I did not find the Aristocracy so remarkable for physical perfection and beauty as I had been taught to expect. Some of them are large, well formed and vigorous; but I think the caste is not noticeably so. Among the ladies of "gentle blood," however, there is more of the asserted aristocratic symmetry and beauty than among the men.
The general stiffness of English manners has often been noted. Not that a gentleman is aught but a gentleman anywhere, but courtesy is certainly not the Englishman's best point. No where else will a perplexed stranger inquiring his way receive more surly answers or oftener be refused any answer at all than in London. Even the policeman who is paid to direct you, replies to your inquiry with the shortest and gruffest monosyllable that will do.
Awkwardness of manner pervades all classes; the most thoroughly natural, modest and easy mannered man I met was a Duke, whose ancestors had been dukes for many generations; but some of the most elaborately ill bred men I met also inherited titles of nobility. And, while I have been thrown into the company of Englishmen of all ranks who were cordial, kind, and every way models of good breeding, I have also met here more constitutionally arrogant and, unbearable persons than had crossed my path in all my previous experience. These, too, are found in all ranks; I think the Military service exhibits some of the worst specimens. But Bull in authority anywhere is apt to exhibit his horns to those whom he suspects of being nobodies. Elevation is unpropitious to the display of his more amiable qualities.
I have elsewhere spoken of the indifferent figure made by most Englishmen at public speaking. Many of them say good things; hardly one delivers them aptly or gracefully. Any Frenchman having Lord Granville's brains would make a great deal more out of them in a speech. I attribute this National defect to two causes; first, the habitually prosaic level of British thought and conversation; next, the intense pride which is also a National characteristic. John is called out at a festive gathering, and springs to his feet really intending to be clever. But the next moment the thought strikes him—"This is beneath my dignity, after all. Why should I subject myself to miscellaneous criticism? Why put myself on the verdict of this crowd? Does it become a gentleman of my standing to fish for their plaudits? What will success amount to, if attained?" Or else he criticises his own thoughts and meditated forms of expression, pronounces them tame, trite or feeble, and recoils from their enunciation as unworthy of his abilities, position and reputation. The result is the same in either case—he hesitates, blunders, chokes, and finally stammers out a few sentences and subsides into his seat, sweating at every pore, red-faced with chagrin, vexed with himself and every body else on account of his failure, which might not have occurred, and certainly would not have been so palpable, had his self-consciousness been less diseased and extravagant.
I have said that the British are not in manner a winning people. Their self-conceit is the principal reason. They have solid and excellent qualities, but their self-complacency is exorbitant and unparalleled. The majority are not content with esteeming Marlborough and Wellington the greatest Generals and Nelson the first Admiral the world ever saw, but claim alike supremacy for their countrymen in every field of human effort. They deem Machinery and Manufactures, Railroads and Steamboats, essentially British products. They regard Morality and Philanthropy as in effect peculiar to "the fast anchored isle," and Liberty as an idea uncomprehended, certainly unrealized, any where else. They are horror-stricken at the toleration of Slavery in the United States, in seeming ignorance that our Congress has no power to abolish it and that their Parliament, which had ample power, refused to exercise it through generations down to the last quarter of a century. They cannot even consent to go to Heaven on a road common to other nations, but must seek admission through a private gate of their own, stoutly maintaining that their local Church is the very one founded by the Apostles, and that all others are more or less apostate and schismatic. Other Nations have their weak points—the French, Glory; the Spaniards, Orthodoxy; the Yankees, Rapacity; but Bull plunders India and murders Ireland, yet deems himself the mirror of Beneficence and feeds his self-righteousness by resolving not to fellowship slaveholders of a different fashion from himself; he is perpetually fighting and extending his possessions all over the globe, yet wondering that French and Russian ambition will keep the world always in hot water. Our Yankee self-conceit and self-laudation are immoderate; but nobody else is so perfect on all points—himself being the judge—as Bull.
There is one other aspect of the British character which impressed me unfavorably. Everything is conducted here with a sharp eye to business. For example, the manufacturing and trafficking classes are just now enamored of Free Trade—that is, freedom to buy raw staples and sell their fabrics all over the world—from which they expect all manner of National and individual benefits. In consequence, these classes seize every opportunity, however unsuitable, to commend that policy to the strangers now among them as dictated by wisdom, philanthropy and beneficence, and to stigmatize its opposite as impelled by narrow-minded selfishness and only upheld by prejudice and ignorance. The French widow who appended to the high-wrought eulogium engraved on her husband's tombstone that "His disconsolate widow still keeps the shop No 16 Rue St. Denis," had not a keener eye to business than these apostles of the Economic faith. No consideration of time or place is regarded; in festive meetings, peace conventions, or gatherings of any kind, where men of various lands and views are notoriously congregated, and where no reply could be made without disturbing the harmony and distracting the attention of the assemblage, the disciples of Cobden are sure to interlard their harangues with advice to foreigners substantially thus—"N. B. Protection is a great humbug and great waste. Better abolish your tariffs, stop your factories and buy at our shops. We're the boys to give you thirteen pence for every shilling." I cannot say how this affected others, but to me it seemed hardly more ill-mannered than impolitic.
