The Egregious English

The flower and exemplar of well-nigh everything that is choicely and brutally English may be summed up in the English politician. Such a tub-thumper, such a master of claptrap a...

Of old--that is to say, twenty years ago--the great majority of the English people suffered from a mental and general disability which was termed "provincialism." If you hailed...

It pains me beyond measure to say it, but I think there can be no doubt that the accumulated experience and wisdom of mankind goes to show that at the bottom of most troubles th...

"With a tow-row-row-row-row-row for the British Grenadiers!" Which, of course, means the English Grenadiers, inasmuch as there never were any Scottish Grenadiers. To-day, howeve...

What is more beautiful or meet to be taken to the bosom than the Englishman? Everybody loves him; his goings to and fro upon the earth are as the progresses of one who has done...

Lord Rosebery, whom the worthy Mr. Crosland dislikes on purely racial grounds, is usually credited as the originator of what has latterly become the Englishman's watchword, "Edu...

It has become the Englishman's habit, one might almost say the Englishman's instinct, to take himself for the head and front of the universe. The order of creation began, we are...

After much patient thinking, the English have come to the conclusion that there is but one branch of literary art, and that its name is Fiction. And by fiction the English reall...

The English have one sauce. But the number of their religions is as the sands of the sea. Roughly speaking, they divide themselves religiously into two classes--Anglicans and No...

The English are a nation of employed persons. Wherever you go, from Berwick to Land's End, you will find that in the main the men you meet are somebody's employees. The better k...

It may be set down as an axiom that a nation which is in the proper enjoyment of all its faculties, which is healthy, wealthy, wise, and properly conditioned, must be producing...

I am dealing here with the English journalist, because in my opinion, after the English sportsman and the English man of business, there is nothing under the sun so wonderfully...

The subject of diet--he prefers to call it diet--is apparently one of unlimited interest to the Englishman. Meet him where you will, he is ever ready to discuss, first, the weat...

To amuse oneself is the great art of life. From the English point of view, the finest kind of amusement is to be obtained by killing something. Fox-hunting, deer-stalking, grous...

Mr. Crosland has very kindly suggested that "under the inspiring tutelage of the national bard Scotland has become one of the drunkenest nations in the world." I shall not retal...

The English, all the world has heard, are a nation of shopkeepers. They are understood to keep shop and to glory in it. They have kept shop, with the other nations for customers...

The English love to be ruled, just as eels are said to take delight in being skinned. They hold that a nation which is properly ruled cannot fail of happiness. Their notion of r...

Since Trafalgar, the English navy has been the apple of the Englishman's eye. He holds that the English power is a sea-power; that these leviathans afloat, the King's ships, are...

There is nothing in England more astounding or more tigerish than the city man. Englishmen have a fixed idea that they are the soul of generosity, indifferent to money, and not...

The English man-about-town--and I am not acquainted with any other sort--is, to put it mildly, a devil of a fellow. Who he may be, how he gets a living, whether he gets a living...

The Englishman who is not a sportsman dares not mention the circumstance. In the counties he must shoot and hunt, or be for ever damned. In the towns he must have daily dealings...