Wellington boots would be still more inconvenient

They wear wide-topped loose boots, which push up their trousers. Wellington boots would be still more inconvenient, as they must slip them off six times a day for prayers. In this new dress, they cannot with comfort sit or kneel on the ground, as is their custom; and they wall thus be led to use chairs; and with chairs they will want tables. But, were these to be introduced, their houses would “be too low, for their heads would almost touch the ceiling. Thus by a little innovation might their whole usages be unhinged”.

In these failures, however, should they turn out to be such, the vis inertice of habit is not the whole account of the matter; an antagonistic principle is at work, characteristic of the barbarian, and intimately present to the mind of a Turk,national pride. All nations indeed are proud of themselves; but, as being the first and the best, not as being the solitary existing perfection, among the inhabitants of the earth. Civilized nations allow that foreigners have their specific excellences, and such excellences as are a lesson to themselves.

They may think too well of their own proficiency, and lose by such blindness; but they admit enough about others to allow of their own emulation and advance; vhereas the barbarian, in his own estimate, is perfect already; and what is perfect cannot be improved. Hence he cherishes in his heart a self-esteem of a very peculiar kind, and a special contempt of others. He views foreigners, either as simply unworthy of his attention, or as objects of his legitimate dominion. Thus, too, he justifies his sloth, and places his ignorance of all things human and divine on a sort of intellectual basis.

The rude Americans

Robertson, in his history of America, enlarges on this peculiarity of the savage. “ The Tartar”, he says, “ accustomed to roam over extensive plains, and to subsist on the produce of his herds, imprecates upon his enemy, as the greatest of all curses, that he may be condemned to reside in one place, and to be nourished with the top of a weed. The rude Americans, …. far from complaining of their own situation, or viewing that of men in a more improved state with admiration or envy, regard themselves as the standard of excellence, as beings the best entitled, as well as the most perfectly qualified, to enjoy real happiness, as well as free from care themselves, and delighted with that state of indolent security, they wonder at the anxious precautions, the unceasing industry, and complicated arrangements of Europeans, in guarding against distant evils, or providing for future wants; and they often exclaim against their preposterous folly, in thus multiplying the troubles, and increasing the labour of life. . .