Such is the plight of honest John Bull at present, yet for all
this the old fellow's spirit is as tall and as gallant as ever.
If you drop the least expression of sympathy or concern, he takes
fire in an instant; swears that he is the richest and stoutest
fellow in the country; talks of laying out large sums to adorn
his house or buy another estate; and with a valiant swagger and
grasping of his cudgel longs exceedingly to have another bout at
quarter-staff.
Though there may be something rather whimsical in all this, yet I
confess I cannot look upon John's situation without strong
feelings of interest. With all his odd humors and obstinate
prejudices he is a sterling-hearted old blade. He may not be so
wonderfully fine a fellow as he thinks himself, but he is at
least twice as good as his neighbors represent him. His virtues
are all his own--all plain, homebred, and unaffected. His very
faults smack of the raciness of his good qualities. His
extravagance savors of his generosity, his quarrelsomeness of his
courage, his credulity of his open faith, his vanity of his
pride, and his bluntness of his sincerity. They are all the
redundancies of a rich and liberal character. He is like his own
oak, rough without, but sound and solid within; whose bark
abounds with excrescences in proportion to the growth and
grandeur of the timber; and whose branches make a fearful
groaning and murmuring in the least storm from their very
magnitude and luxuriance.
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