• 
 
 
 
 A^ 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 . 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
ftitocr£itic (Stiition 
 
 ENGLISH TRAITS 
 
 BEING VOLUME V. 
 
 OF 
 
 EMERSON'S COMPLETE WORKS 
 
ENGLISH TRAITS 
 
 BY 
 
 RALPH WALDO EMERSON 
 
 Jfteto an* Kebtee* Titian 
 
 BOSTON 
 
 HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY 
 
 New York: 11 East Seventeenth Street 
 
 @&e fttoerjji&e #re#& Camfcrtofle 
 
 1883 
 
y* 
 
 ** 
 
 
 Copyright, 1856 and 1876, 
 Bz RALPH WALDO EMERSON. 
 
 Copyright, 1883, 
 Br EDWARD W. EMERSON, 
 
 All rights reserved. 
 2d. COPY 
 SUPPLIED FROM 
 COPYRIGHT FILES 
 
 JANUARY, 1911. 
 
 The Riverside Press, Cambridge : 
 Electrotyped and Printed by H. 0. Houghton & Co. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER PAGE 
 
 I. First Visit to England 7 
 
 II. Voyage to England ..... 28 
 
 III. Land . 37 
 
 IV. Race . 47 
 
 V. Ability 7a 
 
 VI. Manners . 101 
 
 VII. Truth 1U 
 
 VIII. Character 124 
 
 IX. Cockayne 
 
 140 
 
 X. Wealth 149 
 
 XI. Aristocracy 166 
 
 XII. Universities 191 
 
 XIII. Religion 205 
 
 XIV. Literature 221 
 
 XV. The " Times," 247 
 
 XVI. Stonehenge 259 
 
 v XVII. Personal . 276 
 
 XVIII. Result 283 
 
 XIX. Speech at Manchester, ..... 292 
 
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 Sun- 
 day 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 lan- 
 guage ; 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 Edin- 
 
8 ENGLISH TRAITS. 
 
 burgh 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, — Cole- 
 ridge, Wordsworth, Landor, De Quincey, and the 
 latest and strongest contributor to the critical jour- 
 nals, 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 fan- 
 cies 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 condi- 
 tions of literary success are almost destructive of 
 the best social power, as they do not leave that 
 frolic liberty which only can encounter a compan- 
 ion 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 
 
FIRST VISIT TO ENGLAND. 9 
 
 to their books, and I cling to my first belief that a 
 strong head will dispose fast enough of these im- 
 pediments and give one the satisfaction of reality, 
 the sense of having been met, and a larger hori- 
 zon. 
 
 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 per- 
 sonalities. 
 
 At Florence, chief among artists I found Hora- 
 tio Greenough, the American scidptor. 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 elo- 
 quent, 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 
 
10 ENGLISH TRAITS. 
 
 so refractory a material as stone ; and he thought 
 art would never prosper until we left our shy jeal- 
 ous 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 pa- 
 per 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 re- 
 specting 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 fea- 
 tures proportioned, to their gradated importance in 
 function ; color and ornament to be decided and ar- 
 ranged and varied by strictly organic laws, having 
 a distinct reason for each decision ; the entire and 
 immediate banishment of all make-shift 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 courte- 
 ous, living in a cloud of pictures at his Villa Ghe- 
 rardesca, a fine house commanding a beautiful land- 
 scape. I had inferred from his books, or magnified 
 
FIRST VISIT TO ENGLAND. 11 
 
 from some anecdotes, an impression of Achillean 
 wrath, — an untamable petulance. I do not know 
 whether the imputation were just or not, but cer- 
 tainly on this May day his courtesy veiled that 
 haughty mind and he was the most patient and gen- 
 tle of hosts. He praised the beautiful cyclamen 
 which grows all about Florence ; he admired Wash- 
 ington ; talked of Wordsworth, Byron, Massinger, 
 Beaumont and Fletcher. To be sure, he is decided 
 in his opinions, likes to surprise, and is well con- 
 tent 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 excep- 
 tion ; 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 Michael Angelo ; in 
 painting, Eaffaelle, 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 Mackin- 
 tosh, nor my more recent friends ; Montaigne very 
 cordially, — and Charron also, which seemed un- 
 discriminating. He thought Degerando indebted 
 to " Lucas on Happiness " and " Lucas on Holi- 
 ness " ! He pestered me with Southey ; but who is 
 Southey ? 
 
12 ENGLISH TRAITS. 
 
 He invited me to breakfast on Friday. On Fri- 
 day I did not fail to go, and this time with Green- 
 ough. 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 Ti- 
 moleon, — 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 micro- 
 scopes, magnifying (it was said) two thousand di- 
 ameters; 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 woidd 
 give fifty guineas to the man that would swear it 
 was a Domenichino." I was more curious to see 
 
 
FIRST VISIT TO ENGLAND. 13 
 
 his library, but Mr. H , one of the guests, told 
 
 me that Mr. Lanclor 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 sig- 
 nalize their commanding freedom. He has a won- 
 derful 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 ac- 
 tion 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. Lan- 
 dor 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 multi- 
 tude of elegant sentences ; for wisdom, wit, and in- 
 dignation that are unforgetable. 
 
 From London, on the 5th August, I went to 
 Highgate, and wrote a note to Mr. Coleridge, re- 
 questing 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 
 
14 ENGLISH TRAITS. 
 
 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, &c, &c. He spoke of 
 Dr. Charming. It was an unspeakable misfortune 
 that he should have turned out a Unitarian af- 
 ter all. On this, he burst into a declamation on 
 the folly and ignorance of Unitarianism, — its high 
 unreasonableness ; and taking up Bishop Water- 
 land'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, &c, &c. 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 
 
FIRST VISIT TO ENGLAND. 15 
 
 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 Christi- 
 anity 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 (Cole- 
 ridge) 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 su- 
 per-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 ken- 
 nel, 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 
 
16 ENGLISH TRAITS. 
 
 the Independent's pamphlet, in the third volume 
 of the Friend, were a veritable quotation. He re- 
 plied 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 quo- 
 tation 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 anni- 
 versary," 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 re- 
 turned from that country, that Sicily was an excel- 
 lent 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 legis- 
 lation to anything good and wise. There were only 
 
FIRST VISIT TO ENGLAND. 17 
 
 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 toward 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 spec- 
 tacle than a conversation, of no use beyond the sat- 
 isfaction of my curiosity. He was old and preoc- 
 cupied, 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 
 
 VOL. v. 2 
 
18 ENGLISH TRAITS. 
 
 being intent on delivering a letter which I had 
 brought from Rome, inquired for Craigenputtock. 
 It was a farm in Nithsdale, in the parish of Dun- 
 score, 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 au- 
 thor 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 every thing he 
 looked upon. His talk playfully exalting the fa- 
 miliar 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 ; " Eraser's nearer approach to 
 
FIRST VISIT TO ENGLAND. 19 
 
 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, " Quails artifex pereo ! " better than 
 most history. He worships a man that will man- 
 ifest any truth to him. At one time he had in- 
 quired and read a good deal about America. Lan- 
 dor'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. 
 
20 ENGLISH TRAITS. 
 
 Tristram Shandy was one of his first books after 
 Eobinson Crusoe, and Robertson's America an 
 early favorite. Rousseau's Confessions had discov- 
 ered 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 litera- 
 ture 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 book- 
 sellers 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 
 
FIRST VISIT TO ENGLAND. 21 
 
 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 Lon- 
 don 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, espe- 
 cially one man of letters, his friend, the best mind 
 he knew, whom London had well served. 
 
 On the 28th 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 
 
22 ENGLISH TRAITS. 
 
 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 so- 
 ciety 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 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 grav- 
 est 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 
 
 
FIRST VISIT TO ENGLAND. 23 
 
 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 Eng- 
 land 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 steal- 
 ing spoons ! " He was against taking off the tax 
 on newspapers in England, — which the reformers 
 represent as a tax upon knowledge, — for this rea- 
 son, 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, &c, &c, 
 and never to call into action the physical strength 
 of the people, as had just now been done in Eng- 
 land in the Reform Bill, — a thing prophesied by 
 Delolme. He alluded once or twice to his conver- 
 sation 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 any- 
 thing and to reconcile the foreknowledge of God 
 
24 ENGLISH TRAITS. 
 
 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 arti- 
 cles and translations. He said he thought him 
 sometimes insane. He proceeded to abuse Goethe's 
 Wilhelm Meister heartily. It was full of all man- 
 ner of fornication. It was like the crossing of flies 
 in the air. He had never gone farther 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 sympa- 
 thies of every body. Even Mr. Coleridge wrote 
 more clearly, though he had always wished Cole- 
 ridge 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 com- 
 posed. 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 inter- 
 
FIRST VISIT TO ENGLAND. 25 
 
 ested 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 sec- 
 ond 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 al- 
 ludes 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 steam- 
 boat. 
 
 This recitation was so unlooked for and surpris- 
 ing, — 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 alter- 
 ation is ungraciously received after printing ; but 
 what he had written would be printed, whether he 
 lived or died. I said " Tintern Abbey " appeared 
 
26 ENGLISH TRAITS. 
 
 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 what- 
 ever is didactic, — what theories of society, and so 
 on, — might perish quickly ; but whatever com- 
 bined a truth with an affection was K-rrjiia 'cs 'act, 
 good to-day and good forever. He cited the son- 
 net " 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 New- 
 tonian 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 capabili- 
 ties 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 ad- 
 
FIRST VISIT TO ENGLAND. 27 
 
 here nee 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 expi- 
 ate their departure from the common in one direc- 
 tion, 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 Eng- 
 land 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 in- 
 vited, 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 op- 
 portunity 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 
 
VOYAGE TO ENGLAND. 29 
 
 traveller, nor have I found that long journeys yield 
 a fair share of reasonable hours. But the invita- 
 tion was repeated and pressed at a moment of more 
 leisure and when I was a little spent by some un- 
 usual studies. I wanted a change and a tonic, and 
 England was proposed to me. Besides, there were 
 at least the dread attraction and salutary influ- 
 ences of the sea. So 1 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 hun- 
 dred 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 north-wester 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, 
 
30 ENGLISH TRAITS. 
 
 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 steer- 
 ing, 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, what- 
 ever 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, col- 
 lision, 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 in- 
 stead 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, meas- 
 ured 115 feet ; the length of the deck from stem to 
 
VOYAGE TO ^ENGLAND. 31 
 
 stern, 155. It is impossible not to personify a 
 ship ; every body does, in every thing 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 every 
 thing we touch, makes us all champions of her 
 sailing qualities. 
 
 The conscious ship hears all the praise. In one 
 week she had 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 po- 
 tato. 
 
 I find the sea-life an acquired taste, like that for 
 tomatoes and olives. The confinement, cold, mo- 
 tion, 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 morn- 
 ing with the belief that some one was tipping up 
 my berth. Nobody likes to be treated ignomin- 
 iously, upset, shoved against the side of the house, 
 
32 
 
 ENGLISH TRAITS. 
 
 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 egg-shells are drifting all over it, each one, 
 like ours, filled with men in ecstasies of terror, alter- 
 nating with cockney conceit, as the sea is rough or 
 smooth. Is this sad-colored circle an eternal ceme- 
 tery ? In our graveyards we scoop a pit, but this 
 aggressive water opens mile-wide pits and chasms 
 and makes a mouthfid of a fleet. To the geolo- 
 gist 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 man- 
 kind, 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 
 
VOYAGE TO ENGLAND. 33 
 
 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 
 
34 ENGLISH TRAITS. 
 
 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 coun- 
 try inn, or in the transom of a merchant brig. I 
 remember that some of the happiest and most val- 
 uable 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 con- 
 venience 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 count- 
 ed, sixteen according to me. Reckoned from the 
 
VOYAGE TO ENGLAND. 35 
 
 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 seafaring people, 
 who for hundreds of years claimed the strict SOV' 
 ereignty of the sea, and exacted toll and the strik- 
 ing 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 senti- 
 ments, 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 
 
36 ENGLISH TRAITS. 
 
 of bubbles, we measure by Kinsale, Cork, Water- 
 ford and Ardruore. 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 be- 
 cause 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, val- 
 leys, 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 quar- 
 riable rock, the highways, the byways, the fords, 
 the navigable waters ; and the new arts of inter- 
 course meet you every where ; so that England is 
 a huge phalanstery, where all that man wants is 
 provided within the precinct. Cushioned and com- 
 
38 ENGLISH TRAITS. 
 
 forted 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 occa- 
 sion. 
 
 The problem of the traveller landing at Liver- 
 pool 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 na- 
 tional genius universally accepted, it is success; 
 and if there be one successful country in the uni- 
 verse for the last millennium, that country is Eng- 
 land. 
 
 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 to- 
 wards 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 consid- 
 erable for a thousand years since Egbert, it has, 
 in the last centuries, obtained the ascendant, and 
 stamped the knowledge, activity and power of man- 
 kind with its impress. Those who resist it do not 
 
LAND. 39 
 
 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, re- 
 ligion 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 Amer- 
 ican 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 what- 
 ever 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, that the 
 sheriff finds in drawing a jury to try some cause 
 which has agitated the whole community and on 
 which every body finds himself an interested party. 
 Officers, jurors, judges have all taken sides. Eng- 
 land has inoculated all nations with her civiliza- 
 tion, intelligence and tastes ; and to resist the tyr- 
 anny 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 
 
40 ENGLISH TRAITS. 
 
 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 inde- 
 pendent 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 de- 
 clining. 
 
 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 di- 
 mensions 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. 
 
