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among us like other weeds. No doubt America furnishes some slang to England also, and we often go to London to hear it for the first time from cultivated lips. But it must be remembered that pugilists and circus-riders are not here to be found so fre quently in fastidious circles, and thus our opportunities of picking up their flowers of speech are more limited than in London

But it must be remembered, in justice, that this lack of sensitiveness in the Englishman is at the foundation, not merely of many demerits, but of some of his most conspicuous virtues, and especially of his energetic self-assertion. The American errs in the opposite direction, and both faults and virtues are often due, in his case, to the quality of being too thin-skinned. Mr. Darwin never said an acuter thing than when he wrote to Dr. Gray, during the American civil war: "We cannot enter into your feelings [i. e., as to the hostility of England]; if Scot land were to rebel I presume we should be very wroth, but I do not think we should care a penny what other nations thought." * Mr. Darwin heartily sympathized with the antislavery cause; but our sensitiveness to the general English want of sympathy on that point amazed him. He was accustomed to the English mode of action, which is to go on your own course, and "not care a penny " what others think. The difference runs through everything; it makes the American too self-conscious, too visibly sensitive, and the Englishman too stolid and aggressive. Wherever he goes, the American wishes to adapt himself to the habits of the country; the Englishman desires to adapt the habits of the country to himself. The American is pleased at being taken for a Frenchman, an Italian, a German; the Englishman would be vexed by such a misapprehension, were it possible. This spirit of adaptation is easily carried to excess by the American, but it tends to keep up the amenities of life. Being sensitive himself, one respects the feelings of others, and would rather forego sugar in his coffee than annoy his host. On the other hand, the absence of over-sensitiveness does much to produce that ingenuousness and frankness which constitute, after all, the attraction of the English manner. The young men of the colleges and great * "Life" (Am. ed.), II., 179.

schools seem to me the most attractive class in English society; they certainly carry the dew of their youth longer than our young Americans, who seem, by comparison, prematurely sagacious and experienced.

One feels this attractive directness in the English manner all the more after spending some time in France. The charm of the French manner is in a certain degree feline, while the merit of the English manner is canine; they seem to cultivate a rude honesty in themselves, as in their bull-dogs. In the "Manuel de la Bonne Société," by the Comtesse de Valresson, she assures us that Christianity and good manners are the same thing; and, when she goes into particulars, instructs us that we must always tell invalids how remarkably well they are looking, and public officials how much their departments have improved in their hands. In short, her Christianity omits absolutely the element of truth. But the English nation does not err on that side; it, indeed, has truthfulness enough for a whole continent, and almost too much for an island. There is something to be said on the French side, which is, in this case, as in many others, the American side also. Nothing makes society more unpleasant than a truthfulness which is, so to speak, indecently exposed. If this supposed truthfulness takes the form of national selfassertion, it is at its height. When I think of the frankness with which our English cousins proclaim their own virtues, when in foreign countries, and apply their own unvarying standards to all the world, I am really at a loss to understand where we Americans picked up our modesty. Any experienced traveler can easily parallel the story lately told of the young Englishman at a Trouville table d'hôte, who audibly remarked to his sister that there was no society on the Continent fit for an Englishman to associate with. But the assumption is not brought to its highest point until an author of the grade of Hamerton gravely protests against the current impression that there can be no real gentlemen outside of England, and gravely points out that he himself has personally known three or four.

It must be owned that neither Englishmen nor Americans appear at their best in foreign countries; but there is, at least, this difference, that whereas all sorts and conditions of Ameri

