ges and sat on Vatican
Councils; his kinsmen are the MacMahons in France, the O'Donnels in
Spain, the Taafes in Austria. Even in the days of the Regency this was
so: look at Lever and his heroes! When England drank port, County Clare
drank claret. But ever since the famine, Ireland has expanded. Every
Irishman has cousins in Canada, in Australia, in New York, in San
Francisco. The Empire is Irish, with the exception of India; and India,
of course, is a Scotch dependency. Irishmen and Scotchmen have no such
feelings about Abroad and its Foreigners as Londoners entertain. But
Englishmen never quite get over the sense that everybody must needs
divide the world into England and Elsewhere. To the end no Englishman
really grasps the fact that to Frenchmen and Germans he himself is a
foreigner. I have met John Bulls who had passed years in Italy, but who
spoke of the countrymen of Caesar and Dante and Leonardo and Garibaldi
with the contemptuous toleration one might feel towards a child or an
Andaman Islander. These Italians could build Giotto's campanile; could
paint the Transfiguration; could carve the living marble on the tombs of
the Medici; could produce the Vita Nuova; could beget Galileo, Galvani,
Beccaria; but still--they were Foreigners. Providence in its wisdom has
decreed that they must live Abroad--just as it has decreed that a
comprehension of the decimal system and its own place in the world
should be limitations eternally imposed upon the English intellect.

XXI.

_WHY ENGLAND IS BEAUTIFUL._

As I strolled across the moor this afternoon towards Waverley, I saw
Jones was planting out that bare hillside of his with Douglas pines and
Scotch firs and new strains of silver birches. They will improve the
landscape. And I thought as I scanned them, "How curious that most
people entirely overlook this constant betterment and beautifying of
England! You hear them talk much of the way bricks and mortar are
invading the country; you never hear anything of this slow and silent
process of planting and developing which has made England into the
prettiest and one of the most beautiful countries in Europe."

What's that you say? "Astonished to find I have a good word of any sort
to put in for England!" Why, dear me, how irrational you are! I just
_love_ England. Can any man with eyes in his head and a soul for beauty
do otherwise? England and Italy--there you have the two great glories of
Europe. Italy for towns, fo