Five-and-twenty years ago Americans had no cause to be particularly proud of the manner in which, from a social point of view, their travelling compatriots were looked upon in Europe. At that epoch we were still the object of what Mr. Lowell calls a "certain condescension in foreigners." We were still the recipients at their hands of that certain half-curious, half-amused and wholly patronizing inspection which, from the height of their civilization, they might be expected to bestow upon a novel species of humanity, with manners different from their own, but recently sprung into existence and notice and disporting itself in their midst.

But this sort of thing has had its day. By dint of having been able to produce, here and there, for the edification of foreigners, a few types of American manhood and womanhood which came up to the standard of high-breeding entertained in the Old World, and of having occasionally dispensed hospitality, both at home and abroad, in a manner which was unexceptionable, besides having shown other evidences in social life—not to speak of political life—of being able to hold our own quite creditably, the "condescension" has gradually diminished in a very satisfactory manner. It is now no longer kept alive by even the typical American traveller such as he was when five-and-twenty years ago a familiar sight at every railway-station, in every steamer and in every picture-gallery, museum and ruin of every town in Europe. Now-a-days everybody in America who lays any claim to the right of being called "somebody," however small a "somebody" it may be, has been to Europe at least once in his or her life—on a three months' Cook-excursion tour, if in no other way. And those who have not been have had a father, mother, brother, sister, or in any case a cousin in some degree, who has; so that there is always a European trip in the family, so to speak. The result of all this has naturally been a certain amount of experience concerning Europe which has tended to wellnigh exterminate the race of the typically-verdant American traveller. Occasional specimens, with all their characteristics in full and vigorous development, may still be met, but these are merely isolated survivors of a once widespread family. The Americans that one meets to-day in Europe, both those who travel and those who reside there, are of a different conformation and belong to a different type. The crudeness which so shocked Europeans in their predecessors they have, with characteristic adaptability, readily and gracefully outgrown. But whether they have improved in other respects, and whether, on other grounds, we have cause to be particularly proud of our countrymen abroad at the present day, is another question.

That Americans are constantly apologizing to foreigners for America, for its institutions, for its social life, and for themselves as belonging to it, is a fact which no one ever thinks of disputing. In this faculty for disparaging our own country we may flatter ourselves that we have no equals. The Chinese may come near us in their obsequious assurances as to the utter unworthiness of everything pertaining to them, but with the difference that they, probably, are inwardly profoundly convinced of the perfection of all that their idea of courtesy obliges them to abuse, and mean nothing of what they say; whereas we do mean everything we say.

The prejudice of the English, and their attempts to transport a miniature England about with them wherever they go, furnish a frequent subject of jest to Americans on the Continent. If the total immunity from any such feeling which characterizes the Americans themselves were the result of breadth of ideas—if they spoke as they do because they measured the faults and follies, the merits and advantages, of their own institutions with as impartial an eye as they would measure those of other nations, and judged them without either malice or extenuation—we might then have the privilege of condemning narrow-mindedness and prejudice. But we have no such breadth of ideas. On the contrary, we have ourselves—none more so—the strongest sort of prejudices—prejudices which prevent us as a nation from taking wide, cosmopolitan views of things. The only difference is that with us the prejudice, instead of being in favor of everything belonging to our own country, is, in far too many cases, against it, consequently the most objectionable, the least excusable, of prejudices.

It is but rarely that we find a German, a Frenchman, a Spaniard, an Italian, or a Russian, who even having expatriated himself completely for one reason or another, and after years of absence, will not have retained some affection for his native country, some longing for it, some feeling that it is the best place on earth after all. But among any number of Americans who have been on European soil for any period of time, from twenty days to twenty years, those who are burdened with any such affection, any such longing, any such feeling, might be counted with ease. Indeed, if through some inconceivable arrangement of human affairs the Americans abroad were to be prevented from ever returning to their own country, I imagine the majority would bear the catastrophe with great equanimity, and, aside from the natural ties of family and pecuniary interests that might bind them to their home, would think the permanent life in Europe thus enforced the happiest that Fate could have bestowed upon them. For my part, I never met but one American who was anxious to return home—a lady, strange to say—and her chief reason seemed to be that she missed her pancakes, hot breads, etc. for breakfast. All the others, men and women, had but one voice to express how immeasurably more to their taste was everything in Europe—the climate, the life, the people, the country, the food, the manners, the institutions, the customs—than anything in America.

