" He ridicules our unsuspecting
provincialism: "Have you seen the dozen great men of New York and Boston?
Then you may as well die!" He does not spare our tendency to spread-
eagleism and declamation, and having quoted a shrewd foreigner as saying
of Americans that, "Whatever they say has a little the air of a speech,"
he proceeds to speculate whether "the American forest has refreshed some
weeds of old Pictish barbarism just ready to die out?" He finds the foible
especially of American youth to be--pretension; and remarks, suggestively,
that we talk much about the key of the age, but "the key to all ages is
imbecility!" He cannot reconcile himself to the mania for going abroad.
"There is a restlessness in our people that argues want of character....
Can we never extract this tapeworm of Europe from the brain of our
countrymen?" He finds, however, this involuntary compensation in the
practice--that, practically "we go to Europe to be Americanized," and has
faith that "one day we shall cast out the passion for Europe by the
passion for America." As to our political doings, he can never regard them
with complacency. "Politics is an afterword," he declares--"a poor
patching.
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