Yet the better qualities in the English character decidedly preponderate. Naturally, this people love justice, manly dealing, fair play; and though I think the shop-keeping attitude is unfavorable to this tendency, it has not effaced it. The English have too much pride to be tricky or shabby, even in the essentially corrupting relation of buyer and seller. And the Englishman who may be repulsive in his out-of-door intercourse or spirally inclined in his dealings, is generally tender and truthful in his home. There only is he seen to the best advantage. When the day's work is over and the welcome shelter of his domestic roof is attained, he husks off his formality with his great-coat and appears to his family and his friends in a character unknown to the outer world. The quiet comfort and heartfelt warmth of an English fireside must be felt to be appreciated. These Britons, like our own people, are by nature not demonstrative; they do not greet their wives before strangers with a kiss, on returning from the day's business, as a Frenchman may do; and if very glad to see you on meeting, they are not likely to say so in words; but they cherish warm emotions under a hard crust of reserve and shyness, and lavish all their wealth of affection on the little band collected within the magic circle of Home. Said an American who had spent two years as a public lecturer throughout Great Britain: "Circumstances have introduced me favorably to the intimacy and regard of many English families, and I can scarcely recollect one which was not in its own sphere, a model household." My own opportunities have been very limited, yet so far as they go they tend to maintain the justice of this remark. There are of course exceptions, but they would be more abundant elsewhere. And I regard the almost insuperable obstacles here interposed to the granting of Divorces, no matter on what grounds, as one cause of the general harmony and happiness of English homes.
But I must not linger. The order to embark is given; our good ship Baltic is ready; another hour and I shall have left England and this Continent, probably for ever. With a fervent good-bye to the friends I leave on this side of the Atlantic, I turn my steps gladly and proudly toward my own loved Western home—toward the land wherein Man enjoys larger opportunities than elsewhere to develop the better and the worse aspects of his nature, and where Evil and Good have a freer course, a wider arena for their inevitable struggles, than is allowed them among the heavy fetters and cast-iron forms of this rigid and wrinkled Old World. Doubtless, those struggles will long be arduous and trying: doubtless, the dictates of Duty will there often bear sternly away from the halcyon bowers of Popularity; doubtless, he who would be singly and wholly right must there encounter ordeals as severe as those which here try the souls of the would-be champions of Progress and Liberty. But Political Freedom, such as white men enjoy in the United States, and the mass do not enjoy in Europe, not even in Britain, is a basis for confident and well-grounded hope; the running stream, though turbid, tends ever to self-purification; the obstructed, stagnant pool grows daily more dank and loathsome. Believing most firmly in the ultimate and perfect triumph of Good over Evil, I rejoice in the existence and diffusion of that Liberty which, while it intensifies the contest, accelerates the consummation. Neither blind to her errors nor a pander to her vices, I rejoice to feel that every hour henceforth till I see her shores must lessen the distance which divides me from my country, whose advantages and blessings this four months' absence has taught me to appreciate more clearly and to prize more deeply than before. With a glow of unwonted rapture I see our stately vessel's prow turned toward the setting sun, and strive to realize that only some ten days separate me from those I know and love best on earth. Hark! the last gun announces that the mail-boat has left us, and that we are fairly afloat on our ocean journey: the shores of Europe recede from our vision; the watery waste is all around us; and now, with God above and Death below, our gallant bark and her clustered company together brave the dangers of the mighty deep. May Infinite Mercy watch over our onward path and bring us safely to our several homes; for to die away from home and kindred seems one of the saddest calamities that could befall me. This mortal tenement would rest uneasily in an ocean shroud; this spirit reluctantly resign that tenement to the chill and pitiless brine; these eyes close regretfully on the stranger skies and bleak inhospitality of the sullen and stormy main. No! let me see once more the scenes so well remembered and beloved; let me grasp, if but once again, the hand of Friendship and hear the thrilling accents of proved Affection, and when sooner or later the hour of mortal agony shall come, let my last gaze be fixed on eyes that will not forget me when I am gone, and let my ashes repose in that congenial soil which, however I may there be esteemed or hated, is still
"My own green land forever!"