“He was a model of those formal but reverend manners which make what is called a gentleman of the old school, so called under an impression that the style is passing away, but which, I suppose, is an optical illusion, as there are always a few more of the class remaining, and always a few young men to whom these manners are native.”

The single verse I quote is compendious enough and descriptive enough for an Elizabethan monumental inscription.

  “With beams December planets dart
  His cold eye truth and conduct scanned;
  July was in his sunny heart,
  October in his liberal hand.”

Emerson’s “English Traits,” forming one volume of his works, was published in 1856.  It is a thoroughly fresh and original book.  It is not a tourist’s guide, not a detailed description of sights which tired the traveller in staring at them, and tire the reader who attacks the wearying pages in which they are recorded.  Shrewd observation there is indeed, but its strength is in broad generalization and epigrammatic characterizations.  They are not to be received as in any sense final; they are not like the verifiable facts of science; they are more or less sagacious, more or less well founded opinions formed by a fair-minded, sharp-witted, kind-hearted, open-souled philosopher, whose presence made every one well-disposed towards him, and consequently left him well-disposed to all the world.

A glance at the table of contents will give an idea of the objects which Emerson proposed to himself in his tour, and which take up the principal portion of his record.  Only one place is given as the heading of a chapter,—­Stonehenge.  The other eighteen chapters have general titles, Land, Race, Ability, Manners, and others of similar character.

He uses plain English in introducing us to the Pilgrim fathers of the British Aristocracy:—­

“Twenty thousand thieves landed at Hastings.  These founders of the House of Lords were greedy and ferocious dragoons, sons of greedy and ferocious pirates.  They were all alike, they took everything they could carry; they burned, harried, violated, tortured, and killed, until everything English was brought to the verge of ruin.  Such, however, is the illusion of antiquity and wealth, that decent and dignified men now existing boast their descent from these filthy thieves, who showed a far juster conviction of their own merits by assuming for their types the swine, goat, jackal, leopard, wolf, and snake, which they severally resembled.”

The race preserves some of its better characteristics.

“They have a vigorous health and last well into middle and old age.  The old men are as red as roses, and still handsome.  A clear skin, a peach-bloom complexion, and good teeth are found all over the island.”

English “Manners” are characterized, according to Emerson, by pluck, vigor, independence.  “Every one of these islanders is an island himself, safe, tranquil, incommunicable.”  They are positive, methodical, cleanly, and formal, loving routine and conventional ways; loving truth and religion, to be sure, but inexorable on points of form.