on, style, spread-eagleism; everything is instinctively kept as
near to the practical heart of the matter as possible. He is--to the eye
of an artist--distressingly matter-of-fact, a tempting mark for satire.
And yet he is in truth an idealist, though it is his nature to snub,
disguise, and mock his own inherent optimism. To admit enthusiasms is
"bad form" if he is a "gentleman"; "swank" or mere waste of good heat if
he is not a "gentleman." England produces more than its proper
percentage of cranks and poets; it may be taken that this is Nature's
way of redressing the balance in a country where feelings are not shown,
sentiments not expressed, and extremes laughed at. Not that the
Englishman lacks heart; he is not cold, as is generally supposed--on the
contrary he is warm-hearted and feels very strongly; but just as
peasants, for lack of words to express their feelings, become stolid, so
it is with the Englishman from sheer lack of the habit of
self-expression. Nor is the Englishman deliberately hypocritical; but
his tenacity, combined with his powerlessness to express his feelings,
often gives him the appearance of a hypocrite. He is inarticulate, has
not the clear and fluent cynicism of expansive natures wherewith to
confess exactly how he stands. It is the habit of men of all nations to
want to have things both ways; the Englishman is unfortunately so unable
to express himself, _even to himself_, that he has never realized this
truth, much less confessed it--hence his appearance of hypocrisy.

He is quite wrongly credited with being attached to money. His island
position, his early discoveries of coal, iron, and processes of
manufacture have made him, of course, into a confirmed industrialist
and trader; but he is more of an adventurer in wealth than a heaper-up
of it. He is far from sitting on his money-bags--has absolutely no vein
of proper avarice, and for national ends will spill out his money like
water, when he is convinced of the necessity.

In everything it comes to that with the Englishman--he must be
convinced, and he takes a lot of convincing. He absorbs ideas slowly,
reluctantly; he would rather not imagine anything unless he is obliged,
but in proportion to the slowness with which he can be moved is the
slowness with which he can be removed! Hence the symbol of the bulldog.
When he does see and seize a thing he seizes it with the whole of his
weight, and wastes no breath in telling you that he has got h