, most redoubtable in battle, most
impatient of slavery. "English savages" is what Cellini calls them; and
the great shins of beef with which they fill themselves nourish the force
and ferocity of their instincts. To harden them thoroughly, institutions
work in the same groove as nature. The nation is armed. Every man is a
soldier, bound to have arms according to his condition, to exercise
himself on Sundays and holidays. The State resembles an army; punishments
must inspire terror; the idea of war is ever present. Such instincts,
such a history, raises before them with tragic severity the idea of life;
death is at hand, wounds, blood, tortures. The fine purple cloaks, the
holiday garments, elsewhere signs of gayety of mind, are stained with
blood and bordered with black. Throughout a stern discipline, the axe
ready for every suspicion of treason; "great men, bishops, a chancellor,
princes, the king's relations, queens, a protector kneeling in the straw,
sprinkled the Tower with their blood; one after the other they marched
past, stretched out their necks; the Duke of Buckingham, Queen Anne
Boleyn, Queen Catherine Howard, the Earl of Surrey, Admiral Seymour, the
Duke of Somerset, Lady Jane Grey and her husband, the Duke of
Northumberland, the Earl of Essex, all on the throne, or on the steps of
the throne, in the highest ranks of honor, beauty, youth, genius; of the
bright procession nothing is left but senseless trunks, marred by the
tender mercies of the executioner."

The gibbet stands by the highways, heads of traitors and criminals grin
on the city gates. Mournful legends multiply, church-yard ghosts, walking
spirits. In the evening, before bedtime, in the vast country houses, in
the poor cottages, people talk of the coach which is seen drawn by
headless horses, with headless postilions and coachmen. All this, with
unbounded luxury, unbridled debauchery, gloom, and revelry hand in hand.
"A threatening and sombre fog veils their mind like their sky, and joy,
like the sun, pierces through it and upon them strongly and at
intervals." All this riot of passion and frenzy of vigorous life, this
madness and sorrow, in which life is a phantom and destiny drives so
remorselessly, Taine finds on the stage and in the literature of the
period.

To do him justice, he finds something else, something that might give him
a hint of the innate soundness of English life in its thousands of sweet
homes, something of that great force