y with which the travelling Englishman has
made his opinions known on any peculiar trait or unusual institution
which he has been pleased to think that he has noticed in the United
States has been vastly more ill-mannered than anything in the manners of
the Americans themselves on which he has animadverted so freely. The
thing most comparable to it--most nearly as ill-mannered--is, perhaps,
the frank brutality with which the travelling American expresses
himself--and herself--in regard to things in Europe. In it, in fact, we
see again another aspect of the same fundamentally English trait,--the
insistence on the sovereignty of the individual--and Americans come by
it legitimately. Every time that they display it they do but make
confession of their original Anglo-Saxon descent and essentially English
nature. The Englishman in America has, however, had some excuse for his
readiness to criticise, in the interest, the anxiety, with which, at
least until recent years, the Americans have invited his opinions. But
if that has gone some way to justify his expression of those opinions,
it has furnished no sort of excuse for the lack of tact and breeding
which he has shown in the process. The American does not commonly wait
for the invitation.

"My! But isn't that quaint! Now in America we . . ." etc. So speaks an
uncultivated American on seeing something that strikes him--or her--as
novel in London, not unkindly critical, but anxious to give information
about his country--and uninvited. But whereas the Englishman is so
accustomed to the abuse and criticism of other peoples that the harmless
chatter of the American ripples more or less unheeded by him, the
American, less case-hardened in his isolation, hears the Englishman's
bluntly worded expression of contempt, and it hurts. It does not hurt
nearly as much now as it did twenty years ago; but the harm has largely
been done.

The harm would not be so serious but for the American sensitiveness
bred of his seclusion,--if that is (at the risk of seeming to repeat
myself I must again say) he knew enough of the world to know that he
himself has precisely the same critical inclination as the Englishman
and that it is a trait inherited from common ancestors. The Anglo-Saxon
race acquired early in its life the conviction that it was a trifle
better than any other section of the human kind. And it is justified.
We--Americans and Englishmen alike--hold that we are better than any
other