ENGLISH CHARACTERISTICS. 



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taste, or of abnormal appetites. I often smiled at the 

 tameness and simplicity of the amusements, but my 

 sense of fitness, or proportion, or decency, was never 

 once outraged. They always stop short of a certain 

 point — the point where wit degenerates into mockery, 

 and liberty into license : nature is never put to shame, 

 and will commonly bear much more. Especially to 

 the American sense did their humorous and comic 

 strokes, their negro-minstrelsy, and attempts at Yankee 

 comedy, seem in a minor key. There was not enough 

 irreverence, and slang, and coarse ribaldry, in the 

 whole evening's entertainment, to have seasoned one 

 line of some of our most popular comic poetry. But 

 the music, and the gymnastic, acrobatic, and other 

 feats, were of a very high order. And I will say here 

 that the characteristic flavor of the humor and fun- 

 making of the average English people, as it impressed 

 my sense, is what one gets in Sterne — very human 

 and stomachic, and entirely free from the contempt and 

 superciliousness of most current writers. I did not 

 get one whiff of Dickens anywhere. No doubt, it is 

 there in some form or other, but it is not patent, or even 

 appreciable, to the sense of such an observer as I am. 



I was not less pleased by the simple good-will and 

 bonhomie that pervaded the crowd. There is in all 

 these gatherings an indiscriminate mingling of the 

 sexes, a mingling without jar, or noise, or rudeness of 

 any kind, and marked by a mutual respect on all sides 

 that is novel and refreshing. Indeed, so uniform is 