 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 
 
 1 Add South Carolina, and you have more than an equiva- 
 lent for the area of Scotland. 
 
LAND. 41 
 
 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 en- 
 titled 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 wood- 
 
42 ENGLISH TRAITS. 
 
 cock, 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 conven- 
 iency 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 an- 
 
LAND. 43 
 
 chored it in a more judicious or effective position. 
 Sir John Herschel said " London is the centre of 
 the terrene globe." The shopkeeping nation, to 
 use a shop word, has a good stand. The old Ve- 
 netians 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 Jerusa- 
 lem 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 con- 
 vince 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, di- 
 vided 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 
 
44 ENGLISH TRAITS. 
 
 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 na- 
 tional 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 peo- 
 ple 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, de- 
 
LAND. 45 
 
 licious 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 na- 
 ture had sometimes a little affectation ; and there 
 is such an artificial completenesss in this nation of 
 artificers as if there were a design from the begin- 
 ning 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 north- 
 ern 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, 
 seafaring, sea-risk« 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 an- 
 other, but proportioned to the size of Europe and 
 the continents.' 
 
 With its fruits, and wares, and money, must its 
 
46 ENGLISH TRAITS. 
 
 civil influence radiate. It is a singular coinci- 
 dence 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 de- 
 stroyed. 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 
 popidar 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. Blu- 
 menbach reckons five races ; Humboldt three ; and 
 Mr. Pickering, who lately in our Exploring Expe- 
 dition thinks he saw all the kinds of men that can 
 be on the planet, makes eleven. 
 
 The British Empire is reckoned to contain (in 
 1848) 222,000,000 souls, — perhaps a fifth of the 
 
 1 The Races, a Fragment. By Robert Knox. London: 1850. 
 
48 ENGLISH TRAITS. 
 
 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 mill- 
 ions are of British stock. Add the United States 
 of America, which reckon (in the same year), ex- 
 clusive of slaves, 20,000,000 of people, on a terri- 
 tory 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 de- 
 nied 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 
 
RACE. 49 
 
 millions from Great Britain, amounting in 1852 
 to more than a thousand a day. They have assim- 
 ilating force, since they are imitated by their for- 
 eign subjects; and they are still aggressive and 
 propagandist, enlarging the dominion of their arts 
 and liberty. Their laws are hospitable, and slav- 
 ery 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. Every body likes to know that his advan- 
 tages 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 pedi- 
 
50 ENGLISH TRAITS. 
 
 gree, and copy heedf ully 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 parent- 
 age ? For it is certain that these men are samples 
 of their contemporaries. The hearing ear is al- 
 ways found close to the speaking tongue, and no 
 genius can long or often utter any thing which is 
 not invited and gladly entertained by men around 
 him. 
 
 It is race, is it not ? that puts the hundred mill- 
 ions of India under the dominion of a remote is- 
 land 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 repre- 
 sentative principle. Race is a controlling influence 
 in the Jew, who, for two millenniums, under every 
 climate, has preserved the same character and em- 
 ployments. Race in the negro is of appalling im- 
 portance. The French in Canada, cut off from all 
 intercourse with the parent people, have held their 
 
RACE. 51 
 
 national traits. I chanced to read Tacitus " On the 
 Manners of the Germans," not long since, in Mis- 
 souri and the heart of Illinois, and I found abun- 
 dant points of resemblance between the Germans 
 of the Hercynian forest, and our Uoosiers, 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 man- 
 ners. Trades and professions carve their own lines 
 on face and form. Certain circumstances of Eng- 
 lish life are not less effective ; as personal liberty ; 
 plenty of food ; good ale and mutton ; open mar- 
 ket, 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 
 
52 ENGLISH TRAITS. 
 
 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 national- 
 ity as out of other conditions, and make the na- 
 tional 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 inconverti- 
 bleness 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 sol- 
 itariest fact in our natural history, such as the mel- 
 ioration of fruits and of animal stocks, has the 
 worth of a power in the opportunity of geologic pe- 
 riods. 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 every- 
 where. It need not puzzle us that Malay and Pap- 
 uan, Celt and Roman, Saxon and Tartar should 
 mix, when we see the rudiments of tiger and ba- 
 boon in our human form, and know that the bar- 
 riers 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 
 
RACE. 53 
 
 mounts, the organizations become complex. We 
 are piqued with pure descent, but nature loves in- 
 oculation. 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. Every thing 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 practi- 
 cal 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 hea- 
 then colliers ; — nothing can be praised in it with- 
 out 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 
 
54 ENGLISH TRAITS. 
 
 what races are in Britain ? Who can trace them 
 historically ? Who can discriminate them anatom- 
 ically, 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 Eng- 
 lishman was the mud of all races." I incline to 
 the belief that, as water, lime, and sand make mor- 
 tar, 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 tempera- 
 ments 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 tempera- 
 ments 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 
 
RACE. 55 
 
 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 Lon- 
 don. 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 Eng- 
 lish 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-win- 
 dows, are distinctive English, and not American, 
 no, nor Scotch, nor Irish : but 'tis a very restricted 
 nationality. As you go north into the manufac- 
 turing and agricultural districts, and to the popu- 
 lation 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 pro- 
 vincial eagerness and acuteness appear; the pov- 
 erty 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, 
 
56 ENGLISH TRAITS. 
 
 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 un- 
 broken traditions, though vague and losing them- 
 selves 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 the Linnsean classi- 
 fication, 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 any thing that appeared in their 
 
RACE. 57 
 
 complexion or form; and their speech was much 
 less marked and their thought much less bound. 
 We will call them Saxons. Then the Koman 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 peo- 
 ples are deciduous or transitory. Where are the 
 Greeks ? Where the Etrurians ? Where the Eo- 
 mans ? But the Celts or Sidonides are an old fam- 
 ily, 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 productive- 
 ness. They planted Britain, and gave to the seas 
 and mountains names which are poems and imitate 
 the pure voices of nature. They are favorably re- 
 membered 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 
 
58 ENGLISH TRAITS. 
 
 hundred and ten years, — say impossible to con- 
 quer, 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 vic- 
 torious advantage in the retreat. As soon as the 
 
RACE. 59 
 
 shores are sufficiently peopled to make piracy a los- 
 ing 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 cit- 
 izens. In Norway, no Persian masses fight and per- 
 ish 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 predomi- 
 nates, 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, 
 
 1 Heimskringla. Translated by Samuel Laing, Esq. Lon- 
 don : 1844. 
 
60 ENGLISH TRAITS. 
 
 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. 
 A king among these farmers has a varying power, 
 sometimes not exceeding the authority of a sheriff. 
 They fish in the fiord and hunt the deer. 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. 
 
 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, crowbars, 
 peatknives and hayforks are tools valued by them 
 all the more for their charming aptitude for assas- 
 sinations. A pair of kings, after dinner, will di- 
 vert 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 
 
RACE, 61 
 
 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 some- 
 body, 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 gentle- 
 man 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 con- 
 dition 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 be- 
 
62 ENGLISH TRAITS. 
 
 tween 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 lan- 
 guage 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 " mem- 
 ory 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, har- 
 ried, violated, tortured and killed, mitil every thing 
 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 fai- 
 nter conviction of their own merits, by assum- 
 
RACE. 63 
 
 ing 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 re- 
 ceptacle 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 en- 
 tire 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 
 
64 ENGLISH TRAITS. 
 
 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 pu- 
 berty, 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 na- 
 tion has a tough, acrid, animal nature, which cen- 
 turies of churching and civilizing have not been 
 able to sweeten. Alfieri 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-bait- 
 ing, 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 
 
 
RACE. 65 
 
 } war dice 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 flog- 
 ging, 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 dis- 
 used. Of the criminal statutes, Sir Samuel Rom- 
 illy said " I have examined the codes of all na- 
 tions, and ours is the worst, and worthy of the 
 Anthropophagi." In the last session (1848), the 
 
66 ENGLISH TRAITS. 
 
 House of Commons was listening to the 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 be- 
 coming the sailors and factors of the globe. From 
 childhood, they dabbled in water, they swam 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 landlocked 
 counties driving the natives with a maritime dex- 
 terity." 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 sup- 
 pose 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 re- 
 marked the stoutness on my first landing at Liver- 
 pool ; porter, drayman, coachman, guard, — what 
 substantial, respectable, grandfatherly figures, with 
 
RACE. 67 
 
 costume and manners to suit. The American lias 
 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 o£ 
 these people. Here they are in the identical cos- 
 tumes 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 Worces- 
 ter 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 goodnature, valor and refinement, and 
 mainly by that uncorrupt youth in the face of man- 
 hood, which is daily seen in the streets of London. 
 
 Both branches of the Scandinavian race are dis- 
 tinguished for beauty. The anecdote of the hand- 
 some captives which Saint Gregory found at Rome, 
 A. D. 600, is matched by the testimony of the 
 Norman chroniclers, ^.\e centuries later, who won- 
 dered at the beauty and long flowing hair of the 
 young English captives. Meantime the "Heims- 
 
68 ENGLISH TRAITS. 
 
 kringla " has frequent occasion to speak of the per- 
 sonal beauty of its heroes. When it is considered 
 what humanity, what resources of mental and moral 
 power the traits of the blonde 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 con- 
 struction. 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, law- 
 ful trade, civility, marriage, the nurture of chil- 
 dren, 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 
 
 
RACE. 69 
 
 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 ex- 
 tremes of courage and tenderness. Nelson, dying 
 at Trafalgar, sends his love to Lord Collingwood, 
 and like an innocent schoolboy 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 Kodney's fig- 
 ure 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 Buck- 
 ingham was so modest and gentle, that some cour- 
 tiers 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 high- 
 waymen the same virtue is claimed, and Robin 
 Hood comes described to us as mitissimus prcedo- 
 num ; 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 
 
70 ENGLISH TRAITS. 
 
 the bottom of society, the animal ferocity of the 
 quays and cockpits, the bullies of the costermon- 
 gers 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 nutri- 
 tious diet. The operative cannot subsist on water- 
 cresses. Beef, mutton, wheat-bread and malt-liq- 
 uors 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 For- 
 tescue, 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 mac- 
 eration 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 
 
RACE. 71 
 
 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 ele- 
 vation 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 head bent forward, as if urged 
 on some pressing affair. The French say that 
 Englishmen in the street always walk straight be- 
 fore 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 con- 
 dition. They are the most voracious people of prey 
 that ever existed. Every season turns out the aris- 
 tocracy into the country to shoot and fish. The 
 more vigorous run out of the island to America, to 
 Asia, to Africa and Australia, to hunt with fury 
 by gun, by trap, by harpoon, by lasso, with dog, 
 with horse, with elephant or with dromedary, all 
 the game that is in nature. These men have writ- 
 ten the game-books of all countries, as Hawker, 
 Scrope, Murray, Herbert, Maxwell, Cumming and 
 
72 ENGLISH TRAITS. 
 
 a host of travellers. The people at home are ad- 
 dicted 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 effi- 
 cient man there is first a fine animal, in the Eng- 
 lish 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 
 
RACE. 73 
 
 other branch of their race had been Tartar nomads. 
 The horse was ail 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 horseflesh at religious feasts. In 
 the Danish invasions the marauders seized upon 
 horses where they landed, and were at once con- 
 verted into a body of expert cavalry. 
 
 At one time this skill seems to have declined. 
 Two centuries ago the English horse never per- 
 formed any eminent service beyond the seas ; and 
 the reason assigned was that the genius of the Eng- 
 lish 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 bet- 
 ter 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 
 
74 ENGLISH TRAITS. 
 
 game-preserves. It is a proverb in England that 
 it is safer to shoot a man than a hare. The sever- 
 ity of the game-laws certainly indicates an extrav- 
 agant sympathy of the nation with horses and hunt- 
 ers. 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 Scandi- 
 navians. 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 Eng- 
 land 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 en- 
 joyer. 
 
 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 
 
76 ENGLISH TRAITS. 
 
 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 
 sjDeak 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 viva- 
 cious 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 com- 
 
ABILITY. 77 
 
 monalty of shrewd scientific persons. What signi- 
 fies 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 Brunei 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 dis- 
 honor, 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 steve- 
 dores, 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, Wedgewood, dwell in the troll- 
 mounts of Britain and turn the sweat of their 
 face to power and renown. 
 
78 ENGLISH TRAITS. 
 
 If the race is good, so is the place. Nobody 
 landed on this spellbound island with impunity. 
 The enchantments of barren shingle and rough 
 weather transformed every adventurer into a la- 
 borer. 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 tem- 
 perament 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 ir- 
 resistible 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 baro- 
 nial 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 
 
ABILITY. 79 
 
 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 Winborne and said he " would do one of two 
 things, or there live, or there lie." They hate 
 craft and subtlety. They neither poison, nor way- 
 lay, 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 piti- 
 less attack: and in a bargain, no prospect of ad- 
 vantage 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 elocu- 
 tion 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 
 
80 ENGLISH TRAITS. 
 
 six tongues, and master of arts and arms." 1 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 busi- 
 nesses. Man, as he is man, doth nothing else but 
 weave such chains. Whatsoever he doth, swarving 
 from this work, he doth as deficient from the na- 
 ture 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." 2 
 
 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, 
 1 Antony Wood. 2 Maris Souk, p. 29. 
 
