54 ON A CERTAIN CONDESCENSION IN FOREIGNERS. 



nothing more genuine than the better men whose limbs \\ere 

 made in England. So manly-tender, so brave, so true, so 

 warranted to wear, they make us proud to feel that blood is 

 thicker than water. 



But it is not merely the Englishman ; every European 

 candidly admits in himself some right of primogeniture in 

 respect to us, and pats this shaggy continent on the back 

 with a lively sense of generous unbending. The German 

 who plays the bass-viol has a well-founded contempt, which 

 he is not always nice in concealing, for a country so few of 

 whose children ever take that noble instrument between 

 their knees. His cousin, the Ph. D. from Gottingen, cannot 

 help despising a people who do not grow loud and red over 

 Aryans and Turanians, and are indifferent about their descent 

 from either. The Frenchman feels an easy mastery in speak 

 ing his mother tongue, and attributes it to some native 

 superiority of parts that lifts him high above us barbarians of 

 the West. The Italian prima donna sweeps a courtesy of 

 careless pity to the over-facile pit which unsexes her with 

 the bravo! innocently meant to show a familiarity with 

 foreign usage. But all \vithout exception make no secret of 

 regarding us as the goose bound to deliver them a golden 

 egg in return for their cackle. Such men as Agassiz, Guyot, 

 and Goldwin Smith come with gifts in their hands ; but 

 since it is commonly European failures who bring hither 

 their remarkable gifts and acquirements, this view of the 

 case is sometimes just the least bit in the world provoking. To 

 think what a delicious seclusion of contempt we enjoyed till 

 California and our own ostentatious parvenus, flinging gold 

 away in Europe that might have endowed libraries at home, 

 gave us the ill repute of riches ! What a shabby downfall 

 from the Arcadia which the French officers of our Revolu 

 tionary War fancied they saw here through Rousseau-tinted 

 spectacles ! Something of Arcadia there really was, something 

 of the Old Age ; and that divine provincialism were cheaply 

 repurchased could we have it back again in exchange for the 

 tawdry upholstery that has taken its place. 



For some reason or other, the European has rarely been 

 able to see America except in caricature. Would the first 

 Review of the world have printed the niaiseries of Mr. 

 Maurice Sand as a picture of society in any civilised coun 

 try ? Mr. Sand, to be sure, has inherited nothing of his 



