have had the benefit of as many years in determining
your own position and relation to him. You are electrified when a waiter
first touches his hat to you; it is as if he had discharged something
into you by the gesture, which is likely to exhaust him, and you expect
to have to offer him a chair. But his deference is an integral part of
the stability of England. When he forgets it, look for a panic in the
Exchange, the collapse of credit, and the assassination of the Queen.

This mutual deference in a country that is so strictly apportioned into
castes becomes an unconscious toadyism, which is saved from being very
repulsive only by the frank and childlike ways of the people. If it is
carried too far, they are the first to see it. The "Times" could not
report a case of murder without remarking, as it described the direction
of the fatal shot, "What was a very singular fact, a part of the charge,
after crossing the apartment, entered a picture of her Majesty the Queen
on the opposite wall";--that is, in committing the murder, the charge of
powder went too far; it ought to have stuck to its business, instead of
violating one of the chief proprieties of a limited monarchy. But when
the Queen went down to Greenwich summer before last to embark for
Belgium, an over-zealous official issued an order that no person should
be admitted into the yard of the dock, no workman should cross the yard
while she was in it, and no one should look out of a window until she
had gone. This was his British sense of the behavior due to a Queen who
was in mourning for her husband, and might dislike to be observed. But
the whole press derided this order, and subjected it to indignant
criticism; the officer was styled flunky and tyrant, and the Queen
herself was obliged to rebuke and disavow it.

In doing everything in England, there is so little excitement, because
it is felt to be irregular. The temper of the people is well kept by the
smooth and even island air; the moist southwestern winds come and soothe
with calm lips the check. The thermometer, like everything else, knows
its place; and when once it succeeded in passing through twenty degrees
in the course of a day, the oldest inhabitant of London grew anxious; it
was feared that stocks, too, would fall. The thunderstorms understand
propriety, and simply growl, like the dissatisfied Englishman. Vivid
effects, sharp contrasts, violent exertions, cannot be sustained in that
insular atmospher