Besides, the dream does not interfere with the realities;
it even honors them. If a man does any great thing in England,
the chief figure of the faery dream recognizes his deed, stoops
to him, lifts him up among the other figures, and makes him part
of the dream forever. After that he has standing, such as no man
may have with us for more than that psychological moment, when
all the papers cry him up, and then everybody tries to forget
him. But, better than this, the dream has the effect, if it has
not the fact, of securing every man in his place, so long as he
keeps to it. Nowhere else in the world is there so much personal
independence, without aggression, as in England. There is
apparently nothing of it in Germany; in Italy, every one is so
courteous and kind that there is no question of it; in the French
Republic and in our own, it exists in an excess that is molestive
and invasive; in England alone does it strike the observer as
being of exactly the just measure.
Very likely the observer is mistaken, and in the present case he
will not insist.
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