The EnglisJi Lyric 3 



understanding of British psychology. Yet they do not represent 

 two types of individual, for their fusion has produced a new and 

 distinct personality having temper and tone not difficult to rec- 

 ognize nor wrongly to be accounted unitary. 



For seeing what that temper is, because it is so common to us, 

 we may best contrast it with types that strike us by reason of 

 their divergence from it. The Italian mind we conceive to be 

 richly and vividly sensuous, delighting in color and sound and all 

 the joyous stimulation of a brilliant vitality. The Gallic mind 

 we think of as keenly logical and quick, dramatic in all the stag- 

 ings of its thought, clear-bounded even in emotion. The German 

 we take to be ponderously profound, studiously careful, tenderly 

 sentimental. But our own mind shares with none of these. 

 Compared with them, we find its most striking feature is its 

 repression. It is dumb even to itself, slow to understand itself, 

 and when it does understand, however stubborn in conviction, 

 it is never facile in expression. The repression is thus not a 

 stoical reticence, and it is far less willed than imposed by nature. 

 In common with all mankind we desire self-expression, but it is 

 only attained by us with labor ; we never quite conquer the awk- 

 ward age. Hence our admiration for the to us difficult art of 

 orator)' — so spontaneously the gift of the gesticulating Latin, — 

 and hence, too, our failure to comprehend the somewhat pluvious 

 emotion of the German. 



But in the mere fact of repression we have only a negative 

 and barren characteristic. Our interest probes deeper. We 

 know, for example, that we possess natively a full portion of 

 Northern gloom of mind, an oppression under destiny which 

 impels us to take even joys sadly. In half antithesis to this, we 

 recognize an almost exuberant practical idealism, the spirit which 

 can exalt the average human life to highest worth. — as in the 

 democracy we believe in, and aspire to, and by reason of a mag- 

 nificent faith partially attain. Other qualities and other features 

 we know, too. but this struggle of idealistic faith with the 

 anciently destined sorrow of our mood is perhaps most funda- 

 mental. That it is tight-pent, because of our natural repression, 

 renders the struggle more intense and at the same time gives the 



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