g to
the customs and traditions of their own country is pathetic in its
loyalty and in its misconceptions. Their scheme of life does not
permit a single foreign observance, their range of sympathies seldom
includes a single foreign ideal. "An Englishman's happiness," says
M. Taine, "consists in being at home at six in the evening, with a
pleasing, attached wife, four or five children, and respectful
domestics." This is a very good notion of happiness, no fault can
be found with it, and something on the same order, though less perfect
in detail, is highly prized and commended in America. But it does
not embrace every avenue of delight. The Frenchman who seems never
to go home, who seldom has a large family, whose wife is often his
business partner and helpmate, and whose servants are friendly
allies rather than automatic menials, enjoys life also, and with some
degree of intelligence. He may be pardoned for resenting the attitude
of English exiles, who, driven from their own country by the
harshness of the climate, or the cruel cost of living, never cease
to deplore the unaccountable foreignness of foreigners. "Our social
tariff amounts to prohibition," said a witty Englishman in France.
"Exchange of ideas takes place only at the extreme point of
necessity."

It is not under such conditions that any nation gives its best to
strangers. It is not to the affronted soul that the charm of the
unfamiliar makes its sweet and powerful appeal. Lord Byron was
furious when one of his countrywomen called Chamonix "rural"; yet,
after all, the poor creature was giving the scenery what praise she
understood. The Englishman who complained that he could not look out
of his window in Rome without seeing the sun, had a legitimate
grievance (we all know what it is to sigh for grey skies, and for
the unutterable rest they bring); but if we want Rome, we must take
her sunshine, along with her beggars and her Church. Accepted
sympathetically, they need not mar our infinite content.

There is a wonderful sentence in Mrs. Humphry Ward's "Marriage of
William Ashe," which subtly and strongly protests against the blight
of mental isolation. Lady Kitty Bristol is reciting Corneille in Lady
Grosville's drawing-room. "Her audience," says Mrs. Ward, "looked
on at first with the embarrassed or hostile air which is the
Englishman's natural protection against the great things of art."
To write a sentence at once so caustic and so flawless is to triumph