"You have none of the English character. Count Schönstein is an Englishman—a typical Englishman—conceited, bigoted in his own opinions, generous when it is permitted to him to be ostentatious, dull and stupid, and jealous of people who are not so——" "My friend," said Will, "why didn’t you leave your dolls behind you in the nursery? Or is this typical Englishman one of your university puppets? You know there is no such thing as a typical Englishman, or typical Frenchman, or typical German; and I have almost come to believe that there is no such thing as national character. The most reckless prodigals I have met have been Scotchmen; the keenest business-men I have met have been Irishmen; the dullest and most melancholy, Frenchmen——" "And the Germans?" asked Gersbach, with a laugh. "The Germans are like anybody else, so far as disposition goes, although they happen to be educationally and intellectually a little ahead of other nations. And as for the poor Graf, I don’t think you, for example, would make half as good a man as he is if you were in his position." "Perhaps not; but why?" "I can’t exactly explain it to you in German; but doctrinairism is not the first requisite in a landlord; and if you were the Graf, you would be for coercing the people under you and about you, into being logical, and you would withdraw yourself from people who opposed you, and you would gradually weaken your influence and destroy your chances of doing good. Why are our Tory country gentlemen always better liked by the people than the Radical proprietors? Why are Tories, as a rule, pleasanter companions than Radicals? I am a Radical; but I always prefer dining with a Tory?" "Is the Count a Tory?" asked the Schulmeister. "Yes. Men who have been in business and earned, or gained, a lot of money, almost invariably become fierce Tories. It is their first passport to respectability; and there is no step one can take so cheaply as that of changing one’s political theories." "What a singular social life you have in England!" cried Gersbach, blinking with a curious sort of humour behind his big spectacles. "There is the demi-monde, for example. Why, you talk of that, and your writers speak of it, as if there was an acknowledged rivalry openly carried on between the members of it and your married women." "But our married women," said Will, "are going to form a trades-union among themselves in order to crush that institution." At which Franz Gersbach looked puzzled: these English were capable of trying any mad expedient; and somehow their devices always worked well, except in such matters as popular education, military efficiency, music, scholarship, and so forth. As for a trades-union of any kind, it was sure to flourish in England.