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They restore to people their idea of themselves as a family.
他们使人们恢复原有的那种彼此亲如一家的观念。
It has been done in England over and over again.
这种现象在英国曾一次又一次地发生过。
But not lately.
但近来情形却不一样，
There has been little or no appeal from deep feeling to deep feeling, from imagination to imagination.
那种以深情唤起深情，以想象激发想象的情况已经很罕见，或者说根本没有了。
Recent years have robbed us of immortal things.
近年来"我们身上所有不朽的东西已被洗劫一空"。
But we do not have to go on like that, to enter a Common Market of national character.
但我们没必要再这样继续下去了，没必要去加入一个具有民族特征的共同市场。
It is now many years since I first declared in public my belief that the English, despite so many appearances to the contrary, are at heart and at root an imaginative people immediately responsive to any suggestion of drama in their lives.
许多年前，我就曾首次公开表示过我的一个观点：英国人。尽管表面上给人以许多相反的印象，但在内心深处却是一个富于想象的民族，他们对生活中任何激动人心的事物能迅速作出反应。
Deprived of it, they drift towards boredom, sulks and foolish short-sighted quarrels.
这一点如果被剥夺了，他们便会变得烦闷、愠怒，与人发生愚蠢的、目光短浅的争吵。
And this is true, whether they are wearing bowler hats or ungovernable mops of hair.
不论是戴着圆顶礼帽的老成持重的生意人，还是那些头发蓬乱的毛头小伙子，全都是这样。
To face the future properly they need both a direction and a great lift of the heart.
要正确地面对未来，他们需要有人来指明方向并给以精神上的巨大鼓舞。
A rather poorer and harder way of life will not defeat them so long as it is not harder and poorer in spirit, so long as it still refuses to reject Englishness-for so many centuries the secret of the islanders'oddity and irrationality, their many weaknesses, their creative strength.
再贫困、再冷酷一些的生活也不能让英国人低头--只要他们在精神上不是更冷酷、更贫困，只要他们依然拒绝抛弃英国人特性-这就是千百年来这些岛国居民的奇特气质和非理性特点以及他们的许多弱点和创造力的奥秘所在。
The Final Chapter from The English published by William Heinemann in 1973
(选自《英国人》)
