WE had seen the Carnevale at Rome, and the wild confusion of the moccoletti, which is its finale; festas, in Venice, Milan, and almost every other Italian town where we had stayed overnight. There are more festas than working-days in that laughter-loving land. In Paris we had witnessed illuminations, and a royal funeral, or of such shreds of royalty as appertained unto the dead King of Hanover,—the Prince of Wales, very red of face in the broiling sun, officiating as chief mourner in his mother’s absence. In Geneva we had made merry over the extravaganzas of New Year’s Day, and the comicalities of patriotism that rioted in the Escalade. We were au fait to the beery and musical glories of the German fest. We would see and be in the thick of a British holiday. What better opportunity could we have than was offered by the placards scattered broadcast in the streets, and pasted upon the “hoardings” of Brighton, announcing a mammoth concert in the Crystal Palace at Sydenham; a general muster of Temperance Societies; an awarding of prizes to competitive brass bands, and a prospective convocation of 100,000 souls from every town and shire within a radius of fifty miles? Such facilities for beholding that overgrown monster, the British Public, in his Sunday clothes and best humor—might not occur again—for us—in a half-century.

True, the weather was warm, but the Palace and grounds were spacious. The musical entertainment was not likely to be of the classic order, but it would be something worth the hearing and the telling,—the promised chorus of 5,000 voices, led by the immense organ, in “God save the Queen!” Thus we reasoned away Caput’s predictions that we would be heartily sick of the experiment before the day was half-gone, and thankful to escape, as for our lives, from the hustling auditors of the grand chorus. We yielded one point. Instead of going up to Sydenham in an excursion-train, the better to note the appearance and manners of the Public, we waited for a quieter and later, at regular prices, and so reached the Crystal Palace Station about eleven o’clock.

The punishment of our contumacy began immediately. Wedged in a dark passage with a thousand other steaming bodies, with barely room enough for breathing—not for moving hand or foot—retreat cut off and advance impracticable, we waited until the pen was filled to overflowing by the arrival of the next train before the two-leaved doors at the Palaceward end split suddenly and emptied us into the open air. We made a feint of going through the main building with those of our party who had not already seen it, but every staircase was blocked by ascending and descending droves, and nobody gave an inch to anybody else. The Mothers of England were all there, each with a babe in arms and another tugging at her skirts. Men swore—good-humoredly,—women scolded as naturally as in their own kitchens and butteries, and babies cried without fear or favor. The police kept a wise eye upon the valuables of the Palace, and let the people alone. Repelled in every advance upon art-chamber and conservatory, we collected our flurried forces and withdrew to the grounds. When sore-footed with walking from fountain to flower-bed, the gentlemen watched for and obtained seats for the ladies upon a bench near the stand, where the competitive brass bands were performing, heard, perhaps by themselves and their rivals, but few besides.

The avenues were choked in every direction with swarms of the commonest-looking people our eyes had ever rested upon. Rags and squalor were seldom seen, and the yeomanry and their families were fresh-colored and plump. The representatives from London and other large cities were easily distinguishable by a sharper, sometimes a pinched look, leaden complexions and smarter clothes. There is a Continental saying that in England, blacksmiths make the women’s dresses and men’s hats. If the ladies of rank, beginning with the queen, are notably ill-dressed, what shall we say of the apparel of mechanics’, small tradesmen’s and farmers’ wives and daughters, such as we beheld at Sydenham? Linsey skirts, quite clearing slippered feet and ankles clothed in home-knit hose, were converted into gala-suits by polonaises of low-priced grenadine, or worked muslin of a style twenty years old, and bonnets out-flaunting the geranium-beds. The English gardeners may have borrowed the device of massing lawn-flowers from their countrywomen’s hats. White was in high favor with the young, generally opaque stuffs such as piquÉ and thick cambric, but we did not see one that was really clean and smooth. Most had evidently done holiday-duty for several seasons and were still considered “fresh enough.” Elderly matrons and spinsters panted in rusty black silk and shiny alpacas, set off by broad cotton lace collars, astounding exhibitions of French lace, cheap flowers and often white feathers, upon hats that had not seen a milliner’s block in a dozen seasons. Old and young were prone to ribbon-sashes with flying or drooping ends, and cotton gloves. Some wore fur tippets over their summer-robes. These we remarked the less for having seen ladies, traveling first-class, with footmen and maids in attendance, wear in August, grenadine and muslin dresses and sealskin jackets.

