If you have
the means of a gentleman in England, you must live like a
gentleman, apparently; you cannot live plainly, and put by, and
largely you must trust to your life-insurance as the fortune you
will leave your heirs. It cannot be denied that the more generous
expenditure of the English adds to the grace of life, and that
they are more hospitable according to their means than we are; or
than those Continental peoples who are not hospitable at all.
A thing that one feels more and more irritatingly in England is
that, while with other foreigners we stand on common ground,
where we may be as unlike them as we choose, with the English we
always stand on English ground, where we can differ only at our
peril, and to our disadvantage. A person speaking English and
bearing an English name, had better be English, for if he cannot
it shows, it proves, that there is something wrong in him. Our
misfortune is that our tradition, and perhaps our inclination,
obliges us to be un-English, whereas we do not trouble ourselves
to be un-French, or un-Italian, for we are so by nature.
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