t
condition of the nation. It is obvious that it is given to very few
visitors to conduct such an investigation. Most of them have no time;
very, very few have the intellectual grasp necessary for an
undertaking of this magnitude. It is obvious, therefore, that the
criticism of a two months' traveller must be worthless generally, and
impertinent almost always. The kodak, you see, in the bands of the
cads, produces mischievous and misleading pictures.

Let us take one or two familiar instances of the dangers of hasty
objection. Nothing worries the average American visitor to Great
Britain more than the House of Lords, and, generally, the national
distinctions. He sees very plainly that the House of Lords no longer
represents an aristocracy of ancient descent, because by far the
greater number of peers belong to modern creations and new families,
chiefly of the trading class; that it no longer represents the men of
whom the country has most reason to be proud, because out of the whole
domain of science, letters, and art there have been but two creations
in the history of the peerage. He sees, also, that an Englishman has,
apparently, only to make enough money in order to command a peerage
for himself, and the elevation to a separate caste of himself and his
children forever. Again, as regards the lower distinctions, he
perceives that they are given for this reason and for that reason; but
he knows nothing at all of the services rendered to the State by the
dozens of knights made every year, while he can see very well that the
men of real distinction, whom he does know, never get any distinctions
at all. These difficulties perplex and irritate him. Probably he goes
home with a hasty generalization.

But the answer to these objections is not difficult. Without posing as
a champion of the House of Lords, one may point out that it is a very
ancient and deep-rooted institution; that to pull it up would cost an
immense deal of trouble; that it gives us a second or upper house
quite free from the acknowledged dangers of popular election; that the
lords have long ceased to oppose themselves to changes once clearly
and unmistakably demanded by the nation; that the hereditary powers
actually exercised by the very small number of peers who sit in the
House do give us an average exhibition of brain power quite equal to
that found in the House of Commons, in which are the six hundred
chosen delegates of the people; that, as regards