IMPRESSIONS 
 
 OF 
 
 LONDON SOCIAL LIFE, 
 
IMPRESSIONS 
 
 OF 
 
 LONDON SOCIAL LIFE 
 
 WITH OTHER PAPER: 
 
 SUGGESTED BY AN ENGLISH RESIDENCE. 
 
 ^Y 
 
 E. S. NADAL. 
 
 NEW YORK: 
 
 SCRIBNER, ARMSTRONG & CO. 
 
 1875. 
 
 

 Copyright, 1875, 
 
 BY 
 
 SCRIBNER, ARMSTRONG & CO. 
 
 John F. Trow & Son, 
 
 Printers and Bookbinders, 
 
 205-213 Hasi \-2.tk St., 
 
 NEW YORK.. 
 
■TO THAT CHIVALROUS GENTLEMAN AND HONEST FRIEND, 
 
 JUDGE JOHN P. O'SULLIVAN, 
 
 3E hzQ to inscribe this little §ook, 
 
 WITH THE ASSURANCE THAT IN WHATEVER PART OF TH t EARTH 
 
 HIS FEET NOW STRAY OR TARRY, HE BEARS WITH HIM 
 
 THE WARM RECOLLECTIONS OF THE AUTHOR. 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 This volume of Essays records the impressions 
 received during; a residence in London, where the 
 Author was for some eighteen months a secretary 
 of legation. It also describes things her^ as they 
 appear to one who returns to this country after 
 a stay in England. A number of these papers 
 have already been printed in American periodicals. 
 
 New York: Jamcary^ 1875. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 I. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Impressions of London Social Life • • • • i 
 
 IL 
 
 English Sundays and London Churches . • • 33 
 
 IIL 
 
 Two Visits to Oxford ..••••• 64 
 
 IV. 
 
 The British Upper Class in Fiction • • i • 90 
 
 PrESUMPTION m 9 • • 9 o » • • lOS 
 
 VL 
 
 English Court Festivities . • • • • .110 
 
 VIL 
 
 English Tradition and the English Future , . 131 
 
 vin. 
 
 Childhood and English Tradition • • • '. 141 
 
X Contents, 
 
 TX. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 The Dancing School in Tavistock Square . . 148 
 
 X. 
 
 Contrasts of Scenery , , • • • • ,161 
 
 XI. 
 
 New York and London Winters. « • . .173 
 
 XII. 
 The Evening Call . • . • « • • . 176 
 
 XIII. 
 Our Latest Notions of Republics • • • • 186 
 
 XIV. 
 English Conservative Temper • • • • . 193 
 
 XV. 
 English and American Nevv'spaper-writing . , 197 
 
 XVL 
 Americans Abroad ...',•••. 209 
 
 xvn. 
 
 Society in New York, and Fiction • • • .si; 
 
Sojne Impressions of London 
 Social Life. 
 
 I WISH to record some impressions of London 
 social life, and of that particular phase of it we 
 call society. I may dwell upon some faults 
 which, I should explain, are shared by society 
 in all times and places — indeed, are quite in- 
 separable from it, while others to be described 
 are the peculiarities not so much of the country 
 as of the age. Whatever be the defects and 
 drawbacks of society, scholars and thinkers 
 would wish to establish something like it, did 
 they not see that, in many respects, that already 
 established was unfit for their uses. Were it 
 possible, they would want some common s^round 
 where men and women might meet to talk 
 and see and be seen. What they, with their 
 
2 Some Impressions of [i. 
 
 very high intentions, would desire, the rest 
 of us would find enjoyable. When the gods 
 had brought man into existence, they were still 
 puzzled by the formidable problem of how he 
 was to be amused. It was supposed that some- 
 thing more extended and complex than the 
 original race would be required for that pur- 
 pose ; and numerous plans were submitted to the 
 council of the gods, and v/ere one by one rejected. 
 At length one Olympian inventor arose and sug- 
 gested that the members of the new race should 
 find their amusement in looking at each other. 
 This novel and audacious suggestion, though at 
 first received with merrim.ent and wonder, was 
 finally adopted, and on trial was discovered to 
 work admirably. It has certainly since proved 
 itself to be the completest of all inventions, at 
 once the most perfect and the simplest and 
 most labour-saving. 
 
 I have often wondered if something like the 
 Athenian Agora could not be devised. One of 
 the great features of Athens, I fancy, was the 
 active intellectual interest the people took in 
 their society as a spectacle. The liveliest 
 
I.] Lofidon Social Life, 3 
 
 curiosity everywhere pervaded the community, 
 and the stimulus of a public place of resort 
 must have been great. Hither came men of all 
 ranks and professions — merchants, poets, soldiers, 
 sophists, and statesmen. When Socrates or 
 Cleon passed, every pedlar had his jibe and 
 every huckster his bit of scandal. . The whole 
 market-place was full of mirth, movement, 
 gaiety, gossip, and curiosity. There is, at least, 
 one modern institution which has some points 
 of similarity to the Agora : I mean London 
 society. The resemblance is one more of form 
 than of character. It is like it in the fact that 
 it brings numbers of people into association, or 
 rather contiguity, and that in it we see con- 
 stantly all the noted people of the day. Here 
 the likeness ends : the life and variety are not 
 there. 
 
 Yet, easy as it is to find fault with, London 
 society is far the most perfect thing of the kind 
 in the world, and it must be a dull man who 
 would fail to extract amusement and pleasure 
 from it. Were it a little less hard and rude, and 
 were there a little more liberty for individualities, 
 
4 So7ne Impressions of [l 
 
 one might spend a lifetime in it with profit. 
 As a spectacle, it is valuable for its profuseness, 
 its pomp of life, the beautiful women and famous 
 men we see. There is, moreover, something of 
 moral education in it. We get a certain strength 
 — of a kind, indeed, which we should not take 
 long to acquire, and, having acquired, should 
 not take a lifetime to practise, but still a kind 
 of strength — silent resistance, and ease in the 
 presence of people who are indifferent and 
 critical. The dowagers are the persons in con- 
 versing with whom one experiences the greatest 
 growth of character. Some large and listless 
 mother, whose eyes are following the fortunes 
 of her charges over the field, and who has 
 asked you for the fourth time the question you 
 have already answered for the third — to go on 
 discoursing to such a person as calmly and 
 fluently as Cato does to the universe is a 
 great and difficult thing. There is not a pleasure 
 in it, nor indeed a rapture, but there is real 
 growth and building up in a certain amount 
 of it. 
 
 But the moral education of society is scarcely its 
 
I. "J London Social Life. 5 
 
 most important service. There ts a larg-e class of 
 men to whom success in it is the main object 
 of Hfe. To them it furnishes a profession, and 
 one in which they are sure in time to succeed. 
 He who in the bloom of youth is bidden to 
 dance at some great lady's ball is sure, with 
 average luck and persistence, to go to breakfast 
 in his toupee. It gives the swell something to 
 live for. When he has attained the Marquis 
 of This, the Duke of That shines yet ahead of 
 him. The way is plain, and there is no limit 
 to the possibilities of its extension. From round 
 to round of the Jacob's ladder of fashion the 
 aspiring climber may ascend indefinitely. There 
 is always something a little ahead. To tread 
 all the ways of Mayfair, to sound all the depths 
 and shoals of Belgravia, were indeed a hopeless 
 task. But it has many sorts of uses for many 
 sorts of people. Mothers there exhibit their 
 marriageable wares. Politicians put their heads 
 together. The Earl of Barchester asks a Cabinet 
 minister to appoint a friend. But the old gentle- 
 men who go to look on and take their daughters 
 get the most out of it. It is especially pleasant 
 
6 Some Imp7'essio7is of [i. 
 
 for them by contrast with the treatment they 
 receive in this country. Here the fathers of 
 famihes creep about among their daughters' 
 suitors in a very abject and humble manner. 
 "What talk is there of fathers when there is 
 such a man as Orlando?" The old men in 
 England are much more defiant and unmanage- 
 able. They do not strike their flags to the 
 young ones, as is their habit with us. They 
 confront age with fine clothes, the locks right 
 from the hand of the hair-dresser, and the air 
 of success and authority. The condition of an 
 Englishman who has grown grey in honours, who 
 has a star and a decoration and the health and 
 vanity to wear them properly, is by no means 
 an unhappy one. (Decorations should be given 
 to suit complexions ; kings and colleges should 
 award blue ribbons to blond men and red ribbons 
 to dark men.) If, besides his fortunate accidents, 
 he has humour, sensibility, and an individuality, 
 his is really an enviable lot. In the most rigid 
 of societies, wealth, rank, and success clear a way 
 for individuality. They make one elbow-room. 
 An eccentric clerk in the Admiralty would very 
 
I.] London Social Life. 7 
 
 soon find himself on the curbstone ; the eccentric 
 nobleman, on the contrary, is a popular personage, 
 and has a recognised position in all the novels. 
 Even hard and supercilious people are not apt to 
 question the wit and manners of one whom kings 
 and learned societies have indorsed. A stare 
 need not make him check his humour. He may 
 be a strong and a natural person, if he chooses. 
 It used to delight me to watch one old man 
 who had run a career in literature and politics, 
 and to Vv'hom the world had given all its good 
 things. He protected himself with the best of 
 Poole's tailoring. He wore a decoration which 
 suited his complexion perfectly. He was none 
 of your cravens. He met old age with hand 
 gaily extended in the jauntiest, boldest way in 
 the world. With a bearing humorously perverse 
 and imperious, with a pair of yellow-grey eyes 
 flashing over his eagle beak, he moved through 
 the throng ; shaking hands pleasantly with many, 
 complimenting the mammas, and hectoring the 
 maidens, whose conversation he corrected with mock 
 severity, and whom he cautioned against slang. 
 Such of the young ladies as received his reproof 
 
8 Some Impressio7ts of [l 
 
 demurely, he looked down on with approbation ; 
 while those who were saucy pleased quite as well, 
 as they gave him opportunity for more extended 
 reprimand. If age ever retains the vanity, 
 humour, and kindness of youth, this old man must 
 have had a pleasant time. The only drawback 
 is, that the people who to-night are flattered by 
 his smile may, a week hence, be reading his 
 obituary with that contempt we instinctively 
 feel for a man who has just ceased to live. 
 The death of a successful man of the world 
 affects our way of thinking of him much as any 
 other reverse in his affairs — the loss of his 
 fortune, for instance, or the favour of his party. 
 We cannot help reflecting that he must now 
 take in a little sail, that he must in future abate 
 a little his demand upon society. 
 
 But for the average man the very last thing 
 society does is to give him an opportunity to 
 express himself. Self-suppression is the lesson 
 it inculcates by precept and by very strong 
 example. The man of society must imitate the 
 patience of the processes of nature. He must 
 act as though he intended to go out for ever, 
 
1.] London Social Life. 9 
 
 and was in no hurry to get the good of it. No 
 wise man attempts to hurry London society. 
 The people who compose it never hurry. But 
 if the man of society be unselfish and be careful 
 to retain his sanity, its chief good is in what it 
 offers him to look at — the carriages flashing 
 back and forth at the dinner-hour, looking like 
 caskets or Christmas-boxes with the most 
 wonderful lining and furniture (the drapery and 
 lace almost floating out of the windows), the balls 
 and parties, the acres of fair-armed British 
 maidens through which he may wander as in a 
 wilderness, the odours of the midnight gardens, 
 the breath of the dawn, and the first flush of sun- 
 rise over Hyde Park as the drowsy cabman 
 wheels him homeward and to bed. Every spring 
 he may watch for the reappearance of some queen 
 of the last season, as for the coming of the 
 flowers. To a mind capable of pleasure it must 
 often be a joyous and delightful spectacle, and 
 always an amusing one. But if a man be subject 
 to feelings of pique and envy, and allow fortunes 
 better than his own to make him wretched, there 
 could hardly be a worse place for him. I knew 
 
lo Some Impressions of [i. 
 
 one man, foolish fellow ! who, instead of giving 
 himself up to the admiration of the ladies, and 
 the graces and peculiarities of the dancers, had 
 held aloof and had been unhappy because people 
 took so little notice of him. He told me that, 
 when he saw other men successful and smiled 
 upon, he used to stand back and try to look 
 " devilish deserving." " Wisdom and worth were 
 all he had." " I have since found out," he re- 
 marked, " what a very poor expedient it was. 
 For success in society, either here or anywhere 
 else, I had as lief be accused of forgery as of 
 modest merit.'" 
 
 I found everywhere an excessive respect of the 
 individual for the sentiment of the mass — I mean 
 in regard to behaviour. In matters of opinion 
 there is greater latitude than with us. Now- 
 adays a man in England may believe anything 
 he chooses ; the reason being, I suppose, that 
 beliefs have not much root or practical im- 
 portance. Authority seems to have left the 
 domain of thought and literature, and to have 
 invaded that of manners. Of the two sorts of 
 tyranny, I think I should prefer the first I 
 
I.] London Social Life. ii 
 
 should rather be compelled to write my poetry 
 in pentameters, and to speak with respect of 
 the Church and the Government, than to be for- 
 ever made to behave as other people dictate. I 
 know Englishmen do not accept this as true of 
 themselves. One of them, to whom I had hinted 
 something of the sort, said, " Oh, I don't know ; 
 we do about as we please." Precisely ; but they 
 have lived so constantly in the eyes of other 
 people, have got so used to conforming, that 
 they never think of wanting to do what society 
 would disapprove of They have been so in the 
 habit of subduing whatever native individuality 
 they possess, that they have at last got rid of it. 
 Of course, it would be impossible to make them 
 believe this. They mistake their inattention, the 
 hostile front they present to the world, and their 
 indifference to the strictures of foreigners when 
 they are abroad, for real independence and a 
 self-reliant adherence to nature. But there 
 seems to me to be something conventional 
 even about the rude and lounging manners 
 of which they are so proud. It is like the 
 " stand-at-ease " of soldiers. It would be highly 
 
12 Some Impressions of [i. 
 
 improper and contrary to orders to do anything 
 else. 
 
 Englishmen appeared to me to be criticising 
 themselves away. It is not only among Englishmen 
 of fashion, nor solely in England, that this is the 
 case. The age everywhere partakes of it. It 
 has come to attach great importance to proper 
 externals, to seemliness, to a dignified and har- 
 monious behaviour. What unexceptionable people 
 in their private lives are the writers of the day! 
 Artists used to be envious and backbiting : if 
 they retain such feelings at present, they are 
 certainly not candid. It cannot be that the 
 world has made such progress in a few years as 
 to have quite got rid of the passions of spite 
 and envy. We fear the age has caught cold 
 and the disease has been driven in. Certainly 
 we have come to devote an exceedingly parti- 
 cular and microscopic care to externals ; we give 
 such attention to our walk and conversation, 
 we are so careful to avoid faults and littlenesses 
 of demeanour, that we seem to have acquired 
 some sort of negative Puritanism or Pharisaism. 
 This is true of ourselves, and it is true of all 
 
I.] London Social Life, 13 
 
 educated English people ; but the disease reaches 
 its extremest form among Englishmen of fashion 
 and quality. I once asked one of the kindest 
 and cleverest of them I knew, " Can a young 
 man in this country read poetry to the ladies — 
 not his own, of course, but out of a book ? '^ 
 "No," said he, "that would be rather com-pro- 
 mis-ing " (shaking his head and pronouncing 
 the word slowly). On reflection, I did not 
 remember having done that thing myself for 
 some years, but I hardly had it classified as one 
 of the things not to be done under any circum- 
 stances. 
 
 In this very great self-consciousness and doubt 
 as to what to say and do, it was an advantage 
 to have some particular tone set and the range 
 of conversation narrowed within some well- 
 understood limits. By this, language, as a 
 medium of expression, is abolished, and becomes 
 a means of getting along comfortably with 
 friends. Certain things are set apart as good 
 for men to converse upon — the races, horse- 
 flesh, politics, anything in short, providing it is 
 not discussed in a definite or original manner. 
 
14 Some Impressions of [l 
 
 No man should say anything which might not be 
 very well said by any one else. Each man has 
 an infaUible guide in the rest. He must set his 
 clock by them, and regulate it carefully when 
 it inclines to go faster. The following is a 
 simple and easily-understood specimen of a 
 club conversation : — 
 
 First Speaker. "Are you going to Aldershot 
 to-morrow } " 
 
 Second Speaker. " No." 
 
 Here follows a pause of several minutes. 
 
 First Speaker. " Why aren't you going to 
 Aldershot to-morrow ? " 
 
 Second Speaker. "O, I hate Aldershot." 
 
 Here follows a pause of longer duration, during 
 which the first speaker reads over the Pall Mall 
 Gazette for the third tini.^. 
 
 Second Speaker, " Walter, bring me gin and 
 selt;^er.'* 
 
 This one might call the unit of a club conver- 
 sation, upon which more elaborate remark may 
 be superadded at will. 
 
 We are of course always bound to pitch our 
 voices to the ears of those around us. As a 
 
I.] London Social Life, 15 
 
 rule, we must expect people to talk about trivial 
 matters ; it would be a great bore if they did 
 otherwise. But now and then we need not be 
 surprised at a little genuine laughter or a hearty 
 greeting between friends. But in the clubs, 
 from what I saw, there rarely seemed to be any 
 abandon or heartiness. There was roseate youth 
 with the finest health, with beauty, with a 
 flower in the button-hole, with horses to ride 
 in the Row, with fine raiment and sumptuous 
 living every day, with the smiles of mammas and 
 the shy adoration of the maidens. Yet I have 
 seen old men who seemed far more happily self- 
 forgetful and with more enthusiasm for enjoy- 
 ment. The young men have deteriorated from 
 the energy of their fathers of forty years ago, 
 who must have been a very amusing class of 
 men. The strong pressure of public sentiment 
 prevents these young men from acquiring the 
 old physical vigour and freedom of the British 
 upper class ; and as they have no task set them 
 they are driven unavoidably into dulness. They 
 never swear, or rarely. The " demmes " and 
 *' egads " of their ancestors are quite out of em- 
 
1 6 Some Impressions of [l 
 
 ployment They even sin with a certain decorum. 
 For instance, it is very " bad form " to dance 
 with the ladies at the casinos, though there is 
 no impropriety in leaving those places in their 
 company. The few men who are literary and 
 intellectual make, perhaps, the weakest im- 
 pression. The thin wash of opinion which forms 
 their conversation evaporates, and leaves a very 
 slight sediment. They have that contagious 
 v/eariness I have noticed in the agricultural 
 population along the water-courses of Illinois 
 and Missouri. In the latter it is the result of 
 fever and ague, and the long eating of half-baked 
 bread. The voices of those people seemed to 
 struggle up from a region below their lungs, and 
 in them the peculiarity, besides Avearying, in- 
 tensely repelled and disgusted. In men as 
 charmingly dressed and beautifully clean as 
 these Englishmen, the offensive quality was 
 missed, but there was the same weariness and a 
 vapidity that inoculated and subdued you. There 
 often seemed to me an effeminate sound in the 
 talk, not only of the intellectual sort, but 
 even of the faster men. • Should the ghosts 
 
I.] London Social Life. 17 
 
 of their uproarious ancestors ever rustle through 
 those halls of Pall Mall and St. James's Street, 
 they must marvel, I fancy, to see the young 
 bloods of the present sitting about and compar- 
 ing experiences of vaccination with the minute- 
 ness of old ladies at a religious tea-party. 
 
 It is an old folly, it may be said, that of de- 
 crying the present, and I may be reminded that 
 most men are human, no matter what the age 
 or the country in which they live. There is 
 truth in that ; but we may easily see how very 
 different men may be whom centuries divide, 
 when we consider that most important fact of 
 the human mind — mood. How diverse are the 
 thoughts and passions which rule the fast fol- 
 lowing movements of a single human life ! How 
 diverse the lives of individual men ! How widely 
 separate from our own may be the feelings of 
 men between whom and ourselves many years 
 intervene, and of whom no living soul remains 
 to speak. There was a day when people were 
 less suspicious of each other than nowadays, 
 when they were freer and far brighter. Talk like 
 that of which we read in Boswell's *' Life of 
 
 
 
1 8 Some Impressions of [i. 
 
 Johnson," " The Vicar of Wakefield," and the "Sel- 
 wyn Correspondence" is not heard now. I have 
 noticed the fluency of some very charming old 
 ladies. They address you with an unhesitatinf^ 
 talkativeness, which is not of this time. They 
 have never asked themselves, " How did I appear 
 when I said this.?" or "Was not that gesture 
 or that expression of countenance peculiar V It 
 would seem, then, that the monologue which 
 is so characteristic of the novel of fifty years 
 ago was no invention of the novelist, but that 
 people really talked in that way. They did 
 not skirmish behind wary short sentences as 
 do the lovers in Mr. Trollope's books. Why, 
 if you proposed to one of the young ladies 
 of that period, she replied in a speech covering 
 full a page and a half of Miss Edgeworth, per- 
 fectly fluent and grammatical, every word of 
 which could be parsed from beginning to end. 
 If she rejected you, the discourse was sure to 
 contain many and most irreproachable moral 
 sentiments. Yet those very young ladies upon 
 occasions could very nearly swear. On the de- 
 corous pages of Miss Austin we find expressions 
 
I-] Lo72don Social Life. 19 
 
 which nowadays would be considered wicked. 
 The proper and satirical Emma, and the very 
 charming Elizabeth, say "Good God!" " My God!" 
 Exquisite profanity! It would have wheedled 
 the heart out of a travelling colporteur with a 
 bundle of tracts. Ah, fresh blooming maidens 
 with the blue waving plumes, what joy it would 
 have been to have met you, and to have heard 
 from your own lips those shocking expressions 
 some blissful morning long ago, on a breezy hill- 
 top, and near the foHage of a rustling oak! 
 
 The complete banishment of profanity from 
 the conversation of men of fashion seemed to me 
 a curious phenomenon. I do not believe it could 
 have been accomplished in any country where 
 example had less authority. The common 
 modern oaths you hear very little ; as to the 
 archaic and Homeric forms, they have quite 
 gone out. I never met a man, however aged, 
 who used those expressions. I used constantly 
 to see one old gentleman who always came 
 arrayed in the traditional blue coat and brass 
 buttons, buff waistcoat, and great neckcloth of 
 the Regency. I fancied he might be like that 
 
20 Some Impressions of [i. 
 
 South American parrot of which Humboldt tells, 
 that was the sole remaining creature to speak 
 the language of a lost tribe. I never had the 
 pleasure, however, of hearing him express him- 
 self. He silently surveyed the moving throng. 
 The present, perhaps, seemed dull to him. He 
 had heard, a fine Llay morning long ago, in 
 Piccadilly, the horn of the coachman ringing up 
 the street, and had awaited the stopping of the 
 coach at Hatchett's, to see such blooming 
 faces looking merrily out of the windows, and 
 the ladies in the short waists and petticoats of 
 the tim.e alighting from the top. Somewhere 
 away in one of those shires whose name recalls 
 the green fields and the sound of the milk in the 
 pail, he had kissed a country cousin under one of 
 the big bonnets they wore when the century and 
 he and his sv/eetheart were all in their teens. 
 
 In the parlours the narrow range of thought 
 and conversation is even more noticeable than 
 at the clubs. Here the ladies set the tone ; and 
 kind as they usually are, bright and pretty as 
 they often are, there is unmistakably among 
 them an unconsciousness of all outside certain 
 
I.] London Social Life. 21 
 
 narrow limits that custom has prescribed for 
 them. The freedom and gaiety which are not 
 uncommon in the parlours of Americans of the 
 best class will be hard to find in the drawing- 
 rooms of English fashionables. They falk, pro- 
 fessedly. Upon those common topics which 
 should form the ordinary conversation they do 
 very well, and, among the brighter of them, a 
 kind of wit and wisdom is permitted. But that 
 is apt to be a la mode. The wit is badly watered. 
 I am not sure, however, that fashionable wisdom 
 and watered wit are peculiar to London. All 
 society-wit is somewhat diseased. The wit of 
 rich and idle men is poor. It is curious that 
 they who have nothing to do but to make jokes 
 should make such very poor ones. There are a 
 few recipes afloat from which most of these fine 
 things are evidently prepared. The fashionable 
 joke is usually accompanied by the fashionable 
 gesture, and an expression of imvard illumination 
 which the state of the mind hardly justifies. 
 Though as to artificial pantomime and vocal 
 inflection, there is less of that among the English 
 "respectables" than among our own. It may 
 
22 So7ne Impressions of [i. 
 
 seem to contradict this, but really does not, 
 when I say that our own fashionable manners 
 are borrowed from the English. English people 
 must speak in some way, and their peculiarities, 
 as a rule, are proper and natural. Our imitative 
 and impressible society leaders, seeing something 
 admirable in English aristocratical style, copy 
 the accents and gestures, forgetting that they too 
 would seem admirable to others were they to 
 speak naturally. 
 
 As a rule, women in English society are 
 remarkably natural — negatively natural, I mean. 
 English girls are particularly simple and un- 
 assuming. They are innocent of all efibrt to 
 impress or astonish. As all womankind does 
 and should do, they make themselves as pretty 
 as they can ; but as to personal superiorities, their 
 educators do not lay enough stress upon such 
 things to make them ambitious to excel in that 
 way. All young ladies are taught a certain 
 mode of deportment, which is excellent so far as 
 it goes. The chief precept of the code, whether 
 inculcated openly or by the silent feeling of 
 society, is that each young lady must do as the 
 
I.] London Social Life. 23 
 
 rest. That "young English girl," who is the 
 theme of the novelists and the magazine bards 
 and artists, easily merits all the adulation she 
 receives. Does not all the world knov/, is it not 
 almost an impertinence to say, that for dignity, 
 modesty, propriety, sense, and a certain soft self- 
 possession, she has hardly her equal anywhere.-* 
 But the British maiden is taught that ambition 
 in character is not a desirable thing. The natural- 
 ness and propriety which accompany this state 
 of mind are not particularly admirable. It is very 
 different from that propriety which is the result 
 of elevation of character, of conclusions intimately 
 known and constantly practised. People who 
 have activity and ambition are very apt to be 
 affected, and very apt to unduly crave recogni- 
 tion. That we ask to be thought superior, showa 
 at least that we prize superiority. When the 
 young are left to their own growth, and no restric- 
 tive tariff is put upon individuality, we may 
 expect a little nonsense. Society will certainly 
 do a good thing for the young if it teaches them 
 the folly of a desire for recognition. But this 
 society does not do, I fear. It merely instructs 
 
24 Some Impressions of [i. 
 
 them not to ask for recognition, because bv so 
 doing they make a bad impression. It has done 
 them a still more doubtful service, if, in giving 
 them this very good trait, it has also taught them 
 to emphasise less strongly the superiorities of 
 character and conduct. 
 
 I have said that English-society people make 
 but little effort to impress or astonish ; and I ex- 
 plained that they have no wish to be thought 
 individually remarkable, because that sort of 
 ambition among them is a very exceptional 
 thing. What they do value is the "getting on;" 
 and the inevitable effect of living among them 
 is to make one think that that is the best thing 
 one can do. Certainly those old familiar ideas 
 of the poets and moralists, " truth, innocence, 
 fidelity, affection, &c.," which one always felt at 
 home with in the snug corners of the parlours 
 at the village sewing-circles, suddenly became 
 strange to me and very unreal and whimsical. 
 They danced off at a distance in the oddest and 
 most fantastical manner. If anybody sneered at 
 "upholstery," or spoke contemptuously of rank 
 and fashion, you at once fancied some one had 
 
I.] London Social Life, 25 
 
 snubbed him ; if he praised virtue, you suspected 
 him of wanting a dinner. But while the lust of 
 the eyes and the pride of life are everything to 
 upper-class Englishmen, you hear wonderfully 
 little said about these things. Carlyle and 
 Thackeray, the poets and satirists and the goody 
 old maids who write the novels, though they 
 have quite shut the mouths of these brave 
 gentlemen, have by no means driven such 
 thoughts out of their hearts. To give you to 
 understand that they are persons of consequence, 
 they would think the last degree of vulgarity. 
 Yet, if they do not claim consequence, it is not 
 because they do not value consequence. They 
 know that to assert openly their demand is not 
 the best way to have it accorded them. The 
 avidity of Mrs. Governor Brown and Mrs. Judge 
 Jones for the best rooms at the hotels, and the 
 recognition and sympathy of all the railway 
 conductors, is unknown in England. But the 
 two manners, so different apparently, are not so 
 different essentially. Both demand consideration 
 and consequence — the one only more successfully 
 than the other. The quiet demeanour, the 
 
26 Some Impressio7is of [i. 
 
 sedulous avoidance of self-assertion, the critical 
 look, the slightly reserved bearing, say very 
 plainly, ." See, I am a person of consequence.'* 
 Both make the same inferior claim. The one 
 makes it in a wise, refined, and successful way ; 
 the other in a foolish, vulgar, and unsuccessful 
 way. 
 
