The North Italians are
more like Englishmen, both in body and mind, than any other people
whom I know; I am continually meeting Italians whom I should take
for Englishmen if I did not know their nationality. They have all
our strong points, but they have more grace and elasticity of mind
than we have.
Priggishness is the sin which doth most easily beset middle-class
and so-called educated Englishmen: we call it purity and culture,
but it does not much matter what we call it. It is the almost
inevitable outcome of a university education, and will last as long
as Oxford and Cambridge do, but not much longer.
Lord Beaconsfield sent Lothair to Oxford; it is with great pleasure
that I see he did not send Endymion. My friend Jones called my
attention to this, and we noted that the growth observable
throughout Lord Beaconsfield's life was continued to the end. He
was one of those who, no matter how long he lived, would have been
always growing: this is what makes his later novels so much better
than those of Thackeray or Dickens. There was something of the
child about him to the last. Earnestness was his greatest danger,
but if he did not quite overcome it (as who indeed can? It is the
last enemy that shall be subdued), he managed to veil it with a
fair amount of success. As for Endymion, of course if Lord
Beaconsfield had thought Oxford would be good for him, he could, as
Jones pointed out to me, just as well have killed Mr.
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