are beautiful people, in abundance.
There are great houses as of yore, maintained, perhaps, with even more
than bygone splendour: the horses are as good--the dogs as good--the
trout-streams as well stocked--the grouse as abundant--foreign travel is
more easy--all travel is more facile--there are more books and more
illustrated newspapers; and yet, with all these advantages--very
tangible advantages too--I do not think the present occupants make the
house as pleasant as their fathers did, and for the very simple reason,
that they never try.

Indifferentism is the tone of the day. No one must be eager, pleased,
displeased, interested, or anxious about anything. Life is to be treated
as a tiresome sort of thing, but which is far too much beneath one to
be thought of seriously--a wearisome performance, which good manners
require you should sit out, though nothing obliges you to applaud or
even approve of it. This is the theory, and we have been most successful
in reducing it to practice. We are immensely bored, and we take good
care so shall be our neighbour. Just as we have voted that there is
nothing new, nothing strange, nothing amusing, we defy any one to differ
with us, on pain of pronouncing him vulgar. North American Indians are
not more case-hardened against any show of suffering under torture than
are our well-bred people against any manifestation of showing pleasure
in anything. "It wasn't bad," is about the highest expression of our
praise; and I doubt if we would accord more to heaven--if we got there.
The grand test of your modern Englishman is, to bear any amount of
amusement without wincing: no pleasure is to wring a smile from him, nor
is any expectancy to interest, or any unlooked-for event to astonish. He
would admit that "the Governor"--meaning his father--was surprised; he
would concede the fact, as recording some prejudice of a bygone age. As
the tone of manners and observance has grown universal, so has the very
expression of the features. They are intensely like each other. We are
told that a shepherd will know the actual faces of all the sheep in his
flock, distinguishing each from each at a glance. I am curious to know
if the Bishop of London knows even the few lost sheep that browse about
Rotten Eow of an afternoon, and who are so familiar to us in Leech's
sketches. There they are--whiskered, bearded, and bored; fine-looking
animals in their way, but just as much living creatures in 'Punch'
as they