Chapter X Wealth
There is no country in which so absolute a homage is paid to wealth. In America, there is a touch of shame when a man exhibits the evidences of large property, as if, after all, it needed apology. But the…
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Category V – English Traits
English Traits was published first in 1856 and is different from the rest of Emerson’s works in that rather than concerning the inner life and Emerson’s major themes of self-recovery and self-reliance, the book is about a country and its people. It praises England and its people while also pointing out limitations and failures. He admires the English most of all for their common sense. As he wrote, "An Englishman must be treated with sincerity and reality; with muffins and not the promise of muffins."
Chapter IX Cockayne
The English are a nation of humorists. Individual right is pushed to the uttermost bound compatible with public order. Property is so perfect, that it seems the craft of that race, and not to exist elsewhere. The king cannot step…
Chapter VIII Character
The English race are reputed morose. I do not know that they have sadder brows than their neighbors of northern climates. They are sad by comparison with the singing and dancing nations: not sadder, but slow and staid, as finding…
Chapter VII Truth
The teutonic tribes have a national singleness of heart, which contrasts with the Latin races. The German name has a proverbial significance of sincerity and honest meaning. The arts bear testimony to it. The faces of clergy and laity in…
Chapter VI Manners
I find the Englishman to be him of all men who stands firmest in his shoes. They have in themselves what they value in their horses, mettle and bottom. On the day of my arrival at Liverpool, a gentleman, in…
Chapter V Ability
Chapter V Ability The saxon and the Northman are both Scandinavians. History does not allow us to fix the limits of the application of these names with any accuracy; but from the residence of a portion of these people in…
Chapter IV Race
An ingenious anatomist has written a book (*) to prove that races are imperishable, but nations are pliant political constructions, easily changed or destroyed. But this writer did not found his assumed races on any necessary law, disclosing their ideal…
Chapter III Land
New10 Chapter III Land Alfieri thought Italy and England the only countries worth living in; the former, because there nature vindicates her rights, and triumphs over the evils inflicted by the governments; the latter, because art conquers nature, and transforms…
Chapter II Voyage to England
New9 Chapter II: Voyage to England The occasion of my second visit to England was an invitation from some Mechanics’ Institutes in Lancashire and Yorkshire, which separately are organized much in the same way as our New England Lyceums, but,…
Chapter I First Visit to England
New8 Chapter I First Visit to England I have been twice in England. In 1833, on my return from a short tour in Sicily, Italy, and France, I crossed from Boulogne, and landed in London at the Tower stairs. It…