However, all Americans in Europe are not of this class, although it includes the majority. There is a comparatively small number who are as much impressed with the perfection of everything American as the most ardent patriotism could desire. These people go to Europe cased in a triple armor of self-assertion, prepared to poohpooh everything and everybody that may come under their notice, and above all to vindicate under all circumstances their independence as free-born American citizens by giving the world around them the benefit of their opinions upon all topics both in and out of season. They stand before a chef-d'oeuvre of some old master and declare in a loud, aggressive voice that they see nothing whatever to admire in it, that the bystanders may know that the judgment of centuries will not weigh with them. They inquire with grim facetiousness, and terrific emphasis on the pronominal adjectives, "Is this what the people in this part of the world call a steamboat?" "Do they call that duckpond a lake?" "Is that stream what they call a river?" And so on, in a perpetual attitude of protest against everything not so large as their steamboats, their lakes, their rivers. When this genus of Americans abroad comes together with the other genus—with the people who think the most wretched daub that hangs in the most obscure corner of a European gallery, labelled with prudent indefiniteness "of the school of ——," better far than the most conscientious work by the most gifted of American artists—and a discussion arises, as it is sure to do, on the relative merits of Europe and America, then indeed does Greek meet Greek, and, both starting from equally false premises and with equally false views, the cross-purposes, the rabid comparing of things between which no comparison is possible, the amount of absurd nonsense spoken on either side, and the profound disdain of one for the other, furnish a great deal of amusement to Europeans, but make an American who has any self-respect suffer no small amount of mortification.

There is but one ground upon which these two classes of Americans meet in common, and that is in their respect for titles, coronets and coats-of-arms. It is useless to deny the immense impressiveness which this sort of thing has for the average American. Of course, if he be of the aggressive sort he will scout the very idea of any such imputation, one of the favorite jokes of his tasteful stock in trade being precisely to express sovereign contempt for anything and everything smacking of nobility, and to weigh its advantages against the chink of his own dollars and find it wanting. But this does not in the least alter the matter. The people who inveigh the most fiercely against the pretensions of blue blood are generally, the world over, the ones who are devoured by the most ardent retrospective ambitions for grandfathers and grandmothers; and the Americans who cry out loudest against the hollow vanity of the European aristocracy are generally those who have genealogical trees and coats-of-arms of authenticity more or less questionable hanging in their back parlor, and think themselves a step removed from those among their neighbors who boast of no such property.

It may not be pleasant for us to acknowledge to ourselves that our countrymen abroad are cankered with toadyism and are frightful snobs; but so it is, nevertheless. The fact is very visible, veil it as we may. The American who has not had it forced upon his attention in innumerable ways—by the undisguised empressement of those among his compatriots who frankly spend their whole time running after persons with titles, entertaining them and fawning upon them in every possible manner, no more than by the intensely American Americans who profess supreme disregard for all precedence and distinctions established by society, and yet never fail to let you know, quite accidentally, that Count This, Baron That and Marquis the Other are their very particular friends—has had an exceptional experience indeed.

This manner of disposing of all Americans abroad by putting them into one of these two categories may seem somewhat sweeping, and it will be objected that there are hundreds of our countrymen in Europe who could never come under the head of either. Granted. These hundreds undoubtedly exist: they are made up of people of superior mind and intelligence, of people of superior culture, of people who occupy that exceptional social position which, either through associations of hereditary ease, refinement, wealth and elegance, or by contact with "the best" of everything from childhood up, confers on those who belong to it very much the same outward gloss the world over. But it is never among such exceptions that the distinctive characteristics of a nation are to be sought. These are to be looked for in the great mass of the people. Now, the great mass of Americans who go abroad are people of average minds, average education, average positions; and that, thus taken as a mass, they are lamentably lacking both in good taste and dignity, every one must admit who is in any degree familiar with the American colonies in the cities of Europe where our countrymen congregate.

