"We want," says Sir John, "to be independent of the changes of the weather; and we isolate our bodies by means of suitable articles of dress. We wear flannel, cottons, india-rubber, and gutta percha; we drink cognac, port, stout; we eat strong meats with strong spices. We never pretend that the climate is to suit us; we suit ourselves to the climate. The Continentals act on a different principle, and say they like the result. We like the result of our own principle, and that's the reason why we stick to it."
Flannels in summer and in winter, in Glasgow and in Jamaica; this is one of the ten commandments which few Englishmen care to transgress. But their conservative tendencies which cause them to cling to the habits in which they were reared, lead them into the absurdity of adhering to an English mode of life even when fate or trade have flung them to the furthermost corners of the earth. I understand that English drawing-rooms at Gibraltar are as carefully carpeted as the drawing-rooms of London and Edinburgh. The British drink their port and sherry under the torrid zone; their porter and stout follow them to the foot of the Himalaya. And they do all this, not because they cannot be comfortable without their old habits; but because they protest and devoutly believe, that in all the various climates the English mode of living is most conducive to health.
The proper cultivation of the body is a matter of great importance in England. A French labourer is happy with the most frugal dinner, if, in the evening, he can but afford to take a place and laugh or weep at a vaudeville theatre. The Englishman wants meat, good meat, and plenty of it. The lower classes care little or nothing for "the feast of the soul." John Bull laughs at the starvelings, the French frog-eaters. He has no idea that the French _ouvrier_ is, after all, a more civilised creature than he is, exactly because to the Frenchman his Sunday dinner is not, as is the case with the lower classes of the English, the most important part of the Sunday.
These material tendencies are, of course, fostered by education and society. Originally they result from the climate. The frugality of the Paris _ouvrier_ could not, for any length of time, resist the stomach-inspiriting effect of a fresh sea-breeze.