Page:Counter-currents, Agnes Repplier, 1916.djvu/213



T is now nearly fifty years since Mr. Lowell wrote his famous essay, "On a Certain Condescension in Foreigners"; an essay in which justifiable irritation prompted the telling of plain truths, and an irrepressible sense of humour made these truths amusing. It was well for Mr. Lowell that he was seldom too angry to laugh, and he knew, as only a man of the world can know, the saving grace of laughter. Therefore, though confessedly unable to understand why foreigners should be persuaded that "by doing this country the favour of coming to it, they have laid every native thereof under an obligation," he was willing in certain light-minded moods to acquit himself honourably of the debt. When a genteel German mendicant presented a letter, "professedly written by a 197