 " Pose " is the name given to this wise, refined, 
 and successful manner of self-assertion. It may 
 be defined as the quality of absolute quiescence. 
 By the aid of it we move with the semblance of 
 unconsciousness through a throng of which we 
 are inspecting every individual. Society has dis- 
 covered (what the young find it so hard to learn) 
 that by looking quite blank we may keep people 
 altogether in the dark as to what we are think- 
 ing about. That which Mr. Phunky found so 
 difficult — to look as though no one were looking 
 at him — London society has learned to do. Yet 
 I think that some other quality besides mere qui- 
 escence is necessary to "pose." That we will 
 suppose to be some beauty (whether physical or 
 spiritual) of face or form. An unconscious coster- 
 monger would not be imposing. I have seen 
 
I.] London Social Life, 27 
 
 flunkies who possessed the quality to a greater 
 degree than their masters, and who were yet not 
 admirable. A thing must be beautiful absolutely 
 before it can be beautiful in any one condition — 
 particularly in that of rest. No doubt the young 
 men are as fine-looking a lot of fellows as can be 
 found. They have good physiques, which they 
 keep in good condition ; they have had an edu- 
 cation among people of breeding and cultivation ; 
 they have been at the best schools, and brought 
 away such culture as they could not help getting ; 
 they have had respect and consideration from their 
 cradles ; they know very well they have nothing 
 to ask of society. But besides all this, they owe 
 most to the pains which they lavish upon their 
 exteriors. That last is an important point. Let 
 Carlyle deride the Stultz swallow-tail. The Stultz 
 swallow-tail and the white waistcoats, and the 
 gold chains, and the wonderful linen, and the silk 
 stockings, and the beautiful boots — these between 
 them do work wonders. The young dons at the 
 universities and the young clergy of England — 
 than whom no finer race of gentlemen exists, 
 candid, catholic, modest, learned, courteous— are 
 
28 Some Impressions of [i. 
 
 yet not so beautiful as the men of Pall Mall and 
 St. James's Street. The reason is that they do not 
 so generally seek the outdoor life, and especially 
 that they give no such scrupulous and continuous 
 care to the decoration of the ambrosial person. 
 
 In English ladies, "pose" is particularly admired, 
 yet I am not sure that the novelists do not make 
 too much of it. The female phenomenon at a 
 circus is trained to stand with one foot on the 
 back of a galloping horse, and yet not for a 
 moment lose her equable expression of counte- 
 nance. Surely, then, it were no such great thing 
 to teach a lady to move amid a throng of well- 
 disposed people with the appearance of equanimity 
 and unconsciousness. The ladies are beautiful, 
 especially the younger and softer of them ; they 
 choose to stand still, and the impression Vv^iich 
 is really due to some quality of face or form or 
 spirit is ascribed to attitude. But I doubt if 
 quiescence is the highest attainable condition of 
 mind and body. Grace is beauty become ex- 
 pressive and vital. That is the quality which 
 must delight us while we move upon the earth, 
 and we are not content with any state of things 
 
I.] London Social Life, 29 
 
 which robs us of it. We shall not always be here, 
 and we are impatient that whatever there is lovely 
 in life should be in haste to express itself. Grace, 
 I should say, was the expression of a beautiful 
 past. It finds egress, we know, in any sort of 
 action — walking, sewing, reading, or singing — 
 but most of all in dancing. Here, fortunately, 
 the baneful influence of "pose" is counteracted. 
 The ball seems to be the invention of some good 
 friend of humanity to force people to be quite 
 themselves. Self-indulgence and conceit generate 
 ugliness ; virtue and self-denial beget beauty, and 
 we know how necessary it is that people should 
 always be expressing these things. No training 
 of the body can eradicate vulgarity ; no awkward- 
 ness or inexperience of limb can suppress grace. 
 With what odious sensations the trained dancing- 
 girls of the Alhambra afflict us ! What inde- 
 scribable pleasure some little creature's mistakes 
 who blunders in the Lancers afford us ! 
 
 " Pose " has been adopted by English people 
 of fashion in self-defence. London and Texan 
 societies have this one point in common — they 
 all go armed, even to the women. As acquaint- 
 
30 Some Impr^ssio^rs of |i. 
 
 ances in the South-west discuss politics over their 
 slings and cocktails, with knives and revolvers 
 half hidden in their belts, so the London swell, 
 as you meet him at the club or the party, hardly 
 conceals under his waistcoat and watch-chains the 
 handles of his weapons of defence ; and, set like 
 jewels in the girdle that zones a lady^s waist, 
 you detect the dearest little gemmed and mounted 
 implements of destruction. The Englishman con- 
 ducts himself as though he were in an enemy's 
 country. In the strictest apostolic sense he 
 regards this life as a warfare. " And well he 
 may," he would say. " Consider what people 
 we meet, what dangers we encounter by sea and 
 land, on the promenade, in the park, and at the 
 watering-place. The parvenu walks abroad in 
 daylight. All about us are people who don't 
 know their grandfathers. Everywhere rich con- 
 tractors and lotion-sellers lie in ambush. It 
 behoves us to tread cautiously. And not only 
 are we in constant dread of these people, but we 
 must be for ever on our guard against those of 
 our own sort. If we are affable to our superiors, 
 they may think us familiar ; if we are civil to 
 
I.] London Social Life, 31 
 
 our equals, they may fancy we think them better 
 than ourselves. So, amid imminent perils from 
 the insults of the great, from the snubs of equals, 
 and the familiarities of inferiors, we move through 
 this dangerous wilderness of society." 
 
 Of the external advantage of London society 
 J have already spoken. Its machinery is nearly 
 perfect. One meets numbers of persons who 
 not only bear themselves perfectly, but seem to 
 think and feel almost with perfection ; women 
 sensible and gracious, men from whom reflection 
 and high purpose have removed every trace of 
 triviality. Parties and receptions have this ad- 
 vantage ; we have the perfection of social ease 
 with those to whom we are under no obligation 
 to be agreeable. The guests cannot be uncon- 
 scious and oblivious of the host, nor the host of 
 the guests. But between those who meet on 
 common ground there may be silence or con- 
 versation, just as is most comfortable. Hence 
 the benefit of such an organised social establish- 
 ment as London possesses. The great distinction 
 which rank and money obtain in England may 
 perhaps be irksome to those who spend their lives 
 
32 London Social Life. [i, 
 
 in the midst of its society. To a stranger or 
 sojourner, it is a novel and interesting feature. 
 One felt that here was company which, however 
 it might be in Saturn and Jupiter, no set of 
 tellurians at least could affect to despise. You 
 enjoyed this sensation. All round this wide 
 planet, through the continents and the islands of 
 the sea, among the Franks and the Arabs, the 
 Scandinavians, the Patagonians, and the Poly- 
 nesians, there were none who could give them- 
 selves airs over this. The descendants of Adam, 
 the world over, could show nothing better. 
 
English Stmdays and Loiidoii 
 Chtirches. 
 
 I DOUBT if there is, upon the outside, an ugher 
 or more unattractive hoHday in the world than 
 Sunday in an EngUsh or American town. There 
 is something in the spectacle of the closed shops 
 and barred windows, the long, deserted business 
 thoroughfare, and in the ringing of the iron cellar 
 doors over which your feet rattle drearily, to the 
 last degree desolate and inhospitable. Even in 
 the parks and city squares the day does not lose 
 its disconsolate aspect. The shoemaker and his 
 wife trundling their baby carriage afflict us with 
 a sense of commiseration. His Sunday clothes 
 and his wife's parasol and their solemn, circuni- 
 spect walking about, suggest most vividly his 
 unhappy, shabby toil, hi:-; unending drud.c^ery. 
 
 D 
 
34 English Sundays [ii. 
 
 Can there be anything but ugliness in a city 
 square upon a Sunday, with an iron bench to sit 
 upon, a gravel path to walk upon, a policeman 
 near at hand, and the sight of three or four 
 smart young clerks condemned to spend the day 
 in each other's company. There is, however, in 
 many American towns (I never saw anything of 
 the kind in London), a street where the nice 
 people walk up and down on Sunday afternoons. 
 The young ladies are pretty and gay and loqua- 
 cious, and the young gentlemen, though a trifle 
 overdressed, are happy and endeavour to be 
 agreeable. On a winter or autumn afternoon, 
 the fine promenade of an American city is bright 
 and splendid. There is something a little hard, 
 something not quite warm and generous, in the 
 spectacle of the long, cold, gay street. Yet the 
 scene is not unpleasing. The polished window- 
 pane is now and then lit up with a flickering ray 
 of the firelight within. Certainly the day is not 
 without austerity even here. But the neighbour- 
 hood of friends in a great city finds one well 
 contented with the severity and peculiarity of the 
 religious festival of the week. I am willing to put 
 
II.] and London Churches. 35 
 
 up with the abolition of the shop-windows, and the 
 desolation of streets so bright on other days, with 
 the depressing hilarities of the people, and the 
 dismal bits of green grass, with fountains, iron 
 benches, policemen, and baby-carriages. The 
 tinge of gloom which hangs over the elegant 
 quarter of the town is agreeable rather than 
 otherwise. I am glad of the Puritan reminiscence 
 which yet hangs about our Sunday. It is well 
 that there should be one day in the week which 
 we are under some vague obligation not to give 
 to trivialities, when at times we shall even repress 
 that laughter and joking at the sound of which 
 dreams and emotions are apt to break away and 
 vanish, when the lights are lowered and fingers 
 wander over the keys, and "The spacious firma- 
 ment on high," and " By cool Siloam^s shady rill,^^ 
 are sung by the voices of the kind and good. 
 
 The English Sunday is more sombre than our 
 own. Here the day wears more of a holiday 
 aspect ; the people in the streets look happier 
 and are better dressed. The genteel English 
 think it common and snobbish to dress much on 
 Sunday. Of course they ascribe this notion to 
 
36 English Sundays [11. 
 
 their nicer sense of propriety ; but how much 
 of it is due to superior taste and sanctity, and 
 how much to the tradition that snobs dress on 
 Sunday because persons of their station are com- 
 pelled to Avork on other days, I do not pretend 
 to decide. One may say that the English, as a 
 rule, regard Sunday with rather more sobriety and 
 strictness than ourselves. They think it is godless 
 to stay away from church ; and it is to the 
 churches one must go to see the English Sunday. 
 We, in this country, have always had a poetic 
 curiosity and interest in the churches and parson- 
 ages of England. The "decent church" (inimitable 
 adjective !) when, for the first time, on the road 
 from Liverpool to London, one sees it crowning 
 a well-clipped, humid hill-top, softly returns to the 
 imagination as something known in infancy and 
 forgotten. Ever since childhood our minds have 
 been filled with innumerable stories and poems 
 about the parsons and parsonages. There is the 
 Vicar of Wakefield, and there is the clergyman 
 in the " Deserted Village ; " and, later, we are 
 familiar with many admirable or amusing parsons 
 or parsons' wives and daughters on the pages of 
 
II. 1 and London Churches. 2>1 
 
 Miss Austin and Trollope. The clergyman seems 
 to have been the best man in their society to unite 
 in his person virtue and gentility with tragical 
 poverty. On the other hand, there is in the 
 lives of many clergymen^s families just that 
 plcnwn of earthly comfort which is alluring for 
 the gentler uses of literature, just that happy 
 balance of circumstances which equally removes 
 the household from the ugliness of want, and 
 from the pretension which is the peril of too 
 much success. The parson has been called the 
 " centre of English society." High and low, rich 
 and poor, all group themselves about him, and 
 compute their position by reference to him. He 
 touches the community at every point ; he may 
 know everybody, though his place is a very 
 variable and accidental one. His importance, of 
 course other things being equal, is in proportion 
 to his income. He is a greater man in the country 
 than in town. Some parsons are very much 
 greater than others. Between a bishop and a 
 poor curate there exists what the novelists would 
 call a "gulf" Indeed, 1 am told that a young 
 curate, when speaking to a bishop in the street, 
 
38 English Stmdays [il 
 
 would be likely to take off his hat and stand 
 bareheaded. In London, the priest appears to 
 lose himself amidst the crowd ; but even there he 
 retains an intrinsic identity and distinctiveness 
 which nobody else possesses. 
 
 We have, besides, been attracted by the artistic 
 and poetical qualities of the Church of England. 
 It possesses these attractions, not because it is a 
 State Church, but because it is a National Church. 
 It is the Church of all, and, because the people 
 in humble and middle hfe outnumber the great 
 and the fortunate, it is more the church of the poor 
 than of the rich. This fact gives it substance and 
 depth, and a sombre strength, like the chill sod 
 and damp winds of their autumn evening. In the 
 Church the people have for ages been christened, 
 married, and buried ; indeed, any other kind of 
 religious establishment has a look either shabby 
 or glaringly brand-new. With us it is always the 
 particular church, say, at the corner of IMoyomen- 
 sing Avenue and iSth Street, which attracts or 
 repels one. Is it a good place to go "^ Do we 
 like the clergyman, and do we like the people } 
 One of the best parts of any Church Service here, 
 
II.] and London CJmrches, 39 
 
 I take it, is shaking hands with acquaintances 
 going down the aislco. We go here to those 
 houses which attract and please, which are the 
 brightest and happiest-looking. The minified 
 cathedrals, where gloom was secured by the same 
 cheap means by which one can get it in any 
 pantry, namely, by having no windows, are re- 
 placed by houses of worship more fit and sensible. 
 We have no old churches ; and antiquity here is 
 so weak and unimportant, that people do well 
 in ceasing altogether to imitate its solemn and 
 pathetic impressions. How slight and feeble is 
 our past, the man will feel who loiters in Trinity 
 church-yard, or strolls for an hour in St. PauFs, 
 the interior of which wonderfully resembles an 
 old English church. What comes to us from pre- 
 revolutionary times is scarcely more inspiring than 
 the rubbish left in an attic by the people who 
 move out to those who move in. Wlio that drops 
 his ticket at Wall Street Ferry cares to remember 
 that, on that spot, George and Martha Washington 
 landed from Virginia ninety years ago ; or who- of 
 the crowds that flock hourly about the Exchange 
 calls to mind that, on the balcony of a building 
 
40 English Stmdays [ii. 
 
 which once stood there, the first president was 
 inaugurated ? The mighty To-Day of the con- 
 tinent is scarcely conscious of these trifles. It 
 is different in England. George III., with his 
 tumultuous, triumphant Empire, and his thunder- 
 ing Waterloos and Trafalgars, curbs the conceit 
 and insolence of the living. So far as duration 
 goes, America has had the very respectable past 
 of nearly four centuries. But, whatever is ancient 
 in point of tim^e by association with this continent, 
 seems to partake of its newness. What is old here 
 does not at all become precious because it is rare. 
 It is rather swallowed up in the all-pervading, 
 all-forgetting present. A tomb-stone with 1790 
 scratched upon it is a less impressive object here 
 than in Europe. The occupant has no con- 
 stituency ; there are too few of him to make it 
 worth while to take him into account. But even 
 the recent past in Europe is strong, because of 
 the multitudes which disappear with a generation, 
 and of the ages full of life and history upon which 
 it lies. The names over the chancel of men who 
 fell with Nelson, and the tablets upon the walls, 
 not a half century old, appeal to us with a strange 
 earnestness. 
 
II.] and London Churches. 41 
 
 There is no doubt that these English temples 
 possess sublime and fervid impressions which 
 houses of worship of yesterday cannot produce. 
 Yet the services in many of them, particularly 
 in the West-End, are very dull and vapid. The 
 churches were a third full, with pretty much every- 
 body asleep or inattentive. The most devout and 
 enthusiastic worship is to be found in those parts 
 of London inhabited mainly by the lower middle 
 classes — people who live by trades and small shops. 
 In some churches, where the pews are reserved 
 until the time for the service to begin, the outside 
 public range themselves along the aisle, waiting 
 to take the unoccupied seats when the moment 
 comes. In other churches the pews are thrown 
 open during the evening service, and anybody 
 can come in and take a seat, the only precedence 
 being such as long occupation and courtesy %vvq. 
 I remember a young lady who hustled me out 
 of a comfortable corner on the plea that it was 
 " hers.^' There she sat and opened her prayer- 
 book and surrendered herself almost greedily to 
 her ecstasy and mxcditation. How she valued 
 that snug corner I could tell from the warlike 
 
42 English Sundays [n. 
 
 expression of her countenance, when for a moment 
 I looked sceptical of her right to eject me. 
 
 This was at St. Dominic's, with the curate of 
 which church I had the good fortune to contract 
 an acquaintance. The curate of St. Dominic's 
 was a very good, laborious, and capable man. He 
 preached two or three sermons on Sunday ; his 
 evenings were occupied with lectures and charities; 
 during five days of the week he taught a great 
 city school. The rest of the time he took in 
 writing his two sermons, visiting the sick and 
 burying the dead, in reading the Bible to all the 
 bed-ridden old women in the parish, and in bap- 
 tising certain red and blue-faced, black-haired 
 and very tender babies. How shall I describe 
 him — a saint without a feebleness, a humorist 
 without scepticism, an Englishman without a 
 trace of the egotist, a tireless worker and an 
 unquestioning child of duty; yet with the most 
 generous sense of enjoyment, and a most 
 m.odest charity for the indolent and the semi- 
 virtuous. I had a note to him from a friend 
 who had met him in Switzerland. With his 
 countenance I saw a good deal of St. Dominic's. 
 
II.] and London Churches, 43 
 
 Often on Sunday evenings at 7 o'clock I used 
 to call at the curate's lodgings for the chance of a 
 walk with him to church, or rather a trot, for we 
 were nearly always late, the parson stopping to 
 tack a tail on to his sermon. It was a mile 
 away, and the chimes of St. Dominic's were 
 clanging as we brought up the vestibule. It was 
 an ancient building, standing in what is called 
 the " City," — a district inclosed by the old walls 
 and now entirely taken up by trade. I got my 
 seat in church, and when the bell stopped, the 
 procession of choristers, dressed in white, began 
 to move up the aisle, the youngest and tenderest 
 coming first, the older and taller following. The 
 little ones were often beautiful boys, with the 
 soft tender English complexion, and looked like 
 angels, though I often saw them nudging each 
 other when they were responding the loudest, 
 and communicating by dumb show, with spelling 
 upon their fingers and with grimaces. Their faces 
 were so clean, and they had their hair so well 
 brushed, that it was easy to see that some neat 
 and proud mother had inspected every one of 
 them. One little fellow in particular looked as 
 
44 English Smtdays [il 
 
 if his mother had follov/ed him all about the room, 
 holding him by the chin, brushing his forehead and 
 temples violently as he retreated, and, perhaps, 
 giving him now and then a crack on the head 
 with the hair-brush. The procession grew coarser 
 as it grew older ; the difference between the little 
 and the big choristers was much like that between 
 young and tender leeks and onions gone to seed. 
 The choristers were, I suppose, taken almost en- 
 tirely from the families of small shopkeepers and 
 mechanics. Directly behind the grown choristers, 
 and attired very much like them, came the clergy; 
 and the contrast between their countenances 
 showed more plainly than anything I remember 
 seeing, the unmistakable unlikeness of gentle- 
 men to persons who are not gentlemen. There 
 were the well-defined, educated faces of tv/o or 
 three young clergymen, and in a singular contrast 
 was the loutish, indistinct chaos in the counte- 
 nances of the overgrown singers. 
 
 The curate preached always in the evenings, 
 and led a good part of the service. His sermons 
 were delivered in a low, musical monotone or 
 recitative. They were thoughtful and well ex- 
 
II.] and London Churches. 45 
 
 pressed, excellent sermons, among the best I heard 
 in London ; but what made them especially admir- 
 able was the manifest purity of the man, the 
 reality of his goodness. Whether he read or 
 preached, or prayed, or sat silent, you felt the 
 influence of a devoted spirit. It is the sort of 
 man he is, not so much what he says, that makes 
 a clergyman a good one. You would not care 
 to have a vulgar, superficial, or conceited person 
 sit in your room and occupy your attention for 
 an hour. It is just as unpleasant to have any 
 such man moving constantly before your eyes in 
 church, praying, reading, and exhorting. Of vul- 
 garity one sees very little among the English 
 clergy, but, of course, most clergymen, like most 
 other people, do not possess very clear ideas, and 
 it is necessary that they be exhibiting their lack of 
 strength during the whole time they occupy the 
 eyes of the congregation. Their manner of read- 
 ing the Bible seems to be altogether without sense 
 or reason. They take the promises, the revelations, 
 the ecstasies, the lamentations, and the genealogies 
 all in the same voice, and at the same pace. I 
 remember once to have heard, in the afternoon 
 
46 English Sundays [11. 
 
 service at Westminster Abbey, a clergyman reading 
 the Scriptures in a heavy, sonorous voice, with 
 which he was obviously very well contented. 
 Paul, in the chapter read, has been speaking in 
 a lofty. Apostolic strain, which the agreeable bari- 
 tone suited very well. But he closes the epistle 
 with some commonplace messages, which are 
 manifestly not to be read with the same sub- 
 limity of enunciation as the other parts of the 
 chapter. But the clergyman grandly intoned, 
 " Bring Zenas, the lawyer-r-r-r-r-r," and the ca- 
 dences of this bathetic expression rolled among the 
 arches of the cathedral and over the heads of the 
 people. The curate of St. Dominic's intoned the 
 service also, and with the motions of his voice 
 his large congregation was instinctively in sym- 
 pathy. His reading was affecting, as I have said, 
 owing, not so much to any grace of manner, or 
 agreeable vocal cadences (though his voice was a 
 sweet one), as to the purity and devotion of his 
 spirit. Some more modern sorts of sin, I used 
 to think, though, might have very well found 
 their way into his liturgy. Could he not have 
 elided " From false doctrine, heresy and schism," 
 
II.] and London Churches, 47 
 
 and have intoned instead, " From inconstancy and 
 vain obliviousness, from ennui, lassitude, and all 
 self-admiration ! " 
 
 St. Dominic's was one of the oldest of the city 
 sanctuaries, its history stretching way back before 
 Elizabeth. The church was destroyed and re- 
 built at the time of the great fire. Its aisles have 
 been the resting-place of city worthies as long as 
 London has had Lord Mayors, or London women 
 have been comely. Their quaint memorials were 
 upon the windows — " Thomas Watson, citizen, of 
 Milk Street, — 15 13/' How many generations of 
 listless children, lying back in these pews during 
 the long service, have spelt out his virtues on the 
 marble underneath, and wondered what a quaint 
 old fellow he was, and how strange it must be 
 to be dead so long, and have one's name scratched 
 in such queer characters under the painted figures 
 of saints and martyrs, then sighed to think what 
 an age it would oe till dinner. St. Dominic's 
 was just such a church as old City magnates 
 should have worshipped and grown rich in. The 
 place had a look of tarnished bullion and dingy 
 guineas ; it made one think of the dark corners 
 
48 E7iglish Sundays [11. 
 
 of old counting-rooms. On the walls and over 
 the chancel, upward-gazing saints aspired with 
 the faith of long-gone ages. The glad singing 
 of the choristers and the murmurings of the 
 people arose incessantly ; from the tablets upon 
 the walls the past gave testimony. There, with 
 the dark wilderness of London trade without, the 
 people knelt and worshipped in the same old 
 place which had been a landmark to their be- 
 lieving fathers. 
 
 After church the curate used to guide me 
 through all sorts of strange lanes and arcades, 
 and openings, and narrow passages through which 
 we could scarcely get abreast, to the vicarage, 
 which was a third of a mile away, where half-a- 
 dozen of the parsons of the neighbourhood 
 gathered for supper. Incessant and indefatigable 
 as he v/as. he yet seemed to have more time for 
 his friends than many men who do not accom- 
 plish a fourth of his work. I took advantage 
 of all tne time I could get of him. He was 
 always to be found after church on Sunday 
 when the same group that gathered at the vicar- 
 age came to him to lunch. These meetings were 
 
II.] and London Churches, 49 
 
 marked by a friendship and abandon rare, I 
 should have supposed, among Englishmen. This 
 we owed to the hospitality of the curate^s spirit, 
 and his laugh, which, I think, was one of the 
 most delightful I ever heard. He possessed a 
 most capacious nature. His humour, of which he 
 had a great deal, was just like his frame, large 
 and ruddy. He was from the farmer class ; and, 
 it seemed to me, that he had in his blood the 
 jollity of a hundred Christmas Eves, and in his 
 voice the warmth and volume of centuries of 
 roaring Yule-logs upon the hearth. He had 
 perfect health ; he was three-and-thirty, indeed, 
 but he had that other youth — the youth of purity 
 and simplicity. On Sundays he usually came 
 back from church in great spirits. His talk with 
 his clerical friends ran upon parish matters, the 
 peculiarities of some familiar people, an odd 
 answer of a charity scholar to a question in the 
 catechism, or what had been seen and heard 
 among the poor during the week. For instance 
 (this was told me in a subdued voice, as if to 
 apologise for its profanity),- the curate had called 
 upon a poor girl who had lost her baby. He 
 
 £ 
 
50 Efiglish Su7tdays [ii. 
 
 tried to comfort her, and told her that it was 
 better ofif where it was. She was inconsolable ; 
 but when he reminded her that it had gone to 
 Heaven, she said "yes" (sobbing), that she be- 
 lieved it was a "bloody little angel." I mention 
 this to shov/ the strength of the soil from which 
 these men drew their nutriment. Their conver- 
 sation was full of fact and personal experience; 
 but the wit and pleasure, the " sweet insanity " to 
 which the company attained when their minds 
 were the clearest and kindest, they owed to the 
 patronage and hospitality of the host The free- 
 dom and perfect unselfishness of the parson pro- 
 voked the humour of his guests to the very limit 
 of audacity; indeed, at times, to the border of 
 dehrium. 
 
 This pale photograph is all I have with which 
 to reproduce his modesty, his efficiency, his good- 
 ness, his friendship, his humour. Even these 
 words — a hieroglyphical sort of suggestion of him 
 rather than of definition — may bring him into 
 trouble, should they find their way across the 
 ocean. The ladies at the vicarage, where we used 
 to sup on Sunday evenings after service, used to 
 
II.] and London Churches. 51 
 
 tease him sorely. Indeed, that was the way they 
 took to testify the warm regard in which they held 
 the curate. They had rather a handle against him 
 in the great devotion of certain old ladies in the 
 parish. These old people could not help testifying 
 their love of him, and not very skilful in expressing 
 themselves, would make use of epithets rather 
 more fond than accurate. Expressions meant for 
 parsons of the honeyed or pallid and ascetic sort 
 sat rather absurdly upon his broad shoulders. 
 Then there were certain good and pretty women 
 who used to persecute this devout man and worthy 
 servant by recalling these compliments in his pre- 
 sence. Thus he was never permitted to forget 
 that he had been called '' the handsomest curate 
 in Wolverton." Perhaps they may find something 
 in my encomiums to tease him about. 1 can see 
 him alter church on Sunday evenings at the 
 vicarage, indulging deep draughts of beer, and 
 very busy at the cold chicken, amid gusts of his 
 own laughter and expostulation, exclaiming that 
 a certain friend of his is a "blasted Yankee," ''a 
 heretic," &c. 
 
 People in England do not run together so much 
 
52 English Simdays [ii. 
 
 by churches as in this country. There is the broad 
 division between the Establishment and the Dis- 
 senters, much broader than that between any two 
 American denominations, though the hne is by 
 no means so marked as it once was. But you 
 find comparatively very little association by par- 
 ticular church, societies. In the West-End there 
 is none at all ; in the less fashionable parts of 
 London the Church is a sort of focus for the con- 
 gregation, but to no such degree as in America. 
 They have nothing like our Sunday schools, about 
 which the young people in an American town and 
 village get together, and which, in their own minds, 
 they associate much more intimately vv^ith cider 
 and hickory nuts than with the catechism. Sun- 
 day schools in England are entirely for the poor. 
 The original object was to teach children who 
 could not go to school during the week. Of the 
 bright and attractive gatherings of pretty children 
 and happy people among us they have no idea. 
 The Sunday school here is so national and peculiar 
 an institution, that I wonder it has not got into 
 literature. The number of people, the country 
 through, who have recollections of them, must be 
 
II.] and London Churches, 53 
 
 very great. In the days when school disciphne 
 was severer than at present, a boy's reason for 
 liking them was that they did not "lick" and 
 " keep in.^^ But the man who looks back upon 
 those festivals will remember some impressions 
 more exalted and mystical than any he has known 
 since. There was a pale little girl, with a demeanour 
 of almost severe purity, and a face quite grave 
 and intense, who, on Sunday mornings, was hid 
 from him too often by intervening and constantly 
 interrupting heads and bonnets. The breeze that 
 swung the branches into the open windows, rattled 
 the Bible leaves, and blew a skein of her yellow 
 hair over her tem.ples. Then there was a boy of 
 fifteen, who was the secretary, and who wore coat- 
 tails, and who was a very great personage. With 
 book in hand and pencil behind his ear, he went 
 among the girls and gathered pennies, and re- 
 ceived the offering of the pale little girl, apparently 
 unconscious that she was unlike the others. This 
 boy was marshal, and wore a rosette on excursions, 
 and when a missionary came to address the school, 
 he rose and moved a vote of thanks. Wild and 
 thrilling eminence ! There was but one unpleasant 
 
54 English Sundays [n- 
 
 thing about the Sunday school, that to-morrow- 
 was Monday, and that the sight of the pale little 
 girl, and the pleasant hubbub about Jonah and 
 Elijah, w^ould be exchanged for the long, dark 
 school-room, and the desks and the black-boards, 
 and "What place was celebrated for its manu- 
 factures?" and "What place for the intelligence 
 of its inhabitants?" the odious smell of slate and 
 slate-pencil ; the master's ruler over the hands and 
 his cane over the legs. 
 
