te
attention on the external circumstances and conditions of happiness. And
the same tendency will be naturally found in the most active, industrial
and progressive nations; where life is very full and busy; where its
competitions are most keen; where scientific discoveries are rapidly
multiplying pleasures or diminishing pains; where town life with its
constant hurry and change is the most prominent. In such spheres men
naturally incline to seek happiness from without rather than from
within, or, in other words, to seek it much less by acting directly on
the mind and character than through the indirect method of improved
circumstances.

English character on both sides of the Atlantic is an eminently
objective one--a character in which thoughts, interests and emotions
are most habitually thrown on that which is without. Introspection and
self-analysis are not congenial to it. No one can compare English life
with life even in the Continental nations which occupy the same rank in
civilisation without perceiving how much less Englishmen are accustomed
either to dwell upon their emotions or to give free latitude to their
expression. Reticence and self-restraint are the lessons most constantly
inculcated. The whole tone of society favours it. In times of great
sorrow a degree of shame is attached to demonstrations of grief which in
other countries would be deemed perfectly natural. The disposition to
dilate upon and perpetuate an old grief by protracted mournings, by
carefully observed anniversaries, by long periods of retirement from the
world, is much less common than on the Continent and it is certainly
diminishing. The English tendency is to turn away speedily from the
past, and to seek consolation in new fields of activity. Emotions
translate themselves speedily into action, and they lose something of
their intensity by the transformation. Philanthropy is nowhere more
active and more practical, and religion has in few countries a greater
hold on the national life, but English Protestantism reflects very
clearly the national characteristics. It, no doubt, like all religions,
lays down rules for the government of thought and feeling, but these are
of a very general character. Preeminently a regulator of conduct, it
lays comparatively little stress upon the inner life. It discourages, or
at least neglects that minutely introspective habit of thought which the
confessional is so much calculated to promote, which appears so