traced usually to Shakspeare, Bacon, Milton, or Hooker, even to Van -Helmont and Behmen, and do all have a kind of filial retrospect to Plato -and the Greeks. Of this kind is Lord Bacon's sentence, that "Nature is -commanded by obeying her"; his doctrine of poetry, which "accommodates -the shows of things to the desires of the mind"; or the Zoroastrian -definition of poetry, mystical, yet exact, "apparent pictures of -unapparent natures"; Spenser's creed, that "soul is form, and doth the -body make"; the theory of Berkeley, that we have no certain assurance of -the existence of matter; Doctor Samuel Clarke's argument for theism from -the nature of space and time; Harrington's political rule, that power -must rest on land,--a rule which requires to be liberally interpreted; -the theory of Swedenborg, so cosmically applied by him, that the man -makes his heaven and hell; Hegel's study of civil history, as the -conflict of ideas and the victory of the deeper thought; the -identity-philosophy of Schelling, couched in the statement that "all -difference is quantitative." So the very announcement of the theory of -gravitation, of Kepler's three harmonic laws, and even of Dalton's -doctrine of definite proportions, finds a sudden response in the mind, -which remains a superior evidence to empirical demonstrations. I cite -these generalizations, some of which are more recent, merely to indicate -a class. Not these particulars, but the mental plane or the atmosphere -from which they emanate, was the home and element of the writers and -readers in what we loosely call the Elizabethan age (say in literary -history, the period from 1575 to 1625), yet a period almost short enough -to justify Ben Jonson's remark on Lord Bacon: "About his time, and -within his view, were born all the wits that could honor a nation, or -help study." - -Such richness of genius had not existed more than once before. These -heights could not be maintained. As we find stumps of vast trees in our -exhausted soils, and have received traditions of their ancient fertility -to tillage, so history reckons epochs in which the intellect of famed -races became effete. So it fared with English genius. These heights -were followed by a meanness, and a descent of the mind into lower -levels; the loss of wings; no high speculation. Locke, to whom the -meaning of ideas was unknown, became the type of philosophy, and his -"understanding" the measure, in all nations, of the English intellect. -His countrymen forsook the lofty sides of Parnassus, on which they had -once walked with echoing steps, and disused the studies once so beloved; -the powers of thought fell into neglect. The later English want the -faculty of Plato and Aristotle, of grouping men in natural classes by an -insight of general laws, so deep, that the rule is deduced with equal -precision from few subjects or from one, as from multitudes of lives. -Shakspeare is supreme in that, as in all the great mental energies. The -German's generalize: the English cannot interpret the German mind. -German science comprehends the English. The absence of the faculty in -England is shown by the timidity which accumulates mountains of facts, -as a bad general wants myriads of men and miles of redoubts, to -compensate the inspirations of courage and conduct. - -The English shrink from a generalization. "They do not look abroad into -universality, or they draw only a bucketful at the fountain of the First -Philosophy for their occasion, and do not go to the spring-head." -Bacon, who said this, is almost unique among his countrymen in that -faculty, at least among the prose-writers. Milton, who was the stair or -high table-land to let down the English genius from the summits of -Shakspeare, used this privilege sometimes in poetry, more rarely in -prose. For a long interval afterwards, it is not found. Burke was -addicted to generalizing, but his was a shorter line; as his thoughts -have less depth, they have less compass. Hume's abstractions are not -deep or wise. He owes his fame to one keen observation, that no copula -had been detected between any cause and effect, either in physics or in -thought; that the term cause and effect was loosely or gratuitously -applied to what we know only as consecutive, not at all as causal. Dr. -Johnson's written abstractions have little value: the tone of feeling in -them makes their chief worth. - -Mr. Hallam, a learned and elegant scholar, has written the history of -European literature for three centuries,--a performance of great -ambition, inasmuch as a judgment was to be attempted on every book. But -his eye does not reach to the ideal standards; the verdicts are all -dated from London: all new thought must be cast into the old moulds. -The expansive element which creates literature is steadily denied. -Plato is resisted, and his school. Hallam is uniformly polite, but with -deficient sympathy; writes with resolute generosity, but is unconscious -of the deep worth which lies in the mystics, and which often outvalues -as a seed of power and a source of revolution all the correct writers -and shining reputations of their day. He passes in silence, or -dismisses with a kind of contempt, the profounder masters: a lover of -ideas is not only uncongenial, but unintelligible. Hallam inspires -respect by his knowledge and fidelity, by his manifest love of good -books, and he lifts himself to own better than almost any the greatness -of Shakspeare, and better than Johnson he appreciates Milton. But in -Hallam, or in the firmer intellectual nerve of Mackintosh, one still -finds the same type of English genius. It is wise and rich, but it -lives on its capital. It is retrospective. How can it discern and hail -the new forms that are looming up on the horizon,--new and gigantic -thoughts which cannot dress themselves out of any old wardrobe of the -past? - -The essays, the fiction, and the poetry of the day have the like -municipal limits. Dickens, with preternatural apprehension of the -language of manners, and the varieties of street life, with pathos and -laughter, with patriotic and still enlarging generosity, writes London -tracts. He is a painter of English details, like Hogarth; local and -temporary in his tints and style, and local in his aims. Bulwer, an -industrious writer, with occasional ability, is distinguished for his -reverence of intellect as a temporality, and appeals to the worldly -ambition of the student. His romances tend to fan these low flames. -Their novelists despair of the heart. Thackeray finds that God has made -no allowance for the poor thing in his universe;--more 's the pity, he -thinks;--but 't is not for us to be wiser: we must renounce ideals, and -accept London. - -The brilliant Macaulay, who expresses the tone of the English governing -classes of the day, explicitly teaches, that good means good to eat, -good to wear, material commodity; that the glory of modern philosophy is -its direction on "fruit"; to yield economical inventions; and that its -merit is to avoid ideas, and avoid morals. He thinks it the distinctive -merit of the Baconian philosophy, in its triumph over the old Platonic, -its disentangling the intellect from theories of the all-Fair and -all-Good, and pinning it down to the making a better sick-chair and a -better wine-whey for an invalid;--this not ironically, but in good -faith;--that, "solid advantage," as he calls it, meaning always sensual -benefit, is the only good. The eminent benefit of astronomy is the -better navigation it creates to enable the fruit-ships to bring home -their lemons and wine to the London grocer. It was a curious result, in -which the civility and religion of England for a thousand years ends in -denying morals, and reducing the intellect to a saucepan. The critic -hides his scepticism under the English cant of practical. To convince -the reason, to touch the conscience, is romantic pretension. The fine -arts fall to the ground. Beauty, except as luxurious commodity, does not -exist. It is very certain, I may say in passing, that if Lord Bacon had -been only the sensualist his critic pretends, he would never have -acquired the fame which now entitles him to this patronage. It is -because he had imagination, the leisures of the spirit, and basked in an -element of contemplation out of all modern English atmospheric gauges, -that he is impressive to the imaginations of men, and has become a -potentate not to be ignored. Sir David Brewster sees the high place of -Bacon, without finding Newton indebted to him, and thinks it a mistake. -Bacon occupies it by specific gravity or levity, not by any feat he did, -or by any tutoring more or less of Newton, etc., but an effect of the -same cause which showed itself more pronounced afterwards in Hooke, -Boyle, and Halley. - -Coleridge, a catholic mind, with a hunger for ideas, with eyes looking -before and after to the highest bards and sages, and who wrote and spoke -the only high criticism in his time, is one of those who save England -from the reproach of no longer possessing the capacity to appreciate -what rarest wit the island has yielded. Yet the misfortune of his life, -his vast attempts but most inadequate performings, failing to accomplish -any one masterpiece, seems to mark the closing of an era. Even in him, -the traditional Englishman was too strong for the philosopher, and he -fell into _accommodations_: and, as Burke had striven to idealize the -English State, so Coleridge 'narrowed his mind' in the attempt to -reconcile the Gothic rule and dogma of the Anglican Church, with eternal -ideas. But for Coleridge, and a lurking taciturn minority, uttering -itself in occasional criticism, oftener in private discourse, one would -say, that in Germany and in America is the best mind in England rightly -respected. It is the surest sign of national decay, when the Bramins -can no longer read or understand the Braminical philosophy. - -In the decomposition and asphyxia that followed all this materialism, -Carlyle was driven by his disgust at the pettiness and the cant, into -the preaching of Fate. In comparison with all this rottenness, any -check, any cleansing, though by fire, seemed desirable and beautiful. He -saw little difference in the gladiators, or the "causes" for which they -combated; the one comfort was, that they were all going speedily into -the abyss together. And his imagination, finding no nutriment in any -creation, avenged itself by celebrating the majestic beauty of the laws -of decay. The necessities of mental structure force all minds into a -few categories, and where impatience of the tricks of men makes Nemesis -amiable, and builds altars to the negative Deity, the inevitable recoil -is to heroism or the gallantry of the private heart, which decks its -immolation with glory, in the unequal combat of will against fate. - -Wilkinson, the editor of Swedenborg, the annotator of Fourier, and the -champion of Halmeman, has brought to metaphysics and to physiology a -native vigor, with a catholic perception of relations, equal to the -highest attempts, and