e is any other people who have confined their national
self-laudation to one day in the year. I may be allowed to make one
remark as a personal experience. Fortune had willed it that I should see
as many--perhaps more--cities and manners of men as Ulysses; and I have
observed one general fact, and that is, that the adjectival epithet
which is prefixt to all the virtues is invariably the epithet which
geographically describes the country that I am in. For instance, not to
take any real name, if I am in the kingdom of Lilliput, I hear of the
Lilliputian virtues. I hear courage, I hear common sense, and I hear
political wisdom called by that name. If I cross to the neighboring
Republic Blefusca--for since Swift's time it has become a Republic--I
hear all these virtues suddenly qualified as Blefuscan.

I am very glad to be able to thank Lord Coleridge for having, I believe
for the first time, coupled the name of the President of the United
States with that of her Majesty on an occasion like this. I was struck,
both in what he said, and in what our distinguished guest of the evening
said, with the frequent recurrence of an adjective which is
comparatively new--I mean the word "English-speaking." We continually
hear nowadays of the "English-speaking race," of the "English-speaking
population." I think this implies, not that we are to forget, not that
it would be well for us to forget, that national emulation and that
national pride which is implied in the words "Englishman" and "American,"
but the word implies that there are certain perennial and abiding
sympathies between all men of a common descent and a common language. I
am sure, my lord, that all you said with regard to the welcome which our
distinguished guest will receive in America is true. His eminent talents
as an orator, the dignified--I may say the illustrious--manner in which
he has sustained the traditions of that succession of great actors who,
from the time of Burbage to his own, have illustrated the English stage,
will be as highly appreciated there as here.

And I am sure that I may also say that the chief magistrate of England
will be welcomed by the bar of the United States, of which I am an
unworthy member, and perhaps will be all the more warmly welcomed that
he does not come among them to practise. He will find American law
administered--and I think he will agree with me in saying ably
administered--by judges who, I am sorry to say, sit without the
tra