may take on airs in literature; for our little leisure leaves us short repose, and it would be strange indeed, if their civilization of centuries had not left its marks in a finer culture and a deeper thought.  But when, leaving literature and coming down into the fastnesses of life, they gave us hatred for love, and scorn for reverence,—­when they sneered at that which we held sacred, and reviled that which we counted honorable,—­when, green-eyed and gloating, they saw through their glasses not only darkly, but disjointed and askance,—­when devotion became to them fanaticism, and love of liberty was lust of power,—­did virtue go out of them, or had it never been in?  This, at least, was wrought:  when one part of the temple of our reverence was undermined, the whole structure came down.  They who showed themselves so morally weak cannot maintain even the intellectual or aesthetic superiority which they have assumed.  Henceforth their blame or praise is not what it was hitherto.  When a man rails at my country, it is little that he rails at me.  If they have called the master of the house Beelzebub, they of his household would as soon be called little flies as anything else.

(As a matter of fact, I don’t suppose my little venture has ever been heard of across the ocean.  You think it is very presumptuous in me ever to have thought of it; but I did not think of it.  I was only afraid of it.  Suppose the British Quarterly has not vision microscopic enough to discern you; you like to know how you would feel in a certain contingency, even if it should never happen.  Besides, so many strange things arise every day, that incongruity seems to have lost its force.  Nothing surprises.  Cause and effect are continually dissolving partnership.  Merit and reward do not hunt in couples.  If the Tycoon should send a deputation requesting me to come over at once and settle matters between himself and his Daimios, I should simply tell him that I had not the time, but I should not be surprised.)

But if we only did reverence England as once we reverenced her, this is what I would say:—­“Upon my country do not visit my sins.  Upon my country’s fame let me fasten no blot.  Wherever I am wrong, inelegant, inaccurate, provincial, visit all your reprobation upon me,—­

    ’Me, me:  adsum, qui feci; in me convertite ferrum,
    O Angli! mea fraus omnis,’—­

upon me as a writer, not upon me as an American.  Do not regard me as the exponent of American culture, or as anywhere near the high-water mark of American letters.  I am not one of the select few, but of the promiscuous many.  Born and bred in a farm-yard, and pattering about among the hens and geese and calves and lambs when other children were learning to talk like gentlemen and scholars, what can you expect of me?  It is a wonder that I am as tolerable as I am.  It is a sign of the greatness of my country, that I, who, if I lived in England, should be scattering my h-s in wild confusion, and asking whether