The truth is that there has never been any real sympathy between these two nations, so nearly united in geographical position and by some political ties and so widely separated in all other respects. Perhaps our one and only point of resemblance is our common inability to adapt ourselves to ways that are not our ways. A Frenchman, wherever he goes, is always a Frenchman, and an Englishman is always an Englishman. In this particular the Americans have the advantage of us. With their keenness of observation, their restless curiosity, their desire to pick out and appropriate whatever seems to them best in foreign lands, the Americans have fewer prejudices and fewer antipathies than we who live in the Old World. Their extreme sensitiveness does not often take the form of self-consciousness; they readily pick up the tone of the society that they frequent, and, although they are not as a rule, first-rate linguists, they soon acquire enough knowledge of a language to enable them to converse easily with the inhabitants of the country in which they are sojourning. Moreover, they are less prone than we are to save themselves trouble by accepting other people’s views, and, whatever their opinion may be worth, are generally able at least to give grounds for holding it. In the case of our kinsmen on the other side of the Atlantic we have of late years unquestionably made a great advance towards mutual understanding, and, it may be added, friendship. Possibly we are none the worse friends for having disliked one another very cordially not so long ago. There is a prevalent impression in this country that the quarrel was one-sided, that the Americans were irritated (excusably perhaps) by our recognition of the Confederate States as belligerents, as well as by the general sympathy that was felt in England for the Southern cause, and that we really never said half such unpleasant things about them as they did about us. But if they expressed their aversion more loudly than we did it is not so certain that ours was any less deep; and in our present liberal and enlightened mood we can afford to admit that most of us had but a poor opinion of our cousins, from a social point of view, twenty years back. I happened, towards the close of the civil war, to be in a German city much frequented both by English and Americans, who could hardly be induced to speak to one another. The British chaplain of the place—remembering, I suppose, that the Americans who attended his services contributed something towards the defrayal of the expenses connected therewith—took it into his head one Sunday to pray for the President of the United States, a custom which has since become universal among mixed congregations on the Continent. In those days it was an innovation, and an English gentleman who was present marked his disapproval of it by thumping his stick on the floor and saying aloud, “I thought this was an English church!” after which he picked up his hat and walked out.