religious age. At the same time that you venerate the
history of England, and are thankful for the great expansion which she
gave to human rights, you almost quarrel with it, because at first it
seems like an old stratum with its men and women imbedded; its
institutions, once so softly and lightly deposited, now become a tough
clay; its structures, once so curiously devised for living tenants, now
crusts and shells; its tracks of warm and bleeding feet now set in a
stiff soil that will take no future impression.

All this is due to the first glance you get at the hard, realistic
England of to-day. You have noticed a machine clutch its raw material
and twist and turn it through its relentless bowels. That is the way the
habits of England seize you when you land, and begin to appropriate your
personality. This is the first offence of England in the eyes of an
American, whose favorite phrase, "the largest liberty," is too
synonymous with the absence of any settled habits. Prescribed ways of
doing everything are the scum which a traveller first gathers in
England. Perhaps he thinks that he has caught the English nationality in
his skimmer; and as he rather contemptuously examines these topmost and
handiest traits, he grumbles to himself that these are the habits of a
very old nation, that lives on an island, and keeps up a fleet, not to
bridge, but to widen narrow seas. Such respect for routine and
observance can nowhere else be perceived. An American is so little
prepared for this that he is disposed to quarrel with it even in
railway-stations, where it is most excellent. But it penetrates all
forms and institutions; the Established Church itself is a specimen of
complete arranging and engineering; the worshippers are classified,
ticketed, and despatched safely rolling on the broad gauge of the
Liturgy, in confidence of being set down at last where the conductors
have contracted to take them. How accurately everybody in England knows
his own place!--and he accepts it, however humble, with a determined
feeling that it is inevitable. The audience is so packed that everybody
remains quiet. The demeanor of the servants is as settled and
universally deferential as Westminster Abbey is Gothic. Mr. Lindsay or
Mr. Roebuck might forget to revile America, or Lord Palmerston,
England's right hand, forget his cunning, as soon as a servant might
forget his place. A thousand years have settled him in it; and you are
supposed by him to