ENGLISH CHARACTERISTICS. 197 



himself, and his interior, unconscious characteristics 

 are revealed. There he is quite a different creature 

 from what he is abroad. There he is " sweet," but 

 he sours the moment he steps off the island. In this 

 country he is too generally arrogant, fault-finding, and 

 supercilious. The very traits of loudness, sharpness, 

 and unleavenedness which I complain of in our na- 

 tional manners, he very frequently exemplifies in an 

 exaggerated form. 



The Scotch or German element no doubt fuses 

 and mixes with ours much more readily than the 

 purely British. 



The traveler feels the past in England as of course 

 he cannot feel it here ; and, along with impressions 

 of the present, one gets the flavor and influence, of 

 earlier, simpler times, which, no doubt, is a potent 

 charm, and one source of the " rose-color " which 

 some readers have found in my sketches, as the ab- 

 sence of it is one cause of the raw, acrid, unlovely 

 character of much there is in this country. If the 

 English are the old wine, we are the new. We are 

 not yet thoroughly leavened as a people, nor have 

 we more than begun to transmute and humanize our 

 surroundings ; and, as the digestive and assimila- 

 tive powers of the American are clearly less than 

 those of the Englishman, to say nothing of our 

 harsher, more violent climate, I have no idea that 

 ours can ever become the mellow land that Brit- 

 ain is. 



As for the charge of brutality that is often brought 



