It was a striking and unpleasant illustration of social differences.  Could such a thing happen in any country but England?  I doubt it.  The sufferer was of decent appearance, and, with ordinary self-command, might have taken his meal in the restaurant like any one else, quite unnoticed.  But he belonged to a class which, among all classes in the world, is distinguished by native clownishness and by unpliability to novel circumstance.  The English lower ranks had need be marked by certain peculiar virtues to atone for their deficiencies in other respects.

XVIII.

It is easy to understand that common judgment of foreigners regarding the English people.  Go about in England as a stranger, travel by rail, live at hotels, see nothing but the broadly public aspect of things, and the impression left upon you will be one of hard egoism, of gruffness and sullenness; in a word, of everything that contrasts most strongly with the ideal of social and civic life.  And yet, as a matter of fact, no nation possesses in so high a degree the social and civic virtues.  The unsociable Englishman, quotha?  Why, what country in the world can show such multifarious, vigorous and cordial co-operation, in all ranks, but especially, of course, among the intelligent, for ends which concern the common good?  Unsociable!  Why, go where you will in England you can hardly find a man—­nowadays, indeed, scarce an educated woman—­who does not belong to some alliance, for study or sport, for municipal or national benefit, and who will not be seen, in leisure time, doing his best as a social being.  Take the so-called sleepy market-town; it is bubbling with all manner of associated activities, and these of the quite voluntary kind, forms of zealously united effort such as are never dreamt of in the countries supposed to be eminently “social.”  Sociability does not consist in a readiness to talk at large with the first comer.  It is not dependent upon natural grace and suavity; it is compatible, indeed, with thoroughly awkward and all but brutal manners.  The English have never (at all events, for some two centuries past) inclined to the purely ceremonial or mirthful forms of sociability; but as regards every prime interest of the community—­health and comfort, well-being of body and of soul—­their social instinct is supreme.

Yet it is so difficult to reconcile this indisputable fact with that other fact, no less obvious, that your common Englishman seems to have no geniality.  From the one point of view, I admire and laud my fellow countryman; from the other, I heartily dislike him and wish to see as little of him as possible.  One is wont to think of the English as a genial folk.  Have they lost in this respect?  Has the century of science and money-making sensibly affected the national character?  I think always of my experience at the English inn, where it is impossible not to feel a brutal indifference to the humane features of life; where food is bolted without attention, liquor swallowed out of mere habit, where even good-natured accost is a thing so rare as to be remarkable.