4 History of the English Landed Interest, 



before the doors of a mansion, wliicli from its diamond-paned, 

 old-fashioned windows reminded him of some Tudor manor- 

 house in the old country. Its handsome inmates, their mode 

 of life, and truly English hospitality, were but finishing 

 touches to a picture which assured him that the institution of 

 a country gentry is no artificial product of a feudal society, 

 but the free growth of this English nation.^ And yet, with all 

 these similarities between the Englishman abroad and the 

 Englishman at home, there were points of contrast which could 

 have only arisen from a difference in the circumstances which 

 cradled the infancy of the Anglo-Saxon grandsire and that 

 of his colonial grandson. Provincialisms in the manners and 

 speech of the Antipodean Englishman are conspicuous by their 

 absence, proving how entirely he has lost touch with his tribal 

 origin,^ Here in the mother-land the rolled r's of the Scotch- 

 man, the guttural consonants of the Welshman, the burr of 

 the Northumbrian collier, the melodious intonation of the York- 

 shire tyke, the accentuated z'sof the Somersetshire peasant, all 

 keep up the associations of a time when Picts, Scots, and 

 Britons, Angles, Jutes and Saxons, Danes and Normans strove 

 for the mastery throughout the length and breadth of this 

 island. Out in this new world a titular aristocracy, the off- 

 spring of Feudalism, does not flourish and is not wanted. In a 

 democratic constitution where all are comfortably situated, 

 class antipathies, so thinks Mr. Froude, are hardly possible, 

 and political rivalry is but the artificial warfare of faction 

 and intrigue.^ Sprung from the middle class, that unique 

 production of Europe, the Australian frames his social system 

 on the lines laid down in the great centres of our English 

 commerce. His aristocracy consists solely of those who have 

 been successful in business, — money settles the vexed ques- 

 tions of social precedence, and pedigree is almost entirely 

 ignored ; so that however much the Australian may lionise 



* Froude's Oceana, pa.ssm. 



^ The Australian twang and the Yankee drawl are not to be confused 

 with our home vagaries of accent and speech. Tiie^' are attributable to 

 some other source than tribal or provincial origin. 



^ Froude's Oceana, passim. 



