the deep undercurrent of favor among the English people, which the
superficial course of power belied and at last ceased to control, in our
earlier vital war as well as in our later.

So much for that consideration of us nationally, which I do not think
England, in her quality of hostess, is bound to show her several
American guests. I do not blame her that the sympathy of her greatest
sons, so far as it has been shown us nationally, has been shown in her
interest, which they believed the supreme interest of mankind, rather
than in our interest, which it is for us to believe the supreme interest
of mankind. Even when they are talking America they are thinking
England; they cannot otherwise; they must; it is imperative; it is
essential that they should. We talk of England on the same terms, with
our own inner version.

There is another point in this inquiry which I hesitate to touch, and
which if I were better advised I should not touch--that is, the English
interest in the beauty and brilliancy of our women. Their charm is now
magnanimously conceded and now violently confuted in their public
prints; now and then an Englishman lets himself go--over his own
signature even, at times--and denounces our women, their loveliness,
their liveliness, their goodness, in terms which if I repeated them
would make some timider spirits pause in their resolution to marry
English dukes and run English society. But his hot words are hardly cold
before another Englishman comes to the rescue of our countrywomen, and
lifts them again to that pinnacle where their merits quite as much as
the imagination of their novelists have placed them. Almost as much as
our millionaires they are the object of a curiosity which one has not
had to inspire. Where, in what part, in which favored city, do they most
abound? What is the secret of their dazzling wit and beauty, the heart