ce in the main character behind.

In attempting to understand the real nature of the Englishman certain
salient facts must be borne in mind:

THE SEA.--To be surrounded generation after generation by the sea has
developed in him a suppressed idealism, a peculiar impermeability, a
turn for adventure, a faculty for wandering, and for being sufficient
unto himself in far surroundings.

THE CLIMATE.--Whoso weathers for centuries a climate that, though
healthy and never extreme, is perhaps the least reliable and one of the
wettest in the world, must needs grow in himself a counterbalance of dry
philosophy, a defiant humor, an enforced medium temperature of soul. The
Englishman is no more given to extremes than is his climate; against its
damp and perpetual changes he has become coated with a sort of
bluntness.

THE POLITICAL AGE OF HIS COUNTRY.--This is by far the oldest settled
Western power, politically speaking. For eight hundred and fifty years
England has known no serious military disturbance from without; for over
one hundred and fifty she has known no military disturbance, and no
serious political turmoil within. This is partly the outcome of her
isolation, partly the happy accident of her political constitution,
partly the result of the Englishman's habit of looking before he leaps,
which comes, no doubt, from the mixture in his blood and the mixture in
his climate.

THE GREAT PREPONDERANCE FOR SEVERAL GENERATIONS OF TOWN OVER COUNTRY
LIFE.--Taken in conjunction with centuries of political stability this
is the main cause of a certain deeply ingrained humaneness of which,
speaking generally, the Englishman appears to be rather ashamed than
otherwise.

THE PUBLIC SCHOOLS.--This potent element in the formation of the modern
Englishman, not only of the upper but of all classes, is something that
one rather despairs of making understood--in countries that have no
similar institution. But, imagine one hundred thousand youths of the
wealthiest, healthiest, and most influential classes passed during each
generation at the most impressionable age, into a sort of ethical mold,
emerging therefrom stamped to the core with the impress of a uniform
morality, uniform manners, uniform way of looking at life; remembering
always that these youths fill seven-eighths of the important positions
in the professional administration of their country and the conduct of
its commercial enterprise; remembering, too, that through perpetua