ling which characterizes the Americans themselves were
the result of breadth of ideas--if they spoke as they do because they
measured the faults and follies, the merits and advantages, of their
own institutions with as impartial an eye as they would measure those of
other nations, and judged them without either malice or extenuation--we
might then have the privilege of condemning narrow-mindedness
and prejudice. But we have no such breadth of ideas. On the
contrary, we have ourselves--none more so--the strongest sort of
prejudices--prejudices which prevent us as a nation from taking wide,
cosmopolitan views of things. The only difference is that with us the
prejudice, instead of being in favor of everything belonging to our own
country, is, in far too many cases, against it, consequently the most
objectionable, the least excusable, of prejudices.

It is but rarely that we find a German, a Frenchman, a Spaniard, an
Italian, or a Russian, who even having expatriated himself completely
for one reason or another, and after years of absence, will not have
retained some affection for his native country, some longing for it,
some feeling that it is the best place on earth after all. But among any
number of Americans who have been on European soil for any period of
time, from twenty days to twenty years, those who are burdened with any
such affection, any such longing, any such feeling, might be counted
with ease. Indeed, if through some inconceivable arrangement of human
affairs the Americans abroad were to be prevented from ever returning to
their own country, I imagine the majority would bear the catastrophe
with great equanimity, and, aside from the natural ties of family and
pecuniary interests that might bind them to their home, would think the
permanent life in Europe thus enforced the happiest that Fate could have
bestowed upon them. For my part, I never met but one American who was
anxious to return home--a lady, strange to say--and her chief reason
seemed to be that she missed her pancakes, hot breads, etc. for
breakfast. All the others, men and women, had but one voice to express
how immeasurably more to their taste was everything in Europe--the
climate, the life, the people, the country, the food, the manners, the
institutions, the customs--than anything in America.

However, all Americans in Europe are not of this class, although it
includes the majority. There is a comparatively small number who are as
much impre