The women were more easy in their finery than were the men in broadcloth, shirt-fronts and blackened boots. These huddled in awkward groups, talked loudly and laughed blusteringly, while their feminine companions strolled about, exchanging greetings and gossip. The little girls kept close to their mothers in conformity with British traditions on the government of girls of all ages; the small boys munched apples and gingerbread-nuts, and stared stolidly around; those of the bigger lads who could afford the few pence paid for the privilege, rode bicycles up and down the avenues until the blood threatened to start from the pores of their purple faces, and their eyes from the sockets. From that date to this, the picture of a half-grown Briton,—done up to the extreme of uncomfortableness in best jacket and breeches that would “just meet,”—careering violently over the gravel under the fierce July sun, directing two-thirds of his energies to the maintenance of his centre of gravity upon the ticklish seat, the rest to the perpetual motion of arms and legs,—stands with me as the type of the pitiable-ludicrous. Of men, women and children, at least one-half wore ribbon badges, variously lettered and illuminated. Standards were borne in oblique, undress fashion, upon shoulders, and leaned against trees, advertising the presence of “Bands of Hope,” “Rain Drops,” “Rechabites,” “Summer Clouds,” “Snow-Flakes” and “Cooling Springs.” Many men, and of women not a few, had velvet trappings, in shape and size resembling Flemish horse-collars, about their necks, labeled in gold with cabalistic characters, denoting the title borne by the wearer in some one of the Temperance Societies represented.

Caput was right. The element of the picturesque was utterly wanting from the holiday crowd. The naÏve jollity that almost compensates for this deficiency in the fests of Deutschland was likewise absent. The brass bands pealed on perseveringly, the crowd shifted lumberingly to and fro, and we grew hungry as well as tired. The Palace Restaurant would be crowded, we knew, but we worked our way thither by a circuitous course, avoiding the densest “jams” in corridors and stairways, and were agreeably surprised at finding less than twenty persons at lunch, and in the long, lofty dining-room, the coolest, quietest retreat we had had that day. The dinner was excellent, the waiters prompt and attentive, and with the feeling that the doors (bolted by the restaurant-prices), were an effectual bulwark against the roaring rabble, we dallied over our dessert as we might in the back drawing-room in Brighton with good Mr. Chipp behind Caput’s chair.

We would fain have lingered in the concert-hall to hear the chorus of five thousand voices upborne by the full swell of the mighty organ. There were the tiers of singers, mostly school-girls in white frocks, piled up to the ceiling, waiting for the signal to rise. Somebody said the organ was preluding, but of this we were not sure, such was the reigning hubbub. The important moment came. The thousands of the choir were upon their feet; opened their mouths as moved by one unseen spring. The conductor swung his bÂton with musical emphasis and discretion. The mouths expanded and contracted in good time. We heard not one note of it all. Men shouted to one another and laughed uproariously; women scolded and cackled; babies screamed,—as if music, “heavenly maid,” had never been born, and it was no concern of theirs whether the Queen might, could, would, or should be saved.

Caput put his mouth to my ear.

“This will kill you!” he said, and by dint of strong elbows and broad shoulders, fought a way for us out of the press.

“From all such—and the rest of it!” gasped Prima, when we were seeking lost breath, and smoothing rumpled plumage in the outer air.

That blessed man was magnanimous! He never so much as looked—“You would come!”

He only said solicitously to me—“I am afraid your head aches! Would you like to sit quietly in the shade for awhile before we go home?”

Fallacious dream! The British Public had lunched out-of-doors while we sat at ease within. The park, containing more than two hundred acres, was littered with whitey-brown papers that had enwrapped the “British Sangwich;” empty beer-bottles were piled under the trees, and the late consumers of the regulation-refreshments lounged upon the grass in every shady corner, smoking, talking and snoring. Abandoning the project of rest within the grounds, we walked toward the gate of egress. Everywhere was the same waste of greasy papers, cheese-parings, bacon-rinds and recumbent figures, and, at as many points of our progress we saw three drunken women—too drunk to walk or rise. One lay in the blazing sunshine, untouched by Good Samaritan or paid police, a baby not over two years old sitting by her, crying bitterly. Caput directed a policeman to the shocking spectacle. He shook his head.

“She’s werry drunk!” he admitted. “But she h’aint noisy. We must give the h’attention of the Force to them w’ot h’is!”

It was but two o’clock when we entered the waiting-room of the station. Out-going trains were infrequent at that time of the day, and we must wait an hour. I found a comfortable sofa in the ladies’ parlor and laid down my throbbing head upon a pillow of the spare shawls without which we never stirred abroad. A kindly-faced woman suspended her knitting and asked what she could do for me.

“Maybe the lady would like a cup of tea with a teaspoonful of brandy in it? Or a glass of h’ale?”