a rhetoric like the armory of the invincible -knights of old. There is in the action of his mind a long Atlantic roll -not known except in deepest waters, and only lacking what ought to -accompany such powers, a manifest centrality. If his mind does not rest -in immovable biases, perhaps the orbit is larger, and the return is not -yet: but a master should inspire a confidence that he will adhere to his -convictions, and give his present studies always the same high place. - -It would be easy to add exceptions to the limitary tone of English -thought, and much more easy to adduce examples of excellence in -particular veins; and if, going out of the region of dogma, we pass into -that of general culture, there is no end to the graces and amenities, -wit, sensibility, and erudition, of the learned class. But the -artificial succor which marks all English performance, appears in -letters also: much of their aesthetic production is antiquarian and -manufactured, and literary reputations have been achieved by forcible -men, whose relation to literature was purely accidental, but who were -driven by tastes and modes they found in vogue into their several -careers. So, at this moment, every ambitious young man studies geology; -so members of Parliament are made, and churchmen. - -The bias of Englishmen to practical skill has reacted on the national -mind. They are incapable of an inutility, and respect the five mechanic -powers even in their song. The voice of their modern muse has a slight -hint of the steam-whistle, and the poem is created as an ornament and -finish of their monarchy, and by no means as the bird of a new morning -which forgets the past world in the full enjoyment of that which is -forming. They are with difficulty ideal; they are the most conditioned -men, as if, having the best conditions, they could not bring themselves -to forfeit them. Every one of them is a thousand years old, and lives -by his memory; and when you say this, they accept it as praise. - -Nothing comes to the book-shops but politics, travels, statistics, -tabulation, and engineering, and even what is called philosophy and -letters is mechanical in its structure, as if inspiration had ceased, as -if no vast hope, no religion, no song of joy, no wisdom, no analogy, -existed any more. The tone of colleges and of scholars and of literary -society has this mortal air. I seem to walk on a marble floor, where -nothing will grow. They exert every variety of talent on a lower -ground, and may be said to live and act in a sub-mind. They have lost -all commanding views in literature, philosophy, and science. A good -Englishman shuts himself out of three fourths of his mind, and confines -himself to one fourth. He has learning, good sense, power of labor, and -logic: but a faith in the laws of the mind like that of Archimedes; a -belief like that of Euler and Kepler, that experience must follow and -not lead the laws of the mind; a devotion to the theory of politics, -like that of Hooker, and Milton, and Harrington, the modern English mind -repudiates. - -I fear the same fault lies in their science, since they have known how -to make it repulsive, and bereave nature of its charm;--though perhaps -the complaint flies wider, and the vice attaches to many more than to -British physicists. The eye of the naturalist must have a scope like -nature itself, a susceptibility to all impressions, alive to the heart -as well as to the logic of creation. But English science puts humanity -to the door. It wants the connection which is the test of genius. The -science is false by not being poetic. It isolates the reptile or -mollusk it assumes to explain; whilst reptile or mollusk only exists in -system, in relation. The poet only sees it as an inevitable step in the -path of the Creator. But, in England, one hermit finds this fact, and -another finds that, and lives and dies ignorant of its value. There are -great exceptions, of John Hunter, a man of ideas; perhaps of Robert -Brown, the botanist; and of Richard Owen, who has imported into Britain -the German homologies, and enriched science with contributions of his -own, adding sometimes the divination of the old masters to the unbroken -power of labor in the English mind. But for the most part, the natural -science in England is out of its loyal alliance with morals, and is as -void of imagination and free play of thought, as conveyancing. It -stands in strong contrast with the genius of the Germans, those -semi-Greeks, who love analogy, and, by means of their height of view, -preserve their enthusiasm, and think for Europe. - -No hope, no sublime augury, cheers the student, no secure striding from -experiment onward to a foreseen law, but only a casual dipping here and -there, like diggers in California "prospecting for a placer" that will -pay. A horizon of brass of the diameter of his umbrella shuts down -around his senses. Squalid contentment with conventions, satire at the -names of philosophy and religion, parochial and shop-till politics, and -idolatry of usage, betray the ebb of life and spirit. As they trample -on nationalities to reproduce London and Londoners in Europe and Asia, -so they fear the hostility of ideas, of poetry, of religion,--ghosts -which they cannot lay; and, having attempted to domesticate and dress -the Blessed Soul itself in English broadcloth and gaiters, they are -tormented with fear that herein lurks a force that will sweep their -system away. The artists say, "Nature puts us out"; the scholars have -become un-ideal. They parry earnest speech with banter and levity; they -laugh you down, or they change the subject. "The fact is," say they -over their wine, "all that about liberty, and so forth, is gone by; it -won't do any longer." The practical and comfortable oppress them with -inexorable claims, and the smallest fraction of power remains for -heroism and poetry. No poet dares murmur of beauty out of the precinct -of his rhymes. No priest dares hint at a Providence which does not -respect English utility. The island is a roaring volcano of fate, of -material values, of tariffs, and laws of repression, glutted markets and -low prices. - -In the absence of the highest aims, of the pure love of knowledge, and -the surrender to nature, there is the suppression of the imagination, -the priapism of the senses and the understanding; we have the factitious -instead of the natural; tasteless expense, arts of comfort, and the -rewarding as an illustrious inventor whosoever will contrive one -impediment more to interpose between the man and his objects. - -Thus poetry is degraded, and made ornamental. Pope and his school wrote -poetry fit to put round frosted cake. What did Walter Scott write -without stint? a rhymed traveller's guide to Scotland. And the -libraries of verses they print have this Birmingham character. How many -volumes of well-bred metre we must jingle through, before we can be -filled, taught, renewed! We want the miraculous; the beauty which we -can manufacture at no mill,--can give no account of; the beauty of which -Chaucer and Chapman had the secret. The poetry of course is low and -prosaic; only now and then, as in Wordsworth, conscientious; or in -Byron, passional; or in Tennyson, factitious. But if I should count the -poets who have contributed to the Bible of existing England sentences of -guidance and consolation which are still glowing and effective,--how -few! Shall I find my heavenly bread in the reigning poets? Where is -great design in modern English poetry? The English have lost sight of -the fact that poetry exists to speak the spiritual law, and that no -wealth of description or of fancy is yet essentially new, and out of the -limits of prose, until this condition is reached. Therefore the grave -old poets, like the Greek artists, heeded their designs, and less -considered the finish. It was their office to lead to the divine -sources, out of which all this, and much more, readily springs; and, if -this religion is in the poetry, it raises us to some purpose, and we can -well afford some staidness; or hardness, or want of popular tune in the -verses. - -The exceptional fact of the period is the genius of Wordsworth. He had -no master but nature and solitude. "He wrote a poem," says Landor, -"without the aid of war." His verse is the voice of sanity in a worldly -and ambitious age. One regrets that his temperament was not more liquid -and musical. He has written longer than he was inspired. But for the -rest, he has no competitor. - -Tennyson is endowed precisely in points where Wordsworth wanted. There -is no finer ear than Tennyson's, nor more command of the keys of -language. Color, like the dawn, flows over the horizon from his pencil, -in waves so rich that we do not miss the central form. Through all his -refinements, too, he has reached the public,--a certificate of good -sense and general power, since he who aspires to be the English poet -must be as large as London, not in the same kind as London, but in his -own kind. But he wants a subject, and climbs no mount of vision to -bring its secrets to the people. He contents himself with describing -the Englishman as he is, and proposes no better. There are all degrees -in poetry, and we must be thankful for every beautiful talent. But it -is only a first success, when the ear is gained. The best office of the -best poets has been to show how low and uninspired was their general -style, and that only once or twice they have struck the high chord. - -That expansiveness which is the essence of the poetic element, they have -not. It was no Oxonian, but Hafiz, who said: "Let us be crowned with -roses, let us drink wine, and break up the tiresome old roof of heaven -into new forms." A stanza of the song of nature the Oxonian has no ear -for, and he does not value the salient and curative influence of -intellectual action, studious of truth, without a by-end. - -By the law of contraries, I look for an irresistible taste for -Orientalism in Britain. For a self-conceited modish life, made up of -trifles, clinging to a corporeal civilization, hating ideas, there is no -remedy like the Oriental largeness. That astonishes and disconcerts -English decorum. For once there is thunder it never heard, light it -never saw, and power which trifles with time and space. I am not -surprised, then, to find an Englishman like Warren Hastings, who had -been struck with the grand style of thinking in the Indian writings, -deprecating the prejudices of his countrymen, while offering them a -translation of the Bhagvat. "Might I," he says, "an unlettered man, -venture to prescribe bounds to the latitude of criticism, I should -exclude, in estimating the merit of such a production, all rules drawn -from the ancient or modern literature of Europe, all references to such -sentiments or manners as are become the standards of propriety for -opinion and action in our own modes, and, equally, all appeals to our -revealed tenets, of religion and moral duty." [#] He goes on to bespeak -indulgence to "ornaments of fancy unsuited to our taste, and passages -elevated to a tract of sublimity into which our habits of judgment will -find it difficult to pursue them." - -[#] Preface to Wilkins's Translation of the Bhagvat Geeta. - -Meantime, I know that a retrieving power lies in the English race, which -seems to make any recoil possible; in other words, there is at all times -a minority of profound minds existing in the nation, capable of -appreciating every soaring of intellect and every hint of tendency. -While the constructive talent seems dwarfed and superficial, the -criticism is often in the noblest tone, and suggests the presence of the -invisible gods. I can well believe what I have often heard, that there -are two nations in England; but it is not the Poor and the Rich; nor is -it the Normans and Saxons; nor the Celt and the Goth. These are each -always becoming the other; for Robert Owen does not exaggerate the power -of circumstance. But the two complexions, or two styles of mind,--the -perceptive class, and the practical finality class,--are ever in -counterpoise, interacting mutually; one, in hopeless minorities; the -other, in huge masses; one studious, contemplative, experimenting; the -other, the ungrateful pupil, scornful of the source, whilst availing -itself of the knowledge for gain; these two nations, of genius and of -animal force, though the first consist of only a dozen souls, and the -second of twenty millions, forever by their discord and their accord -yield the power of the English State. - - - - -CHAPTER XV.