In so far as the "Reminiscences," therefore, ruin Carlyle as a politician, their publication must be considered a gain for the English race. The particular political vice his influence fostered, that nobody who cannot thrash you in fight is worth listening to, is, it must be said, a vice peculiar to the English race. It is only in the Anglo-Saxon forum that a man of foreign birth and unfamiliar ways of thinking has to obtain a _locus standi_ by making himself an object of physical terror. The story which has lately gone the rounds of the papers, of Carlyle's discussion with some Irishman who got the better of him in an argument in support of the logical right of the Irish to manage their own affairs, in which he met his opponent in the last resort in half-humorous vehemence by informing him that he would cut his throat before he would let him have his independence, is not a bad expression of the spirit which has governed English policy in dealing with dependent communities. There is a certain wisdom and justice in exacting from every malcontent who asks for great changes in his condition some strong proof of his earnestness; but it is a test which has to be applied with great discretion, which nations that have made a great fortune with a strong right hand are not likely to apply with discretion, and which is apt to make weakness seem ridiculous as well as contemptible. The history of English politics for fifty years at least has been the history of the efforts of the nation to accustom itself to some other than the English standard of political respectability, to familiarize itself with the idea that pacific people, and poor people, and queer people had something to say for themselves, and were entitled to a place in the world. To the success of that effort it is safe to say that Mr. Carlyle's political writings have been more or less of an obstacle, and that the destruction of his influence will contribute something to the solution of some of the more serious pending problems of English politics.
Nothing is more remarkable in the history of American summering than the number of new resorts which are discovered and taken possession of by "the city people" every year, the rapid increase in the means of transportation both to the mountains and the sea, and the steady encroachments of the cottager on the boarder in all the more desirable resorts. The growth of the American watering-place, indeed, now seems to be as much regulated by law as the growth of asparagus or strawberries, and is almost as easy to foretell. The place is usually first discovered by artists in search of sketches, or by a family of small means in search of pure air, and milk fresh from the cow, and liberty--not to say license--in the matter of dress. Its development then begins by some neighboring farmer's agreeing to take them to board--a thing he has never done before, and does now unwillingly, and he is very uncertain what to charge for it. But at a venture he fixes what seems to him an enormous sum--say $5 to $7 a week for each adult. His ideas about food for city people are, however, very vague. The only thing about their tastes of which he feels certain is that what they seek in the country is, above all things, change, and that they accordingly do not desire what they get at home. Accordingly he furnishes them with a complete set of novelties in the matter of food and drink, forgetting, however, that they might have got them at home if they pleased. The tea and coffee and bread differ from what they are used to at home simply in being worse. He is, too, at the seaside, very apt to put them on an exclusively fish diet, in the belief that it is only people who live by the sea who get fish, and that city people, weary of meat, must be longing for fish. The boarders, this first summer, having persuaded him to take them, are of course too modest to remonstrate, or even to hint, and go on to the end eating what is set before them, and pretending to be thankful, and try to keep up their failing strength by being a great deal in the open air, and admiring the scenery. After they leave, he is apt to be astonished by the amount of cash he finds himself possessed of, probably more than he ever handled before at one time, except when he mortgaged his farm, and comes to the conclusion that taking summer boarders is an excellent thing, and worth cultivating.