cans travel, and thereby afford to the observer a cross-section, as it were, of their whole nationality, the English traveling class is a picked body, in comparison, and should show that nation at its best. If Englishmen of the lower-middle or lower class travel, they are apt to be labeled as "Cook's tourists," and quietly excluded from the account. I can remember to have been attacked by some very pleasant Oxford and Cambridge men in Switzerland in regard to the ignorance and bad manners of an American in the diligence, and they said frankly, “You would not find such a man among English travelers." "Not among Cook's tourists?" I asked. "Oh!" said one of them, conclusively, "of course we did not mean them." I had some trouble to explain to them that the American "Cook's tourists" usually traveled first-class, and without being labeled, and that they were necessarily included in the general average; but that, tried by any fair comparison, the American traveling manners were, perhaps, as good as any. Ill-mannered people of all nations usually show to the least advantage when away from home, because the virtues of hospitality do not then enter into their behavior. Tested by the standard of hospitality, the Englishman has no need to fear comparison with any other nation; and if his taste seems equivocal, and he sometimes seems to prefer his Americans, as he likes his game, a little high-flavored, we must not be too particular.

We must own, also, that, after all is said and done, there remains a certain quality in the English nature which one is compelled to regard with thorough admiration, a certain manliness, a ready self-sacrifice, a sense of justice, a fiber of oak. Asking the first English soldier I saw, on my first visit to England, some questions about the service, I was told by him that he belonged to the Coldstream Guards. He was a short, sturdy fellow, with the chevrons of an orderly sergeant, and his cheeks and hair were almost as rubicund as his uniform; yet I thought he flushed a little more when I remarked that the Coldstream Guards was a famous corps, and that I had read its history. After this he lingered awhile at the post-office, where I was doing an errand, and, coming up to me on my reappearance, said: "I ought to have explained to you, sir, that although I

belong to the Coldstream Guards, as I told you, I was not originally a member of it. I was transferred to it after the battle of the Alma, where I was wounded; and I wished to tell you that you are not to take me for a fair specimen of it. I give you my word of honor, sir, that I am the shortest man in the corps.' I thought to myself, "The Guard dies, but never surrenders; and whole centuries of England's greatness were summed up for me in this single piece of perfectly gratuitous self-sacrifice for the honor of his comrades. After all, there is a certain seriousness at the foundation of the English nature. Joubert says, "Les Anglais sont élevés dans le respect des choses sérieuses;" and something of this grave purpose lies at the foundation of what is noblest, even in manners. But even seriousness alone is not enough; and the daring Heine declared it his opinion that a blaspheming Frenchman was, on the whole, a more pleasing spectacle in the sight of Heaven than a praying Englishman. To what use, then, this great transplantation of the English race across the Atlantic, and its mingling with more varied and more mercurial blood, if we cannot go a little beyond the traditions of our parentage and make virtue attractive?

T. W. HIGGINSON.

THE STUFF THAT DREAMS ARE MADE OF.

I. SLEEP in man is the periodical rest of the brain, with suspension of volitional muscular activity. The system of relation, by means of which man comes to know and is linked with the outside world and his fellow beings, is in abeyance for the sake of repose and repair. In perfect sleep there is a stoppage of senseimpressions, a locking up or deadening of consciousness. The system of maintenance of the individual, as digestion, respiration, secretion, is alone doing work, and that probably slowed to half or three-quarters speed. The only parts, then, of the nervous system inevitably active are those essential to the persistence of life-functions simply automatic and called orderlyreflex, which are as unperceived as if the fore-brain were wanting -a condition shown experimentally in animals after decapitation, or when the connection between the brain and spinal cord has been interrupted. Beheaded frogs will whisk off a drop of acid from their skin, make purpose-like defensive movements when pinched by a forceps, pushing their feet against the instrument; croak when the back is stroked, and take a sitting posture: all like will-acts with a whole brain, and yet they are necessarily only inconscient reflex instincts of the lower nervous centers. Dacoits, a band of thieves in India, steal a mattress from under a sleeper without waking him, first deepening sleep by fanning the victim, then tickling the part of the body next the operator, when the sleeper automatically edges away a little. The fanning and tickling are repeated till the man sidles quite off his bed.

A notion of the distinction between conscious volitional activity and that which is only automatic is essential to the right understanding of the phenomena of sleep. In the wak ing state, when a sensation comes to the gray cells of the forebrain, there is always a perception, which may or may not give

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