France -- Description and travel; France -- Social life and customs
The next day I was looking at a bronze statue of Achilles, at Hyde Park
Corner, which had been erected in honour of the Duke of Wellington. The
place, like every other fashionable haunt at that season, was
comparatively deserted. Still, there might have been fifty persons in
sight. "Stop him! stop him!" cried a man, who was chasing another directly
towards me. The chase, to use nautical terms, began to lighten ship by
throwing overboard first one article and then another. As these objects
were cast in different directions, he probably hoped that his pursuer,
like Atalantis, might stop to pick them up. The last that appeared in the
air was a hat, when, finding himself hemmed in between three of us, the
thief suffered himself to be taken. A young man had been sleeping on the
grass, and this land-pirate had absolutely succeeded in getting his shoes,
his handkerchief, and his hat; but an attempt to _take off his cravat_ had
awoke the sleeper. In this case, the prisoner was marched off under sundry
severe threats of vengeance; for the _robbee_ was heated with the run, and
really looked so ridiculous that his anger was quite natural.
My business was now done, and I left London in a night-coach for
Southampton. The place of rendezvous was the White Horse Cellar, in
Piccadilly--a spot almost as celebrated for those who are _in transitu_,
as was the Isthmus of Suez of old. I took an inside seat this time, for
the convenience of a nap. At first, I had but a single fellow-traveller.
Venturing to ask him the names of one or two objects that we passed, and
fearing he might think my curiosity impertinent, I apologized for it, by
mentioning that I was a foreigner. "A foreigner!" he exclaimed; "why,
you speak English as well as I do myself!" I confess I had thought,
until that moment, that the advantage, in this particular, was
altogether on my side; but it seems I was mistaken. By way of relieving
his mind, however, I told him I was an American. "An American!" and he
seemed more puzzled than ever. After a few minutes of meditation on what
he had just heard, he civilly pointed to a bit of meadow through which
the Thames meanders, and good-naturedly told me it was Runnymeade. I
presume my manner denoted a proper interest, for he now took up the
subject of the English Barons, and entered into a long account of their
modern magnificence and wealth. This is a topic that a large class in
England, who only know their aristocracy by report, usually discuss with
great unction. They appear to have the same pride in the superiority of
their great families, that the American slave is known to feel in the
importance of his master. I say this seriously, and not with a view to
sneer, but to point out to you a state of feeling that, at first, struck
me as very extraordinary. I suppose that the feelings of both castes
depend on a very natural principle. The Englishman, however, as he is
better educated, has one respectable feature in his deference. He exults
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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