ever-present consciousness of social limitation, but society is not
entirely composed of philosophers, even in America; and the sense of
freedom and space is unqualifiedly welcome to its members. It is not
easy for a European to the manner born to realise the sort of
extravagant, nightmare effect that many of our social customs have in
the eyes of our untutored American cousins. The inherent absurdities
that are second nature to us exhale for them the full flavour of their
grotesqueness. The idea of an insignificant boy peer taking precedence
of Mr. John Morley! The idea of _having_ to appear before royalty in a
state of partial nudity on a cold winter day! The necessity of backing
out of the royal presence! The idea of a freeborn Briton having to get
out of an engagement long previously formed on the score that "he has
been _commanded_ to dine with H.R.H." The horrible capillary plaster
necessary before a man can serve decently as an opener of
carriage-doors! The horsehair envelopes without which our legal brains
cannot work! The unwritten law by which a man has to nurse his hat and
stick throughout a call unless his hostess specially asks him to lay
them aside!

Mr. Bryce commits himself to the assertion that "Scotchmen and
Irishmen are more unlike Englishmen, the native of Normandy more
unlike the native of Provence, the Pomeranian more unlike the
Wurtemberger, the Piedmontese more unlike the Neapolitan, the Basque
more unlike the Andalusian, than the American from any part of the
country is to the American from any other." Max O'Rell, on the other
hand, writes: "L'habitant du Nord-est des Etats Unis, le Yankee,
diffère autant de l'Americain de l'Ouest et du Midi que l'Anglais
diffère de l'Allemand ou de l'Espagnol." On this point I find myself
far more in accord with the French than with the British observer,
though, perhaps, M. Blouët rather overstates his case. Wider