Excerpt from Gleanings in Europe, Vol. 2 of 2: England It strikes me the English are drilled into a formality that throws a cloud over their social inter course. As a people they are not fluent, and the itching desire to catch the tone of the highest class has probably a bad effect for a man may be a peer, or a great commoner, without being much gifted with intellect. It is true, that Englishmen of this class are generally respectable, but mere respectability of mind will not sumec for great models, and when a body of merely respectable men impart a tone to others, which originates in their own incapacity, it has the effect to restrain talents. Individuals like Sir James Macintpsh and Mr. Coleridge overcome this by the force of their impulses, and the consciousness of power, but thousands of men, highly, though less gifted than they, are curbed by the established forms. This is but speculation, after all, and quite likely it is value less. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.