A feature of the average middle-class Englishman which the American
cannot easily understand is his tacit recognition of the fact that
somebody else (the aristocrat) is his superior. In fact, this is
sometimes a fertile source of misunderstanding, and it is apt to beget
in the American an entirely false idea of what he thinks the innate
servility of the Englishman. He must remember that the aristocratic
prestige is a growth of centuries, that it has come to form part of
the atmosphere, that it is often accepted as unconsciously as the law
of gravitation. This is a case where the same attitude in an American
mind (and, alas, we occasionally see it in American residents in
London) would betoken an infinitely lower moral and mental plane than
it does in the Englishman. No true American could accept the
proposition that "Lord Tom Noddy might do so-and-so, but it would be a
very different thing for a man in my position;" and yet an Englishman
(I regret to say) might speak thus and still be a very decent fellow,
whom it would be unjust cruelty to call a snob. No doubt the English
aristocracy (as I think Mr. Henry James has said) now occupies a
heroic position without heroism; but the glamour of the past still
shines on their faded escutcheons, and "the love of freedom itself is
hardly stronger in England than the love of aristocracy."

Matthew Arnold has pointed out to us how the aristocracy acts like an
incubus on the middle classes of Great Britain, and he has put it on
record that he was struck with the buoyancy, enjoyment of life, and
freedom of constraint of the corresponding classes in America. In
England, he says, a man feels that it is the _upper class_ which
represents him; in the United States he feels that it is the _State_,
_i.e._, himself. In England it is the Barbarian alone that dares be
indifferent to the opinion of his fellows; in America everyone
expresses his opinion and "voices" his idiosyncrasies with perfect