t we
should free ourselves of the material slavery imposed upon us by the
brick-and-mortar of past generations, and learn to change our houses as
easily as our coats. We ought to feel--only we unfortunately can't
feel--that a tent or a wigwam is as good as a house. The mode in which
Hawthorne regards the Englishman himself is a quaint illustration of the
same theory. An Englishwoman, he admits reluctantly and after many
protestations, has some few beauties not possessed by her American
sisters. A maiden in her teens has 'a certain charm of half-blossom and
delicately folded leaves, and tender womanhood shielded by maidenly
reserves, with which, somehow or other, our American girls often fail to
adorn themselves during an appreciable moment.' But he revenges himself
for this concession by an almost savage onslaught upon the full-blown
British matron with her 'awful ponderosity of frame ... massive with
solid beef and streaky tallow,' and apparently composed 'of steaks and
sirloins.' He laments that the English violet should develop into such
an overblown peony, and speculates upon the whimsical problem, whether a
middle-aged husband should be considered as legally married to all the
accretions which have overgrown the slenderness of his bride. Should not
the matrimonial bond be held to exclude the three-fourths of the wife
that had no existence when the ceremony was performed? A question not to
be put without a shudder. The fact is, that Hawthorne had succeeded only
too well in misleading himself by a common fallacy. That pestilent
personage, John Bull, has assumed so concrete a form in our
imaginations, with his top-boots and his broad shoulders and vast
circumference, and the emblematic bulldog at his heels, that for most
observers he completely hides the Englishman of real life. Hawthorne had
decided that an Englishman must and should be a mere mass of transformed
beef and beer. No observation could shake his preconceived impression.
At Greenwich Hospital he encountered the mighty shade of the
concentrated essence of our strongest national qualities; no truer
Englishman ever lived than Nelson. But Nelson was certainly not the
conventional John Bull, and, therefore, Hawthorne roundly asserts that
he was not an Englishman. 'More than any other Englishman he won the
love and admiration of his country, but won them through the efficacy of
qualities that are not English.' Nelson was of the same breed as
Cromwell, though his