ABILITY. 81 
 
 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 daz- 
 zled by its own means, but locked and bolted to 
 results. They love men who, like Samuel John- 
 son, 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 prac- 
 tical 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 inven- 
 tion 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 repro- 
 duction of the grievance, with calculations and es- 
 timates. But, meantime, he is drawing numbers 
 and money to his opinion, resolved that if all rem- 
 
82 ENGLISH TRAITS. 
 
 edy 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 resolu- 
 tion 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 kiss the dust be- 
 fore 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 wdiich 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," "equal- 
 
ABILITY. 83 
 
 ity," and " indivisible unity" are names for assassi- 
 nation. 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 con- 
 ditions 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 allow- 
 ance for friction is made. They are impious in 
 their skepticism of theory, and in high departments 
 they are cramped and sterile. But the uncondi- 
 tional 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 
 
8-4 ENGLISH TRAITS. 
 
 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 sub-soil ; to 
 fishery, to manufacture of indispensable staples, 
 — salt, plumbago, leather, wool, glass, pottery and 
 brick, — to bees and silkworms ; — 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 pine-apples, all the growth 
 of his estate. They are neat husbands for order- 
 ing all their tools pertaining to house and field. 
 Ail 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 
 
ABILITY. 85 
 
 man whose dress is so fit for his use that you can- 
 not 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 im- 
 pressed their directness and practical habit on mod- 
 ern civilization. 
 
 In trade, the Englishman believes that nobody 
 breaks who ought not to break; and that if he 
 do not make trade every thing, 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 mercan- 
 tile power of England. 
 
 In war, the Englishman looks to his means. 
 He is 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 fa- 
 
86 ENGLISH TRAITS. 
 
 vorecl the heaviest battalion." Their military sci- 
 ence 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 with- 
 out ; believing that the force of an army depended 
 on the weight and power of the individual sol- 
 diers, 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 rank, on 
 the day of action, on the field of battle, than any 
 other army. Before the bombardment of the Da- 
 nish forts in the Baltic, Nelson spent day after 
 day, himself, in the boats, on the exhausting ser- 
 vice of sounding the channel. Clerk of Eldin's 
 celebrated manoeuvre of breaking the line of sea- 
 battle, and Nelson's feat of doitbling, 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 accus- 
 tomed 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. 
 
ABILITY. 87 
 
 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 improve- 
 ment in rig, in motor, in weapons, but they funda- 
 mentally believe that the best stratagem in naval 
 war is to lay your ship close alongside of the ene- 
 my'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 Judg- 
 ment. Magna - charta, jury -trial, habeas - corpus, 
 star-chamber, ship-money, Popery, Plymouth col- 
 ony, American Revolution, are all questions involv- 
 ing a yeoman's right to his dinner, and except as 
 touching that, would not have lashed the British 
 nation to rage and revolt, 
 
88 ENGLISH TRAITS. 
 
 Whilst they are thus instinct with a spirit of or- 
 der and of calculation, it must be owned they are 
 capable of larger views ; but the indulgence is ex- 
 pensive 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 Eng- 
 lish thought than our unvarnished Connecticut ques- 
 tion " 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 princi- 
 ple, 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 com- 
 position 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 
 
ABILITY. 89 
 
 was shown the process of making a razor and a pen- 
 knife, I was told there is no hick 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 per- 
 fection in that; not content unless he has some- 
 thing in which he thinks he surpasses all other men. 
 He would rather not do any thing at all than not 
 do it well. I suppose no people have such thor- 
 oughness ; — 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 Eng- 
 lishman, " but to set your shoulder at the wheel, — 
 to advance the business." Sir Samuel Komilly 
 refused to speak in popular assemblies, confining 
 himself to the House of Commons, where a meas- 
 ure can be carried by a speech. The business of 
 the House of Commons is conducted by a few per- 
 sons, but these are hard-worked. Sir Robert Peel 
 " knew the Blue Books by heart." His colleagues 
 
90 ENGLISH TRAITS. 
 
 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, Cas- 
 tlereagh, 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 him- 
 self 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 
 
ABILITY. 91 
 
 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 epi- 
 grams, and, after five years' labor to collect them, 
 got his marbles on ship-board. 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 Cape- 
 town. Faithful performance of what is undertaken 
 to be performed, they honor in themselves, and ex- 
 act in others, as certificate of equality with them- 
 selves. The modern world is theirs. They have 
 made and make it day by day. The commercial 
 relations of the world are so intimately drawn in 
 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 re- 
 place it. 
 
92 ENGLISH TRAITS. 
 
 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, in- 
 viting 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 Ste- 
 phenson, 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 exi- 
 gency, with counsel and with conduct. Is it their 
 luck, or is it in the chambers of their brain, — it 
 
ABILITY. 93 
 
 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 se- 
 lection of a competent person. 
 
 A proof of the energy of the British people is 
 the highly artificial construction of the whole fab- 
 ric. The climate and geography, I said, were fac- 
 titious, 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 founda- 
 tions 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 
 
9J: ENGLISH TRAITS. 
 
 but a baked apple ; " but oranges and pine-apples 
 are as clieap in London as in the Mediterranean. 
 The Mark-Lane Express, or the Custom House Re- 
 turns, 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 every thing was omitted but what 
 is economical. The cow is sacrificed to her bag, 
 the ox to his sirloin. 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 artifi- 
 cially 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 guttapercha 
 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 al- 
 ready 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 
 
FACTITIOUS. 95 
 
 disappear. In clue 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 agri- 
 culture into a great thriving and spending indus- 
 try. 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 exporta- 
 tion of native products, but on its manufactures, or 
 the making well every thing which is ill-made else- 
 where. They make ponchos for the Mexican, ban- 
 dannas for the Hindoo, ginseng for the Chinese, 
 beads for the Indian, laces for the Flemings, tele- 
 scopes 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 
 
96 ENGLISH TRAITS. 
 
 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 prod- 
 ucts of their looms, their potteries and their foun- 
 dries. 1 
 
 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 in- 
 terest on money that no man ever saw. Their so- 
 cial 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 Bir- 
 mingham 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. 2 Foreign power is kept by armed colo- 
 nies ; 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. The sovereignty 
 of the seas is maintained by the impressment of 
 
 1 See Memorial of H. Greenough, p. 66, New York, 1853. 
 
 2 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. 
 
FACTITIOUS. 97 
 
 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 Chancel- 
 lor's staying away entirely from his court. Their 
 system of education is factitious. The Universi- 
 ties 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 ex- 
 istence is a work of art ; — a cold, barren, almost 
 arctic isle being made the most fruitful, luxurious 
 and imperial land in the whole earth. 
 
 Man in England submits to be a product of po- 
 litical 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 pop- 
 ulation to America. The nation is accustomed to 
 the instantaneous creation of wealth. It is the 
 
 VOL. v. 7 
 
98 ENGLISH TRAITS. 
 
 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 intel- 
 lectual organization of the English admits a coni- 
 municableness 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 al- 
 ways having, into use and play for all. Is it the 
 smallness of the country, or is it the pride and af- 
 fection of race, — they have solidarity, or responsi- 
 bleness, 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 
 
SOLIDARITY. 99 
 
 does not divide the national heart. The Danish 
 poet Oehlenschlager complains that who writes in 
 Danish writes to two hundred readers. In Ger- 
 many there is one speech for the learned, and an- 
 other 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 idio- 
 matic ; 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 know 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 an- 
 tiquities. 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 
 
100 ENGLISH TRAITS. 
 
 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 poli- 
 tics and in war they hold together as by hooks of 
 steel. The charm in Nelson's history is the unself- 
 ish greatness, the assurance of being supported to 
 the uttermost by those whom he supports to the ut- 
 termost. 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, 
 lockstep, 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 them- 
 selves what they value in their horses, — mettle 
 and bottom. On the day of my arrival at Liver- 
 pool, 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 sig- 
 nify 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 Sydney Smith had made it 
 a proverb that little Lord John Russell, the minis- 
 ter, 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 
 
102 ENGLISH TRAITS. 
 
 dare to displease, nay, they will let you break all 
 the commandments, if 3^011 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 ten- 
 ders. 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 requires 
 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 fainthearted 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 
 
MANNERS. 103 
 
 the people. Nothing but the most serious business 
 could give one any counterweight to these Bare- 
 sarks, though they were only to order eggs and muf- 
 fins 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 stam- 
 ina ; he can take the initiative in emergencies. He 
 has that aplomb which results from a good adjust- 
 ment 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 
 
104 ENGLISH TRAITS. 
 
 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 is- 
 land himself, safe, tranquil, incommunicable. In a 
 company of strangers you would think him deaf ; 
 his eyes never wander from his table and news- 
 paper. 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 in- 
 troduced. In mixed or in select companies they 
 do not introduce persons ; so that a presentation is 
 a circumstance as valid as a contract. Introduc- 
 tions 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 pri- 
 vate address on a card, it is like an avowal of 
 friendship ; and his bearing, on being introduced, 
 
MANNERS. 105 
 
 is cold, even though he is seeking yonr acquaint- 
 ance 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 I 
 which I had been accustomed to spin, about poor, i 
 thin, unable mortals ; — so much had the fine phy- 
 sique and the personal vigor of this robust race J 
 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 con- 
 tinue 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 pos- 
 session which surround them are their own crea- 
 tion, and they exert the same commanding industry 
 at this moment. 
 
 They are positive, methodical, cleanly and for- 
 mal, 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 pos- 
 sibly be clean ; an Englishman is conscientiously 
 
106 ENGLISH TRAITS. 
 
 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. Incred- 
 ible 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 
 
MANNERS. 107 
 
 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 Cym- 
 beline is copied from English nature ; and not less 
 the Portia of Brutus, the Kate Percy and the Des- 
 demona. 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 inde- 
 pendence 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 
 
108 ENGLISH TRAITS. 
 
 and parish merits lias of course its doting and fool- 
 ish side. Mr. Cobbett attributes the huge popular- 
 ity 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 Mid- 
 dle 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 life-long, 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 West- 
 moreland, "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 hun- 
 dred years, grandfather, father, and son. 
 
MANNERS. 109 
 
 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 mem- 
 ory 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 fa- 
 vorite phrase of their law is, "a custom whereof 
 the memory of man runneth not back to the con- 
 trary." 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 states- 
 men 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 shoidd 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 
 
110 ENGLISH TRAITS. 
 
 varnishes every part. The keeping of the propri- 
 eties is as indispensable as clean linen. No merit 
 quite countervails the want of this, whilst this some- 
 times 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 he- 
 hind. 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 pa- 
 per, 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 cot- 
 tage. When Thalberg the pianist was one evening 
 performing before the Queen at Windsor, in a pri- 
 vate party, the Queen accompanied him with her 
 voice. The circumstance took air, and all England 
 shuddered from sea 4;o sea. The indecorum was 
 never repeated. Cold, repressive manners prevail. 
 No enthusiasm is permitted except at the opera. 
 They avoid every thing marked. They require a 
 tone of voice that excites no attention in the room. 
 Sir Philip Sidney is one of the patron saints of 
 
 
MANNERS. Ill 
 
 England, of whom Wotton said, " His wit was the 
 measure of congruity." 
 
 Pretension and vaporing are once for all dis- 
 tasteful. 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 expres- 
 sion ; they use a studied plainness. Even Brum- 
 mel, their fop, was marked by the severest sim- 
 plicity in dress. They value themselves on the 
 absence of every thing 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 pro- 
 vide an entertainment for a person, than a groat 
 to assist him in any distress." 1 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 din- 
 1 Relation of England. Printed by the Camden Society. 
 
112 ENGLISH TRAITS. 
 
 ner, 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, liter- 
 ary and personal news ; railroads, horses, diamonds, 
 agriculture, horticulture, pisciculture and wine. 
 
 English stories, hon - mots and the recorded ta- 
 ble-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 pictur- 
 esque in society, as broken country makes pictur- 
 esque landscape; whilst our prevailing equality 
 makes a prairie tameness : and secondly, because 
 the usage of a dress-dinner every day at dark has a 
 
MANNERS. 113 
 
 tendency to hive and produce to advantage every- 
 thing good. Much attrition has worn every sen- 
 tence into a bullet. Also one meets now and then 
 with polished men who know every thing, have 
 tried every thing, and can do every thing, 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 tes- 
 timony 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 com- 
 merce creates, and you have the English truth and 
 credit. The government strictly perforins its en- 
 gagements. The subjects do not understand tri- 
 fling 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 gov- 
 ernment 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. 
 
TRUTH. 115 
 
 Their practical power rests on their national sin- 
 cerity. 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 founda- 
 tion 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 unresist- 
 ingly 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 Nor- 
 man Conquest, the truth- sp eaher ; Alueredus verid- 
 icus. 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 mot- 
 toes of their families are monitory proverbs, as, 
 
116 ENGLISH TRAITS. 
 
 Farefac, — Say, do, — of the Fairfaxes ; Say and 
 seal, of the house of Fiennes ; Vero nil ve7*ius, of 
 the DeVeres. To be king of their word is their 
 pride. When they unmask cant, they say, " The 
 English of this is," &c. ; 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 dam- 
 aged in the public opinion, on which any palter- 
 ing can be fixed. Even Lord Chesterfield, with 
 his French breeding, when he came to define a 
 gentleman, declared that truth made his distinc- 
 tion ; 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 su- 
 perlative, checks himself in compliments, alleging 
 that in the French language one cannot speak with- 
 out 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 orna- 
 
TRUTH. 117 
 
 ments, 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 di- 
 gested a lie, as the wearing of false stones or pen- 
 dants 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 com- 
 monly 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 agricul- 
 
118 ENGLISH TRAITS. 
 
 ture 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 lie 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 Eu- 
 rope. 
 
