"
It is true that this ancient and universal custom has vanished with
the modern weakening of England. Sydney would have thought nothing
of kissing Spenser. But I willingly concede that Mr. Broderick
would not be likely to kiss Mr. Arnold-Foster, if that be any proof
of the increased manliness and military greatness of England.
But the Englishman who does not show his feelings has not altogether
given up the power of seeing something English in the great sea-hero
of the Napoleonic war. You cannot break the legend of Nelson.
And across the sunset of that glory is written in flaming letters
for ever the great English sentiment, "Kiss me, Hardy."
This ideal of self-repression, then, is, whatever else it is, not English.
It is, perhaps, somewhat Oriental, it is slightly Prussian, but in
the main it does not come, I think, from any racial or national source.
It is, as I have said, in some sense aristocratic; it comes
not from a people, but from a class. Even aristocracy, I think,
was not quite so stoical in the days when it was really strong.
But whether this unemotional ideal be the genuine tradition of
the gentleman, or only one of the inventions of the modern gentleman
(who may be called the decayed gentleman), it certainly has something
to do with the unemotional quality in these society novels.
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