give character to nations; extraordinary things may occur anywhere,
and possess little national flavor. In another chapter I will attempt
some portrayal of this English life of fifty years since.




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.

In a country whose ruling principle is caste, it might be expected
that the line of cleavage between the upper and the lower grades would
be punctually observed. It is assumed that democracy levels and
aristocracy distinguishes and separates. My father was not long in
remarking, however, that there was a freedom of intercourse between
the patrician and the plebeian--between people of all orders--such as
did not exist in America. And the fact, once perceived, was not
difficult of explanation. In a monarchy of a thousand years'