I had made good use of my time in seeing England. I had studied the solid, smileless, arrogant Englishman, who acts, particularly in India, as if he felt that when God had finished making him and his set, He had but little earth from which to make the rest of mankind. He is born a grumbler and a grasper. He is ever finding faults in other people. He is always reaching out to get something, and ever kicking when others try to get a little wealth or a small share of the earth’s surface. In one of my rural tours I saw some swine—and a noble breed of hogs they were, such as we never see in India. When they were fed, one fat old fellow stood sideways to the trough to keep the others away, and when he had got his fill, what did the brute do but lie down lengthwise in the trough to prevent the others from getting anything. Why the very hogs seemed to be characteristic of England. She has more than half of North America, the richest part of Asia, all the Antarctic continent, many islands of the ocean, and while she keeps all she has got she grasps for more. Without conscience as to her own methods of acquisition, she kicks when poor old Russia wants a few barren frozen steppes of central Asia, useless to anybody else, and unmindful that she has just absorbed Burmah, she kicks when France wants a little slice of Siam; she holds Egypt for the benefit of a lot of usurers, and took Burmah on the plea of protecting a sharp trading company. It is curious to note that all the annexations and usurpations of England have been preceded by some trading company, and yet her society folks and aristocracy have such a dislike to trade and tradespeople. Whether it is the climate, the rain, the fog, the sticky mud, the solid, half-cooked food, and the heavy beer that has made England what she is, yet she is a great nation in her way, the power of the world, with very grand, noble impulses. “Is not their climate foggy, raw and dull, On whom, as in despite, the sun looks pale, Killing their fruit with frowns?”