William Hickling Prescott, 1796-1859, the historian, was the son of
William Prescott, an eminent jurist, and the grandson of Col. William
Prescott, who commanded the Americans at the battle of Bunker Hill. He was
born in Salem, Massachusetts, graduated at Harvard University in 1814, and
died in Boston. Just as he was completing his college course, the careless
sport of a fellow-student injured one of his eyes so seriously that he
never recovered from it. He had intended to adopt law as his profession;
but, from his detective eyesight, he was obliged to choose work in which
he could regulate his hours of labor, and could employ the aid of a
secretary. He chose to be a historian; and followed his choice with
wonderful system, perseverance, and success till the close of his life.
His works are: "The Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella," "The Conquest of
Mexico," "The Conquest of Peru," "The Reign of Philip II," and a volume of
"Miscellanies." He had not completed the history of Philip at the time of
his death. As a writer of history, Mr. Prescott ranks with the first for
accuracy, precision, clearness, and beauty of style. As a man, he was
genial, kind-hearted and even-tempered.
###
On the whole, what I have seen raises my preconceived estimate of the
English character. It is full of generous, true, and manly qualities; and
I doubt if there ever was so high a standard of morality in an aristocracy
which has such means for self-indulgence at its command, and which
occupies a position that secures it so much deference. In general, they do
not seem to abuse their great advantages. The respect for religion--at
least for the forms of it--is universal, and there are few, I imagine, of
the great proprietors who are not more or less occupied with improving
their estates, and with providing for the comfort of their tenantry, while
many take a leading part in the great political movements of the time.
There never was an aristocracy which combined so much practical knowledge
and industry with the advantages of exalted rank.
The Englishman is seen to most advantage in his country home. For he is
constitutionally both domestic and rural in his habits. His fireside and
his farm--these are the places in which one sees his simple and warm-
hearted nature more freely unfolded. There is a shyness in an Englishman,
--a natural reserve, which makes him cold to strangers, and difficult to
approach. But once corner him in his own house, a frank and full expansion
will be given to his feelings that we should look for in vain in the
colder Yankee, and a depth not to be found in the light and superficial
Frenchman,--speaking of nationalities, not of individualities.
The Englishman is the most truly rural in his tastes and habits of any
people in the world. I am speaking of the higher classes. The aristocracy
of other countries affect the camp and the city. But the English love
their old castles and country seats with a patriotic love. They are fond
of country sports. Every man shoots or hunts. No man is too old to be in
the saddle some part of the day, and men of seventy years and more follow
the hounds, and, take a five-barred gate at a leap. The women are good
whips, are fond of horses and dogs, and other animals. Duchesses have
their cows, their poultry, their pigs,--all watched over and provided with
accommodations of Dutch-like neatness. All this is characteristic of the
people. It may be thought to detract something from the feminine graces
which in other lands make a woman so amiably dependent as to be nearly
imbecile. But it produces a healthy and blooming race of women to match
the hardy Englishman,--the finest development of the physical and moral
nature which the world has witnessed. For we are not to look on the
English gentleman as a mere Nimrod. With all his relish for field sports
and country usages, he has his house filled with collections of art and
with extensive libraries. The tables of the drawing-rooms are covered with
the latest works, sent down by the London publisher. Every guest is
provided with an apparatus for writing, and often a little library of
books for his own amusement. The English country gentleman of the present
day is anything but a Squire Western, though he does retain all his relish
for field sports.
The character of an Englishman, under its most refined aspect, has some
disagreeable points which jar unpleasantly on the foreigner not accustomed
to them. The consciousness of national superiority, combined with natural
feelings of independence, gives him an air of arrogance, though it must be
owned that this is never betrayed in his own house,--I may almost say in
his own country. But abroad, when he seems to institute a comparison
between himself and the people he is thrown with, it becomes so obvious
that he is the most unpopular, not to say odious, person in the world.
Even the open hand with which he dispenses his bounty will not atone for
the violence he offers to national vanity.
There are other defects, which are visible even in his most favored
circumstances. Such is his bigotry, surpassing everything in a quiet
passive form, that has been witnessed since the more active bigotry of the
times of the Spanish Philips. Such, too, is the exclusive, limited range
of his knowledge and conceptions of all political and social topics and
relations. The Englishman, the cultivated Englishman, has no standard of
excellence borrowed from mankind. His speculation never travels beyond his
own little--great little--island. That is the world to him. True, he
travels, shoots lions among the Hottentots, chases the grizzly bear over
the Rocky Mountains, kills elephants in India and salmon on the coast of
Labrador, comes home, and very likely makes a book. But the scope of his
ideas does not seem to be enlarged by all this. The body travels, not the
mind. And, however he may abuse his own land, he returns home as hearty a
John Bull, with all his prejudices and national tastes as rooted, as
before. The English--the men of fortune--all travel. Yet how little
sympathy they show for other people or institutions, and how slight is the
interest they take in them! They are islanders, cut off from the great
world. But their island is, indeed, a world of its own. With all their
faults, never has the sun shone--if one may use the expression in
reference to England--all a more noble race, or one that has done more for
the great interests of humanity.
NOTES.--Nimrod is spoken of in Genesis (x. 9) as "a mighty hunter." Thus
the name came to be applied to any one devoted to hunting.
Squire Western is a character in Fielding's "Tom Jones." He is represented
as an ignorant, prejudiced, irascible, but, withal, a jolly, good-humored
English country gentleman.