--THE "TIMES." - - -The power of the newspaper is familiar in America, and in accordance -with our political system. In England, it stands in antagonism with the -feudal institutions, and it is all the more beneficent succor against -the secretive tendencies of a monarchy. The celebrated Lord Somers -"knew of no good law proposed and passed in his time, to which the -public papers had not directed his attention." There is no corner and -no night. A relentless inquisition drags every secret to the day, turns -the glare of this solar microscope on every malfaisance, so as to make -the public a more terrible spy than any foreigner; and no weakness can -be taken advantage of by an enemy, since the whole people are already -forewarned. Thus England rids herself of those incrustations which have -been the ruin of old states. Of course, this inspection is feared. No -antique privilege, no comfortable monopoly, but sees surely that its -days are counted; the people are familiarized with the reason of reform, -and, one by one, take away every argument of the obstructives. "So your -Grace likes the comfort of reading the newspapers," said Lord Mansfield -to the Duke of Northumberland; "mark my words; you and I shall not live -to see it, but this young gentleman (Lord Eldon) may, or it may be a -little later; but a little sooner or later, these newspapers will most -assuredly write the dukes of Northumberland out of their titles and -possessions, and the country out of its king." The tendency in England -towards social and political institutions like those of America, is -inevitable, and the ability of its journals is the driving force. - -England is full of manly, clever, well-bred men who possess the talent -of writing off-hand pungent paragraphs, expressing with clearness and -courage their opinion on any person or performance. Valuable or not, it -is a skill that is rarely found, out of the English journals. The -English do this, as they write poetry, as they ride and box, by being -educated to it. Hundreds of clever Praeds, and Freres, and Froudes, and -Hoods, and Hooks, and Maginns, and Mills, and Macaulays, make poems, or -short essays for a journal, as they make speeches in Parliament and on -the hustings, or, as they shoot and ride. It is a quite accidental and -arbitrary direction of their general ability. Rude health and spirits, -an Oxford education, and the habits of society are implied, but not a -ray of genius. It comes of the crowded state of the professions, the -violent interest which all men take in politics, the facility of -experimenting in the journals, and high pay. - -The most conspicuous result of this talent is the "Times" newspaper. No -power in England is more felt, more feared, or more obeyed. What you -read in the morning in that journal, you shall hear in the evening in -all society. It has ears everywhere, and its information is earliest, -completest, and surest. It has risen, year by year, and victory by -victory, to its present authority. I asked one of its old contributors, -whether it had once been abler than it is now. "Never," he said; "these -are its palmiest days." It has shown those qualities which are dear to -Englishmen, unflinching adherence to its objects, prodigal intellectual -ability, and a towering assurance, backed by the perfect organization in -its printing-house, and its world-wide network of correspondence and -reports. It has its own history and famous trophies. In 1820, it -adopted the cause of Queen Caroline, and carried it against the king. -It adopted a poor-law system, and almost alone lifted it through. When -Lord Brougham was in power, it decided against him, and pulled him down. -It declared war against Ireland, and conquered it. It adopted the -League against the Corn Laws, and, when Cobden had begun to despair, it -announced his triumph. It denounced and discredited the French Republic -of 1848, and checked every sympathy with it in England, until it had -enrolled 200,000 special constables to watch the Chartists, and make -them ridiculous on the 10th April. It first denounced and then adopted -the new French Empire, and urged the French Alliance and its results. It -has entered into each municipal, literary, and social question, almost -with a controlling voice. It has done bold and seasonable service in -exposing frauds which threatened the commercial community. Meantime, it -attacks its rivals by perfecting its printing machinery, and will drive -them out of circulation; for the only limit to the circulation of the -"Times" is the impossibility of printing copies fast enough; since a -daily paper can only be new and seasonable for a few hours. It will -kill all but that paper which is diametrically in opposition; since many -papers, first and last, have lived by their attacks on the leading -journal. - -The late Mr. Walter was printer of the "Times," and had gradually -arranged the whole _materiel_ of it in perfect system. It is told, that -when he demanded a small share in the proprietary, and was refused, he -said, "As you please, gentlemen; and you may take away the 'Times' from -this office when you will; I shall publish the 'New Times' next Monday -morning." The proprietors, who had already complained that his charges -for printing were excessive, found that they were in his power, and gave -him whatever he wished. - -I went one day with a good friend to the "Times": office, which was -entered through a pretty garden-yard, in Printing-House Square. We -walked with some circumspection, as if we were entering a powder-mill; -but the door was opened by a mild old woman, and, by dint of some -transmission of cards, we were at last conducted into the parlor of Mr. -Morris, a very gentle person, with no hostile appearances. The -statistics are now quite out of date, but I remember he told us that the -daily printing was then 35,000 copies; that on the 1st March, 1848, the -greatest number ever printed,--54,000 were issued; that, since February, -the daily circulation had increased by 8,000 copies. The old press they -were then using printed five or six thousand sheets per hour; the new -machine, for which they were then building an engine, would print twelve -thousand per hour. Our entertainer confided us to a courteous assistant -to show us the establishment, in which, I think, they employed a hundred -and twenty men. I remember, I saw the reporters' room, in which they -redact their hasty stenographs, but the editor's room, and who is in it, -I did not see, though I shared the curiosity of mankind respecting it. - -The staff of the "Times" has always been made up of able men. Old -Walter, Sterling, Bacon, Barnes, Alsiger, Horace Twiss, Jones Loyd, John -Oxenford, Mr. Mosely, Mr. Bailey, have contributed to its renown in -their special departments. But it has never wanted the first pens for -occasional assistance. Its private information is inexplicable, and -recalls the stories of Fouche's police, whose omniscience made it -believed that the Empress Josephine must be in his pay. It has -mercantile and political correspondents in every foreign city; and its -expresses outrun the despatches of the government. One hears anecdotes -of the rise of its servants, as of the functionaries of the India House. -I was told of the dexterity of one of its reporters, who, finding -himself, on one occasion, where the magistrates had strictly forbidden -reporters, put his hands into his coat-pocket, and with pencil in one -hand, and tablet in the other, did his work. - -The influence of this journal is a recognized power in Europe, and, of -course, none is more conscious of it than its conductors. The tone of -its articles has often been the occasion of comment from the official -organs of the continental courts, and sometimes the ground of diplomatic -complaint. What would the "Times" say? is a terror in Paris, in Berlin, -in Vienna, in Copenhagen, and in Nepaul. Its consummate discretion and -success exhibit the English skill of combination. The daily paper is -the work of many hands, chiefly, it is said, of young men recently from -the University, and perhaps reading law in chambers in London. Hence -the academic elegance, and classic allusion, which adorn its columns. -Hence, too, the heat and gallantry of its onset. But the steadiness of -the aim suggests the belief that this fire is directed and fed by older -engineers; as if persons of exact information, and with settled views of -policy, supplied the writers with the basis of fact, and the object to -be attained, and availed themselves of their younger energy and -eloquence to plead the cause. Both the council and the executive -departments gain by this division. Of two men of equal ability, the one -who does not write, but keeps his eye on the course of public affairs, -will have the higher judicial wisdom. But the parts are kept in -concert; all the articles appear to proceed from a single will. The -"Times" never disapproves of what itself has said, or cripples itself by -apology for the absence of the editor, or the indiscretion of him who -held the pen. It speaks out bluff and bold, and sticks to what it says. -It draws from any number of learned and skilful contributors; but a more -learned and skilful person supervises, corrects, and co-ordinates. Of -this closet, the secret does not transpire. No writer is suffered to -claim the authorship of any paper; everything good, from whatever -quarter, comes out editorially; and thus, by making the paper -everything, and those who write it nothing, the character and the awe of -the