sion" has gradually diminished in a very
satisfactory manner. It is now no longer kept alive by even the typical
American traveller such as he was when five-and-twenty years ago a
familiar sight at every railway-station, in every steamer and in every
picture-gallery, museum and ruin of every town in Europe. Now-a-days
everybody in America who lays any claim to the right of being called
"somebody," however small a "somebody" it may be, has been to Europe at
least once in his or her life--on a three months' Cook-excursion tour,
if in no other way. And those who have not been have had a father,
mother, brother, sister, or in any case a cousin in some degree, who
has; so that there is always a European trip in the family, so to speak.
The result of all this has naturally been a certain amount of experience
concerning Europe which has tended to wellnigh exterminate the race of
the typically-verdant American traveller. Occasional specimens, with all
their characteristics in full and vigorous development, may still be
met, but these are merely isolated survivors of a once widespread
family. The Americans that one meets to-day in Europe, both those who
travel and those who reside there, are of a different conformation and
belong to a different type. The crudeness which so shocked Europeans in
their predecessors they have, with characteristic adaptability, readily
and gracefully outgrown. But whether they have improved in other
respects, and whether, on other grounds, we have cause to be
particularly proud of our countrymen abroad at the present day, is
another question.

That Americans are constantly apologizing to foreigners for America, for
its institutions, for its social life, and for themselves as belonging
to it, is a fact which no one ever thinks of disputing. In this faculty
for disparaging our own country we may flatter ourselves that we have no
equals. The Chinese may come near us in their obsequious assurances as
to the utter unworthiness of everything pertaining to them, but with the
difference that they, probably, are inwardly profoundly convinced of the
perfection of all that their idea of courtesy obliges them to abuse, and
mean nothing of what they say; whereas we _do_ mean everything we say.

The prejudice of the English, and their attempts to transport a
miniature England about with them wherever they go, furnish a frequent
subject of jest to Americans on the Continent. If the total immunity
from any such fee