I should perhaps say, to express myself more accurately, "where our countrywomen congregate;" for, after all, the true representatives of America in Europe are the American women. Nine-tenths of all the American colonies consist of mothers who, having left their liege lords to their stocks and merchandise, have come abroad "for the education of their children"—an exceedingly elastic as well as convenient formula, which somehow always makes one think of charity that "covereth a multitude of sins." Occasionally—once in three or four years perhaps—the husband leaves his stocks or merchandise for a brief space of time, crosses the Atlantic and remains with his family a month or two. Occasionally also he fails to appear altogether. I am not very sure but that this last course is the one that foreigners expect him to pursue, and that when he deviates from it it is not rather a surprise to them. Europeans, I fancy, are somewhat apt to look upon the American husband as a myth. At all events, it seems to take the experience of Thomas in many instances to convince them of his material existence. The American who is content to have his wife and children leave him for an indefinite period ranging anywhere from one year to ten years, and during that time enjoy the advantages of life and travel in Europe, while he himself remains at home absorbed in his business, is a species of the genus Homo that Europeans are at a loss to comprehend. Being so rarely seen in the flesh, he necessarily occupies but a secondary position in their estimation: indeed, I think all American men, those of the class named no more than those that are more frequently seen abroad, such as doctors, clergymen, consuls, etc., may be said—some exception being made for the "leisure class" possessed of four-in-hands and so on, and an unlimited supply of the world's goods—to be considered by Europeans of no great significance, socially speaking. It is madame and mesdemoiselles who are all-important. Monsieur is thought a worthy person, with some excellent qualities, such as freedom from uncomfortable jealousies and suspicions, and both capacity and willingness for furnishing remittances, but a person rather destitute of polish—invaluable from a domestic point of view, from any other somewhat uninteresting. But madame and mesdemoiselles have every possible tribute paid to their charms: their beauty, their wit, their dash and sparkle, their independence, receive as large a share of admiration as the most insatiable among them could desire.

It must be owned that the American spirit, tempered by European education or influences, makes a very delightful compound. And it is astonishing to mark how soon the toning process does its work—how soon the most objectionable American girl of the sort known as "fast," or even "loud," softens into a very charming creature who makes the admiration bestowed upon her by European men quite comprehensible.

That this admiration is returned is perhaps not less comprehensible. American women, as a mass, are better educated than American men, and are particularly their superiors so far as outward grace and polish and the general amenities of life are concerned. These qualities, in which their countrymen are deficient, and the blander manners which accompany them, they are apt to find well developed in European men, whatever other virtues or faults may be theirs; and when to this fact is added the spice of novelty, the strong liking that American girls manifest for foreigners, and which has been the cause of putting so many American youths in anything but a benedictory frame of mind, is easily accounted for, and the marriages which so frequently take place between our girls and European men may be explained, even on other grounds than the common exchange of money on one side and title on the other.

Be the motive of these marriages either mutual interest or mutual inclination, in neither case does the generally-accepted theory that they are never happy bear the test of application. So far as my knowledge goes, the common experience is quite the reverse. The number of matches between American girls and Europeans that turn out badly is small compared to the number of those that are perfectly satisfactory. It is astonishing to see how many of our girls, who have been brought up in the belief of the American woman's prerogative of absolute supremacy in the domestic circle, when they are thus married change and seem quite content to relinquish not a few of their ideas of perfectly untrammelled independence, and to take that more subordinate position in matrimony which European life and customs allot to women. It is still more astonishing to see how contentedly and cheerfully they do so when marrying men, as they often do, whose equals in every point, were they their own countrymen, they would consider decidedly bad partis—men with no advantages of any description, without either position, career or any visible means of livelihood, often passably destitute of education and character as well. How they contrive to be satisfied with their bargain in this case is a puzzle, but satisfied they are.

Marriages of this sort, where the man has absolutely nothing to offer beyond the charms of his more or less blandly persuasive person, excite no surprise abroad. That a penniless male fortune-hunter should marry a girl with wealth is considered in Europe at the present day not only just, proper and quite as it should be, but rather comme il faut than otherwise. Let the case be reversed, and a man of fortune permit himself the caprice of marrying a portionless girl, and society cries out in horror against the mÉsalliance.

