The universal geography : earth and its inhabitants

42 THE BEITISn ISLES.
As men of common sense they never omit to associate themselves with those of
their comitrj'men who hold views similar to their own, and the number of societies
established for every conceivable object is exceedingly large. In France associa-
tions of this kind are less influential, and they generally devote their energies to
vast and indefinite projects, whilst the numberless " leagues," " unions," and other
societies of England have always some definite object in view. Political parties
and religious bodies do not form distinct and hostile camps, as on the continent.
The transitions between one pole of society and the other are innumerable, for these
hundreds of associations, whatever their object, recruit their members from the
whole nation, wherever a sympathetic voice responds to them. It thus happens
that an Englishman may find himself associated, for a particular object, with men
belonging to the most diverse political parties. No one thinks of blaming him, or
expects him to sacrifice his independent opinions.
It is now four centuries since Froissart said that Englishmen took their
pleasures sadly, although, at the time this author wrote, " ilerry " was the epithet
which the natives of the country prefixed to the name of England. The crowds
which throng the streets of the towns of Great Britain in our own days certainly
are anything but gay. On the contrary, these preoccupied, silent men, clad in
sombre garments, are almost lugubrious in appearance. The climate, with its fogs,
its rains, and its leaden skies, may account, to some extent, for the gloomy faces we
meet with ;
but there are other causes at work calculated to stamp a character of
melancholy upon the countenances of vast numbers. In none of the Latin countries
of Europe is social inequality so great as in England. It has created a gulf
separating the rich from the poor, the landed proprietor from the tillers of the soil,
the master from the servant—nay, even, until recently, the undergraduate of noble
birth from his fellow-commoner. Veneration of the aristocracy has passed into the
blood of the people, and in some provincial towns crowds immediately collect
whenever a nobleman's carriage stops in the streets.* The moral malady, which
Bulwer designates as " aristocratic contagion," has corrupted the whole nation,
from the court to the village. Every one aspires to become " respectable "
; that
is, to appear wealthier than he is. Society is thus divided into innumerable classes,
all busily employed removing the barriers which separate them from their superiors,
but equally intent upon maintaining those which shut out the class next beneath
it. Not a provincial town but the haberdasher's wife declines to associate with
the wife of the grocer, as being beneath her.f Nor has the Puritanical reaction
ceased yet, which consisted, not in a maceration of the body, but in stifling free
inquiry, and curtailing the delight yielded by a cultivation of art. The actual
inferiority of the British stage may probably be due to this Puritanical influence,
for power of observation or fancy is not lacking for comedy, whilst the drama
boasts of the models furnished by Shakspere and his successors. But perhaps
we ought also to take into account that England has enjoyed internal peace for
more than two centuries ; it lives no longer, like France, in the midst of a great
• X. Hawthorne, " English Note-Books."
t Edward Lytton Bulwer, " England and the Eno-Ush."