Abbildungen der Seite
PDF
EPUB

or how far an improved knowledge of physiological and hygienic laws may have influenced their habits. The apprehension that climate and diet were acting injuriously upon tissues and nerves, thus generally depressing the national stamina, as well as impairing chances for longevity, has been pretty widely spread. The common exclamations of even the best disposed among European visitors about the desiccated and unwholesome look they so generally perceived in the people around them, together with the demonstrated truth that American women fade so much earlier than those of Europe, have undoubtedly had their effect. It is probable, too, that increasing wealth, and consequent leisure, and greater attention to literature and art, have exerted some influence. But, whatever the cause, or causes, the rising generation in the United States, and more especially the female portion of it, is infinitely healthier, stronger, and handsomer than that which preceded it. This is observable in most of the great towns, and particularly so in New York. The growing girls are taller, fuller in bust and limb, rosier in complexion than of yore. More open-air exercise and better regulated and selected food must certainly be credited for a share in this good work. Croquet has become as fashionable here as it is in England, and a dozen young women are seen in the saddle to one of ten years ago. Many, too, play at billiards, tables being now as common as pianofortes in substantial New York houses. The game is, I believe, a healthful one for females, and is sufficiently fascinating to ensure its being assiduously practised. Be the reasons what they may, the proportion of really beautiful young women now to be seen in the best parts of New York has assuredly, in the past decade, greatly increased; a circumstance which again supports our theory of resemblance between Broadway and Regent Street.

Our young men have not so obviously improved, but that they also, as a class, are getting healthier and stronger is, I believe, the fact. Manly exercises are more in vogue with them than they were with their predecessors, for the same reasons that have affected their sisters. Yachting has been a passion with them of late, and other open-air sports are regularly and largely pursued. It is generally admitted that the youths of the wealthier classes lead somewhat wilder lives than their puritan forefathers, and this may counterbalance in a measure the athletic pastimes which favour wholesome development. If, however, what we have lately been told by a much-quoted London weekly be true, the young gentlemen of England have in this respect no particular advantage to boast of, so that even in this wise, since a

blending of muscular activity and free living tends to produce very similar exterior effects on both sides of the Atlantic, our comparison would not be at fault. It appears to me only just to claim that the new generation of American lads is intrinsically more manly, more hardy, and less finical, slab-sided, and dyspeptic, than that which is passing away. Either so many preposterously lean and skinny people are not produced as in Basil Hall's and Mrs. Trollope's time, or they manage somehow and subsequently to get fat.

Although so many points of resemblance have here been claimed to exist as between these representative streets, it would be uncandid, or would argue a lack of discrimination, to omit to say that there are certain elements of distinctiveness about them which, while including some of a subtle and unapparent character, are sufficient to mark their individuality to a close and practised eye. More people smoke in Broadway than in Regent Street, although late observers say that street smoking in London is on the increase. In Regent Street one does not see the strange knots of pale, sinister, richly-dressed gamblers which in Broadway gather about the corners, and constitute a society of themselves. As to the demi monde, or the poor outcasts of lower grade, their appearance in the two streets is much the same. There is a difference, which is perhaps not one that would strike the majority of observers, but which, on attention being directed to it, must certainly be acknowledged. This consists in the measure of deference and consideration paid by the young to their seniors. It is scarcely a pleasant thing to acknowledge, but young people do not pay that respect to age which in the mother country is thought to be so proper and found to be so usual. The subject is a delicate one, and I do not purpose at present to dwell upon it further than to say that the prevailing remissness does not seem to be of the nature of unkindness, but of want of reverence, and to spring in a great degree from habits of indulgence and self-assertion which so many young Americans are unhappily permitted in childhood to form. It appears to be an implicit dogma with the rising republican generation that old people have really no particular business to be alive, and that, if they are allowed to live, it is only by a species of semi-contemptuous toleration. Young America will get over this in time, perhaps when she ceases to be young America; but at present it certainly does give a tinge to her manners. The glorification of youth is doubtless natural to a country which is always looking forward, while reverence for age is as characteristic of one which can point to a great past. The young lady who

precedes her mamma in coming out of Stewart's, and jumps first into the carriage, is in a hurry to fulfil her destiny; the carriage was only set up last year, you see, and the next generation will be better taught.

Still further to seek divergencies, Broadway and Regent Street vary in some particulars which are typical, in each case, of nationality. The latter is very wide in proportion to its length; the former, despite its name, is the reverse. Regent Street, by reason of its paving, is comparatively quiet; Broadway is diabolically otherwise. Regent Street is compact, uniform, settled for life, and, in a word, finished; Broadway is irregular, diverse, subject to perpetual mutation, and exhibits, briefly, all the lusty irregularity of adolescence; and yet the streets, like the people which swarm in them, are substantially the same -alike in race, in literature, in speech, in garb, in religion, in pursuits, in ambitions, and, in a broad sense, regarding both as countries constitutionally governed by rulers popularly chosen, alike in political structure. Unlike the great streams of the West, which come together, but yet, in joining, still preserve their colour and individuality, these human streams have a common source. The rivers arose in regions

