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We have thus far spoken of shyness as a defect. But there is
another way of looking at it; for even shyness has its bright
side, and contains an element of good. Shy men and shy races are
ungraceful and undemonstrative, because, as regards society at
large, they are comparatively unsociable. They do not possess
those elegances of manner, acquired by free intercourse, which
distinguish the social races, because their tendency is to shun
society rather than to seek it. They are shy in the presence of
strangers, and shy even in their own families. They hide their
affections under a robe of reserve, and when they do give way to
their feelings, it is only in some very hidden inner-chamber. And
yet the feelings ARE there, and not the less healthy and genuine
that they are not made the subject of exhibition to others.
It was not a little characteristic of the ancient Germans, that
the more social and demonstrative peoples by whom they were
surrounded should have characterised them as the NIEMEC, or Dumb
men. And the same designation might equally apply to the modern
English, as compared, for example, with their nimbler, more
communicative and vocal, and in all respects more social
neighbours, the modern French and Irish.
But there is one characteristic which marks the English people, as
it did the races from which they have mainly sprung, and that is
their intense love of Home.
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