42 THE BEITISli ISLES. 



As men of common sense they never omit to associate themselves with those of 

 their countrymen who hold views similar to their own, and the numher of societies 

 estahlished for every conceivable ohject is exceedingly large. In France associa- 

 tions of this kind are less inHuential, and they generally dovoto their energies to 

 vast and indefinite projects, whilst the numberless " leagues," " unions," and other 

 societies of England have always some definite object in view. Political parties 

 and religious bodies do not form distinct and hostile camps, as on the continent. 

 The transitions between one pole of society and the other are innumerable, for these 

 hundreds of associations, whatever their object, recruit their members from the 

 whole nation, wherever a sympathetic voice responds to them. It thus happens 

 that an Englislinian m:iy find himself associated, for a particular object, with men 

 belonging to the most diverse political parties. No one thinks of blaming him, or 

 expects him to sacrifice his independent opinions. 



It is now four centuries since Froissarb said that Englishmen took their 

 pleasures sadly, although, at the time this author wrote, " Merry " was the epithet 

 which the natives of the country prefixed to the name of England. The crowds 

 which throng the streets of the tow^ns of Great Britain in our own days certainly 

 are anything but gay. On the contrary, these preoccupied, silent men, clad in 

 sombre garments, are almost lugubrious in appearance. The climate, with its fogs, 

 its rains, and its leaden skies, may account, to some extent, for the gloomy faces we 

 meet with ; but there are other causes at work calcuLited to stamj) a character of 

 melancholy upon the countenances of vast numbers. In none of the Latin countries 

 of Europe is social inequality so great as in England, It has created a gulf 

 separating the rich from the poor, the landed proprietor from the tillers of the soil, 

 the master from the servant — nay, even, until recently, the undergraduate of noble 

 birth from his fellow-commoner. Veneration of the aristocracy has passed into the 

 blood of the people, and in some provincial towns crowds immediately collect 

 whenever a nobleman's carriage stops in the streets.* The moral malady, which 

 Bulwer designates as " aristocratic contagion," has corrupted the whole nation, 

 from the court to the village. Every one aspires to become " respectable ; " that 

 is, to appear wealthier than he is. Society is thus divided into innumerable classes, 

 all busily employed removing the barriers which separate them from their superiors, 

 but equally intent upon maintaining those which shut out the class next beneath 

 it. Not a provincial town but the haberdasher's wife declines to associate with 

 the wife of the grocer, as being beneath her.f Nor has the Puritanical reaction 

 ceased yet, which consisted, not in a maceration of the body, but in stifling free 

 inquiry, and curtailing the delight yielded by a cultivation of art. The actual 

 inferiority of the British stage may probably be due to this Puritanical influence, 

 for power of observation or fancy is not lacking for comedy, whilst the drama 

 boasts of the models furnished by Shakspere and his successors. But perhaps 

 we ought also to take into account that England has enjoyed internal peace for 

 more than two centuries ; it lives no longer, like France, in the midst of a great 



* X. Hawthorne, " English Xotc-Books." 



t Edward Eytt.m Buhvtr, " England and the English." 



