70 CONDESCENSION IN FOREIGNERS. 



be carried on by declamation. It is noticeable also that 

 facility of communication has made the best English and 

 French thought far more directly operative here than ever 

 before. Without being Europeanised, our discussion of 

 important questions in statesmanship, political economy, 

 in aesthetics, is taking a broader scope and a higher tone. It 

 had certainly been provincial, one might almost say local, 

 to a very unpleasant extent. Perhaps our experience 

 in soldiership has taught us to value training more than 

 we have been popularly wont. We may possibly come to 

 the conclusion, one of these days, that self-made men may 

 not be always equally skilful in the manufacture of 

 wisdom, may not be divinely commissioned to fabricate the 

 higher qualities of opinion on all possible topics of human 

 interest. 



So long as we continue to be the most common-schooled 

 and the least cultivated people in the world, I suppose we 

 must consent to endure this condescending manner of 

 foreigners toward us. The more friendly they mean to be 

 the more ludicrously prominent it becomes. They can 

 never appreciate the immense amount of silent work that 

 has been done here, making this continent slowly fit for the 

 abode of man, and which will demonstrate itself, let us 

 hope, in the character of the people. Outsiders can only 

 be expected to judge a nation by the amount it has con 

 tributed to the civilisation of the world ; the amount, that 

 is, that can be seen and handled. A great place in history 

 can only be achieved by competitive examinations, nay, by 

 a long course of them. How much new thought have we 

 contributed to the common stock 1 Till that question can 

 be triumphantly answered, or needs no answer, we must 

 continue to be simply interesting as an experiment, to be 

 studied as a problem, and not respected as an attained 

 result or an accomplished solution. Perhaps, as I have 

 hinted, their patronising manner toward us is the fair 

 result of their failing to see here anything more than a poor 

 imitation, a plaster-cast of Europe. And are they not partly 

 right 1 If the tone of the uncultivated American has too 



