248 CHAUCER. 



vague way all the pith of our institutions and the 

 motive power of our progress. For my own part, I 

 think there is such a thing as being too Anglo-Saxon, 

 and the warp and woof of the English national charac- 

 ter, though undoubtedly two elements mainly predomi- 

 nate in it, is quite too complex for us to pick out a 

 strand here and there, and affirm that the body of the 

 fabric is of this or that. Our present concern with the 

 Saxons is chiefly a literary one ; but it leads to a study 

 of general characteristics. What, then, so far as we can 

 make it out, seems to be their leading mental feature \ 

 Plainly, understanding, common-sense, — a faculty which 

 never carries its possessor very high in creative litera- 

 ture, though it may make him great as an acting and 

 even thinking man. Take Dr. Johnson as an instance. 

 The Saxon, as it appears to me, has never shown any 

 capacity for art, nay, commonly commits ugly blunders 

 when he is tempted in that direction. He has made the 

 best working institutions and the ugliest monuments 

 among the children of men. He is wanting in taste, 

 which is as much as to say that he has no true sense of 

 proportion. His genius is his solidity, — an admirable 

 foundation of national character. He is healthy, in no 

 danger of liver-complaint, with digestive apparatus of 

 amazing force and precision. He is the best farmer and 

 best grazier among men, raises the biggest crops and the 

 fattest cattle, and consumes proportionate quantities of 

 both. He settles and sticks like a diluvial deposit on 

 the warm, low-lying levels, physical and moral. He has 

 a prodigious talent, to use our Yankee phrase, of staying 

 put. You cannot move him ; he and rich earth have a 

 natural sympathy of cohesion. Not quarrelsome, but 

 with indefatigable durability of fight in him, sound of 

 stomach, and not too refined in nervous texture, he is 

 capable of indefinitely prolonged punishment, with a 



