BULWER AND HIS BOOK. 379 



lieved and unelevated by the more spiritual and lofty notions, that a well- 

 cultivated philosophy ever diffuses throughout a people. 



I have heard an anecdote of a gentleman advertising for a governess for 

 his daughters ; an opera-dancer applied for the situation ; the father de- 

 murred at the offer : " What !" cries the lady, ' Am I not fit for the office ?" 

 Can I not teach dancing, and music, and French, and manners ?" Very 

 possibly but still an opera-dancer just consider!" " Oh! if that 

 be all," said the would-be governess, " I can change my name !" I admire 

 the naivete of the dancer less than her sagacity ; she knew that nine times 

 out of ten, when the English ask for virtues, they look only to the name !" 



" With us the word virtue is seldom heard, out of a moral essay ; I am 

 not sure whether it does not excite a suspicion of some unorthodox signifi- 

 cation, something heathen and contrary to religion. The favourite word is 

 " respectability" and the correct meaning of " respectability" may cer- 

 tainly exclude virtue, but never a decent sufficiency of wealth : no wonder 

 that every man strives to be rich." 



" To the want, too, of a cultivation of morality as a science, all its rules 

 are with us vague, vacillating and uncertain ; they partake of the nature of 

 personal partiality or of personal persecution. One person is proscribed by 

 society for some offence which another commits with impunity. One woman 

 elopes, and is " the abandoned creature ;" another does the same, and is 



only the " unfortunate lady." Miss is received with respect by the same 



audience that drove Kean to America. Lady is an object of interest, for 



the same cause as that which makes Lady an object of hatred.. Lord 



ill uses and separates from his wife nobody blames him. Lord Byron 



is discarded by his wife and is cut by society. * * * is a notorious gam- 

 bler, and takes in all his acquaintances every one courts him he is a man 



of fashion. Mr. imitates him, and is shunned like a pestilence he is a 



pitiful knave !" 



And now it may be worth while to make a resume of Mr. Bulwer's 

 notions respecting the English character. 



We are, in the first place, rather selfish than otherwise. But we 

 are eminently generous. Poverty does not blunt our generosity. 

 Even our criminals have been known to share their food with debtors. 

 Yet poverty, in other countries a misfortune, is considered by us a 

 crime. We care not how many descend into the lowest abysses of 

 crime. Thus, then, generosity is the character of the nation. Again, 

 we are honest ; we know that it is the best policy to be so. But 

 ,\vhen we can get more of other people's money by idleness than we 

 can procure of our own by industry, we shall prefer to be idle. And 

 in no foreign country is there so much improvidence j we incur the 

 wicked calamity of bringing children into the world whom we cannot 

 support. We squander in selfish vices the produce of a week's toil. 

 The continental peasant, on the contrary, is not selfish or improvident. 

 And yet a wonderful spirit of industry is our chief characteristic. 

 This has made us a moral people, for it has left us no time to be 

 vicious. Once more ; although there are a few rogues amongst us, 

 there is no systematic mockery of principle; no conventional mo- 

 rality, such as it to be found at Paris or Vienna. And yet, looking 

 around on the state of morality in this country, a thousand shallow 

 and jejune observations, upon every point of morality, are put forth. 

 Propping morality merely on decorum, a low and vulgar standard of 

 opinion is established amongst us. We care not for virtues, we look 



