68 CONDESCENSION IN FORE IGNERS. 



Hohenzollerns 1 First of all, that they were canny, a 

 thrifty, forehanded race. Next, that they made a good 

 fight from generation to generation with the chaos around 

 them. That is precisely the battle which the English race 

 on this continent has been carrying doughtily on for two 

 centuries and a-half. Doughtily and silently, for you can 

 not hear in Europe &quot; that crash, the death-song of the per 

 fect tree,&quot; that has been going on here from sturdy father 

 to sturdy son, and making this continent habitable for the 

 weaker Old World breed that has swarmed to it during the 

 last half-century. If ever men did a good stroke of work 

 on this planet, it was the forefathers of those whom you are 

 wondering whether it would not be prudent to acknowledge 

 as far-off cousins. Alas ! man of genius, to whom we owe 

 so much, could you see nothing more than the burning of a 

 foul chimney in that clash of Michael and Satan which 

 flamed up under your very eyes 1 



Before our war we were to Europe but a huge mob of 

 adventurers and shopkeepers. Leigh Hunt expressed it 

 well enough when he said that ho could never think of 

 America without seeing a gigantic counter stretched all 

 along the seaboard. Feudalism had by degrees made com 

 merce, the great civiliser, contemptible. But a tradesman 

 with sword on thigh and very prompt of stroke was not 

 only redoubtable, he had become respectable also. Few 

 people, I suspect, alluded twice to a needle in Sir John 

 Hawkwood s presence, after that doughty tighter had ex 

 changed it for a more dangerous tool of the same metal. 

 Democracy had been hitherto only a ludicrous effort to 

 reverse the laws of nature by thrusting Cleon into the 

 place of Pericles. But a democracy that could light for 

 an abstraction, whose members held life and goods cheap 

 compared with the larger life which we call country, was 

 not merely unheard-of, but portentous. It was the night 

 mare of the Old World taking upon itself flesh and blood, 

 turning out to be substance and not drearn. Since the 

 Norman crusader clanged down upon the throne of the 

 porphyro-geniti, carefully-draped appearances had never 



