ooks and foreign books, formed under
another code and appealing to a different taste. The principle of
'elimination,' the 'use and disuse' of organs which naturalists speak
of, works here. What is used strengthens; what is disused weakens: 'to
those who have, more is given;' and so a sort of style settles upon an
age, and imprinting itself more than anything else in men's memories
becomes all that is thought of about it.

I believe that what we call national character arose in very much the
same way. At first a sort of 'chance predominance' made a model, and
then invincible attraction, the necessity which rules all but the
strongest men to imitate what is before their eyes, and to be what they
are expected to be, moulded men by that model. This is, I think, the
very process by which new national characters are being made in our own
time. In America and in Australia a new modification of what we call
Anglo-Saxonism is growing. A sort of type of character arose from the
difficulties of colonial life--the difficulty of struggling with the
wilderness; and this type has given its shape to the mass of characters
because the mass of characters have unconsciously imitated it. Many of
the American characteristics are plainly useful in such a life, and
consequent on such a life. The eager restlessness, the highly-strung
nervous organisation are useful in continual struggle, and also are
promoted by it. These traits seem to be arising in Australia, too, and
wherever else the English race is placed in like circumstances. But
even in these useful particulars the innate tendency of the human mind
to become like what is around it, has effected much: a sluggish
Englishman will often catch the eager American look in a few years; an
Irishman or even a German will catch it, too, even in all English
particulars. And as to a hundred minor points--in so many that go to
mark the typical Yankee--usefulness has had no share either in their
origin or their propagation. The accident of some predominant person
possessing them set the fashion, and it has been imitated to this day.
Anybody who inquires will find even in England, and even in these days
of assimilation, parish peculiarities which arose, no doubt, from some
old accident, and have been heedfully preserved by customary copying. A
national character is but the successful parish character; just as the
national speech is but the successful parish dialect, the dialect, that
is, of the distri