"THE human species," says Charles Lamb, "according to the best theory I can form of it, is composed of two distinct races the men who borrow and the men who lend. To these two original diversities may be reduced all those impertinent classifications of Gothic and Celtic tribes, white men, black men, red men. All the dwellers upon earth, Parthians and Medes and Elamites,' flock hither, and do naturally fall in with one or other of these primary distinctions." We do not unreservedly endorse this doctrine of races; nor do we accept as our creed, the more elaborate division of mankind, by Buffon and Cuvier, into Caucasian, Mongolian, Ethiopian, Malayan, and American races. Prichard's psychical and philological study of man is too high for us; so are his Melanic, Xanthous and Leucous varieties. Still less would we adopt the Lazarus and Dives distinction. The theory of our afoot philosophy is, that men should be classed, not by race or degree, but by kind. We would divide them into Churl and Gentle the churl in heart and mind, the man of purblind vision, of the closed heart and the closed hand-the gentle in spirit and thought, the fullhearted, full-handed, and full-sighted; the men who have smiles for their brethren and eyes for nature, who can say a welcome and a God-speed. These are the grand divisions, and these again have their varieties. There are peasant churls and noble churls; boorish churls and niggard churls; muleish and moleish churls; sodden, sordid, crabbed, and sullen churls. There are the low-born and high-born gentles; the hearty and the social; the retiring and the diffident; the hail - fellow - well - met and the recluse; the horny-handed and weatherbeaten gentle; the soft and the delicate, yet all-generous, free-hearted, cheerful-lovers of nature and lovers of men. We have found these pretty equally distributed between Caucasian and Ethiopian, and

as often associated with blubber lips and woolly hair, as with the finely chiselled physiognomy of Arab or Greek. We would not bruit it in New York, or whisper it in a steamer on the Mississippi, without having made up our minds to be tabooed, lynched, or bowied; but here, surrounded by Magna Charta and the rural police, we are free to confess that we consider the Ethiop or Nigger rather a pleasant fellow, save and excepting when he comes betwixt the wind and our nobility. We are not sanguine enough to believe that we shall ever see the fulfilment of the theory, that the most gorgeous drama of civilisation the world has ever witnessed will be enacted by blacks if so, we trust that some bountiful dispensation will adapt the olfactories to the time and circumstances for we have lived through a dignity ball, and can imagine what a drawing-room or Exeter hall of niggers would be-but we look upon the nigger rather as a fellow to be laughed and joked with, than to be manacled and cow-hided. The courtesy with which he invites one to partake of his plantain or shaddock has not the grace with which the Arab tenders his bowl of milk, or the Andalusian presents the cigaro, yet it is just as hearty: and as for merriment and laughter, one laugh of his will concentrate more force of cacchination than would come from the whole tribe of Bedouins in a generation. We have known a joke, which we would not father on Selwyn or even quote as Grimaldi's, set a whole group of Sambos and Dinahs rolling, rollicking, and guffawing in an ecstasy of fun.

No! gentleness, courtesy, pleasantness, are not things which depend on blood, or race, or rank, colour or locality; nor are churlishness, niggardliness, insensateness. In this is the whole world nearly kin: that both sorts are to be found in all its peoples and families, classifying them more surely than genus or species. There

have been Nabals and Barzillais in all ages-Coverleys and Grimes in all classes. We men afoot, who jostle and rub elbows with the world, soon learn the characteristics of these kinds, and 'tis wonderful by how many signs, by how many little traits, the gentle disclose the courtesy and hospitality of their hearts. We have gathered these in crumbs from the rich man's table; we have feasted on them at the scant board of the peasant. We have caught them in smiles and greetings; in salaams, salutations, and passing benedictions; in proffered chibouques and seats, and in the many kindly acts which lighten the foot and gladden the heart of the wayfarer. The memories of such things fan our thoughts like angels' wings. Their name is legion-these gentle deeds. Yet there are some which, from a peculiarity of expression or association, stand apart from the rest. Once we had followed some wild duck along a deep cut in a plain of Murcia, and had passed beyond the limits of habitation. Some kind of dwelling at last appeared before us, and we approached it in the hope that it might be a venda, where we could at least get a crust and a cup of wine. We found it to be a mere shed or shelter made of boughs and reeds; yet it was the abode of man, and from it there came forth a gaunt peasant leading a sickly child by the hand. He welcomed us at once waved us to a slight alcove which he had formed outside; spread his tattered cloak on the ground for a seat; then retired within and came back bearing a platter with some brown bread, black olives, and a bottle of the sourest, thinnest wine on it. He made no excuses, no apologies he gave his best, his all. The offering was poor in matter, yet rich in bounty. Twas true hospitality too, for his hand closed against the coin we tried to slip into it, and we were fain to drop it in the lap of the child.

