62 ON A CERTAIN CONDESCENSION IN FOREIGNERS. 



we beg them to remember that America is not to us, as to 

 them, a mere object of external interest to be discussed and 

 analysed, but in us, part of our very marrow. Let them not 

 suppose that we conceive of ourselves as exiles from the 

 graces and amenities of an older date than we, though very 

 much at home in a state of things not yet all it might be or 

 should be but which we mean to make so, and which we find 

 both wholesome and pleasant for men (though perhaps not 

 for dilettanti} to live in. The full tide of human existence 

 may be felt here as keenly as Johnson felt it at Charing Cross, 

 and in a larger sense. I know one person who is singular 

 enough to think Cambridge the very best spot on the 

 habitable globe. Doubtless God could have made a better, 

 but doubtless he never did. 



It will take England a great while to get over her airs of 

 patronage toward us, or even passably to conceal them. She 

 cannot help confounding the people with the country, and 

 regarding us as lust) juveniles. She has a conviction that 

 whatever good there is in us is wholly English, when the 

 truth is that we are worth nothing except so far as we have 

 disinfected ourselves of Anglicism. She is especially con 

 descending just now, and lavishes sugar-plums on us as if we 

 had not outgrown them. I am no believer in sudden con 

 versions, especially in sudden conversions to a favorable 

 opinion of people who have just proved you to be mistaken 

 in judgment, and therefore unwise in policy. I never blamed 

 her for not wishing well to democracy, how should she ? 

 but Alabamas are not wishes. Let her not be too hasty in 

 believing Mr. Reverdy Johnson s pleasant words. Though 

 there is no thoughtful man in America who would not con 

 sider a war with England the greatest of calamities, yet the 

 feeling towards her here is very far from cordial, whatever 

 our minister may say in the effusion that comes after ample 

 dining. Mr. Adams, with his famous My lord, this means 

 war, perfectly represented his country. Justly or not, we 

 have a feeling that we have been wronged, not merely in 

 sulted. The only sure way of bringing about a healthy rela 

 tion between the two countries is for Englishmen to clear 

 their minds of the notion, that we are always to be treated 

 as a kind of inferior and deported Englishman whose nature 

 they perfectly understand, and whose back they accordingly 

 stroke the wrong -way of the fur with amazing perseverance. 



