d." And any amount of evidence
might be adduced, to show how deeply Bohemian habits of one kind or
another were ingrained in the nature of the men who inhabited most
parts of the earth, now overspread by the Anglo-Saxon and other
civilized races. Luckily there is still room for adventure, and a man
who feels the cravings of a roving, adventurous spirit to be too
strong for resistance, may yet find a legitimate outlet for it in the
colonies, in the army, or on board ship. But such a spirit is, on the
whole, an heirloom that brings more impatient restlessness and beating
of the wings against cage bars, than persons of more civilized
characters can readily comprehend, and it is directly at war with the
more modern portion of our moral natures. If a man be purely a nomad,
he has only to be nomadic and his instinct is satisfied; but no
Englishmen of the nineteenth century are purely nomadic. The most so
among them have also inherited many civilized cravings that are
necessarily starved when they become wanderers, in the same way as the
wandering instincts are starved when they are settled at home.
Consequently their nature has opposite wants, which can never be
satisfied except by chance, through some very exceptional turn of
circumstances. This is a serious calamity; and as the Bohemianism in
the nature of our race is destined to perish, the sooner it goes the
happier for mankind. The social requirements of English life are
steadily destroying it. No man who only works by fits and starts is
able to obtain his living nowadays, for he has not a chance of
thriving in competition with steady workmen. If his nature revolts
against the monotony of daily labor, he is tempted to the
public-house, to intemperance, and it may be to poaching, and to much
more serious crime; otherwise he banishes himself from our shores. In
the first case, he is unlikely to leave as many children as men of
more domestic and marrying habits; and in the second case, his breed
is wholly lost to England. By this steady riddance of the Bohemian
spirit of our race, the artisan part of our population is slowly
becoming bred to its duties, and the primary qualities of the typical
modern British workman are already the very opposite of those of the
nomad. What they are now was well described by Mr. Chadwick as
consisting of "great bodily strength, applied under the command of a
steady, persevering will; mental self-contentedness; impassibility to
external irrel