nd
snake, which they severally resembled."

The race preserves some of its better characteristics.

"They have a vigorous health and last well into middle and old age.
The old men are as red as roses, and still handsome. A clear skin,
a peach-bloom complexion, and good teeth are found all over the
island."

English "Manners" are characterized, according to Emerson, by pluck,
vigor, independence. "Every one of these islanders is an island himself,
safe, tranquil, incommunicable." They are positive, methodical, cleanly,
and formal, loving routine and conventional ways; loving truth and
religion, to be sure, but inexorable on points of form.

"They keep their old customs, costumes, and pomps, their wig and
mace, sceptre and crown. A severe decorum rules the court and the
cottage. Pretension and vaporing are once for all distasteful. They
hate nonsense, sentimentalism, and high-flown expressions; they use
a studied plainness."

"In an aristocratical country like England, not the Trial by Jury,
but the dinner is the capital institution."

"They confide in each other,--English believes in English."--"They
require the same adherence, thorough conviction, and reality in
public men."

"As compared with the American, I think them cheerful and contented.
Young people in this country are much more prone to melancholy."

Emerson's observation is in accordance with that of Cotton Mather nearly
two hundred years ago.

"_New England_, a country where splenetic Maladies are prevailing
and pernicious, perhaps above any other, hath afforded numberless
instances, of even pious people, who have contracted those
_Melancholy Indispositions_, which have unhinged them from all
service or comfort; yea, not a few persons have been hurried thereby
to lay _Violent Hands_ upon themselves at the last. These are among
the _unsearchable Judgments_ of God."

If there is a little exaggeration about the following portrait of the
Englishman, it has truth enough to excuse its high coloring, and the
likeness will be smilingly recognized by every stout Briton.

"They drink brandy like water, cannot expend their quantities of
waste strength on riding, hunting, swimming, and fencing, and run
into absurd follies with the gravity of the Eumenides. They stoutly
carry into every nook and corner of the earth their turbulent sense;
leaving