for her a solidarity which Americans
lack. Ignoring or misunderstanding the standards of other races, she
sets her own so high we needs must raise our eyes to consider them.
Yet when Mr. Arnold scandalized his fellow countrymen by the frank
confession that he found foreign life "liberating," what did he mean
but that he refused to

"drag at each remove a lengthening chain"?

His mind leaped gladly to meet new issues and fresh tides of thought;
he stood ready to accept the reasonableness of usages which differed
materially from his own; and he took delight in the trivial
happenings of every day, precisely because they were un-English and
unfamiliar. Even the names of strange places, of German castles and
French villages, gave him, as they give Mr. Henry James, a curious
satisfaction, a sense of harmony and ordered charm.

In that caustic volume, "Elizabeth in Rugen," there is an amusing
description of the indignation of the bishop's wife, Mrs.
Harvey-Browne, over what she considers the stupidities of German
speech.

"What," she asks with asperity, "could be more supremely senseless
than calling the Baltic the Ostsee?"

"Well, but why shouldn't they, if they want to?" says Elizabeth
densely.

"But, dear Frau X, it is so foolish. East sea! Of what is it the east?
One is always the east of something, but one doesn't talk about it.
The name has no meaning whatever. Now 'Baltic' exactly describes it."

This is fiction, but it is fiction easily surpassed by fact,--witness
the English tourist in France who said to Sir Leslie Stephen that
it was "unnatural" for soldiers to dress in blue. Then, remembering
certain British instances, he added hastily: "Except, indeed, for
the Artillery, or the Blue Horse." "The English model," comments Sir
Leslie, "with all its variations, appeared to him to be ordained by
nature."

The rigid application of one nation's formulas to another nation's
manners has its obvious disadvantages. It is praiseworthy in an
Englishman to carry his conscience--like his bathtub--wherever he
goes, but both articles are sadly in his way. The American who leaves
his conscience and his tub at home, and who trusts to being clean
and good after a foreign fashion, has an easier time, and is not
permanently stained. Being less cock-sure in the start about his
standing with Heaven, he is subject to reasonable doubts as to the
culpability of other people. The joyous outdoor Sundays of France
and Germany ple