I thanked her, but said I only wanted rest and quiet.

“Which I mean to say, mem, it’s ’ard to get to-day. I’ve been ’ere five year, keeper of this ’ere waiting-room, and never ’ave I seen such crowds. The trains h’are a-comin’ h’in constant still, and will, till h’evening. And h’every train, h’it do bring a thousand. A Temperance pic-nic, you see, mem, do allers draw h’uncommon!”

We saw, not of choice, one more fÊte-day in England—the Bank holiday lately granted to all classes of working-people. It fell on Monday, August 5th, and caught us in London with a day full of not-to-be-deferred engagements, the departure of some of our family-party being near at hand. The Banks, all public offices and shops were closed. The British Museum, ZoÖlogical Gardens, The Tower and parks would be crowded, we agreed, in modifying our plans. St. Paul’s and Westminster Abbey seemed safe. We were right with respect to the Cathedral. An unusually large number of people strayed in and sauntered about, looking at monuments and tablets in church and crypt, but we were free to move and examine. It was a “free day” at the Abbey. The chapels locked at other seasons, and only to be seen in the conduct of a verger, were now open to everybody, and everybody was there. We threaded the passage-ways in the wake of a fleet of cockneys, great and small, to whom the tomb that holds the remains of the Tudor sisters, and on which their greatest queen lies in marble state, signified no more than a revolving doll in a hair-dresser’s window; who slouched aimlessly from Ben Jonson’s bust to Chaucer’s monument, and trod with equal apathy the white slab covering “Old Parr,” and the gray flagging lettered, “Charles Dickens.”

That this judgment of the rank and file is not uncharitable we had proof in the demeanor and talk of the visitors.

“James!” cried a wife to her heedless husband, when abreast of the tomb of Henry III. “You don’t look at nothink you parss. Don’t you see this is the tomb of ’Enry Thirteenth?”

“’Enry or ’Arry!” growled her lord without taking his hands from his pocket—“Wot do I care for he?”

None of the comments, we overheard, upon the treasures of this grandest of burial-places amused us more than the talk of a respectable-looking man with his bright-eyed ten-year old son over the memorial to Sir John Franklin. Beneath a fine bust of the hero-explorer is a bas-relief of the Erebus and Terror locked in the ice.

“See the vessels in the rocks, Pa!” cried the boy. “Or—is it ice?”

“I don’t rightly know, Charley. Don’t touch!”

“I wont, Pa! I just want to read what this is on the ship. E, R, E, B, U, S!—E. R. Bruce! Is he buried here, do you ’spose?”

“In course he is, me lard! They wouldn’t never put h’another man’s name h’upon ’is tombstone—would they?”

It is obviously unfair, say some of those for whom I am writing, to gauge the intelligence and breeding of a great nation by the manners of the lower classes. Should I retort that upon such data, as collected by British tourists in a flying trip through our country, is founded the popular English belief that we are vulgar in manner and speech, superficial in education and crude in thought, I should be told that these are the impressions and opinions of a bygone period,—belong to a generation that read Mrs. Trollope’s and Marryatt’s “Travels,” and Boz’s “American Notes;” that the Briton of to-day harbors neither prejudice nor contempt for us; appreciates all that is praiseworthy in us as individuals and a people; is charitable to our faults. There are Americans resident abroad who will assert this. Some, because having made friends of enlightened English men and women, true and noble, they see the masses through the veil of affectionate regard they have for the few. Others, flattered in every fibre of their petty natures by the notice of those who arrogate superiority of race and training, affect to despise their own land and kind; would rather be Anglicized curs beneath the tables of the nobility than independent citizens of a free and growing country. We know both classes. We met them every day and everywhere for two years. America can justify herself against such children as those I have last described.

But I have somewhat to say about the popular estimate in England of America and Americans, and I foresee that I shall write of other matters with more comfort when I have eased my spirit by a little plain speech upon this subject:

“You agree with me, I am sure, in saying, ‘My country, right or wrong!’” said a dear old English lady, turning to me during a discussion upon the policy of Great Britain with regard to the Russian-Turkish war.

“We say—‘My country, always right!’” replied I, smiling. “We are, as you often tell us, ‘very young’—too young to have committed many national sins. Perhaps when we are a thousand or fifteen hundred years nearer the age of European governments, we, too, may have made dangerous blunders.”

An English gentleman, hearing a portion of this badinage, came up to me.

“You were not in earnest in what you said just now?” he began, interrogatively. “I honor America. I have studied her history, and I hail every step of her march to the place I believe God has assigned her—the leadership of the Christian world. She is fresh and enthusiastic. She is sound to the core. But she does make mistakes. Let us reason together for a little while. There is the Silver Bill, for example.”