 But Sunday schools have of late years become 
 much prettier places than they were fifteen or 
 twenty years ago. At present they fit them up 
 with fountains, nice furniture, and warm-coloured 
 carpets, and the walls are decorated with mottoes 
 and texts of Scripture in red, blue, and gilt. They 
 sing sweetly and heartily, and the conversational 
 hubbub of voices is bright and exhilarating. The 
 confusion of tongues and subjects, when one sits 
 in the midst of it, is agreeable. A little boy near 
 you spells out, "Go to the ant, thou sluggard." In 
 the Bible class a young collegian of an investi- 
 gating and somewhat sceptical turn is confounding 
 the wisdom of his simple-minded teacher, who is 
 
II.] and London Churches. 55 
 
 really in much awe of him, expostulates with his 
 erudition and logical superiority, and warns him 
 that too much learning has made him mad. Over 
 the way the bears are devouring the boys who 
 mocked Eiisha ; while a fair little group of girls 
 to your left are taking down the priests of Baal 
 to a destruction which they and their teacher in 
 a rather matter-of-course and apathetic manner 
 appear to approve. Considering that so many 
 human beings are cut to pieces, the look of mild 
 and tacit acquiescence in the young teacher's 
 countenance is rather dreadful, and it is some- 
 what strange that the scholars should inspect 
 each other's dresses, and exchange confidences, 
 and that their faces should fall into absent and 
 far-away expressions. 
 
 They have none of these pretty things in Eng- 
 land. I once attended a sort of Sunday school 
 in the loft of a warehouse down by the river, 
 where some bargees were taught. The young 
 boatmen walked in in single file with an enor- 
 mous clamping of boots, which must have been 
 wooden, and an expression upon their counte- 
 nances of an intention to behave with great 
 
56 English Stmdays [ii. 
 
 decorum. They knelt clovv-n miicli aS you would 
 suppose a row of Egyptian obelisks to do, and 
 when down you wished that they would never 
 attempt to get up again. One young man did 
 continue kneeling some moments longer than was 
 necessary. He arose with as much haste as pos- 
 sible, and the whole of them, as a matter of course, 
 immediately crammed their handkerchiefs down 
 their throats (or whatever in a bargee^s wardrobe 
 corresponds to a handkerchief), and by this panto- 
 mime expressed their readiness to choke rather 
 than violate propriety. I suppose that all British 
 Sunday schools are modifications of this one. As 
 the children who compose them are taken alto- 
 gether from the very poorest, a look of squalor 
 and dirt must be, I imagine, inseparable from 
 them. 
 
 St. Dom.inic's had no Sunday schools like ours, 
 yet the young people of the church had some ex- 
 ceedingly pleasant v/ays of spending time. For 
 instance, they had dances during the Christmas 
 holidays in the school-room of the church, to the 
 great scandal of som.e of the neighbouring parishes. 
 A small sum was charged for admission. The 
 
il] and London Clntrches, 57 
 
 room was prettily decorated with holly, ever^^reen, 
 and ivy ; and all the young people of the church 
 came and danced. Over this little realm, hid in 
 the heart of London trade, the vicar's wife, a 
 person of much sense and beauty, exercised a 
 pleasant rule. Most of the young men had rather 
 a half-baked look; the best of them, it was easy to 
 see, were not quite done. But my experience is 
 that gentle and refined and lady-like women are 
 of no class at all ; you find them everywhere. For 
 centuries the beauty of London women has been 
 famous. These young ladies, indeed, were not 
 quite like the slight, pale slips, and faintly tinted 
 blue-bells of the West-End. Bloom and zone 
 they possessed in abundance. The faces of many 
 of them were exceedingly comely. They had 
 health, spirits, good-nature, and much freedom 
 and humour. St. Dominic's was very high, or 
 very broad, or both, or neither, I forget which ; 
 but, at any rate, it occupied just that theological 
 attitude which a church may hold and give charity 
 balls to the young people. At such times the 
 school-room was too small, and they secured a 
 hall in the neighbourhood. These assemblages, I 
 
58 English Sundays [11. 
 
 think, attracted rather a higher class of people 
 than the dances in the school-room. Thither 
 came the most devout and charitable ladies of 
 the parish. You may fancy how pleasant it was ; 
 the church at Philippi gave me the right hand of 
 fellowship. I was permitted to waltz with Priscilla, 
 to gallop with Lydia, and to balancez and turn not 
 a few of the chief women in the lancers. 
 
 St. Dominic's, it will be seen, practised a very 
 agreeable type of Christianity. It must not be 
 imagined, however, that this religion was in very 
 general vogue. I heard a number of elderly 
 people say that they never heard of such things 
 in their lives as a dance in a church school-room. 
 But a great many strancre things have come to 
 pass which elderly people never heard of It 
 really seems at present that everybody is tolerated 
 except the Evangelicals. There are in England 
 at present a great many kinds of people, and a 
 great many kinds of belief They have a strong, 
 ably expressed, and respectable unbelief, like which 
 we have nothing in America ; and lying oddly 
 by the side of it is a good deal of what might 
 be termed "religion as a matter of course.^^ Thus, 
 
II.] mid London Churches. 59 
 
 it is mentioned in the Blue Books that certain 
 children in the agricultural regions cannot tell 
 who made them ; yet this is not to be wondered 
 at, when so many of the learned professors in the 
 universities say they don't know. As a specimen 
 of the diversity of opinion one meets with, a 
 young lady once told me that she saw no reason 
 to believe in the immortality of the soul ; and that 
 women, she thought, were religious because they 
 had nothing else to do. The next day a young 
 curate assured me that on no account could he 
 marry an Evangelical girl; though this austerity, 
 I fancy, was a reminiscence of a severe youth 
 which time and nature had mollified. (He pro- 
 mised, by-the-way, that he would take me to call 
 upon an "Evangelical girl," which he never did.) 
 Between these extremes there is obviously room 
 for some shades of opinion. Yet widely diverse 
 as are the notions of men, all alike receive the 
 heritage which the strong religious moods of early 
 England have bequeathed them. They yet have 
 the churches and the universities, St. Paul's, the 
 Abbey, and Magdalen cloisters. There yet re- 
 main abodes of solitude and emotion which no 
 
6o English Sundays [u, 
 
 modern hands can imitate, where men in mighty 
 cities can retire apart for an hour from the 
 crowd, and dust, and turmoil. 
 
 The night of my arrival in London I stopped 
 at a hotel not far from Westminster. It was 
 raining during the evening, and T did not go 
 out, but sat before the grate in the smoking- 
 room, strangely reflecting upon the strange, dark, 
 new, old world about me. It was one of those 
 large hotels to which people go who know 
 nothing about London, and I had dined in a 
 hushed and stately dining-hall instead of the 
 dingy little coffee-room one should always seek. 
 I was disappointed with the arid elegance of my 
 surroundings, and began to fear that the world 
 I was to enter upon the morrow might be as vain 
 and modern. There was a young clergyman 
 sitting near me, with whom I entered into talk. 
 He was the rector of a parish somewhere in 
 Shropshire, of which he told me the nam.e, and 
 it had an extremely pleasant country sound. 
 (The reader will perhaps think me impressible, 
 but why should I tell him of the stupid people 
 I met T) I had never met a man, it seemed to 
 
II.] and London Churches, 6i 
 
 me, with a manner and spirit more refined, and 
 when afterwards I had an opportunity to know 
 him better, that impression was fixed and 
 strengthened. His countenance and behaviour 
 united gentleness and purity, softness and dignity. 
 In the course of the conversation he spoke of 
 the Abbey, and as he was modestly and kindly 
 communicative, I got from him a good deal about 
 it. He took a pencil and sketched me some 
 hints of its architectural history ; and he told 
 me this story, which is perhaps familiar to many 
 of my readers, but was new to me. Ages ago a 
 clear stream watered the grassy margin of the 
 river, where now the brown, viscid wave of the 
 Thames laves its stone walls and embankments. 
 Once at night a boatman saw upon the bank a 
 man who beckoned him to come nearer. He 
 rowed him across the stream to where the Abbey 
 stood. The figure entered, and immediately the 
 church was filled with light and music, and sing- 
 ing angels. It was St. Peter who came to possess 
 and consecrate his Cathedral. When my acquaint- 
 ance retired he proposed that we should attend 
 the ten o'clock services at the Abbey the next 
 
62 En^lisJi Sundays [ii 
 
 morning. " They have every day," he said, *' a 
 morning and afternoon service. It is well to have 
 some place in the heart of the city where one can 
 be apart with one's God." The manner of the 
 young clergyman was constrained and diffident ; 
 I can convey no impression of the gentleness 
 and purity with which these words were uttered. 
 The next morning we went to the Abbey. I 
 have never been since so distinctly conscious of 
 the mood of which it was the expression — if it be 
 not presumption to talk of distinctness upon such 
 a subject. I felt in the authors of that work a 
 sense of that strong exclusion which possesses all 
 artists in their clearest moments. Had the 
 builders not had the sympathy of the multitude, 
 these were emotions which, when brought in con- 
 tact with an alien and astonished atmosphere, 
 would have appeared how wild, how strange ! 
 They could not have survived a day which did 
 not comprehend them. But the aspiration and 
 exultation had been changed to the stone of the 
 solid globe. The thoughts of the builders may 
 now fly hither and thither, the builders die and 
 their visions with them, but still that dream en- 
 
11. J and London Churches, 63 
 
 tranced remains ; the towers yet linger, the arches 
 exult, the saints aspire; so I thought when first 
 those aisles and ascending vaults were revealed to 
 me, and when, with the pious few gathered under 
 its canopy, I first heard the rejoicing of the 
 choristers. 
 
Two Visits to Oxford. 
 
 A NOTION, I believe, still prevails very generally 
 that Oxford and Cambridge are the universities of 
 the English aristocracy. It is to the novelists that 
 we owe this impression. Years ago, these univer- 
 sities were very much such places as Bulwer and 
 Thackeray have painted them. But they have 
 altered, and there has been nothing in their recent 
 literature to mark the change. They still exist to 
 a large portion of the public as elegant and 
 aristocratic as ever. To the imagination of the 
 English shop-girl, Oxford and Cambridge are yet 
 peopled by a race of the most delightful heroes, 
 who breakfast in velvet, who have valets and tigers 
 and tandems, who ride and shoot and borrow each 
 other's money, who are aristocratically lavish and 
 aristocratically hard up. 
 
III.] Tivo Visits to Oxford. 65 
 
 Now, on the contrary, the real Oxford does not 
 resemble this conception in the least, and at first 
 sight, perhaps, the social life of the place is even 
 plainer and more commonplace than we should 
 observe it to be on closer acquaintance. One has 
 scarcely stepped into the streets before he meets 
 numbers of well-behaved, modest youth, walking 
 by twos and threes, not in droves, as students 
 patrol the streets of an American university town. 
 There cannot be found in Europe, I imagine, a 
 more well-conducted, orderly generation of young 
 men-. The most of them are from the middle 
 classes and are upon limited incomes. The average 
 allowance of an Oxford undergraduate is not more 
 than 1,200 dollars, upon which, of course, magnifi- 
 cence is out of the question. The number of 
 clergymen's sons is very great, and these, as a 
 rule, are poor. 
 
 It is thought that a man can live nicely and 
 entertain moderately on 1,500 dollars. The under- 
 graduates have a dinner "in Hall" of fish, roast, 
 and sweet, and at dinner they usually drink beer 
 instead of wine. They have opportunities for 
 luxury and elegance in their breakfasts, which 
 
66 Two Visits to Oxford. [m. 
 
 they make very inviting. They brew at Oxford 
 a claret cup with which nothing of the same kind 
 one tastes anywhere else can be compared. The 
 young men are exceedingly kind and hospitable, 
 and they possess a modesty which absolutely 
 humiliates one. 
 
 An English youth, as I saw him in the army 
 or at the universities, who is sufficiently well born 
 to have all the advantages of breeding, and suffi- 
 ciently removed from exceptional fortune not to 
 be tempted to folly and nonsense, has the very 
 perfection of behaviour. He has, besides, veiy 
 nearly the perfection of right feeling tovv-ards his 
 associates, which cannot be said of him a few 
 years later. I knew some of the undergraduates 
 of Christ Church and Baliol. Under theit 
 guidance I went the walks of the universities, 
 and especially remember a bath in the river, to 
 which I consented under the impression that it 
 would be rather an interesting and romantic 
 action, and would furnish a pretty souvenir, but 
 I found the wave of the Isis much too cold for 
 comfort. Christ Church is rather a college for 
 the sons of rich men ; it is not considered, I 
 
III.] Two Visits to Oxfoj^d, 6^ 
 
 believe, that they do much work there. Baliol is 
 one of the working colleges — those which take the 
 honours. The talk of the Baliol men, I thought, 
 ran rather more to books and literature than the 
 conversation at Christ Church. This was possibly 
 due to the fact that a Christ Church man was to 
 give a ball that week, which was naturally the 
 topmost matter of interest among the men of his 
 college. At Baliol, when the pewter cup of beer 
 went round, of which each took a cool swig in 
 succession, we spoke of matters which are rarely 
 discussed with interest except at universities and 
 by very young men. We talked of the poets, and 
 I remember one young gentleman's enthusiasm 
 swept him into reciting a half dozen lines of 
 Greek. 
 
 The pride in scholarship, and the respect for it, 
 I am told, are very much on the decline. Firsts 
 and double-firsts are not held in such esteem as 
 formerly. One hears it said that the boating and 
 cricket men have thrown the reading men into 
 the shade. A good cricketer is asked everywhere, 
 and talked and written about, and pushed in 
 society. Years ago many good stories were told 
 
68 Two Visits to Oxford, [m. 
 
 of the extravas^ant rec^ard which successful prize- 
 men received from the universities. It was said that 
 a senior wrangler from Cambridge happened to 
 enter a theatre in London at the same time with 
 the Queen, and, hearing the plaudits, placed his 
 hand gracefully over his heart, and bowed his 
 acknowledgments to the audience. The old 
 fashion, no doubt, had its absurdities, as all 
 fashions have ; but, upon the whole, it was more 
 reasonable than the present one. We are mis- 
 taken if we fancy that it is mere " dig " and 
 memory which makes the successful man in a 
 university examination. It requires not only 
 persistence, but ability, intelligence, and self-pos- 
 session. Of course where many work, the victoiy 
 must be to him who works most intelligently. 
 The scholar and the boating man must equally 
 guard against over-training ; and at the hour of 
 examination the danger of losing one^s head is 
 very much greater than in a boat-race. The stake 
 is so great that the strain of the contest seems a 
 cruel one for very young men to undergo. If they 
 Vv^in, they have a competency for the rest of their 
 days — a thing to be appreciated in England, where 
 
III.] Two Visits to Oxfoi'd. 69 
 
 a living is so very hard to make. All the mothers 
 and cousins are waiting; breathlessly for the issue. 
 Such competition must, I fancy, impart an almost 
 abnormal stimulus to the moral qualities. In the 
 faces of the stronger men one observes some 
 "silent rages," which the intensity of the struggle 
 has nursed. Why such men should have less con- 
 sideration than a cricketer or a stroke-oar one can 
 hardly see. A strong back and good legs are fine 
 gifts, no doubt ; but it is hard to understand why 
 their possessor should be so petted and feted, 
 should have his picture in the illustrated papers, 
 and have his disorders telegraphed over two con- 
 tinents. The vignettes in the papers appear 
 especially absurd. Why should boating men 
 have pictures made of their faces 1 They should, 
 it would seem, stand on their heads and have their 
 legs taken. 
 
 It was during Commemoration week that I first 
 visited Oxford. I'he exercises consist of the con- 
 ferring of degrees upon distinguished persons, and 
 the recital of prize poems in Greek, Latin, and 
 English ; and I may incidentally remark, that at no 
 ball or party in England do you ever see so many 
 
70 Two Visits to Oxfoi^d. [m. 
 
 pretty girls as at a university commemoration. 
 The same is true, however, of college celebrations 
 everywhere ; girls have a way of looking their 
 prettiest at them. The degree conferred upon 
 strangers at Oxford is that of Doctor of Civil 
 Law. It is not supposed that a man should know 
 anything of law to be a D.C.L. Critics, poets, 
 politicians, inventors, noblemen, for being noble- 
 men, are doctored. The first commemoration I 
 saw was at the installation of Lord Salisbury. 
 The candidates were marshalled up the hall from 
 the door in single file, all dressed in red gowns. 
 The Professor of Civil Law, Mr. Bryce, introduced 
 each in a Latin speech, which contained some 
 happy characterisation. The Chancellor then ad- 
 dressed the candidate in another Latin speech, 
 applying to him some complimentary expressions ; 
 the bar was raised, and he shook the candidate by 
 the hand, who sat down a D.C.L. Of course, as 
 always happens in England, there was a throng of 
 people of rank who went ahead of abler men. 
 The cheering of the undergraduates, however, went 
 some distance towards equalising things. The men 
 who received the warmest applause were Liddon, 
 
III.] Two Visits to Oxford, 71 
 
 the famous preacher, and Arnold, the poet. When it 
 came to the latter gentleman's turn, all young Ox- 
 ford in the galleries went wild. They made a pro- 
 digious cheering ; the young men's enthusiasm was 
 enough to stir some generous blood in the most 
 sluggish veins. Of course, Mr. Arnold's compara- 
 tive youthfulness had much to do with it, and his 
 recent attacks upon the Dissenters had endeared 
 him to the clergymen's sons in the galleries. The 
 Chancellor, who had been throwing about his issimcs 
 profusely among people of whom I at least had never 
 heard, contented himself with calling Mr. Arnold, 
 vir ornatissime, or some other opprobrious epithet — 
 which, as one of Mr. Arnold's many admirers, I 
 felt called upon to resent. I understood after- 
 wards, however, that Lord Salisbury had con- 
 :jidered the propriety of addressing him as O 
 lucidissime et didcissime (most light and most 
 sweet), which, I suppose, would scarcely have 
 done. He did joke, though, in one case ; he ad- 
 dressed the editor of the " Edinburgh Review " as 
 vir doctissime, in repttblica litterariim potejitissime, 
 and at that everybody was amused. The incident 
 gives one a high idea of the power which inheres 
 
72 Two Visits to Oxford, [m. 
 
 in reserve, dignity, and position. A cabinet minister, 
 by congratulating an editor upon his formidable- 
 ness in the republic of letters, creates more merri- 
 ment than could a harlequin by throwing his body 
 into twenty contortions. 
 
 The bad behaviour of the undergraduates in 
 the gallery on these occasions is famous. I was 
 present at two commemorations, and can testify 
 to the power of lung and the great good humour 
 and animal spirits of the British youth. At the 
 last commemoration they kept up an incessant 
 howl from the beginning to the end. I cannot 
 say much for the wit, though, I believe, they do 
 sometimes hit upon something worth recording. 
 When Longfellow was made D.C.L. an under- 
 graduate proposed, " Three cheers for the red man 
 of the West," which, I am told, Mr, Longfellow 
 thought very good. But, of course, wit and 
 originality are just as rare among yelling boys 
 as in synods and parliaments. The scant wit is 
 supplemented by the more widely diffused qualities 
 of impudence and vocal volume. When the Vice- 
 Chancellor, Dr. Liddell, of Liddell and Scott's 
 Dictionary (the accent of his name, by-the-way, 
 
III.] Two Visits to Oxford, 73 
 
 is not upon the last syllabic), was reading a Latin 
 address, some one would call out, " Now construe." 
 A man who violated the canons of dress by ap- 
 pearing in a white coat was fairly stormed out 
 of the place. He stood it for an hour or so, 
 during which he was addressed : " Take off that 
 coat, sir." " Go out, sir." " Worit you go at 
 once V " Ladies, request him to leave." "Doctor 
 Brown, won^t j^?^ put that man out .''" (Then, in a 
 conversational and moderate tone), "Just put your 
 hand upon his shoulder and lead him out." After 
 an hour of it, the man withdrew. Each successive 
 group of ladies was cheered as it came in. The 
 young men would exclaim : " Three cheers for the 
 ladies in blue." " Three cheers for the ladies in 
 white, brown, red, grey," &;c. The poor fellows 
 who read the prize odes and essays were dreadfully 
 bullied. One young man recited an English poem, 
 of which I could not catch the burden, but from 
 the manner of its delivery I should say that it 
 must have been upon the saddest subject that ever 
 engaged the muse of mortal. His physiognomy 
 and his tone of voice alike expressed the dismal 
 and the disconsolate. I think that possibly the 
 
74 Two Visits to Oxford. [iii. 
 
 extreme sadness of his manner may have been 
 induced by the reception rather than the matter 
 of his poem. They cat-called, hooted him, and 
 laughed immeasurably at him. One young gentle- 
 man with an eye-glass leaned over the gallery, and 
 in a colloquial tone inquired, " My friend, is that 
 the refrain that hastened the decease of the old 
 cow t " In the intervals of the horrible hootings, 
 I could only now and then catch a word like 
 "breeze" or "trees." By-and-by the galleries 
 caught the swing of the poet's measure, and kept 
 time to his cadences with their feet, and with a 
 rhythmical roar of their voices. It was too painful 
 to laugh at. One felt so for the poor fellow, and 
 more still for his mother and sisters, who, I am 
 sure, were there. I was particularly glad to notice 
 among the men who last year were compelled to 
 face the music, a man who the year before had 
 been especially energetic in the galleries. 
 
 To see an English university, one should look 
 at it from the don's side rather than the under- 
 graduates'. Undergraduates are of exceedingly 
 little importance. The dons are the essentials of 
 university life ; the students are its transient and 
 
in.] Two Visits to Oxford. 75 
 
 unimportant incidents. At Yale, when we were 
 juniors, we thought ourselves of consequence. We 
 considered a senior greater than a professor, and 
 the tutors we pretended to hold in no esteem at 
 all. The purpose of the founders of the University 
 of Oxford, as one dispirited and conservative old 
 gentleman told me, was originally not study alone, 
 but study and devotion. The colleges were asso- 
 ciations of men who gave their lives to learning 
 and religion. The education of youth was rather 
 an afterthought and an incident. Whether or not 
 the present state of things at Oxford and Cam- 
 bridge is the result of tradition, it is certainly true 
 that the fellows and masters of the colleges con- 
 stitute the universities. At Cambridge I had 
 letters to two of the Fellows of Trinity ; and at 
 Oxford I was the guest for a week of a friend 
 who was a fellow of Oriel. The spirit and social, 
 atmosphere of the two universities seemed to me 
 very much the same ; almost any statement which 
 might be true of the society of either would be 
 true of the other. 
 
 A Fellow, as everybody knows, passes a good 
 examination, and for the rest of his life, or until 
 
76 Two Visits to Oxford. [iii. 
 
 marriage, draws from the university an income 
 of from 1,000 to 1,500 dollars. For this he is 
 under no obligation to return any labour. Those 
 who reside at the universities are usually tutors 
 or lecturers, and for these services of course 
 receive extra pay. On marriage they are com- 
 pelled to resign their fellowships. The men who 
 wish to marry, obtain, if they can, livings in the 
 Church, school-inspectorships, or appointments 
 under government. Recently the universities 
 have been pressing the abolition of the restriction 
 upon marriage, and expecting it from every suc- 
 cessive parliament. It is both pleasant and pain- 
 ful to think of the number of interesting young 
 couples who at this moment are waiting for a 
 word from the British Government. A very 
 pretty tale one might make of it. The story of 
 another Evangeline, waiting through long years 
 upon the slow steps of legislation, and rising each 
 morning to scan with eager eyes the parliamentary 
 proceedings, might form a good subject for a 
 play or a poem. I examined very few of the 
 considerations in favour of the reform. This one 
 presents itself, however — men are always strangely 
 
III.] Two Visits to Oxford, 77 
 
 tempted to what is forbidden them ; cehbacy 
 may not be so irksome, if they know they may 
 marry when they choose. Upon the other side I 
 heard a bachelor urge that the university would 
 cease to be such an equal, reasonable, sensible 
 place as it has been heretofore. The women 
 would introduce discord. The wife of a Head 
 would no doubt think herself above a poor tutor's, 
 and would give herself airs. 
 
 Were it not for the peculiar and easily ex- 
 plained susceptibility of college tutors, the cir- 
 cumstances of their bachelor life are so delightful 
 that one might wonder that even m.atrimony can 
 tempt them away from it. The physical life is 
 looked after very well. The dinners are fair and 
 the lodgings comfortable. The bachelor can do 
 there what is difficult to do elsewhere : he can 
 live well and dine in pleasant company. He Is 
 not solitary as at a club, and the company of 
 congenial men who have the same interests with 
 himself makes the commons^ dinner infinitely 
 better than any table d'hote. The dons' rooms 
 are of all degrees of comfort and elegance. Some 
 of them are very bare ; others are pretty and 
 
78 Two Visits to Oxford, [m. 
 
 well furnished. The rooms of men who have 
 been some time at the university, and who have 
 a taste for elegance, grow to be pretty ; and a 
 pleasantly-arranged room, I believe, must always 
 be the result of time. At Merton College, Oxford, 
 I saw an apartment of which the whole front 
 had been made into a bow-window, facing upon 
 a green and humid quadrangle. Its occupant, I 
 remember, showed me, among his curiosities, a 
 side-board of the 17th century, on which was 
 carved in very bold relief a good part of the 
 events of Genesis. There was a figure of the 
 Lord, about as long as your finger, walking in 
 the garden ; and Adam and Eve and the Serpent 
 were engaged in conversation about the Tree of 
 the Knowledge of Good and Evil. Adam, strange 
 to say, was accompanied by a dog of some choice 
 breed, which smelt about his heels in a rather 
 clumsy wooden manner, but very much as fallen 
 canine nature is yet in the habit of doing. Such 
 elegance and curiousness are unusual, I suppose, 
 though many of the rooms are cozy and inviting. 
 The ceilings are low, and low ceilings are warm 
 and pleasant. One is delighted with the sense 
 
III.] Tzuo Visits to Oxford, 79 
 
 of the ancient atmosphere, the ample grate, the 
 books upon the shelves and strewn about the 
 tables. 
 
 At Cambridge I left my cards and letters, and 
 
 in walking about the town missed seeing J , 
 
 of Trinity, who had called in my absence, but I 
 chanced to meet the dean of one of the smaller 
 colleges, whom I had known in London, and I 
 accepted his invitation to his college. I went 
 with him the pretty walk behind the colleges, 
 and, reaching his room, found there several of the 
 tutors who had strolled in, and were sitting in the 
 dusk before the grate, waiting for dinner. The 
 dining-hall of the college was small and dimly 
 lighted. There were but three or four of the 
 Fellows present, and we sat together upon a raised 
 platform. An undergraduate read a long grace 
 in Latin. I sat with my back to the wall, so that 
 I could look over the Fellows down upon the 
 tables, dim and candle-lit, where the young men 
 dined. The fewness of the undergraduates, and 
 the quiet and dark of the hall gave one a 
 feeling something like that which children have 
 when huddled under a big umbrella. Sitting in 
 
8o Two Visits to Oxford, [iii. 
 
 talk with these intelligent, unaffected scholars, 
 and having one's heart warmed by their genial 
 converse and kind attention, and with one's only 
 distraction to peep into the dim and quiet ends 
 of the room, how blessed seemed these men's oc- 
 cupations, how pleasant the tenor of their lives ; 
 how attractive appeared the comfort, the poetry, 
 and solid happiness there is in learning ! The 
 hall at Trinity is, I believe, the great place to 
 see. " If they ask you to dine there, mind you 
 go," I was told. But who does not know the 
 pleasure of finding beauties and curiosities of 
 which the almanacs say nothing ! I liked to 
 think that the earth contained so happy a spot 
 
 as this dim hall of College, unpraised of 
 
 men and unheralded by the guide-books. I was 
 more diverted with the old side-board at Merton 
 than with the Tower of London. 
 
