It was, however, an instance of precisely what my fancy had been suggesting of the kind of virtue which would be the natural growth of the place. ‘Sir,’ said the lady, without asking me to be seated, or taking a seat herself, and in a tone and with a manner which proclaimed that she belonged to the order of beings who cannot err, and who regard the disposition to forgive as one of the weaknesses of ordinary mortals: ‘Sir, I will not attempt to conceal from you that our feelings are completely changed towards Englishmen. Formerly we used to think that England was always on the side of right. But since we found that, during the late war, she sided with the South, our opinion of England has been reversed; and the reversal of our feelings has accompanied the reversal of our opinion.’ [Sidenote: _How a Fanciful Idea was Confirmed._] ‘Madam,’ I replied, ‘it is true that there were many in England who felt towards the South, just as the schoolboy feels, while he reads Homer’s “Iliad,” about Hector, when he finds him battling manfully against destiny and a host of heroes. His sympathies, if he has any generosity in his character, are naturally enlisted on behalf of the brave man who is acquitting himself so well, and who must in the end he overwhelmed.’ With these two little speeches the brief interview ended. For the moment my fancies seemed hard and established facts. What could I gain by remaining longer in such a place?—and so I left it by the first train. People look upon the progressiveness and enterprise of the Americans as if it were something _sui generis_. This, however, is a mistake; the difference is only one of degree, and not of kind. The character of the American, just like every other product, whether in external nature or in man, is the result of a chain of precedent events. In his case the links of this chain can be traced back to dates and events long anterior to the dawn of history, or even to the twilight of tradition, but which, thanks to modern science, are not altogether irrecoverable. Philology reveals to us that race of mankind to which the American belongs, seated at a very remote date somewhere in Central Asia. As there is no ground for supposing that it came from the South, which was occupied by another and very different branch of the human family, or from the West or the North, for reasons with which the philologist and ethnologist will be familiar, we must conclude that if it had not sprung from the soil, it must have come from a more distant east. If then the Aryans of Central Asia had been the product of a migration, of course only those had come who had had the enterprise and the hardihood to go in quest of a new home. This then was the spirit which presided over the race at its birth, and launched it upon its long career. Again and again—we know not how often, for the records of history had not yet begun—the same process must have been repeated. Of this hardy and