80 ON A CERTAIN CONDESCENSION IN FOREIGNERS, 



we shall be ashamed of a bankruptcy of honor, if we 

 can only keep the letter of our bond 1 I hope we shall 

 be able to answer all these questions with a frank yes. 

 At any rate, we would advise our visitors that we are 

 not merely curious creatures, but belong to the family 

 of man, and that, as individuals, we are not to be al- 

 ways subjected to the competitive examination above 

 mentioned, even if we acknowledged their competence 

 as an examining board. Above all, we beg them to re- 

 member that America is not to us, as to them, a mere 

 object of external interest to be discussed and analyzed, 

 but in us, part of our very marrow. Let them not sup- 

 pose that we conceive of ourselves as exiles from the 

 graces and amenities of an older date than we, though 

 very much at home in a state of things not yet all it 

 might be or should be, but which we mean to make so, 

 and which we find both wholesome and pleasant for men 

 (though perhaps not for dilettanti) to live in. " The full 

 tide of human existence " may be felt here as keenly as 

 Johnson felt it at Charing Cross, and in a larger sense. 

 I know one person who is singular enough to think 

 Cambridge the very best spot on the habitable globe. 

 " Doubtless God could have made a better, but doubtless 

 he never did." 



It will take England a great while to get over her airs 

 of patronage toward us, or even passably to conceal 

 them. She cannot help confounding the people with the 

 country, and regarding us as lusty juveniles. She has a 

 conviction that whatever good there is in us is wholly 

 English, when the truth is that we are worth nothing ex- 

 cept so far as we have disinfected ourselves of Anglicism. 

 She is especially condescending just now, and lavishes 

 sugar-plums on us as if we had not outgrown them. I 

 am no believer in sudden conversions, especially in sud- 

 den conversions to a favorable opinion of people who 