 The next morning the Dean and myself accepted 
 
 an invitation to breakfast from J , of Trinity. 
 
 We climbed up one of those dark, narrow, per- 
 pendicular winding staircases, and knocked upon 
 his door, and our host came out to meet us. He 
 introduced me to two or three others whom he 
 
III.] Two Visits to Oxford. 8i 
 
 had invited. It was raining, I remember, and the 
 windows of his room looked down upon a drip- 
 ping garden (garden is the name given to a lawn 
 planted with trees), and a little arched bridge 
 which crossed a stream like a mill-race. The 
 drops fell rapidly against the window-panes, and 
 it was dark and v/arm in the large, low, old room 
 where we breakfasted. My host's conversation 
 was light and witty, and the talk of the table 
 ran much to politics, and that pleasantest and 
 most instructive kind of discourse, gossip. A 
 good deal was said of education, which is one 
 of the most pressing political questions for Great 
 Britain. One gentleman, who was a school- 
 inspector, had been driving about England, look- 
 ing at the private schools everywhere along his 
 route, and examining the teachers and scholars. 
 With the exception of the examination, it struck 
 me that this must be a very pleasant occupation. 
 There were present at this breakfast several 
 men who, I was told, were very clever ; and 
 again, as elsewhere in Cambridge and Oxford, 
 was I struck with a quality of theirs, which if I 
 praise they may laugh at me — I mean their 
 
 G 
 
82 Two Visits to Oxford, [m. 
 
 modesty. Some of them were even diiTidcnt. It 
 was a pleasure to look at these men, and think, 
 " You know ever so much about international law, 
 and yoic about the Greek philosophy, and nobody 
 knows what yoit can tell us about the particles." 
 ]\Iy host was a lecturer upon Plato, I believe. 
 We sat together for an hour after breakfast, and 
 I fell to admiring audibly his circumstances and 
 employments. Our conversation was upon topics 
 not usually touched upon by men on the first 
 day of an acquaintance. One of the drawbacks 
 of travel is that natural delicacy which forbids 
 men who are strangers from speaking upon any 
 but trivial subjects. The necessity is sometimes 
 rather hard upon travellers, who are always 
 strangers. But I remember the Trinity lecturer 
 making such a remark as this — that no course 
 of philosophical reading ever gave satisfactory 
 opinions to anybody. Still, it is very well to 
 have tested for oneself the vanity of such a way 
 of getting at the truth. But it is not to be ex- 
 pected that they would appreciate their advan- 
 tages ; scarcely anybody does. My host walked 
 with me about the colleges, and promised, if I 
 
III.] Two Visits to Oxford, Z^y 
 
 stayed, that I should see an old gentleman who 
 had been Lord Byron's tutor when that young 
 nobleman was an undergraduate at Trinity. 
 
 At Oxford I was for a week the guest of a 
 friend who was a Fellow of Oriel. An Oriel 
 Fellowship has always been, I am told, the under- 
 graduate's blue-ribbon ; and I presume that the 
 men I met there were very excellent specimens 
 of Oxford. The undergraduates had left the uni- 
 versity, and the Fellows of Oriel dined, not in hall, 
 but in the wine-room. A curious feature of the 
 meal, the grace, has been, I believe, incorrectly 
 given by visitors. Before dinner they say " Bene- 
 dictiLs bejtedicat,'' and after dinner — i.e., just before 
 dessert — somebody drops his head in the middle 
 of the talk and says, ^^ Benedicto benedicaturr The 
 room is hung round with pictures of the ancient 
 and recent worthies of the college. A fine and 
 large likeness of Clough looked down upon the 
 warm and pleasant scene. This sort of living, 
 compared with the only bachelor modes of exist- 
 ence I had ever known — a club, a boarding- 
 house, or a hotel — seemed perfection. And if the 
 old wainscoted room and the company of the 
 
84 Two Visits to Oxford, [m. 
 
 genial scholars was so pleasing, what did I think 
 one evening when, dining at Merton College, famed 
 for the beauty of its gardens, cofl'ee was served in 
 a rustic seat on the lawn, and, as the summer 
 evening came down upon the grass and the still 
 trees, and a star or two came out and brightened, 
 and the towers over us and about us grew grayer 
 and darker, we sat and talked, and listened far 
 into the twilight ? 
 
 In a week's stay about Oxford I saw it in many 
 forms and moods. An Oxford quadrangle is the 
 hoariest and most ancient spectacle in my ex- 
 perience. Shut up in one of them at the time 
 of sun-down the impression is particularly strong. 
 One feels the planet to have aged. I found it 
 difficult to conceive that a scene yet strong with 
 the strength of Nature remained anywhere i.i the 
 world. It was hard to think that beyond the 
 swelling and sinking Atlantic the blue line of 
 the Alleghany trembled over the quiet harvests of 
 a familiar valley, or that the stream of the yellow 
 Missouri drowned with disconsolate floods his 
 black slimy islands of sand. 
 
 Some o\ the quadrangles were very gray and 
 
III.] Two Visits to Oxford, 85 
 
 sombre; others were warm and happy. In the 
 cloisters of Magdalen they have found tne flower 
 which best harmonises with the associations of the 
 place. It is the wild rose. Upon a mid-summer 
 afternoon, when Oxford is deserted — when no feet 
 but your own are heard in the cloisters — when the 
 blue air of the quadrangle is warmed to the fill by 
 the sun — there is that in the odour of the flower of 
 wild, yet sweet, of gay, yet yearning, which harmo- 
 nises well with the spongy turf, with the moist air 
 thrilled by the sunshine, with the cold recesses of 
 the cloister and the benign silence with which the 
 scene regards your footfall. 
 
 The character for learning of the men I met at 
 the universities stands, I suppose, as high as that of 
 the same class of men anywhere in the world. It 
 is a pleasure to me to dwell upon their candour 
 and kindness. I discovered scarcely anything to 
 find fault with. "We grow a very disagreeable 
 specimen of prig here," said one. I did not see 
 him. Here and there I irict a man whose playful- 
 ness had a somewhat learned flavour and whose 
 speeches might, when repeated, have had a sound 
 of pedantry, but the awkwardness was accompanied 
 
86 Two Visits to Oxford, [in. 
 
 by a simplicity which made it rather attractive. I 
 must say, though, that the wit was a Httle wordy — 
 but that is true of the wit of young college tutors 
 everywhere ; their jokes may be said to have ex- 
 tension, their jests and quips remind one of the 
 gambols of a Newfoundland pup. The older men, 
 where they were not more solemn, had rather more 
 pith and point. But the wit of scholars is apt to 
 be diluted, just as is that of the man of fashion, 
 though from a different cause. The wit of the 
 man of fashion shares the general feebleness of his 
 nature ; that of the scholar is poor because he does 
 not see enough of life ; because the situations in 
 which he is an actor or a looker-on are not suffi- 
 ciently numerous, various, and rapidly successive. 
 
 What especially strikes the visitor at the uni- 
 versities is their way of speaking the unadulterated 
 truth ; it does not occur to them that anything 
 else shouM be spoken. They have their pretenders 
 and humbugs in England just as here — men who 
 live and thrive by the inevitable folly and inatten- 
 tion of the mass of the community. Some poor 
 offspring of a lucky talent and a lucky opportunity 
 wins applause and place and profit with scarcely a 
 
III.] Tzvo Visits to Oxford, Z"^ 
 
 strug-gle. Some light creature gets the start of 
 this tremendous world, and is swept onward like a 
 leaf. Oxford and Cambridge are the places to 
 hear these men called by their right names. It is 
 just as well that most people do not indulge in 
 such plain speaking, for most people would be apt 
 to be mistaken. But at the universities there are 
 many thinking, educated men, whose opinions 
 are tolerably apt to be correct. They are very 
 little troubled with that charity which will say no 
 ill of your neighbour because the report of it may 
 come to your neighbour's ear. They have no axes 
 to grind, no ulterior aims, no policies. One eveninj^ 
 at Oxford a well-known name was mentioned, and 
 the whole company at once agreed that he was an 
 ass. That was my own opinion ; but had I men- 
 tioned it among people more polite and circum- 
 spect, I should have been thought, if not a jealous 
 and deprecatory person, at least a very rash one 
 — perhaps one of those envious detractors who 
 go about tearing the reputations of the great and 
 good. The man v/as certainly dull and talkative, 
 yet he deserved respect of a kind. There was an 
 acerbity, however, in the comment which his folly 
 
88 Two Visits to Oxford, [hl 
 
 did not quite explain. Why should they so go out 
 of the way to abuse a comparatively unimportant 
 man for merely being an ass ? This point was 
 naively met by one ingenuous young accuser, who 
 said, " After all, the only thing I have against him 
 is that he's a successful man." 
 
 English writers upon this country have given us 
 the impression that their scholars are less men of 
 the world than our own. I found tne young men 
 at Oxford and Cambridge very greatly interested 
 in matters outside their universities. Many of 
 them, I thought, were piqued by the social power 
 which the aristocracy still retains in England, for 
 no men are better placed than themselves to see 
 how belated is the entire face of their society. 
 Not a few of them have aspirations for political 
 careers. Many are barristers and have chambers 
 in London, some few conducting cases, but many 
 more waiting for them. For those who are only 
 students and citizens of the world, the greatest 
 city in Europe is but two hours away. It is they 
 who get most out of university life. They may 
 infest, if they choose, those old quadrangles of 
 Oxford for a lifetime ; the ends of Europe are 
 
III.] Tzuo Visits to Oxford, 89 
 
 within two days ol them. The physical man and 
 the eating, drinking, and sleeoing man are Avell 
 enough cared for. They have the great libraries, 
 and the constant society of cukivated men in such 
 numbers that they may look about among them- 
 selves for suitable acquaintance. They have for a 
 home one of the most beautiful . places in the 
 world. There is scarcely a happy circumstance of 
 a scholar's life which fortune and the generous 
 wisdom of the men who have been throu^^^h 
 centuries the custodians of their university have 
 denied them. 
 
TJie British Upper Class in 
 Fictmt. 
 
 '•'Not yon, but the house derides me,** said the 
 wolf to the kid in the fable. This is the answer 
 ■which societ}^ makes to any insolent or arrogan: 
 individual who happens to be out of its reach. 
 Fortunate men ever)^'here are apt to fall into 
 the kid's mistake ; and of all ST?i'ells, none cherishes 
 the delusion so honestly as an Englishman. 
 He stands there protected in that insctuciaiice 
 which the novelists admire, and which he himself 
 deems the consummate result of history and 
 human progress, by defences wtnch. are none of 
 his making. The radical claim, the fundamental 
 distinction of an Englishman of the upper class 
 is, that no man can get the better of him in 
 hauteur. The neighbourhood of the most op- 
 
IV.] The British Upper Class in Fiction, 91 
 
 pressive or confusmg- personality will run en him 
 like water. Ke will flush as he passes no man ; 
 no man can gi\-e him two nng^ers. Should hy 
 any chance his bosom acknowledge impression cr 
 trepidation, his exterior shall be calm as stone. 
 And he is proud to think that this gift of his s 
 not the accident of his station or his cfrciim- 
 stances, but is an inherent virtue of his own. of 
 which ad\-erse fortune cannot rob him. Ke may 
 be depri\-ed of health, money, and &i«aids; he 
 may be bafied and beaten here, and lost here- 
 after ; but it is his belief and consolation that 
 the time can ne\"er come liviien he may be snubbed. 
 
 To this it may be said, that the courage which 
 confronts a future or a possible evil is a \-ery 
 easy one. Dimcult\% until we meet it face to 
 face, is an unknown quantity. It fe x; when 
 really upon us, it becomes a -^ ^. He who is m 
 the midst of the dirucult\- he challenged from a 
 distance, may ^ith perfect consistency- retire, 
 . claimtng that %\-hen he made the engagement, tie 
 had not sufnciont data to go upon* He agneed 
 to encounter jr, not tf -h ^. 
 
 Undoubtedly the qualities whidi constitute die 
 
92 The British Upper Class [iv. 
 
 distinction in the swell are precisely not the 
 qualities which constitute success in the great 
 struggle of man for subsistence. The " survivors ^' 
 of Mr. Herbert Spencer have succeeded by alert 
 attention, rather than by an elegant inattention. 
 The monkey that saw the apple first got it ; the 
 chimpanzee that first saw the wild cat was the 
 first to get away from him. In the " incoherent " 
 ages, when one man met in the forest another 
 who was carrying a sword or a spear, he did not 
 saunter by, relying upon his own unconscious 
 majesty, and the impressibility of his adversary, 
 as a protection against a blow in the back of the 
 head. He was the best man who had the most 
 and the quickest perceptions, rather than he who 
 had the fewest and the slowest. 
 
 But whatever may have been true of those 
 remote and uncertain ages, in society, as we 
 know it, the alert, attentive man plainly gets 
 ahead of the inattentive one. A certain suavity 
 and deference in his dealings with others will 
 not hurt him. He cannot ignore the man out 
 of whom he makes money. He cannot snub a 
 client, a customer, or a patient with impunity. 
 
IV.] in Fiction, 93 
 
 The swell, therefore, whom adverse fortune com- 
 pels to take his chances with other men, has 
 either to fail, or to relinquish his superb be- 
 haviour, and to change his principle of elegant 
 unconsciousness into one of alert attention. He 
 may say that he will die first, which would per- 
 haps be the more heroic and graceful exit from 
 the difficulty, providing he died at once. But 
 he thus registers himself among the defeated and 
 fails — the very thing it was the boast of his 
 ancestors that they did not do. Should he 
 happen to have hostages to fortune, in the shape 
 of wife and children, the complexion of his case 
 would be entirely altered. To take defeat for 
 himself would be his right ; to accept it for 
 those dependent upon him would be quite another 
 thing. It is pretty plain, then, that the swell is 
 very much in the position of the kid upon the 
 house-top. If he were a lawyer's clerk, of course 
 these fine ways would have to cease. If he were 
 on the staff of a popular weekly, and had to 
 dance in the liveliest paragraphs under the whip 
 of the managing editor, or the proprietors, or 
 the public, he would find his unconsciousness 
 
94 The British Upper Class [iv. 
 
 and hautcjir very Inconvenient. He would, no 
 doubt, consider the editor a demagogue, an in- 
 accurate, semi-honest, and wholly uneducated 
 person ; would gnash his teeth in secret over the 
 failure of the proprietors duly to appreciate their 
 own vulgarity, and would heartily despise the 
 silly public ; but when this inadequate revenge 
 had been taken, there would be nothing left for 
 him to do. 
 
 It was very easy to see that, as a matter of 
 fact, the young Englishman of the class of which 
 I am speaking did change his manners as soon 
 as his circumstances changed. Men of precisely 
 the same claims of birth had a very different 
 behaviour. Those who had to make their way 
 acquired a more eager, and, as a rule, a more 
 complaisant manner than their luckier cousins. 
 Even diplomatists and private secretaries to heads 
 of departments were evidently alive to, and 
 anxious to conciliate the good opinions of others. 
 At the clubs it was not difficult to pick out, 
 from their more alert behaviour, the men whose 
 fortunes were capable of improvement, and who 
 were on the look-out to better them. In a word, 
 
IV.] in Fiction, 95 
 
 when in Enf^land, I saw that a swell, so soon as 
 he perceives that his distinctions do not pay, 
 relinquishes them. 
 
 It will be seen that these distinctions appeal 
 for admiration to persons in a certain middle 
 condition of education. Those who appreciate 
 such graces to the full must be somewhat civilised 
 and yet somewhat immature. A degree of im- 
 pressibility in the men who look on is the 
 condition of the exercise of the swell's talent. 
 What sort of impression would insoiLciance make 
 upon a hungry tiger } Nor would it impress an 
 educated and acute man who insists upon sub- 
 mitting reverie to the test of definition and cri- 
 ticism. It is to the shop-boy, and the writer 
 for the spring annual, that such graces appeal. 
 
 The aristocracy has received, from time to 
 time, very various treatment at the hands of 
 literature. The writers of the age of Queen 
 Anne — a keen and critical race — never gave them 
 any very respectful consideration. Later in the 
 century the novelists dealt with them in a very 
 truthful and sensible fashion. Fielding, I re- 
 member, somewhere takes occasion to explain in 
 
96 The British Upper Class [iv. 
 
 a foot-note that by the " mob " he does not 
 mean the common people, but the coarse and 
 the ignoble in every rank. In those days the 
 aristocracy possessed real power. When their 
 power had come to an end, and they retained 
 only their social precedence, the admiration of 
 their class superiorities seems to have begun. 
 It is a somewhat curious fact that Bulwer, Dis- 
 raeli, the Kingsleys, and other writers of the last 
 quarter of a century, have expressed an admira- 
 tion for the upper classes which is new in 
 English literature. Nothing of the kind is to 
 be found in their great predecessors, Scott, Miss 
 Austen, and Miss Edgeworth. The reason is, I 
 suppose, that blessings brighten as they take 
 their flight. The strong, whether they be good 
 or bad, need no apology. Praise of them is 
 rather a superfluity and an impertinence. But 
 when power had slipped out of the hands of the 
 upper classes, to justify the social precedence 
 that remained, people began to look about for 
 something of an inherent and permanent nature 
 to admire. The gradual contraction of their 
 privileges removed, too, the " wicked lord " from 
 
IV.] in Fiction. 97 
 
 romance. His opportunities of wickedness were 
 gone. Earls could no longer kidnap pretty 
 women. Moreover, the rise of a powerful class 
 of merchants, into a social prominence scarcely- 
 less than that enjoyed by them in Cromwell's 
 time, fixed the attention of society upon the 
 graces of the older aristocracy. The poor clergy- 
 man was glad to feel that the people who snubbed 
 his wife were nobodies by the side of his patron. 
 It was perhaps rather pleasant to a banker's 
 clerk to know that there were persons before 
 whom his own despot would have to take off 
 his hat. 
 
 But the novel has been the peculiar literary 
 staple of the last thirty years. The upper classes 
 have been of great use to the playwrights and the 
 story-tellers. The throng of tutors, governesses, 
 and young professional men who write for the Lon- 
 don magazines, have relied much upon the dramatic 
 capabilities of their unequal society. The fortunate 
 classes anywhere will always be excellent material 
 for art, providing those classes are known to the 
 entire society. The people like to look at them. 
 They take the sort of pleasure in them which they 
 
 H 
 
98 The British Upper Class. [iv. 
 
 experience at a fete or a pantomime. They wish 
 them well, as they like the novels and the plays to 
 end happily. The converse is also evident. So 
 soon as these classes cease to appear fortunate 
 they cease to be attractive. The cause of the 
 Queen's recent unpopularity is to be found, not 
 in her seclusion, nor in the discontent of the 
 tradesmen who live upon Court patronage, but in 
 the natural aversion of men to the lachrymose and 
 the melancholy. The elegant classes here cannot 
 be used to very great advantage, because a farmer 
 in Illinois has a most indistinct and hazy notion 
 of the habits of a person of fashion in New York 
 or Boston. Moreover, here nobody knows exactly 
 who these classes are. Abroad, this " fine " society 
 is the most distinguished and conspicuous. Here 
 it is the little set whose particular boast is that 
 ** nobody knows anything about it." 
 
 The reaction which followed the French Revo- 
 lution ; the glory to which England attained during 
 the first third of the present century, to which she 
 was certainly led by the upper classes, and upon 
 which she lived until very lately; the gradual 
 diminution of the privileges of the upper class 
 
IV.] 171 Fiction. 99 
 
 and the sense of security from their encroachments 
 — all these things disposed the English people to 
 think very favourably of their aristocracy. Their 
 impressibility and credulity and their curiosity 
 about the aristocracy have been fed by the 
 novelists. Many popular mistakes concerning the 
 manners of the " great " have thus been encouraged. 
 Thackeray even has lent countenance to the super- 
 stition that the young men are marked by a certain 
 graceful and reckless generosity. It would seem 
 natural that men who have assured wealth, and a 
 station at the top of society, should exhibit towards 
 each other a simple friendliness and an unthinking 
 generosity, not to be found among people who are 
 compelled to jostle and elbow each other in the 
 struggle for subsistence. But I did not find it to 
 be so. Lord Kew gives Jack Belsize ever so many 
 thousand pounds. But the Lord Kews are scarce 
 in real life. Not only is it hard to find men who 
 give each other fortunes, but Lord Kew's spirit is 
 not at all the spirit of the men I saw. The money 
 they won from each other in the card-rooms and 
 at the races, they were very anxious to get and 
 very willing to keep. Indeed, men who are on 
 
lOO The British Upper Class [iv. 
 
 stated allowances, as many of them were, are 
 compelled to exercise a systematic forecast in the 
 matter of expenses, which a man who can stretch 
 his income by a little extra labour will scarcely 
 take. As to the gracefidly reckless kindness, the 
 shop-boy is quite wrong in his notions upon this 
 point. So far as I could see, they did not feel 
 more kindly to one another than the brokers who 
 scream each other hoarse in the New York Stock 
 Exchange. Indeed, I believe that, as a rule, they 
 are the most ready to help others who have most 
 ably helped themselves. 
 
 Another of the misconceptions of the middle 
 classes which the novelists have flattered is that 
 their superiors are so accustomed to superiority 
 that they have forgotten all about it. They think 
 nothing of their distinction, it is said. On the 
 contrary, they are always thinking about it and 
 always talking about it. They roll it under their 
 tongues like a sweet morsel. A friend of mine 
 wrote to a certain very great and exalted person, 
 asking whether we should or should not dress for 
 a political dinner at Richmond. He answered 
 pithily : " The snobs dress ; the gentlemen don't.^' 
 
IV.] in Fiction. loi 
 
 I may here say that the most elegant men hi dress 
 and behaviour are not those in whom pride of 
 lineage is strongest. Your man of stern family 
 pride rather despises any such distinction as fine 
 clothes and fine manners can give him. When you 
 see an individual with his hat knocked over his 
 eyes or his collar awry, you may know that he 
 secretly hugs an escutcheon to his bosom with a 
 fervour and energy of which no dandy is 
 capable. 
 
 Thackeray's charge against the English, that 
 they are virtue-proud, is certainly true. They 
 think themselves the best people in the world, 
 and after one notable exception has been made, 
 I am inclined to agree with them. Of unkindness 
 to foreigners upon their own shores they are un- 
 justly accused. They are, however, defiant in 
 their behaviour to strangers, and at this point 
 they have been educated in another misconception. 
 They cherish the impression that their reserve is 
 in some way a scrutiny of the character of the 
 individual who is a candidate for the honour of 
 their acquaintance. But this is a mistake. They 
 
I02 The British Upper Class, [iv. 
 
 hold back till they are sure, not that he is virtuous, 
 but that it will help them to know him. The 
 young Englishman chooses his friends just as the 
 young American or the young Frenchman does. 
 
 It is the way of the world to regard success and 
 fortune as another sort of character, and here 
 again the English are no exception to the rule. 
 Gentle manners to the poor and dependent, and 
 a conciliatory bearing towards acquaintance, are 
 praised, if the man who possesses them is a person 
 of consequence. The English say, " He knows 
 who he is ; " " Nothing can be better than he." 
 In such a man rank seems to pass for a kind of 
 virtue. But a seemly behaviour is not difficult to 
 people who have no opposition. You do see men, 
 however, in England, in whom good manners 
 are only another sort of heroism. Life is not to 
 them a pleasant saunter among tolerant equals and 
 obsequious inferiors. I have known men with 
 strong, fierce hearts and the consciousness of 
 power and ability, who, unrecognised and in irk- 
 some and difficult positions, are yet able to conduct 
 themselves with propriety and dignity. There are 
 
IV.] in Fiction, 103 
 
 rages which come, we know not whence, and moods 
 in which it is difficult to remember principles, yet 
 these men learn to control them. They behave 
 with a self-respect which does not verge upon 
 truculence, and with a complaisance which does 
 not approach servility. 
 
 The present tone of the fashionable novel is not 
 that of the aristocratic romance of the early part of 
 the century. It is not even the tone of Coningsby 
 or Maltravers. To the story-writers of " Cornhill " 
 and "Fraser" the nobleman is no longer picturesque, 
 or superior, or haughty, or aquiline. The purpose 
 of these later writers is to present him as a good 
 deal more like most people than anybody else. 
 The young Bohemians laugh flippantly at the " fat 
 old duchess ; " the glib governesses pour much 
 scorn and contempt on " Lady Booby's old, 
 rattling, broken-down barouche." The countess is 
 deaf and has an ear-trumpet ; the marchioness 
 is an honest old termagant, with a voice and 
 temper like a fishwomar/s. But this method of 
 treatment insinuates a familiarity, very delightful 
 to the average British reader. It is only another 
 
I04 The British Upper Class in Fictimt, [iv. 
 
 sort ot admiration. The change, however, seems 
 to be in the direction of truth, and the EngHsh will 
 in time, no doubt, get back to a healthy and 
 common-sense treatment cf this subject. 
 
Pres'umptioji. 
 
 The East is ignorant of the West, the West 
 is unduly sensitive to the unconsciousness of the 
 East. It is so in this country. St. Louis com- 
 pares itself with New York, and Kansas City 
 with St. Louis. This succession extends all the 
 way from London to the Sandwich Islands. 
 Before Mr. Bret Harte had Vv'on his present fame, 
 I remember to have met a lady from the Pacific 
 who told me that he was the Irving of California. 
 Now, Irving used to be called the Goldsmith of 
 America, and, I suppose, we shall shortly have 
 a Bret Harte of the Sandwich Islands. The in- 
 distinct, hazy way in which an eastern com- 
 munity thinks of one to the west of it, is 
 extremely tantalising to the latter. That such 
 a way of thinking of Canada is common in this 
 
io6 Presimiption, [v. 
 
 country may explain in part the hostility of the 
 British Provinces towards ourselves. Until 
 recently most of us thought of the Canadians 
 as a sort of modified Esquimaux. In the same 
 way the English are ignorant and incurious 
 about ourselves. We, on the contrary, are all 
 curiosity and interest in the English. An 
 American has no sooner stepped into the streets 
 of Liverpool, felt the exulting certainty that he 
 is really in the old world, read the signs of the 
 butchers, brewers, and bakers to the Queen, 
 and wondered at the voracity of the great per- 
 sonages of the kingdom, before he begins to ask 
 himself in what way these people differ from, 
 and in what way they resemble his countrymen. 
 This is a matter upon which the English are 
 not at all exercised. That com^fortable people, 
 sitting contentedly on their firm anchored isle, 
 are under no pressing necessity of comparing 
 themselves with anybody. The English, certainly, 
 have this advantage, if it be an advantage. The 
 longitude of character and custom is reckoned 
 from Greenwich. 
 
 The English very justly charge that Americans 
 
V.J Presumption, 107 
 
 are self-assertive. The American at home is not 
 an especially self-assertive person, or has, at any 
 rate, ceased to be so. But when in Europe our 
 people have nothing to do, and are away from 
 their friends ; the people they meet, on the con- '' 
 trary, are in the midst of their native society, 
 and of their life-long employments. It is natural 
 that some defiant or not altogether decorous 
 advances should be made by strangers, who have 
 any quantity of time on their hands. In Eng- 
 land, especially, there is some temptation to this, 
 from the manner of many of the people. Some 
 would say, I know, that this is a topic upon 
 w^hich it were best to keep silent. To expostulate 
 with presumption is not the proper way to meet 
 it. Presumption never means to be reasonable, 
 but only to be successful. When you expostulate 
 with an arrogant man you acknowledge the 
 success of his arrogance, which is all he asks. 
 A friend of mine, an Englishman, objected to 
 Mr. Lowell's paper, ''On a certain Condescension 
 in Foreigners," that you should never "let them 
 know you see it." Now that is well as a rule for 
 behaviour, but when one is writing, one is sup- 
 
io8 Presumption. \y» 
 
 posed to tell the truth. If, as a consequence, the 
 complacency of a man two or three thousand 
 miles away may be increased thereby, why really 
 that is no matter of the author's. How foolish 
 it would have been for Mr. Lowell to have 
 assumed an attitude with which to pique and 
 tantalise an entire empire. 
 
