it is sometimes represented to be. The anti-English sentiment of
American schools is, as it seems to me, an inevitable phenomenon of
juvenile psychology, under the given conditions; and it is the
alteration in the actual conditions wrought by recent events, rather
than any marked change in the tone of the text-books, that may, I think,
be trusted to soothe the schoolboy's savage breast. England has now done
what she had never done before: shown herself conspicuously friendly to
the United States; and another European country has given occasion for
spirit-stirring manifestations of American prowess. Thus England is
deposed for the time, and we may trust for ever, from her position as
the one traditional arch-enemy.

But though the errors of commission in American history-books have been
exaggerated, I cannot but think that a common error of omission is
worthy of remark and correction. They begin American history too
late--with the discovery of America--and they do not awaken, as they
might, the just pride of race in the "unhyphenated" American boy. Long
before Columbus set sail from Palos, American history was a-making in
the shire-moots of Saxon England, at Hastings, and Runnymead, and
Bannockburn. In all the mediæval achievements of England, in peace and
war--in her cathedrals, her castles, her universities, in Cressy,
Poictiers, and Agincourt--Americans may without paradox claim their
ancestral part. Why should the sons of the English who emigrated leave
to the sons of those who stayed at home the undivided credit of having
sent to the right-about the Invincible Armada? Nay, it is only the very
oldest American families that can disclaim all complicity in having, as
Lord Auchinleck put it, "garred kings ken that they had a lith in their
necks." Of course I do not mean that the American schoolboy should be
taken in detail through British history down to the seventeenth century
before, so to speak, he crosses the Atlantic. But I do suggest that he