i88o.] 
English and American Physique . 3^ 
manded him to leave him alone until the great event had 
occurred, and not until then to carry the intelligence to his 
cousin and heir, Lord George Cavendish. 
In presence of the reverence and affedtion with which he 
was regarded by his fellow philosophers, he could not be 
said to have died unwept ; he has certainly not died unsung. 
His deeds will live as long as Science itself. 
IV. ENGLISH AND AMERICAN PHYSIQUE.* 
By George M. Beard, M.D. 
I. 
S MERICA is England in a minor key. All that is good, 
all that is evil in the United States of the past, or 
near present, comes diredtly from Great Britain — the 
daughter is but a mild type of the mother. In the angry 
and inexpert discussions of national characteristics, it is 
forgotten that the difference between one country and the 
other is far less than is suggested or commonly credited. In 
criticising England for her failures, her weaknesses, her in- 
consistencies, her preference for the near to the remote, and 
the practical to the ideal, we are but criticising ourselves, 
who derive all these traits by direCt inevitable transmission 
from our maternal home. 
Even American buncombe is all English : at public ban- 
quets, at gatherings of quiet and sober men of science in 
that empire, I have heard more of self-exaltation, of recipro- 
cal flattery, of glorification, of hosannas over the greatness 
of themselves, than one should hear in this country at a 
rustic Fourth-of-July carousal ; indeed, we are outgrowing 
that academic play, which the conservatism of the mother 
land holds to as with bands of iron. 
The delusion that the two nations utterly differ in kind 
appears in England as well as in America. This summer 
the distinguished London physician, Dr. Richardson, gave 
me an excellent example. The DoCtor, in a leCture before 
a large audience of working men, quoted a passage from my 
work on longevity of brain-workers, in which a contrast was 
* Communicated by the author, having appeared also in “ The North 
American Review.” 
VOL. II. (THIRD SERIES.) 
D 
