AMONGST the never-ending arguments for thankfulness in the privilege of a British birth-arguments more solemn even than numerous, and telling more when weighed than when counted, pondere quàm numero,-three aspects there are of our national character which trouble the uniformity of our feelings. A good son even in such a case, is not at liberty to describe himself as "ashamed." Some gentler word must be found to express the character of his distress. And, whatever grounds of blame may appear against his venerated mother, it is one of his filial duties to suppose-either that the blame applies but partially, or, if it should seem painfully universal, that it is one of those excesses to which energetic natures are liable through the very strength of their constitutional characteristics. Such things do happen. It is certain, for instance, that to the deep sincerity of British nature, and to that shyness or principle of reserve which is inseparable from self-respect, must be traced philosophically the churlishness and unsocial bearing for which, at one time, we were so angrily arraigned by the smooth south of Europe. That facile obsequiousness, which attracts the inconsiderate in Belgians, Frenchmen, and Italians, is too generally a mixed product from impudence and insincerity. Want of principle and want of moral sensibility compose the original fundus of southern manners: and the natural product, in a specious hollowness of demeanour, has been afterwards propagated by imitation through innumerable people, who may have partaken less deeply, or not at all, in the

NO. CCXCVII, VOL. XLVIII.

original moral qualities that have moulded such a manner.

Great faults, therefore, may grow out of great virtues in excess. And this consideration should make us cautious even towards an enemy; much more when approaching so holy a question as the merits of our maternal land.

Else, and supposing that a strange nation had been concerned in our judgment, we should declare ourselves mortified and humiliated by three expressions of the British character, too public to have escaped the notice of Europe. First, we writhe with shame when we hear of semi-delirious lords and ladies, sometimes theatrically costumed in caftans and turbans, proclaiming to the whole world-as the law of their households-that all nations and languages are free to enter their gates, with one sole exception directed against their British compatriots; that is to say, abjuring by sound of trumpet that land through which only they themselves have risen into consideration; spurning those for countrymen-" without whom," (as M. Gourville had the boldness to tell Charles II.,) "without whom, by G-Sir, you yourself are nothing." We all know who they are that have done this thing: we may know, if we enquire, how many conceited coxcombs are at this moment acting upon that precedent; in which, we scruple not to avow, is contained a fund of satire, more crying than any which Juvenal found in the worst days of Rome. And we may ask calmlywould not death, judicial death, have visited such an act amongst the ancient republics ?—Next, but with that

A