street that it is "full of character." As if an English street was not!
Such is blindness--to be cured by travel and the exercise of the logical
faculty, most properly termed common sense. If one is struck by the
magnificence of the great towns of the Continent, one should
ratiocinate, and conclude that a major characteristic of the great towns
of England is their shabby and higgledy-piggledy slovenliness. It is so.
But there are people who have lived fifty years in Manchester, Leeds,
Hull and Hanley without noticing it. The English idiosyncrasy is in that
awful external slovenliness too, causing it, and being caused by it.
Every street is a mirror, an illustration, an exposition, an
explanation, of the human beings who live in it. Nothing in it is to be
neglected. Everything in it is valuable, if the perspective is
maintained. Nevertheless, in the narrow individualistic novels of
English literature--and in some of the best--you will find a domestic
organism described as though it existed in a vacuum, or in the Sahara,
or between Heaven and earth; as though it reacted on nothing and was
reacted on by nothing; and as though it could be adequately rendered
without reference to anything exterior to itself. How can such novels
satisfy a reader who has acquired or wants to acquire the faculty of
seeing life?

V

The net result of the interplay of instincts and influences which
determine the existence of a community is shown in the general
expression on the faces of the people. This is an index which cannot lie
and cannot be gainsaid. It is fairly easy, and extremely interesting, to
decipher. It is so open, shameless, and universal, that not to look at
it is impossible. Yet the majority of persons fail to see it. We hear of
inquirers standing on London Bridge and counting the number of
motor-buses, foot-passengers, lorries, and white horses that pass over
the bridge in an hour. But we never hear of anybody counting the number
of faces happy or unhappy, honest or rascally, shrewd or ingenuous, kind
or cruel, that pass over the bridge. Perhaps the public may be surprised
to hear that the general expression on the faces of Londoners of all
ranks varies from the sad to the morose; and that their general mien is
one of haste and gloomy preoccupation. Such a staring fact is paramount
in sociological evidence. And the observer of it would be justified in
summoning Heaven, the legislature, the county council, the churches,