 The mere fact that an Englishman is so much 
 nearer the centre of the world makes him seem to 
 himself a better man than an American. This is 
 especially manifest in third-rate men, your " gods 
 of war, lieutenants-colonel to the Earl of Mar." 
 They in some way imagine that their geo- 
 graphical advantage is a personal one. I once 
 sat at dinner near a gentleman of this rank, Vvho 
 had been in correspondence with a very dis- 
 tinguished soldier of the War of the Rebellion. 
 Somebody observed that the General was a good 
 letter-writer. " Oh yes," said the Colonel lan- 
 guidly, " I kept the letters." Here was a little 
 Crimean Colonel, who was actually condescending 
 to preserve the letters of one of the most il- 
 lustrious living members of his own profession, 
 than whom he plainly thought himself a greater 
 
v.] Presumption, 109 
 
 man. I was at a loss to explain it. I believe, 
 though, that the fact that the General lived so 
 far away, and had no famous London or Paris 
 with which to identify himself, was the uncon- 
 scious cause of this feehng. 
 
E7iglish Court Festivities. 
 
 Am]£ricans have an impression that the English 
 think it a considerable distinction to be presented 
 at Court. But the ceremony of presentation has 
 entirely ceased to have any social significance in 
 England. Any young gentleman who imagines 
 that the door of English Society will be thrown 
 open to him on the publication of his appearance 
 at a drawing-room had better save the expense of 
 a dress and carriage and stay at home. If a lady 
 be ambitious of a social success, the money which 
 a robe will cost might be expended to equal ad- 
 vantage anywhere else in London. However, a 
 lady's dress may be worn again, and men may hire 
 a court-suit for the day at a very small cost. Your 
 tailor, if you get a good deal of him, will patch you 
 
VI.] English Cotirt Festivities, iii 
 
 up something tolerable for very little ; so that 
 sartorial expenses are comparatively light. One 
 can get for the afternoon a two-horse brougham, 
 with a coachman and footman, for a sum less than 
 ten dollars. Still, going to Court costs something, 
 and its only possible advantage is that the spectacle 
 is a fine and an interesting one. One has therefore 
 to consider whether the sight is worth the fee. 
 
 A presentation at Court is of quite as little 
 advantage to an Englishman as to a foreigner 
 coming to England. Almost anybody can be 
 presented, and of those who are precluded from 
 presentation, a great many occupy higher positions 
 than many of those who have the privilege of going 
 to Court. Any graduate of a university, any clergy- 
 man, any officer in the army, is entitled to go. A 
 merchant, an attorney, even a barrister, cannot ; 
 and yet in England a barrister, or for that matter, 
 a successful merchant, is apt to be a person of 
 more consequence than a curate or a poor soldier. 
 The Court has scarcely any social significance in 
 England. I once asked a young barrister If pre- 
 sentation would help him in the least In making 
 his way in society. He said, " Not a bit.'' 
 
112 English Cotirt Festivities, [vi. 
 
 Tn England the position of everybody is so well 
 fixed that people cannot weii change it by wishin^j 
 it to be changed. Thus, for a poor East London 
 curate to go to Court would simply make him 
 ridiculous. The parsons in the West-End d?- 
 present themselves, but there is no part of the 
 British empire where clergymen are of such slight 
 consequence as in the West-End of London. The 
 clergymen, as they file in along with the gaily- 
 accoutred young guardsmen, have a meek and 
 gerAi'e air which makes one feel that tliej' Jii:d 
 better have stayed away. No person who is not 
 already in such a position as to need no pushing 
 could becomingly make his appearance at Court. I 
 remember in Shropshire to have heard a family 
 who went down to London to be presented made 
 the target for the ridicule of the whole neigh- 
 bourhood. 
 
 Invitations to the Court festivities are given only 
 to those persons presented jn the diplomatic circle. 
 It must be understood that there is at every court 
 in Europe a select and elegant and exclusive 
 entrance, by which the diplomatists come in. 
 Along with them enter also the ministers of state 
 
VI.] English Cottrt Festivities, 113 
 
 and the liouscliold officers of the Crown. The 
 general circle, as it is called, includes everybody 
 else. Another entrance and staircase are provided 
 for it, and in that way all of British society, from 
 a duke to a half-pay captain, gains admittance 
 to the sovereign. "When one is in the inside of 
 Buckingham or St. James's Palace the same dis- 
 tinction exists. The room in which the members 
 of the royal family receive the public is occupied 
 during the entire ceremony by the diplomatic 
 circle. Other persons, after bowing to the Queen, 
 pass into an ante-chamber. 
 
 Though I say it is of but small social advantage 
 to an Englishman to be presented, yet undoubtedly 
 the greatest people in the empire attend Court, and 
 are to be seen at the ceremonials and festivities at 
 Buckingham and St. James's Palaces. At present 
 the Queen holds drawing-rooms and levees at 
 Buckingham Palace, and the Prince of Wales at 
 St. Jameses Palace. The latter are attended only 
 by gentlemen, and, though not so grand as the 
 Queen's, are pleasanter. Trousers are allowed, 
 instead of the knee-breeches and stockings which 
 must be worn at all Court ceremonials where there 
 
 I 
 
114 English Court Festivities, [vi. 
 
 are ladies. At two o'clock — for the Prince is very- 
 punctual — the doors of the reception-rooms are 
 thrown open, and the diplomatists begin to file 
 in. First come the ambassadors. It must be 
 remembered that there is a wide difference be- 
 tween an ambassador and an envoy or minister 
 plenipotentiary. The original difference was that 
 the ambassador was supposed, by a sort of tran- 
 substantiation, to represent the person of his 
 sovereign. He had a right at any time to demand 
 an audience with the king. An envoy must see 
 the foreign secretary. This, of course, has ceased 
 to have any practical significance in countries which 
 have constitutions ; and no doubt a minister can 
 at any time demand an interview of the sovereign. 
 It is still true, however, that an ambassador is 
 accredited to the king, while an envoy is ac- 
 credited to the foreign secretary. Practically, the 
 difference is that an ambassador represents a 
 bigger country, has better pay, lives in a finer 
 house, and gives more parties and grander dinners. 
 An ambassador has precedence of everybody in the 
 country in which he resides, except the royal family. 
 There are five countries which send ambassadors 
 
VI.] English Cottrt Festivities, 115 
 
 to En;^land — Russia, France, Germany, Austria, 
 and Turkey. These ambassadors enter the re- 
 ception-room at the Princess levee in the order of 
 seniority of residence. 
 
 Behind each ambassador come the secretaries 
 of the embassy. After the ambassadors come the 
 ministers. The whole diplomatic corps moves from 
 an ante-room into an apartment in which the Prince 
 of Wales awaits them. The Prince and several of 
 his brothers and cousins stand up in a row. Next 
 to the Prince, on his right, stands Viscount Sidney, 
 the lord chamberlain, who calls off each detach- 
 ment as it approaches — "the Austrian ambassa- 
 dor," " the Spanish minister," " the United States 
 minister,^^ &c. The Prince shakes hands with the 
 head of the embassy or mission, and bows to 
 the secretaries. When the diplomatists, cabinet 
 ministers, and household officers have all made 
 their bow, it is the turn of British society. The 
 diplomatic circle, and such as have the entree to it, 
 remain in the room : the Englishmen pass out. 
 The Lord Chamberlain in a loud voice calls off 
 the name of each person as he appears, so that 
 each comer is, as it were, labelled and ticketed. 
 
Ii6 English Court Festivities, [vi. 
 
 One may often guess the rank or importance of 
 the courtier by the manner of his reception. If he 
 shakes hands with the Prince, you may know he is 
 somebody — if he shakes hands with all five or six 
 of the princes, you may know he is a very great 
 person. But if he gives the princes a wide berth, 
 bows hastily and glances furtively at them, and 
 runs by skittishly, then you may know that he is 
 some half-pay colonel or insignificant civil servant. 
 Something, too, may be inferred from the length 
 of time the Lord Chamberlain takes to decipher 
 the name of the comer on the slip of paper which 
 is handed him. If he scans it long and hard, and 
 holds it a good way from^ him, and says, " Major 
 Te — e — e — bosh — bow," then in a loud voice, 
 " Major Tebow," you will be safe in thinking 
 that Major Tebow is not one of the greatest of 
 warriors or largest of landed proprietors. 
 
 The ceremony lasts an hour and a half or two 
 hours, and during the whole of it the talk and 
 hand-shaking among the diplomatists go on very 
 pleasantly. There is a great deal of esprit de corps 
 among them, and perfect equality. Attaches, 
 secretaries, and ministers walk about through the 
 
VI.] English Cotii't Festivities, 117 
 
 room and exchange greetings. The ambassadors 
 are rather statelier : these do not mix themselves 
 with the crowd of diplomatists, but stand up apart, 
 all five in a row, leaning against the wall. 
 
 At all other Court entertainments ladies are 
 present. Of course there are a great many very 
 pretty ones, and their toilets are brilliant. The 
 Queen's levees are very much longer than those of 
 the Prince of Wales. Then, at all ceremonials 
 where there are ladies, men are compelled to wear, 
 as I have said, silk stockings and knee-breeches, 
 shoes, and buckles. One can support this costume 
 in tolerable comfort in a warm room, but in getting 
 from the carriage to the door it is often like 
 walking knee-deep in a tub of cold water. A 
 cold hall or a draught from an open door will give 
 very unpleasant sensations. In many of the large 
 rooms of the palaces huge fireplaces, with great 
 logs of wood, roar behind tall brass fenders. Once 
 in front of one of these, the courtier who isn^t a 
 Scotchman feels as if he would never care to go 
 av\^ay. Fortunately, most of these ceremonials are 
 in summer, but the first of them come in February, 
 and London is often cool well up into June. 
 
ii8 English Court Festivities, [vi. 
 
 The ceremony of a presentation to the Queen 
 is quite the same as that at a Prince of 
 Wales's levee. The class of royal ladies stand 
 up in a rigid row. On the Queen^s right is the 
 Lord Chamberlain, who reads off the names. Next 
 to the Queen, on her left, is the Princess of Wales, 
 then the Queen's daughters and the Princess 
 Mary of Cambridge. Next to them stand the 
 princes, and the whole is a phalanx which 
 stretches entirely across the room. Behind this 
 line, drawn up in battle array, stand three or 
 four ranks of Court ladies. 
 
 The act of presentation is very easy and 
 simple. Formerly — indeed, until within a few 
 years — it must have been a very perilous and 
 important feat. The courtier (the term is used 
 inaccurately, there being no noun to describe a 
 person who goes to Court for a single time) was 
 compelled to walk up a long room, and to back, 
 bowing, out of the Queen's presence. For ladies 
 wdio had trains to manage the ordeal must have 
 been a trying one. Now it has been made quite 
 easy. There is but one point in which a pre- 
 sentation to the Queen differs from that already 
 
VI.] English Court Festivities, 119 
 
 described at the Prince of Wales's levee. You 
 may turn your back to the Prince, but after 
 bowing to the Queen you step off into the crowd, 
 still facing her. There (if you have had the good 
 luck to be presented in the diplomatic circle) 
 you may stand and watch a most interesting 
 pageant. To the young princes, perhaps, it is 
 not very amusing ; but there is plenty in it to 
 occupy and interest the man who sees it for the 
 first or second time. You do not have to ask 
 "Who is this.?" and "Who is that.?" The Lord 
 Chamberlain announces each person as he or 
 she appears. You hear the most heroic and 
 romantic names in English history as some boy 
 or old woman appears to represent them. One 
 sees a number of beautiful persons. The young 
 slips of girls who come to be presented for the 
 first time, frightened and pale or flushed, one 
 admires and feels a sense of loyalty to. 
 
 The name of each person is called out loudly 
 by the Lord Chamberlain. The ladies bow very 
 low, and those to whom the Queen gives her 
 hand to kiss nearly or quite touch their knee to 
 the carpet. No act of homage to the Queen 
 
I20 English Court Festivities, [vi. 
 
 ever seems exaggerated, her behaviour being so 
 modest and the sympathy with her so wide and 
 sincere ; but ladies very nearly kneel in shaking 
 hands with any member of the royal family, not 
 only at Court, but elsewhere. It is not so strange- 
 looking, the kneeling to a royal lady, but to see 
 a stately mother or some soft maiden rendering 
 such an act of homage to a young gentleman 
 impresses one unpleasantly. The courtesy of a 
 lady to a prince or princess is something between 
 kneeling and that queer genuflection one meets 
 in the English agricultural districts : the props 
 of the boys and girls seem momentarily to be 
 knocked away, and they suddenly catch them- 
 selves in descending. It astonished me, I re- 
 member, at a party, to see one patrician young 
 woman shake hands with a not very imposing 
 young prince, and bend her regal knees into this 
 curious and sudden little cramp. I saw her, this 
 adventurous maid^ some days afterward in a 
 hansom cab, directing with her imperious parasol 
 the cabby to this and that shop. 
 
 This odd jumble of the new and the old 
 struck me again and again wherever I turned. 
 
VI.] English Court Festivities, 121 
 
 The mysterious scarlet coaches rolled along 
 Piccadilly side by side with the smart waggons 
 of the Cheshire Cheese and Butter Company. 
 To the traveller who idles away a balmy morn- 
 ing in Green Park, can he resist for a moment 
 the blue hues of the Abbey towers, and the warm 
 shining greensward, this impression is often 
 present. The goblins wont to disport themselves 
 in the medieval moonshine have been suddenly 
 overtaken by a flood of commonplace daylight. 
 There is the veritable St. James's Palace. But 
 no Charles drives forth from its open portal as 
 in the gay pictures on the curtains of the theatres. 
 The word belated expresses the general impression 
 which the monarchical and aristocratic fabric of 
 English society makes upon the observer. It is 
 like the banquet-hall the morning after the ban- 
 quet ; the goblets are overturned, the dishes half- 
 emptied, and the strong sunlight pours in upon 
 the silent chamber, long deserted by the revellers. 
 The levees and the drawing-rooms may be 
 called the Court ceremonials. There are, besides, 
 the Court festivities, or the balls and concerts at 
 Buckingham Palace. There are four or five of 
 
122 English Court Festivities, [vi. 
 
 these given in a season — two balls and two 
 concerts. The balls are the larger and less select, 
 but much the more amusing. The ball-room of 
 the palace is a large rectangular apartment. At 
 one end is the orchestra — at the other a raised 
 dais on which the " royalties " sit. On each side, 
 running the length of the hall, are three tiers of 
 benches, which are for ladies and such gentlemen 
 as can get a seat. The tiers on the left of the 
 dais are for diplomatists. English society has 
 the tiers upon the other side. By ten the ball- 
 room is usually filled with people waiting for 
 the appearance of the royalties. The band strikes 
 up, and the line of princes and princesses ad- 
 vances down the long hall leading to the ball- 
 room. The Queen and Prince Albert used 
 formerly to preside at these balls. The Queen 
 does not come now : the Prince and Princess of 
 Wales take her place. 
 
 First enters a line of gentlemen bearing long 
 sticks. Behind them come the princesses, bowing 
 on each hand. The Princess of Wales advances 
 first, with a naive, faltering, hesitating step, a 
 strange and quite delicious blending of timidity 
 
VI.] English Coicrt Festivities, 123 
 
 and child-like confidence in her manner. Then 
 come, walking by twos, some daughters of the 
 Queen. A German duchess or two follow her. The 
 courtesies of these German princesses are indeed 
 quite wonderful. After entering the hall one of 
 them will espy (such, I suppose, is the fiction) 
 some persons to whom she wishes to bow, and 
 she then proceeds to execute a performance of 
 some minutes' duration. Before courtesying, she 
 stops and looks at the persons to be saluted 
 as a frightened horse examines intently the 
 object which alarms him : she then sinks slowly 
 backwards almost to the ground, and recovers 
 herself with the same slowness. It would seem 
 that such a genuflection must be, of necessity, 
 ridiculous. But it is not so in the least : it is 
 quite successful, and rather pleasing. After the 
 ladies come the Prince of Wales and his suite. 
 The royalties then all go upon the stage, and 
 after music the ball begins. 
 
 There are two sets of dancers. The princes 
 and princesses open the ball with the diplomatists 
 and some of the highest nobility on the space 
 just in front of the dais. The rest of the hall 
 
124 English Court Festivities, [vi. 
 
 is occupied by tlie other dancers, who later in 
 the evening find their way into the diplomatic 
 set. The dancing in the quadrilles and Lancers 
 is of a rather stately and ceremonious sort. In 
 waltz or galop the English mostly dance the 
 same step, the detix tempSy and the aim of the 
 dancing couple is to go as much like a spinning- 
 top as possible. They make occasional efforts 
 to introduce puzzling novelties like the trois tempSy 
 the Boston dip, etc., but, I am glad to say, with- 
 out any success. The result is, that once having 
 learned to dance in England, you are safe. 
 
 The great hall during the waltz is a brilliant 
 spectacle. There are many beautiful women, the 
 toilets are dazzling, and all the men are " flaming 
 in purple and gold." There is every variety of 
 magnificent dress. Ofhcers of a Russian body- 
 guard are gold from head to foot. Hungarians 
 wear purple and fur-trimmed robes of dark 
 crimson of the utmost splendour. The young 
 men of the Guards' Club in gold and scarlet 
 coats, and m spurred boots which reach above 
 their knees, clank through the halls. Scotch 
 lords sit about, and exhibit legs of which they 
 
vl] English Court Festivities, 125 
 
 are justly proud Here, with swinging gait, 
 wanders the Queen's piper, a sort of poet- 
 laureate of the bagpipes, arrayed in plaid, and 
 carrying upon his arm the soft, enchanting 
 instrument to the music of which, no doubt, the 
 Queen herself dances. The music of the orchestra 
 is perfect, and he must be a dull man who does 
 not feel the festivity, the buoyancy, and the elation 
 of the scene. 
 
 The dress which our diplomatic representatives 
 are now compelled to wear at the Court ceremonies 
 and festivities needs a word of mention. Our 
 people in America are somewhat conceited, some- 
 what prone to be confident, upon questions of which 
 they know very little. Congress, at a distance 
 of some thousands of miles from courts, thought 
 itself competent to decide what sort of Court dress 
 an American diplomatist should wear. An able, 
 though crotchety man, brought forward a measure, 
 and, once proposed, it was certain to go through, 
 because to oppose its passage would have been to 
 be aristocratic and un-American. Mr. Sumner's 
 bill required Americans to go in the ^' ordinary 
 dress of an American citizen." There was no 
 
126 English Court Festivities, [vi. 
 
 attempt to indicate what that should be. Up to 
 that time our diplomatists had worn the uniform 
 used by the non-military diplomatists of other 
 countries. This consists of a blue-coat with more 
 or less gold upon it, white breeches, silk stockings, 
 sword, and chapeau. 
 
 An attempt or two had been made before 
 by the State Department to interfere with the 
 trappings of its servants abroad. Marcy issued a 
 circular requesting American diplomatists to go 
 to Court without uniform. This afforded James 
 Buchanan an opportunity of making one of the 
 best speeches attributed to him. The circular of 
 Mr. Marcy threw consternation into the breasts of 
 certain ancient functionaries of the European 
 courts, for shortly after its appearance the Lord 
 High Chamberlain in waiting, or some other 
 member of the Queen's household, called upon 
 Mr. Buchanan, who was then the United States 
 minister in London, and said that a certain very 
 distinguished person had heard of the recent wish 
 which the American government had expressed 
 with regard to the costume of its agents, and that 
 while she would be happy to see Mr. Buchanan in 
 
VI.] E^tglish Court Festivities, 127 
 
 any dress in which he might choose to present 
 himself, she yet hoped he would so far consult 
 her wishes as to consent to carry a sword. " Tell 
 that very distinguished personage," said Mr, 
 Buchanan, " that not only v/ill I wear a sword, as 
 she requests, but, should occasion require it, will 
 hold myself ready to draw it in her defence." This 
 strikes me as in just that tone of respectful exagge- 
 ration and playful acquiescence which a gentleman 
 in this country ma.y very becomingly take toward 
 the whole question. Neither Mr. Buchanan nor 
 anyone else, I believe, heeded the request of the 
 Department, and Mr. Marcy himself, it is said, 
 subsequently repudiated it. 
 
 But what was only a request of the State 
 Department in Mr. Marcy^s time is now a law. 
 I had good opportunities to know how very un- 
 comfortable the poor American diplomatist is 
 made by this piece of legislation. Its object was, 
 of course, to give him a very unpretending and 
 subdued appearance. The result is, that with the 
 exception of Bengalese nabobs, the son of the 
 Mikado of Japan, and the Khan of Khiva, the 
 American legations are the most noticeable people 
 
128 English Court Festivities, [vi. 
 
 at any Court ceremony or festivity in Europe. 
 When ever^^body else is flaming in purple and 
 gold the ordinary diplomatic uniform is exceed- 
 ingly simple and modest ; but the Yankee diplo- 
 mates are the most scrutinised and conspicuous 
 persons to be seen. 
 
 The dress in which our diplomates attend Court 
 at present is a plain dress-coat and vest, with 
 knee-breeches, black silk stockings, shoes, &c. 
 It is difficult to see in what sense this is the 
 "ordinary dress of an American citizen.^^ The 
 dress is not so ugly as it would seem to be ; 
 indeed, with the help of a white vest and liberal 
 watch-chain, it might be made quite becoming 
 were it not so excessively conspicuous. An 
 English cabinet minister at a party given in his 
 own house usually wears it, and all persons invited 
 to the Empress Eugenie's private parties came got 
 up in that manner. But in London it was not till 
 recently that American diplomatists were allowed 
 to go to Court even thus attired. Everyv/here else 
 in Europe the United States legations were ad- 
 mitted in evening dress, the concession of knee- 
 breeches not having been required. But at 
 
VI.] English Cotcrt Festivities, 129 
 
 Buckingham Palace no Americans were admitted 
 without the proper garments. , The consequence 
 was, that our legation was compelled to stay at 
 home. This state of things continued until 
 Reverdy Johnson came out, who arranged what 
 was called " the Breeches Protocol.^^ Owing to 
 the unreasonable state of the public mind during 
 his term of office, this was the only measure 
 which that good and able man succeeded in 
 accomplishing. The compromise which Mr. 
 Johnson's good-humour and the friendly impulse 
 of the British public toward us at that time wrung 
 from the chamberlains and gold-sticks of St. 
 James's (for you may say what you will, public 
 opinion is irresistible), was to allow the minister 
 and the two secretaries of legation to appear in 
 the breeches above described. Americans who are 
 presented at Court, and who get invitations to the 
 festivities, are all required to wear a Court dress. 
 Of what good compelling the poor diplomatists to 
 make scarecrows of themselves may be I do not 
 know. Mr. Sumner's proposition was just one of 
 those absurdities to which men are liable who have 
 considerable conscience and no sense of humour. 
 
 K 
 
130 English Court Festivities, [vi. 
 
 Senators and members of Congress fell in with it 
 because they feared to be un-American, and be- 
 cause it is not their wont to be very dignified or 
 (in matters of this sort) very scrupulous. 
 
English Traditioii and the 
 Eiis:lish Fitture. 
 
 The admiration of the novelists of thirty years 
 ago for the Bi-itish upper class was a symptom 
 of the admiration by the English of that period 
 of everything pertaining to themselves. Each 
 Englishman felt (read, for instance, Ford's '' Hand- 
 book of Spain") as if he himself had discovered 
 gravitation, written '* Childe Harold," conquered 
 Waterloo and Trafalgar, and perished upon the 
 Plains of Abraham. The aristocracy was at the 
 top of British society, and of course great. So 
 that it is diiticuit, in readmg tne chronicles of 
 the manners of that day, to distinguisn oetween 
 what is laudation of a class, and what is laudation 
 of the Empire and the period. The novelists 
 can find no words in which to insinuate the im- 
 
132 English Tradition [vii. 
 
 mense immaturity of anybody who would with- 
 hold his applause. Zoroaster and Confucius 
 would smile with wise tolerance upon the cynic 
 and the radical, and would cheerfully assist 
 society by showing themselves at the assemblies. 
 Zanoni, with the personal acquaintance of every 
 interesting individual of the race from Adam 
 down, Bulwer would have thought nothing of 
 until he had entered him at the clubs, introduced 
 him to the party chiefs, and given him enough 
 of the current coin of the realm to astonish the 
 lackeys. That writer describes with excess of 
 definition the Parliamentary leaders. It is neces- 
 sary that we should be able to recognise to a 
 shade these prime figures in the most important 
 arena of the world. We are not permitted to 
 forget the majesty of these persons even when 
 they are satirised. Readers of "The Caxtons" will 
 remember a letter on colonisation, from the 
 statesman Trevanion to the young Pisistratus. It 
 
 runs : " Dear Pisistratus : W is up ! we are 
 
 in for it for two mortal hours." This letter is 
 dated from the House of Commons, and the 
 Library of the House of Commons ! Yet notice 
 
VII.] and the English Future. 133 
 
 the very light way in which the letter leads off. 
 
 "W is up," said in three words, and such 
 
 short and indifferent ones, too. How fascinating 
 is the disrespectful allusion in the next clause. 
 
 " We are in it for two mortal hours." W is 
 
 tiresome, no doubt, but can you help admiring 
 the point of view of that man who can make 
 sport of him } The reader must remember the 
 impression made upon him in youth by a descrip- 
 tion of that most important event, a change of 
 government. There is a most impressive one in 
 Mr. Disraeli^s "Coningsby." At three o'clock in 
 the morning, while the boys in the waiting-room 
 of a club in Pall Mall are asleep, a gentleman 
 (I forget his name, but we will call him Mr. 
 Gervase Hastyngs) rushes in breathless and an- 
 nounces that Lord Derby has been to see the 
 Queen, and that Peel has just been sent for to 
 form a government. How striking is the con- 
 trast between the commonplace accidents of the 
 scene and the tremendous importance of the 
 moment. One would expect a portent in the 
 sky to announce such an event. There is a new 
 government, and it is only the breathless Gervase 
 
134 English Tradition [vii. 
 
 Hastyngs and the hall-boy in buttons who have 
 heard of it. Ah, sleepy Islington, drowsy Clerken- 
 well, you honest tradesfolk soundly snoring in 
 Clapham, Fulham, Brixton, Hampstead, and High- 
 buiy, little you know what goes on among your 
 betters at three o'clock in the morning. 
 
 But very little of this arrogance of victory 
 and supremacy remains in England. The tone 
 at present is rather one of diffidence and dis- 
 content. There are those who profess to believe 
 that England has lost her ancient courage and 
 her warlike spirit. Now, a nation which has the 
 virtues and the advantages of peace cannot expect 
 to have also the virtues of war, except in a 
 dormant and potential way. To hear the talk 
 of some persons, you would think that war is 
 the state of society for which peace is the pre- 
 paration, instead of peace being the state of 
 society for which war is the preparation. Courage 
 is a means, and not an end, and it is shown in 
 fighting for the things we want. Englishmen of 
 the present time are not willing to make war for 
 what they do not very much desire. But ought 
 they not to wish to keep their country in its 
 
VII.] and the English Future, 135 
 
 position at the head of the world, which it held 
 fifty years ago ? Any such obstinate deter- 
 mination would surely show a great lack of 
 political intelligence. The times change and we 
 change. The new conditions of the Empires of 
 Russia and Germany and the silent influence 
 exerted by this country have altered the face of 
 the world. England does not greatly desire to 
 hold her old place, because she feels that she 
 cannot hold it, and it is only lunatics who refuse 
 to cut their coat according to their cloth. But 
 as to the charge of a want of patriotic feeling 
 and the spirit which takes men well into battle, 
 there can be no truth in it, as any man among 
 the millions who heard the fife and drum play 
 before Sir Garnet Wolseley^s returning legions 
 could have known from the beating of his ov/n 
 heart. The tumult of the crowd and the sight 
 of the pathetic ranks of real warriors reveals in 
 the breast of the plainest citizen possibilities of 
 which at average moments he does not dream. 
 
 The English now propose to lead the world in a 
 new way. When we go to heaven, we are told, we 
 shall not have fine wines and costly apparel, but 
 
136 English Tradition [vii. 
 
 we shall not miss them, because we shall have 
 ceased to cherish these carnal desires. The 
 English think — at least that portion of them Avhich 
 Mr. Gladstone represents — that while it is true that 
 they are not hereafter to lead the world after their 
 old fashion, yet that fact should not make them 
 unhappy, for in the new order of things the nations 
 will set little store by mere physical victory. The 
 first duties of a state will be the education of its 
 citizens and the advancement of mankind. The 
 greatest state shall lead the world, not in selfish- 
 ness, but in unselfishness. That state shall be 
 greatest which is supreme in ideas and in the 
 useful arts. Of course, there can be no disputing 
 the truth of this principle. If the English have a 
 more highly educated population than we, purer 
 domestic life, a more dignified press, a more 
 honourable administration of government and of 
 justice, they are better than we, though we crowd 
 the Continent with our money-getting millions. 
 Gladstone's view is, undoubtedly, the highest, and, 
 undoubtedly, the best, provided always that the 
 state is strong enough to pursue its high purposes 
 in security. 
 
