present political ills. In no country but
England have the only means and scenes of
relaxation within the reach of some million or
two of people been systematically lampooned
and derided. This disgraceful Insularity exists
no longer. Still, some weak traces of its
contemptuous spirit may occasionally be found,
even in very unlikely places. The
accomplished Mr. Macaulay, in the third volume
of his brilliant History, writes loftily about
"the thousands of clerks and milliners who
are now thrown into raptures by the sight of
Loch Katrine and Loch Lomond." No such
responsible gentleman, in France or Germany,
writing history—writing anything—would
think it fine to sneer at any inoffensive and
useful class of his fellow subjects. If the
clerks and milliners—who pair off arm in
arm, by thousands, for Loch Katrine and
Loch Lomond, to celebrate the Early Closing
Movement, we presume—will only imagine
their presence poisoning those waters to the
majestic historian as he roves along the
banks, looking for Whig Members of
Parliament to sympathise with him in
admiration of the beauties of Nature, we think
they will be amply avenged in the absurdity
of the picture.

Not one of our Insularities is so astonishing
in the eyes of an intelligent foreigner, as
the Court Newsman. He is one of the absurd
little obstructions perpetually in the way of
our being understood abroad. The quiet greatness
and independence of the national
character seems so irreconcileable with its having
any satisfaction in the dull slipslop about the
slopes and the gardens, and about the Prince
Consort's going a-hunting and coming back to
lunch, and about Mr. Gibbs and the ponies,
and about the Royal Highnesses on horseback
and the Royal infants taking carriage
exercise, and about the slopes and the gardens
again, and the Prince Consort again, and Mr.
Gibbs and the ponies again, and the Royal
Highnesses on horseback again, and the
Royal infants taking carriage exercise again,
and so on for every day in the week and
every week in the year, that in questions of
importance the English as a people, really
miss their just recognition. Similar small
beer is chronicled with the greatest care
about the nobility in their country-houses.
It is in vain to represent that the English
people don't care about these insignificant
details, and don't want them; that
aggravates the misunderstanding. If they don't
want them, why do they have them? If
they feel the effect of them to be ridiculous,
why do they consent to be made ridiculous?
If they can't help it, why, then the bewildered
foreigner submits that he was right at first,
and that it is not the English people that is
the power, but Lord Aberdeen, or Lord
Palmerston, or Lord Aldborough, or Lord
Knowswhom.

It is an Insularity well worth general
consideration and correction, that the English
people are wanting in self-respect. It wouId
be difficult to bear higher testimony to the
merits of the English aristocracy than they
themselves afford in not being very arrogant
or intolerant, with so large a public
always ready to abase themselves before
titles. On all occasions, public and
private, where the opportunity is afforded, this
readiness is to be observed. So long as it
obtains so widely, it is impossible that we
should be justly appreciated and comprehended,
by those who have the greatest part
in ruling us. And thus it happens that now
we are facetiously pooh-poohed by our
Premier in the English capital, and now the
accredited representatives of our arts and
sciences are disdainfully slighted by our
Ambassador in the French capital, and we
wonder to find ourselves in such curious
and disadvantageous comparison with the
people of other countries. Those people may,
through many causes, be less fortunate and
less free; but, they have more social self-
respect: and that self-respect must, through
all their changes, be deferred to, and will
assert itself. We apprehend that few
persons are disposed to contend that Rank does
not receive its due share of homage on
the continent of Europe; but, between the
homage it receives there, and the homage
it receives in our island, there is an immense
difference. Half-a-dozen dukes and lords, at
an English county ball, or public dinner, or
any tolerably miscellaneous gathering, are
painful and disagreable company; not because
they have any disposition unduly to exalt
themselves, or are generally otherwise than
cultivated and polite gentlemen, but, because
too many of us are prone to twist ourselves
out of shape before them, into contortions of
servility and adulation. Elsewhere, Self-
respect usually steps in to prevent this; there
is much less toadying and tuft-hunting; and
the intercourse between the two orders is
infinitely more agreeable to both, and far
more edifying to both.

It is one of our Insularities, if we have a
royal or titled visitor among us, to use
expressions of slavish adulation in our public
addresses that have no response in the heart
of any breathing creature, and to encourage
the diffusion of details respecting such visitor's
devout behaviour at church, courtly
behaviour in reception-rooms, decent
behaviour at dinner-tables, implying previous
acquaintance with the uses of knife, fork,
spoon, and wine-glass,—which would really
seem to denote that we had expected Orson.
These doubtful compliments are paid nowhere
else, and would not be paid by us if we had a
little more self-respect. Through our
intercourse with other nations, we cannot too soon
import some. And when we have left off
representing, fifty times a day, to the King of
Brentford and the Chief Tailor of Tooley
Street, that their smiles are necessary to our
existence, those two magnificent persons will