Britishness

“ The highest-mounted thought, the soul's complete attainment, like the summits of the hills, can be the possession only of the few, but the paths that lead thither this empire shall open to the daring climber. Humanity has left the Calvinist and Jacobin behind. And thus Britain shall become the name of an ideal as well as the designation of a race, the description of an attitude of mind as well as of traits of blood. ”

“ England has inoculated all nations with her civilization, intelligence, and tastes; and, to resist the tyranny and prepossession of the British element, a serious man must aid himself, by comparing with it the civilizations of the farthest east and west, the old Greek, the Oriental, and, much more, the ideal standard, if only by means of the very impatience which English forms are sure to awaken in independent minds. ”

“ With some sad exceptions, I think that Great Britain has reason to be proud of her aristocracy. I do not speak now of those gaudy flaunting personages, of either sex, who, by their excesses or eccentricities, are eternally obtruding themselves, their manners, dress, and equipage, upon the offended ear and eye of the public; but of those who occupy their exalted sphere in simplicity, in calmness, and in unobtrusive dignity and virtue. I am no flatterer or idolater of the nobility. ”

“ The working out of the idea of democracy in a country like England which still retained its monarchical form and much of its aristocratic flavor, was a theme on which he dwelt with particular pleasure. Back somewhere in the line of descent his paternal ancestors had been of English blood, and he was proud of the heroism, the spirit and the energy which had made Great Britain one of the mighty nations of the earth. ”

“ Even the national temper was fully formed. Civilization, letters, science, religion itself, have done little to change the inner mood of Englishmen. That love of venture and of toil, of the sea and the fight, that trust in manhood and the might of man, that silent awe of the mysteries of life and death which lay deep in English souls then as now, passed with Englishmen to the land which Englishmen had won. ”

“ We are born of earth's best blood, and have titles manifold. Admitting all the crimes of which our nation has been guilty, I yet thank God—and in that sentiment I but utter the feelings of every British heart—that I am born a Briton. Therefore it behoves us, as Britons, to spread far and wide throughout our beloved and honoured land that which can carry on its liberties and its prosperity to a yet higher height. ”

“ Come, then, expressive silence, muse His praise.
[RULE, BRITANNIA] AN ODE: FROM ALFRED, A MASQUE When Britain first, at Heaven's command,
Arose from out the azure main,
This was the charter of the land,
And guardian angels sang this strain:
Rule, Britannia, Britannia rules the waves!
Britons never will be slaves!
The nations not so blest as thee,
Must in their turns to tyrants fall,
Whilst thou shalt flourish great and free,
The dread and envy of them all. ”

“ How can you most easily and most securely better yourselves as Britishers—as working men? By making England better, by making it better worth your while to be a citizen of, and a worker in that nation! ”

“ Why can't you English leave people alone? Surely, if one likes to come all this way from civilisation, one has a right to a little peace and quietness. Oh, I don't blame you, but I know exactly what you were after. In a short time you find some excuse to quarrel with the natives, then you run up the British flag and build a light railway, and then you go home and write a book, and your Government gives you a knighthood and perhaps makes you a governor of some important island. ”

“ But I fear very much that our English pride is of another growth, and smells too rankly of that overstrained commercial spirit which makes the basis of the present grandeur of Great Britain, but which, in my humble judgment, raises only to debase her——by slow, subtle degrees, poisons the national principle, enslaves the once bold spirit of the People, detracts from their real solid felicity, and, by confounding the idea of national wealth with that of national prosperity, leads it in rapid strides to its downfall. ”

“ To the contemplative stranger who permits himself not only to talk sentimental nonsense, but to think it, it seems as if, somehow, all England had been gathered up into such a place—-as if nothing less than her glorious past, her wealth, her power, her honour, her uninvaded centuries, had been needed to produce it. ”

“ They had not only a respect, but an affection for Great-Britain; for its laws, its customs and manners, and even a fondness for its fashions, that greatly increased the commerce. Natives of Britain were always treated with particular regard; to be an Old England man was, of itself, a character of some respect, and gave a kind of rank among us. ”

“ What suits Great Britain, with her insular position and consequent need to concentrate and intensify her life, her limited monarchy, and spirit of trade, does not suit a mixed race, continually enriched with new blood from other stocks the most unlike that of our first descent, with ample field and verge enough to range in and leave every impulse free, and abundant opportunity to develope a genius, wide and full as our rivers, flowery, luxuriant and impassioned as our vast prairies, rooted in strength as the rocks on which the Puritan fathers landed. ”

“ It takes all sorts of people to make up the British Empire, and there is no sort lacking—glorious or pretty, or sour or sweet. But this was the type of English globe-trotter that makes himself as unpopular among foreigners as he is among his own people. ”

“ The British people had no quarrel with any great Power. All talk about a German menace, we thought, was the delusion of foolish old gentlemen in military clubs, or the scaremongering of newspapers out for circulation and sensation. The heart of England beat steadily to the old rhythm of life in country houses and fields and workshops and mean streets. Beneath the surface of modern change, progress and accidental novelties, the spirit of England and of its sister peoples was deep-rooted in the past and slow-moving towards new ideas. ”

“ In the great Elizabethan age, when the English nation was finally hammered out, in the great eighteenth century when the British Empire was being built up everywhere, where in all these times, where was this symbolic stoical Englishman who dresses in drab and black and represses his feelings? ”