 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 com- 
 patriots, 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 opin- 
 
TRUTH. 119 
 
 ions to suit the hour. They are like ships with too 
 much head on to come quickly about, nor will pros- 
 perity or even adversity be allowed to shake their 
 habitual view of conduct. Whilst 1 was in Lon- 
 don, M. Guizot arrived there on his escape from 
 Paris, in February, 1848. Many private friends 
 called on him. His name was immediately pro- 
 posed as an honorary member of 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 de- 
 spise M. Guizot; and the altered position of the 
 man as an illustrious exile and a guest in the coun- 
 try, makes no difference to him, as it would in- 
 stantly to an American. 
 
 They require the same adherence, thorough con- 
 viction 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 hun- 
 dred and twenty-seven all voting like sheep, never 
 proposing any thing, and all but four voting the 
 income tax," — which was an ill-judged conces- 
 sion 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 
 
120 ENGLISH TRAITS. 
 
 proportion they value honesty, stoutness, and ad- 
 herence 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 Ger- 
 mans, 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 auy 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 re- 
 ceive one for victory on 1st June, 1794 ; and the 
 long withholden medal was accorded. When Cas- 
 tlereagh dissuaded Lord Wellington from going to 
 the king's levee until the unpopular Cintra busi- 
 ness 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 Trim- 
 
TRUTH. 121 
 
 mers to the timeservers, whom English character 
 does not love. 1 
 
 They are very liable in their politics to extraor- 
 dinary delusions ; thus to believe what stands re- 
 corded in the gravest books, that the movement of 
 10 April, 1848, was urged or assisted by foreigners: 
 which, to be sure, is paralleled by the democratic 
 whimsy in this country which I have noticed to be 
 shared by men sane on other points, that the Eng- 
 lish are at the bottom of the agitation of slav- 
 ery, in American politics : and then again by the 
 French popular legends on the subject of perfidi- 
 ous Albion. But suspicion will make fools of na- 
 tions as of citizens. 
 
 A slow temperament makes them less rapid and 
 ready than other countrymen, and has given occa- 
 sion to the observation that English wit comes 
 afterwards, — which the French denote as esprit 
 oTescalier. This dulness makes their attachment 
 
 1 It is an unlucky moment to remember these sparkles of 
 solitary virtue in the face of the honors lately paid in Eng- 
 land 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. 
 
122 ENGLISH TRAITS. 
 
 to home and their adherence in all foreign coun- 
 tries to home habits. The Englishman who visits 
 Mount Etna will carry his teakettle to the top. 
 The old Italian author of the " Relation of Eng- 
 land " (in 1500), says, " I have it on the best in- 
 formation, 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 
 
TRUTH. 12& 
 
 that lie exclaimed, " So help me God ! I will never 
 listen to evidence again." Any number of delight- 
 ful examples of this English stolidity are the anec- 
 dotes 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 Malibran. 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 un- 
 safe ! 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 is said, could 
 never wrest from an Egyptian the confession of a 
 secret. None of these traits belong to the English- 
 man. His choler and conceit force every thing 
 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 neigh- 
 bors of northern climates. They are sad by com- 
 parison 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 travel- 
 lers, who, from Froissart, Voltaire, Le Sage, Mira- 
 beau, down to the lively journalists of the feuille- 
 tons, 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 coun- 
 try all feed and increase his natural melancholy. 
 The police does not interfere with public diversions. 
 
CHARACTER. 125 
 
 It thinks itself bound in duty to respect the pleas- 
 ures and rare gayety of this inconsolable nation ; 
 and their well-known courage is entirely attribu- 
 table to their disgust of life. 
 
 I suppose their gravity of demeanor and their 
 few words have obtained this reputation. As com- 
 pared with the Americans, I think them cheerful 
 and contented. Young people in this 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 ; Us s'amusaient tristement, selon la 
 coutmne, cle leur 2 :>a y s i sa id Froissart ; and I sup- 
 pose 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 
 
126 ENGLISH TRAITS. 
 
 spoke well enough if they had the tone of gentle- 
 men. 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 cidtivate 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, sple- 
 netic and stubborn, — and as mild, sweet and sen- 
 sible. 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 character- 
 ize England to the foreigner, who meets them on 
 the road and at every public house, whilst the gen- 
 
CHARACTER. 127 
 
 try 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 sus- 
 pect any poetic insinuation or any hint for the con- 
 duct 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, some- 
 times gruffness and ill temper ; and in minds of 
 more power, magazines of inexhaustible war, chal- 
 lenging 
 
 " The ruggedest hour that time and spite dare bring 
 To frown upon the enraged Northumberland." 
 
 They are headstrong believers and defenders of 
 
128 ENGLISH TRAITS. 
 
 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 vas- 
 cular and highly organized, so as to be very sensi- 
 ble of pain; and intellectual, so as to see reason 
 and glory in a matter. 
 
 Of that constitutional force which yields the sup- 
 plies 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 ceremo- 
 
CHARACTER. 129 
 
 nies, 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 uncon- 
 tradicted ; 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 alem- 
 bic ; they saw a hole into the head of the " winking 
 Virgin," to know why she winks ; measure with an 
 English footrule every cell of the Inquisition, every 
 Turkish caaba, every Holy of holies ; translate and 
 send to Bentley the arcanum bribed and bullied 
 away from shuddering Bramins ; and measure their 
 own strength by the terror they cause. These trav- 
 ellers 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 multi- 
 tudes of rude young English who have the self- 
 sufficiency and bluntness of their nation, and who, 
 
130 ENGLISH TRAITS. 
 
 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 any thing that came into his 
 mind, not only among his companions, but in pub- 
 lic 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 with the loud statement of his crotch- 
 ets or personalities. 
 
 But it is in the deep traits of race that the for- 
 tunes 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 
 
CHARACTER. 131 
 
 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 human- 
 ity 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, "threshes the 
 corn that ten day -laborers could not end," but it is 
 done in the dark and with muttered maledictions. 
 Pie 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, and 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 wor- 
 
132 ENGLISH TRAITS. 
 
 shipper 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 im- 
 porting into their galleries every tint and trait of 
 sunnier cities and skies ; making an era in paint- 
 ing ; 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 black- 
 ened his own. 
 
 They do not wear their heart in their sleeve for 
 daws to peck at. They have that phlegm or staid- 
 ness which it is a compliment to disturb. " Great 
 men," said Aristotle, " are always of a nature 
 originally melancholy." 'Tis 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 
 
CHARACTER. 133 
 
 metaphysical grounds. He is there with his own 
 consent, face to face with fortune, which he defies. 
 On deliberate choice and from grounds of charac- 
 ter, he has elected his part to live and die for, and 
 dies with grandeur. This race has added new ele- 
 ments 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 ten- 
 dency 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 sub- 
 sidize 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 ad- 
 minister, 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 
 
134 ENGLISH TRAITS. 
 
 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 opin- 
 ion ; the English press never timorous about French 
 opinion, but arrogant and contemptuous. 
 
 They are testy and headstrong through an ex- 
 cess 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 asper- 
 ities wear off and leave the good-will pure. If 
 anatomy is reformed according to national tenden- 
 cies, 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 Eng- 
 lish heart. They are subject to panics of credu- 
 lity 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 con- 
 dition. 
 
 A saving stupidity masks and protects their per- 
 
CHARACTER. 135 
 
 ception, as the curtain of the eagle's eye. Our 
 swifter Americans, when they first deal with Eng- 
 lish, 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 con- 
 form, 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 ; " Gen- 
 tlemen," 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 si- 
 lence have suspected that he had lost the day ; and, 
 had he beheld him in a retreat, he would have col- 
 
136 ENGLISH TRAITS. 
 
 lected him a conqueror by the cheerfulness of his 
 spirit." 2 
 
 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 circum- 
 stances, whether they betokened danger or pleas- 
 ure ; 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." 2 
 
 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 bor- 
 ders in flame. The wrath of London is not French 
 wrath, but has a long memory, and, in its hottest 
 heat, a register and rule. 
 
 1 Fuller, Worthies of England. 
 
 2 Heimskringla, Laing's translation, vol. iii. p. 37. 
 
CHARACTER. 137 
 
 Half their strength they put not forth. They 
 are capable of a sublime resolution, and if here- 
 after the war of races, often predicted, and making 
 itself a war of opinions also (a question of des- 
 potism 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 mu- 
 table as the French, what reliance? But the Eng- 
 lish stand for liberty. The conservative, money- 
 loving, lord-loving English are yet liberty-loving ; 
 and so freedom is safe : for they have more per- 
 sonal force than any other people. The nation al- 
 ways resist the immoral action of their government. 
 They think humanely on the affairs of France, of 
 Turkey, of Poland, of Hungary, of Schleswig Hol- 
 stein, 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 col- 
 onies, 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 
 
138 ENGLISH TRAITS. 
 
 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 profes- 
 sion, or to appease diseased or inflamed talent, the 
 army and navy may be entered (the worst boys do- 
 ing well in the navy) ; and the civil service in de- 
 partments 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 nor obey, but to 
 be kings in their own houses. They are intellect- 
 ual 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 art, they value its refine- 
 ment. 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 precli- 
 
CHARACTER. 139 
 
 lection 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 occupa- 
 tions. They choose that welfare which is compat- 
 ible with the commonwealth, knowing that such 
 alone is stable ; as wise merchants prefer invest- 
 ments in the three per cents. 
 
CHAPTER IX. 
 
 COCKAYNE. 
 
 The English are a nation of humorists. Indi- 
 vidual right is pushed to the uttermost bound com- 
 patible 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 chan- 
 cellors and horse -guards. There is no freak so 
 ridiculous but some Englishman has attempted to 
 immortalize by money and law. British citizen- 
 ship is as omnipotent as Roman was. Mr. Cock- 
 ayne 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 perform- 
 
COCKAYNE. 141 
 
 ance of his nation makes him provokingly incu- 
 rious 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 look- 
 ing 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 " Kelation of England," 1 in 1500, 
 says : — " The English are great lovers of them- 
 selves and of every thing 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 coun- 
 try." When he adds epithets of praise, his climax 
 is, u 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 nat- 
 ural contrast, a kind of blackboard on which Eng- 
 lish character draws its own traits in chalk. This 
 arrogance habitually exhibits itself in allusions to 
 1 Printed by the Camden Society. 
 
142 ENGLISH TRAITS. 
 
 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 de- 
 fended him from being able to utter a single sen- 
 tence 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 talk- 
 ing 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. 
 
 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 Amer- 
 
COCKAYNE. 148 
 
 fca, but buy their hails in England ; — for that 
 also is British law ; and the fact that British com- 
 merce 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 
 any body. He hides no defect of his form, fea- 
 tures, dress, connection, or birthplace, for he thinks 
 every circumstance belonging to him comes recom- 
 mended 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 
 
144 ENGLISH TRAITS. 
 
 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 him- 
 self 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 states- 
 men made by their foible." And another, an ex- 
 governor of Illinois, said to me, " If the 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 
 
COCKAYNE. 145 
 
 which they find entertained in the world for Eng- 
 lish 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 extraordi- 
 nary tone on the subject of English merits. 
 
 An English lady on the Rhine hearing a Ger- 
 man 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 English- 
 man 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 any 
 body, fired up the chimney, — and brought down 
 the Frenchman. They have no curiosity about for- 
 eigners, and answer any information you may vol- 
 unteer 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 
 
 vol. v. 10 
 
146 ENGLISH TRAITS. 
 
 the "Times" newspaper through politicians and 
 poets, through Wordsworth, Carlyle, Mill and Syd- 
 ney Smith, down to the boys of Eton. In the 
 gravest treatise on political economy, in a philo- 
 sophical essay, in books of science, one is surprised 
 by the most innocent exhibition of unflinching na- 
 tionality. 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." l 
 
 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 colo- 
 nies has no root of kindness. They govern by 
 their arts and ability; they are more just than 
 1 William Speuce. 
 
COCKAYNE. 147 
 
 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 nsefnl 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 meta- 
 physics discriminating Greek, or English, or Span- 
 ish science. iEsop 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 his- 
 tory on this very point of national pride. 
 
 George of Cappadocia, born at Epiphania in 
 Cilicia, was a low parasite who got a lucrative con- 
 tract 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 Jul- 
 ian came, A. D. 361, George was dragged to pris- 
 on ; 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 
 
148 ENGLISH TRAITS. 
 
 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 pickledealer 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 no- 
 body can throw stones. We are equally badly off 
 in our founders ; and the false pickledealer is an 
 offset to the false bacon-seller. 
 
CHAPTER X. 
 
 WEALTH. 
 
 These is no country in which so absolute a hom- 
 age 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 gen- 
 tleman without a pipe of wine ? Haydon says, 
 " TJhere 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 
 sons 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 opu- 
 lent men. An Englishman who has lost his for- 
 tune is said to have died of a broken heart. The 
 last term of insult is, " a beggar." Nelson said, 
 
150 ENGLISH TRAITS. 
 
 " The want of fortune is a crime which I can never 
 get over." Sydney Smith said, " Poverty is infa- 
 mous in England." And one of their recent writ- 
 ers speaks, in reference to a private and scholastic 
 life, of "the grave moral deterioration which fol- 
 lows 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 preach- 
 ing and in the table-talk. 
 