American women in Europe have two chief aims and occupations. The first is to obtain an entrÉe into the society of the country in which they are residing, and to identify themselves with that society: the second is to revile one another.

So far as the first aim is concerned, it is certainly most laudable, taken in one sense: the persons who can live in the midst of a people without endeavoring to gain an insight into its character and its customs must be possessed of an exceptionally oyster-like organization indeed. But the majority of American women seek foreign society on other grounds than this—chiefly from that tendency to ape everything European and to decry everything American to which I have already alluded as being characteristic of us as a nation. England and the English are the principal models chosen for imitation. It is marvellous to notice the fondness of American women abroad for the English accent and manner of speech and way of thinking; how enthusiastically they attend all the meets in Rome; how plaintively they tell one if one happens to have arrived quite recently from home, "Really, there is no riding across country in your America, you know." In the cities of the Continent that have large English and American colonies they attend the English church in preference to their own. I believe it is considered more exclusive to do so, and better form. In this mania for all things English we are not alone. John Bull happens to be the fashion of the day quite as much on the continent of Europe as in America, and has quite as many devoted worshippers there as among us.

Naturally, one of the chief reasons why American women have so great a liking for European society is to be found in the fact of the far more important position that married ladies occupy in that society than they do with us. For a woman who feels that she has still attractions which should not be buried in obscurity, but who has found that since her marriage she has, to all intents and purposes, been "laid upon the shelf," it is a very delightful experience to see herself once more the object of solicitous attention, considered as one of the brilliant central ornaments of a ballroom, not as one of its indispensable wall-decorations. The experience seems to be so particularly pleasant to the majority of American women, indeed, that they show the greatest disinclination to sharing it one with the other—a disinclination made manifest by that habit of reviling each other which I mentioned as the second great aim and occupation of our countrywomen abroad. That there should be very little kindness and fellow-feeling, and a great deal of envy, hatred, malice and all uncharitableness among their members, is characteristic of all foreign colonies in every country; but none certainly can, in this respect, surpass the American colonies in Europe, at least in so far as their feminine representatives are concerned. The extent to which these ladies carry their backbiting and slandering, and the abnormal growth which their jealousy of one another attains, fill the masculine mind with amazement.

A lady of a certain age who had lived in Europe twenty years, and who, in addition to being a person of great clearness and robustness of judgment, held a position, as a widow with a comfortable competency, which made her verdict unassailable by any suspicion of its being an interested one, spoke to me once on this subject. "In all my experience of American life in Europe," she said, "I may safely state that I have never met more than half a dozen American women who had anything but ill-natured remarks to make of one another. No American woman need hope, live as she may, do as she may, say what she may, to escape criticism at the hands of her countrywomen. The mildest manner in which they will treat her in conversation will be to say that she is 'nobody,' 'never goes anywhere,' etc., and thus dismiss her. In every other case it is, 'Mrs. A——? Oh yes, such a charming person! Perhaps just a little bit inclined to put on airs, but then—Oh, a very nice little woman. I don't suppose she has ever really been accustomed to much, you know. They say her mother was a dressmaker, but of course one never knows how true these things may be. She does make frantic efforts to get into society here: it is quite amusing. I think the Von Z——s have rather taken her up. She has plenty of money to spend, oh yes. I can't see how her husband can afford to let her live in the style she does abroad, but then that is his affair. She entertains all these people, and of course they go to her house because she can give them some amusement.'—'Mrs. B——? Do I know anything about her? Well, I think I do. Nice? Oh, I do not know that there is anything to be said against her. To be sure, in Paris people did say some rather ugly things. There was a Count L——. And I heard from a very reliable source that she was not on exactly good terms with her husband. So, having daughters, you know, I was obliged to be prudent and rather to shun her than otherwise. Without wishing to be ill-natured I feel inclined to advise you to do the same: I think you will find it quite as well to do so.'—'Mrs. C——? Oh, my dear, such a coarse, common, vulgar creature! She was never received in any sort of good society in New York. Her husband made money one fine day, and she has come abroad and is trying to impose upon people here. She is perfectly ignorant—no education whatever. And the daughters are horribly mauvais genre.'—'Mrs. D——? I should call her an undesirable acquaintance. Not but what she is a very nice sort of person—in her way—but she does make up so frightfully, and she looks so fast. Always has a crowd of officers dangling about her. Her husband is a stick. They do say that when his relatives came abroad last winter they would not call upon him. They were completely incensed at the way in which he permits his wife to carry on.'—'Mrs. E——? Pray, who is Mrs. E——? and where does she get the money to live as she does? I knew her a few years ago, when she had a thousand a year to live on, she and both her children. And now, the toilettes she makes! And, some people say, the debts! And, really, I don't see how it can be otherwise, knowing, as I do, that all the members of her family are as poor as church mice. Her husband committed suicide, you know.—No! did you never hear that? Oh yes: he was mixed up in some rather shady transactions in business, and put an end to himself in that way.'—'Mrs. F——? Oh yes, I remember. An old thing, with a grown-up son, who dresses as if she were fifteen. Dreadfully affected, and so silly! Moreover, Mrs. I—— lived in the same house with her in Dresden—had the apartment above hers—and she told me the servants said that Mrs. F—— was always in some difficulty with tradespeople.'—'Miss G——? Is it possible you have never heard about her? Why, she ran away with a footman, or something of the kind. Was brought back before she had reached the station, I believe; but you can imagine the scandal! All the girls in that family are rather queer, which, considering the stock they come from, is really not very strange,' etc. etc. etc."

