The juvenile republican of Europe, panting on the outskirts of exclusivism, makes a great mistake when he imagines America is free from ‘class’ prejudice. Let him emigrate to a house on the wrong side of Boston, and we can promise he will have leisure during the remainder of his life to calculate the difference in degree between the descendants of those whose patent of nobility bears the date of the _Mayflower_ and the representatives in the Old World of Norman blood. In the present day, we take it for granted the society of every country is willing to welcome the man of genius or money who is, besides, a gentleman, and does not run his head against established facts. Be that as it may, there is one thing certain—the old idea of Americans, considered typical of the race, and still lingering in some quarters, is entirely an error. Let us look at a few of the supposed characteristics of our ‘cousins’—one and all taken from the travelling citizen of other days, but who latterly has faded into the background before the true American, and is only now to be seen in second-class hotels or lodgings. Does he ask interminable questions with the curiosity of an inquisitor, till nothing remains but a point-blank demand to know the amount of your income? If so, engage rooms in a German _pension_, and relate your experiences after a three days’ stay. Does he worry you to death with a skilful display of the knife-trick? Go to a German pastry-cook’s and watch the same performance at four o’clock in the afternoon by a well-dressed young lady on a solid pie. Does he smoke everywhere and spit freely? Enter a Paris tramway car or a second-class German railway carriage, and you will learn that Uncle Sam has not the monopoly of expectorating power. Does his square-cut coat hang upon him like a sack? Does he wear shirt fronts and glazed cuffs, long boots with high heels, and a hat whose style has originated in his inner bosom? If you have observed these things, go to any small German town and see their prototypes. Does he destroy his digestion by drinking iced water as he sits down to dinner? Does he eat a heavy meal in the middle of the day and hurry off as if the table were let? Does he brag like a schoolboy and believe that existence centres in himself? If he does, make the acquaintance of the first German at the nearest watering-place. Does he, in his native town, when aspiring to a higher place in the respect of the citizens, turn himself quite inside out in the effort to be agreeable? Does he take his hat off to the man of distinction with a wide wave, forgetful of his own dignity, eyeing him with suppressed jealousy, and when he dares, endeavouring to patronise, as a means of recommending himself to notice, the realisation of _ich empfehl’ mich_ which is shot out occasionally, more especially in Austria? If so, study the German character in the lower middle class. Is this class, however, making all allowance for