登陆注册
25635300000013

第13章

Again, as if to intensate the influences that are not of race, what we think of when we talk of English traits really narrows itself to a small district. It excludes Ireland, and Scotland, and Wales, and reduces itself at last to London, that is, to those who come and go thither. The portraits that hang on the walls in the Academy Exhibition at London, the figures in Punch's drawings of the public men, or of the club-houses, the prints in the shop-windows, are distinctive English, and not American, no, nor Scotch, nor Irish: but 'tis a very restricted nationality. As you go north into the manufacturing and agricultural districts, and to the population that never travels, as you go into Yorkshire, as you enter Scotland, the world's Englishman is no longer found. In Scotland, there is a rapid loss of all grandeur of mien and manners; a provincial eagerness and acuteness appear; the poverty of the country makes itself remarked, and a coarseness of manners; and, among the intellectual, is the insanity of dialectics. In Ireland, are the same climate and soil as in England, but less food, no right relation to the land, political dependence, small tenantry, and an inferior or misplaced race.

These queries concerning ancestry and blood may be well allowed, for there is no prosperity that seems more to depend on the kind of man than British prosperity. Only a hardy and wise people could have made this small territory great. We say, in a regatta or yacht-race, that if the boats are anywhere nearly matched, it is the man that wins. Put the best sailing master into either boat, and he will win.

Yet it is fine for us to speculate in face of unbroken traditions, though vague, and losing themselves in fable. The traditions have got footing, and refuse to be disturbed. The kitchen-clock is more convenient than sidereal time. We must use the popular category, as we do by the Linnaean classification, for convenience, and not as exact and final. Otherwise, we are presently confounded, when the best settled traits of one race are claimed by some new ethnologist as precisely characteristic of the rival tribe.

I found plenty of well-marked English types, the ruddy complexion fair and plump, robust men, with faces cut like a die, and a strong island speech and accent; a Norman type, with the complacency that belongs to that constitution. Others, who might be Americans, for any thing that appeared in their complexion or form: and their speech was much less marked, and their thought much less bound. We will call them Saxons. Then the Roman has implanted his dark complexion in the trinity or quaternity of bloods.

1. The sources from which tradition derives their stock are mainly three. And, first, they are of the oldest blood of the world, -- the Celtic. Some peoples are deciduous or transitory. Where are the Greeks? where the Etrurians? where the Romans? But the Celts or Sidonides are an old family, of whose beginning there is no memory, and their end is likely to be still more remote in the future; for they have endurance and productiveness. They planted Britain, and gave to the seas and mountains names which are poems, and imitate the pure voices of nature. They are favorably remembered in the oldest records of Europe. They had no violent feudal tenure, but the husbandman owned the land. They had an alphabet, astronomy, priestly culture, and a sublime creed. They have a hidden and precarious genius. They made the best popular literature of the middle ages in the songs of Merlin, and the tender and delicious mythology of Arthur.

2. The English come mainly from the Germans, whom the Romans found hard to conquer in two hundred and ten years, -- say, impossible to conquer, -- when one remembers the long sequel; a people about whom, in the old empire, the rumor ran, there was never any that meddled with them that repented it not.

3. Charlemagne, halting one day in a town of Narbonnese Gaul, looked out of a window, and saw a fleet of Northmen cruising in the Mediterranean. They even entered the port of the town where he was, causing no small alarm and sudden manning and arming of his galleys.

As they put out to sea again, the emperor gazed long after them, his eyes bathed in tears. "I am tormented with sorrow," he said, "when Iforesee the evils they will bring on my posterity." There was reason for these Xerxes' tears. The men who have built a ship and invented the rig, -- cordage, sail, compass, and pump, -- the working in and out of port, have acquired much more than a ship. Now arm them, and every shore is at their mercy. For, if they have not numerical superiority where they anchor, they have only to sail a mile or two to find it. Bonaparte's art of war, namely of concentrating force on the point of attack, must always be theirs who have the choice of the battle-ground. Of course they come into the fight from a higher ground of power than the land-nations; and can engage them on shore with a victorious advantage in the retreat. As soon as the shores are sufficiently peopled to make piracy a losing business, the same skill and courage are ready for the service of trade.

The _Heimskringla_, or Sagas of the Kings of Norway, collected by Snorro Sturleson, is the Iliad and Odyssey of English history.

