lack
of discussible topics is made up by more friendly calls for drinks. The
same subjects are gone through with variations time after time, and that
is about all.

Now, I maintain that this should not be so, because, taking things all
round, the young Englishman is really _au fond_ brighter and infinitely
more intelligent than foreigners. It is his education and mode of living
that are at fault, not the individual himself, and this our cousins the
Americans have long since discovered; hence their steaming ahead of us in
every line with the greatest ease.

We hear that the Englishman is no good at learning languages, but that is
again a great mistake. I do not believe that there is any other nation in
Europe, after the Russians, who have greater facility--if properly
cultivated--and are more capable of learning languages to perfection than
the English. I am not referring to every shameless holiday tripper on
the Continent who makes himself a buffoon by using misapplied,
mispronounced, self-mistaught French or Italian or German sentences, but
I mean the rare observant Englishman who studies languages seriously and
practically.

Speaking from experience, in my travels--which extend more or less all
over the world--I have ever found that Englishmen, when put to it, could
learn languages perfectly. Hence my remarks, which may seem blunt but are
true. Truly there is no reason why the gift of learning languages should
be neglected in England,--a gift which, I think, is greatly facilitated
by developing in young people musical qualities, if any, and training the
ear to observe and receive sounds correctly,--a fact to which we are just
beginning to wake up.

It is undoubted that the command of several languages gives a commercial
man an enormous advantage in the present race of European nations in
trying to obtain a commercial superiority; but the command of a language
requires, too, to a limited extent the additional etiquette of ways and
manners appropriate to it to make it quite efficient; and these, as well
as the proper manner of speaking the language itself, can only, I repeat,
be learnt by personal observation.

The Germans train commercial men specially for the East, men who visit
every nook of Asiatic countries where trade is to be developed, and
closely study the natives, their ways of living, their requirements,
reporting in the most minute manner upon them, so that the German
manufacturers may provide suitable