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THE LIVING RACES OF MANKIND 



[Ashtead. 



empire. Her manufactures were then in a 

 state of infancy, if indeed they can be said 

 to have existed at all. Her principal source 

 of revenue was the wool which she exported 

 to Flanders. A writer of the fifteenth century 

 describes the English as "being seldom 

 fatigued with hard labour" and leading a 

 spiritual and refined life. Indolent and con- 

 templative, the Englishman of this epoch is 

 said to have been pre-eminent in urbanity 

 and totally devoid of domestic affection. 

 England first began to show a little more 

 energy when the Flemish manufacturers 

 transferred their industry to this country, 

 after it had been ruined in the religious 

 wars of the Low Countries with Spain. 

 The discovery of the New World, the adven- 

 tures of the Elizabethan Age, our long wars 

 with Holland resulting in our acquisition 

 of the carrying trade of the world, must 

 all be taken into account, when we examine 

 the mental characteristics of the race. 

 Without these external influences it is prob- 

 able that the Englishman of to-day would 

 not have improved upon the prosaic person 

 he is described to have been by the fifteenth- 

 century writers. On the other hand, his 



Viking ancestors no doubt supplied him with the physical energy to avail himself of the great 

 opportunities which offered themselves. At the beginning of the sixteenth century he seems to 

 have already developed a trait which is regarded with disfavour by his critics and with a certain 

 amount of complacency by himself. In the year 1500 a Venetian traveller wrote: "The English 

 are great lovers of themselves and of everything belonging to them. They think that there 

 are no other men than, themselves and no other world but England; and whenever they see 

 a handsome foreigner, they say that he looks like an Englishman, and it is a great pity he 

 should not be an Englishman; and whenever they partake of any delicacy with a foreigner, 

 they ask him whether such a thing is made in his country." It would appear from this that 

 the indefinable trait in the national character which is aptly described as "insularity" is by 

 no means a recent development. "To see ourselves as others see us" is often wholesome, but 

 seldom pleasant. However, one great critic who made the English character his special study 

 speaks in terms of the highest enthusiasm. Ralph Waldo Emerson, the American writer, has 

 summed up the race as the best the world has seen. The English love of fair play, common 

 sense, and practical ability are the features that he singled out for praise. " Pretension and 

 vapouring are once for all distasteful. They keep to the other extreme of low tone in dress 

 and manners. They avoid pretension and go right to the heart of the thing. They hate 

 nonsense, sentimentalism, and high-flown expression; they use a studied plainness. Even 

 Brummel their fop was marked by the severest simplicity in dress. They pride themselves 

 on the absence of everything theatrical in the public business, and on conciseness and going 

 to the point in private affairs. But it is in the deep traits of race that the fortunes of nations 

 are written; and however derived whether it was a more gifted tribe or mixture of tribes, the 

 air, or what circumstance, that mixed for them the golden mean of temperament here exists 

 the best stock in the world, broad-fronted, broad-bottomed, best for depth, range, and equability, 

 men of aplomb and reserve, great range and many moods, strong instincts, yet apt for culture; 



Photo by Payne Jennings] 



A LOWESTOFT SMACKSMAN. 



