All this is due to the first glance you get at the hard, realistic England of to-day. You have noticed a machine clutch its raw material and twist and turn it through its relentless bowels. That is the way the habits of England seize you when you land, and begin to appropriate your personality. This is the first offence of England in the eyes of an American, whose favorite phrase, "the largest liberty," is too synonymous with the absence of any settled habits. Prescribed ways of doing everything are the scum which a traveller first gathers in England. Perhaps he thinks that he has caught the English nationality in his skimmer; and as he rather contemptuously examines these topmost and handiest traits, he grumbles to himself that these are the habits of a very old nation, that lives on an island, and keeps up a fleet, not to bridge, but to widen narrow seas. Such respect for routine and observance can nowhere else be perceived. An American is so little prepared for this that he is disposed to quarrel with it even in railway-stations, where it is most excellent. But it penetrates all forms and institutions; the Established Church itself is a specimen of complete arranging and engineering; the worshippers are classified, ticketed, and despatched safely rolling on the broad gauge of the Liturgy, in confidence of being set down at last where the conductors have contracted to take them. How accurately everybody in England knows his own place!--and he accepts it, however humble, with a determined feeling that it is inevitable. The audience is so packed that everybody remains quiet. The demeanor of the servants is as settled and universally deferential as Westminster Abbey is Gothic. Mr. Lindsay or Mr. Roebuck might forget to revile America, or Lord Palmerston, England's right hand, forget his cunning, as soon as a servant might forget his place. A thousand years have settled him in it; and you are supposed by him to have had the benefit of as many years in determining your own position and relation to him. You are electrified when a waiter first touches his hat to you; it is as if he had discharged something into you by the gesture, which is likely to exhaust him, and you expect to have to offer him a chair. But his deference is an integral part of the stability of England. When he forgets it, look for a panic in the Exchange, the collapse of credit, and the assassination of the Queen.