The American, however, must not plume himself too much on his superior
knowledge. Shameful as the British ignorance of America often is, a
corresponding American ignorance of Great Britain would be vastly more
shameful. An American cannot understand himself unless he knows
something of his origins beyond the seas; the geography and history of
an American child must perforce include the history and geography of
the British Isles. For a Briton, however, knowledge of America is
rather one of the highly desirable things than one of the absolutely
indispensable. It would certainly betoken a certain want of humanity
in me if I failed to take any interest in the welfare of my sons and
daughters who had emigrated to New Zealand; but it is evident that for
the conduct of my own life a knowledge of their doings is not so
essential for me as a knowledge of what my father was and did. The
American of Anglo-Saxon stock visiting Westminster Abbey seems
paralleled alone by the Greek of Syracuse or Magna Græcia visiting the
Acropolis of Athens; and the experience of either is one that less
favoured mortals may unfeignedly envy. But the American and the
Syracusan alike would be wrong were he to feel either scorn or elation
at the superiority of the guest's knowledge of the host over the
host's knowledge of the guest.

However that may be, and whatever latitude we allow to the proverbial
connection of familiarity and contempt, there seems little reason to
doubt that closer knowledge of one another will but increase the
mutual sympathy and esteem of the Briton and the American. The former
will find that Brother Jonathan is not so exuberantly and perpetually
starred-and-striped as the comic cartoonist would have us believe;
and the American will find that John Bull does not always wear
top-boots or invariably wield a whip. Things that from a distance seem
preposterous and even revolting will often assume a very different