ecimens of a class whose Sunday clothes are a distinct
kind of garb from their week-day ones; and this, in England, implies
wholesome habits of life, daily thrift, and a rank above the lowest. I
longed to be acquainted with them, in order to investigate what manner
of folks they were, what sort of households they kept, their politics,
their religion, their tastes, and whether they were as narrow-minded as
their betters. There can be very little doubt of it: an Englishman is
English, in whatever rank of life, though no more intensely so, I
should imagine, as an artisan or petty shopkeeper, than as a member of
Parliament.

The English character, as I conceive it, is by no means a very lofty
one; they seem to have a great deal of earth and grimy dust clinging
about them, as was probably the case with the stalwart and quarrelsome
people who sprouted up out of the soil, after Cadmus had sown the
dragon's teeth. And yet, though the individual Englishman is sometimes
preternaturally disagreeable, an observer standing aloof has a sense of
natural kindness towards them in the lump. They adhere closer to the
original simplicity in which mankind was created than we ourselves do;
they love, quarrel, laugh, cry, and turn their actual selves inside
out, with greater freedom than any class of Americans would consider
decorous. It was often so with these holiday-folks in Greenwich Park;
and, ridiculous as it may sound, I fancy myself to have caught very
satisfactory glimpses of Arcadian life among the Cockneys there, hardly
beyond the scope of Bow-Bells, picnicking in the grass, uncouthly
gambolling on the broad slopes, or straying in motley groups or by
single pairs of love-making youths and maidens, along the sun-streaked
avenues. Even the omnipresent policemen or park-keepers could not
disturb the beatific impression on my mind. One feature, at all events,
of the Golden Age was to be seen in the herds of deer that encountered
you in the somewhat remoter recesses of the Park, and were readily
prevailed upon to nibble a bit of bread out of your hand. But, though no
wrong had ever been done them, and no horn had sounded nor hound bayed
at the heels of themselves or their antlered progenitors, for centuries
past, there was still an apprehensiveness lingering in their hearts; so
that a slight movement of the hand or a step too near would send a whole
squadron of them scampering away, just as a breath scatters the winged
seeds of a dandel