70 ON A CERTAIN CONDESCENSION IN FOREIGNERS. 



tender, so brave, so true, so warranted 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 con 

 tempt, 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 barbarians 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 Gold win Smith come with 

 gifts in their hands ; 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 Califor 

 nia 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 



