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Hereditary Genius
347
an heirloom that brings more impatient restlessness and beating of the
wings against cage-bars, than persons of more civilized characters
can readily comprehend, and it is directly at war with the more
modern portion of our moral natures. If a man be purely a nomad, he
has only to be nomadic, and his instinct is satisfied; but no Englishmen
of the nineteenth century are purely nomadic. The most so among
them have also inherited many civilized cravings that are necessarily
starved when they become wanderers, in the same way as the
wandering instincts are starved when they are settled at home.
Consequently their nature has opposite wants, which can never be
satisfied except by chance, through some very exceptional turn of
circumstances. This is a serious calamity, and as the Bohemianism in
the nature of our race is destined to perish, the sooner it goes, the
happier for mankind. The social requirements of English life are
steadily destroying it. No man who only works by fits and starts is
able to obtain his living nowadays; for he has not a chance of thriving
in competition with steady workmen. If his nature revolts against the
monotony of daily labour, he is tempted to the public-house, to
intemperance, and, it may be, to poaching, and to much more serious
crime: otherwise he banishes himself from our shores. In the first
case, he is unlikely to leave as many children as men of more
domestic and marrying habits, and, in the second case, his breed is
wholly lost to England. By this steady riddance of the Bohemian spirit
of our race, the artisan part 'of our population is slowly becoming
bred to its duties, and the primary qualities of the typical modern
British workman are already the very opposite of those of the nomad.
What they are now, was well described by Mr. Chadwick, as
consisting of “great bodily strength, applied under the command of a
steady, persevering will, mental self-contentedness, impassibility to
external irrelevant impres-
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