The territory has a singular perfection. Neither hot nor cold, there is no hour in the whole year when one cannot work. The only drawback to industrial conveniency is the darkness of the sky. The night and day are too nearly of a colour.
England resembles a ship in shape, and, if it were one, its best admiral could not have anchored it in a more judicious or effective position. The shop-keeping nation, to use a shop word, has a good stand. It is anchored at the side of Europe, and right in the heart of the modern world.
In variety of surface Britain is a miniature of Europe, as if Nature had given it an artificial completeness. It is as if Nature had held counsel with herself and said: "My Romans are gone. To build my new empire I will choose a rude race, all masculine, with brutish strength. Sharp and temperate northern breezes shall blow to keep them alive and alert. The sea shall disjoin the people from others and knit them by a fierce nationality. Long time will I keep them on their feet, by poverty, border-wars, seafaring, sea-risks, and stimulus of gain." A singular coincidence to this geographic centrality is the spiritual centrality which Emanuel Swedenborg ascribes to the people: "The English nation are in the centre of all Christians, because they have an interior intellectual light. This light they derive from the liberty of speaking and writing, and thereby of thinking."
II.—Racial Characteristics
The British Empire is reckoned to contain a fifth of the population of the globe; but what makes the British census proper important is the quality of the units that compose it. They are free, forcible men in a country where life has reached the greatest value. They have sound bodies and supreme endurance in war and in labour. They have assimilating force, since they are imitated by their foreign subjects; and they are still aggressive and propagandist, enlarging the dominion of their arts and liberty.
The English composite character betrays a mixed origin. Everything English is a fusion of distant and antagonistic elements. The language is mixed; the currents of thought are counter; contemplation and practical skill; active intellect and dead conservatism; world-wide enterprise and devoted use and wont; a country of extremes—nothing in it can be praised without damning exceptions, and nothing denounced without salvos of cordial praise.
The sources from which tradition derives its stock are mainly three: First, the Celtic—a people of hidden and precarious genius; second, the Germans, a people about whom, in the old empire, the rumour ran there was never any that meddled with them that repented it not; and, third, the Norsemen and the children out of France. Twenty thousand thieves landed at Hastings. These founders of the House of Lords were greedy and ferocious dragoons, sons of greedy and ferocious pirates. Such, however, is the illusion of antiquity and wealth that decent and dignified men now existing actually boast their descent from these filthy thieves.
As soon as this land, thus geographically posted, got a hardy people into it, they could not help becoming the sailors and factors of the world. The English, at the present day, have great vigour of body. They are round, ruddy, and handsome, with a tendency to stout and powerful frames. It is the fault of their forms that they grow stocky, but in all ages they are a handsome race, and please by an expression blending good nature, valour, refinement, and an uncorrupt youth in the face of manhood.
The English are rather manly than warlike. They delight in the antagonism which combines in one person the extremes of courage and tenderness. Nelson, dying at Trafalgar, says, "Kiss me, Hardy," and turns to sleep. Even for their highwaymen this virtue is claimed, and Robin Hood is the gentlest thief. But they know where their war-dogs lie, and Cromwell, Blake, Marlborough, Nelson, and Wellington are not to be trifled with.