 I was lately turning over Wood's Athence Ox- 
 onienses, and looking naturally for another stand- 
 ard 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, dis- 
 loyalty 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. Mal- 
 thus 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 offi- 
 cers to bind children apprentices at a greater dis- 
 tance than forty miles from their home, Peel op- 
 posed, and Mr. Wortley said, "though, in the 
 
WEALTH. 151 
 
 higher ranks, to cultivate family affections was a 
 good thing, it was not so among the lower orders. 
 Better take them away from those who might de- 
 prave 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, every 
 thing 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 
 
152 ENGLISH TRAITS. 
 
 Crystal Palace is not considered honest until it 
 pays ; no matter how much convenience, beauty, 
 or eclat, it must be self-supporting. They are con- 
 tented with slower steamers, as long as they know 
 that swifter boats lose money. They proceed log- 
 ically 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 presump- 
 tion 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 am- 
 bition, 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 ab- 
 sorb 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 stock- 
 
WEALTH. 153 
 
 ings. 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 another European ; or, his life as a work- 
 man is three lives. He works fast. Every thing 
 in England is at a quick pace. They have rein- 
 forced their own productivity by the creation of 
 that marvellous machinery which differences this 
 age from any other age. 
 
 It 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 look- 
 ing 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 con- 
 structed 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 ; 
 
154 ENGLISH TRAITS. 
 
 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-j enny, which wove the web of his for- 
 tunes. Hargreaves invented the spinning-j enny, 
 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 spin- 
 ners to Belgium and the United States. Iron and 
 steel are very obedient. Whether it were not pos- 
 sible to make a spinner that would not rebel, nor 
 mutter, nor scowl, nor strike for wages, nor emi- 
 ^ grate ? At the solicitation of the masters, after a 
 mob and riot at Staley Bridge, Mr. Roberts of 
 Manchester undertook to create this peaceful fel- 
 low, instead of the quarrelsome fellow God had 
 made. After a few trials, he succeeded, and in 
 
WEALTH. 155 
 
 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 histo- 
 rians recite that " in 1067, William carried with 
 him into Normandy, from England, more gold and 
 silver then 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 steampipe has added to her 
 population and wealth the equivalent of four or 
 five Englands. Forty thousand ships are entered 
 
156 ENGLISH TRAITS. 
 
 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 of 
 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 
 
WEALTH. 157 
 
 and of money, war and commerce are changed. 
 Nations have lost their old omnipotence ; the pa- 
 triotic tie does not hold. Nations are getting obso- 
 lete, 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 tele- 
 graph 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 competi- 
 tion, as stock-holders 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 
 
158 ENGLISH TRAITS. 
 
 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 amns- 
 in<>\ or intoxicating, are sucked into this commerce 
 and floated to London. Some English private for- 
 tunes 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 genera- 
 tions ; the gardens which Evelyn planted ; the tem- 
 ples 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 
 
WEALTH. 159 
 
 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, til- 
 lage, pasture and park, sumptuous castle and mod- 
 ern 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 per- 
 fection. 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 Eng- 
 land to the dregs. Vested rights are awful things, 
 and absolute possession gives the smallest free- 
 holder identity of interest with the duke. High 
 stone fences and padlocked garden-gates announce 
 
160 ENGLISH TRAITS. 
 
 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-ma- 
 sonry, 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 preci- 
 pice of incomparable prospect, built a house like a 
 long barn, which had not a window on the prospect 
 side. Strawberry Hill of Horace Walpole, Font- 
 hill 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 dis- 
 posal 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 
 
WEALTH. 161 
 
 trumpets announcing him. This, with his quiet 
 style of manners, gives him the power of a sover- 
 eign without the inconveniences which belong to 
 that rank. I much prefer the condition of an Eng- 
 lish 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 tap-root in the 
 bowels of the planet, because they are constitution- 
 ally 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. 
 
 vol. v. 11 
 
162 ENGLISH TRAITS. 
 
 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 silk-worm, 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 nee- 
 dles. 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 shoe-strings super- 
 sedes buckles, when cotton takes the place of linen, 
 or railways of turnpikes, or when commons are 
 inclosed 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. 
 
WEALTH. 163 
 
 In true England all is false and forged. This 
 too is the reaction of machinery, but of the lar- 
 ger machinery of commerce. 'T is not, I suppose, 
 want of probity, so much as the tyranny of trade, 
 which necessitates a perpetual competition of under- 
 selling, 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 cul- 
 mination of national prosperity, in the annexation 
 of countries ; building of ships, depots, towns ; in 
 the influx of tons of gold and silver; amid the 
 
164 ENGLISH TRAITS. 
 
 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 re- 
 curs, does she take the step beyond, namely to the 
 wise use, in view of the supreme wealth of na- 
 tions ? We estimate the wisdom of nations by see- 
 ing 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, libra- 
 ries, 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 or- 
 ganization must supply. At present she does not 
 rule her wealth. She is simply a good England, 
 
WEALTH. 165 
 
 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. Eng- 
 land 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 princi- 
 ples, and the dedication to outsides ? A civility of 
 trifles, of money and expense, an erudition of sen- 
 sation takes place, and the putting as many imped- 
 iments as we can between the man and his ob- 
 jects. 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 Eng- 
 land 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 con- 
 trast with the democratic tendencies. The inequal- 
 ity of power and property shocks republican nerves. 
 Palaces, halls, villas, walled parks, all over Eng- 
 land, 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, It 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 man- 
 ners 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 
 
ARISTOCRACY. 167 
 
 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 shoe-makers and coster- 
 mongers. 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 mu- 
 sic, 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. 
 
168 ENGLISH TRAITS. 
 
 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. Eng- 
 lish 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 some- 
 body's natural superiority. The things these Eng- 
 lish 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 Al- 
 fred, "who can read it; " and Alfred won it by that 
 
ARISTOCRACY. 169 
 
 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 Yeres, 
 Bohuns, Mowbrays and Plantagenets were not ad- 
 dicted 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 an- 
 other 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." 1 
 
 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 
 
 1 Fuller's Worthies, II. p. 472. 
 
170 ENGLISH TRAITS. 
 
 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 histori- 
 ette, which, whether more or less true in its particu- 
 lars, carries a general truth. " How came the Duke 
 of Bedford by his great landed estates ? His an- 
 cestor having travelled on the continent, a lively, 
 pleasant man, became the companion of a foreign 
 prince wrecked on 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 law- 
 yer, the farmer, the silkmercer lies perdu under 
 the coronet, and winks to the antiquary to say 
 
ARISTOCRACY. 171 
 
 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 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 prov- 
 erb is, that fifty miles from London, a family will 
 last a hundred years ; at a hundred miles, two hun- 
 dred 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 hun- 
 dred years, rather without obscurity, than with any 
 great lustre." 1 Wraxall says that in 1781, Lord 
 1 Reliquiae Wottoniance, p. 208. 
 
172 ENGLISH TRAITS. 
 
 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. 
 
 This long descent of families and this cleaving 
 through ages to the same spot of ground, capti- 
 vates 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 his- 
 tory 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, Dart- 
 mouth, 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 
 
ARISTOCRACY. 173 
 
 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 em- 
 ploy the same words, which also are dear to the 
 gods." 
 
 'Tis 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 wood- 
 land, in his blood and manners. It has, too, the 
 advantage of suggesting responsibleness. A sus- 
 ceptible man could not wear a name which repre- 
 sented in a strict sense a city or a county of Eng- 
 land, 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 lib- 
 
174 ENGLISH TRAITS. 
 
 erty 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 
 chateaux will be reduced to ashes and their blood 
 spilt in torrents. The English tenant would de- 
 fend 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 num- 
 bers, 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 Picca- 
 dilly, Burlington House, Devonshire House, Lans- 
 downe 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 Brit- 
 ish Museum, once Montague House, now stands, 
 and the land occupied by Woburn Square, Bedford 
 Square, Bussell Square. The Marquis of West- 
 minster built within a few years the series of 
 
ARISTOCRACY. 175 
 
 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 mod- 
 ern uses to which trade or charity has converted 
 them. A multitude of town palaces contain ines- 
 timable 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 Cleve- 
 land. 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 Suther- 
 land 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 Rich- 
 mond has 40,000 acres at Goodwood and 800,000 
 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 Parlia- 
 ment. This is the Heptarchy again ; and before 
 
176 ENGLISH TRAITS. 
 
 the Reform of 1832, one hundred and fifty-four 
 persons sent three hundred and seven members to 
 Parliament. The borough-mongers governed Eng- 
 land. 
 
 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 inter- 
 vals among ship-yards, mills, mines and forges, are 
 the paradises of the nobles, where the livelong 
 repose and refinement are heightened by the con- 
 trast with the roar of industry and necessity, out 
 of which you have stepped aside. 
 
 I was surprised to observe the very small attend- 
 ance 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 es- 
 tates, 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 
 
ARISTOCRACY. 177 
 
 his tone to a lord. It was remarked, on the 10th 
 April, 1848 (the day of the Chartist demonstra- 
 tion), that the upper classes were for the first time 
 actively interesting themselves in their own de- 
 fence, and men of rank were sworn special consta- 
 bles 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 en- 
 titles 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 nobilit}^ fill a large part of the high com- 
 missions, 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 
 
 VOL. v. 12 
 
178 ENGLISH TRAITS. 
 
 state and of expense ; in questions of taste, in so- 
 cial usages, in convivial and domestic hospitalities. 
 In general, all that is required of them is to sit 
 securely, to preside at public meetings, to coun- 
 tenance 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 
 blen faire, gives a majesty which cannot be con- 
 cealed or resisted. 
 
ARISTOCRACY. 179 
 
 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 every thing, 
 in every kind, and they see things so grouped and 
 amassed as to infer easily the sum and genius, in- 
 stead of tedious particularities. Their good behav- 
 ior deserves all its fame, and they have that sim- 
 plicity 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 man- 
 ners, and it is wonderful how much talent runs into 
 manners : — nowhere and never so much as in Eii£- 
 land. They have the sense of superiority, the ab- 
 sence 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 accom- 
 plished 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 
 
180 ENGLISH TRAITS. 
 
 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, ac- 
 complished 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 re- 
 spect every social guard which our manners can es- 
 tablish, tending to secure from the intrusion of frivo- 
 lous 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 plum- 
 bago, securely knows that the world cannot do 
 without him. Every body 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 pro- 
 tect works of art, dragged from amidst burning 
 cities and revolutionary countries, and brought 
 hither out of all the world. I look with respect at 
 
ARISTOCRACY. 181 
 
 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 libra- 
 ries, Warwick and Portland vases, Saxon manu- 
 scripts, 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 treas- 
 urers 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-pre- 
 serves. Against the cry of the old tenantry and the 
 sympathetic cry of the English press, they have 
 
182 ENGLISH TRAITS. 
 
 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. Shak- 
 speare's portraits of good Duke Humphrey, of War- 
 wick, 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 ; a 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, Bel- 
 voir 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 pic- 
 tures of a romantic style of manners. Penshurst 
 still shines for us, and its Christinas 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 
 1 Dibdin's Literary Reminiscences, vol. 1, xii. 
 
ARISTOCRACY. 183 
 
 mind, as his own poems declare him. I must hold 
 Ludlow Castle an honest house, for which Mil- 
 ton's " Comus " was written, and the company nobly 
 bred which performed it with knowledge and sym- 
 pathy. In the roll of nobles are found poets, phi- 
 losophers, chemists, astronomers, also men of solid 
 virtues and of lofty sentiments ; often they have 
 been the friends and patrons of genius and learn- 
 ing, and especially of the fine arts ; and at this mo- 
 ment, almost every great house has its sumptuous 
 picture-gallery. 
 
 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 aristo- 
 cratic history. In later times, when the baron, edu- 
 cated 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. Prosti- 
 tutes 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-com- 
 
184 ENGLISH TRAITS. 
 
 panions 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 aristoc- 
 racy 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 
 
ARISTOCRACY. 185 
 
 of his queen and of his family did nothing to re- 
 trieve. 
 
 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. Dis- 
 mal 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 cham- 
 bers are exhibited to the visitor for money ; of ru- 
 ined 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 Dev- 
 onshire, willing to be the Mecsenas 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, 
 
186 ENGLISH TRAITS. 
 
 and the grounds mown and dressed, at a cost of 
 four or five thousand pounds a year. The spend- 
 ing 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 idle- 
 ness, dressing and attendance on their parties." 
 I suppose too that a feeling of self-respect is driv- 
 ing 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 a?*tistes, 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 cord was stretched between the 
 singer and the company. 
 
 When every noble was a soldier, they were care- 
 fully bred to great personal prowess. The educa- 
 
ARISTOCRACY. 187 
 
 tiou 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 spe- 
 cies of equitation, to the most dangerous practices, 
 and this down to the accession of William of Or- 
 ange. But graver men appear to have framed 
 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, poman- 
 ders, antidotes, gathering seeds, gems, coins and 
 divers curiosities, preparing for a private life there- 
 after, in which they should take pleasure in these 
 recreations. 
 
 All advantages given to absolve the young patri- 
 cian from intellectual labor are of course mistaken. 
 "In the university, noblemen are exempted from 
 the public exercises for the degree, &c, by which 
 they attain a degree called honorary. At the same 
 time, the fees they have to pay for matriculation, 
 and on all other occasions, are much higher." x 
 Fuller records " the observation of foreigners, that 
 Englishmen, by making their children gentlemen 
 1 Huber, History of English Universities. 
 
188 ENGLISH TRAITS. 
 
 before they are men, cause they are so seldom wise 
 men." This cockering justifies Dr. Johnson's bit- 
 ter apology for primogeniture, that " it makes but 
 one fool in a family." 
 
