What is more beautiful or meet to be taken to the bosom than the Englishman? Everybody loves him; his goings to and fro upon the earth are as the progresses of one who has done all men good. He drops fatness and blessings as he walks. He smiles benignity and graciousness and "I-am-glad-to-see-you-all-looking-so-well." And before him runs one in plush, crying, "Who is the most popular man of this footstool?" And all the people shall rejoice and say, "The Englishman—God bless him!"

Hence it comes to pass that in whatever part of the world the Englishman may find himself, he has a feeling that he is thoroughly at home. "I am as welcome as flowers in[Pg 200] May," he says. "These pore foreigners, these pore \'eathen are glad to see me. They never have any money, pore devils! and were it not for our whirring spindles at home, I verily believe they would have nothing to wear." In brief, the Englishman abroad is always in a sort of Father Christmassey, Santa Claus frame of mind. He eats well, he drinks well, and he sleeps well. He calls for the best, and he PAYS for it. It is a wonderful thing to do, and it goes straight to the hearts of the "pore foreigner" and the "pore \'eathen." This, at any rate, is the Englishman\'s own view. It is a pleasing, consoling, and stimulating view, and it would ill become an unregenerate outsider rudely to disturb it. Indeed, I question whether the Englishman in his blindness and adipose conceit would allow you to disturb it.

When persons in France say, "à bas l\'Anglais," your fat Englishman smiles, and says, "Little boys!" When people put rude pictures of him on German postcards, he smiles again, and says that the flowing tide[Pg 201] of public opinion in Germany is entirely with him. When Dutch farmers propose to throw him into the sea, he becomes very red in the neck, splutters somewhat, and says, "I\'m sure they will make excellent subjects in time." And when the savage Americans desire to chaw him up and swallow him, he says, "You astonish me. I have always been under the impression that blood was thicker than water." His desire is to live at peace with all men; but his notion of peace is to have his hand in both your pockets and no questions asked. He owns two-thirds of the habitable globe (vide the geography books), and every pint of sea is his (pace the popular song); he owns also everything that is worth owning. He is the Pierpont Morgan of the universe. Who could help loving him?

On the other hand, the excellent J.B. has not escaped calumny. If I were disposed to reproduce some of the slanders upon him, it goes without saying that they would make a rather large chapter. All manner of foreign writers have time and time again had a[Pg 202] fling at the Englishman. They love him, but their love is not blind. They perceive that he has faults of a grievous nature, and they write accordingly. Curiously enough, too, quite severe criticisms of John Bull have been written in his own household. Mr. Wilfrid Scawen Blunt, for example, who is an Englishman, and apparently innocent of Celtic taint, actually goes so far as to call the Englishman an Anglo-Norman dog:

Down to the latest born, the hungriest of the pack,
The master-wolf of all men, called the Sassenach,
The Anglo-Norman dog, who goeth by land and sea,
As his forefathers went in chartered piracy,
Death, fire in his right hand.

And the English poet goes on to elaborate his indictment against the Englishman, thus:

He hath outlived the day
Of the old single graspings, where each went his way
Alone to plunder all. He hath learned to curb his lusts
Somewhat, to smooth his brawls, to guide his passionate gusts,
His cry of "Mine, mine, mine!" in inarticulate wrath.
He dareth not make raid on goods his next friend hath
With open violence, nor loose his hand to steal,
Save in community and for the common weal

[Pg 203]

\'Twixt Saxon man and man. He is more congruous grown;
Holding a subtler plan to make the world his own
By organized self-seeking in the paths of power
He is new-drilled to wait. He knoweth his appointed hour
And his appointed prey. Of all he maketh tool,
Even of his own sad virtues, to cajole and rule.

We are told, further, that the Beloved has tarred Time\'s features, pock-marked Nature\'s face, and "brought all to the same jakes," whatever that may mean. Also:

There is no sentient thing
Polluteth and defileth as this Saxon king,
This intellectual lord and sage of the new quest.
The only wanton he that fouleth his own nest,
And still his boast goeth forth.

This is an English opinion, and, consequently, worth the money. Mr. Blunt assures us that in putting it forth he has the approval of no less a philosopher than Mr. Herbert Spencer, and no less an idealist than Mr. George Frederick Watts. "I have not," says Mr. Blunt, "shrunk from insisting on the truth that the hypocrisy and all-acquiring greed of modern England is an atrocious[Pg 204] spectacle—one which, if there be any justice in Heaven, must bring a curse from God, as it has surely already made the angels weep. The destruction of beauty in the name of science, the destruction of happiness in the name of progress, the destruction of reverence in the name of religion, these are the Pharisaic crimes of all the white races; but there is something in the Anglo-Saxon impiety crueller still: that it also destroys, as no other race does, for its mere vainglorious pleasure. The Anglo-Saxon alone has in our day exterminated, ro............