178 WINTER SUNSHINE 



little of it during five weeks' residence in London, 

 and I poked about into all the dens and corners I 

 could find, and perambulated the streets at nearly 

 all hours of the night and day. Yet I am persuaded 

 there is a kind of brutality among the lower orders 

 in England that does not exist in the same measure 

 in this country, — an ignorant animal coarseness, an 

 insensibility, which gives rise to wife-beating and 

 kindred offenses. But the brutality of ignorance 

 and stolidity is not the worst form of the evil. It 

 is good material to make something better of. It 

 is an excess and not a perversion. It is not man 

 fallen, but man undeveloped. Beware, rather, that 

 refined, subsidized brutality; that thin, depleted, 

 moral consciousness ; or that contemptuous, cankerous, 

 euphemistic brutality, of which, I believe, we can 

 show vastly more samples than Great Britain. In- 

 deed, I believe, for the most part, that the brutality 

 of the English people is only the excess and plethora 

 of that healthful, muscular robustness and full-blood- 

 edness for which the nation has always been famous, 

 and which it should prize beyond almost anything 

 else. But for our brutality, our recklessness of life 

 and property, the brazen ruffianism in our great 

 cities, the hellish greed and robbery and plunder in 

 high places, I should have to look a long time to 

 find so plausible an excuse. 



[But I notice with pleasure that English travelers 

 are beginning to find more to admire than to con- 

 demn in this country, and that they accredit us 

 with some virtues they do not find at home in the 



