CONDESCENSION IN FOREIGNERS. 63 



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 

 Revolutionary 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 1 Mr. Sand, to be sure, has inherited nothing of his 

 famous mother s literary outfit, except the pseudonyme. 

 But since the conductors of the Revue could not have pub 

 lished his story because it was clever, they must have 

 thought it valuable for its truth. As true as the last cen 

 tury Englishman s picture of Jean Orapaud ! We do not 

 ask to be sprinkled with rose-water, but may perhaps fairly 

 protest against being drenched with the rinsings of an 

 unclean imagination. The next time the Revue allows such 

 ill-bred persons to throw their slops out of its first-floor 

 windows, let it honestly preface the discharge with a gare 

 de I eau/ that we may run from under in season. And 

 Mr. Duvergier d Hauranne, who knows how to be enter 

 taining ! I know le Francois est plutot indiscret que confiant, 

 and the pen slides too easily when indiscretions will fetch so 

 much a page ; but should we not have been tant-soit-peu 

 more cautious had we been writing about people on the 

 other side of the Channel ? But then it is a fact in the 

 natural history of the American long familiar to Europeans, 

 that he abhors privacy, knows not the meaning of reserve, 



