I will add here, in passing, that this English "set up," particularly in the case of almost all Englishmen of any pretensions, is distinctive, and is in a great measure the cause of the impression of superior good looks and strength on their side. It appears in a marked degree in all military persons, rank and file as well as officers, and in the police force, the men of which are on the whole inferior in stature and bulk to ours--leaving the big Broadway squad, most of them Yankees, out of the question--and yet it is far superior in appearance to ours, owing to the "set up" of the men, and the way in which they carry themselves. I observed that although the upper classes contained a fair proportion, although no notable excess, of large and well-formed men and women, the burly men and the big-bodied, heavy-limbed women were generally of the lower and the lower middle class. This made me wonder where all the pretty housemaids and shop girls came from; for the prettiest faces, the most delicately blooming complexions, and the finest figures that I saw in England were among them. In a letter written from the Rose Inn at Canterbury, a cosy comfortable old hostlery, I find the following passage, which is to the purpose:
"I ate my bacon and eggs this morning in the coffee room, where at another table were three queer Englishwomen, yet nice looking--apparently a mother and two daughters. The elder daughter was, I will not say a lathy girl, but very slim not only in the waist, but above and below it. The mother and the younger were plump and rosy, absurdly alike, and with that cocked-up nose which is one of the very few distinctive peculiarities of figure that you see here, but even this very rarely; and their black hair was curled in tight curls all over their heads. I was struck by this, because curling hair is comparatively rare here, and I had expected to find it common. It was cut just like a man's, and plainly so because it would have been impossible to dress it if it were allowed to grow long in woman fashion. They were very jolly and pleasant, chaffing each other in low, soft voices, and breaking out in rich, sweet laughter. They looked just like boys masquerading in women's clothes; for the eldest was quite young looking and may have been an elder sister. The youngest, who was some seventeen or eighteen years old, looked very fair and blooming across the room, but when I came close to her, which I had an opportunity of doing, I found that her color, both white and red, was coarse, which is very often the case here when there is color. In the mother, or eldest sister, this coarseness was apparent even at a distance. But see, Lady ---- and her daughters, although pretty and elegant, had no tinge of color in their cheeks, and they were all as thin as rails, and the girls' hair, as well as their mother's, was as straight as fiddle strings. I came here expecting to see golden curls in plentiful crops, or at least not uncommonly. But it seems to me that I haven't seen a dozen curly-haired children since I have been in the country; and I have seen them--the children--by tens of thousands, and examined them closely, making memorandums of my observation. Nor have the ladies of this family (I am now at ----), Lady ---- and Mrs. ----, any more bloom than this paper, and they are both as thin as Lady ---- and her daughters; Mrs. ---- painfully so. The men, belonging of course to another family, are stout, well-built fellows enough, but the two other guests are as lean as greyhounds. I went to a little dinner party the other evening, and the carriage sent to the station for me (for they think nothing here of asking you fifteen or twenty miles to dinner even when you are not expected to stay over night) took also a Major General Sir ---- ----. I was told that he would join me, and I expected to see a portly, ruddy man of inches, with sweeping whiskers and moustache. I found a short, slender, meek-looking, pale-faced man; but his bearing was very military; he was a charming companion and the pink of courtesy. We entered the drawing-room together of course; but notwithstanding his rank, he waved me in before him, and my plain Mistership was announced before his titles. I have seen no men here at all equal in face or figure to General Hooker, General Hancock, General Augur, or General Terry, to say nothing of General Scott, who was something out of the common even with us. And Burnside, and McDowell, and Grant, and McClellan are all stouter men than you are apt to find here. The biggest men that I have seen were from the north, Yorkshire and Northumberland. Those of the south, particularly in Kent, are the shortest; although, as a Kent man said to me, they are generally 'stocky.'"[3]