The hospitality of the East has a colouring of its own-the broad colouring of primitive feeling, unshaded by conventional touches. We are in the house of a Sheik of the Lebanon; pipes and coffee have been handed

round. We are in full divan, looking as gravely and puffing away as fiercely as we can. The door opens; a servant salaams, and we are informed that a feast awaits us in another room. We enter, and find a banquet spread, at which Aladdin's genie might have assisted, save that the gold and silver dishes were lacking. There were pilaus, kabobs, roasts, heaps of sweetmeat, piles of rice, dishes of fruit, bowls of sherbet, and jars of coolest water-all set off with leaves and flowers. Nor were flasks of vino d'oro wanting, for our host was no Mussulman. We were waiting the signal to fall to, when a black servant entered, bearing on a dish a kid roasted whole, and stuffed with pistacchio nuts, which he placed before one of the party. The Sheik then quietly remarked, that having observed, on a former occasion, that God had blessed our hakim with a good appetite, this dish had been provided especially for him; and we were invited to try our lesser powers on the lighter delicacies around us. This was not done in joke or sarcasm, but in the pure earnest desire of a host that his guest should be filled and satisfied.

This division of churl and gentle is pretty general among people standing by their own homesteads, or sitting under their own vine and fig. We mean not that the sorts are numerically equal, but that they are found pretty much in the same proportions among the races of men. But it must be allowed that there are nations to whom the pilgrim spirit is more congenial than to others, and who more fully comprehend and fulfil the purposes and destiny of travel. The men of the East say, that we of the Saxon blood inherit the wandering foot as a curse; that we cannot rest, and must wander ever on and on by the will of fate. The Spaniard says we come into his country to see the sun. It is certain, that whatever be the motive, we travel more than any other people or species. The old migratory habit is still strong with us. And though there be some of our kin gobemouches, charlatans, inanities, "purblind, opaque flunkeys, and solemn shams," who disgrace the staff and scallop-shell, and make

the name a byword and a scorn, still from our ranks have sprung the truest and most genial of the pilgrim brotherhood. Our cognates of the German family travel much and well; but they are ponderous in research and learning, deep in statics and analogies, and care little for the lighter touches which brighten and shadow the life of man. They are ever digging for ore, and cannot stop to gather flowers or fruit. The Spaniard seldom moves abroad except in his own land. The Pyrenees, the Atlantic, and the Mediterranean, bound all that he considers worth seeing or knowing. Why should he go beyond this supreme spot? Is it not "el Paradiso?" If strangers come to him, well; he will receive them courteously. They are welcome to his hills and plains, his huertas and prados, and also, if he like them, to his homes and his tertulias. It is quite right that they should travel al cielo d'España; but he! why should he wander? The Russ travels luxuriously and diplomatically. He seeks fine climes and pleasant cities. Luxury is his recreation, politics his study. The world is his rouge-et-noir table, on which he speculates and stakes. His thoughts stray not beyond coteries, cabinets, bureaus, écarté, and salons. It is seldom he cares to climb the hillside, to stand beside the herdsman in the plain, the artisan at his work, the peasant in his cot. How could these help him in his battle of life? With his language spoken, his customs and manners adopted, by onethird of the civilised world, the Frenchman is perhaps least of all men a cosmopolitan-is the least at home among foreigners-has the least aptitude for adapting himself to their nationalities-the least comprehends or understands the characters or characteristics of another people. With a knowledge of the fine arts, of the elegancies and refinements of life, with a love of open air, trees, and gardens, with a fine wit and a ready speech, we have rarely found in him a true perception of the picturesque in nature, the grotesque in life, or the great in art. His mind is subjective rather than objective. He is ever thinking of himself, his country, his capital, his tastes, his style

VOL. LXXXII.—NO. DII.