journal gain. - -The English like it for its complete information. A statement of fact -in the "Times" is as reliable as a citation from Hansard. Then, they -like its independence; they do not know, when they take it up, what -their paper is going to say; but, above all, for the nationality and -confidence of its tone. It thinks for them all; it is their -understanding and day's ideal daguerreotyped. When I see them reading -its columns, they seem to me becoming every moment more British. It has -the national courage, not rash and petulant, but considerate and -determined. No dignity or wealth is a shield from its assault. It -attacks a duke as readily as a policeman, and with the most provoking -airs of condescension. It makes rude work with the Board of Admiralty. -The Bench of Bishops is still less safe. One bishop fares badly for his -rapacity, and another for his bigotry, and a third for his courtliness. -It addresses occasionally a hint to majesty itself, and sometimes a hint -which is taken. There is an air of freedom even in their advertising -columns, which speaks well for England to a foreigner. On the days when -I arrived in London in 1847, I read among the daily announcements, one -offering a reward of fifty pounds to any person who would put a -nobleman, described by name and title, late a member of Parliament, into -any county jail in England, he having been convicted of obtaining money -under false pretences. - -Was never such arrogancy as the tone of this paper. Every slip of an -Oxonian or Cantabrigian who writes his first leader assumes that we -subdued the earth before we sat down to write this particular "Times." -One would think the world was on its knees to the "Times" Office, for -its daily breakfast. But this arrogance is calculated. Who would care -for it, if it "surmised," or "dared to confess," or "ventured to -predict," etc.? No; _it is so_, and so it shall be. - -The morality and patriotism of the "Times" claims only to be -representative, and by no means ideal. It gives the argument, not of -the majority, but of the commanding class. Its editors know better than -to defend Russia, or Austria, or English vested rights, on abstract -grounds. But they give a voice to the class who, at the moment, take -the lead; and they have an instinct for finding where the power now -lies, which is eternally shifting its banks. Sympathizing with, and -speaking for the class that rules the hour, yet, being apprised of every -ground-swell, every Chartist resolution, every Church squabble, every -strike in the mills, they detect the first tremblings of change. They -watch the hard and bitter struggles of the authors of each liberal -movement, year by year,--watching them only to taunt and obstruct -them,--until, at last, when they see that these have established their -fact, that power is on the point of passing to them, they strike in, -with the voice of a monarch, astonish those whom they succor, as much as -those whom they desert, and make victory sure. Of course, the aspirants -see that the "Times" is one of the goods of fortune, not to be won but -by winning their cause. - -"Punch" is equally an expression of English good sense, as the "London -Times." It is the comic version of the same sense. Many of its -caricatures are equal to the best pamphlets, and will convey to the eye -in an instant the popular view which was taken of each turn of public -affairs. Its sketches are usually made by masterly hands, and sometimes -with genius; the delight of every class, because uniformly guided by -that taste which is tyrannical in England. It is a new trait of the -nineteenth century, that the wit and humor of England, as in Punch, so -in the humorists, Jerrold, Dickens, Thackeray, Hood, have taken the -direction of humanity and freedom. - -The "Times," like every important institution, shows the way to a -better. It is a living index of the colossal British power. Its -existence honors the people who dare to print all they know, dare to -know all the facts, and do not wish to be flattered by hiding the extent -of the public disaster. There is always safety in valor. I wish I -could add, that this journal aspired to deserve the power it wields, by -guidance of the public sentiment to the right. It is usually pretended, -in Parliament and elsewhere, that the English press has a high -tone,--which it has not. It has an imperial tone, as of a powerful and -independent nation. But as with other empires, its tone is prone to be -official, and even officinal. The "Times" shares all the limitations of -the governing classes, and wishes never to be in a minority. If only it -dared to cleave to the right, to show the right to be the only -expedient, and feed its batteries from the central heart of humanity, it -might not have so many men of rank among its contributors, but genius -would be its cordial and invincible ally; it might now and then bear the -brunt of formidable combinations, but no journal is ruined by wise -courage. It would be the natural leader of British reform; its proud -function, that of being the voice of Europe, the defender of the exile -and patriot against despots, would be more effectually discharged; it -would have the authority which is claimed for that dream of good men not -yet come to pass, an International Congress; and the least of its -victories would be to give to England a new millennium of beneficent -power. - - - - -CHAPTER XVI.--STONEHENGE. - - -It had been agreed between my friend Mr. C. and me, that before I left -England we should make an excursion together to Stonehenge, which -neither of us had seen; and the project pleased my fancy with the double -attraction of the monument and the companion. It seemed a bringing -together of extreme points, to visit the oldest religious monument in -Britain in company with her latest thinker, and one whose influence may -be traced in every contemporary book. I was glad to sum up a little my -experiences, and to exchange a few reasonable words on the aspects of -England, with a man on whose genius I set a very high value, and who had -as much penetration, and as severe a theory of duty as any person in it. -On Friday, 7th July, we took the South-western Railway through Hampshire -to Salisbury, where we found a carriage to convey us to Amesbury. The -fine weather and my friend's local knowledge of Hampshire, in which he -is wont to spend a part of every summer, made the way short. There was -much to say, too, of the travelling Americans, and their usual objects -in London. I thought it natural that they should give some time to -works of art collected here, which they cannot find at home, and a -little to scientific clubs and museums, which, at this moment, make -London very attractive. But my philosopher was not contented. Art and -'high art' is a favorite target for his wit. "Yes, _Kunst_ is a great -delusion, and Goethe and Schiller wasted a great deal of good time on -it":--and he thinks he discovers that old Goethe found this out, and, in -his later writings, changed his tone. As soon as men begin to talk of -art, architecture, and antiquities, nothing good comes of it. He wishes -to go through the British Museum in silence, and thinks a sincere man -will see something, and say nothing. In these days, he thought, it -would become an architect to consult only the grim necessity, and say, -'I can build you a coffin for such dead persons as you are, and for such -dead purposes as you have, but you shall have no ornament.' For the -science, he had, if possible, even less tolerance, and compared the -savans of Somerset House to the boy who asked Confucius "how many stars -in the sky?" Confucius replied, "he minded things near him"; then said -the boy, "how many hairs are there in your eyebrows?" Confucius said, -"he didn't know and didn't care." - -Still speaking of the Americans, C. complained that they dislike the -coldness and exclusiveness of the English, and run away to France, and -go with their countrymen, and are amused, instead of manfully staying in -London, and confronting Englishmen, and acquiring their culture, who -really have much to teach them. - -I told C. that I was easily dazzled, and was accustomed to concede -readily all that an Englishman would ask; I saw everywhere in the -country proofs of sense and spirit, and success of every sort: I like -the people: they are as good as they are handsome; they have everything, -and can do everything: but meantime, I surely know, that, as soon as I -return to Massachusetts, I shall lapse at once into the feeling, which -the geography of America inevitably inspires, that we play the game with -immense advantage; that there and not here is the seat and centre of the -British race; and that no skill or activity can long compete with the -prodigious natural advantages of that country, in the hands of the same -race; and that England, an old and exhausted island, must one day be -contented, like other parents, to be strong only in her children. But -this was a proposition which no Englishman of whatever condition can -easily entertain. - -We left the train at Salisbury, and took a carriage to Amesbury, passing -by Old Sarum, a bare, treeless hill, once containing the town which sent -two members to Parliament,--now, not a hut,--and, arriving at Amesbury, -stopped at the George Inn. After dinner, we walked to Salisbury Plain. -On the broad downs, under the gray sky, not a house was visible, nothing -but Stonehenge, which looked like a group of brown dwarfs in the wide -expanse,--Stonehenge and the barrows, which rose like green bosses about -the plain, and a few hay-ricks. On the top of a mountain, the old -temple would not be more impressive. Far and wide a few shepherds with -their flocks sprinkled the plain, and a bagman drove along the road. It -looked as if the wide margin given in this crowded isle to this primeval -temple were accorded by the veneration of the British race to the old -egg out of which all their ecclesiastical structures and history had -proceeded. Stonehenge is a circular colonnade with a diameter of a -hundred feet, and enclosing a second and a third colonnade within. We -walked round the stones, and clambered over them, to wont ourselves with -their strange aspect and groupings, and found a nook sheltered from the -wind among them, where C. lighted his cigar. It was pleasant to see, -that just this simplest of all simple structures--two upright stones and -a lintel laid across--had long outstood all later churches, and all -history, and were like what is most permanent on the face of the planet: -these, and the barrows,--mere mounds (of which there are a hundred and -sixty within a circle of three miles about Stonehenge), like the same -mound on the plain of Troy, which still makes good to the passing -mariner on Hellespont, the vaunt of Homer and the fame of Achilles. -Within the enclosure grow buttercups, nettles, and, all around, wild -thyme, daisy, meadow-sweet, golden-rod, thistle, and the carpeting -grass. Over us, larks were soaring and singing,--as my friend said: -"the larks which were hatched last year, and the wind which was hatched -many thousand years ago." We counted and measured by paces the biggest -stones, and soon knew as much as any man can suddenly know of the -inscrutable temple. There are ninety-four stones, and there were once -probably one hundred and sixty. The temple is circular, and uncovered, -and the situation fixed astronomically;--the grand entrances here, and -at Abury, being placed exactly north-east, "as all the gates of the old -cavern temples are." How came the stones here? for these _sarsens_ or -Druidical sandstones are not found in this neighborhood. The -_sacrificial stone_, as it is called, is the only one in all these -blocks, that can resist the action of fire, and as I read in the books, -must have been brought one hundred and fifty miles. - -On almost every stone we found the marks of the mineralogist's hammer -and chisel. The nineteen smaller stones of the inner circle are of -granite. I, who had just come from Professor Sedgwick's Cambridge -Museum of megatheria and mastodons, was ready to maintain that some -cleverer elephants or mylodonta had borne off and laid these rocks one -on another. Only the good beasts must have known how to cut a -well-wrought tenon and mortise, and to smooth the surface of some of the -stones. The chief mystery is, that any mystery should have been allowed -to settle on so remarkable a monument, in a country on which all the -muses have kept their eyes now for eighteen hundred years. We are not -yet too late to learn much more than is known of this structure. Some -diligent Fellowes or Layard will arrive, stone by stone, at the whole -history, by that exhaustive British sense and perseverance, so whimsical -in its choice of objects, which leaves its own Stonehenge or Choir Gaur -to the rabbits, whilst it opens pyramids, and uncovers Nineveh. -Stonehenge, in virtue of the simplicity of its plan, and its good -preservation, is as if new and recent; and, a thousand years hence, men -will thank this age for the accurate history it will yet eliminate. We -walked in and out, and took again and again a fresh look at the uncanny -stones. The old sphinx put our petty differences of nationality out of -sight. To these conscious stones we two pilgrims were alike known and -near. We could equally well revere their old British meaning. My -philosopher was subdued and gentle. In this quiet house of destiny, he -happened to say, "I plant cypresses wherever I go, and if I am in search -of pain, I cannot go wrong." The spot, the gray blocks, and their rude -order, which refuses to be disposed of, suggested to him the flight of -ages, and the succession of religious. The old times of England impress -C. much; he reads little, he says, in these last years, but "_Acta -Sanctorum_," the fifty-three volumes of which are in the "London -Library." He finds all English history therein. He can see, as he -reads, the old saint of Iona sitting there, and writing, a man to men. -The _Acta Sanctorum_ show plainly that the men of those times believed -in God, and in the immortality of the soul, as their abbeys and -cathedrals testify: now, even the puritanism is all gone. London is -pagan. He fancied that greater men had lived in England than any of her -writers; and, in fact, about the time when those writers appeared, the -last of these were already gone. - -We left the mound in the twilight, with the design to return the next -morning, and coming back two miles to our inn, we were met by little -showers, and late as it was, men and women were out attempting to -protect their spread windrows. The grass grows rank and dark in the -showery England. At the inn, there was only milk for one cup of tea. -When we called for more, the girl brought us three drops. My friend was -annoyed who stood for the credit of an English inn, and still more, the -next morning, by the dog-cart, sole procurable vehicle, in which we were -to be sent to Wilton. I engaged the local antiquary, Mr. Brown, to go -with us to Stonehenge, on our way, and show us what he knew of the -"astronomical" and "sacrificial" stones. I stood on the last, and he -pointed to the upright, or rather, inclined stone, called the -"astronomical," and bade me notice that its top ranged with the -sky-line. "Yes." Very well. Now, at the summer solstice, the sun -rises exactly over the top of that stone, and, at the Druidical temple -at Abury, there is also an astronomical stone, in the same relative -positions. - -In the silence of tradition, this one relation to science becomes an -important clew; but we were content to leave the problem, with the -rocks. Was this the "Giants' Dance" which Merlin brought from -Killaraus, in Ireland, to be Uther Pendragon's monument to the British -nobles whom Hengist slaughtered here, as Geoffrey of Monmouth relates? -or was it a Roman work, as Inigo Jones explained to King James; or -identical in design and style with the East Indian temples of the sun; -as Davies in the Celtic Researches maintains? Of all the writers, -Stukeley is the best. The heroic antiquary, charmed with the geometric -perfections of his ruin, connects it with the oldest monuments and -religion of the world, and, with the courage of his tribe, does not -stick to say, "the Deity who made the world by the scheme of -Stonehenge." He finds that the _cursus_[23] on Salisbury Plain -stretches across the downs, like a line of latitude upon the globe, and -the meridian line of Stonehenge passes exactly through the middle of -this _cursus_. But here is the high point of the theory: the Druids had -the magnet; laid their courses by it; their cardinal points in -Stonehenge, Ambresbury, and elsewhere, which vary a little from true -east and west, followed the variations of the compass. The Druids were -Phoenicians. The name of the magnet is _lapis Heracleus_, and Hercules -was the god of the Phoenicians. Hercules, in the legend, drew his bow -at the sun, and the sun-god gave him a golden cup, with which he sailed -over the ocean. What was this, but a compass-box? This cup or little -boat, in which the magnet was made to float on water, and so show the -north, was probably its first form, before it was suspended on a pin. -But science was an _arcanum_, and, as Britain was a Phoenician secret, -so they kept their compass a secret, and it was lost with the Tyrian -commerce. The golden fleece, again, of Jason, was the compass,--a bit -of loadstone, easily supposed to be the only one in the world, and -therefore naturally awakening the cupidity and ambition of the young -heroes of a maritime nation to join in an expedition to obtain -possession of this wise stone. Hence the fable that the ship Argo was -loquacious and oracular. There is also some curious coincidence in the -names. Apollodorus makes _Magnes_ the son of _AEolus_, who married -_Nais_. On hints like these, Stukeley builds again the grand colonnade -into historic harmony, and computing backward by the known variations of -the compass, bravely assigns the year 406 before Christ for the date of -the temple. - - [23] Connected with Stonehenge are an avenue and a _cursus_. The avenue - is a narrow road of raised earth, extending 594 yards in a - straight line from the grand entrance, then dividing into two - branches, which lead, severally, to a row of barrows: and to the - cursus,--an artificially formed flat tract of ground. This is - half a mile northeast from Stonehenge, bounded by banks and - ditches, 3,036 yards long, by 110 broad. - -For the difficulty of handling and carrying stones of this size, the -like is done in all cities, every day, with no other aid than -horse-power. I chanced to see a year ago men at work on the -substructure of a house in Bowdoin Square, in Boston, swinging a block -of granite of the size of the largest of the Stonehenge columns with an -ordinary derrick. The men were common masons, with paddies to help, nor -did they think they were doing anything remarkable. I suppose there -were as good men a thousand years ago. And we wonder how Stonehenge was -built and forgotten. After spending half an hour on the spot, we set -forth in our dog-cart over the downs for Wilton, C. not suppressing some -threats and evil omens on the proprietors, for keeping these broad -plains a wretched sheep-walk when so many thousands of Englishmen were -hungry and wanted labor. But I heard afterwards that it is not an -economy to cultivate this land, which only yields one crop on being -broken up, and is then spoiled. - -We came to Wilton and to Wilton Hall,--the renowned seat of the Earls of -Pembroke, a house known to Shakspeare and Massinger, the frequent home -of Sir Philip Sidney, where he wrote the Arcadia; where he conversed -with Lord Brooke, a man of deep thought, and a poet, who caused to be -engraved on his tombstone, "Here lies Fulke Greville Lord Brooke, the -friend of Sir Philip Sidney." It is now the property of the Earl of -Pembroke, and the residence of his brother, Sidney Herbert, Esq., and is -esteemed a noble specimen of the English manor-hall. My friend had a -letter from Mr. Herbert to his housekeeper, and the house was shown. The -state drawing-room is a double cube, thirty feet high, by thirty wide, -by sixty feet long: the adjoining room is a single cube, of thirty feet -every way. Although these apartments and the long library were full of -good family portraits, Vandykes and other; and though there were some -good pictures, and a quadrangle cloister full of antique and modern -statuary,--to which C., catalogue in hand, did all too much -justice,--yet the eye was still drawn to the windows, to a magnificent -lawn, on which grew the finest cedars in England. I had not seen more -charming grounds. We went out, and walked over the estate. We crossed -a bridge built by Inigo Jones over a stream, of which the gardener did -not know the name, (_Qu._ Alph?) watched the deer; climbed to the lonely -sculptured summer-house, on a hill backed by a wood; came down into the -Italian garden, and into a French pavilion, garnished with French busts; -and so, again to the house, where we found a table laid for us with -bread, meats, peaches, grapes, and wine. - -On leaving Wilton House, we took the coach for Salisbury. The Cathedral -which was finished six hundred years ago has even a spruce and modern -air, and its spire is the highest in England. I know not why, but I had -been more struck with one of no fame at Coventry, which rises three -hundred feet from the ground, with the lightness of a mullein-plant, and -not at all implicated with the church. Salisbury is now esteemed the -culmination of the Gothic art in England, as the buttresses are fully -unmasked, and honestly detailed from the sides of the pile. The -interior of the Cathedral is obstructed by the organ in the middle, -acting like a screen. I know not why in real architecture the hunger of -the eye for length of line is so rarely gratified. The rule of art is -that a colonnade is more beautiful the longer it is, and that _ad -infinitum_. And the nave of a church is seldom so long that it need be -divided by a screen. - -We loitered in the church, outside the choir, whilst service was said. -Whilst we listened to the organ, my friend remarked, the music is good -and yet not quite religious, but somewhat as if a monk were panting to -some fine Queen of Heaven. C. was unwilling, and we did not ask to have -the choir shown us, but returned to our inn, after seeing another old -church of the place. We passed in the train Clarendon Park, but could -see little but the edge of a wood, though C. had wished to pay closer -attention to the birthplace of the Decrees of Clarendon. At Bishopstoke -we stopped, and found Mr. H., who received us in his carriage, and took -us to his house at Bishops Waltham. - -On Sunday, we had much discourse on a very rainy day. My friends ask, -whether there were any Americans?