Page:The New Monthly Magazine - Volume 104.djvu/60

48 cheerful during thick fogs. To the great annoyance of his family, ha makes it a rule to have a fit of spleen once a fortnight, and spends the day drinking port wine by the side of a coal fire, and renouncing the soothing cigar. He shrugs his shoulders contemptuously at everything which savours of Danish, especially at the Danish ladies, "who are only fit for cooks" compared to the English ladies. And if by chance any one touches his sleeve in brushing by him, he exclaims "God dam!" Finally, the patient becomes exceedingly disagreeable to his associates by his tiresome fastidiousness and constant ennui, and he winds up by using a plaid, instead of any other outer garment.

When the complaint appears in the decline of life, the sufferer from Anglomania often involves himself in the mazes of obscure theoretical doctrines, whose nearest approach to reason and truth would disappear in the clear light of practical common sense. But another phase of this Anglomania is evinced at this advanced period among sundry old gentlemen who used to flourish in our beloved islands in shoes and white stockings, at the time when to wear large stiff boots was the good burgher's first duty, and when to have sported an eye-glass would have been an infringement of the moral law. No one has an idea whence these elderly cavaliers come, who wander about as solitaries, like St. John the Baptist in the wilderness, living not exactly upon locusts, but upon quite as curious food—namely, old English beef—so gloriously old, that none but persons labouring under what may be termed a state of break-neck abstraction, could fancy it young—so petrified by age, that it would not be at all a wild idea to suppose it the flesh of some of the pigeons from Noah's Ark.

Let us now turn to the fair sex: and while searching for truth, which is the first duty of the natural historian, let us gladly make the gallant admission that this lovely sex have not hitherto been seized upon by the Anglomania as by an epidemic disease; but we cannot deny that a sporadic case of it is found here and there. We do not often see a face bordered on each side by long fair ringlets; we do not often encounter the languishing looks of the English ladies: our ladies have fortunately not yet learned to mingle a degree of ludicrous prudery, and gloomy bigotry, with a bold system of busying themselves about all affairs touching on a certain watchword—; nevertheless we cannot be blind to the fact that our Danish dames and damsels have latterly shown a propensity towards eschewing every male creature who has not been formally introduced, and this savours of the Anglomania. Further, we cannot fail to remark the tender-hearted, charitable fever which seems to be gaining ground. Not indeed quite to the extent in which it rages among Englishwomen, who get up associations for the relief of the distant and toleraUy well-fed African negroes, whilst they leave their own poor neighbours to die of starvation, but which still is characterised by an extraordinary fancy for labouring in ladies' committees on account of asylums, hospitals, servant-girls, &c., to all of whom and which assistance might be more easily rendered with less ostentation.

However, we must arrest our observations here, that we may not involve ourselves in any unpleasant collision with our fair countrywomen. Let us conclude with the hope that what is called "the weaker sex" may continue to be able better to withstand the Anglomania epidemic than the stronger sex have hitherto done.