temperamental traits, the soul which animates all their activities and expressions, have all been omitted from consideration by the author. I can only give fragmentary hints in this short article of the incidents which built up my sense of these differences of national cultures. London was the place where I had the best opportunities for meeting people through letters of introduction. There were glimpses of the Webbs at a meeting of the Fabian Society, which seems to retain the allegiance of its old members rather than enlist the enthusiasm of the younger generation. At their house Mr. Webb talked, as he lectures, with the patient air of a man expounding arithmetic to backward children, and Mrs. Webb, passive by his side, spoke only to correct some slight slip on his part; there was another picture of her sweeping into the _New Statesman_ office and producing a sudden panic of reverent awe among the editorial staff. Lectures by Shaw and Chesterton on succeeding nights--Shaw, clean, straight, clear and fine as an upland wind and summer sun; Chesterton, gluttonous and thick, with something tricky and unsavory about him--gave me a personal estimate of their contrasted philosophies. Then there was Professor Hobhouse, excessively judicial, with that high consciousness of excellence which the Liberal professor seems to exude; Graham Wallas, with his personal vivacity of expression and lack of any clear philosophy, who considered the American sociologist a national disaster; H. G. Wells, a suggestive talker, but very disappointing personally; John A. Hobson, whom I cannot admire too much, a publicist with immense stores of knowledge, poise of mind, and yet radical philosophy and gifts of journalistic expression, a type that we simply do not seem to be able to produce in this country. I expected to find the atmosphere of London very depressing. On the contrary, a sort of fatuous cheerfulness seemed to reign everywhere on the streets, in middle-class homes, even in the slums. This impressed me as the prevailing tone of English life. Wells and Bennett seem to have caught it exactly. As for the world that Mr. Galsworthy lives in, though I looked hard for his people, I could find nothing with the remotest resemblance. Such a tone of optimism is possible only to an unimaginative people who are well schooled against personal reactions, and against the depressing influences of environment--slums and fog and a prevailing stodginess of middle-class life--that would affect the moods of more impressionable peoples. In certain educated circles this tone gave an impression of incorrigible intellectual frivolity. London has fashions in talk. Significant discussion almost did not exist. A running fire of ideational badinage, “good talk,” took its place. Every idea tended to go up in smoke. You found your tone either monstrously prophetic, as of a young Jeremiah sitting at the board, or else unpleasantly cynical. Irony does not seem to be known in England.