--any with an American idea,--any -theory of the right future of that country? Thus challenged, I -bethought myself neither of caucuses nor congress, neither of presidents -nor of cabinet-ministers, nor of such as would make of America another -Europe. I thought only of the simplest and purest minds; I said, -'Certainly yes; but those who hold it are fanatics of a dream which I -should hardly care to relate to your English ears, to which it might be -only ridiculous,--and yet it is the only true.' So I opened the dogma -of no government and non-resistance, and anticipated the objections and -the fun, and procured a kind of hearing for it. I said, it is true that -I have never seen in any country a man of sufficient valor to stand for -this truth, and yet it is plain to me that no less valor than this can -command my respect. I can easily see the bankruptcy of the vulgar -musket-worship,--though great men be musket-worshippers; and 't is -certain, as God liveth, the gun that does not need another gun, the law -of love and justice alone, can effect a clean revolution. I fancied -that one or two of my anecdotes made some impression on C., and I -insisted that the manifest absurdity of the view to English feasibility -could make no difference to a gentleman; that as to our secure tenure of -our mutton-chop and spinage in London or in Boston, the soul might quote -Talleyrand, "_Monsieur, je n'en vois pas la necessite_."[24] As I had -thus taken in the conversation the saint's part, when dinner was -announced, C. refused to go out before me,--"he was altogether too -wicked." I planted my back against the wall, and our host wittily -rescued us from the dilemma, by saying, he was the wickedest, and would -walk out first, then C. followed, and I went last. - - [24] "Mais, Monseigneur, il faut que j'existe." - -On the way to Winchester, whither our host accompanied us in the -afternoon, my friends asked many questions respecting American -landscape, forests, houses,--my house, for example. It is not easy to -answer these queries well. There I thought, in America, lies nature -sleeping, overgrowing, almost conscious, too much by half for man in the -picture, and so giving a certain tristesse, like the rank vegetation of -swamps and forests seen at night, steeped in dews and rains, which it -loves; and on it man seems not able to make much impression. There, in -that great sloven continent, in high Alleghany pastures, in the -sea-wide, sky-skirted prairie, still sleeps and murmurs and hides the -great mother, long since driven away from the trim hedge-rows and -over-cultivated garden of England. And, in England, I am quite too -sensible of this. Every one is on his good behavior, and must be -dressed for dinner at six. So I put off my friends with very inadequate -details, as best I could. - -Just before entering Winchester, we stopped at the Church of Saint -Cross, and, after looking through the quaint antiquity, we demanded a -piece of bread and a draught of beer, which the founder, Henry de Blois, -in 1136, commanded should be given to every one who should ask it at the -gate. We had both, from the old couple who take care of the church. -Some twenty people, every day, they said, make the same demand. This -hospitality of seven hundred years' standing did not hinder C. from -pronouncing a malediction on the priest who receives L2,000 a year, that -were meant for the poor, and spends a pittance on this small-beer and -crumbs. - -In the Cathedral, I was gratified, at least by the ample dimensions. -The length of line exceeds that of any other English church; being 556 -feet by 250 in breadth of transept. I think I prefer this church to all -I have seen, except Westminster and York. Here was Canute buried, and -here Alfred the Great was crowned and buried, and here the Saxon kings: -and, later, in his own church, William of Wykeham. It is very old: part -of the crypt into which we went down and saw the Saxon and Norman arches -of the old church on which the present stands, was built fourteen or -fifteen hundred years ago. Sharon Turner says: "Alfred was buried at -Winchester, in the Abbey he had founded there, but his remains were -removed by Henry I. to the new Abbey in the meadows at Hyde, on the -northern quarter of the city, and laid under the high altar. The -building was destroyed at the Reformation, and what is left of Alfred's -body now lies covered by modern buildings, or buried in the ruins of the -old."[25] William of Wykeham's shrine tomb was unlocked for us, and C. -took hold of the recumbent statue's marble hands, and patted them -affectionately, for he rightly values the brave man who built Windsor, -and this Cathedral, and the School here, and New College at Oxford. But -it was growing late in the afternoon. Slowly we left the old house, and -parting with our host, we took the train for London. - - [25] History of the Anglo-Saxons, I. 599. - - - - -CHAPTER XVII.--PERSONAL. - - -In these comments on an old journey now revised after seven busy years -have much changed men and things in England, I have abstained from -reference to persons, except in the last chapter, and in one or two -cases where the fame of the parties seemed to have given the public a -property in all that concerned them. I must further allow myself a few -notices, if only as an acknowledgment of debts that cannot be paid. My -journeys were cheered by so much kindness from new friends, that my -impression of the island is bright with agreeable memories both of -public societies and of households; and, what is nowhere better found -than in England, a cultivated person fitly surrounded by a happy home, -"with honor, love, obedience, troops of friends," is of all institutions -the best. At the landing in Liverpool, I found my Manchester -correspondent awaiting me, a gentleman whose kind reception was followed -by a train of friendly and effective attentions which never rested -whilst I remained in the country. A man of sense and of letters, the -editor of a powerful local journal, he added to solid virtues an -infinite sweetness and _bonhommie_. There seemed a pool of honey about -his heart which lubricated all his speech and action with fine jets of -mead. An equal good-fortune attended many later accidents of my -journey, until the sincerity of English kindness ceased to surprise. My -visit fell in the fortunate days when Mr. Bancroft was the American -Minister in London, and at his house, or through his good offices, I had -easy access to excellent persons and to privileged places. At the house -of Mr. Carlyle, I met persons eminent in society and in letters. The -privileges of the Athenaeum and of the Reform Clubs were hospitably -opened to me, and I found much advantage in the circles of the -"Geologic," the "Antiquarian," and the "Royal Societies." Every day in -London gave me new opportunities of meeting men and women who give -splendor to society. I saw Rogers, Hallam, Macaulay, Milnes, Milman, -Barry Cornwall, Dickens, Thackeray, Tennyson, Leigh Hunt, D'Israeli, -Helps, Wilkinson, Bailey, Kenyon, and Forster: the younger poets, -Clough, Arnold, and Patmore; and, among the men of science, Robert -Brown, Owen, Sedgwick, Faraday, Buckland, Lyell, De la Beche, Hooker, -Carpenter, Babbage, and Edward Forbes. It was my privilege also to -converse with Miss Baillie, with Lady Morgan, with Mrs. Jameson, and -Mrs. Somerville. A finer hospitality made many private houses not less -known and dear. It is not in distinguished circles that wisdom and -elevated characters are usually found, or, if found, not confined -thereto; and my recollections of the best hours go back to private -conversations in different parts of the kingdom, with persons little -known. Nor am I insensible to the courtesy which frankly opened to me -some noble mansions, if I do not adorn my page with their names. Among -the privileges of London, I recall with pleasure two or three signal -days, one at Kew, where Sir William Hooker showed me all the riches of -the vast botanic garden; one at the Museum, where Sir Charles Fellowes -explained in detail the history of his Ionic trophy-monument; and still -another, on which Mr. Owen accompanied my countryman Mr. H. and myself -through the Hunterian Museum. - -The like frank hospitality, bent on real service, I found among the -great and the humble, wherever I went; in Birmingham, in Oxford, in -Leicester, in Nottingham, in Sheffield, in Manchester, in Liverpool. At -Edinburgh, through the kindness of Dr. Samuel Brown, I made the -acquaintance of De Quincey, of Lord Jeffrey, of Wilson, of Mrs. Crowe, -of the Messrs. Chambers, and of a man of high character and genius, the -short-lived painter David Scott. - -At Ambleside, in March, 1848, I was for a couple of days the guest of -Miss Martineau, then newly returned from her Egyptian tour. On Sunday -afternoon, I accompanied her to Rydal Mount. And as I have recorded a -visit to Wordsworth, many years before, I must not forget this second -interview. We found Mr. Wordsworth asleep on the sofa. He was at first -silent and indisposed, as an old man, suddenly waked, before he had -ended his nap; but soon became full of talk on the French news. He was -nationally bitter on the French: bitter on Scotchmen, too. No -Scotchman, he said, can write English. He detailed the two models, on -one or the other of which all the sentences of the historian Robertson -are framed. Nor could Jeffrey, nor the Edinburgh Reviewers write -English, nor can .... who is a pest to the English tongue. Incidentally -he added, Gibbon cannot write English. The _Edinburgh Review_ wrote -what would tell and what would sell. It had however changed the tone of -its literary criticism from the time when a certain letter was written -to the editor by Coleridge. Mrs. W. had the Editor's answer in her -possession. Tennyson he thinks a right poetic genius, though with some -affectation. He had thought an elder brother of Tennyson at first the -better poet, but must now reckon Alfred the true one..... In speaking of -I know not what style, he said, "To be sure it was the manner, but then -you know the matter always comes out of the manner." .... He thought Rio -Janeiro the best place in the world for a great capital city..... We -talked of English national character. I told him it was not creditable -that no one in all the country knew anything of Thomas Taylor, the -Platonist, whilst in every American library his translations are found. -I said, if Plato's Republic were published in England as a new book -to-day, do you think it would find any readers?