But what
race? Looking at their mother watching her little ones at
their frolics with dark shining eyes--the small oval-faced
brown-skinned woman with blackest hair--I could but say that
she was an Iberian, pure and simple, and that her children
were like her. In Southern Europe that type abounds; it is
also to be met with throughout Britain, perhaps most common in
the southern counties, and it is not uncommon in East Anglia.
Indeed, I think it is in Norfolk where we may best see the two
most marked sub-types in which it is divided--the two
extremes. The small stature, narrow head, dark skin, black
hair and eyes are common to both, and in both these physical
characters are correlated with certain mental traits, as, for
instance, a peculiar vivacity and warmth of disposition; but
they are high and low. In the latter sub-division the skin is
coarse in texture, brown or old parchment in colour, with
little red in it; the black hair is also coarse, the forehead
small, the nose projecting, and the facial angle indicative of
a more primitive race. One might imagine that these people
had been interred, along with specimens of rude pottery and
bone and flint implements, a long time back, about the
beginning of the Bronze Age perhaps, and had now come out of
their graves and put on modern clothes. At all events I don't
think a resident in Norfolk would have much difficulty in
picking out the portraits of some of his fellow-villagers in
Mr.
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