ON A CERTAIN CONDESCENSION IN FOREIGNERS, 63 



Let them learn to treat us naturally on our merits as human 

 beings, as they would a German or a Frenchman, and not as 

 if we were a kind of counterfeit Briton whose crime appeared 

 in every shade of difference, and before long there would 

 come that right feeling which we naturally call a good un 

 derstanding. The common blood, and still more the com 

 mon language, are fatal instruments of misapprehension. 

 Let them give up trying to understand us, still more thinking 

 that they do, and acting in various absurd ways as the ne 

 cessary consequence, for they will never arrive at that de 

 voutly-to-be-wished consummation, till they learn to look at 

 us as we are and not as they suppose us to be. Dear old 

 long-estranged mother-in-law, it is a great many years since 

 we parted. Since 1660, when you married again, you have 

 been a step-mother to us. Put on your spectacles, dear 

 madam. Yes, we have grown, and changed likewise. You 

 would not let us darken your doors, if you could help it. We 

 know that perfectly well. But pray, when we look to be 

 treated as men, don t shake that rattle in our faces, nor talk 

 baby to us any longer. 



Do, child, go to it grandam, child ; 



Give grandam kingdom, and it grandam will 



Give it a plum, a cherry, and a fig I 



A GREAT PUBLIC CHARACTER* 



IT is the misfortune of American biography that it must 

 needs be more or less provincial, and that, contrary to 

 what might have been predicted, this quality in it predomi 

 nates in proportion as the country grows larger. Wanting 

 any great and acknowledged centre of national life and 

 thought, our expansion has hitherto been rather aggregation 

 than growth; reputations must be hammered out thin to 

 cover so wide a surface, and the substance of most hardly 

 holds out to the boundaries of a single state. Our very 

 history wants unity, and down to the Revolution the attention 

 is wearied and confused by having to divide itself among 

 thirteen parallel threads, instead of being concentred on a 

 single clue. A sense of remoteness and seclusion comes over 

 us as we read, and we cannot help asking ourselves, * Were 



* The Life of Josiah Quincy by his son. 



