the last generation does not matter. The point is here:--When one
speaks of the "average Englishman" (as, without regard to grammar, we
persist in doing) what he really means is the typical representative of
a comparatively small section of the population, from the middle, or
upper middle, classes upward. It is the same when one speaks of
Frenchmen. When he says "the average Frenchman dresses," or "thinks," or
"talks" in such and such a way, he merely means that so does the normal
specimen of a class including only a few hundred thousand men, and those
city dwellers, dress or think or speak. The figure is excusable because
(apart from the fact that an "average" of the entire population would be
quite unfindable) the comparatively small class does indeed guide, rule,
and, practically, think for, the whole population. So far as foreign
countries are concerned, they represent the policy and mode of thought
of the nation. The great numerical majority is practically negligible.

The same is true of the people of the United States, but with this
difference, that the class represented by the "average"--the class of
which, when grouped together, it is possible to find a reasonably
typical representative--includes in the United States a vastly larger
proportion of the whole people than is the case in other countries. It
would not be possible to find a common mental or moral divisor for the
members of Parliament in the aggregate, and an equal number of Norfolk
fishermen or Cornish miners. They are not to be stated in common terms.
But no such incongruity exists between the members of Congress, Michigan
lumbermen, and the men of the Texas plains.

It may be that within the smaller circle in England, the
individuals--thanks to the public schools and the universities--are more
nearly identical and the type specimen would more closely represent the
whole. But as soon as we get outside the circle, much greater
divergences appear. The English are _homogeneous_ over a small area: the
Americans _homogeneous_ over a much larger.

"You may go all over the States," said Robert Louis Stevenson (and
Americans will, for love of the man, pardon his calling their country
"the States") "and--setting aside the actual intrusion and influence of
foreigners, negro, French, or Chinese--you shall scarce meet with so
marked a difference of accent as in forty miles between Edinburgh and
Glasgow, or of dialect as in the hundred miles between Edinburgh an