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ENGLISH CHARACTERISTICS IN NORWAY.
327
one hand, and Austrian court influences on the other.
Such a confederation, united by a strong sense of
common nationality, and common language, if in firm,
alliance with Britain, would have great influence on
Europe; and an influence exercised by a people of so
solid, calm, and pacific a character would greatly aid
the spread of sound constitutional liberty and the
general progress of mankind.
I feel strongly tempted to dwell upon this and
kindred subjects in order to show how Englishmen are
bound by a sort of national filial tie to Norway and
Denmark—for undoubtedly the best blood of Britain has
been derived from the shores of Scandinavia. No
observant tourist can visit Norway (and the same applies
to Denmark) without having continually forced upon
his attention the moral and physical family likeness
between these northern people and ourselves; for all our
special English characteristics are even more visible in
Norway than in England: all those peculiarities of
physiognomy, of manner and character, by which an
Englishman is distinguished from a Frenchman, and
even from a German, are seen to be purely
Scandinavian peculiarities. I often thought, when in the most
wild and primitive parts of Norway, that they now
represent, in everything but costume and the iiresence
of guns and a few other modern inventions, very nearly
the state of Old England in the days of Alfred; and
that a practical knowledge of the physical and social
condition of Norway at the present time must be of
great value to the student of English history and the
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