e comparable
to-day, though England is as yet unaware of it. In time, Englishmen will
awake to a realisation of the fact; but what the relative standing of
the two countries will be by that time it is impossible to say.
Englishmen would, perhaps, not find it to their disadvantage, and it
would certainly (if not done in too condescending a spirit) not be
displeasing to the people of the United States, if they began, even now,
to take a livelier interest in the work that the other is doing.

FOOTNOTES:

[153:1] At this point my American friend, to the value of whose
criticisms I have already paid tribute, interjects marginally: "none the
less _Fliegende Blaetter_ presents more real humour in a week than is to
be found in _Punch_ in a month." To which I can but make the obvious
reply that I have already said that Americans think so. He points out,
however, further that, while the Munich paper is always to be found in
the higher-class American clubs, it is comparatively infrequent in the
clubs of Great Britain, which is undoubtedly true; and that is a subject
(the relative breadth of outlook on the world-literature of the day in
the two countries) which will necessarily receive attention later on.

[155:1] Lest any American readers should assume that some personal
feeling is responsible for my point of view (which would entirely
destroy any value in my argument) it seems necessary to explain that I
have become calloused to being told that I am the only Englishman the
speaker ever met with an American sense of humour. Sometimes I have
taken it as a compliment.

[159:1] It is merely pathetic to find such a paper as the London
_Academy_ at this late day summing up the American aesthetic impulse as
follows: "Their culture is now a borrowed thing animated by no life of
its own. Their art is become a reflection of French art, their
literature a reflection of English literature, their learning a
reflection of German learning. A velleity of taste in their women of the
richer class seems to be all that maintains in their country the
semblance of a high, serious, and disinterested passion for the things
of the mind."

It would be interesting to learn from the _Academy_ what school of
English writers it is that the American humourists "reflect," who among
English novelists are the models for the present school of Western
fiction, where in English historiography is to be found the prototype of
the great histories of their count