Englishmen; but it is such logically only. A man
born to the traditions of monarchy and aristocracy accepts them as the
natural background of his ideas, just as the English landscape is the
setting of his house and park; he will vindicate them if assailed; but
ordinarily they do not consciously affect his mental activities, and he
will talk good republicanism without being aware of it. The monarchy is
a decoration, a sentiment, a habit; as a matter of fact, England is more
democratic in many essentials than we have as yet learned how to
be. Bennoch was not a university man, and lacked the historical
consciousness that Bright so assiduously cultivated; he lived by feeling
and intuition more than by deliberate intellectual judgments. He was
emotional; tears would start to his eyes at a touch of pathos or pity,
as readily as the laughter of a moment before. So lovable, gallant,
honest, boyish a man is seldom born into this modern world-boyish as
only the manliest men can be. He died thirty years after the time I
write of, the same fresh and ardent character as ever, and loving and
serving Hawthorne's children for Hawthorne's sake. I shall have occasion
to mention him hereafter; but I have dwelt upon him here, both because
he made it forever impossible for any one who knew him well to do other
than love the land which could breed such a man, and because, for the
American Hawthorne, he was as a hospitable gate-way through which the
England of his dreams and imaginings was entered upon as a concrete and
delightful reality.

With Bright and Bennoch on his right hand and on his left, then, my
father began his English experience. The two are frequently mentioned
in his English journals, and Bennoch figures as one of the subordinate
characters in the posthumous romance called Doctor Grimshawe's Secret.
It is but a sketch of him, however, and considerably modified from the
brilliant and energetic reality. Meanwhile the consul began to accustom
himself to the routine of the consulate, and his family, leaving the
sombre respectability of the Waterloo Hotel, moved, first, to the
hospitable boarding-house of Mrs. Blodgett, and afterwards to a private
dwelling in Rock Park, Rock Ferry, on the opposite side of the Mersey,
where we were destined to dwell for several years. They were years full
of events very trifling in themselves, but so utterly different from
everything American as to stamp themselves upon the attention and the
memory.