"The eccentricity of which the English are accused abroad is, in truth, the mainspring of our national progress. However absurd the form which occasionally it may assume, it is yet an element of character eminently productive, on the whole, of good. Without a high degree of originality, which is but another name for eccentricity - a departure from ordinary rule - no man ever accomplished anything great."

Mabel Sharman Crawford, Through Algeria, 1863.