Counter-Currents
olent American clergyman," and certifying that the bearer thereof had long "sofered with rheumatic paints in his limps," Mr. Lowell rightly considered that a composition so rich in the naïveté common to all Teuton mendacities was worth the money asked. When a French traveller assured him, with delightful bonhomie, that Englishmen became Americanized so rapidly that "they even begin to talk through their noses, just like you do," the only comment of our representative American was that he felt ravished by this testimony to the assimilating powers of democracy.
Nevertheless, it is well in these years of grace to reread Mr. Lowell's essay, partly because of its sturdy and dignified Americanism, and partly because we can then compare his limited experiences with our own. We can also speculate pleasantly upon his frame of mind could he have lived to hear Mrs. Amadeus Grabau (Mary Antin) say, "Lowell would
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