ON A CERTAIN CONDESCENSION IN FOREIGNERS. 73 



World, and do not know precisely the present fashion of 

 May-Fair, but I have a kind of feeling that if an Ameri 

 can (mutato nomine, de te is always frightfully possible) 

 were to do this kind of thing under a European roof, it 

 would induce some disagreeable reflections as to the 

 ethical results of democracy. I read the other day in 

 print the remark of a British tourist who had eaten 

 large quantities of our salt, such as it is (I grant it has 

 not the European savor), that the Americans were 

 hospitable, no doubt, but that it was partly because they 

 longed for foreign visitors to relieve the tedium of their 

 dead-level existence, and partly from ostentation. What 

 shall we do] Shall we close our doors? Not I, for one, 

 if I should so have forfeited the friendship of L. S., 

 most lovable of men. He somehow seems to find us 

 human, at least, and so did Clough, whose poetry will 

 one of these days, perhaps, be found to have been the 

 best utterance in verse of this generation. And T. H. 

 the mere grasp of whose manly hand carries with it the 

 pledge of frankness and friendship, of an abiding sim 

 plicity of nature as affecting as it is rare ! 



The fine old Tory aversion of former times was not 

 hard to bear. There was something even refreshing in 

 it, as in a northeaster to a hardy temperament. When 

 a British parson, travelling in Newfoundland while the 

 slash of our separation was still raw, after prophesying a 

 glorious futiire for an island that continued to dry its 

 fish under the segis of Saint George, glances disdainfully 

 over his spectacles in parting at the U. S. A., and fore 

 bodes for them a " speedy relapse into barbarism," now 

 that they have madly cut themselves off from the 

 humanizing .influences of Britain, I smile with barbarian 

 self-conceit. But this kind of thing became by degrees 

 an unpleasant anachronism. For meanwhile the young 

 giant was growing, was beginning indeed to feel tight in 

 4 



