But if this sheltered boy be further occasionally subjected to the inspection and criticism of some one from the outside world--a candid and outspoken elderly relative--he is likely to become, on the one hand, morbidly sensitive about those things which the other finds to blame, and, on the other, no less puffed up with pride in whatever is awarded praise. Both these tendencies have been acutely developed in the American character--an extraordinary sensitiveness to criticism by outsiders of certain national foibles, and a no less conspicuous belief in the heroic proportions of their good qualities. For surely no people has ever been blessed in its seclusion with such an abundance of criticism of singular candour. The frank brutality with which the travelling Englishman has made his opinions known on any peculiar trait or unusual institution which he has been pleased to think that he has noticed in the United States has been vastly more ill-mannered than anything in the manners of the Americans themselves on which he has animadverted so freely. The thing most comparable to it--most nearly as ill-mannered--is, perhaps, the frank brutality with which the travelling American expresses himself--and herself--in regard to things in Europe. In it, in fact, we see again another aspect of the same fundamentally English trait,--the insistence on the sovereignty of the individual--and Americans come by it legitimately. Every time that they display it they do but make confession of their original Anglo-Saxon descent and essentially English nature. The Englishman in America has, however, had some excuse for his readiness to criticise, in the interest, the anxiety, with which, at least until recent years, the Americans have invited his opinions. But if that has gone some way to justify his expression of those opinions, it has furnished no sort of excuse for the lack of tact and breeding which he has shown in the process. The American does not commonly wait for the invitation. "My! But isn't that quaint! Now in America we . . ." etc. So speaks an uncultivated American on seeing something that strikes him--or her--as novel in London, not unkindly critical, but anxious to give information about his country--and uninvited. But whereas the Englishman is so accustomed to the abuse and criticism of other peoples that the harmless chatter of the American ripples more or less unheeded by him, the American, less case-hardened in his isolation, hears the Englishman's bluntly worded expression of contempt, and it hurts. It does not hurt nearly as much now as it did twenty years ago; but the harm has largely been done.