epitaphs, things that are commonplace to most Englishmen and which are
hateful to the sanitary inspector, are refreshing to every fibre of his
soul. He tries in vain to take the sanitary inspector's view. In spite
of himself he is always falling into the romantic tone, though a sense
that he ought to be sternly philosophical just gives a humorous tinge
to his enthusiasm. Charles Lamb could not have improved his description
of the old hospital at Leicester, where the twelve brethren still wear
the badge of the Bear and Ragged Staff. He lingers round it, and gossips
with the brethren, and peeps into the garden, and sits by the cavernous
archway of the kitchen fireplace, where the very atmosphere seems to be
redolent with aphorisms first uttered by ancient monks, and jokes
derived from Master Slender's note-book, and gossip about the wrecks of
the Spanish Armada. No connoisseur could pore more lovingly over an
ancient black-letter volume, or the mellow hues of some old painter's
masterpiece. He feels the charm of our historical continuity, where the
immemorial past blends indistinguishably with the present, to the
remotest recesses of his imagination. But then the Yankee nature within
him must put in a sharp word or two; he has to jerk the bridle for fear
that his enthusiasm should fairly run away with him. 'The trees and
other objects of an English landscape,' he remarks, or, perhaps we
should say, he complains, 'take hold of one by numberless minute
tendrils as it were, which, look as closely as we choose, we never find
in an American scene;' but he inserts a qualifying clause, just by way
of protest, that an American tree would be more picturesque if it had an
equal chance; and the native oak of which we are so proud is summarily
condemned for 'John Bullism'--a mysterious offence common to many things
in England. Charlecote Hall, he presently admits, 'is a most delightful
place.' Even an American is tempted to believe that real homes can only
be produced by 'the slow ingenuity and labour of many successive
generations,' when he sees the elaborate beauty and perfection of a
well-ordered English abode. And yet he persuades himself that even here
he is the victim of some delusion. The impression is due to the old man
which stills lurks even in the polished American, and forces him to look
through his ancestor's spectacles. The true theory, it appears, is that
which Holgrave expresses for him in the 'Seven Gables,' namely, tha