When the first suspension bridge was thrown over Niagara, there was a great and tumultuous opening ceremony, such as the Americans love, and many of the great ones of the United States assembled to do honour to the occasion, and among them was Roscoe Conkling. Conkling was one of the most brilliant public men whom America has produced: a man of commanding, even beautiful, presence and of, perhaps, unparalleled vanity. He had been called (by an opponent) a human peacock. After the ceremonies attending the opening of the bridge had been concluded, Conkling, with many others, was at the railway station waiting to depart; but, though others were there, he did not mingle with them, but strutted and plumed himself for their benefit, posing that they might get the full effect of all his majesty. One of the station porters was so impressed that, stepping up to another who was hurrying by trundling a load of luggage, he jerked his thumb in Conkling's direction and: "Who's that feller?" he asked. "Is he the man as built the bridge?" The other studied the great man a moment. "Thunder! No," said he. "He's the man as made the Falls." It is curious that with their sense of humour Americans should so persistently force Europeans into the frame of mind of that railway porter. The Englishman, in his assurance of his own greatness, has come to depreciate the magnitude of whatever work he does; nor is it altogether a pose or an affectation. He sees the vastness of the British Empire and the amazing strides which have been made in the last two generations, and wonders how it all came about. He knows how proverbially blundering are British diplomacy and British administration, so he puts it all down to the luck of the nation and goes grumbling contentedly on his way. There is no country in which policies have been so haphazard and unstable, or ways of administration so crude and so empirical, as in the United States. "Go forth, my son," said Oxenstiern, "go forth and see with how little wisdom the world is governed"; and on such a quest, it is doubtful if any civilised country has offered a more promising field for consideration than did the United States from, say, the close of the Civil War to less than a decade ago. All thinking Americans recognise this fact to the full; but whereas the Englishman sees only the blunders that he has made and marvels at the luck that pulled him through, the American generally ignores the luck and is more likely to believe that whatever has been achieved is the result of his peculiar virtues. I never heard an American ascribe the success of any national undertaking to the national luck. The Englishman on the other hand is for ever speaking of the "luck of the British Army," and the "luck that pulls England through."