ON A CERTAIN CONDESCENSION IN FOREIGNERS. 69 



This state of things was so painful that excellent 

 people were not wanting who gave their whole genius to 

 reproducing here the original Bull, whether by gaiters, 

 the cut of their whiskers, by a factitious brutality in their 

 tone, or by an accent that was forever tripping and fail 

 ing flat over the tangled roots of our common tongue. 

 Martyrs to a false ideal, it never occurred to them that 

 nothing is more hateful to gods and men than a second- 

 rate Englishman, and for the very reason that this planet 

 never produced a more splendid creature than the first- 

 rate one, witness Shakespeare and the Indian Mutiny. 

 Witness that truly sublime self-abnegation of those pris 

 oners lately among the bandits of Greece, where average 

 men gave an example of quiet fortitude for which all 

 the stoicism of antiquity can show no match. If we 

 could contrive to be not too unobtrusively our simple 

 selves, we should be the most delightful of human be 

 ings, and the most original ; whereas, when the plating 

 of Anglicism rubs off, as it always will in points 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 him 

 self here with such an easy air of superiority may be 

 owing to the fact that he meets with so many bad imi 

 tations as to conclude himself the only real thing in a 

 wilderness of shams. He fancies himself moving through 

 an endless Bloomsbury, where his mere apparition con 

 fers honor 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 patron 

 age is so divertingly insufferable. Thank Heaven he it) 

 not the only specimen of cater-cousinship from the dear 

 old Mother Island that is shown to us ! Among genuine 

 things, 1 know nothing more genuine than the better 

 men whose limbs were made hi England. So manly- 



