hey neither comprehend nor desire them; and as they never have thought
of them, it is to their minds as if such things had never been. Too
much importance should not be attached to this loss, but it may well be
regretted.

I am aware that it has not unfrequently happened that the same men have
had very high-bred manners and very low-born feelings: the interior of
courts has sufficiently shown what imposing externals may conceal the
meanest hearts. But though the manners of aristocracy did not constitute
virtue, they sometimes embellish virtue itself. It was no ordinary sight
to see a numerous and powerful class of men, whose every outward action
seemed constantly to be dictated by a natural elevation of thought
and feeling, by delicacy and regularity of taste, and by urbanity
of manners. Those manners threw a pleasing illusory charm over human
nature; and though the picture was often a false one, it could not be
viewed without a noble satisfaction.

Chapter XV: Of The Gravity Of The Americans, And Why It Does Not Prevent
Them From Often Committing Inconsiderate Actions

Men who live in democratic countries do not value the simple, turbulent,
or coarse diversions in which the people indulge in aristocratic
communities: such diversions are thought by them to be puerile or
insipid. Nor have they a greater inclination for the intellectual and
refined amusements of the aristocratic classes. They want something
productive and substantial in their pleasures; they want to mix actual
fruition with their joy. In aristocratic communities the people readily
give themselves up to bursts of tumultuous and boisterous gayety, which
shake off at once the recollection of their privations: the natives of
democracies are not fond of being thus violently broken in upon, and
they never lose sight of their own selves without regret. They prefer to
these frivolous delights those more serious and silent amusements which
are like business, and which do not drive business wholly from their
minds. An American, instead of going in a leisure hour to dance merrily
at some place of public resort, as the fellows of his calling continue
to do throughout the greater part of Europe, shuts himself up at home
to drink. He thus enjoys two pleasures; he can go on thinking of his
business, and he can get drunk decently by his own fireside.

I thought that the English constituted the most serious nation on the
face of the earth, but I have since seen t