They not only entertained all these notions, but they held them in
defiance of most contradictory elements. They practised the most rigid
economy when professing immense wealth; they affected to despise the
foreigner while shunning their own countrymen; they assumed to be
votaries of art when merely running over galleries; and lastly, while
laying claim, and just claim, for their own country to the highest moral
standard of Europe, they not unfrequently outraged all the proprieties
of foreign life by an open and shameless profligacy. It is difficult to
understand how a mere change of locality can affect a man's notions of
right and wrong, and how Cis-Alpine evil may be Trans-Alpine good. It
is very hard to believe that a few parallels of latitude can affect the
moral thermometer; but so it is, and so Mr. Dodd honestly confessed he
found it. He not only avowed that he could do abroad what he could
not dare to do at home, but that, worse still, the infraction cost
no sacrifice of self-esteem, no self-reproach. It was not that these
derelictions were part of the habits of foreign life, or at least of
such of it as met the eye; it was, in reality, because he had come
abroad with his own preconceived ideas of a certain latitude in morals,
and was resolved to have the benefit of it. Such inconsistency in
theory led, naturally, to absurdity in action, and John Bull became, in
consequence, a mark for every trait of eccentricity that satirists could
describe, or caricaturists paint.
The gradations of rank so rigidly defined in England are less accurately
marked out abroad. Society, like the face of the soil, is not enclosed
by boundaries and fenced by hedgerows, but stretches away in boundless
undulations of unlimited extent. The Englishman fancies there are no
boundaries, because he does not see the landmarks. Since all seems open,
he imagines there can be no trespass. This is a serious mistake! Not
less a one is, to connect title with rank. He fancies that nobility
represents abroad the same pretensions which it maintains in England,
and indignantly revenges his own blunder by calumniating in common every
foreigner of rank.
Mr. Dodd fell into some of these errors; from others he escaped. Most,
indeed, of his mistakes were those inseparable from a false position;
and from the acuteness of his remarks in conversation, it is clear that
he possessed fair powers of observation, and a mind well disposed to
receive and retain the truth. One quality certainly his observations
possessed,--they were "his own." They were neither worked out from the
Guide-book, nor borrowed from his _Laquais de Place_. They were the
honest convictions of a good ordinary capacity, sharpened by the habits
of an active life. It was with sincere pleasure the Editor received from
him the following note, which reached him about three weeks after they
parted:--
"DODSBOROUGH, BRUFF.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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