The offer was accepted with many expressions of the most profuse thanks; but as the carriage rolled on Prince Edward gradually began to be somewhat alarmed at the behaviour of his companion, who began carrying on a long conversation with himself of a solemn and prayer-like nature. Listening more attentively, the Prince at last was able to make some meaning out of the broken sentences, which, uttered in a sort of Dutch-English, produced a sort of weird, wailing effect. “A broud tay indeed,” the man was saying, “a broud tay for me and mine. Oh dat my boor mother had been sbared to see me dis night, triving side by side with a Brince of the blood!” Now, I fancy, Anglicised foreign financiers take these sort of things more or less as a matter of course. No one, indeed, is at all surprised at meeting people of uncertain nationality, one or two at least being certain to be included in every fashionable party. To do these individuals justice, most of them, after a mysterious process of Anglicisation, become public-spirited men, whilst the great majority yield to no one in vaunting the superiority of the Englishman over the foreigner. At the same time, with the influx of the rich foreign element into English society has come a new conception of life altogether, and wealth as the ultimate end of existence has been placed upon a pinnacle which it never occupied before. In one respect, however, there can be no doubt but that the new English have deserved well of their newly adopted country: this is in their magnificent gifts and bequests to hospitals and charities, acts of generosity which must silence much criticism. On the whole, I think the influx of the American element into English society has done good rather than harm, whilst there are many old families which, both in mind and pocket, have been completely revivified by prudent marriages with American brides. At the present day, so close has the union between ourselves and the United States become that Americans are hardly looked upon as foreigners at all, so many people having American relatives; but in old days things were quite different, and we rather dreaded the social influence of a people whom we did not know. Bright and vivacious, it may with justice be said that it is by the American girl that we have been conquered, for she it is in reality who has brought about the excellent understanding which now exists with the great people beyond the Atlantic.