28 APRIL 1906, Page 34

EMERSON AND THE ENGLISH. [To THE EDITOR OF THE ‘sescrarou..-]

Sra,—In your issue of March 10th your correspondent, Mr. William Clarke, observes : "I believe that Emerson some- where said that the mud of all the continents had gone to the making of the Englishman ' I " The words were used by Daniel Defoe, and quoted by Emerson in chap. 4, para. 13, of "English Traits." The passage runs thus :—

"In the impossibility of arriving at satisfaction on the historical question of race, and—come of whatever disputable ancestry—the indisputable Englishman before me, himself very well marked, and nowhere else to be found,—I fancied I could leave quite aside the choice of a tribe as his lineal progenitors. Defoe said in his wrath, 'the Englishman was the mud of all races."

Bengal, India.