 The revolution in society has reached this class. 
 The great powers of industrial art have no exclu- 
 sion 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 con- 
 fined 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 his- 
 tory, wisely read, is the vindication of the brain of 
 that people. Here at last were climate and condi- 
 tion 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 adminis- 
 trative 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 hun- 
 
ARISTOCRACY. 189 
 
 dred 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 re- 
 cruiting 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 Sydney Smith, " but the Arch- 
 bishop of Canterbury." " The lawyers" said Burke, 
 " are only birds of passage in this House of Com- 
 mons," 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 univer- 
 
190 ENGLISH TRAITS. 
 
 sities, 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 with- 
 out 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 clay 
 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 gar- 
 dens 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. Dau- 
 beny, Professor of Botany, and to the Regius Pro- 
 fessor 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 
 
192 ENGLISH TRAITS. 
 
 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 ; bene- 
 dicitur, 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 oc- 
 curred. 
 
 Oxford is old, even in England, and conserva- 
 tive. 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 thous- 
 and 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, 
 
UNIVERSITIES. 193 
 
 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. Al- 
 bericus Gentilis, in 1580, was relieved and main- 
 tained by the university. Albert Alaskie, a noble 
 Polonian, Prince of Sirad, who visited England to 
 admire the wisdom of Queen Elizabeth, was enter- 
 tained with stage-plays in the Refectory of Christ- 
 church in 1583. Isaac Casaubon, coming from 
 Henri Quatre of France by invitation of James L, 
 was admitted to Christ's College, in July, 1613. I 
 saw the Ashmolean Museum, whither Elias Ash- 
 mole 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 
 around has its lustre. For Wood's Athence Ox- 
 onienses, 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 mon- 
 ument as Purchas's Pilgrims or Hansard's Regis- 
 ter. 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 Mer- 
 ton Library are still chained to the wall. Here, 
 on August 27, 1660, John Milton's Pro Populo 
 Anglicano Defensio and Iconoclastes were commit- 
 ted to the flames. I saw the school-court or quad- 
 
 VOL. v. 13 
 
194 ENGLISH TRAITS. 
 
 rangle 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 Indepen- 
 dence, 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 commit- 
 tee 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 poimds. 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 cheque for three 
 
UNIVERSITIES. 195 
 
 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 re-bound. The old- 
 est 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 cata- 
 logue 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 
 
196 ENGLISH TRAITS. 
 
 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 Wil- 
 ton 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. 1 
 
 " 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, 
 1750 a year is economical, and $1,500 not extrava- 
 gant. 2 
 
 1 Huber, ii. p. 301. 
 
 2 Bristed, Five Years at an English University. 
 
UNIVERSITIES. 197 
 
 The number of students and of residents, the 
 dignity of the authorities, the value of the founda- 
 tions, 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 col- 
 lege is half suspected by the Freshman to be insig- 
 nificant in the scale beside trade and politics. Ox- 
 ford 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 learn- 
 ing 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 para- 
 lytic old man, who was assisted into the hall. As 
 
198 ENGLISH TRAITS. 
 
 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 con- 
 jectured 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 Brasenose 
 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 na- 
 ture, 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 Eng- 
 lish writer cannot ignore. They prune his orations 
 
UNIVERSITIES. 190 
 
 and point his pen. Hence the style and tone of 
 English journalism. The men have learned accur- 
 acy 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 mas- 
 ters 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 encour- 
 aged : 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 non- 
 sense 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 country- 
 
200 ENGLISH TRAITS. 
 
 men the attributes of an English gentleman, frank- 
 ly 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 fam- 
 ily. He should also have bodily activity and 
 strength, unattainable by our sedentary life in pub- 
 lic offices. The race of English gentlemen pre- 
 sents 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 can- 
 not be in better company than on the books of one 
 of the larger Oxford or Cambridge colleges." 1 
 
 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." 2 
 
 No doubt, the foundations have been perverted. 
 
 1 Huber, History of the English Universities, Newman's 
 Translation. 
 
 2 See Bristed, Five Years in an English University. New- 
 York, 1852. 
 
UNIVERSITIES. 201 
 
 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 ; " mis-spends the revenues be- 
 stowed for such youths " as should be most meet 
 for towardness, poverty and painfulness ; " there 
 is gross favoritism ; many chairs and many fellow- 
 ships are made beds of ease ; and it is 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 im- 
 part. 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 arrived at. 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 com- 
 petitors had victoriously performed, and I believed 
 they would prove too severe tests for the candi- 
 dates for a Bachelor's degree in Yale or Harvard. 
 And in general, here was proof of a more search- 
 ing study in the appointed directions, and the 
 
202 ENGLISH TRAITS. 
 
 knowledge pretended to be conveyed was con- 
 veyed. Oxford sends ont yearly twenty or thirty 
 very able men and three or four hundred well-edu- 
 cated 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 col- 
 leges. No doubt much of the power and brilliancy 
 of the reading-men is merely constitutional or hy- 
 gienic. With a hardier habit and resolute gym- 
 nastics, 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 con- 
 cede 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 uni- 
 versity 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 
 
UNIVERSITIES. 203 
 
 and fragmentarily. Charles I. said that he under- 
 stood English law as well as a gentleman ought to 
 understand it. 
 
 Then they have access to books ; the rich libra- 
 ries 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 col- 
 lege, and though he be a genius, the youth must 
 take his chance. The university must be retrospec- 
 tive. 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 
 
204 ENGLISH TRAITS. 
 
 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 restor- 
 ative 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 clay can be explained 
 by their national religion. They do not feel re- 
 sponsible 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 mar- 
 riage. 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 expen- 
 diture 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 
 
206 ENGLISH TRAITS. 
 
 Fate, or lift these absurdities which are now moun- 
 tainous ? Better find some niche or crevice in this 
 mountain of stone which religious ages have quar- 
 ried and carved, wherein to bestow yourself, than 
 attempt any thing 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 Chris- 
 tianity 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, in- 
 spired the crusades, inspired resistance to tyrants, 
 inspired self-respect, set bounds to serfdom and 
 slavery, founded liberty, created the religious ar- 
 chitecture, — York, Newstead, Westminster, Foun- 
 tains Abbey, Ripon, Beverley and Dundee, — works 
 to which the key is lost, with the sentiment which 
 created them ; inspired the English Bible, the lit- 
 urgy, the monkish histories, the chronicle of Rich- 
 ard of Devizes. The priest translated the Vulgate, 
 
RELIGION. 207 
 
 and translated the sanctities of old hagiology into 
 English virtues on English ground. It was a cer- 
 tain affirmative or aggressive state of the Cauca- 
 sian races. Man awoke refreshed by the sleep of 
 ages. The violence of the northern savages exas- 
 perated Christianity into power. It lived by the 
 love of the people. Bishop Wilfrid manumitted 
 two hundred and fifty serfs, whom he found at- 
 tached 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 sun- 
 set 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. Lati- 
 mer, Wicliffe, Arundel, Cobham, Antony Parsons, 
 Sir Harry Yane, 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 every thing 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 head- 
 land and monument, and has coupled itself with 
 
208 ENGLISH TRAITS. 
 
 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 dis- 
 tribution 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 educa- 
 tion has been secured to the clergyman, makes them 
 "the link which unites the sequestered peasantry 
 with the intellectual advancement of the age." 1 
 
 The English church has many certificates to show 
 of humble effective service in humanizing the peo- 
 ple, in cheering and refining men, feeding, healing 
 and educating. It has the seal of martyrs and 
 confessors ; the noblest books ; a sublime architec- 
 ture ; 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 di- 
 rection to the nation's affection and will to-day. 
 The carved and pictured chapel, — its entire sur- 
 face animated with image and emblem, — made the 
 parish-church a sort of book and Bible to the peo- 
 ple's eye. 
 
 Then, when the Saxon instinct had secured a 
 1 Wordsworth. 
 
RELIGION. 209 
 
 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 arch- 
 bishop, 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 cir- 
 cumstantiality in York minster, on the 13th Janu- 
 ary, 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 occa- 
 sion 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 po- 
 litical engine. From his infancy, every English- 
 man is accustomed to hear daily prayers for the 
 queen, for the royal family and the Parliament, by 
 name ; and this lifelong consecration cannot be with- 
 out influence on his opinions. 
 
 vol. v. 14 
 
210 ENGLISH TRAITS. 
 
 The universities also are parcel of the ecclesi- 
 astical 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 un- 
 broken order and tradition of its church ; the lit- 
 urgy, ceremony, architecture ; the sober grace, the 
 good company, the connection with the throne and 
 with history, which adorn it. And whilst it en- 
 dears itself thus to men of more taste than activity, 
 the stability of the English nation is passionately 
 enlisted to its support, from its inextricable connec- 
 tion 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 some- 
 where in the 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." l Their ar- 
 chitecture 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, 
 i Fuller. 
 
RELIGION. 211 
 
 twelfth, thirteenth, and again in the sixteenth and 
 seventeenth centuries, when the nation was full of 
 genius and piety. 
 
 But the age of the Wicliffes, Cobhams, Arun- 
 dels, Beekets ; of the Latimers, Mores, Cranmers ; 
 of the Taylors, Leightons, Herberts ; of the Sher- 
 locks 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, you cannot help feeling how much 
 national pride prays with him, and the religion of a 
 gentleman. So far is he from attaching any mean- 
 ing 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 be- 
 come their magnanimity, after so great successes, 
 to take order that a proper acknowledgment be 
 
212 ENGLISH TRAITS. 
 
 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 vigor- 
 ous 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 exam- 
 ination 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 Christen- 
 dom 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 apothe- 
 cary 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-in- 
 formed men possess the power of thinking just so 
 
RELIGION. 213 
 
 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 conies 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, 
 
214 ENGLISH TRAITS. 
 
 and in buying Pugin and architectural literature. 
 It lias a general good name for amenity and mild- 
 ness. It is not in ordinary a persecuting church ; 
 it is not inquisitorial, not even inquisitive ; is per- 
 fectly 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 Me- 
 chanics' Institutes, of the Free School, of 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 ; 
 
RELIGION. 215 
 
 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 Lon- 
 don, reprobating this bill, as " tending extremely 
 to the dishonor of the Christian religion, and ex- 
 tremely 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 ab- 
 surd 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 nonconformist confutes the conformists, by 
 
216 ENGLISH TRAITS. 
 
 quoting the texts they must allow. It is the con- 
 dition of a religion to require religion for its ex- 
 positor. Prophet and apostle can only be rightly 
 understood by prophet and apostle. The states- 
 man 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 organ- 
 ize 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 expec- 
 tation in the society to run to meet natural endow- 
 ment 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 
 
RELIGION. 217 
 
 who have a taste for expense. Thus a bishop is 
 only a surplieed merchant. Through his lawn I 
 can see the bright buttons of the shopman's coat 
 glitter. A wealth like that of Durham makes al- 
 most 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 ab- 
 horrence 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 admin- 
 istration thereof, and for no other reason what- 
 ever ? " The modes of initiation are more dam- 
 aging than custom-house oaths. The Bishop is 
 elected by the Dean and Prebends of the cathedral. 
 The queen sends these gentlemen a conge (Telire, 
 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 recom- 
 mendations 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, 
 
218 ENGLISH TRAITS. 
 
 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. Be- 
 sides, 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 under- 
 standing 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. 
 
RELIGION. 219 
 
 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. Thack- 
 eray exposes the heartless high life. Nature re- 
 venges 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 as- 
 sembly 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 in- 
 terrogations in his eyes, he has no resource but to 
 take wine with him. False position introduces 
 
220 ENGLISH TRAITS. 
 
 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 Estab- 
 lished 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, forever- 
 more ; it is passing, glancing, gesticular ; it is a 
 traveller, a newness, a surprise, a secret, which per- 
 plexes 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 moncle, et ne /aire 
 soitffi*ir personne^ that divine secret has existed in 
 England from the days of Alfred to those of Rom- 
 illy, 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 con- 
 vertible into a fable not long after ; but they de- 
 light 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 farmyard, the lane and market. 
 
222 ENGLISH TRAITS. 
 
 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 ma- 
 terialist, 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 pa- 
 per. When he is intellectual, and a poet or a phi- 
 losopher, 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 sym- 
 bol palpable and resisting. What he relishes in 
 Dante is the vise-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 bib- 
 lical 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, 
 
LITERATURE. 223 
 
 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 I 
 
 senses. Shakspeare, Spenser and Milton, in their 
 loftiest ascents, have this national grip and exacti- 
 tude 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 ele- 
 vations materialistic, its poetry is common sense in- 
 spired ; 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 
 
224 ENGLISH TRAITS. 
 
 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 mono- 
 syllables. 
 
 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 Eng- 
 lish mind flowered in every faculty. The common- 
 sense was surprised and inspired. For two centu- 
 ries 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, — aston- 
 ish, like the legendary feats of Guy of Warwick. 
 The union of Saxon precision and Oriental soaring, 
 of which Shakspeare is the perfect example, is 
 
LITERATURE. 225 
 
 shared in less degree by the writers of two centu- 
 ries. 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 com- 
 mon style of the people, as one finds it in the cita- 
 tion of wills, letters and public documents ; in prov- 
 erbs 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 sev- 
 enteenth 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 gentle- 
 men 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. 
 
 VOL. v. 15 
 
226 ENGLISH TRAITS. 
 
 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 mak- 
 ing his fortune ; and the apathy proved by the ab- 
 sence of all contemporary panegyric, — seems to 
 demonstrate an elevation in the mind of the people. 
 Judge of the splendor of a nation by the insignifi- 
 cance of great individuals in it. The manner in 
 which they learned Greek and Latin, before our 
 modern facilities were yet ready ; without diction- 
 aries, grammars, or indexes, by lectures of a pro- 
 fessor, followed by their own searchings, — required 
 a more robust memory, and cooperation of all the 
 faculties; and their scholars, Camden, Usher, Sel- 
 den, Mede, Gataker, Hooker, Taylor, Burton, Bent- 
 ley, Brian Walton, acquired the solidity and method 
 of engineers. 
 
