of Europe, but of the remoter parts of the earth,
while the United States for the single century of her history has lived
insulated and almost solely intent on her own affairs. So though the
American has no adequate retort against the Englishman for his
ignorance, he need not defend it. It has been an accident of his
geographical situation and needs no more apology than the Rocky
Mountains. But, like the Rocky Mountains, it is a fact which has had a
distinct influence on his character. It is probably unavoidable that a
people--as an individual--which lives a segregated life, with its
thoughts turned almost wholly on itself, should come to exaggerate,
perhaps its own weaknesses, but certainly its virtues.

The boy who lives secluded from companionship, when he goes out into the
world, will find not merely that he is diffident and sensitive about his
own defects, real or imaginary, but that he is different from other
people. It may take him all his life to learn--perhaps he will never
learn--that his emotional and intellectual experiences are no prodigies
of sentiment and phoenixes of thought, but the common experiences of
half his fellows. It has been such a life of seclusion that the American
people lived--though they hardly know it (and perhaps some American
readers will resent the statement), because the mere fact of their
seclusion has prevented them from seeing how secluded, as compared with
other peoples, they have been. It is true that individual Americans of
the well-to-do classes travel more (and more intelligently) than any
other people except the English; but this, as leavening the nation, is a
small off-set against the daily lack of mental contact with foreign
affairs at home.

But if this sheltered boy be further occasionally subjected to the
inspection and criticism of some one from the outside world--a candid
and outspoken elderly relative--he is likely to become, on the one hand,
morbidly sensitive about those things which the other finds to blame,
and, on the other, no less puffed up with pride in whatever is awarded
praise.

Both these tendencies have been acutely developed in the American
character--an extraordinary sensitiveness to criticism by outsiders of
certain national foibles, and a no less conspicuous belief in the heroic
proportions of their good qualities. For surely no people has ever been
blessed in its seclusion with such an abundance of criticism of singular
candour. The frank brutalit