--he confessed, it would -not: "And yet," he added after a pause, with that complacency which -never deserts a true-born Englishman,--"and yet we have embodied it -all." - -His opinions of French, English, Irish, and Scotch seemed rashly -formulized from little anecdotes of what had befallen himself and -members of his family, in a diligence or stage-coach. His face -sometimes lighted up, but his conversation was not marked by special -force or elevation. Yet perhaps it is a high compliment to the -cultivation of the English generally, when we find such a man not -distinguished. He had a healthy look, with a weather-beaten face, his -face corrugated, especially the large nose. - -Miss Martineau, who lived near him, praised him to me, not for his -poetry, but for thrift and economy; for having afforded to his country -neighbors an example of a modest household, where comfort and culture -were secured without any display. She said, that, in his early -housekeeping at the cottage where he first lived, he was accustomed to -offer his friends bread and plainest fare: if they wanted anything more, -they must pay him for their board. It was the rule of the house. I -replied, that it evinced English pluck more than any anecdote I knew. A -gentleman in the neighborhood told the story of Walter Scott's once -staying a week with Wordsworth, and slipping out every day under -pretence of a walk, to the Swan Inn, for a cold cut and porter; and one -day passing with Wordsworth the inn, he was betrayed by the landlord's -asking him if he had come for his porter. Of course, this trait would -have another look in London, and there you will hear from different -literary men, that Wordsworth had no personal friend, that he was not -amiable, that he was parsimonious, etc. Landor, always generous, says -that he never praised anybody. A gentleman in London showed me a watch -that once belonged to Milton, whose initials are engraved on its face. -He said, he once showed this to Wordsworth, who took it in one hand, -then drew out his own watch, and held it up with the other, before the -company, but no one making the expected remark, he put back his own in -silence. I do not attach much importance to the disparagement of -Wordsworth among London scholars. Who reads him well will know, that in -following the strong bent of his genius, he was careless of the many, -careless also of the few, self-assured that he should "create the taste -by which he is to be enjoyed." He lived long enough to witness the -revolution he had wrought, and "to see what he foresaw." There are -torpid places in his mind, there is something hard and sterile in his -poetry, want of grace and variety, want of due catholicity and -cosmopolitan scope: he had conformities to English politics and -traditions; he had egotistic puerilities in the choice and treatment of -his subjects; but let us say of him, that, alone in his time, he treated -the human mind well, and with an absolute trust. His adherence to his -poetic creed rested on real inspirations. The Ode on Immortality is the -high-water mark which the intellect has reached in this age. New means -were employed, and new realms added to the empire of the muse, by his -courage. - - - - -CHAPTER XVIII.--RESULT. - - -England is the best of actual nations. It is no ideal framework, it is -an old pile built in different ages, with repairs, additions, and -makeshifts; but you see the poor best you have got. London is the -epitome of our times, and the Rome of to-day. Broad-fronted, -broad-bottomed Teutons, they stand in solid phalanx foursquare to the -points of compass; they constitute the modern world, they have earned -their vantage-ground, and held it through ages of adverse possession. -They are well marked and differing from other leading races. England is -tender-hearted. Rome was not. England is not so public in its bias; -private life is its place of honor. Truth in private life, untruth in -public, marks these home-loving men. Their political conduct is not -decided by general views, but by internal intrigues and personal and -family interest. They cannot readily see beyond England. The history -of Rome and Greece, when written by their scholars, degenerates into -English party pamphlets. They cannot see beyond England, nor in England -can they transcend the interests of the governing classes. "English -principles" mean a primary regard to the interests of property. -England, Scotland, and Ireland combine to check the colonies. England -and Scotland combine to check Irish manufactures and trade. England -rallies at home to check Scotland. In England, the strong classes check -the weaker. In the home population of near thirty millions, there are -but one million voters. The Church punishes dissent, punishes -education. Down to a late day, marriages performed by dissenters were -illegal. A bitter class-legislation gives power to those who are rich -enough to buy a law. The game-laws are a proverb of oppression. -Pauperism incrusts and clogs the state, and in hard times becomes -hideous. In bad seasons, the porridge was diluted. Multitudes lived -miserably by shell-fish and sea-ware. In cities, the children are -trained to beg, until they shall be old enough to rob. Men and women -were convicted of poisoning scores of children for burial fees. In -Irish districts, men deteriorated in size and shape. The nose sunk, the -gums were exposed, with diminished brain and brutal form. During the -Australian emigration, multitudes were rejected by the commissioners as -being too emaciated for useful colonists. During the Russian war, few -of those that offered as recruits were found up to the medical standard, -though it had been reduced. - -The foreign policy of England, though ambitious and lavish of money, has -not often been generous or just. It has a principal regard to the -interest of trade, checked however by the aristocratic bias of the -ambassador, which usually puts him in sympathy with the continental -Courts. It sanctioned the partition of Poland, it betrayed Genoa, -Sicily, Parga, Greece, Turkey, Rome, and Hungary. - -Some public regards they have. They have abolished slavery in the West -Indies, and put an end to human sacrifices in the East. At home they -have a certain statute hospitality. England keeps open doors, as a -trading country must, to all nations. It is one of their fixed ideas, -and wrathfully supported by their laws in unbroken sequence for a -thousand years. In _Magna Charta_ it was ordained, that all "merchants -shall have safe and secure conduct to go out and come into England, and -to stay there, and to pass as well by land as by water, to buy and sell -by the ancient allowed customs, without any evil toll, except in time of -war, or when they shall be of any nation at war with us." It is a -statute and obliged hospitality, and peremptorily maintained. But this -shop-rule had one magnificent effect. It extends its cold unalterable -courtesy to political exiles of every opinion, and is a fact which might -give additional light to that portion of the planet seen from the -farthest star. But this perfunctory hospitality puts no sweetness into -their unaccommodating manners, no check on that puissant nationality -which makes their existence incompatible with all that is not English. - -What we must say about a nation is a superficial dealing with symptoms. -We cannot go deep enough into the biography of the spirit who never -throws himself entire into one hero, but delegates his energy in parts -or spasms to vicious and defective individuals. But the wealth of the -source is seen in the plenitude of English nature. What variety of -power and talent; what facility and plenteousness of knighthood, -lordship, ladyship, royalty, loyalty; what a proud chivalry is indicated -in "Collins's Peerage," through eight hundred years! What dignity -resting on what reality and stoutness! What courage in war, what sinew -in labor, what cunning workmen, what inventors and engineers, what -seamen and pilots, what clerks and scholars! No one man and no few men -can represent them. It is a people of myriad personalities. Their -many-headedness is owing to the advantageous position of the middle -class, who are always the source of letters and science. Hence the vast -plenty of their aesthetic production. As they are many-headed, so they -are many-nationed; their colonization annexes archipelagoes and -continents, and their speech seems destined to be the universal language -of men. I have noted the reserve of power in the English temperament. -In the island, they never let out all the length of all the reins, there -is no Berserkir rage, no abandonment or ecstasy of will or intellect, -like that of the Arabs in the time of Mahomet, or like that which -intoxicated France in 1789. But who would see the uncoiling of that -tremendous spring, the explosion of their well-husbanded forces, must -follow the swarms which, pouring now for two hundred years from the -British islands, have sailed, and rode, and traded, and planted, through -all climates, mainly following the belt of empire, the temperate zones, -carrying the Saxon seed, with its instinct for liberty and law, for arts -and for thought,--acquiring under some skies a more electric energy than -the native air allows,--to the conquest of the globe. Their colonial -policy, obeying the necessities of a vast empire, has become liberal. -Canada and Australia have been contented with substantial independence. -They are expiating the wrongs of India, by benefits: first, in works for -the irrigation of the peninsula, and roads and telegraphs; and secondly, -in the instruction of the people, to qualify them for self-government, -when the British power shall be finally called home. - -Their mind is in a state of arrested development,--a divine cripple like -Vulcan; a blind _savant_ like Huber and Sanderson. They do not occupy -themselves on matters of general and lasting import, but on a corporeal -civilization, on goods that perish in the using. But they read with -good intent, and what they learn they incarnate. The English mind turns -every abstraction it can receive into a portable utensil, or a working -institution. Such is their tenacity, and such their practical turn, that -they hold all they gain. Hence we say, that only the English race can -be trusted with freedom,--freedom which is double-edged and dangerous to -any but the wise and robust. The English designate the kingdoms emulous -of free institutions as the sentimental nations. Their own culture is -not an outside varnish, but is thorough and secular in families and the -race. They are oppressive with their temperament, and all the more that -they are refined. I have sometimes