THE ENGLISH AT HOKE.*
EXILED from France, after the coup d'Etat of December 2, 1851, M. Alphonse Esquires passed first to Belgium. From Belguim he migrated to Holland, and recognizing the benefits enjoyed by a small State, in which, unimpeded by religious restrictions, liberty was allowed a full development, he determined to direct his attention to a different branch of the Saxon race, and crossing the Channel, arrived on the shores of that country which once disputed with Holland the empire of the sea. In Great Britain M. Esquires found what he sought, the opportunity of studying, on a larger area than that afforded by the once rival republic, the political characteristics of Protestantism, the conditions of a representative Government, and the influence of certain institutions on the moral and national life of a people. The conclusions which he has formed, so far as they are expressed in the two volumes of The English al Hone, evince the impartial and generous spirit of the writer, and show that French ignorance. of England is thoroughly corrigible; that the natives of Great Britain may hope, one day, to be understood by the inhabitants of la belle France; and that the picture of the legendary England impressed on the national mind of her great ally may not only, be obliterated, but superseded by the true likeness of the real historical. England, as we know it ourselves. It has been a leading object with M. Esquires to refute, on the authority of facts, prejudices which prevail in France with respect to the English nation,; to help two great and rival nations to know and esteem each other ; to aid them in coming to a common agreemeut on the tendency of certain institu- tions which rule civil life, as well as on the character and genuis of the contrasted peoples. His object, so far as he has sought to reahn. e it, has been proportionably attained, for the essays as yet published are but an instalment of the work which our author has undertaken to produce. His book at present consists not so much of a continu- ous disquisition as of a number of papers originally contributed to • The English at Home. By Alphonse Esquiros. Translated and Edited bY 1,18cslies Wraxall. In two volumes. (Chapman and Hall) the Revue des deux lifoncks, on the more striking topics comprised in his general subject. To use the author's own expression, he has walked through the picture gallery of English life and civilization ; ausing before such pictures as accidentally attracted his attention, studying each individually, while reserving to himself the right of forming, afterwards, a general idea of the school of painting to which they belong. Postponing all formal consideration of the political
j life, the government, the urisglrudence, the religion, the education, the literature, the science, art, philosophy of Great Britain, M. Esquiros has hitherto limited himself to the investigation of its character, customs, resources, territory, &c. Writing specially for his own countrymen, he tells us, himself, that he has many other phases of English character, and many other conquests of British civilization, not indicated in these volumes, to make known to France. We trust that he will not leave his task unfulfilled. Let him, still occupying his independent position of disinterested spectator, pho- tograph our personal and collective peculiarities, neither flattering our vanity nor exaggerating our faults, but bringing out both the deformities and beauties of that civilization which national self-esteem and the enervating and blinding influence of custom may dispose those who are born and live it, and who thus want the elements of com- parison, to observe wrongly or imperfectly, and so to misapprehend and misrepresent. If M. Esquiros can succeed in holding up to us a truer image of England and the English than we yet possess, he will realize for the nation which he so well appreciates the wish of the great Scotch poet—" 0, wad some Power the giftie gie us, To see oursels as others see us."
The generous and sympathetic spirit of the author of these essays is sufficiently indicated in one of the concluding pages of the work, on which we have already drawn, and which, hitherto unpublished, are presented to us in the translation as a kind of Author's Preface. Announcing that the time has already arrived when the wall of pre- judice which separates France from England is being gradually removed, M. Esquiros suggests that the two peoples may still regard themselves as the different branches of the same tree, and be anxious to maintain their characteristic differences ; he reminds us that though some Frenchmen still foster the wound of Waterloo, and regard England through the bad remininscences of history, their number diminishes as the feeling of humanity extends. More conclu- sively, if more self-regardingly, he argues, that "all political parties in Europe are interested-in England being great, free, and flourishing, were it only from the selfish hope of finding there a refuge, a sacred island, on the day of defeat and shipwreck." Our author's ready perception of England's peculiar and distinguishing superiority in a political point of view, is shown by the preference which he accords to her moral over her material greatness, in her conquest of liberty and her enjoyment of liberal institutions. On his arrival in England two things mainly struck him : the grandeur of the British power and that of manly confidence which the representative govern- ment inspired. Here, he continues, I found incarnated in the manners, laws, and public life, that liberty which was pursued in France through so many struggles, and has not yet been attained. Of the personal character of the Englishman he forms no less agree- able an estimate, in some, at least of its phases. Commenting on the notion, "too lightly spread," that Great Britain was not a military nation, he describes the Englishman as warlike, but not war- like through inclination. He does not, he says, like war for the sake of war, :nor maintain an army for the ruinous pleasure of seeing glistening bayonets and waving ensigns, but to defend his territory, Ins trade, and the immense ramifications of his external affairs and