elic speech. It was but
the other day that English triumphed in Cornwall, and they still show in
Mousehole, on St. Michael's Bay, the house of the last Cornish-speaking
woman. English itself, which will now frank the traveller through the
most of North America, through the greater South Sea Islands, in India,
along much of the coast of Africa, and in the ports of China and Japan,
is still to be heard, in its home country, in half a hundred varying
stages of transition. You may go all over the States, and--setting aside
the actual intrusion and influence of foreigners, negro, French, or
Chinese--you shall scarce meet with so marked a difference of accent as
in the forty miles between Edinburgh and Glasgow, or of dialect as in
the hundred miles between Edinburgh and Aberdeen. Book English has gone
round the world, but at home we still preserve the racy idioms of our
fathers, and every county, in some parts every dale, has its own quality
of speech, vocal or verbal. In like manner, local custom and prejudice,
even local religion and local law, linger on into the latter end of the
nineteenth century--_imperia in imperio_, foreign things at home.

In spite of these promptings to reflection, ignorance of his neighbours
is the character of the typical John Bull. His is a domineering nature,
steady in fight, imperious to command, but neither curious nor quick
about the life of others. In French colonies, and still more in the
Dutch, I have read that there is an immediate and lively contact between
the dominant and the dominated race, that a certain sympathy is
begotten, or at the least a transfusion of prejudices, making life
easier for both. But the Englishman sits apart, bursting with pride and
ignorance. He figures among his vassals in the hour of peace with the
same disdainful air that led him on to victory. A passing enthusiasm for
some foreign art or fashion may deceive the world, it cannot impose upon
his intimates. He may be amused by a foreigner as by a monkey, but he
will never condescend to study him with any patience. Miss Bird, an
authoress with whom I profess myself in love, declares all the viands of
Japan to be uneatable--a staggering pretension. So, when the Prince of
Wales's marriage was celebrated at Mentone by a dinner to the Mentonese,
it was proposed to give them solid English fare--roast beef and plum
pudding, and no tomfoolery. Here we have either pole of the Britannic
folly. We will not eat the food of a