VII.] a7id the English Fuhcre, 137 
 
 But it seems to me not so improbable that the 
 dream of the EngHsh Liberals may have an easy- 
 realisation. I know that an American editor in 
 his third or fourth letter home is not unlikely to 
 say something of the palpable decadence of the 
 English power. The observation is often made 
 regretfully, as if the discovery caused him a pang. 
 It is not difficult to understand the state of mind 
 in which these regretful paragraphs are written. 
 His landlady is the only person in the great wil- 
 derness who knows him. Nobody marks him. 
 Not a soul in the restaurant or the omnibus 
 recognises him. The main street of the city in 
 which his own paper — the Chronicle and Evening 
 Advertiser — is published has no place in the imagi- 
 nations of the people he meets. He is naturally 
 interested in the points of difference between the 
 newspapers there and at home. But there is in 
 the broad, decorous columns of the TiraeSy as they 
 lie open before him in the coffee-room of his inn, 
 an obvious and depressing ignorance of the 
 Chronicle and Evening Advertiser. He believes 
 in his heart that the managers of the Times never 
 heard of his paper. If the editor of the Chronicle 
 
138 English Tradition [vii. 
 
 and Evening Advertiser is at all a splenetic person, 
 he will shortly have occasion, with mournful im- 
 partiality, to suggest the " political decline," the 
 "germ of social disorder," &c. &c. 
 
 As for the "germ of social disorder," if the 
 labour question is to be the end of English society, 
 it will be likely to be the end of us also. I am not 
 sure that there is to be a " political decadence." I 
 think that England will find physical security while 
 pursuing the course which her Liberal statesmen 
 have marked out for her in the moral support of 
 the English race the world over. The idea of race 
 is good only up to a certain point. Because a 
 certain number of people in many parts of the 
 earth speak the same tongue (some of them very 
 detestably), it v/ould be very unreasonable that 
 they should join hands against everybody whose 
 patois is different. But so long as England con- 
 ducts herself with reason, and with that obvious 
 ambition to act justly which now marks her, she 
 will be sure of the sympathy of the Anglo-Saxon 
 race. She will not need support, moral or physical, 
 if she withdraws within herself and limits her pur- 
 poses by the " streak of silver sea " which separates 
 
VII.] and the English Future, 139 
 
 her from her enemies. But should she feel it her 
 duty to continue her beneficent endeavours for the 
 civilisation of her remote dependencies, she will 
 find that the Pan-Anglican sentiment may do her 
 good service. The silent feeling of the race, even 
 if understood to be but tepidly friendly, will go far 
 to preserve her from extremities. England will be 
 strong in proportion as she has the moral support 
 of the race. As I suppose it to be a mere matter 
 of arithmetic that for the next few hundred years 
 this country will contain the physical mass of the 
 race, I may go farther and say that England will 
 be strong in proportion as she has the moral 
 support of this country. Secure in that support, 
 there is no reason why, with her universities and 
 her highly educated upper class, she should not 
 continue to teach and lead us as she certainly does 
 teach us and lead us at present in almost all the 
 departments of thought and civilisation. Why 
 should not London be the capital of the race } 
 
 In such a state of things the diminutive size of 
 England will be a part of lier good fortune. Gold 
 is precious because there is so little of it. When 
 the world is full of people who look back to her as 
 
1 40 English Tradition and the Ftdtire, [vii. 
 
 the home of their tradition, she will be happy in 
 that her soil will not be capable of dilution. There 
 are leagues upon leagues in America and Australia, 
 but it may be said with pride and affection that 
 there are only a few meadows and a stream or two 
 in England. I suggest this point for the considera- 
 tion of any American who is to speak at a London 
 public dinner. Let the orator assure his hearers 
 that the race in Lidia, in Africa, in Australia, in 
 America— wherever the Anglo-Saxon pursues his 
 heaven-given prerogative to subdue nature and 
 society — will constitute a mighty moral empire, 
 of which this little island will be the sacred and 
 inviolable home, and he will be certain to sit down 
 amid applause. 
 
Childhood and Rnglish 
 Traditiofi. 
 
 A POINT I have not seen made much of is the 
 hold which English tradition and fable and 
 fiction get upon the mind of infancy in this 
 country. When young eyes first open with 
 fresh wonder upon the world, the scenes of 
 English life come in upon us from a hundred 
 sources. Perhaps these impressions are not so 
 strong now as in the days before the war. I see 
 that the school readers now have pictures of the 
 Pacific Railroad with the bufialo scampering 
 from the coming engine. But in my day the 
 pictures in the reading-books were all English ; 
 the pictures were English, even if the books were 
 of American composition. The lessons were 
 mainly English, and had to do with English 
 
142 Childhood [vm. 
 
 things. It was before the paling of an English 
 cottage that we saw the bent old man, whose 
 age we were told to revere and pity. It was 
 from an English casement that the little girl let 
 the captive robin out of the cage. I was ten 
 before I knew that the lark was not an American 
 bird, and, on being told that I should have a day 
 in the country, remember promising myself that 
 I should hear the bird about which so much was 
 said in McGuffey's " Second Reader." The good 
 boy in that little volume was always rewarded 
 with a tart. Now, I doubt if anybody living in 
 Maryland, Virginia, or thereabouts, had ever 
 eaten a tart, or had seen one to know it by that 
 name. I am sure I never had. But, for that 
 matter, neither had a poet of the last century 
 ever seen an Amaryllis or a Chloe, or heard a 
 shepherd piping in the shade. I must have known 
 that " tart " meant " sour," yet so perverse is the 
 imagination that I conceived it to be a sort of 
 transfigured sugar-plum. 
 
 The costume worn by the little boy in the 
 educational work just referred to was quite unique. 
 I fancy it must have been the English fashion 
 
VIII.] and English Tradition. 143 
 
 of dressing boys of twenty years earlier. The 
 cap was peculiar, though about the year '56 we 
 had something like it called the " Pancake." The 
 collar was a broad band of linen worn outside 
 the jacket. But the portion of his apparel with 
 which I was most profoundly impressed was a 
 pair of incipient swallow tails. The • possession 
 of these did not seem to make him any happier, 
 he had become so used to them. They invariably 
 attended him in the orchards, the meadows, the 
 gardens, and wherever his sunlit young existence 
 wandered. Envy of many a childish day-dream, 
 and quite as wise, I think, as some of the more 
 recent ones, how often I pondered them while 
 the cherry-trees stood alone in the silent play- 
 ground, or the echoes of the feet of a solitary 
 passer-by came with a sound of strange and 
 audacious freedom from the pavement of the 
 street below ! The little fellow had them on 
 when he and his sister wandered too near the 
 bee-hive. When he looked toward the rising sun, 
 with one hand pointing to the South and the 
 other to the North, it was these little coat-tails 
 he turned to the West. 
 
144 Childhood [viii. 
 
 The household pictures in " McGulTcy " all were 
 English, and the groups were certainly presented 
 in an amiable light. How good and virtuous 
 were the families who trimmed the evening lamp 
 in the pages of McGuffey's " Second Reader ; " 
 the father, how firm and prudent ; the mother, 
 how wise, how tender, how solicitous. (Indeed, 
 the grown people in children's books are always 
 paragons. The readers of the " Rollo Books " 
 will remember that RoUos father and mother 
 appeared to have been born parents ; think of 
 RoUo's father and mother ever being divorced !) 
 There was a picture in " McGuffey ^' of the little 
 boy I have described walking out at sunrise with 
 his mother to hear the sky-lark. She has told 
 him of dav/n and the song of the lark. He has 
 been but seven short years in the world and can 
 remember but four of them ; seven years, which 
 in the life of a grown man pass as a week or a 
 month passes. He has never seen the sun rise, 
 but from report and picture he is as familiar 
 with it as if he had Avitnessed it in Eden. His 
 mother is holding him by the hand, and they 
 are passing a high wall. It is the moist, whisper- 
 
VIII.] and English Tradition, 145 
 
 ing- dawn of a summer's day. Up in one corner 
 of the picture is a little spot which is, of course, 
 the lark, and it is pouring a flood of melody- 
 over the scene. The reader may know what 
 that picture must have been to boys whose 
 meadows were the morning-glories which skirted 
 the brick pavement of the kitchen-yard while 
 they waited for their breakfasts, whose butterfly 
 was the winged and dusty grasshopper which 
 tells of August and the close of the city summer ! 
 The sunrise is not often seen by children, except 
 when they are waked early for some picnic or 
 festival. So it is a good theme for the young 
 imagination. The English sunrise has, besides 
 the lark and the milkmaid, all the charming 
 accompaniments of the chase. Whatever con- 
 fusion there may have been about larks and 
 cuckoos, we all knew that only in the English 
 valleys was heard the horn of the huntsman. 
 There is in the window of a saddler's shop in St. 
 James's Street, near Pall Mall, a coloured en- 
 graving of a landscape at sunrise. In the fore 
 ground is to be seen a mounted huntsman amid 
 a pack of hounds. The picture was familiar, for 
 
 L 
 
146 Childhood [vm. 
 
 years before I had often come upon it, thrust 
 away in a corner, soiled and torn, in an old 
 garret, where I went in search of lost treasures 
 among handirons and broken hobby-horses. The 
 huntsman^s honest plebeian face tells of service 
 for the happy, sleeping people whom his horn 
 will soon summon to the chase. The dawn 
 wakens softly over meadows that have not yet 
 begun to shine. He blows his trumpet, and his 
 jolly cheeks are puffed as he startles the dim 
 dwellings and the drowsy landscape v/ith its 
 saucy echoes. 
 
 Now such impressions and recollections as 
 these, existing as they do in many thousands of 
 minds, are of very great importance. They are 
 of real political significance. How ready is an 
 American to greet in England any realisation 
 of these dreams of his childhood ! With what 
 pleased recognition does he exclaim, " Oh, this 
 is you ! " and " I have heard of you before." I 
 once went upon a visit to a friend of mine, who 
 was an officer in a yeomanry regiment at that 
 time mustering in a town in one of the v/estern 
 iihires of England. The colonel, to whom I was 
 
VIII.] and English Tradition, 147 
 
 introduced, had been a younger son, had gone 
 into the army and been to India. But he had 
 come into his property, and was now a country 
 squire with a large family and handsome for- 
 tune. I at once recognised the kind of man. 
 They said he had eleven daughters. (What a 
 fine old English sound they have !) During the 
 mess dinner the regimental band played from a 
 hall adjoining. The colonel, who had put me 
 next him, said, " I wanted to see if the band could 
 play 'Yankee Doodle,' but I find they don't know 
 it."" "How good of you!" I exclaimed, depre- 
 cating the mention of such a distinction. " Yes, 
 yes," he answered, with the determined manner 
 of one who, though now an old rustic, perhaps, 
 had yet, in his youth, seen something of the 
 world, and knew how things should be done, "I 
 believe in every honour for the diplomatists." As 
 I sat there listening to his honest talk, my mood 
 grew strangely friendly. " Should war's dread 
 blast against them blow," I felt that I wished to 
 be ranged on the side of the kind colonel and 
 his eleven daughters. 
 
The Dancing-School in Tavistock 
 Sqitare. 
 
 In London, in order to "get on," one must be 
 great or famous, or one must dance. Unless a 
 man is a very decided catch and an object to the 
 " mammas," or is enough of a Hon to make him fit 
 for exhibition, dancing is about his only utility. 
 The average London man of society thinks dancing 
 a very slow amusement. He is either athletic 
 and prefers hunting and yachting, or he is dis- 
 solute, and simple pleasures pall upon his jaded 
 appetite. As a rule, too, the important young 
 men do not dance. The greater a man is, the 
 more is he careful to abstain from anything which 
 will make him entertaining. His dulness is always 
 in proportion to his distinction. The same holds 
 true with regard to conversation or to any other 
 
IX.] The Dancmg- School, 149 
 
 sort of contribution to the amusement of others. 
 He only is agreeable and clever from whom fortune 
 has withheld better gifts than talent or the power 
 of pleasing. He only would be witty who is with- 
 out solid advantages. A " talking man " is in 
 danger of being snubbed, and nobody can help 
 pitying the ridiculous fellows who sing at the 
 afternoon " musicals.''^ 
 
 To be sure, all young people dance. How 
 would " golden youth " be possible if there were 
 no ball-rooms 1 But when men get toward five- 
 and-twenty, those who can afford not to dance 
 desert the balls for the concert-saloons. Young 
 noblemen and eldest sons v/ill spend a few moments 
 at the parties, and as a great favour to the hostess, 
 will walk through a quadrille with the prettiest girl 
 in the room. But how can one who has at hand 
 the cancan and the casinos find amusement in any- 
 thing so puerile as the waltz t Who cares to talk 
 to humdrum cousins when one may drink bad 
 champagne with painted women in a gilt cafe near 
 the Haymarket t It is only cadets, clerks in the 
 Treasury, youths with no particular expectations, 
 who dance. Among diplomatists, attaches waltz ; 
 
150 ^>^^^ Dancing-School [ix. 
 
 a councillor or secretary may under protest. I 
 knew one excessively light-headed envoy who 
 would dance now and then, but who always took 
 care to dance badly. 
 
 The talk of the young men concerning balls and 
 parties is, however, to be taken with some caution. 
 They are "bores," and this tone the poorer young 
 men catch from the more fortunate swells. A 
 clerk in one of the offices, when I asked him his 
 
 destination, said, " To this ball." Of course, 
 
 the young man would have been very sorry not to 
 
 have got a card, but he shuffled off to " this 
 
 ball " with the air of a martyr. Dancing young 
 men, however, are scarce enough to make ladies 
 who give parties anxious to get them ; and if one 
 is going to a ball, though it may be more dignified 
 to walk about sohis and stare, it is certainly 
 pleasanter to dance. 
 
 Accordingly, when a diplomatic appointment 
 made me a resident of London, I determined to 
 learn to dance. Cato learned Greek when he was 
 eighty, and I was twenty-five before I could do the 
 deux temps. I was reared in a pious household, in 
 which dancing was thought to be wicked. After 
 
IX.] in Tavistock Square, 151 
 
 leaving- college I acquired a notion of my own 
 dignity quite inconsistent with so frivolous a 
 pastime. (I give my experience in this matter at 
 some length, because I know it will represent that 
 of a great many others.) But, of course, I outgrew 
 this dignity in time, and came to look upon that 
 notion as only another and rather small sort of 
 coxcombry. Between your frivolous and your 
 philosophic coxcomb I much prefer the former, 
 as the more amiable of the two. What possible 
 relation had the conduct of my legs to the universe 
 and the moral law ? My fear of dancing was a 
 symptom of that timidity and strength-destroying 
 self-consciousness which possesses so many people 
 of the present day. They are enamoured of 
 superiority, and they associate certain external 
 images with the fashionable types of greatness 
 they admire. A little energetic thinking would 
 easily rid the victim of such reverie. What this 
 philosophic coxcomb really fears is not the essential 
 unworthiness of the pastime, but the impression of 
 himself he reflects in the minds of lookers-on. 
 
 Omne ignoium pro mirifico, says the proverb. I 
 should have been taught to dance in order to learn 
 
152 The Dancing-School [ix. 
 
 that dancing is no very wonderful thing. A man 
 who could put his arm round the waist of a pretty 
 woman, and calmly trust himself with the guidance 
 of his floating argosy of lace and tarlatan about a 
 ball-room, was formerly to me like a being from 
 another sphere. I could not understand how that 
 man felt. His ego was an exalted mystery. A 
 few steps at Brooke's academy would have taught 
 me that this man was but mortal, and might have 
 cured me of my depressing sense of inferiority. 
 
 I once did attend the dancing-school of a little 
 village in Western New York. This village was 
 the seat of a very radical water-cure, in the chapel 
 of which there was a service on Sundays and a 
 dance on Tuesday evenings. The ladies were all 
 in Bloomer costume, and as the institution was 
 radical socially as well as in religion and politics, 
 the cooks, laundresses, and chambermaids were 
 always asked to the balls. These were, in fact, 
 the only healthy people present. Your vis-a-vis 
 was usually a lady with an affection of the neck or 
 a gentleman with a wet towel round his forehead. 
 One gentleman, I remember, with a towel about 
 his head and a neck awry, had a chair set for him 
 
IX.] in Tavistock Square. 153 
 
 which he occupied while the side couples were 
 dancing : when the time came he sprang up with 
 great alacrity, gallantly and playfully flung out his 
 right foot, and walked through the step in the most 
 punctilious manner. 
 
 One's imagination was not fascinated by the 
 felicity of whirling round the room one of these 
 invalids in short clothes and trousers. Still, I did 
 go to the village dancing-school with the intention 
 of learning to waltz. But I found it was only the 
 little girls who were pupils : their sisters merely 
 came to look on and chat. I did not care to enact 
 the directions of the master before all the smiling 
 young society of Bunbury. The only pupil of 
 riper age I ever saw at the school was Miss 
 Carker, the lady doctress from the water-cure. 
 She was dressed at the time almost like a man, 
 and her hair was parted on the side. She pre- 
 sented herself as a scholar, and the professor, who 
 had never seen her before, was sorely puzzled 
 where to put her. He did not like to ask her. 
 There was a long continuous row of children 
 standing at the time, the upper half of which 
 were girls and the lower half boys. The professor 
 
154 The Dancing- School [ix. 
 
 wittily extricated himself by placing her just in the 
 middle and letting her decide for herself. 
 
 In London I found it quite necessary that I 
 should put myself under the care of some in- 
 structor, and I was commended to the academy 
 of Mrs. Watson, in Tavistock Square. Tavistock 
 Square, the reader will remember, is situate in the 
 dim regions of Bloomsbury, once an aristocratic 
 quarter, but now quite given up to lodging-houses 
 and the private dwellings of attorneys and mer- 
 chants. Here lives on the second floor an 
 economical widow, who supports a son at the 
 university ; a Spanish conspirator. Communist, or 
 exile of the Thiers government occupies the third ; 
 an American Senator, even, who is verdant or un- 
 ambitious, may find his way with his family into 
 the first. Upon the whole, it is a gloomy neigh- 
 bourhood. All Bloomsbury has much the same 
 look — the most unlovely part of London, or indeed 
 of England. For my part, I believe I prefer Seven 
 Dials. 
 
 Mrs. Watson was a very large Avoman. She 
 was, however, a very good and agreeable person, 
 and an excellent teacher. There were besides 
 
IX.] in Tavistock Scptare, 155 
 
 several nieces, rather pretty girls, wlio assisted 
 her in the education of the young men. It seemed 
 to me an odd sort of profession for a young lady. 
 Twelve hours out of the day and twelve months 
 out of the year they were saying, " Take my right 
 
 hand with your left, and put your right arm " 
 
 This latter instruction the preceptress did not 
 finish in words, but the pupil seemed to compre- 
 hend his duty by intuition. " That is very well," 
 said the lady. 
 
 These young ladies were very nice, and of 
 course perfectly respectable, but they did not 
 appear to me to be envied. Society is not kind 
 to a poor girl in England. That her position here 
 is different is due not to any superior charity or 
 chivalry of ours, but to our luckier circumstances. 
 Society in Europe assumes toward her that tone 
 of scarcely concealed contempt which the strong 
 and successful must inevitably hold towards the 
 weak. The talk of the young men concerning 
 her is, I think, not so respectful as in this country. 
 Of course, where such a sentiment exists, the 
 dignity of the objects of it must be somewhat 
 impaired. It is only the exceptional people who 
 
156 The Daiicmg-ScIiGol [ix. 
 
 can resolutely hold their own sense of themselves 
 against the mood of society. 
 
 These ladies, I say, assisted Mrs. Watson, She 
 herself usually undertook the initiation of the 
 patient. Mrs. Watson was not only large, but 
 strong, resolute, and conscientious. Moreover, 
 she was not a person to put up with any indolence 
 or false shame on the part of a pupil. I had for 
 years been enamoured of passivity. "I do not 
 like to be moved," says Clough. That poet and 
 much-musing philosopher liked to feel himself 
 at the centre of innumerable radii of possibilities, 
 rather than as moving in any one line by which he 
 v/as plainly and irrevocably committed. But Mrs. 
 Watson was not a person to encourage any in- 
 decision of this kind. After a preliminary word 
 or two she took me firmly by each hand and began 
 jumping me back and forth, saying, " One, two, 
 three, four," &c. Be it remembered that I was the 
 only performer in the room, and that all the lady 
 assistants and a pupil or two, who were waiting 
 their turns, were looking on. Mrs. Watson, be- 
 coming satisfied with my proficiency in the piston 
 movement, wished to see what I could do in a 
 
IX. J i7i Tavistock Square, 157 
 
 rotary way. She began by sending me round the 
 room by myself, spinning Hke a top. When I 
 gave signs of running down, she struck me again 
 on the arm and sent me round faster. Really, 
 for a person with some pretensions of sobriety, 
 this was pretty thorough treatment. I was sure 
 the young assistants must be screaming with 
 laughter, and I was not sorry when I passed 
 into the hands of these milder and less muscular 
 preceptresses. 
 
 I was very proud when I had learned the deiLX 
 temps. I really thought myself a very accom- 
 plished young man. But Mrs. Watson said that it 
 was quite necessary, absolutely indispensable, that 
 I should learn the trois temps. I had got on very 
 well with the detix temps, but what labours I under- 
 went in the acquisition of the trois temps, and what 
 giggling of the lady assistants I braved, and what 
 screams of stifled laughter from a veiy jolly cousin 
 of Mrs. Watson, who was visiting from the country, 
 and who came in to look at us, I will not here 
 relate. I was absolutely made to stand on one 
 foot and hop. It was incredibly painful, but I 
 bore it all, as children take medicine, because I 
 
158 The Dancijig-SchooL [ix. 
 
 thoii<^ht it was good for me. The reader will 
 fancy the bitterness of my feelings when I dis- 
 covered that it was all In vain. The trois temps 
 was not danced at all in London : the deux temps 
 was universal. 
 
 There was no personage of the dancing-academy 
 in Tavistock so interesting to me as its mistress, 
 Mrs. Watson, whose gentle and dapper little 
 husband played the violin. Mrs. Watson was 
 rarely seen except on great and critical occasions. 
 Her full habit of body and long service entitled 
 her, she thought, to repose. But she would now 
 and then walk with majesty and old-time elegance 
 through a figure of a quadrille, taking hold of her 
 petticoat with thumb and finger of each hand, and 
 coquettishly fanning and flirting it. She did not 
 often waltz or galop, but sometimes, in enforcing 
 a lesson, she would commit herself to the undula- 
 tions of the dance, and sail or swim about the 
 room, sola. She was as a rule a veiy good, kind, 
 and sensible wom.an, and she had, moreover, a few 
 fine antique graces which she would bring out 
 when circumstances seemed to call for them. 
 Among these was a very superb method of leaving 
 
IX.] in Tavistock Sq^iare, 159 
 
 the room which she gave us occasionally. If the 
 conversation turned upon fine society (I believe 
 she thought nae rather a man of fashion), and if 
 she had seen my name in the Morning Post that 
 morning, she would treat me to one of these. " I 
 bid you good morning,^^ she would say ; and 
 lifting her petticoat with thumb and finger, she 
 executed a retreat backward with some six steps, 
 and, laying her hand upon the door-knob, vanished 
 with a peculiar grace and dignity. 
 
 Of the school in Tavistock Square, besides the 
 accomplishments which I there gained., and which I 
 highly prize, I retain a little memento in the shape 
 of Mrs. Watson^s "Manual for Dancing," a tiny book 
 which now lies on my table. It contains, besides 
 descriptions of quadi-illes, polkas, galops, &c., 
 much excellent advice upon general behaviour 
 which recalls the little institution quite vividly. 
 Occasionally the little document becomes severe, 
 almost sarcastic. "All skipping, hopping, and 
 violent motion should be restrained." Again we 
 are told that vis-a-vis must not meet each other 
 " with proud looks and averted glances," but " with 
 a smile" and "a pleasant recognition." "True 
 
i6o The Dancing-School, [ix, 
 
 politeness is entirely compatible with a kind dis- 
 position. In our higher classes unreserved and 
 agreeable manners prevail much more than in the 
 middling ranks of society,'* 
 
Contrasts of Scenery, 
 
 I HAVE never been so struck with the sublimity of 
 great cities as in August eventides in the depths 
 of dog-days. At such an hour, when in London, I 
 used to go to Trafalgar Square. Instead of the 
 usual paltry plots of grass, that square has a broad 
 floor of stone, which immensely enhances its im- 
 pressiveness.^ Only a few weary feet broke the 
 stillness of the place. The golden clouds of dust 
 choked the vistas of the streets. Silently out of 
 their grimy mouths the fountains glided. I heard 
 all round the desolate roar of the city. The granite 
 column seemed borne upward and to swim in the 
 
 * There is a profuse and profound wealth of fancy and expression 
 in this line of one of the sonnets of Shakespere, — 
 
 "Than unswept stone besmeared with sluttish time." 
 
 M 
 
1 62 Contrasts of Scenery [x, 
 
 air, and Nelson from its summit looked far away 
 to Egypt and the Nile. 
 
 Art is stronger than nature in the old countries. 
 Nowhere in England do you ever get well out of 
 London ; the town inflames the island to its ex- 
 tremities. London is strong as disease is strong. 
 Many a time, swinging about the streets in the 
 " gondola of London," the hansom cab, I have 
 wondered that so great a place should be so low — 
 should have so little height. The inequalities on 
 the surface of an orange, w^e are told, vastly 
 exaggerate the hills and valleys of the globe. 
 London is scarcely higher than if the surface of 
 the earth upon which it lies had been scratched 
 with a file. Yet so potent has it been to change 
 the entire face of that part of the world which it 
 dominates. 
 
 Nature has been chased out of England into the 
 sea. In Europe man is scarcely conscious of the 
 presence of nature. Here nature is scarcely con- 
 scious of the presence of man. Perhaps, indeed, on 
 our Atlantic border, she is just waking to a sense 
 that her rest is broken by the foot of the intruder. 
 But in England nature has been quite subjugated. 
 
X.] Contrasts of Scenery, 163 
 
 The fence and the furrow are everywhere. You 
 find yourself by a lonely tarn at the bottom of a 
 sweet breathing ravine, and you say, " Surely here 
 is something primeval ;" but you have only to look 
 up to where the sharp back of the mountain cuts 
 the sky, to see a stone fence riding it with a giddy 
 tenacity, and holding on for dear life. We miss the 
 feelings with which newer and wilder scenes inspire 
 us. English scenery is always pleasing, perhaps 
 the most agreeable for any common condition of 
 mind that can be found. Nowhere is there such a 
 pretty country to have picnics in. What wind so 
 careless as that which fans the cheeks of August 
 tourists, whose table is spread half-way up some 
 hill-side in Devon } In the morning, when the 
 youth of the day supplements the age of nature, 
 then we see the English landscape in its best. 
 The air is sweet and the sod greener than else- 
 where, and the foldings of the hills and hollows 
 are lovely and surprising. But the beauty is for 
 the eye ; it fails to touch the heart. This seemed 
 to be true even of the scener). in Wales. It was 
 very impressive. The Welsh mountains were very 
 old ; the wind of the heather wandered gravely 
 
1 64 Cont.' asts of Scenoy, [x. 
 
 from the sweet, sad fields of the most distant 
 part ; the verdure of the margin of that shining 
 estuary that sets up to Dolgelly, through the 
 greenest green, is enriched by the yellow of the 
 buttercups. 
 
 Nevertheless there was an incompleteness that I 
 could not suppose to be altogether in myself, for 
 the ocean had its m.oods as sublime or bright as 
 where its evening waves flow round the light-ship 
 at Sandy Hook. The waters came to the cottage 
 thresholds and to the gates of the gardens. Late 
 one afternoon, as I sat looking over the blue, bright 
 ocean, there came under my window a proud- 
 stepping fellow with a plaid, and a feather in his 
 bonnet, playing upon the bagpipes. A pure and 
 stainless sunset was approaching. The sweet 
 breeze from the heather ran about the streets at 
 wdll. Far out over the quiet, flickering waters 
 wandered the notes of the bagpipes, flew, and 
 were wafted westward. The children danced 
 about the piper, and their feet moved to the 
 music and to the fast-changing moments of the 
 sunset. But the landlord came out before the door 
 bare-headed and rang the bell, and the bagpiper 
 
X.] Contrasts of Scenery. 165 
 
 ceased suddenly and went away with the children, 
 and the sun dropped down behind the wave, and I, 
 with that rude haste with which we extinguish 
 delights we know to be too evanescent — went to 
 dinner. 
 