 The influence of Plato tinges the British genius. 
 Their minds loved analogy ; were cognisant of re- 
 semblances, 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 discrep- 
 ances ; 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 
 
LITERATURE. 227 
 
 Plato ; — More, Hooker, Bacon, Sidney, Lord 
 Brooke, Herbert, Browne, Donne, Spenser, Chap- 
 man, Milton, Crashaw, Norris, Cudworth, Berke- 
 ley, Jeremy Taylor. 
 
 Lord Bacon has the English duality. His cen- 
 turies of observations on useful science, and his ex- 
 periments, 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 gene- 
 sis or its diffusion are not known. That knowl- 
 edge, if we had it, would supersede all that 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 re- 
 semblances, 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. Who- 
 ever discredits analogy and requires heaps of facts 
 before any theories can be attempted, has no poetic 
 
228 ENGLISH TRAITS. 
 
 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 poli- 
 tics and commerce will absorb from the educated 
 class men of talents without genius, precisely be- 
 cause such have no resistance. 
 
 Bacon, capable of ideas, yet devoted to ends, 
 required in his map of the mind, first of all, uni- 
 versality, 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 dis- 
 covery 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 
 doth 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 
 
LITERATURE. 229 
 
 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 pro- 
 founder sort of wits drawing a bucket now and 
 then for their own use, but the spring-head unvis- 
 ited. 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 Per- 
 icles 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 nour- 
 ished himself with sublime speculations on the ab- 
 solute 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 king- 
 doms of thought, and these are in the world con- 
 stants, like the Copernican and Newtonian theories 
 in physics. In England these may be traced usu- 
 ally 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, 
 
230 ENGLISH TRAITS. 
 
 Of this kind is Lord Bacon's sentence, that " Na- 
 ture is commanded by obeying her ; " his doctrine 
 of poetry, which " accommodates the shows of 
 things to the desires of the mind," or the Zoroas- 
 trian definition of poetry, mystical, yet exact, " ap- 
 parent 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 as- 
 surance 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 Sweden- 
 borg, 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 dif- 
 ference is quantitative." So the very announce- 
 ment 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 empiri- 
 cal 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 
 
LITERATURE. 231 
 
 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 Jon- 
 son'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 reck- 
 ons 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 coun- 
 trymen 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 
 
232 ENGLISH TRAITS. 
 
 that, as in all the great mental energies. The Ger- 
 mans 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 accumnlates moun- 
 tains of facts, as a bad general wants myriads of 
 men and miles of redoubts to compensate the in- 
 spirations 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 Phi- 
 losophy 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 ob- 
 servation, that no copula had been detected be- 
 tween 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. Doctor 
 
LITERATURE. 233 
 
 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, in- 
 asmuch 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 sym- 
 pathy ; writes with resolute generosity, but is un- 
 conscious of the deep worth which lies in the mys- 
 tics, 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 prof ounder masters : a lover of ideas is not only 
 uncongenial, but unintelligible. Hallam inspires 
 respect by his knowledge and fidelity, by his mani- 
 fest 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 Eng- 
 lish genius. It is wise and rich, but it lives on its 
 capital. It is retrospective. How can it discern 
 
234 ENGLISH TRAITS. 
 
 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 pre- 
 ternatural apprehension of the language of man- 
 ners 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 tempo- 
 rary in his tints and style, and local in his aims. 
 Bulwer, an industrious writer, with occasional abil- 
 ity, is distinguished for his reverence of intellect 
 as a temporality, and appeals to the worldly am- 
 bition of the student. His romances tend to fan 
 these low flames. Their novelists despair of the 
 heart. Thackeray finds that God has made no al- 
 lowance 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, ex- 
 plicitly 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 
 
LITERATURE. 235 
 
 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 ad- 
 vantage," as he calls it, meaning always sensual 
 benefit, is the only good. The eminent benefit of 
 astronomy is the better navigation it creates to en- 
 able the fruit-ships to bring home their lemons and 
 wine to the London grocer. It was a curious re- 
 sult, in which the civility and religion of England 
 for a thousand years ends in denying morals and 
 reducing the intellect to a sauce-pan. The critic 
 hides his skepticism under the English cant of prac- 
 tical. To convince the reason, to touch the con- 
 science, is romantic pretension. The fine arts fall 
 to the ground. Beauty, except as luxurious com- 
 modity, 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 atmos- 
 pheric gauges, that he is impressive to the imagina- 
 tions of men and has become a potentate not to be 
 
236 ENGLISH TRAITS. 
 
 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 an}^ 
 tutoring more or less of Newton &c, but as an ef- 
 fect of the same cause which showed itself more pro- 
 nounced 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 per- 
 formings, failing to accomplish any one master- 
 piece, — seems to mark the closing of an era. Even 
 in him, the traditional Englishman was too strong 
 for the philosopher, and he fell into accommoda- 
 tions ; 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 into 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, 
 
LITERATURE. 237 
 
 when the Bramins can no longer read or under- 
 stand the Braminical philosophy. 
 
 In the decomposition and asphyxia that followed 
 all this materialism, Carlyle was driven by his dis- 
 gust at the pettiness and the cant, into the preach- 
 ing of Fate. In comparison with all this rotten- 
 ness, any check, any cleansing, though by fire, 
 seemed desirable and beautiful. He saw little dif- 
 ference 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 catego- 
 ries ; 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 anno- 
 tator of Fourier and the champion of Hahnemann, 
 has brought to metaphysics and to physiology a na- 
 tive 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 
 
238 ENGLISH TRAITS. 
 
 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 limit- 
 ary 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 eru- 
 dition of the learned class. But the artificial suc- 
 cor which marks all English performance appears 
 in letters also : much of their aesthetic production 
 is antiquarian and manufactured, and literary rep- 
 utations 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 mo- 
 ment, every ambitious young man studies geology : 
 so members of Parliament are made, and church- 
 men. 
 
 The bias of Englishmen to practical skill has re- 
 acted 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 
 
LITERATURE. 239 
 
 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 me- 
 chanical 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 soci- 
 ety has this mortal air. I seem to walk on a marble 
 floor, where nothing will grow. They exert every 
 variety of talent on the 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 
 
240 ENGLISH TRAITS. 
 
 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 repudi- 
 ates. 
 
 I fear the same fault lies in their science, since 
 they have known how to make it repulsive and be- 
 reave 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 sci- 
 ence is false by not being poetic. It isolates the 
 reptile or mollusk it assumes to explain ; whilst rep- 
 tile 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 ex- 
 ceptions, 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 
 
LITERATURE. 241 
 
 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 clipping 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, sa- 
 tire at the names of philosophy and religion, paro- 
 chial and shop-till politics, and idolatry of usage, 
 betray the ebb of life and spirit. As they trample 
 on nationalities to reproduce London and London- 
 ers 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 broad- 
 cloth and gaiters, they are tormented with fear that 
 herein lurks a force that will sweep their system 
 away. The artists say, " Nature puts them out " ; 
 the scholars have become un-ideal. They parry 
 earnest speech with banter and levity ; they laugh 
 
 VOL. v. 16 
 
242 ENGLISH TRAITS. 
 
 you down, or they change the subject. " The fact 
 is," say they over their wine, " all that about lib- 
 erty, 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 pre- 
 cinct 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 pri- 
 apism 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 im- 
 pediment 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 with 
 out 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 
 
LITERATURE. 243 
 
 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 effect- 
 ive, — 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 
 
244 ENGLISH TRAITS. 
 
 of canity in a worldly and ambitious age. One re- 
 grets 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, nor 
 more command of the keys of language. Color, 
 like the dawn, flows over the horizon from his pen- 
 cil, 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 con- 
 tents 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 beau- 
 tiful 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. If 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 
 
LITERATURE. 245 
 
 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 irresisti- 
 ble 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 aston- 
 ishes 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, 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 man- 
 ners 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." 1 He goes to bespeak indulgence to 
 " ornaments of fancy unsuited to our taste, and 
 passages elevated to a tract of sublimity into which 
 
 1 Preface to Wilkins's Translation of the Bhagvat Geeta. 
 
246 ENGLISH TRAITS. 
 
 our habits of judgment will find it difficult to pur- 
 sue them." 
 
 Meantime, I know that a retrieving power lies 
 in the English race which seems to make any re- 
 coil possible ; in other words, there is at all times 
 a minority of profound minds existing in the na- 
 tion, capable of appreciating every soaring of intel- 
 lect and every hint of tendency. While the con- 
 structive talent seems dwarfed and superficial, the 
 criticism is often in the noblest tone and suggests 
 the presence of the invisible gods. I can well be- 
 lieve 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 becom- 
 ing the other ; for Robert Owen does not exagger- 
 ate the power of circumstance. But the two com- 
 plexions, 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 stu- 
 dious, contemplative, experimenting ; the other, the 
 ungrateful pupil, scornful of the source whilst avail- 
 ing itself of the knowledge for gain ; these two na- 
 tions, 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 power of the newspaper is familiar in Amer- 
 ica and in accordance with our political system. 
 In England, it stands in antagonism with the feu- 
 dal institutions, and it is all the more beneficent 
 succor against the secretive tendencies of a mon- 
 archy. The celebrated Lord Somers " knew of 
 no good law proposed and passed in his time, to 
 which the public papers had not directed his at- 
 tention." 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 terri- 
 ble 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 mo- 
 nopoly, 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 
 
248 ENGLISH TRAITS. 
 
 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 Northum- 
 berland out of their titles and possessions, and the 
 country out of its king." The tendency in Eng- 
 land 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. Val- 
 uable 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 edu- 
 cated 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 Par- 
 liament and on the hustings, or as they shoot and 
 ride. It is a quite accidental and arbitrary direc- 
 tion of their general ability. Rude health and 
 spirits, an Oxford education and the habits of soci- 
 ety are implied, but not a ray of genius. It comes 
 
THE "TIMES." 249 
 
 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, com- 
 pletest 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 intel- 
 lectual 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 
 
250 ENGLISH TRAITS. 
 
 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 de- 
 nounced 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 commu- 
 nity. 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 de- 
 manded 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 4 New Times, ' 
 next Monday morning. " The proprietors, who had 
 
THE "TIMES:' 251 
 
 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 pow- 
 der-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 appear- 
 ances. 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 8000 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. 
 
252 ENGLISH TRAITS. 
 
 The staff of the " Times " lias always been made 
 up of able men. Old Walter, Sterling, Bacon, 
 Barnes, Alsiger, Horace Twiss, Jones Lloyd, John 
 Oxenford, Mr. Mosely, Mr. Bailey, have contrib- 
 uted to its renown in their special departments. 
 But it has never wanted the first pens for occa- 
 sional assistance. Its private information is inex- 
 plicable, and recalls the stories of Fouche's police, 
 whose omniscience made it believed that the Em- 
 press Josephine must be in his pay. It has mer- 
 cantile and political correspondents in every foreign 
 cit}^, 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 repor- 
 ters, 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 con- 
 scious 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 
 
THE "TIMES." 253 
 
 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, sup- 
 plied the writers with the basis of fact and the ob- 
 ject 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 con- 
 cert, 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, cor- 
 rects, and co-ordinates. Of this closet, the secret 
 
254 ENGLISH TRAITS. 
 
 does not transpire. No writer is suffered to claim 
 the authorship of any paper; every thing 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 po- 
 liceman, and with the most provoking airs of con- 
 descension. 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 court- 
 liness. It addresses occasionally a hint to Maj- 
 esty itself, and sometimes a hint which is taken. 
 There is an air of freedom even in their advertis- 
 ing columns, which speaks well for England to a 
 
THE "TIMES." 255 
 
 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 per- 
 son 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 sub- 
 dued 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 
 u dared to confess," or " ventured to predict," &c ? 
 No ; it is so, and so it shall be. 
 
 The morality and patriotism of the " Times " 
 claim 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 Eng- 
 lish 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 shift- 
 ing its banks. Sympathizing with, and speaking 
 for the class that rules the hour, yet being apprised 
 
256 ENGLISH TRAITS. 
 
 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 cari- 
 catures 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 Eng- 
 land, — as in Punch, so in the humorists, Jerrold, 
 Dickens, Thackeray, Hood, — have taken the di- 
 rection of humanity and freedom. 
 
THE "TIMES." 257 
 
 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 else- 
 where, 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 limita- 
 tions 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 hu\ 
 manity, it might not have so many men of rank 
 among its contributors, but genius would be its cor- 
 dial 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 func- 
 tion, that of being the voice of Europe, the de- 
 fender of the exile and patriot against despots, 
 would be more effectually discharged ; it would 
 
 VOL. v. 17 
 
258 ENGLISH TRAITS. 
 
 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. Car- 
 lyle 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 monu- 
 ment and the companion. It seemed a bringing 
 together of extreme points, to visit the oldest re- 
 ligious 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 Rail- 
 way 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 
 
260 ENGLISH TRAITS. 
 
 much to say, too, of the travelling Americans and 
 their usual objects in London. I thought it natu- 
 ral 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 antiq- 
 uities, 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 ar- 
 chitect to consult only the grim necessity, and say, 
 4 1 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 ? " Confu- 
 cius replied, " he minded things near him : " then 
 said the boy, " how many hairs are there in your 
 eyebrows ? " Confucius said, " he did n't know and 
 didn't care." 
 
