Valuable Importations. 275 



restricted position. Pursuing this fact to its logical con- 

 clusion, Britain may soon receive from her giant child 

 all that is best in any department of art which depends 

 upon general support for success. This seems to me to 

 betoken a revolution, not as implying the inherent supe- 

 riority of the American, but simply flowing from the fact 

 that fifty-five millions of English-speaking and reading 

 people can afford to spend more for any certain article 

 than thirty-five millions can. That Colonel Mapleson 

 now brings over Her Majesty's Opera Company for the 

 New York season as regularly as he opens his London 

 season, and especially that he makes far more profit out 

 of the former than out of the latter, is another significant 

 fact. That leading actors find a wider field here than at 

 home is still another, and even ministers are finding that 

 the call of the Lord to higher labors and higher salaries 

 often comes from the far side of the Atlantic. Drs. 

 McCosh, Hall, Ormiston, and Taylor, our leading divines, 

 get treble salaries in the Republic, and are said to be 

 valuable importations. As Mr. Evarts said one night in 

 a post-prandial effort : " They are about the only speci- 

 mens of 'the cloth' admitted duty free." As long as 

 America sent Britain only pork and cheese and provi- 

 sions, and such products of the soil, it was all well 

 enough, but if she is beginning to send the highest 

 things of life, the art treasures, which give sweetness 

 and light to human existence, it is somewhat alarming. 

 For my part, I do not like to think that these Ameri- 



