They experience a gratification when a rich man dies, that the wonder will now be solved as to the amount of his property; and when a man fails in business, that it is now made clear—what has so long perplexed them—'how he managed to live so extravagantly!' See them at an agricultural fair, and they will be found examining the 'mammoth squashes' and various products of prodigious growth—or they will install themselves as self-appointed exhibiter of the 'Fat Baby,' to inform the incredulous how much it weighs! See them at a conflagration, and they wonder what was the cause of the fire, and how far it will extend?
They long to travel, that they may visit 'mammoth caves' and 'Giant's Causeways.' We talk of the 'Seven Wonders of the World,' while to them there is a successive series for every day in the year—putting to the blush our meagre stock of monstrosities—making 'Ossa like a wart.' Nothing gratifies them more than the issuing from the press of an anonymous work, that they may exert their ingenuity in endeavoring to discover the author; and, when called on for information on the subject, prove conclusively to every one but themselves, that they know nothing whatever about the matter.
The ocean is to them only wonderful as the abode of 'Leviathans,' and 'Sea Serpents,' 'Krakens,' and 'Mermaids'—abounding in 'Mäelstroms' and sunken islands, and traversed by 'Phantom Ships' and 'Flying Dutchmen' in perpetual search for some 'lost Atlantis;'—all well-attested incredibilities, certified to by the 'affidavits of respectable eye-witnesses,' and, we might add, by 'intelligent contrabands,'—and all in strict conformity with the convenient aphorism 'Credo quia impossibile est.' They are ever ready to bestow their amazement upon a fresh miracle as soon as the present has had its day—like the man who, being landed at some distance by the explosion of a juggler's pyrotechnics, rubbed his eyes open, and exclaimed, 'I wonder what the fellow will do next!'
If a steamboat explodes her boiler, or the walls of a factory fall, burying hundreds in the ruins, their hearts—rendered callous by the constant stream of cold air pouring in through their ever-open mouths—are not shocked at the calamity, but they wonder if it was insured!
The increase of population in this country affords a most prolific and inexhaustible fund for statistical astonishment, as an interlude to the entertainment, while something more appalling is being prepared.
The portentous omens so often relied on by the credulous believers in signs, have so frequently proved 'dead failures,' that one would suppose these votaries would at length become disheartened. But this seems not to be the case—like a quack doctor when his patient dies, their audacity is equal to any emergency, and, with the elasticity of india rubber, they come out of a 'tight squeeze' with undiminished rotundity. With stupid amazement, hair all erect, and ears likewise, they pass through life as through a museum, ready to exclaim with Dominie Sampson at all they cannot understand, 'Pro—di—gi—ous!'
It matters little, perhaps, in what form this principle is exhibited, while it exists and flourishes in undiminished exuberance. Thus says Glendower:
'At my nativity
The front of heaven was full of fiery shapes,
Of burning cressets; and, at my birth,
The frame and huge foundation of the earth
Shak'd like a coward.
Hotspur. Why so it would have done
At the same season, if your mother's cat had
But kittened, though yourself had ne'er been born.'
Glendower naturally enough flouts this rather impertinent comment, and 'repeats the story of his birth' with still greater improvements, till Hotspur gives him a piece of advice which will do for his whole race of the present day, viz., 'tell the truth, and shame the devil.'
The English people of this generation are rather more phlegmatic than their explosive neighbors across the channel, and neither the injustice of black slavery abroad, nor the starvation of white slaves at home, can shake them from their lop-sided neutrality, so long as money goes into their pocket. The excitable French, on the contrary, require an occasional coup d'état to arouse their conjectures as to the next imperial experiment in the art of international diplomacy.