almost immeasurably remote from their junction and from each other. One has wound its way through vast strata of limestone, and its greenish hue is given by the mineral substances it has thus borrowed and kept in solution. The other has pierced through primeval forests of hemlock and of spruce, and is loaded with vegetable matter, which dye it purplish brown. Each has come from afar, loves best its own idiosyncracy, and hates change, as do the conventional races of men. They foam on sullenly side by side, defer intermixture as long as possible, and assent to it at last, as it were, under protest. The green and the red are as bitterly opposed as in the imagination of a Fenian, and even when that which gave them colour has been precipitated and left behind in their rapid swirl, the coalition is reluctant. But the two great branches of the Anglo-Saxon race sprang from the same fountain head. Their histories may vary from the point of separation, although in important respects they promise to be identical. However this may be, their history up to that point was, like their origin, the same. To perfect an analogy, therefore, between these branches and the uniting streams would be to invert the natural physical conditions, and to conceive of those branches as rising together from the sea, and ascending by a channel like that of the Mississippi, through a splendid and protracted experience, to divide at last to make the Ohio and Missouri at Cairo.

[merged small][ocr errors][merged small][merged small][merged small]

THERE is a standing feud between the young man and the old man, there ever has been and always will be. We may remember, we whose reading is confined to Dickens and the railway novelists, that Mr. Ralphı Nickleby called his nephew, indignantly, "a boy;" as if that were something derogatory, also, as if it were open to him to be a boy at any time, but he wouldn't. Perhaps if he could have been he would not have hesitated, that grim old money-lender! But a very different man speaks in much the same strain. In Göthe's autobiography, he records-he, that bright-eyed, broad-shouldered, ever-young, all-seeing and all-loving poet-that he did not like the young men of his day. "They come to me," he said, "short-sighted, narrow-chested, pallid young men, with their eye-glasses and their doubts, and I say to them, Don't bring your doubts to me, I have enough of my own; bring me your convictions if you like." Truly this intellectual giant, who sowed more doubts than I hope any of our men will try to reap and harvest, might well be annoyed with the young students of his day who wandered in, each with his little armful of gleanings, to the greater Resolver-not an Angelic Doctor in that way by any means.

Cannot

we realize the stern flash of his eye as he looks upon his visitants?

Like as the leaves come and go, so do the races of men: Göthe's young men, with their bent forms, pallid countenances and questioning looks have gone, their sons are old, have had their doubts and published them, written their " Tract Ninety," and other matters now celebrated. Our young men are the product of volunteering, gymnastic education, rowing, cricketing, and boys' magazines, externally a fine set of fellows enough. "You see, my friend," said a wicked, crooked old marquis, twinkling with his eyes at the fine footman who attended the ladies, straight-limbed and broad backed, "how fine we make ces gens la!" I will not repeat the last part of his story, but our fathers of families may often recal the first as they look on the young men of the day at Eton, Rugby, Wellington College-where I have a young friend who wins prizes at high jumps but does not seem to acquire much Greek—at Dr. Birch's academy at Clapham, Mr. Smithington's private tuition shop for the sons of gentlemen only, old Blimber's at Brighton, at the Blue Coat and other charity schools, yea, even in Messrs.

Swan and Edgar's shop, and behind the counter of Messrs. Sboolbred. Fine, tall, long, lithe of limb, broad of chest, thin of flank, flat in wrist, good biceps, firm throat, well set up, especially those who have joined the volunteers. Look! what young men should have they do not lack, externally, at least. Don't let us go only among the upper classes, as do some of my brethren of the pen and inkpot, but come into the places where they sell. Regard Patsey O'Connor there, born of Irish and English, who travels for a dry-goods house in the City, and at the age of five-and-twenty makes, by a glib tongue and consequent commissions, about as much as a colonial bishop; ay, half of those reverend fathers at the Pan-Anglican Synod do not make more. Is not Patsey a fine fellow ? a little coarse, yes-possibly a little too familiar; he does not understand the ne quid nimis, applied to assurance, but as an animal what a fine fellow it is. Brave? I believe you, he would fight anyone and anyhow, occasion being given. Come out into Holborn about 8.30 A.M., as they say in Bradshaw, you will see a whole army of his like pouring down that fast disappearing hill. The Holborn Valley viaduct. will be thronged with them. So it is in Liverpool, in Birmingham, in Canterbury, or in Edinburgh. At Manchester, they tell me they run rather shorter-and as we get lower down in the scale perhaps, the race is neither so well fed nor grown, but as a whole the upper class and middle class young men are externally those we may be proud of. I have seen many races of men, and many countries, and on the whole I agree with Emerson who in his English traits gives the palm to the English. "We have," he says, "the same distinct breed which was to be noticed in the Plantagenet kings-the long oval faces, the flat cheeks, the good foreheads-you may see them lying on their tombs in some of our old churches-true forefathers of the young Englishmen of to-day."

The Volunteer movement has done much for all classes-even for those who are not drilled nor set up. There has been everywhere a manliness infused, and an unconscious imitation has run up and down the social scale—for we yet have a scale, although some of our advanced thinkers (?) wish to do away with one. More open-air excrcise, less drinking, for which we have to thank our teetotal friends who are more often treated to banter than to argument; a better system of dress, and less preciseness, have given us greater freedom of muscular action. This has been purchased at a sacrifice of manner. "Formerly," says a French wit, "when anyone especially well-dressed, extremely gentlemanly in appearance entered the stalls of the opera or theatre, people

« ZurückWeiter »