“I was talking nonsense,” I said, impulsively. “Mere braggadocio, and in questionable taste. But it irks me that the best and kindest of you patronize my country, and excuse me! that so many who do it know next to nothing about us. Mrs. B—— asked me, just now, if it were ‘quite safe to promenade Broadway unarmed—on account of the savages, you know.’ And when I answered—‘the nearest savages to us are in your Canadian provinces,’ she said, without a tinge of embarrassment—‘Ah! I am very, very excessively ignorant about America. In point of fact, it is a country in which I have no personal interest whatever. I have a son in India, and one in Australia, but no friends on your side of the world.’ Yet she is a lady, well educated and well-born. She has traveled much; speaks several languages, and converses intelligently upon most topics. She is, moreover, too kind to have told me that my country is uninteresting had she dreamed that I could be hurt or offended by the remark. Another lady, a disciple of Dr. Cummings, and his personal friend, asked my countrywoman, Mrs. T——, ‘if she came from America by steamer or by the overland route?’ and a member of Parliament told Mr. J——, the other day, that the ‘North should have let the South go when she tried to separate herself from the Union. The geographical position of the two countries showed they should never have been one nation.’ ‘The hand of the Creator,’ he went on to say, ‘had placed a rocky rampart between them.’ ‘A rocky rampart!’ repeated Mr. J——, his mind running upon Mason’s and Dixon’s line. ‘Yes! The Isthmus of Darien!’

“Americans are accused of over-sensitiveness and boastfulness. Is it natural that we should submit tamely to patronage and criticism from those who calmly avow their ‘excessive ignorance’ of all that pertains to our land and institutions? Can we respect those who assume to teach when they know less upon many subjects than we do? A celebrated English divine once persisted in declaring to my husband that Georgia is a city, not a State. Another informed us that Pennsylvania is the capital of New England. Even my dear Miss W—— cannot be convinced that boys of nine years old are considered minors with us. She says she has been told by those who ought to know that, at that age, they discard parental authority; while her sister questioned me seriously as to the truth of the story that the feet of all American babies—boys and girls—are bandaged in infancy to make them small. Don’t laugh! This is all true, and I have not told you the tenth. The Silver Bill! I have never met another Englishman who knew anything about it!”

My friend laughed, in spite of my injunction.

“It is not ‘natural’ for Americans to ‘submit tamely’ to any kind of injustice, I fancy. But be merciful! Have you read in the ‘Nineteenth Century’ Dr. Dale’s ‘Impressions of America?’”

“I have. They are like himself, honest, sincere, thorough! But I have also read Trollope’s ‘American Senator,’ a product of the nineteenth century that will be read and credited by many who cannot appreciate Dr. Dale’s scholarship and logic. May I tell you an anecdote—true in every particular—to offset the Senator’s behavior in the Earl’s drawing-room? An English novelist, than whom none is better known on both sides of the water, dined, by invitation, at the house of a bona fide Senator in Washington. After dinner he approached the hostess in the drawing-room to take leave.

“‘It is very early yet, Mr.——,’ she said politely.

“‘I know it. But the fact is I must write ten pounds’ worth before I go to bed!’

“Yet this man is especially happy in clever flings at American society. We have faults—many and grievous! But we might drop them the sooner if our monitors were better qualified to instruct us, and would admonish in kindness, not disdain.”

Because he was an Englishman, and I liked him, I withheld from my excited harangue many and yet more atrocious absurdities uttered in my hearing by his compatriots. At this distance and time, and under the shelter of a nom de plume, I may relate an incident I forebore religiously from giving to my transatlantic acquaintances, albeit sorely tempted, occasionally, by their unconscious condescension and simplicity of arrogance—too amusing to be always offensive.

We were taking a cup of “arfternoon tea” with some agreeable English people, who had invited their rector and his wife to meet us. My seat was next the wife, a pretty, refined little woman, who graciously turned the talk into a channel where she fancied I would be at ease. She began to question me about America. Perceiving her motive, and being by this time somewhat weary of cruising in one strait, I, as civilly, fought shy of my native shores, and plied her with queries in my turn. I asked information, among other things, concerning Yorkshire and Haworth, stating our intention of visiting the home and church of the BrontËs. The rectoress knew nothing about the topography of Yorkshire, but had heard of the BrontË novels.

“Wasn’t ‘Jane Eyre’ just a little—naughty? I fancy I have heard something of the kind.”

Our English cousins “farncy” quite as often as we “guess,” or “reckon,” or “presume,” and sometimes as incorrectly.

