dowy face, the strong gaze, the hair rubbed short in front by the pressure of the iron casque, and the warts upon the forehead, as he wished it. So would John wish to be painted as was his Oliver. Draw him with his warts, and he sees you are not overpraising him; for he is, like all well-bred animals, thin-skinned, and knows where his weak points lie.

It was a happy thought of Dr. John Arbuthnot,* the friend of Swift and Popc, to give to the English nation the name of John Bull (in a pamphlet published in 1712), a name it has ever since retained. We have thus been John Bulls only 150 years; but the fond way in which, through our caricaturists and comic writers, we have stuck to the name, and the spiteful way in which our enemies have plastered us with the dulness and stupidity of the animal-in short, the universality of the acceptance of the satire—prove how well it was deserved, and how thoroughly understood. We take John Bull, then, for the English nation, or it may be, since our more intimate alliance, for the British, the inhabitants of the three kingdoms, who are every day becoming more and more alike, with just those essential differences which, like salt, preserve us pure, lively, and fresh. As for being Saxons, Anglo-Saxons, Teutons, Normans, or what not, it is well known to all who have looked into the matter that we might as well be called

*The Miscellaneous Works of Dr. Arbuthnot; with an Account of the Author's Life. 2 Vols. London, 1770. See also a review of this work, in The Retrospective Review, p. 285, No. 16. Arbuthnot's account of the "Ancient and Worshipful Family of the Bulls" is in the second volume.

Scandinavians. In fact, though with a large Saxon element in us, we have had also pure British, Roman, Norman, and other elements equally large.

"From this amphibious ill-born mob began

That vain, ill-natured thing, an Englishman."

"Nay," cries Defoe, a true John Bull, when, in defending William III., he wished to put down the stupid political cry of the day, "A True-born Englishman," or as we now should say, England for the English; nay—

'A TRUE-BORN ENGLISHMAN's a contradiction:

In speech an irony, in fact a fiction;

A metaphor, invented to express

A man akin to all the universe."

And he tells us, moreover, that, if we choose to study our own tongue, we shall there find traces by which " we may distinguish our Roman-Saxon-Danish-Norman-English." In addition to these-and, for a man educated at Newington Green, Defoe has hit the matter pretty accurately—we have distinct traces of French, Dutch, Walloons, Irishmen and Scots, Vaudois and Valtolins, Italians, Swedes, and indeed of all nations under the sun. We have had a few hundreds of Lascars and Chinese of late years, who, settling here, will produce children, who will inherit our tongue, laws, customs, and energy, and call themselves Anglo-Saxons with the best of us. Had we not, therefore, better stick to the one name, and be all the children of John Bull?

What then is this John Bull, who has, for the last eight hundred years, existed and held his own in a small corner

of Europe; who has peopled continents, conquered empires six times bigger than his own petty province, and who has soldiers, sailors, and ships taking care of his possessions all over the world; and who is, without any exaggeration, a very important personage? "We air," said Mr. Scadder, the American land-agent-" we air, sir, a great nation, a great people, sir, and we must be cracked up!" But it is not in a spirit of flattery that we would do this. We take, therefore, into our counsels two foreign artists, M. Esquiros and Ralph Waldo Emerson, who shall tell us what we are; and with these gentlemen we shall associate several eminent artists, native as well as foreign, who will touch up the picture, and put a high light or a dark shadow where wanted.

John Bull, we perceive, then, is not of pure blood. He brags a bit about it, and talks of high descent; but his blood, if compared to that of the Jews, Hindoos, Japanese, or Chinese, is, as regards antiquity, puddle blood. John believes, however, that he has the most highly born aristocracy in the world. One of his dukes is worth to him two or three German princes. He has a great contempt for foreign nobility. He despises German barons and Italian counts, and believes that with a good big purse he could go "into the market”—a favourite phrase of his-and buy a cart-load of foreign titles. He never quite understands that man who has money about him, without having a large mine, ship, trade, shop, estate, or title in England, and he laughs and sneers at a strange title of honour. When Peter the Great went to see our House of Lords, a fellow with a porter's knot

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and a load ran against him and nearly knocked him down. "Don't you see, fellow," said the lord in waiting—" don't you see that it's the Czar ?" "Tszar!" sneered the man : oh, we are all Tszars here !” and Peter admired the answer. John's wife, on the contrary, loves a foreign title, and is not undesirous of allying her daughters with one.

To his own nobles John is loyal and subservient. He grumbles behind their backs, but is prostrate before their faces. To him, however, a duke must be ducal; that is, he must be rich, powerful, generous; have fine estates, horses, and show power. A poor nobleman he dislikes: a poor gentleman he despises. Success is what he demands and worships. A man must make a mark in the world to be anything with him. This success must be material. He does not bow down to the shadow of a name, but he wants the possessor to surround himself with the signs of power. The man may be worse than poor, like Charles Fox or Sheridan ; but so long as he is one with power and weight John will admire and worship him. Neither John nor his wife quite understands literature or art, in spite of their children having produced, as a whole, the finest literature in the world, and a race of artists not to be despised; but, like German George II., John does not much like "boetry and baintin'," although his spirit and soul have been kept alive by both of them. So also with his inventors, engineers, machinists, and all mind-workers, except lawyers : there is something altogether too solid about John to thoroughly love merely mind-products. When by an effort of genius some inventor enriches his own country, improves all

the world, and realizes his own fortune, John wonders" with a foolish face of praise," and calls him a lucky fellow. Yet it is entirely to the brain-men that Englishmen owe their all. The problem of the traveller is, "why England is England. What are the elements of that power which England holds over other nations? If there be one test of natural genius universally accepted, it is success; and if there be one successful country in the universe for the last millennium, that country is England." This dictum of a foreigner is not wholly true. If John Bull worships success, his love of that quality lies at the base of his love of reality. Ideality he detests his great ideal is the actual. The very bias of the nation is the passion for utility, and it looks not very far ahead. John has no passion for post-obits. He lives in the present. He will make all comfortable about him. He does not like castles in the air. What he covets is certainty of foundation; hence his very speculations are safe. He does not believe in making fifty on every hundred, but looks to the actual loss and gain, and invests quietly in the Three per Cents.

John is a free man, which fact is his boast. He has pulled up and rooted out all laws which can interfere with his personal freedom, and hence pays great respect to those he has left. He believes a man to be a man, and in general is of singular fairness. Foreigners know this, and respect the fact. Criminals of other nations most frequently prefer a jury of Englishmen to that which they have a right to demand— half of their own people. Even old Philip de Commines saw