only have smiled at the criticism even had it been couched in the language of persiflage.  And when M. Max O’Rell traverses the statements of the two Englishmen and exaggerates American civilisation, we must bear in mind first that la vulgarite ne se traduit pas, and secondly, that the foes of our foemen are our friends.  Woe be to the man who refuses to fall down and do worship before that brazen-faced idol (Eidolon Novi Mundi), Public Opinion in the States; unless, indeed, his name be Brown and he hail from Briggsville.

Some years ago I proposed to write a paper upon the reflex action of Anglo-America upon England using as a base the last edition of Mrs. Trollope, who was compelled to confess that almost every pecularity which she had abused in her first issue had become naturalised at home.  Yankee cuteness has already displaced in a marvellous way old English rectitude and plain-dealing; gambling on the Stock Exchange, cornering, booms and trusts have invaded the trading-classes from merchant-princes to shopkeepers, and threaten, at their actual rate of progress, not to leave us an honest man.  But now the student’s attention will be called to the great and ever-growing influence of the New World upon the Old, and notably upon Europe.  Some 50,000 Americans annually visit the continent, they are rapidly becoming the most important item of the floating population, and in a few years they will number 500,000.  Meanwhile they are revolutionising all the old institutions; they are abolishing the classical cicerone whose occupation is gone amongst a herd which wants only to see streets and people:  they greatly increase the cost of traveling; they pay dollars in lieu of francs, and they are satisfied with inferior treatment at superior prices:—­hence the American hotel abroad is carefully shunned by Englishmen and natives.  At home the “well-to-do class” began by regarding their kinsmen d’outre mer with contemptuous dislike; then they looked upon them as a country squire would regard a junior branch which has emigrated and has thriven by emigration; and now they are welcomed in Society because they amuse and startle and stir up the duller depths.  But however warm may be private friendship between Englishmen and Anglo-Americans there is no public sympathy nor is any to be expected from the present generation.  “New England does not understand Old England and never will,” the reverse being equally the fact.  “The Millennium must come,” says Darwin (ii. 387), “before nations love each other:”  I add that first Homo alalus seu Pithecanthropus must become Homo Sapiens and cast off his moral slough—­egoism and ignorance.  Mr. Cleveland, in order to efface the foul stigma of being the “English President,” found it necessary to adopt the strongest measures in the matter of “Fisheries;” and the “Irish vote” must quadrennially be bought at the grave risk of national complications.  Despite the much-bewritten “brotherhood of the two great English-speaking races of the world,”