nciation of
Great Britain; and it is usually the untravelled and preeminently
insular Briton alone that is utterly devoid of sympathy for his
American cousins. The American, as has often been pointed out, has
become vastly more pleasant to deal with since his country has won an
undeniable place among the foremost nations of the globe. The
epidermis of Brother Jonathan has toughened as he has grown in
stature, and now that he can look over the heads of most of his
compeers he regards the sting of a gnat as little as the best of them.
Perhaps not _quite_ so little as John Bull, whose indifference to
criticism and silent assurance of superiority are possibly as far
wrong in the one direction as a too irritable skin is in the other.

Of the books written about the United States in the last score of
years by European writers of any weight, there are few which have not
helped to dissipate the grotesquely one-sided view of America formerly
held in the Old World. Preeminent among such books is, of course, the
"American Commonwealth" of Mr. James Bryce; but such writers as Mr.
Freeman, M. Paul Bourget, Sir George Campbell, Mr. William Sanders,
Miss Catherine Bates, Mme. Blanc, Miss Emily Faithful, M. Paul de
Rousiers, Max O'Rell, and Mr. Stevens have all, in their several
degrees and to their several audiences, worked to the same end. It
may, however, be worth while mentioning one or two literary
performances of a somewhat different character, merely to remind my
British readers of the sort of thing we have done to exasperate our
American cousins in quite recent times, and so help them to understand
the why and wherefore of certain traces of resentment still lingering
beyond the Atlantic. In 1884 Sir Lepel Griffin, a distinguished Indian
official, published a record of his visit to the United States, under
the title of "The Great Republic." Perhaps this volume might have been
left to the obscurity which has befallen it, were it not that Mr.
Matthew Arnold lent it a fictitious importance by taking as the text
for some of his own remarks on America Sir Lepel's assertion that he
knew of no civilised country, Russia possibly excepted, where he
should less like to live than the United States. To me it seems a book
most admirably adapted to infuriate even a less sensitive folk than
the Americans. I do not in the least desire to ascribe to Sir Lepel
Griffin a deliberate design to be offensive; but it is just his calm,
supercilious Phi