同类推荐
  • 巫峡

    巫峡

    本书为公版书,为不受著作权法限制的作家、艺术家及其它人士发布的作品,供广大读者阅读交流。
  • 文原

    文原

    本书为公版书,为不受著作权法限制的作家、艺术家及其它人士发布的作品,供广大读者阅读交流。
  • 水云集

    水云集

    本书为公版书,为不受著作权法限制的作家、艺术家及其它人士发布的作品,供广大读者阅读交流。
  • 从政遗规

    从政遗规

    本书为公版书,为不受著作权法限制的作家、艺术家及其它人士发布的作品,供广大读者阅读交流。
  • 泥丸李祖师女宗双修宝筏

    泥丸李祖师女宗双修宝筏

    本书为公版书,为不受著作权法限制的作家、艺术家及其它人士发布的作品,供广大读者阅读交流。
热门推荐
  • 豪门爱恋:老婆求勾搭

    豪门爱恋:老婆求勾搭

    她倾国倾城,才华横溢,却不幸被后妈买到了异国他乡,正是因为这一点,她收获了不一样的爱情。
  • 修真之极品私生子

    修真之极品私生子

    他是现代典型的纨绔浪荡子,他是修真界的废物点心,他是高阶修士眼里的唐僧肉,无论男女,是雌伏还是雄起,他的一生注定波澜起伏。。。。
  • 重生之祸国妖妃

    重生之祸国妖妃

    前一世,叶袅袅是恪守本分的后宫之主,举全族之力送那人登上至尊之位,却落得个打入冷宫,死无全尸,全族一百二十一口血洒菜市口的下场!这一世,她势必要做一个祸国殃民的妖妃!就算要逆了这世道,背上天下骂名,她也要护得一族平安,免前世乱葬岗之结局。死在皇宫便此生不再踏足吗?她偏不!这一次,她依旧要坐上那把凤椅,她更要踩着那些害她毁她的人的尸骨步步生莲,凤临天下!最重要的是,她要换了身边站着的那个人!我命由我不由天!即便是与狼子野心的慕容清风一起谋皮,哪怕是千夫所指,万人唾骂,只要她痛快一世,大仇得报,那又如何?更不要说,这辈子,还真有一个腹黑得不能再腹黑,宠溺她不能再宠她的人陪她一起走向巅峰,笑看天下。
  • 难道我要制霸校园

    难道我要制霸校园

    一个人们眼中的不良少年重生附身在一个不良少女身上的事情,就是这样。。。。。。
  • 天上有个太阳

    天上有个太阳

    闫小光做了二十六年的女人,有些做够了做厌了。闫小光这二十六年女人做得非常不舒畅,所以她心里始终含着一种怨,但就是不知道该怨谁。就在这天,他碰到了那个梦中出现过的男人,从此她便爱上了他,可是双腿残疾的他不愿意拖累别人,一场感情上的纠葛开始了。
  • 北京甜心

    北京甜心

    本书讲述的是成长于军队大院,踩着滑板每天穿梭在北京的钢筋与铁骨之间的青年“我”,带着这代人潜伏在内心的迷惘、彷徨和失望,阴差阳错地在大学毕业后被一家世界最顶级的男性时尚杂志《VG》录取。从助理编辑开始,在经营着时尚产业的外企环境和光鲜亮丽的时尚秀场间穿梭……
  • 韶华白首,夜璃殇

    韶华白首,夜璃殇

    谁,执我之手,敛我半世癫狂;谁,吻我之眸,遮我半世流离;谁,抚我之面,慰我半世离伤;?谁,携我之心,融我半世冰霜;谁弃我而去,留我一世独殇。?????
  • 魔职天下

    魔职天下

    雄伟血燕独子回,纤弱暗伤以入悲。”它们已经不可能回来了,纤弱死了雄伟的心恐怕也只有报仇和怨恨我当年放在它们家中的两只年幼的麻雀吧。
  • 雷葬

    雷葬

    一个与世无争的武学世家,因为家族传承的武学奇书‘雷炎诀’之事被外人得知,遭到了冰火郡郡主司马乘风的窥视,因此一个关于夺取‘雷炎诀’的阴谋向着这个武学世家悄然伸去,正义与邪恶,爱恨情仇在这一刻开始弥漫了整个大王朝!
  • 中华历史全书(下)

    中华历史全书(下)

    中国是一个有着五千年历史的文明古国,每个中国人无不以此为自豪。