his
portmanteau--for they are in truth so many faithful memorials of the
great poet of nature.

* * * * *

ON NATIONAL VARIETIES.

(_For the Mirror_.)

There are few more familiar subjects than that of the varieties of
national character, and the resemblances and differences that exist
between ourselves and the inhabitants of other countries. Few
conversations occur upon circumstances which may have happened abroad,
in which some one has not an anecdote to relate to illustrate the known
peculiarities of the nation in question; and the greater part of the
travels and tours which now issue in such formidable numbers from the
press, are naturally filled with stories and incidents, either to show
the correctness of our ideas of the manners and opinions of our
neighbours, or (perhaps more frequently) to prove that the public were
in error in that respect, up to the time when the traveller in question
had discovered the truth, or a clue to it. The daily accounts of the
outrages perpetrated in Ireland, and the alarms that are sounded ever
and anon, touching the state of that unhappy country, are continually
exciting surprise, that the natives of the sister island should be so
unaccountably deficient in that sense of order and sobriety which
prevails in Great Britain. We associate with a Scotchman the ideas of
shrewdness and prudence; with a Frenchman, gaiety and frivolity; with a
Spaniard, gravity and pride; with an Italian, strong passions of love
and revenge: with a German, plodding industry and habits of deep
thinking; and with the northern nations, an honest sincerity and
persevering courage. We sometimes judge with tolerable correctness; at
others are wholly mistaken, and not unfrequently run into such extremes,
that having established a principle, that a particular people are
knavish, or cowardly, or stupid, we are unwilling to admit any
exceptions, but include the whole race in our sweeping censure. We are
prejudiced at first sight against a Portuguese or Italian, and are
careful of our communications with him, even though we meet him on the
high road, or by mere accident in a public place. There can, however, be
no mistake in the common notion, that each nation has a peculiar
collection of qualities and habits, distinguishing it in a greater or
less degree from its neighbours, and the rest of the world; and it is,
therefore, at all events, an interesting, if not an useful topi