"They are delightful reading," observed Middleton, "these old
county-histories, with their great folio volumes and their minute account
of the affairs of families and the genealogies, and descents of estates,
bestowing as much blessed space on a few hundred acres as other
historians give to a principality. I fear that in my own country we shall
never have anything of this kind. Our space is so vast that we shall
never come to know and love it, inch by inch, as the English antiquarians
do the tracts of country with which they deal; and besides, our land is
always likely to lack the interest that belongs to English estates; for
where land changes its ownership every few years, it does not become
imbued with the personalities of the people who live on it. It is but so
much grass; so much dirt, where a succession of people have dwelt too
little to make it really their own. But I have found a pleasure that I
had no conception of before, in reading some of the English local
histories."

"It is not a usual course of reading for a transitory visitor," said
Hammond. "What could induce you to undertake it?"

"Simply the wish, so common and natural with Americans," said
Middleton--"the wish to find out something about my kindred--the local
origin of my own family."

"You do not show your wisdom in this," said his visitor. "America had
better recognize the fact that it has nothing to do with England, and
look upon itself as other nations and people do, as existing on its own
hook. I never heard of any people looking hack to the country of their
remote origin in the way the Anglo-Americans do. For instance, England is
made up of many alien races, German, Danish. Norman, and what not: it has