there is a tendency to stout and powerful frames. It is the fault of their forms that they grow stocky, and the women have that disadvantage-few tall, slender figures of flowing shape, but stunted and thickset persons. The French say that the English women have two left hands. But in all ages they are a handsome race. They have a vigorous health, and last well into middle and old age. The old men are as red as roses, and still handsome. A clear skin, a peach-bloom complexion, and good teeth are found all over the island."

ENGLISH LOVE OF UTILITY.

"They have a supreme eye to facts; their mind is not dazzled by its own means, but locked and bolted to results. Their practical vision is spacious, and they can hold many threads without entangling them. Their self-respect, their faith in causation, and their realistic logic, or coupling of means to ends, have given them the leadership of the modern world. The bias of the nation is a passion for utility. They love the lever, the screw and pulley, the Flanders draught-horse, the waterfall, windmills, tide-mills; the sea and the wind to bear their freight ships. More than the diamond they prize that dull pebble, which is wiser than a man, and whose axis is parallel to the axis of the world."

ARTIFICIALITY OF ENGLISH INSTITUTIONS.

"The nearer we look, the more artificial is their social system. Their law is a network of fictions. Their property a scrip or certificate of right to interest on money which no man ever saw. Their social classes are made by statute. Their ratios of power are historical and legal. The last Reform Bill took away political

power from a mound, a ruin, and a stone wall, while Birmingham and Manchester, whose mills paid for the wars of Europe, had no representative. Purity in the elective Parliament is secured by the purchase of seats. Sir Samuel Romilly, purest of English patriots, decided that the only independent mode of entering Parliament was to buy a seat, and he bought Horsham. Foreign power is kept by armed colonies; power at home by a standing army of police. The pauper lives better than the free laborer; the thief better than the pauper; and the transported felon better than one under imprisonment. The crimes are factitious: as smuggling, poaching, non-conformity, heresy, and treason. Better, they say in England, 'kill a man than a hare.' The sovereignty of the seas is maintained by the impressment of seamen. Solvency is maintained by a national debt, on the principle, 'If you will not lend me money, how can I pay you?' Their system of education is factitious. The universities galvanize dead languages into a semblance of life. Their Church is artificial.

The manners and customs of society are artificial-made-up men with made-up manners. And thus the whole is Birminghamized, and we have a nation whose existence is a work of art; a cold, barren, almost arctic isle being made the most fruitful, luxurious, and imperial land in the whole earth."

It will be seen that Mr. Emerson is by no means fastidious about making his statements literally harmonize with each other. Of this "cold, barren, and almost arctic isle" he had said, only a few pages before: "Neither hot nor cold, there is no hour in the whole year in which

man can not work; no winter but such days as we have in November; while the constant rain brings agricultural production up to the highest point."

In English manners Emerson finds pluck the most characteristic feature. He says:

ENGLISH PLUCK.

"I find the Englishman to be him of all men who stands firmest in his shoes. They have in themselves what they value in their horses-mettle and bottom. And what I heard first, I heard last; and the one thing which the English value is pluck. The word is not beautiful, but on the quality they signify by it the nation is unanimous. The cabmen have it; the merchants have it; the bishops have it; the women have it. The 'Times' newspaper, they say, 'is the pluckiest thing in England.' They require you to be of your own opinion; and they hate the practical cowards who can not in affairs answer directly, Yes or No. They dare to displease; nay, will let you break all the commandments, if you do it natively and with spirit. You must be somebody; then you may do this or that as you will."

English manners are set forth under a variety of phases, not always perfectly congruous. The people, we are told in one place, "are positive, methodical, cleanly, and formal; loving routine and conventional ways; loving truth and religion, to be sure, but inexorable on all points of form." On the very next page we are assured that "each man walks, eats, drinks, and shaves ; dresses, gesticulates, and in every manner acts

and suffers without reference to the bystanders. Every man in this polished country consults only his own convenience, as much as a solitary pioneer in Wisconsin. I know not where any personal eccentricity is so freely allowed, and no man gives himself any concern about it. An Englishman walks in the pouring rain, swinging his closed umbrella like a walking-stick; wears a wig, or a shawl, or a saddle, or stands on his head, and no remark is made." Mr. Emerson's typical Englishman, putting everything together, is, to our apprehension, a rude, polished, roughand-ready, conventional person; doing just what he pleases, and letting everybody also do what he pleases, but inexorable upon points of form; afraid of nobody, but in mortal terror of Mrs. Grundy. Just as the climate of this almost arctic island is neither cold nor hot, has no winter, and its barren soil is highly fertile, and while there is no day in the year in which the Englishman may not live out of doors; yet "the harsh and wet climate in which he is born keeps him indoors whenever he is at rest.” Quite the most charming thing which Mr. Emerson sees in English life is its domesticity. He says:

ENGLISH DOMESTICITY.

"Born in a harsh and wet climate, which keeps him indoors whenever he is at rest, and being of an affectionate and loyal temper, he dearly loves his house. If he is

rich, he buys a demesne and builds a hall; if he is in middle condition, he spares no expense on his house. An English family consists of a very few persons, who from youth to age are found revolving within a few feet of each other, as if tied by some tie tense as that cartilage which we have seen attaching the two Siamese. England produces, under favorable conditions of ease and culture, the finest women in the world. And as the men are affectionate and true-hearted, the women inspire and refine them. Nothing can be more delicate without being fantastical, nothing more firm and based in nature and sentiment, than the courtship and mutual carriage of the sexes."

All this is very charming. We have no doubt that Mr. Emerson was brought much into the intimacy of such homes as he has described; and that he saw them in their very best aspects; for, as he tells us, he found a committee of intelligent friends awaiting him in every town which he visited during his lecturing tour. But, if we can put faith in what we read in history, this delightful domesticity is quite as rare in England as elsewhere. Predominant among the traits of the English people, Emerson finds that of truthfulness:

ENGLISH TRUTHFULNESS.

"Their practical power rests on their national sincerity. Veracity derives from instinct, and marks superiority in organization. Nature has endowed some men with cunning as a compensation for strength withheld; but it has provoked the malice of all others, as if aven