All this is very pleasant, but the fact remains that Englishmen express surprise and pain at our most innocent idiosyncrasies.  They correct our pronunciation and our misuse of words.  They regret our nomadic habits, our shrill voices, our troublesome children, our inability to climb mountains or “do a little glacier work” (it sounds like embroidery, but means scrambling perilously over ice), our taste for unwholesome—­or, in other words, seasoned—­food.  When I am reproved by English acquaintances for the “Americanisms” which disfigure my speech and proclaim my nationality, I cannot well defend myself by asserting that I read the same Bible as they do,—­for maybe, after all, I don’t.

The tenacity with which English residents on the Continent cling to the customs and traditions of their own country is pathetic in its loyalty and in its misconceptions.  Their scheme of life does not permit a single foreign observance, their range of sympathies seldom includes a single foreign ideal.  “An Englishman’s happiness,” says M. Taine, “consists in being at home at six in the evening, with a pleasing, attached wife, four or five children, and respectful domestics.”  This is a very good notion of happiness, no fault can be found with it, and something on the same order, though less perfect in detail, is highly prized and commended in America.  But it does not embrace every avenue of delight.  The Frenchman who seems never to go home, who seldom has a large family, whose wife is often his business partner and helpmate, and whose servants are friendly allies rather than automatic menials, enjoys life also, and with some degree of intelligence.  He may be pardoned for resenting the attitude of English exiles, who, driven from their own country by the harshness of the climate, or the cruel cost of living, never cease to deplore the unaccountable foreignness of foreigners.  “Our social tariff amounts to prohibition,” said a witty Englishman in France.  “Exchange of ideas takes place only at the extreme point of necessity.”

It is not under such conditions that any nation gives its best to strangers.  It is not to the affronted soul that the charm of the unfamiliar makes its sweet and powerful appeal.  Lord Byron was furious when one of his countrywomen called Chamonix “rural”; yet, after all, the poor creature was giving the scenery what praise she understood.  The Englishman who complained that he could not look out of his window in Rome without seeing the sun, had a legitimate grievance (we all know what it is to sigh for grey skies, and for the unutterable rest they bring); but if we want Rome, we must take her sunshine, along with her beggars and her Church.  Accepted sympathetically, they need not mar our infinite content.