Until recent years, the volume as well as the quality of the literary and artistic output of Great Britain was vastly superior to that of the United States. The two were not comparable; but they are comparable to-day, though England is as yet unaware of it. In time, Englishmen will awake to a realisation of the fact; but what the relative standing of the two countries will be by that time it is impossible to say. Englishmen would, perhaps, not find it to their disadvantage, and it would certainly (if not done in too condescending a spirit) not be displeasing to the people of the United States, if they began, even now, to take a livelier interest in the work that the other is doing. FOOTNOTES: [153:1] At this point my American friend, to the value of whose criticisms I have already paid tribute, interjects marginally: "none the less _Fliegende Blaetter_ presents more real humour in a week than is to be found in _Punch_ in a month." To which I can but make the obvious reply that I have already said that Americans think so. He points out, however, further that, while the Munich paper is always to be found in the higher-class American clubs, it is comparatively infrequent in the clubs of Great Britain, which is undoubtedly true; and that is a subject (the relative breadth of outlook on the world-literature of the day in the two countries) which will necessarily receive attention later on. [155:1] Lest any American readers should assume that some personal feeling is responsible for my point of view (which would entirely destroy any value in my argument) it seems necessary to explain that I have become calloused to being told that I am the only Englishman the speaker ever met with an American sense of humour. Sometimes I have taken it as a compliment. [159:1] It is merely pathetic to find such a paper as the London _Academy_ at this late day summing up the American aesthetic impulse as follows: "Their culture is now a borrowed thing animated by no life of its own. Their art is become a reflection of French art, their literature a reflection of English literature, their learning a reflection of German learning. A velleity of taste in their women of the richer class seems to be all that maintains in their country the semblance of a high, serious, and disinterested passion for the things of the mind."