ENGLISH CHARACTERISTICS. 177/ 



veniences over the English, but, for my part, I had 

 rather ride smoothly, swiftly, and safely in a luggage- 

 van, than be jerked and jolted to destruction in the 

 velvet and veneering of our palace cars. Upholster 

 the road first, and let us ride on bare boards, until a 

 cushion can be afforded ; not till after the bridges are 

 of granite and iron, and the rails of steel, do we want 

 this more than aristocratic splendor and luxury of 

 palace and drawing-room cars. To me there is no 

 more marked sign of the essential vulgarity of the na- 

 tional manners than these princely cars and beggarly, 

 clap-trap roads. It is like a man wearing a ruffled 

 and jeweled shirt-front, but too poor to afford a shirt 

 itself. 



I have said the English are a sweet and mellow 

 people. There is, indeed, a charm about these an- 

 cestral races that goes to the heart. And herein was 

 one of the profoundest surprises of my visit, namely, 

 that, in coming from the New World to the Old, from* 

 a people the most recently out of the woods of any, to- 

 one of the ripest and venerablest of the European na- 

 tionalities, I should find a race more simple, youthful,, 

 and less sophisticated than the one I had left behind 

 me. Yet this was my impression. We have lost im- 

 mensely in some things, and what we have gained is 

 not yet so obvious or so definable. We have lost in 

 reverence, in homeliness, in heart and conscience — 

 in virtue, using the word in its proper sense. To some 

 the difference which I note may appear a difference in 



12 



