The harm would not be so serious but for the American sensitiveness bred of his seclusion,--if that is (at the risk of seeming to repeat myself I must again say) he knew enough of the world to know that he himself has precisely the same critical inclination as the Englishman and that it is a trait inherited from common ancestors. The Anglo-Saxon race acquired early in its life the conviction that it was a trifle better than any other section of the human kind. And it is justified. We--Americans and Englishmen alike--hold that we are better than any other people. That the root-trait has developed somewhat differently in the two portions of the family is an accident. The Englishman--who, when at home, has himself lived, not entirely secluded, but in a measure shut off from contact with other peoples--by continual going abroad and never-ceasing friction with his neighbours, by perpetual disheartenment with the perplexities of his colonial empire, has become less of a critic than a grumbler; and to do him justice he is, in speech, infinitely more contemptuous of his own government than he is of the American or any other. The American on the contrary remains cheerfully, light-heartedly, garrulously critical. He comes out in the world and gazes on it young-eyed, and he prattles: "My father is bigger than your father, and my sister has longer hair than yours, and my money box is larger than yours." It is neither unkindly meant nor, by Englishmen, very unkindly taken. It is less offensive than the mature, corrosive sullenness of the Englishman; but it is the same thing. "The French foot-guards are dressed in blue and all the marching regiments in white; which has a very foolish appearance. And as for blue regimentals, it is only fit for the blue horse or the Artillery," says the footman in Moore's _Zeluco_. Similarly, when he has been praised, the lad has plumed himself unduly on the thing that found approval. He would not do it now; for the American people of to-day is, as it were, grown up; but, again, the harm has been done. Americans rarely make the mistake of underestimating the excellence of their virtues. Nor is it their fault, but that of their critics.