18 grown more and more minute, like the same countenance seen in the converging power of a concave glass. The victim of prescription, and precedent, and concrete forms of life, the Anglican mind stretches itself rarely and reluctantly to the breath of a general principle, either in morals, philosophy, politics or law; and so upon the transatlantic face of the Anglo-Saxon nature, we see the wrinkles of caste and class, and other practical prejudices furrowed deep in the leathern skin of its hopeless old age, and the character is dull, partial, self-willed and self-satisfied to supercilious and snarling excess. With such differences of development between us, it is natural that while our oneness of blood qualifies us to analyze the Saxon character, the tribal feeling should make us more sorely apt to criticise its blemishes. If we feel obliged to admit the ingrain excellence of England, and respect her fundamental honesty and her bluff boldness, we admire only with a qualification; her beauty is but “ freckled fair.” We rank her as the greatest of the nations, yet repel her as the most disagreeable of all the peoples of the earth. We disaffect the triple compound of nobility, commons and paupers that forms the nation, even though we tolerate gallantly and lovingly the crown that beams with the virtues of Victoria.
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