62 CONDESCENSION IN FOREIGNERS. 



that come to much wear, we are liable to very unpleasing 

 conjectures about the quality of the metal underneath. 

 Perhaps one reason why the average Briton spreads himself 

 here with such an easy air of superiority may be owing to 

 the fact that he meets with so many bad imitations as to 

 conclude himself the only real thing in a wilderness of 

 shams. He fancies himself moving through an endless 

 Bloom sbury, where his mere apparition confers honour as 

 an avatar of the court-end of the universe. Not a Bull of 

 them all but is persuaded he bears Europa upon his back. 

 This is the sort of fellow whose patronage is so divertingly 

 insufferable. Thank heaven, he is not the only specimen of 

 cater-cousinship from the dear old mother island that is 

 shown to us ! Among genuine things, I know nothing 

 more genuine than the better men whose limbs were made 

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

 ranted 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 speaking his mother tongue, and attributes it to some 

 native superiority of parts that lifts him high above us bar 

 barians 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 without 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 ; 



