English Courage in Emigration.
I began by saying that this was an extreme instance, and so it is, but there are thousands of others that show the English facility of removal in minor degrees. Nothing is more characteristic of the English, or more unlike the French, than the courage to go and settle in some place where they know nobody and with which they have no previous associations. French people do it when forced by necessity, but they do it with a sad heart; English people of their own free will have the courage to sever old ties and begin new experiments of life.
A Recent Characteristic.
Local, National, and Imperial Patriotism.
The extreme readiness of the modern English to change their residence is a recently-developed characteristic. It has grown with the modern facilities of communication. Sons and daughters disperse and settle anywhere. In wealthy families the eldest son retains possession of the paternal home, but seldom steadily settles down to live in it, whilst his brothers and sisters scatter themselves over the counties. The affectionate prejudices of local patriotism have given place to a broader national patriotism which, in its turn, is even now giving way to a still more comprehensive Imperial patriotism. It is a change by which the English have gained in grandeur of conception what they have lost in tenderness of feeling.
Irish Tenderness.
Pathetic Feeling and its Causes.
Pathetic Element in Scottish Patriotism.
Amongst the nations under the British crown there is one that still retains that tenderness in perfection. The Irish people have it, and they even keep it in exile. The reason evidently is that Ireland is a small well-defined nation, separated from England by salient national characteristics, and a nation which for a long time has been poor, unhappy, and ill-used. Here are all the influences that increase the pathetic tenderness of patriotic feeling. If ever Ireland becomes rich and happy her patriotism may be quite as powerful, quite as genuine, but it will lose that intense pathos.[17] The pathetic element in Scottish patriotism was most intense when Scotland was poor, when the science and industry of her sons had not yet compensated for the barrenness of her soil.
Wordsworth.