by the gnat-stings of
American readjustments--and all the more because he cannot adopt the
explanation that they are the natural outcome of an alien blood and a
foreign tongue. If he expects the same servility from his "inferiors"
that he has been accustomed to at home, his relations with them will
be a series of electric shocks; nay, his very expectation of it will
exasperate the American and make him show his very worst side. The
stately English dame must let her amusement outweigh her resentment if
she is addressed as "grandma" by some genial railway conductor of the
West; she may feel assured that no impertinence is intended.

The lover of scenery who expects to see a Jungfrau float into his ken
before he has lost sight of a Mte. Rosa; the architect who expects to
find the railway time-table punctuated at hourly intervals by a
venerable monument of his art; the connoisseur who hopes to visit a
Pitti Palace or a Dresden Picture Gallery in every large city; the
student who counts on finding almost every foot of ground soaked with
historic gore and every building hallowed by immemorial association;
the sociologist who looks for different customs, costumes, and
language at every stage of his journey;--each and all of these will do
well to refrain his foot from the soil of the United States. On the
other hand, the man who is interested in the workings of civilisation
under totally new conditions; who can make allowances, and quickly and
easily readjust his mental attitude; who has learned to let the new
comforts of a new country make up, temporarily at least, for the loss
of the old; who finds nothing alien to him that is human, and has a
genuine love for mankind; who can appreciate the growth of general
comfort at the expense of caste; who delights in promising experiments
in politics, sociology, and education; who is not thrown off his
balance by the shifting of the centre of gravity of honour and
distinction; who, in a word, is not congealed by conventionality, but
is ready to accept novelties on their merits,--he, unless I am very
grievously mistaken, will find compensations in the United States that
will go far to make up for Swiss Alp and Italian lake, for Gothic
cathedral and Palladian palace, for historic charters and
time-honoured tombs, for paintings by Raphael and statues by Phidias.

Perhaps, in the last analysis, our appreciation of America will depend
on whether we are optimistic or pessimistic in regard