There is another point on which Americans, both men and women, are very generally called over the coals by English people, as I think somewhat unreasonably. They are, it is said, everlastingly talking about the greatness and grandeur of their country, and never easy without extorting admissions of this. All this is to a great extent true--at least to this extent, that an American is always pleased to hear the greatness of his country recognised. But when I remember the thoroughness with which that cardinal article of an Englishman’s faith (sixty years ago!), that every Englishman could thrash three Frenchmen, was enforced with entire success on my youthful mind, I can hardly find it in my conscience to blame an American’s pride in his country. Why, good heavens! what an insensible block he would be if he was _not_ proud of his country, to whose greatness, it is to be observed, each individual American now extant has contributed in a greater degree than can be said to be the case as regards England and every extant Englishman; inasmuch as our position has been won by the work of, say, a thousand years, and his by that of less than a century. Surely the creation of the United States as they now exist within that time _is_ such a feat of human intelligence and energy as the world has never before seen, and is scarcely likely to see again. I confess that the expression of American patriotism is never offensive to me. I feel somewhat as the old Cornish wrestler felt, who said with immense pride, when he was told that his son had “whopped” the whole parish, “Ay, I should think so! Why, he has whopped _me_ afore now!” Yes! I liked the Americans as I first made acquaintance with them almost among the backwoods at Cincinnati sixty years ago; and I like them as I have since known them better. For I have seen a great deal of them; far more than an Englishman living at home would be likely to do, during my many years’ residence in Italy. The American “colony,” to use the common though incorrect phrase, is large both at Florence and in Rome--of late years fully as large, I think, as that from England. And not only do the two bodies associate indiscriminately with each other in perfect neighbourliness and good fellowship, but they do so, forming one single oasis in the midst of the surrounding continental life, in a manner which makes one constantly feel how infinitely nearer an American is to an Englishman in ideas, habits, ways, and civilisation, than either of them are to any other denizen of earth’s surface.