In view of these facts, and of many more of the same nature, when one sees the people who come back from Europe after an absence of a year or two unable to speak their own language fluently, because they have heard and spoken nothing but German or French or Italian during that time, and who cannot stand the climate because they are not used to it; when one sees the young ladies who return home unable to take any interest in American life, and who shut themselves away from its society, which to them is most unpolished and vapid, because they have had a European education; when one sees the hundred follies which a glimpse of Europe will put into the heads of people whom before one had had every reason to think sensible enough,—one feels inclined to ask one's self the question, Are we to conclude that European life is demoralizing to Americans? Are we to conclude that the innumerable advantages that such a life confers—the wider view and broader knowledge of things, the softening influences gained by contact with a riper civilization, the Æsthetic tastes developed by acquaintance with older and more perfect art—are to count as nothing, are to be outweighed by the disadvantages of the same life?

Certainly, out of a hundred Americans who go abroad ninety-nine return with what they have lost in narrowness of experience completely offset by what they have gained in pretentious affectation. So far from being improved in any way are they that their well-wishers are inclined to think it would have been far better had they never gone at all.

I do not wish to draw the ultimate conclusion from all this that it would be better for Americans were their periodical exodus to Europe to cease. Far from it. That cultivated Americans, and Americans particularly of a more reflective than active mind, should find the relative ease, culture and simplicity of European life more congenial to them than the restless, high-pressure life of America, is quite natural. And if there are no interests or ties to make their presence in their own country imperatively necessary, it is certainly a matter of option with them where they take up their abode. There is no law, human or divine, to bind a person to live in one certain spot when the surroundings are uncongenial to him, and when no private duty fetters him to it, for the simple reason that he has chanced to be born there. Every one is certainly at liberty to seek the centre that best suits him and answers to his needs. Again, there are numbers of persons who with moderate means can live according to their taste in Europe when it would be impossible for them to do so in America on the same amount. There are a thousand small gratifications that people can afford themselves on a small income abroad, a thousand small pleasures in life from which in our country they would be hopelessly debarred; and that they should be debarred from them when escape is possible, and not only possible but most simple and easy, would indeed be hard.

But why cannot Americans indulge this preference for life in Europe, why can they not avail themselves of the choice if it is open to them, and yet remember that they are Americans, and that no circumstance can absolve them from a sacred obligation to show respect for their native country, and to stand as its citizens on their own dignity? Men and women may be conscious of faults and weaknesses in their parents, but they are not expected to expose these weaknesses on that account: instinctive delicacy in any one but a churl would keep him from acknowledging any such failings to his own heart. And a similar feeling should teach us, even if our sympathies were not with our own country, to treat it in word and deed with respect. Until we do learn to show this respect before Europeans we must still resign ourselves to the imputation, if they wish to make it, of crudeness, of being still sadly in want of refining.

Alain Gore.