 For the purposes of comfort the English climate 
 is better than ours. I have heard this denied, but 
 am sure that it is so. One has only to remember 
 that the fashionable hour for horseback riding in 
 London is from twelve to two in the summer 
 months. Nobody can ride at that hour any- 
 where in this country. The equestrian here has 
 a choice between sunrise, sunset, and moonlight ; 
 unless, as used to be common in the South, he 
 rides with an umbrella. But for poetry and the 
 observance of nature our climate is better. The 
 English summer never commits itself It is always 
 lingering April or premiature October. If you go 
 out at night to walk in the mioonlight or to sit by 
 the sea-shore, you must take an overcoat. Here, 
 about the last of June, we have a sweltering week 
 or two, in which everybody unlearns the use of 
 overcoats. We then understand that it is summer, 
 and that it will stay summer. To be sure, if you 
 
1 66 Contrasts of Scenery, [x. 
 
 are in search of some poor churlish spot where 
 you may forego nature and the miracle of summer 
 for the sake of keeping cool, you may find it on 
 the coast of Maine. But if deeper pastimes entice 
 you, and more verdurous hill-sides ; if you would 
 sit in some rose-embowered porch, while yet the 
 blue-eyed mist lingers in the farthest recesses of 
 the mountain gorge, then it is to the Susquehanna 
 or the Kanawha you must go. There, where the 
 chestnut shade cools the edge of the hot, humming 
 meadow, you may lie, your hands stained with the 
 dark, deep clover. On indolent afternoons your 
 scow will float through those silent scenes, you 
 hearing only the dull lapping of the river at the 
 thirsty keel. 
 
 I may here say that one great disadvantage for 
 any person desiring to look at an English land- 
 scape is the absence of good fences to sit upon ; 
 the ground is usually too damp to permit one to 
 lie full length. I missed very much the rail fences 
 of my own country. I would come to a pretty 
 prospect, and my legs sinking under me, I would 
 look about for a place to sit. The inhospitable 
 landscape had not a single suggestion. There 
 
X.] Contrasts of Scenery, 167 
 
 were no stones, and a hedge was, of course, not 
 to be thought of. How different the stake-and- 
 rider fences of this land of ours ! The top rail of a 
 good fence is as fine a seat as one can wish. Of 
 course, much depends upon the shape and posi- 
 tion of the rail. Sometimes the upper rail is 
 sharp and knotted. But one has only to walk 
 on for a rod or two before a perfect seat can 
 be found, and this point I have discovered to be 
 the very best from which the scene may be viewed. 
 It really appears as if the honest farmer had 
 builded better than he knew. If there is one 
 place from which to overlook a landscape to be 
 preferred to another, I have always found that 
 nature, so far from betraying him that loved her. 
 had actually put there the properly shaped rail 
 at his disposal. 
 
 The streams of England are unclean. Waters 
 that the poets have made famous smell abominably. 
 Consider the task the poets would have to immor- 
 talise all the running water of our Atlantic slope. 
 Unsung, unnamed even, with pure noises they 
 hasten to their river-beds. For many miles by 
 the railway which traverses North Wales, the Dee 
 
1 68 Contrasts of Scenery. [x. 
 
 brawls along with a tumult of green waters. From 
 the car window it looked enticing, and I thought 
 I would stay over a day at Llangollen and walk 
 along the banks. At Llangollen is " The Hand," 
 over which presides a gentle and unique landlady, 
 who carries a bunch of keys, and greets you with 
 that curious cramp of the knees called a courtesy. 
 (If you would see a courtesy, you must go to 
 England very soon, for the Radicals will have put 
 a stop to it in a year or two more.) There was 
 hanging in the coffee-room a picture of Sir William 
 Somebody, the great man of the neighbourhood. 
 His left arm he rested upon the withers of a great 
 black hunter, v/hile his wife, buxom and beautiful, 
 leaned upon the other. Some happy dogs were 
 playing about his feet. There were two or three 
 more engravings of the kind well known to fre- 
 quenters of English inns. Upon a table in the 
 middle of the room were the cold meats, the pies, 
 the tarts, the custards, and the berries. In the 
 corner, a lunch was spread for tvv'o collegians who 
 were travelling with their tutor. All this you 
 saw to the music of the old blind harper, v.'lio 
 sat just outside the door by the high clock in 
 
X.] Contrasts of Scenery, 169 
 
 the windy hall. Here, too, was the prettiest girl 
 I saw in Wales. She told me she was sixteen, 
 and I believed her. You talk of strawberries and 
 cream — a namby-pamby and silly expression — she 
 was blackberries and cream. She was there with 
 her brother Arthur, a youth two years older than 
 herself, the guide, philosopher, and financier of the 
 party : the pair were the children of a Bristol 
 music-teacher. We lunched together, and the girl 
 cut the pie with her own hands. She had been 
 twice to London. When I asked her where she 
 stayed when she came there, she said, "At Mr. 
 Hawkins's," as if that were enough. Was there 
 ever such a delightful answer ! 
 
 I tell this because it is only fair to Llangollen 
 that I should. Any little nameless stream in the 
 Shenandoah Valley is better than the Dee. But 
 in the tavern near there would have been no 
 landlady with the keys, nor the really good music 
 of the harper, nor the table spread with tarts and 
 berries, nor very likely the pretty girl. The green 
 waters of the Dee, cool and clean enough a few 
 rods off, I found, when I came nearer, washing 
 over noisome, stinking rocks. I followed the slip- 
 
1 70 Contrasts of Scenery, [x. 
 
 pin^T banks a mile or so, and then took the 
 raacadamised road that runs above the river. I 
 very soon found my way back to the inn, and 
 went with Arthur and his sister to a village enter- 
 tainment. We sat upon the front bench, and saw 
 a burlesque of the Field of the Cloth of Gold, 
 performed by four metropolitan stars, upon a stage 
 eight feet by twelve. 
 
 I have spoken of art as strong and of nature 
 as weak in the Old World. In scenes in which 
 art and nature mingle, England, I suppose, is 
 unsurpassed. The little I saw of rural England 
 was mainly on Sundays, and then I could rarely 
 get far away from London. There are influences 
 which nature appears to borrow from society. 1 he 
 Christian Sunday seems to impart to the pristine 
 beauty of our own landscape an intenser purity. 
 Here, where the virgin altars are set up in glades 
 whose stillness is broken only by the noise of the 
 primeval streams, vv^here the spires shine afar over 
 our summer wildernesses, the face of nature is 
 conscious of the religion of man. There is, on a 
 Sunday afternoon, in the long street which climbs 
 the hill of a New England village, an unattainable 
 
X.] Contrasts of Scenery, 171 
 
 seventy, an almost bitter silence. On a Sunday 
 morning, when the village bells are silent, to me, 
 sitting under the trees of an orchard in blossom, 
 there is in the air a strange reproof, a pungent 
 purity, which renders obvious a canker in the 
 midst of the blue sunlight and the bloom. These 
 impressions must of course exist in England, 
 though my occupations in London were such as 
 to give me little leisure to taste the wild silences 
 and asperities of the rural Sunday afternoon. In 
 one of the few suburbs of London yet compara- 
 tively free from the ravages of convenience and 
 respectability, there was an old green-walled gar- 
 den-plot, to which I was permitted to repair at 
 that hour. I sat alone upon a broken, dirty, iron 
 
 bench (I beg the T ^s pardon for calling their 
 
 bench dirty), and under an old pear-tree. It was 
 a long patch of sod and flowers. The brick walls 
 were rent and decayed, and, except where the 
 peach and the vine covered them, were green 
 with moss and black with age. The neighbouring 
 gardens I only knew by the tops of the pear and 
 may-trees. No sound came from them save the 
 rustle of their greenery, which now and then dis- 
 
172 Contrasts of Scenery, [x. 
 
 turbed the heart of the quiet hour. Of the children 
 who played in them, of the maidens who knelt 
 among their flowers, I knew nothing. The same 
 sunshine and yellow haze filled them all, the same 
 Sabbath silence. From out their narrow plots ail 
 looked upward to the same blue sky. I used to 
 think that the gardens never ended, but lay side by 
 side the island through, and that the sea washed 
 them all around. 
 
New York and Loftdon Winters. 
 
 An English winter all men have agreed to con- 
 sider as the greatest discomfort under which the 
 inhabitants of the Isles suffer. The day is dark 
 by two, and one can scarcely read before ten in the 
 morning. Yet the densest, yellowest fogs in which 
 poor Londoners grope from house to house to find 
 their door-bells, the all-day rains tnat drown the 
 cabbies, and shadow the large, dark, hospitable 
 windows of the inns — all these are very pleasant, 
 soothing, and inviting in comparison with such 
 persistent slush and foul weather, such protracted 
 out-of-door misery as we suffer sometimes in New 
 York. There is a jerking and incessant quality 
 in our winter weather. It is no sooner allayed 
 and softened than it is up and at it again, until 
 patience can support it no longer, and one yields 
 
174 ^^"^ York [xL 
 
 one's self to be jolted along by fate. An English 
 winter is disagreeable rather than violent ; it is no 
 such tax upon human nerves and patience as our 
 own. Of course, your feet are never clean ; your 
 eyes smart with the fogs ; the east wind withers 
 you ; but you are, somehow, soon beset with a soft 
 and dirty uncomfortableness, to which, once having 
 succumbed, you continue in contented subjection. 
 
 We are not sure that the overhead London 
 winter has not been a little slandered. The sun 
 comes out at times very softly, and as you look 
 over the wet sod and blue wintry thickets of Green 
 and St. James's Parks, the towers of the Abbey 
 catch from the air a natural or artificial blue, 
 exquisite and quite indefinable. But they have 
 nothing like the exhilaration of our cold moon- 
 light and starlight heavens. They have nothing 
 like our successive days of hard, bright weather. 
 They have nothing like that frozen blue-green sky 
 of our January nights, with the moon apparently 
 congealed in the midst of it. On a late Sunday, 
 looking over the bay at sundown, there arose a 
 scene so wild, strong, and sublime, that the 
 beholder could scarcely believe himself in the 
 
XI.] and London Wintei^s, 175 
 
 midst of a city of a million people. The desolate 
 bay, jammed with ice from the wharves to the 
 wood-fringed Jersey hills, lay as silent and stern 
 as any untrodden unfamiliar place in the heart of 
 the Andes or the Himalayas. There is a vital 
 hour of the landscape, v/hich, at summer sunsets, 
 is very evanescent. The day concentrates into its 
 parting glance a swift, intense meaning. Turn 
 your back upon it a moment, or shut your eyes, 
 and it is gone ; but, on this evening, all around 
 the city roofs, the hills, and the ice-fields, there 
 lingered a deep, strong crimson almost frozen into 
 the sky. 
 
 The puissance of nature over man here, and 
 its unconsciousness of him, even in the very 
 ways of his cities, is strangely apparent to the 
 European. We shoot about the rivers in our 
 ferry-boats, and wheel in our omnibuses through 
 the drifts of the streets, and all the time the snow- 
 storms roar over us, and tPie whirlwinds enwrap 
 us and hide us from skies which scarcely notice 
 us, and shut us in from a world upon which we 
 scarcely make any impression. 
 
The Evening Call. 
 
 The evening call is a peculiarity of American life. 
 The strict watch kept over the family would make 
 that institution, as it exists among us, quite an 
 impossibility on the continent of Europe. In 
 England, where there is greater freedom for 
 unmarried women, this evening cannot very well 
 be used for calling, owing to the lateness of the 
 dinner hour. The question of dinner is, indeed, 
 very much involved in the matter. It is quite 
 impossible that it should be later than six without 
 either unhappily shortening that cerem^ony or 
 infringing on the hour for the call. While dinner 
 is certainly a pleasanter meal taken in the evening 
 than earlier, we must remember that the evening 
 is the best hour of the day for social enjoyment, 
 no matter how we pass it. It is the instinct of 
 
xil] The Evening Call, 177 
 
 man to have the best thing last ; we should always 
 be happiest just before going to bed. Yet in 
 considering the question whether the evening is 
 better as we pass it, or as the English do after an 
 eight o'clock dinner, there is much to be said on 
 both sides. Both ways are undoubtedly good, but 
 upon the whole a change to the English custom 
 would be rather for the worse. Comparing roughly 
 \}i\Q pros and cons of the subject, we might say that 
 the English habit is better for families, and our 
 own better for the morals and well-being of the 
 bachelors. 
 
 We would certainly not underrate the magical 
 effect of a dress coat and white bosom upon the 
 drooping faculties. The English dinner makes a 
 rubicon dividing by a broad line the day of work 
 from the day of relaxation. The diner washes off 
 the toil of the day with its soot and grime. I»[o 
 matter how tired or languid he may be, the mere 
 act of dressing seems to put a new song in his 
 mouth. He becomes pert and audacious, and 
 bears down upon his acquaintance with the delight 
 and pharisaic feeling of cleanliness and good 
 apparel. He has a distinct consciousness of his 
 
178 The Evejmtg Call, [xii. 
 
 linen. He is well aware of the difference between 
 himself and any unclean thin^. All this is very- 
 pleasant. The English dinner certainly has this 
 consideration in its favour, and for families even 
 higher ones. 
 
 But it bears hardly upon the bachelors, who 
 transact their solitary meals with speed, and have 
 nobody to go to see. On the score of comfort, 
 though, some bachelors in England are very well 
 off. The club men, as a rule, need no sympathy ; 
 their misfortunes are not of the material kind. 
 The miserable people are the men who are com- 
 pelled to live at the hotels and restaurants. The 
 British lion who stares out of the club windows 
 is a well-kept contented beast. But there is no 
 happiness for that lean creature who, as hunger 
 possesses him, must lash his sides with his tail, 
 and wretchedly reflect whether he will lie in wait 
 at the nearest chop-house for whatever comes 
 along, or daintily devour a bird or two at the 
 Pall Mall Restaurant, or pounce upon a leg of 
 mutton at Simpson^s in the Strand. The club is 
 the admirable result of long experience. Not in 
 vain have the bachelors of the past lived and 
 
XII.] The Evening Call, 179 
 
 suffered. Pretty furniture, good cooking, and 
 agreeable company unite to make a pleasant im- 
 pression. The dining-rooms, which are usually 
 small, have perhaps a dozen tables, one of which 
 the diner has to himself A wax candle is placed 
 upon each, with a white paper shade about it 
 The cloths and napkins are spotless, and the 
 glasses glistening. Men usually read at dinner, 
 when alone, books or magazines out of the library ; 
 and two men who have not much talk, even when 
 dining together, will read. The young men usually 
 dress ; and the room, with its pretty tables, and 
 its florid, well-dressed occupants, makes an agree- 
 able, appetising impression. Physically, then, the 
 bachelors are well enough off. In other respects 
 they are not so fortunate. Their privations begin 
 when dinner is over. They must then go to the 
 smoking-room, and have coffee and chat ; or, 
 pleasantly gorged and fuddled, lounge and bask 
 before an open fire. This, again, is not so bad, 
 but they tire of it in time. The trouble is that 
 one half of the great human race is excluded ; 
 they wish to see that other half, and there is no 
 place where they can find it. Ladies' society is 
 
i8o The Evening Call, [xii 
 
 very difficult to be had, because families are at 
 their pleasant and leisurely dinners. There may 
 be, here and there, people you may run in upon ; 
 but the universal opening of doors, which takes 
 place from eight to nine in American towns, is 
 quite unknown. The British bachelor, therefore, 
 as he rises from his dinner at the club, is an object 
 of commiseration. What is he to do till bed-time ? 
 He may have a rubber of whist in the card-room, 
 but that is expensive. He may go to the theatre, 
 but the play is not always good ; and, if it were, 
 he does not want the play every night, any more 
 than waffles every morning. If he has force and 
 restlessness, he is driven to all sorts of shifts to 
 amuse himself I knew one young gentleman whose 
 post-prandial diversion it was to rush off to ride to 
 fires on a steam-engine, and blow the trumpet. 
 But for men gifted with less energy than this 
 individual possessed, the last resort (sometimes we 
 fear the first) is the society of the ladies who 
 frequent the Argyll and the Alhambra. Many of 
 those gentlemen, very likely, do not feel their 
 privations. Most men about town in London 
 might think the way of spending the evening in 
 
XII.] The Evening CalL i8i 
 
 vogue among us exceedingly slow. But the 
 vitiated taste is the result of the evil experience. 
 Had they possessed our opportunities from youth 
 they might have thought differently. 
 
 But those fortunate people, whom fate has not 
 compelled to toil, are comparatively rare with us. 
 After a hard day's work, it must be a very ener- 
 getic man who cares to ride to fires on an engine 
 and blow the trumpet ; and for men who labour 
 in the daytime, no conceivable relaxation, as a 
 stand-by or staple, could be better than the evening 
 call. It is fortunate that this very good thing, 
 unlike most other good things, is easy to be had. 
 Almost any young man, coming as a stranger into 
 an American community, may at once secure the 
 society of good and kind women. Of course, in 
 any city, and almost in any village, there are 
 people whom the young stranger will find it 
 difficult to know. But there are plenty whom he 
 may know easily, and who are quite as good. 
 There will always be some who think they have 
 friends enough, and there will be others who hold 
 notions of chaperonage and surveillance, but the 
 tide of democracy makes very little of these things. 
 
1 82 The Evening Call, [xii. 
 
 The young man will find friends somewhere to his 
 mind, and such friends will usually be feminine, the 
 indispensable quality men ask in their acquaint- 
 ance. We say then that the stranger will find 
 women who will like him, and they will be better 
 than he deserves to know ; for in this country 
 women are very equal in education ; the difference 
 in mental and social culture between classes is 
 mainly seen in the men. It appals Europeans 
 to hear of the readiness with which strangers are 
 received into American homes. But before we 
 censure our way of doing, we have to consider 
 two points. Is it good for the young men, and is it 
 bad for the families into which they are admitted } 
 The advantage to any friendless young stranger is 
 indisputable. A merchant in St. Louis has told 
 me how, when a boy, he left his New Jersey home 
 for the western town, which was then a week's 
 journey off. The very evening of the day on which 
 he reached St. Louis, by good luck he found his 
 way to a parlour where there were an old piano 
 and some young ladies, and these young ladies 
 sang him " 'Way down upon the Swanee River." 
 The lad was but seventeen when, to seek his home 
 
XII.] The Evening Call. 183 
 
 and future, he stepped down into the cold current 
 of that dreary stream. He says that the song, and 
 the kindness of the girls, warmed his chilled breast 
 as with a cordial. We do not think that families 
 have very much to fear from a very liberal opening 
 of doors to strangers. There are dangers in our 
 society, but things would not be helped by a more 
 rigorous examination of candidates for admission. 
 The probability is that if you do not like the 
 candidate he will not like you, and will take him- 
 self off before he can do you any harm. It is 
 quite as safe to trust a countenance as the word of 
 an introducer, though it is well to have both. The 
 introducer is liable to mistake. Moreover, you 
 have no security that the boy who grows up in 
 the next garden to your own may not turn out a 
 knave. We cannot but regret any movement that 
 tends to narrow the possibilities of intercourse. 
 Unluckily, it is our doom to know too few of the 
 admirable people who exist. 
 
 Society, as seen in the parlour of an American 
 house by the evening caller, is the social unit or 
 plenum — small enough to permit him to be a part 
 of it if he chooses, and so large that he may treat it 
 
184 The Evenijtg Call, [xii. 
 
 as a spectacle without being accused of staring. 
 It suits everybody, from the plainest youth with 
 the common gregarious instinct to the more con- 
 ceited person who looks on and admires. I believe 
 this simple institution is one of the best possible 
 tests of the moral health of any epoch of one's life. 
 There are two such gauges. If cur minds are not 
 open to nature, if it bores us to sit upon a fence 
 and look over a darkling country for an hour after 
 sunset (providing, of course, we have ever liked 
 that sort of thing), we may think that something is 
 the matter. This is a negative way of getting at 
 the truth. But in the presence of the pure and 
 beautiful our decadence is shown us plainly and 
 unequivocally. Take the parlour of some house- 
 hold where goodness and refinement are the family 
 dower, and the voices of shame and strife come 
 from the outside muffled through its windows and 
 walls. The mother is there, and she may remain 
 if she choses. The abolition of chaperonage has 
 robbed her of her terrors. If she has kindness, or 
 authority, or benignity, or any other beauty, we con- 
 sider her an acquisition. A father or brother is not 
 in the way. Then the daughters and sisters, or the 
 
xii.] TJie Evening Call, 185 
 
 cousins wlio are visiting, sing, or crochet, or talk, 
 or sit silent — it makes little difference which ; for, 
 if they have grace and innocence, we defy them to 
 move an arm, or thread a needle, or walk the 
 length of the room, without expressing it. There, 
 in the deep and tranquil scene before us, we see 
 written those stories of truth and purity that 
 happily we may so often read in the broad pages 
 of the book of human life. In such hours elevation 
 and sensibility come of course. How grateful we 
 are for whatever virtue we possess, how glad of 
 past self-denial ! But if the late months contain 
 an ugly recollection, how darkly it smites us that 
 the truth cannot be told in this fair company. 
 
OtLT Latest Notions of Republics. 
 
 There is something to me indescribably moving 
 in the attitude of sympathy, yet of separation, 
 which this country held towards Europe for the 
 first third of the present century. That con- 
 tinent was so far away we scarcely believed it to 
 exist ; yet in our remote happiness and security 
 we were unable for an hour to avert our eyes from 
 the drama of human fate enacted within its cities 
 and upon its plains. We later Americans can 
 scarcely understand the wonder and attention 
 with which the citizens of our earlier republic 
 looked upon Europe. When the young ladies of 
 that period gathered to tea-parties in my own 
 native village, it was under the very shadow of 
 the stone tower of the church where were said the 
 longest prayers in all Virginia, that they thumbed 
 
XIII.] Oitr Latest Notions of Repttblics. 187 
 
 albums containing pictures of Haidee and the 
 Maid of Athens ; and who was it but Byron, the 
 hbertine and sceptic, that they held in their dear 
 httle Presbyterian hearts ? My mother, in that 
 mountain home, sang of the loves of Josephine 
 and Napoleon, or thrummed upon the old piano 
 to the humming-bird in the honeysuckle vine, 
 the " Downfall of Paris." Thus did our early 
 republic, nestling along the edge of the great 
 unknown continent, hear the echoes of Europe. 
 Each wind that swept the sun-washed sea brought 
 tidings from the land of passion, and feud, and 
 discord, and ambition. Armies met and perished. 
 Patriots languished in prisons and expired upon 
 scaffolds. But no blight reached those happy 
 homes, only pity and enthusiasm. No rum.our 
 stirred for an hour the trance of our summer land- 
 scape. The mountains yet stood silent ; the spires 
 lingered in the virgin air ; still the wave of the 
 ocean lapped the long glistening line of sand that 
 rimmed our Atlantic border. 
 
 Our early attitude towards Europe was one 
 of separation. We admired Europe far more 
 than we do at present, yet at the same time we 
 
1 88 Our Latest Notions of Repitblics, [xiii. 
 
 were much farther away than now. We looked 
 on with wonder and sympathy, and yet all the 
 while prayed to be delivered from temptation. 
 Unable to take away our eyes, we crossed our- 
 selves. Mirabeau wrote a pamphlet in which he 
 warned us that in the Cincinnati Society (which 
 association, I believe, continues annually to eat a 
 dinner somewhere) we held the germ of an aris- 
 tocracy; and Virginia, with the charming simplicity 
 of the time, refused to retain a chapter for this 
 very reason. If you had told a patriot of that day 
 that his dream of a republic would be one easy 
 enough of accomplishment, that in fact it would 
 be no such great thing when attained, that kings 
 and lords were the simplest and most easily 
 mastered of the obstacles in the Avay of human 
 progress, that a state of society in which the 
 humblest citizen could be elected to office might 
 be a very immature one, you would have nearly 
 broken his heart. 
 
 The passion for the spread of political liberty, 
 so familiar to all cultivated and generous minds 
 during the first half of the present century, has 
 diminished very noticeably of late. Hardly a ves- 
 
XIII.] Oicr Latest Notions of Republics, 189 
 
 tige remains of that enthusiastic sympathy which 
 the people of that day gave to Greece and Poland. 
 It is but twenty years since Kossuth, it is but ten 
 since Garibaldi and the impulse of Italian unity. 
 So that only in the last decade of years has the 
 change of which we speak come over society. In 
 Europe the phenomenon may be in part explained 
 by the great interest the common people have 
 taken in social questions. But in this country 
 there has been much less interest in social ques- 
 tions, and we must look for some other explana- 
 tion of our apathy toward the spread of repub- 
 licanism abroad, and of our want of enthusiasm 
 and exultation over its indisputable establishment 
 at home. I think that the decline of our aspira- 
 tion for the spread and establishment of repub- 
 licanism is the result, first, of the sense of the 
 fulfilment of that aspiration, and, secondly, of the 
 fact that we had greatly over-estimated both the 
 difficulty and the importance of the task. America, 
 with whose movements Europe has always so 
 strongly sympathised, has had several kinds of 
 patriots. The patriot of the years following our 
 revolution was of a far more ardent and interest- 
 
190 Our Latest Notions of Republics, [xm. 
 
 ing type than his successor of the present day. 
 His task was almost as new as that of Columbus. 
 The world applauded, and admired, but doubted, 
 and it would have been strange had he not felt 
 the contagion of its disbelief. He believed, but be- 
 lieved with fear and trembling. He was full of fore- 
 bodings and warnings as to the fate of our liberties, 
 had the lessons of Greece and Rome continually 
 on his lips, and attached a superstitious value to 
 Washington's dying utterances. The early patriot 
 adored liberty, but with the ardour of the lover 
 for his almost unattainable mistress. The patriot 
 of the present has taken her, not for his sweetheart, 
 but for his comely and contented bride. Comfort- 
 ably he sits in dressing-gown and slippers, and, 
 without surprise or exultation, sees her who was 
 once his morning star tripping about his apart- 
 ment, hanging ornaments on the bare walls, dust- 
 ing away the cobwebs, and putting to rights on 
 doorstep and window-sill some disorderly things 
 which have long been a scandal and a reproach in 
 the eyes of certain aristocratic old maids over the 
 other way. Indeed, one might say that the patriot 
 of the present finds his vocation a dull one. With 
 
xm.] Oitr Latest Notions of Rep7iblics. 191 
 
 human ingratitude and obliviousness, he hardly 
 understands that he Is a very happy man. If you 
 tell him he is fortunate in his freedom from royalty 
 and hereditary aristocracy, he is rather surprised. 
 It is much as if the Swiss should congratulate him 
 on not having the goitre. Really that is one of 
 the things it had never occurred to him to be 
 thankful for. The American patriot of ten or 
 fifteen years ago was also a person of more vigour 
 and enthusiasm than the man of to-day. Politics 
 is with us a far less ardent and attractive field now 
 than then. It lacks, at present, the inspiration of 
 opposition to slavery. We all felt before the war 
 (those of us who dared dream of such an event) 
 that the abolition of slavery would make the 
 country happy and perfect. And during the war, 
 how looked then, in the future, the vine and fig- 
 tree under which the victors should one day cool 
 themselves ! How we heard the distant church 
 bells ringing, and saw far away the piping times 
 of peace, and the wide, brooding land grown 
 happier for ever. 
 
 It has all come to pass. Our dreams have been 
 more than fulfilled. We are rich and free, and 
 
192 Oti7' Latest Notions of Republics, [xiii. 
 
 wield a silent influence such as perhaps no other 
 country wields. But we have attained to this 
 only to find ourselves much duller, and no nearer 
 perfection than before, and to again confront tasks 
 of Herculean difficulty. In our pursuit of principles 
 which are new and true, we had forgotten some 
 that are old and equally true. We now call to 
 mind that no State can be happy in which there 
 are not wise and good men to direct and teach, 
 and in which other men are not willing to learn. 
 We have entire confidence in cur republican suc- 
 cess, and we know that, great as our difficulties 
 are, kings and lords cannot help us. It will come 
 right in the end, we are sure, with higher and 
 wider education, and that recognised supremacy 
 of an educated class which we once had, but 
 which we threw away. But our task is so grave 
 that we have little time or inclination for sympathy 
 with the impatience of otner countries. 
 
Rnglish Conservative Temper. 
 
