Some help in understanding Dickens [closed]

Question

It's from a page of "Our Mutual Friend". The specific phrases/vocabulary I didn't understand are in bold, while the general gists which are lost on me are in italics:

'I merely referred', Mr Podsnap explained, with a sense of meritorious proprietorship, 'to Our Constitution, Sir. We Englishmen are Very Proud of our Constitution, Sir. It Was Bestowed Upon Us By Providence. No Other Country is so Favoured as This Country. [...]

'And other countries?', said the foreign gentleman. 'They do how?'

'They do, Sir,' returned Mr Podsnap, gravely shaking his head; 'they do - I am sorry to be obliged to say it - as they do.'

'It was a little particular of Providence,' said the foreign gentleman laughing; 'for the frontier is not large'

'Undoubtedly,' assented Mr Podsnap; 'But So it is. It was the Charter of the Land. This island was Blest, Sir, to the Direct Exclusion of Other Countries as - as there may happen to be. And if we were all Englishmen present, I would say, 'added Mr Podsnap, looking round upon his compatriots, and sounding solemnly with this theme, 'that there is in the Englishman a combination of qualities, a modesty, an independence, a responsibility, a repose, combined with an absence of everything calculated to call a blush into the cheek of a young person, which one would seek in vain among the Nations of the Earth.'

Having delivered this little summary, Mr Podsnap's face flushed, as he thought of the remote possibility of its being at all qualified by any prejudiced citizen of any other country; and, with his favourite right-arm flourish, he put the rest of Europe and the whole of Asia, Africa and America nowhere.

(*Is the capitalisation of certain words meant to signify irony?)

Thanks very much.

Answer 1

Peter Shor has already provided an excellent interpretation of “meritorious proprietorship”.

The profusion of capitalisations is intended to characterize Mr. Podsnap’s speech as highly oratorical, investing the concepts he invokes with a pompous and inflated importance.

“I am sorry to be obliged to say it” —Mr. Podsnap affects distress at being required, in order to provide a frank answer to his interlocutor’s question, to reveal a fact highly discreditable to Other Nations, viz. they pronounce things differently!

“call a blush into the cheek of” —This means “cause [someone] to blush”; that is, offend someone's modesty. The entire phrase is explained by Dickens himself in a passage toward the beginning of the same chapter from which your excerpt is drawn:

A certain institution in Mr Podsnap's mind which he called 'the young person' may be considered to have been embodied in Miss Podsnap, his daughter. It was an inconvenient and exacting institution, as requiring everything in the universe to be filed down and fitted to it. The question about everything was, would it bring a blush into the cheek of the young person? And the inconvenience of the young person was, that, according to Mr Podsnap, she seemed always liable to burst into blushes when there was no need at all. There appeared to be no line of demarcation between the young person's excessive innocence, and another person's guiltiest knowledge. Take Mr Podsnap's word for it, and the soberest tints of drab, white, lilac, and grey, were all flaming red to this troublesome Bull of a young person.

“one would seek in vain among the Nations of the Earth” — If one sought this (a proponderance of X + an absence of Y) throughout the world (outside of England) one would find it nowhere. “Nations of the Earth” is a recurrent Biblical phrase denoting “everybody in the world except the people of Israel”.