of life, his cookery, and his glory. He has not the wide vision to perceive the universality of nature, or the wide heart to comprehend the citizenship of mankind. He is great as a soldier, a statesman, a writer, an artiste; but a poor traveller, and a worse colonist. We must make one exception in favour of his love of nature. We never saw it abiding more beautifully than in the heart and soul of an old man in Martinique. He was a settler and planter, had been busied for years with canes and trees, yet had not lost the air of the old noblesse. Age had thinned and silvered his locks, but had not bowed his form, dimmed his eye, or wrinkled his face. His frame was 'erect as ever, his brow smooth as a child's. After entertaining us hospitably, he said, "Now you must see my pictures;" and then led us forth to his grounds, where he had cut paths in the slopes and openings in the woods, which commanded long glorious vistas of tropic scenery. Here is my morning-here my noontide-here my evening seat," he said. "These are my pictures. In the contemplation of them, and in the worship of my God, I find the pleasures and studies of my old age."

No steam-engine journeys more fiercely, or with more rapidity, than our kinsman across the Atlantic. In doing a certain number of miles, a certain number of museums, cities, rivers, ruins, mountains, churches, in a certain number of weeks or months, he whips the whole world. His success in checking tavern-bills, the skill with which he manages guides and postboys, the energy with which he surmounts difficulties, the perseverance with which he writes himself everywhere, and at all times, a citizen U. S., are truly wonderful. His feet are untiring, his will unrelaxing-yet we cannot hold out to him the hand of fellowship, or recognise in him the true spirit of travel. He is a smart traveller, a regular go-ahead; but we find in his tracks little of the sentiment, the taste, or the heartfulness which are essentials of the gentle. We have met some ludicrous instances of the reverse. We were made prisoner once by a heavy shower in the halls of the Alhambra,

and as we sat musing and dreaming there, the old custodian or majordomo brought us the visitors' book, and there, amid dull poems, duller sophisms, and heavy facetiæ, we lit on this precious couplet :—

"Oh, Alhambra, thou shalt ever be

The dearest thought of W. T.!" The initials were meant to help the rhyme, not the incognito, for beneath was written in large letters, William Thompson, Boston, U. S. It was considerate thus to relieve the world of all doubt as to the authorship, to bar future critics from questions and quibbles, to leave conjecture no peg to hang upon, to drop no bone of contention, no apple of discord among towns and nations which might strive hereafter to claim the writer as their

own.

We were once on our way to Florence; our companion was the friend of many a day afoot. Learned as a pundit, enthusiastic as a boy, nature, antiquity, art, were old familiars to him; yet, so eager was he to greet any novelty which they offered, that he loved to anticipate it by thought and talk, like a child when he awakes at dawn to dream over the coming holiday, or when he goes forth on the stairs to inhale the savour of the goose he is afterwards to feast on, or sits before the drop-curtain of his first play. At the place where we were stopping was a Yankee who had just come from Florence the beautiful. Our friend approached him warily, and began to ask him what he had seen, what admired. Then, after a little circumlocution, he dashed at once, in medias res, by saying, “ Of course, you were in raptures with the Venus de Medici?"-expecting an answer such as he would himself have given. Well, sir, to tell you the truth, I don't care much about those stone gals," was the reply he received. Our friend collapsed. Had any one in his presence denied the orthodoxy of St Augustine, or abjured the Thirtynine Articles, there would have been more sorrow in his anger, but scarcely more indignation. The Venus de Medici-a classic chef-d'œuvre-a thing which Praxiteles might have touched with his chisel, or Pericles have looked upon, to be called a stone

