simply incomprehensible. Muscular England develops itself, and takes no
notice of him.

The foreigner mixed with the assembly, and looked more closely at the
social spectacle around him.

He had met with these people before. He had seen them (for instance) at
the theatre, and observed their manners and customs with considerable
curiosity and surprise. When the curtain was down, they were so little
interested in what they had come to see, that they had hardly spirit
enough to speak to each other between the acts. When the curtain was up,
if the play made any appeal to their sympathy with any of the higher and
nobler emotions of humanity, they received it as something wearisome, or
sneered at it as something absurd. The public feeling of the countrymen
of Shakespeare, so far as they represented it, recognized but two duties
in the dramatist--the duty of making them laugh, and the duty of getting
it over soon. The two great merits of a stage proprietor, in England
(judging by the rare applause of his cultivated customers), consisted
in spending plenty of money on his scenery, and in hiring plenty of
brazen-faced women to exhibit their bosoms and their legs. Not at
theatres only; but among other gatherings, in other places, the
foreigner had noticed the same stolid languor where any effort was
exacted from genteel English brains, and the same stupid contempt where
any appeal was made to genteel English hearts. Preserve us from enjoying
any thing but jokes and scandal! Preserve us from respecting any thing
but rank and money! There were the social aspirations of these insular
ladies and gentlemen, as expressed under other circumstances, and as
betrayed amidst other scenes. Here, all was changed. Here was the strong
feeling, the breathless interest, the hearty enthusiasm, not visible
elsewhere. Here were the superb gentlemen who were too weary to speak,
when an Art was addressing them, shouting themselves hoarse with burst
on burst of genuine applause. Here were the fine ladies who yawned
behind their fans, at the bare idea of being called on to think or
to feel, waving their handkerchiefs in honest delight, and actually
flushing with excitement through their powder and their paint. And all
for what? All for running and jumping--all for throwing hammers and
balls.

The foreigner looked at it, and tried, as a citizen of a civilized
country, to understand it. He was still trying--when there occurred a
pause in the performan