standing puzzle--The respirator--Scamps, fools, mendicants, and
desperadoes--The wrongs of sailor-men--"Is this myself?"--"Profoundly
akin"--Henry Bright--Charm of insular prejudice--No stooping to
compromise--The battle against dinner--"I'm glad you liked it!"--An
English-, Irish-, and Scotchman--An Englishman owns his country--A
contradiction in Englishmen--A hospitable gateway--Years of memorable
trifles

VI

Patricians and plebeians--The discomforts of democracy--Varieties of
equality--Social rights of beggars--The coming peril--Being dragged to
the rich--Frankness of vulgarity and hopelessness of
destitution--Villages rooted in the landscape--Evanescence of the
spiritual and survival of the material--"Of Bebbington the holy
peak"--The Old Yew of Eastham--Malice--prepense interest--History and
afternoon tea--An East--Indian Englishman--The merchantman sticks in
the mud--A poetical man of the world--Likeness to Longfellow--Real
breakfasts--Heads and stomachs--A poet-pugilist--Clean-cut, cold,
gentle, dry--A respectable female atheist--The tragedy of the red
ants--Voluptuous struggles--A psalm of praise

VII

Life in Rock Park--Inconvenient independence of lodgings--The average
man--"How many gardeners have you got?"--Shielded by rose-leaves of
culture and refinement--The English middle class--Prejudice,
complacency, and Burke's Peerage--Never heard of Tennyson or
Browning--Satisfaction in the solid earth--A bond of fellowship--A
damp, winding, verdurous street--The parent of stucco