 The English Conserv^atives have rather a temper 
 than a policy. In describing a Conservative, there- 
 fore, it is far more important to observe him than 
 to attempt a diagnosis of his opinions. He is 
 the balky horse of the team. And yet he is the 
 balky horse in front of a car that must go on. 
 Rear and plunge as he[ may, he must get ahead, 
 or the single-trees will be upon his heels. The 
 hard pulling has always been done by the Liberal 
 horse, the Tory steed trotting on sullenly by his 
 side. As soon as the Liberal animal stumbles or 
 shows signs of fatigue, the balky horse at once 
 begins to plunge in the most indignant and con- 
 temptuous manner, and to indicate to the charioteer 
 that if the coach is to proceed that stupid beast 
 must be unhitched. The Tory steed (which has 
 
 o 
 
194 English Conservative Temper, [xiv. 
 
 really considerable mettle and energy), finding 
 himself the sole reliance of the vehicle, strains 
 forward with all the strength he can command. 
 But the poor beast is nearly exhausted with the 
 struggle before the car has been got over a few 
 feet of ground. The Liberal horse must be again 
 called in ; sullenly the unhappy beast resumes his 
 reluctant jog. But we must not despise the Con- 
 servative horse. He has his uses. He is a good 
 war horse. When the car of state becomes an 
 artilleryman's carriage, he rattles it over the stones 
 in fine style. To change the figure somewhat, he 
 is no beast to carry on his back a tax-gatherer or 
 an educational reformer, or social philosopher 
 who turns his toes out. But when a soldier gets 
 astride of him he becomes a serviceable animal. 
 
 The Conservative party in England has always 
 been the party of objection and the party of 
 defeat. It has its important uses. It teaches 
 caution to those ^whom too much success would 
 render over confident. The flippancy, the jaunt- 
 ing, joking tone of men who think it scarcely 
 worth while that they should condescend to be 
 serious — that tone into which the successful majority 
 
XIV.] English Cofiservative Temper. 195 
 
 in our own civil struggle fell after the war was 
 over — an English party is rarely allowed to reach. 
 The evil to which men are prone as the sparks 
 fly upward is much too inevitable a matter to 
 permit the Conservative function to become an 
 obsolete one. It guards a wise and good impulse 
 from the old age of Solomon. The Conservative 
 party has, moreover, accidental allies in the caprice 
 of the people, in all sorts of rumours and humours. 
 There was evident in the recent crisis an irritable, 
 v/ilful disposition for change, as if the people were 
 tired of looking at Gladstone. They were like 
 untutored listeners at a concert of classical music ; 
 they enjoyed none of it, but when the orchestra 
 was playing they wished it was time for the sing- 
 ing, and when the prima donna was at her solo 
 they wanted the fiddles to begin again. But the 
 Conservative party must always be beaten. The 
 idea of reform has taken a permanent hold of the 
 English mind. All parties agree that progress is 
 the principle of government. The rankest Tory 
 in England holds that freedom should broaden 
 slowly down from precedent to precedent. He 
 only sticks at the particular reform. Reform is 
 
196 E^iglish Conservative Temper, [xiv. 
 
 a good thing: but he thinks that you must not 
 increase the suffrage, and you must not have the 
 ballot, and you must not disestablish the Irish 
 church. In a word, the Conservative party must 
 always have a policy at war with the necessary 
 and inevitable principle in the life of the state. 
 
Rnglish and Americait 
 Newspaper-ivriting. 
 
 The decorum which is characteristic of English 
 papers of the best class resides not so much in 
 the men who conduct them as in the audience to 
 which they are addressed. Were not such deco- 
 rum required from the outside, persons without 
 education and breeding would be sure, sooner or 
 later, to begin to write in papers ; indeed, educated 
 and well-bred men would soon cease to write 
 without decorum. It must be a man of uncommon 
 virtue and strength of judgment, who will write 
 in accordance with the principles of good sense 
 and good taste, unless those principles are pretty 
 well defined by society. What may and what 
 may not be said are pretty well understood by 
 
198 English and A^nerican [xv. 
 
 writers in England. The feeling of the limits put 
 upon them checks many a low impulse, dilutes the 
 gall dripping from many a pen ; while the con- 
 sciousness of a critical audience represses the 
 gush, folly, and pretence which impose upon the 
 ignorant. The best papers of England are read 
 by tradesmen, and perhaps by mechanics. But it 
 is not the tradesmen and mechanics who compel 
 the papers to take their sensible and decorous 
 tone. The barristers, the clergy, and the educated 
 men in general of England do this, and the mer- 
 chants and mechanics acquiesce. The English 
 have a larger class than we of men who ask of 
 any proposition or measure if it be true or right, 
 rather than if it be useful. Here, one is more 
 apt to belong to a clique, or to have an axe to 
 grind, or to have interests other than those of 
 opinion in the matter. Interested criticism, indeed, 
 is that heard everywhere most commonly ; but it is 
 still true that the number of men who care for 
 truth and justice, simply as truth and justice, is 
 smaller here than in England. An educated 
 Englishman, in expressing his opinion upon a 
 question which concerns his country and another 
 
XV.] Newspaper-writing. 199 
 
 country, will usually profess to exclude the con- 
 sideration that England is his country. I say 
 " profess ;" of course, he will not always — perhaps, 
 not often — do it, but an American will scarcely 
 profess to ignore his interest in the matter. This 
 is largely because higher education is more diffused 
 in England than here. Then it is true that edu- 
 cation necessitates a certain degree of honesty. 
 Even if the conscience of an educated and able man 
 does not make him truthful, the clearness of his 
 perceptions will often render it difficult for him to 
 be false. One evening, sitting in the gallery of the 
 House of Commons, I heard a striking example of 
 that candour in which educated men delight. An 
 opponent of the Government was upon the floor. 
 He was upbraiding the ministry for selling arms 
 just before the outbreak of the Franco-Prussian 
 war, at which event, he averred, nobody was or 
 could have been surprised. This was a round- 
 about way of intimating that he was not surprised, 
 and that he was a person of some foresight. Mr. 
 Lowe rose, and before proceeding to the matter of 
 the speech, dismissed the orator as follows : " Mr. 
 Speaker, the only criticism I have to make upon 
 
200 English and American [xv. 
 
 the gentleman is, that he expects everybody to be 
 as clever as himself. Because he descried in the 
 future the terrible war that has ravaged Europe, 
 saw Metz, saw Sedan, the capitulation of the 
 emperor, the fall of Paris, the Commune, and all 
 the rest of it, he thinks that I should have seen 
 all this too. Now, in all humility, I assure him 
 that I never expected anything of the sort. Mr. 
 Speaker, the whole thing has been a complete 
 surprise to me." The wit and truth of this were 
 irresistible. 
 
 Of course, there is wonderfully little stuff in the 
 usual editorial page of the usual high-class English 
 paper. P'or that matter, it is inevitable that there 
 shall be very little stuff in the editorial page of 
 almost any paper. The writing about this country 
 is very poor : it is not, as a usual thing, hostile or 
 spiteful ; it is rather feeble and inaccurate. The 
 best writers, those most ambitious really to com- 
 prehend the country, shoot wide of the mark. In 
 one way they have studied us pretty well. They 
 have read the " Federalist," Madison^s papers, &c., 
 and have quite a notion of State's rights and the 
 Monroe doctrine. But of the moods of the country 
 
XV.] Newspaper-writing, 201 
 
 and its physiognomy, of our public opinion and its 
 factors, they know Httle, and, as a rule, write ill A 
 man born and reared here, and accustomed to think 
 about his country, will detect constant little diver- 
 gencies from the truth. The pen of the writer is 
 incessantly glancing from reality, by spaces which 
 it would be difficult to define, and yet of which it 
 is impossible not to be conscious. Sometimes we 
 are treated to columns of pure guessing. But the 
 mass of English writing about America we should 
 describe rather as the " wishy-washy compli- 
 mentaiy." The chief editor of a journal says, 
 "America is a great country, and she must have 
 to-day a portion of our space." Accordingly, some 
 young gentleman is selected to maunder down a 
 column of loose, uncertain comment, which is not 
 to offend the Americans, who are touchy, nor to 
 tell the truth of them, of which last article they are 
 in possession of very little. 
 
 But when we turn to our own papers, we find 
 the editorial articles feebler than the English ones ; 
 while the propriety, scholar-like manner, and sem- 
 blance of fairness of the English press are gene- 
 rally wanting, And here I have an opportunity to 
 
202 English and American [xv. 
 
 speak of the affectation and insincerity so com- 
 mon in American editorial writing. 
 
 An editorial should be written to inform the 
 people concerning some question of the day, or 
 to counsel the public as to the course to be pursued 
 concerning it. A newspaper writer should speak 
 as if he were in a deliberative assembly, and the 
 question under discussion were to be voted upon. 
 How often does he so speak } Read through the 
 usual editorial, and ask yourself, " Now what shall 
 I do .'' " You find that you are as much in the 
 dark as ever. Suppose the Modoc war is to be 
 written upon. The gentleman or lady sits down 
 to the task, talks in a most superior manner, and 
 earns his or her ten, twenty, or thirty dollars a 
 column, whatever it may be, to the entire satisfac- 
 tion of the managers of the paper. But now take 
 the article to the Government authorities, and let 
 them educe a policy from it. The public func- 
 tionary must read a long time before he will dis- 
 cern whether or no he is to hang Captain Jack ; 
 whether, indeed, he is to do or to refrain from 
 doing anything in particular. 
 
 It is the faith of many newspapers that the 
 
XV.] Newspaper -writing. 203 
 
 people do not like sense and Information; that 
 they prefer nonsense or commonplace which has 
 the appearance of originality. Now I think that the 
 " average man " is very well contented with either. 
 He likes sense and information, if they are not 
 put in such a way as to tire or shock him. He 
 is willing enough to put up with commonplace 
 which imitates originality, for he finds nothing to 
 object to in the commonplaces, and he has not 
 sufficient confidence in his own judgment to 
 detect the counterfeit originality. But it is a 
 mistake to imagine that there is always a popular 
 demand for any foolish fashion of writing which 
 happens to exist. That very lack of discrimina- 
 tion which marks the uneducated man renders him 
 quite as ready to accept sense as nonsense. But 
 as nonsense only is given him, he accepts non- 
 sense. Who is he that he should set up his opinion 
 against persons who express themselves in such 
 fine and confident words, whose sentences are 
 printed in such elegant type, in papers sold at 
 such grand hotels, and scattered by the thousand 
 in such great cities t What is known as a popular 
 demand might be more accurately described as 
 
204 E7iglish and American [xy. 
 
 a popular acquiescence. It seems very formidable 
 when we think of the immense number of persons 
 who form it; but then it is only skin deep. In- 
 stead of a popular state of mind being, as we 
 are apt to think it, a recondite and almost inscrut- 
 able matter, it is oftener the result of an obvious 
 and even contemptible cause. Instead of there 
 being a deep-seated and characteristic taste with 
 which public caterers must comply, the fashion is 
 often given the people from above. After the 
 fashion is fixed, men write in accordance with it, 
 and explain its existence by the fiction of a 
 demand. The qualities at which editorial writers 
 may aim are sense, thoroughness, and good taste. 
 Now and then they may be eloquent, and now 
 and then they may be witty. But wit and 
 eloquence must be the incidents, and not the 
 staple, of an editor's work. If we try to have 
 it otherwise, at the best we can only have sham 
 wit and sham eloquence, which are not only false, 
 hurtful to the writer and hurtful to the reader, 
 but must be quite as tiresome as honest common- 
 places. 
 
 It is natural that an editor should be more 
 
XV.] Newspaper-writing. 205 
 
 anxious that his labour appear good than be good. 
 He has special temptations to this sort of work. 
 He is paid less for the inherent than for the 
 apparent value of his contributions. A lawyer's 
 work is good when he wins his case, a doctor's 
 when he cures his patient ; but there is no such 
 test for the work of an editor. " Do people like 
 to read it.?" is the ultimate question; and what 
 people like to read cannot easily be known with 
 certainty. As we are confident, however, that 
 sense and thoroughness must be acknowledged, 
 we marvel that writers are not more willing to 
 rely upon honest work and to be content with 
 it. But that is the last thing they are willing 
 to rely upon. They must have an out-of-the-way 
 title. They miust torture the jaded humour into 
 some feverish antics. They must put their trust 
 in affected wisdom and affected fine moral senti- 
 ments. One peculiarity of their way of writing 
 is a certain tone of infinite knowingness. A fact 
 is told you, but it is parenthetically insinuated 
 that the writer's general knowledge of the sub- 
 ject is simply boundless. Is he to write upon 
 the Eastern question, and has he heard for the 
 
2o6 English and Ameidcan [xy, 
 
 first time of General Ignatieff, he begins as follows : 
 " Well, in spite of the wily Russian who repre- 
 sents the Czar in Constantinople," &c. Very few 
 of the English papers, except the vulgarest, exhibit 
 this peculiar form of nonsense in their treatment 
 of questions of politics ; but the best papers occa- 
 sionally do something very like it in their criticisms 
 of art and literature. The imitators of these critics 
 in this country are, however, quite even with them. 
 A friend of mine, who is an editor, sent me a book 
 of poems to review, with the request that I should 
 make the article "dignified." I knew very well 
 what he meant by this prescription. I was to talk 
 as if I were not only familiar with the subject in 
 hand, but with pretty much every other. I was 
 to be very confident ; here and there derisive, here 
 and there ecstatic, but always absolute ; and each 
 paragraph, as I left it, was to stand up and quiver 
 with a gelatinous consistency, galvanised by the 
 energy of my mind and hand. 
 
 One would naturally wish to speak only when 
 one can speak strongly, and with precision and 
 certainty. The seemly man is he who is silent 
 when his thought is immature. He is not likely 
 
XV.] Newspaper-W7'iting, 207 
 
 to ofifend his own self-esteem, nor to lower him- 
 self in the opinion of the clear-sighted. But the 
 seemly silent man and the unseemly speaker 
 are alike immature. We merely see the one state 
 of mind, while we do not see the other. One 
 confesses the mental condition, which the other 
 equally possesses. So long as the speaker does 
 not lay claim to a certainty which he has not, 
 he is really as good a man, and, if not so seemly, 
 as dignified as the other. It is one's duty at 
 times to write ill. A newspaper contributor must 
 constantly write upon subjects of which his know- 
 ledge is imperfect, and of which his opinion is 
 immature. It cannot be otherwise. And why 
 should writers wish to make it appear otherwise } 
 You consult a paper with the same intent with 
 which you ask the opinion of an intelligent friend. 
 You do not wish your wiser friend to decide the 
 matter for you ; you ask him to throw light upon 
 it. If he has no definite opinion to give you, 
 you wish the stimulus of a common sympathy 
 and a common curiosity. You ask the same 
 of a newspaper. The writer need not be omnis- 
 cient ; if he be eager and interested the reader 
 
2o8 English and American Newspapers, [xv. 
 
 will be eager and interested. The disposition in 
 newspapers to appear wiser than they are is 
 therefore not only immoral, but, I believe, inex- 
 pedient. 
 
Americans Abroad. 
 
 Many sorts of Americans are to be seen in Europe. 
 There are those who live there and have a hold 
 upon society. These are the privileged few ; and 
 some of them are very nice people and do us 
 credit. But even these are not quite so nice 
 and certainly not so useful and considerable a,s 
 if they lived at home. For a foreigner is always 
 at a disadvantage. He is tied to the country in 
 which he is resident neither by his past nor by 
 his future, and is therefore not important to it. 
 Even an eminent foreigner cannot hold abroad the 
 place he has at home. He has done something in 
 his own country, and is of some value there ; he 
 will be apt to be of very little value elsewhere. So 
 that it is certainly true that a man loses in social 
 density by having his residence in a land other 
 
2IO Americans Abroad, [xvi. 
 
 than his own. Men who desire achievement and 
 consideration should live at home. No country, 
 not even our own, is hospitable to foreigners as 
 such ; our ladies are glad enough to have a count 
 at their houses, but I never hear that they put 
 themselves to much trouble to seek out young 
 strangers who are over here making their way. 
 
 But there are certain other Americans (and this 
 class is much larger than the foregoing) who count 
 upon their fingers the grafs and princes they know. 
 They are very unhappy people. Their unhappi- 
 ness does not consist in the illusive and unsatis- 
 factory nature of the phantoms they pursue so 
 much as in the agonising self-inquiry of which 
 they are the subjects. They never cease to 
 interrogate themselves with one form of ancient 
 question, "What am I.?^' They ask not "Am 
 I virtuous.?'' "Am I right.?'' but "Am I genteel.?" 
 " Do I possess that peculiar constitution of mind 
 which, in the illustrious circles of the Old World, 
 makes me * one of them .? ' " This question is never 
 answered. If it were only a tangible society the 
 inquirer was in search of, his condition would not 
 be so wretched ; he is condemned, however, to 
 
XVI.] Americans Abroad. 211 
 
 imitate the pursuit of the dog who ran round after 
 his own tail. Alas, if men could but devote to 
 the pursuit of goodness and knowledge the sensi- 
 tiveness of conscience, the earnestness, the profound 
 desire and dissatisfaction with which they ask to 
 be genteel ! 
 
 Some thirty years ago the English were the great 
 travellers of Europe. They overran the Continent. 
 Many of these tourists were of a sort to make 
 Frenchmen and Italians wonder what manner of 
 men the English were. But the fact of such people 
 getting abroad was altogether to the advantage of 
 the English. Persons of corresponding position on 
 the Continent would never have got beyond their 
 own thresholds. Of late years, however, the 
 Americans send abroad more travellers and 
 spend more money in foreign lands than any 
 other people. Wealth having in this country, far 
 more than in England, lost significance, any sort 
 of people here go abroad. It is greatly to the 
 credit, or, at least, to the advantage of this 
 country, that such people can prosper and be 
 happy. It is true, however, that we have very 
 often cause to be ashamed of our brethren in 
 
212 Americans Abroad, [xvi. 
 
 Europe. Why is it that Americans look so much 
 worse abroad than at home ? The truth is, I 
 suppose, that we see a worse class than we see 
 at home, or see more of them, and that we see 
 them under circumstances which are not in their 
 favour. 
 
 As I have before said, any foreigner is seen at a 
 disadvantage in a country not his own. He is 
 especially at a disadvantage, if he lacks social 
 education. He is amid circumstances to which he 
 is not accustomed, and if there is any vulgarity in 
 him it is sure to come out. Indeed, if he have 
 none, he is likely to adopt a little for present use. 
 A civilised instinct is possibly the cause of some of 
 his mistakes. He is alone, would like acquaint- 
 ance, and is not judicious in his advances. There 
 are some things which the wariest traveller will 
 have to learn. One is that it will not do to be 
 candid ; an Englishman, Frenchman, or German 
 quite as much objects to be told anything ill of his 
 country as an American. A foreigner should 
 admire ; even guarded and discriminating praise 
 from him is not usually acceptable. I believe 
 that one other mistake with which an American 
 
XVI.] Americans Abroad, 213 
 
 goes abroad for the first time Is, that because he 
 lives in an important country he is entitled to more 
 respect than men who live in smaller countries like 
 Holland or Belgium. A little thought should teach 
 him that this cannot be ; that one's nationality- 
 must be, of course, a very small ingredient among 
 the considerations that go to make up his pre- 
 sentibility. Is he good-looking, is he rich, well- 
 mannered, amusing, learned, clever? These are 
 the questions which society asks, and not, " What 
 is his country V^ But an American's chief danger 
 in Europe is that his energy and want of occupation 
 may hurry him into improprieties and vulgarities. 
 I know it is true that Americans who have lived 
 long about the European capitals, and who have 
 nothing to do, are not energetic people. There are 
 many of our countrymen, loiterers in the foreign 
 cities, who have learned to suffer in silence the 
 ennui and stupefaction which idleness generates. 
 Never having learned the pleasure of labour, and 
 fancying that they cannot work as other men do, 
 they give themselves up to an unhealthful indo- 
 lence, of which they do not admit to themselves 
 even the wretchedness. I have seen a man kept 
 
214 Americans Abroad, [xvi. 
 
 out of Paris by circumstances he could not control, 
 varying the monotony of existence in the fol- 
 lowing manner : One day he has his chop at 
 Simpson's in the Strand, and his supper at the 
 Pall Mall Restaurant ; the next he has lunch 
 at the Rainbow (calling for porter which he does 
 not like, but which he understands should be had 
 at the Rainbow) ; in the evening he dines at the 
 Blue Post and has whitebait. So he goes on from 
 day to day, exhausting one by one the experiences 
 of the universe. 
 
 But the usual American abroad is not this sort 
 of man, and has temptations of a different kind. 
 The more he is able to rest the better for him. 
 One danger is that his impatience and activity 
 will carry him into scenes livelier than the above, 
 but not so moral. Especially he should beware 
 of too great a desire to know the world and to 
 "study society .^^ Every reader is familiar with 
 that strong feeling of obligation resting upon 
 him to acquaint himself with certain French 
 novels ("an educated man should know these 
 things '') before he has read much more famous 
 works of a less peculiar character. In the same 
 
XVI.] Americans Abroad, 215 
 
 way it is surprising to find what opportunities for 
 the student of man the casinos and other places 
 of the kind seem to afford. It is not unusual to 
 see at the Argyll, just when the dancing is the 
 wildest, and the dull electricity in the atmosphere 
 the most palpable, the really honest traveller from 
 America — a Sunday-school teacher, likely — " sur- 
 veying mankind from China to Peru,^^ &c., and 
 looking on with a countenance expressive of 
 edification and enlightenment I had here better 
 amend a remark made above. I spoke of the 
 innocent and dull delights of certain feeble idlers. 
 I meant to pass no encomiums upon the morality 
 of American idlers in Europe. The tendency of 
 the sort of life led by these persons, especially 
 when unmarried, is to produce a certain type of 
 man of which one sees a great deal — a sort of 
 cross between a roue and an old maid. 
 
 It is certainly true that our people do not look 
 to such advantage abroad as at home. I presume 
 the reason of that is, in part, that here we form 
 intimate acquaintanceships with people whom we 
 like, and these stand for America to our minds 
 and " wall us out " from the inferior sort we meet 
 
2i6 Americans Abroad. [xvi. 
 
 abroad. What a delight it is for the sojourner in 
 a foreign land to meet a really charming American 
 family, with beauty, sense, refinement, and kind- 
 ness ! These people are happy to see the fine 
 things Europe has to show them, and will be 
 happy, likewise, to go back to the land which their 
 absence has made lonely. I have no words to 
 offer such as these. But other good persons, with 
 minds less firm and hearts less refined, may reflect 
 with advantage to themselves concerning the 
 manners and the state of mind with wliich to 
 travel. 
 
Society m- New York and Fiction. 
 
 I HAVE heard young persons who contemplate 
 writing" an American novel, or who are interested 
 in the literature of this country, speak of the 
 material there is in New York society for the 
 writer of fiction. It seems to be thought that 
 certain people living among us may be made to 
 have, as members of society, an interest separate 
 from that we feel in them as men and women. 
 A great many good and amusing books have been 
 written about London and Paris society ; why may 
 not such books be written about New York 
 society ? Now I wish to show that there is no 
 society in New York which corresponds to that 
 of London or Paris, and that any writer who 
 attempts to make the idea that there is the key- 
 note of his work will be likely to produce a silly, 
 
2 1 8 Society i?i New Yo7'k and Fiction, [xyii. 
 
 vulgar book. Apart from the harm to the writer 
 of such a misconception, it is not well to be putting 
 into the heads of people, the countiy through, 
 notions which have no actual truth. And be it 
 observed that I am now discussing only a question 
 of fact. Whether or no there should be such 
 societies, or whether, where they exist, they do 
 good or harm, I do not say. I only say that 
 there is no such society among us, and that 
 novelists should not write as if there were. But 
 the fact is not of literary importance only ; if it 
 be a fact, it should be recognised and accepted by 
 the country. 
 
 It would be difficult to discuss this subject 
 without some reference to democracy, the triumph 
 of which in this country has been so complete. 
 There are yet some unreasonable discriminations 
 concerning employments among us, but it is 
 certain that the movement of public sentiment 
 has been strongly and rapidly towards democracy. 
 There was, during the early years of our existence, 
 an approach to a national aristocratic society in 
 this country. A governor or a senator, a judge, 
 commodore, or a general, was an aristocrat. Any- 
 
xvji.] Society ill New Yo7'k and Fictiofi. 219 
 
 body who represented or reflected the dignity of 
 government was an aristocrat. This feehng con- 
 tinued till near the middle of the century, or until 
 the second generation of statesmen had dis- 
 appeared. It has gone now " where the woodbine 
 twineth/^ to use the significant expression of the 
 significant Jim Fisk. The extreme weakness of 
 the aristocratic element among us at present is in 
 part — in very small part — to be explained by the 
 want of respect in our people. A plain man in 
 this country cares nothing for the man who is 
 above him ; is rather proud, and believes it to 
 be a virtue, that he does not care. Nor does 
 it appear a thing to be regretted that such a 
 state of mind exists in the humbler citizen towards 
 the greater one. It is well to have A admire B, 
 if B is a person of superior rectitude, energy, and 
 intelligence. But what advantage will it be to 
 society to have A admire B because B lives in 
 a better house, and may have a better dinner 
 than K> 
 
 There is no need to put the cart before the 
 horse. The value of veneration among the masses 
 of men is obvious where they have anything to 
 
2 20 Society in New York and Fictio7t. [xvii. 
 
 venerate. And there can be no ^vant of the 
 capacity for respect among our people. Some 
 story now and then is told which discloses the 
 vast reverence in which Hamilton and Jefferson, 
 and later, Clay and Webster, were held by 
 the Americans of their time. " Break up the 
 great Whig party,^^ said Webster on one occasion, 
 "and where am I to go?" I remember to have 
 heard my father, who was an old-line Whig and 
 an adherent of Webster, say that Webster admired 
 Isaiah. The impression made upon me at the 
 time was very distinct. I thought how conceited 
 the prophet would be were he only aware of the 
 great man^s eccentric partiality. 
 
 A writer has spoken of this country as one in 
 which superiorities are neither coveted nor re- 
 spected. That is not true ; real superiorities are 
 certainly respected. The few that we have are, 
 perhaps, respected too much. Americans having 
 acquired the just idea that ]\Ir. Emerson is a great 
 man, proceed to let him do tlieir thinking for them. 
 The bulk of our reading people know enough to 
 recognise what is excellent, but have not the 
 critical self-confidence which is the property of 
 
XVII.] Society in Nezv York and Fiction. 221 
 
 educated men. They therefore fail to insist upon 
 the fact that the greatest men have their Hmita- 
 tions and cannot include everything, but in a kind 
 of dazed reverie, like that of a patient in typhoid, 
 accept whatever is told them. So it is not true 
 that there is a want of respect among people in 
 this country to those who deserve respect : the 
 contrary is the fact 
 
 The national aristocratic society has disappeared 
 with the disappearance of respect for the politician. 
 What is called " position " is in this country now 
 altogether local. This is necessarily true. A is 
 knov/n among his neighbours as a rich and decent 
 person ; his wife and daughters are " nice ^^ (the 
 American for "noble ^^), either absolutely or rela- 
 tively to the people about them. A has position, 
 therefore, in his own town ; if he moves elsewhere 
 he does not inevitably take it with him. Now, in 
 very little and very simple communities, these ideas 
 of position and precedence are not important. In 
 a very great place, on the other hand, few men 
 are large enough to be seen over the whole town. 
 As a consequence, we see that New York is 
 perhaps the most democratic town in the country. 
 
2 22 Society in New York and Fiction, [xvii. 
 
 It has become so during- the years in which it 
 has been shooting into a position of such national 
 and cosmopoHtan importance. It is now quite 
 as democratic a place as the inevitable varieties 
 of accident and talent among men will permit it 
 to be. The artifice of exclusiveness, which is sure 
 to succeed in a smaller place, will not do here. 
 People greatly desire to do what they find difficult 
 to do. They do not care at all to do what they 
 know they may do. Accordingly, in a town, or 
 city of moderate size, the people who wish to be 
 thought better than their neighbours, and who have 
 some little advantages to start with, are wise to 
 keep to themselves. They thus prevent their 
 neighbours from finding out that the excluded 
 and the exclusives are just alike. They have for 
 their ally that profound want of confidence of 
 ordinary people in their own perceptions. But 
 this is a device which will not do in a city of the 
 size and wide-reaching importance of New York. 
 What will some mover of commerce or politics 
 over the face of the country care for the opinion 
 of the gentlewoman round the corner, who thinks 
 him vulgar ? 
 
XVII.] Society in New York and Fiction. 223 
 
 Thus we see it to be impossible that any domi- 
 nant society may exist in this country. The 
 recognition of this fact should teach quiet to people 
 Inclined to be restless. It need not be unwelcome 
 to the friend of man, for he will remember that 
 democracy does not mean the triumph of utility 
 over dignity and refinement, but that it means 
 dignity and refinement for the many. Writers of 
 fiction may regret the want of diversity and 
 picturesqueness which the fact involves, but it is 
 always well to know the truth ; if they desire to 
 avoid vulgarity and the waste of such opportunities 
 as they have, they must heed it. To make men 
 and v/omen interesting as members of society is 
 denied them ; but should these vmters have the 
 wit to paint men and women as they are, the field 
 is wide enough. There are on all sides people who 
 are charming to contemplate, and whom it should 
 be a pleasure to describe. 
 
 THE END. 
 
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