Man tanzt, man schwätzt, man kocht, man trinkt, man liebt:
Nun sage mir, wo es was Besseres giebt?
might serve popularly as the Greek's notion of the occupations of the gods when they were not quarreling with each other; and no wonder, for he simply peopled Olympus with exaggerated counterparts of himself and his fellows. Life to him was nothing if it was not a fast and merry one; and to make it so were pressed into the service not only what catered to his sensual nature (and, truly, if Faust had been a Greek there had been no need of Mephistopheles), but all the charms of art, all the powers of exuberant fancy, all the keen delights of literary culture. He had higher aspirations than mere enjoyment, even of an elevated kind: witness Salamis and Mycale, the Pass of Thermopylæ and the fields of Marathon and Platæa. But when the serious business of life gave time, wine, flowers and lovely women were uppermost in his thoughts. To and from him, then, what greeting so natural as Χαιρε! ("Rejoice!" "Be happy!")?
As we pass from the shadows of the Acropolis and the Acrocorinthus to the crests and valleys of the Seven Hills, the tone is changed. We do not speak of the degenerate days when, after his indignant burst of
Non possum ferre, Quirites,
Græcam Urbem,
Juvenal, in speaking of Rome itself, says,
Non est Romano cuiquam locus hîc, ubi regnat
Protogenes aliquis, vel Diphilus, aut Erimarchus,
although even then the Latin speech retained forms of a nobler antiquity. We speak rather of those times when Rome was Roman—when the spirit which framed the speech still pervaded the commonwealth which used the speech. To the citizen of that time the idea of the chief of the Olympian gods was not of a rollicking despot, angry and jovial by turns, a delighter in thunderbolts, a cloud-compeller, a reckless adulterer: he was the awful personification of the majesty of law, mighty to impose its decrees and mighty to avenge its disregarded sanctions—who, brought near to the city, was worshiped as Jupiter Capitolinus, majestic as the conservator of civil and social order. The charms of art, the graces of song, the effeminacy of festal pleasures were little recked of by the Roman of the Roman period—he who used his ancestral speech in the meanings imposed upon its terms by his fathers. Phœbus Apollo and Pallas Athene were not so much revered by him as was Mars of the visage stern and the bloody hand, to whom he gloried in ascribing the blood of Romulus, protected by whom he believed the "Mavortia mœnia" would stand for ever. To him the state was everything, the citizen nothing, save in so far as he was a working member of the state. No private pleasure, no private gain, no private right was admitted which stood in the way of the common weal; and whatever privileges one might have, belonged to him not as a man, but as a Roman, reflecting in his own person the sacred being of the state. No wonder that in spite of all reverses, and until absorption of foreign poisons had vitiated the blood of her sons or fratricidal strife had spilled it, Rome saw the world at her feet. No wonder, too, that the customary greeting of those who used her speech was "Salus!" ("Health!") at meeting, and "Vale!" ("Be strong!") at parting.
To pass from ancient nations to modern. No race has had, in its way, a greater influence upon European civilization than the French, many-sided in character, and whose language is that of modern diplomacy. By no people are appearances more studied or cared for. Courage, undoubtedly, is possessed by the men, but a Frenchman (the typical Frenchman, that is) is better pleased if his courage, whether on the field of battle, in the private encounter or the civic assembly, can have a good mise en scène for its exhibition. Deportment is the great thing; and in social life who can deny what charm is given to friendly intercourse—even though one may know that feelings are not very deep—by the studious attention to a pleasant way of saying or doing things?—so different from the heedless bluntness of some other races, which, even while it may proceed from no unkindness, yet gives, at any rate, the impression of disregard for the feelings of others. What a regard to appearances is not revealed in such common expressions as "Être de mauvaise tournure" and "Avoir bonne tournure," as applied to either man or woman? And as for the women, who can excel a Frenchwoman in the art of looking if not elegant, yet at any rate spruce, by the aid of even meagre materials, and in the art of "savoir faire," of which our English "tact" hardly preserves the aroma? What dynasty or party shall rule the destinies of France may be uncertain. Bonapartist, Legitimist, Republican may be in the ascendant or may be hurled from power, but under each or all, whether for good or evil, manners will rule until the French cease to be French; for when they meet you do not they say, naturally, "Comment vous portez-vous?" ("How do you carry yourself?")?
If a Frenchman should unintentionally run against you, would he not ask your pardon with the politest possible bow? If a German should encounter you in the same unintentionally unceremonious way, would he not in all probability, after the recoil, look at you with inquiring eyes, with a mixture of phlegmatic coolness and curiosity, and partly as an exclamation, partly as an interrogation, utter the monosyllable "So!"? He would not be so much occupied in trying to parry the blunder gracefully as in thinking of its cause, with that love of sifting which involuntarily exhibits itself even in little things, or with that tendency to take even jokes gravely which originated the fable of Pope Joan, and led a learned commentator, in his annotations on Thucydides, to cite, with all the ponderous clang of a critical Latin note, the factions "of the Long Pipes and the Short Pipes, mentioned by Mr. Diedrich Knickerbocker in his History of New York," as a grave historic parallel to the factions at Athens and those of the Guelphs and the Ghibellines! Wonderful is the exactness in research, as well as the gravity, of the Teuton—his reflectiveness, his going to the bottom of the minutiæ of facts, as well as his recourse to his "inner consciousness" when the concrete fails him. Thoroughness, quiet, plodding thoroughness—a looking at things in all their bearings, an exhaustive (as well as exhausting) treatment of a subject, whether of fact or of speculation, a constant striving to find out all about whatever he takes in hand—is not this one of his most marked characteristics? And so, is it not natural that his greeting should be, if he is gravely polite, "Wie befinden Sie sich?" ("How do you find yourself?")?
Lastly, the Anglo-Saxon greeting has its revelation of character no less than the others. No corner of the earth is ignorant of the representatives of that sturdy race whose commerce is worldwide; whose inventions have revolutionized ways and means of getting and doing and having things; whose enterprise is boundless; whose self-contained courage is resistless in onset as it is strong in resistance; whose busy going to and fro, or whose steady home-work, always has an eye to the main chance; whose stateliness as shown in the conservative wealth of the Old England is matched by its progressiveness as developed in the New; whose Anglo-Saxon homes are models of what is nowhere else so readily found, "home comforts," won by hard work or conserved by happy inheritance. Has not the Anglo-Saxon a character all his own—a compound, doubtless, of the good (and often the bad) elements which he has absorbed with his natural acquisitiveness from others? And can the same number of words better gather up the sum and substance of it than his salutation, "How do you do?"?