seen them walk with my countrymen, -when I was forced to allow them every advantage, and their companions -seemed bags of bones. There is cramp limitation in their habit of -thought, sleepy routine, and a tortoise's instinct to hold hard to the -ground with his claws, lest he should be thrown on his back. There is a -drag of inertia which resists reform in every shape; law-reform, -army-reform, extension of suffrage, Jewish franchise, Catholic -emancipation,--the abolition of slavery, of impressment, penal code, and -entails. They praise this drag, under the formula, that it is the -excellence of the British constitution, that no law can anticipate the -public opinion. These poor tortoises must hold hard, for they feel no -wings sprouting at their shoulders. Yet somewhat divine warms at their -heart, and waits a happier hour. It hides in their sturdy will. -"Will," said the old philosophy, "is the measure of power," and -personality is the token of this race. _Quid vult valde vult_. What -they do they do with a will. You cannot account for their success by -their Christianity, commerce, charter, common law, Parliament, or -letters, but by the contumacious sharp-tongued energy of English -_naturel_, with a poise impossible to disturb, which makes all these its -instruments. They are slow and reticent, and are like a dull good horse -which lets every nag pass him, but with whip and spur will run down -every racer in the field. They are right in their feeling, though wrong -in their speculation. - -The feudal system survives in the steep inequality of property and -privilege, in the limited franchise, in the social barriers which -confine patronage and promotion to a caste, and still more in the -submissive ideas pervading these people. The fagging of the schools is -repeated in the social classes. An Englishman shows no mercy to those -below him in the social scale, as he looks for none from those above -him; any forbearance from his superiors surprises him, and they suffer -in his good opinion. But the feudal system can be seen with less pain -on large historical grounds. It was pleaded in mitigation of the rotten -borough, that it worked well, that substantial justice was done. Fox, -Burke, Pitt, Erskine, Wilberforce, Sheridan, Romilly, or whatever -national men, were by this means sent to Parliament, when their return -by large constituencies would have been doubtful. So now we say, that -the right measures of England are the men it bred; that it has yielded -more able men in five hundred years than any other nation; and, though -we must not play Providence, and balance the chances of producing ten -great men against the comfort of ten thousand mean men, yet -retrospectively we may strike the balance, and prefer one Alfred, one -Shakspeare, one Milton, one Sidney, one Raleigh, one Wellington, to a -million foolish democrats. - -The American system is more democratic, more humane; yet the American -people do not yield better or more able men, or more inventions or books -or benefits, than the English. Congress is not wiser or better than -Parliament. France has abolished its suffocating old _regime_, but is -not recently marked by any more wisdom or virtue. - -The power of performance has not been exceeded,--the creation of value. -The English have given importance to individuals, a principal end and -fruit of every society. Every man is allowed and encouraged to be what -he is, and is guarded in the indulgence of his whim. "Magna Charta," -said Rushworth, "is such a fellow that he will have no sovereign." By -this general activity, and by this sacredness of individuals, they have -in seven hundred years evolved the principles of freedom. It is the -land of patriots, martyrs, sages, and bards, and if the ocean out of -which it emerged should wash it away, it will be remembered as an island -famous for immortal laws, for the announcements of original right which -make the stone tables of liberty. - - - - -A few days after my arrival at Manchester, in November, 1847, the -Manchester Athenaeum gave its annual Banquet in the Free-Trade Hall. -With other guests, I was invited to be present, and to address the -company. In looking over recently a newspaper report of my remarks, I -incline to reprint it, as fitly expressing the feeling with which I -entered England, and which agrees well enough with the more deliberate -results of better acquaintance recorded in the foregoing pages. Sir -Archibald Alison, the historian, presided, and opened the meeting with a -speech. He was followed by Mr. Cobden, Lord Brackley, and others, among -whom was Mr. Cruikshank, one of the contributors to "Punch." Mr. -Dickens's letter of apology for his absence was read. Mr. Jerrold, who -had been announced, did not appear. On being introduced to the meeting -I said:-- - - -Mr. Chairman and Gentlemen: It is pleasant to me to meet this great and -brilliant company, and doubly pleasant to see the faces of so many -distinguished persons on this platform. But I have known all these -persons already. When I was at home, they were as near to me as they -are to you. The arguments of the League and its leader are known to all -the friends of free trade. The gayeties and genius, the political, the -social, the parietal wit of "Punch" go duly every fortnight to every boy -and girl in Boston and New York. Sir, when I came to sea, I found the -"History of Europe"[26] on the ship's cabin table, the property of the -captain;--a sort of programme or play-bill to tell the seafaring -New-Englander what he shall find on his landing here. And as for -Dombey, sir, there is no land where paper exists to print on, where it -is not found; no man who can read, that does not read it, and, if he -cannot, he finds some charitable pair of eyes that can, and hears it. - - [26] By Sir A. Alison. - -But these things are not for me to say; these compliments, though true, -would better come from one who felt and understood these merits more. I -am not here to exchange civilities with you, but rather to speak of that -which I am sure interests these gentlemen more than their own praises; -of that which is good in holidays and working-days, the same in one -century and in another century. That which lures a solitary American in -the woods with the wish to see England, is the moral peculiarity of the -Saxon race,--its commanding sense of right and wrong,--the love and -devotion to that,--this is the imperial trait, which arms them with the -sceptre of the globe. It is this which lies at the foundation of that -aristocratic character, which certainly wanders into strange vagaries, -so that its origin is often lost sight of, but which, if it should lose -this, would find itself paralyzed; and in trade, and in the mechanic's -shop, gives that honesty in performance, that thoroughness and solidity -of work, which is a national characteristic. This conscience is one -element, and the other is that loyal adhesion, that habit of friendship, -that homage of man to man, running through all classes,--the electing of -worthy persons to a certain fraternity, to acts of kindness and warm and -stanch support, from year to year, from youth to age,--which is alike -lovely and honorable to those who render and those who receive -it;--which stands in strong contrast with the superficial attachments of -other races, their excessive courtesy, and short-lived connection. - -You will think me very pedantic, gentlemen, but holiday though it be, I -have not the smallest interest in any holiday, except as it celebrates -real and not pretended joys; and I think it just, in this time of gloom -and commercial disaster, of affliction and beggary in these districts, -that on these very accounts I speak of, you should not fail to keep your -literary anniversary. I seem to hear you say, that, for all that is -come and gone yet, we will not reduce by one chaplet or one oak-leaf the -braveries of our annual feast. For I must tell you, I was given to -understand in my childhood, that the British island from which my -forefathers came, was no lotus-garden, no paradise of serene sky and -roses and music and merriment all the year round, no, but a cold, foggy, -mournful country, where nothing grew well in the open air, but robust -men and virtuous women, and these of a wonderful fibre and endurance; -that their best parts were slowly revealed; their virtues did not come -out until they quarrelled: they did not strike twelve the first time; -good lovers, good haters, and you could know little about them till you -had seen them long, and little good of them till you had seen them in -action; that in prosperity they were moody and dumpish, but in adversity -they were grand. Is it not true, sir, that the wise ancients did not -praise the ship parting with flying colors from the port, but only that -brave sailer which came back with torn sheets and battered sides, stript -of her banners, but having ridden out the storm? And so, gentlemen, I -feel in regard to this aged England, with the possessions, honors, and -trophies, and also with the infirmities of a thousand years gathering -around her, irretrievably committed as she now is to many old customs -which cannot be suddenly changed; pressed upon by the transitions of -trade, and new and all incalculable modes, fabrics, arts, machines, and -competing populations,--I see her not dispirited, not weak, but well -remembering that she has seen dark days before; indeed, with a kind of -instinct that she sees a little better in a cloudy day, and that in -storm of battle and calamity, she has a secret vigor and a pulse like a -cannon. I see her in her old age, not decrepit, but young, and still -daring to believe in her power of endurance and expansion. Seeing this, -I say, All hail! mother of nations, mother of heroes, with strength -still equal to the time; still wise to entertain and swift to execute -the policy which the mind and heart of mankind require in the present -hour, and thus only hospitable to the foreigner, and truly a home to the -thoughtful and generous who are born in the soil. So be it! so let it -be! If it be not so, if the courage of England goes with the chances of -a commercial crisis, I will go back to the capes of Massachusetts, and -my own Indian stream, and say to my countrymen, the old race are all -gone, and the elasticity and hope of mankind must henceforth remain on -the Alleghauy ranges, or nowhere. - - - - - THE END. - - - - - Cambridge: Electrotyped and Printed by Welch, Bigelow, & Co. - - - - - - -*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ENGLISH TRAITS *** - - - - -A Word from Project Gutenberg - - -We will update this book if we find any errors. - -This book can be found under: http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/39862 - -Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no one -owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation (and -you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without permission -and without paying copyright royalties. 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