A SPLENDID RACE.

Northland Age, Volume 4, Issue 3, 3 September 1907, Page 2

A SPLENDID RACE.

From Emerson’s “English Traits.

But it is in the deep traits of race that tfie fortunes of nations are written, and however derived, whether a happier tribe or mixture of tribes, the air, or what circumstance, that mixed for them the golden mean of temperament—here exists the best stock in the world, broad-fronted, broad-bottomed, best for depth, range and equability men of aplomb and reserves, great range and many moods, strong instincts, yet apt for culture ; war-class as well as clerks ; Earls and tradesmen wise minority, as ivell as foolish majority ; abysmal temperament, hiding ivells of wrath, and glooms on which no sunshine settles ; alternated with a common sense and humanity which bold them fast to every piece of cheerful duty ; making this temperament a sea in which ail storms are superficial ; a race to which their fortunes flow, as if they alone had the elastic organisation at once fine and robust enough for dominion* ; as if the burly inexpressive, now mute and contumacious, now fierce and sharp-tongued dragon, which once made the island light with his fiery breath, had bequeathed his ferocity to his canqueror. They hide virtues under vices, or the semblance of them. It is the misshapen hairy Scandinavian troll again, who lifts the cart out of the mire or “threshes the corn that ten day-labourers could not end,” but it is done in the dark, and with muttered maledictions. He is a churl with a soft place in his heart, whose speech is a brash of bitter waters, but who loves to help you at a pinch. He says no. and serves you, and your thanks disgust him. Here was lately a cross-grained miser, odd and ugtty, resembling in countenance the portrait of Punch, with the laugh left out ; rich by his own industry ; sulking in a lonely house ;who never gave a dinner to any man, and disdained all courtesies ; yet as true a worshipper of beauty in form and colour as ever existed, and profusely pouring over the cold mind of his countrymen creations of grace and truth, removing [ the reproach of sterility from English art, catching from their savage climate every fine hint, and importing in-* to their galleries every tint and trait of sunnier cities and skies ; making an era in painting ; and, when he saw that the splendour of one of his pictures in the Exhibition dimmed his rival's that hung next it, secretly took a brush and blackened his own.

They do not wear their heart in their sleeve for daws to peck at. They have that phlegm or staidness, which it is a compliment to disturb. “Great men,” said Aristotle, “are always of a nature originally melancholy.” 'Tis the habit of a mind which attaches to abstractions with a passion which gives vast results. They dare to displease, they do not speak to expectation. They like the sayers of No, better than the sayers of Yes. Each of them has an opinion which he feels it becomes him to express all the more that it differs from yours. They are-meditating opposition. This gravity is inseparable from minds of great resources.

There is an English hero superior to the French, the German, the Italian, or the Greek. When he is brought to the strife w’ith fate, he sacrifices a richer material possessor, and on more purely metaphysical grounds. He is there with his own consent, face to face with fortune, which he defies. On deliberate choice, and from grounds of character, he had elected his part to live and die for, and dies with grandeur. This race hpd added new Elements to humanity, and has a deeper root in the world. They have great range of scale, from ferocity to exquisite refinement. With larger scale, they have great retrieving power. After running each tendency -to an extreme, they try another tact with equal heat. More intellectual than other races, when they live with other races, they do not take their language, but bestow their own. They subsidise other nations, and are not subsidised. They proselyte, and are not proselyted. They assimilate other races to themselves and are not assimilated. The English did not calculate the conquest of the Indies. It fell to their character. So they administer in different parts of the world the code of every empire and race ; in Canade, old French law; in the Mauritius, the Code Napoleon; in the West Indies, the edicts of the Spanish Cortes ; in the East Indies, the Laws of Menu ; in the Isle of Man of the Scandinavian Thing ; at the Cape of Good Hope, of the old Netherlands ; and in the lonian Islslands, the Pandects of Justinian.

They are very conscious of their advantageous position in history. England is the lawgiver, the patron, the instructor, the ally. Compare the tone of the French and English Press the first querulous, captious, sensitive about English opinion ; the English press is never timorous about French opinion, but arrogant and contemptuous.

They are testy and headstrong through an excess of will and bias ; churlish as men sometimes please to be who do not forget a debt, who ask no favours, and who will do what they like with their own. With education and intercourse, these asperities wear off, and leave the good will pure. If anatomy is reformed according to national tendencies, .1 suppose, the spleen will hereafter be found in the Englishmen, not found in the American, and differenceing the one from the other. I anticipate another anatomical discovery, that this organ will be found to be cortital and caducous, that they are superficially morose, but at last tenderhearted, herein differing from Rome and the Latin nations. Nothing savage, nothing mean resides in the English heart. They are subject to panics of credulity and of rage, but the temper of the nation, however disturbed settles itself soon and easily, as in this temperate zone, the sky after whatever storms elears away, and serenity is its normal condition.