“ At the same time England has a class to which we have happily no parallel in our country—a class to which even English gentlemen liken the Sepoys, and who would, they admit, under like circumstances be guilty of like enormities. But the true Englishman shuts his eyes for a great part of the time to the steps in the social scale down which his race descends, and looks only at the upper walks. ”

“ And that gay and fresh-coloured youth, of simple but select toilet and lordly British bearing—not aggressively lordly, like that of so many Britons wandering in the land of the barbarous and ineffectual foreigner, not contemptuously, but unconsciously and cheerily so, like one to whom life offered all its best treasures as of royal right. ”

“ All the rest of the world then know they must do what the English say—Germans, Italians, Russians, Yankees, Canadians. Now I'm a cosmopolitan, I am. All kind of folk look good to me."
"But England ruling the world means universal peace," I said enthusiastically. "Free trade, equal rights, all the grand altruistic English ideals established forever and ever! Adam, let England have it! You'll be remembered as the greatest benefactor of humanity. ”

“ To pens more powerful than mine, I leave the noble task of promoting the cause of national amity. To the intelligent and enlightened of my own country, I address my parting voice, entreating them to show themselves superior to the petty attacks of the ignorant and the worthless, and still to look with dispassionate and philosophic eye to the moral character of England, as the intellectual source of our rising greatness ”

“ I do not address myself to whigs or tories, but to the whole people. I know you well. You are loyal at heart, friends to good order, and do violence to yourselves in harboring, one moment, disrespectful sentiments towards Great Britain, the land of our forefathers' nativity, and sacred repository of their bones; but you have been most insidiously induced to believe that Great Britain is rapacious, cruel, and vindictive, and envies us the inheritance purchased by the sweat and blood of our ancestors. ”

“ I much prefer the condition of an English gentleman of the better class, to that of any potentate in Europe,--whether for travel, or for opportunity of society, or for access to means of science or study, or for mere comfort and easy healthy relation to people at home.
Such, as we have seen, is the wealth of England, a mighty mass, and made good in whatever details we care to explore. The cause and spring of it is the wealth of temperament in the people. The wonder of Britain is this plenteous nature. Her worthies are ever surrounded by as good men as themselves ”

“ If you were an impulsive, excitable, sentimental American and thought you were mildly rebuking your British friends when you ventured to wonder at the extraordinary naturalness of life in the West End, or at Walton Heath golf links, or at Chelsea football grounds, or at the Newmarket race-course, you found yourself unconsciously paying a tribute to "British character." ”

“ Though I am a Russian without a drop of English blood in my veins, I have always looked upon the British race as the real bulwark of freedom, and I rejoice that the King of England has not permitted either tradition or personal feeling to stand in the way of the last triumph of the Anglo-Saxon race. ”

“ The deeds on the battlefield, the spirit which fires the men from every region of that empire and from every section of that society of nations, the attitude which has marked that people and that race towards the present war, are not without deep significance. Now at last the name English People is co-extensive and of equal meaning with the English race. The distinctions of rank, of intellectual or social environment, of birth, of political or religious creeds, professions, are all in that great act forgotten and are as if they were not. ”

“ They are sentiments which ought never to have occurred even to his heart. I repudiate, I reject them. I remember there was a time when England, with not a tithe of her present resources, inspired by a patriotic cause, triumphantly encountered a world in arms. And, Sir, I believe now, if the occasion were fitting, if her independence or her honour were assailed, or her empire in danger, I believe that England would rise in the magnificence of her might, and struggle triumphantly for those objects for which men live and nations flourish. ”

“ The ideal of modern life, the ideal of which Britain is the supreme representative amongst existing empires, starting not from justice but from freedom, may be traced beyond the French Revolution and the Reformation, back even to the command "Render unto Caesar." That word thrust itself like a wedge into the ancient unity of the State and God. ”

“ Yet they called themselves British, afraid as they were to show the Flag of England or to sing the National Anthem; all they could do was to dress, drink, and make money, and, like the servile clients of ancient Rome, bend their supple backs to their arrogant and uncouth patrons, and thank them for permission to live. Sixty thousand souls who had been born free, for the sake of gold bent the knee before sixteen thousand uncultivated retarders of civilisation. ”

“ Let us rejoice that we have not only been the advocates of the oppressed—have triumphed by perseverance and constancy over the oppressor; but that England has become the favoured and glorious instrument of a God of mercy, to make his light to shine upon those who sat in darkness and the shadow of death. ”

“ In a word it was the old reckless, dare-devil spirit of their ancestors—the men who carved out the British Empire—re-born in those virile youths and young men from that bigger and fresher and brighter Britain overseas. ”

“ We are habituated to its exclusiveness, and, no doubt, custom in England is a power; but let some event suddenly occur which makes a nation feel or think, and the whole thing might vanish like a dream. ”

“ I rest on the courageous spirit of Britain, which we must not undervalue, as it is the root of our own: and from a belief in the stability of her resources—more than is entertained by all of our friends. ”

“ And as the American people has formed no comprehension of the British Empire as a whole and is without any understanding of its spirit, so it has drawn for itself a caricature of the British character. ”

“ It is asserted by all persons who have lately visited Great Britain, that, though the civilization of the lower classes is much behind that of the same description in France, the higher orders, the rich and the fashionable, are, with regard to their, manners, more French than English, and might easily be cajoled into obedience and subjection to the sovereignty of a nation whose customs, by free choice, they have adopted in preference to their own, and whose language forms a necessary part of their education, and, indeed, of the education of almost every class in the British Empire. ”