STONEHENGE. 201 
 
 Still speaking of the Americans, Carlyle com- 
 plained that they dislike the coldness and exclu- 
 siveness of the English, and run away to France 
 and go with their countrymen and are amused, in- 
 stead of manfully staying in London, and confront- 
 ing Englishmen and acquiring their culture, who 
 really have much to teach them. 
 
 I told Carlyle that I was easily dazzled, and was 
 accustomed to concede readily all that an English- 
 man 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 pro- 
 digious 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 chil- 
 dren. But this was a proposition which no English- 
 man of whatever condition can easily entertain. 
 
 We left the train at Salisbury and took a car- 
 riage to Amesbury, passing by Old Sarum, a bare, 
 
262 ENGLISH TRAITS. 
 
 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 
 hayricks. On the top of a mountain, the old tem- 
 ple 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 Carlyle 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 
 
STONEHENGE. 263 
 
 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 mari- 
 ner on Hellespont, the vaunt of Homer and the 
 fame of Achilles. Within the enclosure grow but- 
 tercups, nettles, and all around, wild thyme, daisy, 
 meadowsweet, goldenrod, 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 northeast, " as 
 all the gates of the old cavern temples are." How 
 came the stones here ? for these sarsens, or Druid- 
 ical 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 
 
264 ENGLISH TRAITS. 
 
 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 Cam- 
 bridge 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 monu- 
 ment, 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 per- 
 severance, 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. 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 
 
STONEHENGE. 265 
 
 known and near. We could equally well revere 
 their old British meaning. My philosopher was 
 subdued and gentle. In this quiet house of des- 
 tiny he happened to say, " I plant cypresses wher- 
 ever 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, sug- 
 gested to him the flight of ages and the succession 
 of religions. The old times of England impress 
 Carlyle 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 puri- 
 tanism 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. 
 
266 ENGLISH TRAITS. 
 
 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 Dru- 
 idical temple at Abury, there is also an astronomi- 
 cal stone, in the same relative position. 
 
 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 
 
STONEHENGE. 26 7 
 
 in the Celtic Researches maintains? Of all the 
 writers, Stukeley is the best. The heroic anti- 
 quary, 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 1 on Salisbury Plain 
 stretches across the downs like a line of latitude 
 upon the globe, and the meridian line of Stone- 
 henge 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, Ambres- 
 bury, and elsewhere, which vary a little from true 
 east and west, followed the variations of the com- 
 pass. 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 
 1 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 divid- 
 ing 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, 3036 yards long, by 110 
 broad. 
 
268 ENGLISH TRAITS. 
 
 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 com- 
 pass, — 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 expedi- 
 tion 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 AUolus, 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. 
 
 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 Bos- 
 ton, swinging a block of granite of the size of the 
 
STONEIIENGE. 269 
 
 largest of the Stonehenge columns, with an ordi- 
 nary 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, Carlyle 
 not suppressing some threats and evil omens on 
 the proprietors, for keeping 'these broad plains a 
 wretched sheep-walk when so many thousands of 
 English men 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, Sid- 
 ney Herbert, Esq., and is esteemed a noble speci- 
 men of the English manor-hall. My friend had 
 a letter from Mr. Herbert to his housekeeper, and 
 
270 ENGLISH TRAITS. 
 
 the house was shown. The state drawing-room is 
 a double cube, 30 feet high, by 30 feet wide, by 
 60 feet long : the adjoining room is a single cube, 
 of 30 feet every way. Although these ajDartnients 
 and the long library were full of good family por- 
 traits, Vandykes and other ; and though there were 
 some good pictures, and a quadrangle cloister full 
 of antique and modern statuary, — to which Car- 
 lyle, 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 
 
STONEHENGE. 271 
 
 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 culmi- 
 nation of the Gothic art in England, as the but- 
 tresses 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 archi- 
 tecture the hunger of the eye for length of line is 
 so rarely gratified. The rule of art is that a col- 
 onnade 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. Car- 
 lyle 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 Carlyle 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 Wal- 
 tham. 
 
272 ENGLISH TRAITS. 
 
 On Sunday we had much discourse, on a very 
 rainy day. My friends asked, 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 cau- 
 cuses nor congress, neither of presidents nor of cab- 
 inet-ministers, nor of such as would make of Amer- 
 ica another Europe. I thought only of the sim- 
 plest 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 mus- 
 ket-worship, — though great men be musket-wor- 
 shippers ; — and 't is certain as God liveth, the gun 
 that does not need another gim, 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 Carlyle, and I insisted that the 
 manifest absurdity of the view to English feasibil- 
 ity could make no difference to a gentleman ; that 
 
STONEHENGE. 273 
 
 as to our secure tenure of our mutton-chop and 
 spinach in London or in Boston, the soul might 
 quote Talleyrand, "Monsieur, je rfen vois pas la 
 necessite." As I had thus taken in the conversa- 
 tion the saint's part, when dinner was announced, 
 Carlyle refused to go out before me, — " he was al- 
 together 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 Carlyle followed, and I 
 went last. 
 
 On the way to Winchester, whither our host 
 accompanied us in the afternoon, my friends asked 
 many questions respecting American landscape, for- 
 ests, houses, — my house, for example. It is not 
 easy to answer these queries well. There, I thought, 
 in America, lies nature sleeping, overgrowing, al- 
 most 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 im- 
 pression. 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 Eng- 
 land. And, in England, I am quite too sensible 
 
 VOL. V. 18 
 
274 ENGLISH TRAITS. 
 
 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 hospital- 
 ity of seven hundred years' standing did not hin- 
 der Carlyle 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, Wil- 
 liam of Wykeham. It is very old : part of the 
 crypt into which we went down and saw the Saxon 
 
STONEHENGE. 275 
 
 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 bur- 
 ied in the ruins of the old." 1 William of Wyke- 
 ham's shrine tomb was unlocked for us, and Carlyle 
 took hold of the recumbent statue's marble hands 
 and patted them affectionately, for he rightly val- 
 ues the brave man who built Windsor and this Ca- 
 thedral 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. 
 
 1 History of the Anglo-Saxons, I. 599. 
 
CHAPTER XVII. 
 
 PERSONAL. 
 
 In these comments on an old journey, now re- 
 vised 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 acknowledg- 
 ment 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 gen- 
 tleman whose kind reception was followed by a 
 train of friendly and effective attentions which 
 never rested whilst I remained in the country. A 
 
PERSONAL. 277 
 
 man of sense and of letters, the editor of a power- 
 ful local journal, he added to solid virtues an infi- 
 nite 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 acci- 
 dents of my journey, until the sincerity of English 
 kindness ceased to surprise. My visit fell in the 
 fortunate days when Mr. Bancroft was the Ameri- 
 can Minister in London, and at his house, or 
 through his good offices, I had easy access to ex- 
 cellent persons and to privileged places. At the 
 house of Mr. Carlyle, I met persons eminent in 
 society and in letters. The privileges of the 
 Athenseum and of the Reform Clubs were hospi- 
 tably opened to me, and I found much advantage 
 in the circles of the " Geologic," the " Antiqua- 
 rian " 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, Mimes, 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 privi- 
 
278 ENGLISH TRAITS. 
 
 lege 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, they are 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 gar- 
 den ; one at the Museum, where Sir Charles Fel- 
 lowes 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 
 
PERSONAL. 279 
 
 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 Sun- 
 day 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 Jef- 
 frey, nor the Edinburgh Reviewers write English, 
 nor can * * *, who is a pest to the English tongue. 
 Incidentally he added, Gibbon cannot write Eng- 
 lish. 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 Cole- 
 ridge. Mrs. W. had the Editor's answer in her 
 possession. Tennyson he thinks a right poetic gen- 
 ius, though with some affectation. He had thought 
 an elder brother of Tennyson at first the better 
 
280 ENGLISH TRAITS. 
 
 poet, but must now reckon Alfred the true one. . . . 
 In speaking of I know not what style, lie 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 credit- 
 able 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 compla- 
 cency 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 anec- 
 dotes 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 
 
PERSONAL. 281 
 
 him to me not for his poetry, but for thrift and 
 economy ; for having afforded to his country-neigh- 
 bors an example of a modest household where com- 
 fort and culture were secured without any display. 
 She said that in his early housekeeping at the cot- 
 tage 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 anec- 
 dote I knew. A gentleman in the neighborhood 
 told the story of Walter Scott's staying once for 
 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 por- 
 ter. 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 par- 
 simonious, &c. Landor, always generous, says that 
 he never praised any body. A gentleman in Lon- 
 don showed me a watch that once belonged to Mil- 
 ton, 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 
 
282 ENGLISH TRAITS. 
 
 no one making the expected remark, he put back 
 his own in silence. I do not attach much impor- 
 tance 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 of the few, self- 
 assured that he should " create the taste by which 
 he is to be enjoyed." He lived long enough to wit- 
 ness 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 cath- 
 olicity and cosmopolitan scope: he had conformi- 
 ties to English politics and traditions ; he had ego- 
 tistic 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 Immortal- 
 ity 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 com- 
 pass ; 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 
 
284 ENGLISH TRAITS. 
 
 can they transcend the interests of the governing 
 classes. " English principles " mean a primary re- 
 gard to the interests of property. England, Scot- 
 land 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 dis- 
 senters 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. Pau- 
 perism incrusts and clogs the state, and in hard 
 times becomes hideous. In bad seasons, the por- 
 ridge 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. 
 
RESULT. 285 
 
 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 sym- 
 pathy 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 wrath- 
 f ully 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 
 
ENGLISH TRAITS. 
 
 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 superfi- 
 cial 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 defec- 
 tive individuals. But the wealth of the source is 
 seen in the plenitude of English nature. What va- 
 riety of power and talent ; what facility and plen- 
 teousness 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 stout- 
 ness ! What courage in war, what sinew in labor, 
 what cunning workmen, what inventors and en- 
 gineers, what seamen and pilots, what clerks and 
 scholars ! No one man and no few men can repre- 
 sent them. It is a people of myriad personalities. 
 Their many-headedness is owing to the advanta- 
 geous 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 col- 
 onization annexes archipelagoes and continents, and 
 
RESULT. 287 
 
 their speech seems destined to be the universal lan- 
 guage of men. I have noted the reserve of power 
 in the English temperament. In the island, they 
 never let out all the length of 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-hus- 
 banded forces, must follow the swarms which pour- 
 ing now for two hundred years from the British is- 
 lands, 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 pol- 
 icy, 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, 
 
288 ENGLISH TRAITS. 
 
 — a divine cripple like Vulcan; a blind savant 
 like Huber and Sanderson. They do not occupy 
 themselves on matters of general and lasting im- 
 port, but on a corporeal civilization, on goods that 
 perish in the using. But they read with good in- 
 tent, 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 de- 
 signate the kingdoms emulous of free institutions, 
 as the sentimental nations. Their 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 
 
RESULT. 289 
 
 franchise, Catholic emancipation, — the abolition of 
 slavery, of impressment, penal code and entails. 
 They praise this drag, nnder 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 per- 
 sonality is the token of this race. Quid vult valde 
 mdt. What they do they do with a will. You 
 cannot account for their success by their Christian- 
 ity, commerce, character, common law, Parliament, 
 or letters, but by the contumacious sharptongued 
 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 in- 
 equality of property and privilege, in the limited 
 franchise, in the social barriers which confine pa- 
 tronage 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 
 
 VOL. v. 19 
 
290 ENGLISH TRAITS. 
 
 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 man, 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 retrospec- 
 tively, 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 rSgime, but is not re- 
 cently marked by any more wisdom or virtue. 
 
RESULT. 291 
 
 The power of performance has not been ex- 
 ceeded, — 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 free- 
 dom. 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 announce- 
 ments of original right which make the stone tables 
 of liberty. 
 
CHAPTER XIX. 
 
 SPEECH AT MANCHESTER. 
 
 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 re- 
 print it, as fitly expressing the feeling with which 
 I entered England, and which agrees well enough 
 with the more deliberate results of better acquaint- 
 ance recorded in the foregoing pages. Sir Archi- 
 bald 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 
 
SPEECH AT MANCHESTER. 293 
 
 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 fort- 
 night to every boy and girl in Boston and New 
 York. Sir, when I came to sea, I found the " His- 
 tory of Europe " 1 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. 
 
 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 
 
 1 By Sir A. Alison. 
 
294 ENGLISH TRAITS. 
 
 with the wish to see England, is the moral pecu- 
 liarity 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 merchant'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 hom- 
 age of man to man, running through all classes, 
 
 — the electing of worthy persons to a certain fra- 
 ternity, to acts of kindness and warm and staunch 
 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 inter- 
 est 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 
 
SPEECH AT MANCHESTER. 295 
 
 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 Brit- 
 ish 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 vir- 
 tuous women, and these of a wonderful fibre and 
 endurance ; that their best parts were slowly re- 
 vealed ; 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 are 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 ban- 
 ners, but having ridden out the storm? And so, 
 gentlemen, I feel in regard to this aged England, 
 with the possessions, honors and trophies, and 
 
296 EXGLISFT TRAITS. 
 
 also with the infirmities of a thousand years gath- 
 ering around her, irretrievably committed as she 
 now is to many old customs which cannot be sud- 
 denly 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 calam- 
 ity 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 endur- 
 ance 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 requires 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 hence- 
 forth remain on the Alleghany ranges, or no- 
 where. 
 
 „9 4 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 ■