Englishman is too old or too old-fashioned to live much longer; he
suffers with the decay of certain English interests which the American
prosperity imperilled before it began to imperil English ideals, if it
has indeed done so. His dying out counts for an increase of favor for
us; we enjoy through it a sort of promotion by seniority.

But a new kind of Englishman has come up of late years, and so far as he
is friendly to us his friendliness should be more gratifying than that
even of our older friends. He has been in America, either much or
little, and has come to like us because he has seen us at home. If such
an Englishman is rich and noble, he has seen our plutocracy, and has
liked it because it is lively and inventive in its amusements and
profusely original in its splendors; but he need not be poor and
plebeian to have seen something of our better life, and divined
something of our real meaning from it. He will not be to blame if he has
not divined our whole meaning; for we are at present rather in the dark
as to that ourselves, and certainly no American who met him in England
could wish to blame him, for his cordiality forms the warmest welcome
that the American can have there. If he has been in America and not
liked us, or our order or ideal, he has still the English good-nature,
and if you do not insist upon being taken nationally, there are many
chances that he will take you personally, and if he finds you not at all
like an American, he will like you, as he liked others in America whom
he found not at all like Americans.

It is the foible, however, of many Americans, both at home and abroad,
that they want to be taken nationally, and not personally, by
foreigners. Beyond any other people we wish to be loved by other
peoples, even by others whom we do not love, and we wish to be loved in
the lump. We would like to believe that somehow our sheer Americanism