nd
wearing a rapier at his side; otherwise, with the exception of the
military uniforms, there was little or no pretence of official costume.
It being the first considerable assemblage of Englishmen that I had
seen, my honest impression about them was, that they were a heavy and
homely set of people, with a remarkable roughness of aspect and
behavior, not repulsive, but beneath which it required more familiarity
with the national character than I then possessed always to detect the
good-breeding of a gentleman. Being generally middle-aged, or still
farther advanced, they were by no means graceful in figure; for the
comeliness of the youthful Englishman rapidly diminishes with years, his
body appearing to grow longer, his legs to abbreviate themselves, and
his stomach to assume the dignified prominence which justly belongs to
that metropolis of his system. His face (what with the acridity of the
atmosphere, ale at lunch, wine at dinner, and a well-digested abundance
of succulent food) gets red and mottled, and develops at least one
additional chin, with a promise of more; so that, finally, a stranger
recognizes his animal part at the most superficial glance, but must take
time and a little pains to discover the intellectual. Comparing him with
an American, I really thought that our national paleness and lean habit
of flesh gave us greatly the advantage in an aesthetic point of view. It
seemed to me, moreover, that the English tailor had not done so much as
he might and ought for these heavy figures, but had gone on wilfully
exaggerating their uncouthness by the roominess of their garments: he
had evidently no idea of accuracy of fit, and smartness was entirely out
of his line. But, to be quite open with the reader, I afterwards learned
to think that this aforesaid tailor has a deeper art than his brethren
among ourselves, knowing how to dress his customers with such individual
propriety that they look as if they were born in their clothes, the fit
being to the character rather than the form. If you make an Englishman
smart, (unless he be a very exceptional one, of whom I have seen a few,)
you make him a monster: his best aspect is that of ponderous
respectability.

To make an end of these first impressions, I fancied that not merely the
Suffolk bar, but the bar of any inland county in New England, might show
a set of thin-visaged, green-spectacled men, looking wretchedly worn,
sallow with the intemperate use of strong co