Page:The New Monthly Magazine - Volume 104.djvu/58



order to acquire a thorough knowledge of the age, or rather of the day, in which we live, it is not sufficient to study its politics and its literature, to be conversant with its mercantile and industrial resources, &c., one must make oneself acquainted with all the little facts, which, when combined, bestow upon the period a peculiar character. "Tell me what you eat, and I will tell you what you are," is a paradox belonging to the celebrated culinary art; but the paradox becomes true when thus explained—"if I do not know how you live, I do not know what you are;" and thus, to be thoroughly acquainted with one's own period, one must know how one's contemporaries eat, how they drink, how they dress—comport themselves; in a word, how they conduct and exhibit themselves in social life.

Our contemporaries of the higher classes have recently, but somewhat energetically, adopted, for the time being, an exclusive stamp—and that is the Anglomania, or English sickness, as it may be termed. Not to know this would betoken dire ignorance of the present period, and it is necessary that we study it at once without delay, while we can yet seize its diagnoses, or peculiar characteristics; in short, before it assimilates itself to our general condition, and becomes naturalised among us.

It is always interesting to trace a phenomenon from its earliest appearance through the onward steps of its development; to watch its progress from its rudimentary state, until it reaches its culminating point, especially when that culminating point be the highest work of the creation—man. We hope, therefore, that the same interest which is bestowed upon the vital functions of insects, toads, fishes, storks, monkeys, and human beings, will be vouchsafed to an inquiry into.

The Anglomania has raged for many years here in Denmark; but for a long time it did not attract much attention, because it was confined to the lower spheres of society. Whilst, in the fashionable world, the Gallomania prevailed, and nothing was thought of but French politics, French taste, French literature; whilst the scientific world was drenched with German mysticism, German profundity, German vapouring, and German bombast; whilst the young people were far gone in Scandinavianism, occupied with Swedish affairs, and ranging themselves under Scandinavian banners, the Anglomania was content with a sort of vegetative existence in stables, and in the homely company of grooms, farmers, and small country squires. That was the germ from which the Anglomania grew up as vigorous as the plant which springs from a grain of mustard-seed.

What was then the Anglomania's most striking characteristic was its extreme anxiety to bring about emancipation from all that goes by the