Two things have to be borne in mind:  the extraordinary difference of demeanour which exists between the refined and the vulgar English, and the natural difficulty of an Englishman in revealing his true self save under the most favourable circumstances.

So striking is the difference of manner between class and class that the hasty observer might well imagine a corresponding and radical difference of mind and character.  In Russia, I suppose, the social extremities are seen to be pretty far apart, but, with that possible exception, I should think no European country can show such a gap as yawns to the eye between the English gentleman and the English boor.  The boor, of course, is the multitude; the boor impresses himself upon the traveller.  When relieved from his presence, one can be just to him; one can remember that his virtues—­though elementary, and strictly in need of direction—­are the same, to a great extent, as those of the well-bred man.  He does not represent—­though seeming to do so—­a nation apart.  To understand this multitude, you must get below its insufferable manners, and learn that very fine civic qualities can consist with a personal bearing almost wholly repellent.

Then, as to the dogged reserve of the educated man, why, I have only to look into myself.  I, it is true, am not quite a representative Englishman; my self-consciousness, my meditative habit of mind, rather dim my national and social characteristics; but set me among a few specimens of the multitude, and am I not at once aware of that instinctive antipathy, that shrinking into myself, that something like unto scorn, of which the Englishman is accused by foreigners who casually meet him?  Peculiar to me is the effort to overcome this first impulse—­an effort which often enough succeeds.  If I know myself at all, I am not an ungenial man; and yet I am quite sure that many people who have known me casually would say that my fault is a lack of geniality.  To show my true self, I must be in the right mood and the right circumstances—­which, after all, is merely as much as saying that I am decidedly English.

XIX.

On my breakfast table there is a pot of honey.  Not the manufactured stuff sold under that name in shops, but honey of the hive, brought to me by a neighbouring cottager whose bees often hum in my garden.  It gives, I confess, more pleasure to my eye than to my palate; but I like to taste of it, because it is honey.

There is as much difference, said Johnson, between a lettered and an unlettered man as between the living and the dead; and, in a way, it was no extravagance.  Think merely how one’s view of common things is affected by literary association.  What were honey to me if I knew nothing of Hymettus and Hybla?—­if my mind had no stores of poetry, no memories of romance?  Suppose me town-pent, the name might bring with it some pleasantness of rustic odour; but of what poor