The Englishman, who leaves the stamp of the most
distinct personality upon others, is the most mixed, the most
various, the most relative of all men. He is not English except
as he is Welsh, Dutch, and Norman, with "a little Latin and less
Greek" from his earliest visitors and invaders. This conception
of him will indefinitely simplify the study of his nature if it
is made in the spirit of the frank superficiality which I propose
to myself. After the most careful scrutiny which I shall be able
to give him, he will remain, for every future American, the
contradiction, the anomaly, the mystery which I expect to leave
him.
I
No error of the Englishman's latest invader is commoner than the
notion, which perhaps soonest suggests itself, that he is a sort
of American, tardily arriving at our kind of consciousness, with
the disadvantages of an alien environment, after apparently
hopeless arrest in unfriendly conditions. The reverse may much
more easily be true; we may be a sort of Englishmen, and the
Englishman, if he comes to us and abides with us, may become a
sort of American.
Pages:
188
189
190
191
192
193
194
195
196
197
198
199
200
201
202
203
204
205
206
207
208
209
210
211
212