ENGLISH CHARACTERISTICS. 



175 



only chip by chip, or grain by grain, that ruin ap- 

 proaches. The timber also lasts an incredibly long 

 time. Beneath one of the arched ways, in the Chester 

 wall above referred to, I saw timbers that must have 

 been in place five or six hundred years. The beams 

 in the old houses, also fully exposed to the weather, 

 seem incapable of decay ; those dating from Shakes- 

 peare's time being apparently as firm as ever. 



I noticed that the characteristic aspect of the clouds 

 in England was different from ours — soft, fleecy, va- 

 pory, indistinguishable — never the firm, compact, 

 sharply-defined, deeply-dyed masses and fragments, so 

 common in our own sky. It rains easily but slowly. 

 The average rain-fall of London is less than that of 

 New York, and yet it doubtless rains ten days in the 

 former to one in the latter. : Storms accompanied with 

 thunder are rare ; while the crashing, wrenching, ex- 

 plosive thunder-gusts so common with us, deluging 

 the earth and convulsing the heavens, are seldom 

 known. 



In keeping with this elemental control and mod- 

 eration, I found the character and manners of the 

 people gentler and sweeter than I had been led to 

 believe they were. No loudness, brazenness, imperti- 

 nence ; no oaths, no swaggering, no leering at women, 

 no irreverence, no flippancy, no bullying, no insolence 

 of porters, or clerks, or conductors, no importunity of 

 boot-blacks or newsboys, no omnivorousness of hack- 

 men — at least, comparatively none — all of which an 



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