| Show ENGLISH IN washington ASHINGTON D C august 30 1872 to the editor of journal I 1 seo bee you are disposed to take down a little my account of the Britis hers in number of the journal mourn dl there is no doubt justness and fitness in what you say most americans I 1 imagine judging from their experience with levith englishmen English in this country will marvel not a alitto litt at my statements I 1 1 myself have never been in love with the typical englishman as he has appeared r eci upon our shores indeed I 1 have cordially d bally disliked him he is too generally arrogant faultfinding fault finding and supercilious the very traits of loudness sharpness and unleavened ness which I 1 complain of in our national manners lie he very frequently exemplifies in an exaggerated ag form I 1 feel and have always felt more congeniality toward the german or scotchman more en rapport with him andi and no doubt these elements fuse and mix into our nationality much more readily than the purely english V the englishman will not adapt himself to his surroundings ho he is not the tild least bit an imitative animal he will be noth noali ing but an englishman and is out of place an anomaly ln in I 1 any ny country but his own to u understand n de rs tn d nim liln you must see him at homo home in the british islands where he grew where he belongs where he has expressed himself and justified himself and his interior unconscious characteristics are revealed there ho he is quite a different creature from what lie is abroad there he is sweet but he sours tho the moment he steps off the island still I 1 did not fall in love with any individual englishman while abroad but rather with the general tone and atmosphere that prevailed and with the manners of the people as aa a whole you feel the past there as you cannot feel it here and along with impressions odthe of the tho present one gets the flavor and influence of earlier simpler times which no doubt is a potent charm and one source of the iros rose color which you find in my article as the absence of it is one ono on cause of tile the raw acrid unlovely character of much there is in this country if the english are the old wine wille we are the now we are not yet thoroughly C leavened as a people nor have we more than begun to transmute and humanize our surroundings and as the digestive and assimilative powers of the american are clearly less than those of the englishman as we are more heady and less than our cousins across the water having less blood and unction lou lon and fluidity of character to say nothing of our harsher more violent climate I 1 I 1 have no idea that ours can ever become the mellow land that britain is As for the charge of brutality there is doubtless good ground for it though I 1 actually saw very little of it durin during five weeks residence in london and I 1 I 1 poked about into all the dens dons and corners I 1 could find and perambulated the streets at nearly all hours of the night and day yet I 1 am persuaded there is a kind of brutality among the lower orders in england that does docs not exist in the same saine measure in this thia country coun try au an ignorant animal coarseness and insensibility which gives rise to wine wife beating and kindred of fences but the brutality of ignorance and stolidity is not the tho worst form it is good material to make something better of it is an excess and failen not a perversion it is not man falten fallen but man undeveloped beware rather that refined subsidized brutality that thin depleted depicted moral consciousness or that contemptuous cankerous on eu brutality of which I 1 believe we can show vastly more samples than great britain indeed I 1 believe for the most part that the brutality of the english people is only the excess and plethora ethora of that healthful muscular robustness clethora El and full fuli blood bloodedness edness for which the nation has always been famous and which it should prize beyond almost any thing else but for our brutality our recklessness of life and property the the ibe brazen in our great cities the hellish greed and robbery and plunder in high places I 1 should have to look a lorg time to find so plausible an excuse if there is any class that may bo be expected I 1 to reflect the worst phases of the morals and manners of a people it beems eema to me it is the sporting op orling gentry he prize fighters and yet if we can credit a writer in the london wems dews who recently paid a visit to the headquarters of the profession in the british metropolis the cockney bruisers are singularly simple and innocuous characters there was plenty of hard hitting from the shoulder and hearty enjoyment of the sport but the songs jests amusements and I 1 judged the whole atmosphere of tho the place were healthful and good there was no swearing or swaggering or ribaldry to be heard that I 1 may not seem alone in this view of our british cousins I 1 will cite the opinion of hawthorne who though less taken with things in the mother country than I 1 was was yet forced to admit that they were a franker and simpler people from peer to peasant than we are and that they had not hot yet wandered so far from that healthful and primitive simplicity in which man was created as have their descendants in this country jonn JOHN fons tons journal |