gal!" Had he doubted its genuineness, or spoken of it as a specimen of secondary art, he might have been deemed critical, hypercritical; but this was a classic impiety, an irreverence, a profanity. We would not lay down this uncivism, this egoism, as certain signs that a race belonged to any one of our divisions. Men who, under their home influences, and the shadow of their own nationalities, are the gentlest of the gentle, may, from peculiarities of circumstances, nurture, or character, have no aptitude for general civism; but we proclaim it as our creed, that the man whose eye, heart, soul, are large enough truly to see, feel, and understand men and things under various aspects and various forms; who can respect custom, tolerate prejudice, and recognise everywhere a universal interpretation in nature, and a common brotherhood in man, must stand in the first class of the genus-gentle. Yes! the wide-hearted, the tolerant, the gentle-spirited, who move from clime to clime, from people to people, without carping at localities, or jarring with nationality, seeing the good and the true everywhere, bear with them marks plainer than masonic symbols, broader than phylactery, that they rank as magnates in the hierarchy. We have recognised them again and again, by little traits, little acts of courtesy and politeness, things said and done without hope of return, not acted or conventional, but genial impulses and genuine utterances. It is a grand element, a foremost sign of gentleness, this politeness this unstudied, unobserved, spontaneous courtesy, which waits not for scenery, audience, or footlights, but diffuses itself, like the sunshine and the rain, equally on rich and poor, young and old, gentle and simple. We agree with old Charles Lamb-a thorough gentle, quaint and uncouth as he was that we would, without further test or trial, give a diploma at once to any "Dorimant who hands a fishwife across the kennel, or assists the applewoman to pick up her wandering fruit, which some unlucky dray has just dissipated; who will part with his admired box-coat to spread it over the defenceless shoulders of the poor

woman who is passing to her parish on the roof of the same stage with him, drenched in the rain: who would yield the wall to the reverend form of female eld, even though she were an old beggar-woman."

A lady of our acquaintance used often to assert, that a gentleman, then sleeping with his fathers, had been the politest man of his generation, and, as a reason for this opinion, always told the following story. On returning once from school for the holidays, she had been put under his charge for the journey. They stopped for the night at a Cornish inn. Supper was ordered, and soon there appeared a dainty dish of woodcocks. Her cavalier led her to the board with the air of a Grandison; and then proceeded to place all the legs of the birds on her plate. At first, with her school-girl prejudices in favour of wings and in disfavour of legs and drumsticks, she felt rather angered at having these (as she supposed) uninviting and least delicate parts imposed upon her; but in after years, when gastronomic light had beamed on her, and the experience of many suppers brought true appreciation, she did full justice to the memory of the man who could sacrifice such morceaus as woodcocks' thighs to the crude appetite of a girl; and who could thus show his innate deference for womanhood, even in such budding form.

In these small courtesies we must confess that we have ever found the most gallant nation under the sun very deficient. In the abstract of politeness the Gaul is great; he is grand. We have seen him dash off his hat at a group of ladies every time they passed him with a frantic enthusiasm which made us tremble for the brim. We have even seen him wave it at their shadow, or after the poodle dog which followed at their heels. Yet alas! when these same deities appeared at the table-d'hôte, how blind! how insensible was he to their presence! how closely did he hug his well-chosen seat, though they were seatless! how zealously did he pick for himself the tit-bits and the dainties, without regard or thought for their delicate palates!

With grief we admit, that even the

Spaniard, high-bred and courteous as he generally is, is frequently a defaulter in this particular. We remember once being one of a motley group which tumbled out of a diligence at Loja, all clamorous and impatient for dinner; when it was served, what a rush was made at the table! what a dash at the viands! One dish of brain fritters seemed to cause great excitement; there was a regufar scuffle for it. At length, as it came near us, we captured it, and instead of taking advantage of our opportunity by emptying it on our own plate, as was evidently expected, we marched off with it to some senoras who were sitting modestly at the end of the board. Our proceeding excited the greatest astonishment, and many were the exclamations of "mira! mira!" which followed us. There was even a slight touch of surprise in the "Gracias" with which the señoras acknowledged our attention.

Our Transatlantic brother does not recognise such trifles and absurdities as courtesies. In travelling he is fighting a mêlée-running a-muckriding a race-every man is a foe, a rival, a competitor. If he stop, or turn, or relax for a moment, he may be taken at advantage-miss a stroke, or lose a place. He repudiates the obligation of yielding, or deferring to, womanhood. "Our gals, sir, I guess, are pretty well up to looking out for themselves. I calculate, stranger, they are pretty smart in finding their own fixings."

In the manner as well as the matter of eating and drinking, travelling and providing, in all the things sacred to self, there are lights and shades of gentleness and churlishness, which ever and anon show forth to illustrate our theory and distinguish our grades. There are the greater and the lesser signs, by which thou shalt know these divisions of men.

We have said, "See all things!" We would also say, See all men! See man at all times, and under all circumstances; at his labour; at his ease; in his sorrow; in his joy! It is better to go to the house of mourning than to the house of feasting! "That," said Sterne, when preaching on the text, "I deny." Both are