I waived the subject of Jane Eyre’s morals by a brief tribute to the author’s genius, and passed to Mrs. Gaskell’s description of the West Riding town, Haworth. Our hostess caught the word “Keighley.”

“I was in Keighley last year, at a wedding,” she interpolated. “It is near Haworth—did you say? And you have friends in Haworth?”

I explained.

“Ah!” politely. “I did not know Charlotte BrontË ever lived there. Her ‘Jane Eyre’ was a good deal talked about when I was a girl. She was English—did you say?”

Dropping the topic for that of certain local antiquities, I discussed these with my gentle neighbor until I happened to mention the name of an early Saxon king.

“The familiarity, of Americans with early English history quite astonishes me,” she remarked. “I cannot understand why they should be conversant with what concerns them so remotely.”

I suggested that their history was also ours until within a hundred years. That their great men in letters, statesmanship and war belonged to us up to that time as much as to the dwellers upon English soil, the two countries being under one and the same government.

The blue eyes were slightly hazy with bewilderment.

“A hundred years! I beg your pardon—but I fancied—I was surely under the impression that America was discovered more than a hundred years ago?”

“It was!” I hastened to say. “Every American child is taught to say—

But”—feeling that I touched upon delicate ground,—“we were provinces until 1776, when we became a separate government.”

I just avoided adding—“and independent.”

The little lady’s eyes cleared before a gleam that was more than the joy of discovery. It was, in a mild and decorous way, the rapture of creation. Her speech grew animated.

“1776! And last year was 1876! Pardon me! but perhaps you never thought—I would say—has it ever occurred to you that possibly that may have been the reason why your National Exposition was called ‘The Centennial’?”

Magnanimity and politeness are a powerful combination. By their aid, I said—“Very probably!” and sipped my tea as demurely as an Englishwoman could have done in the circumstances.

It is both diverting and exasperating to hear Englishmen sneer openly and coarsely at the attentions bestowed by American gentlemen upon the ladies under their care. Their dogged assumption—and disdainful as dogged—that this is an empty show exacted by us cannot be shaken by the fact of which they certainly are not ignorant,—to wit, that our countrymen are cowards in naught else. I will cite but one of the many illustrations that fell under my eye of their different policy toward the weaker sex. I had climbed the Ventnor Downs one afternoon by the help of my escort, and stood upon the brow of the highest hill, when we espied three English people, known to us by sight, approaching. The short grass was slippery, the direct ascent so steep that the last of the party, a handsome woman of fifty or thereabouts, was obliged, several times, to fall upon her hands and knees to keep from slipping backward. Her son, a robust Oxonian, led the way, cane in hand. Her hale, bluff husband came next, also grasping a stout staff. At the top they stopped to remark upon the beauty of the view and evening, thus giving time to the wife and mother to join them. She was very pale; the sweat streamed down her face; she caught her breath in convulsive gasps. Her attendants smiled good-humoredly.

“Pretty well blown—eh?” said her lord.

Her affectionate son—“Quite knocked-up, in fact!”

Yet these were gentlemen in blood and reputation.

I do not defend the ways and means by which the Travelling American makes his name, and, too often, that of his country a by-word and a hissing in the course of the European tour, which is, in his parlance, “just about the thing” for the opulent butcher, baker, and candlestick-maker, now-a-days. I do affirm that, judging him by the representative of the class corresponding to his in the Mother Country, he is no more blatant and objectionable to people of education and refinement than the Briton who is his fellow-traveller. In aptness and general intelligence he will assuredly bear off the palm. If the American of a higher grade be slow to abandon his provincial accent, and his wife her shrill, “clipping” speech; if what Bayard Taylor termed “the national catarrh” be obstinate in both,—the Englishman has his “aws” and “you knows,” and lumbering articulation; calls the garÇon who cannot comprehend his order at the table d’hÔte “a stupid ass,” in the hearing of all, declares the weather to be “nosty,” the wine “beastly,” and the soup “filthy,” while I have seen his wife bring her black-nosed pug to dinner with her, and feed him and herself with blanc mange from the same spoon.

We received much courtesy and many kindnesses from English people in their own country and upon the continent; formed friendships with some the memory of which must warm our hearts until they cease to beat. Their statesmen, their scholars, and their philanthropists have, as such, no equals in any clime or age. If we wince under censures we feel are unjust, and under sarcasms that cut the more keenly because edged with truth:—if, when they tell us we are “young,” we are disposed to retort that they are old enough to know and to do better, let us, in solemn remembrance of our kinship in blood and in faith, borrow, in thought, my friend’s advice, and “be merciful.”