onstant desire to criticise those little foreign ways
that the other has acquired. Just so does a parent obscure her love for
a son by deploring the strange manners which he picks up at school; just
so is she blinded to his real qualities as a man, because he will insist
on giving his time to messing about with machinery instead of settling
down properly to study for the Church.

Burke (was it not?) spoke of his love for Ireland as "dearer than could
be justified to reason." Englishmen might well have difficulty in
justifying to their reason their affection for America; for to hear an
Englishman speak of American peculiarities and eccentricities, it would
often seem that to love such men would be pure unreason. But these
criticisms are no true index to the British national feeling for the
Americans as a people. Does a brother not love his sister because he
says rude things about her little failings? Americans hear the
criticisms and, their own hearts being alienated from Great Britain,
cannot believe that Britishers have any affection for them.

* * * * *

I am well aware that I make--and can make--no general statement from
which many readers, both in England and America, will not dissent.
Englishmen will arise to say that they do not love America; and
Americans--many Americans--will vow with their hands on their hearts
that they have the greatest affection for Great Britain. Vast numbers of
Americans will protest against being called a homogeneous people, and a
vast number more against the accusation of being still essentially
English; the fact being that it is no easier now than it was in the days
of Burke (I am sure of my author this time) to "draw up an indictment
against a whole people." A composite photograph is commonly only an
indifferent likeness of any of the individuals--least of all will the
individual be likely to recognise it as a portrait of himself. But the
type-character will stand out clearly--especially to the eyes of others
not of the type. Most of the notions of Englishmen about Americans are
drawn from the casual contact with individual Americans in England
(where from contrast with their surroundings the little peculiarities
stand out most conspicuously) or from the hasty "impressions" of
visitors who have looked only on the surface--and but a small portion of
that. Even, I am aware, after a lifetime spent in studying the two
peoples, in pondering on their likeness