relations. Again, in dwelling on the courage of the English soldier, he remarks, with some discrimination, that that variety of intrepidity which marks the race is known in familiar language as "pluck," a word that denotes "time idea of energetic effort, and is as applicable to the man that uproots a tree as to him who tears down a moral obstacle." English soldiers, lie affirms, are expected to be at once brave against men and thing's. Their valour is valour subjected to reflection and the control of duty, not the valour of an ardeut impe- tuosity and unreasonin. enthusiasm. Remarking on the new defen- sive organization of unreasoning our author sees in the spontaneous production of a force of one hundred and fifty thousand bayonets " before the mere shadow- of a menace," to protect the country's institutions, a proof of the high regard in which the English hold those institutions. The invasion of the British Isles, which M. Es- quiros thinks was "never a serious project with soldiers," will now, he says, be less so than ever, since the organization of the riflemen, supposing Great Britain's wooden wall, or if you will, her composite of wood and iron, to be destroyed, assuming her rampart of regular troops and volunteers to be forced, the road to the metropolis traversed, and the enemy's flag planted on the Tower of London, the conquerors, he prophesies, would then experience what terrible truth there is in Juvenal's words : " Sed victis arma supersunt." "To con- quer England, the English must be exterminated. Behind England yrould remain Scotland, with her citadels of granite, built by the and of Nature, and her rude children, who would descend from the mountains like an avalanche. Great Britain would recover from her wounds, and then woe to the conqueror." Desultory as these volumes may be considered, in reference to the aClection and arrangement of subject generally, that portion of them W,wji relates to the British army will be found to possess a certain ceoherence, and even completeness. The eight chapters of which it Oflsists are written with care, skill, and honesty, and in a spirit of generous discernment and esteem. We know not where an unpro- fessional reader can find so much information on military affairs con- veyed in so small a compass as in these eight connected essays.
The information, of course, is only general, but it is precisely that sort of information which so many desiderate, but which so few care to acquire, unless it be placed before them in a readable, graphic, and entertaining form. The origin of the British army, the qualities of the British soldier, the military institutions at Woolwich, Addis- combe, Sandhurst, the arsenal, foundry, laboratory, guns, barracks, messes, soldiers' wives, are among the topics passed in review. The militia, the volunteer movement, the Dockyard corps, and the mus- ketry school at Hythe, are also described and illustrated ; occasional anecdote, or lively comment, relieving the more technical or descrip- tive portion.
A sinplar feature in this work is the geological sketch with which it commences, and which, after a long suspension, it resumes. This sketch is rapid, pictorial, forcible, and, we believe, generally correct. It pre- sents us with a kind of geological panorama of Great Britain, tracing; the operations of nature through the three ages assigned to the lite- ral formation of our country, till the appearance of man himself. Such an elaboration is vindicated by the author, on the ground that Great Britain owes her position as the first industrial nation in the world to her mineral wealth, and that a knowledge of the physical constitution of the isles forming the United Kingdom is necessary for the full comprehension of the social and mental character of the Englishman, who is the "king of matter," and subiugator of the elements. The construction of a human archeology for Great Bri- tain is rather tentative than positive. Our author suggests that in the study of "the medals of life"—the skulls of the different races that at various times inhabited England—are to be sought the means of deciphering the ethnological history, rather than in the dumb re- velations of stone and brass. Notwithstanding this, he apparently attaches a greater value to the mineral theory of civilization than some archmologists—Mr. Wright, for instance—would accord it, re- viewing the probable phenomena of the Stone age, the Bronze age, and the Iron age, in reference to the primitive inhabitants of this country. After briefly reproducing the history of Great Britain, properly so called, M. Esquiros, almost unexpectedly, carries us of to a gipsy encampment, explaining; that the gipsies form a sort of eccentric and nomadic superaddition to the races already established on British soil. The chapters in which he has recorded his opinions, or experiences, of this wandering variety of the human family are exceedingly pleasant, and full of an open-air, out-of-door vivacity. Not less agreeable or informing are those which relate to the hop- gardens, the history and manufacture of English beer—the real hero and conqueror at Waterloo l—and to the fantastic trades and street- world of London, with its wandering artists, popular poets, its ped- lars, hawkers, patterers, booksellers, and costermongers in general.
It will be inferred from our notice of The English at Home, that, with no pretensions to a really philosophical treatment, the subject has been handled cleverly, amusingly, and reflectively. The author has limited himself to the outward forms and surroundings of English life, painting what he has seen, what has interested himself, and is likely to interest others, with rare fidelity, and with great descriptive power. The motive which has animated him in the composition of his essays is the high and honourable one of assisting to remove prejudice and enlighten ignorance, and thus to render the two fore- most empires of the earth as majestic in their friendship as they have been magnificent in their rivalry. A task so generously undertaken, and so conscientiously executed, deserves the double success, mate- rial and moral, which we desire to predict for it.
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