France was as delightful as England was doleful:
“My poor sensitive soul,” he cries, “that often recoiled in shyness from German coarseness,
opened out to the flattering sounds of French urbanity. God gave us our tongues so that we might say pleasant things to our fellow-men.... Sorrows are strangely softened. In the air of Paris wounds are healed quicker than anywhere else; there is something so noble, so gentle, so sweet in the air as in the people themselves.”
I suppose the only analogy to such superlative contentment is provided by the phenomenon known as falling in love. Happily we do not all choose the same object of affection. England has a curious way of inspiring either great and lasting love or irritation and positive dislike. There seems to be little or no indifference. I believe love predominates.
From exiled kings to humble refugees, from peripatetic philosophers to indolent aborigines, the testimony of her charm can be gathered. I speak as a victim. I love England with a fervour born of admiration (without admiration no one ever falls in love). I love her ways and her mind, I love her chilly dampness and her hot, glowing fires (attempts to analyse and classify love are always silly). In her thinkers and workers, in her schemes and efforts for social improvement, in her
freedom of thought and speech I found my mental milieu.
To me England is inexpressibly dear, not because a whole conspiracy of influences—educational, conventional, patriotic—were at work persuading me that she is worthy of affection. I myself discovered her lovableness. Your Chauvinist is always a mere repeater. He is but a member of the Bandar-Log, shouting greatness of which he knows nothing. True love does not need the trumpets of Jingoism. I have no room for lies about England: the truth is sufficient for me. Though I love England, I have affection to spare for other countries. I feel at home in France, in Sweden, in America, in Switzerland. Your Chauvinist will excuse the former affections on account of “blood.” Swedish-French by ties of ancestry, such a sense of familiarity is natural when set against my preternatural love of England.
Chauvinism flourishes exceedingly on the soil of national conceit. That conceit is prodigious and universal. The Germans are past-masters in the art of self-glorification, and their pan-German literature is certainly not only bold but ingenious in this respect.
Is any one great outside Germany? Very well, let us trace his German origin. It may be remote, it may be hidden by centuries of illusory nationality, but it must be there. France has her apostles of superiority. Their style is more flexible, their pretensions less clumsy, but they neglect no opportunity of seducing us into a belief that France, and France only, is mistress of the human mind. Russia has her fervid declaimers of holy excellence and the superior quality of the Slav character. It does not matter whether the country is great or small, whether it be Montenegro or Cambodia, it always contains souls who feel constrained to give the world a demonstration of their overflowing superiority. Pan-Germanism, pan-Slavism, pan-Magyarism, pan-Anglosaxism, pan-Americanism grow out of such conceit, systematized by professors and sanctified by bishops.
The conceit of nationality often fosters great deeds, and generally finds expression that is more aggressive than intelligent. It takes hold of the most unlikely subjects. It is a potent destroyer of balanced judgment, and will pitilessly make the most solemn men ridiculous. The outbursts of Emerson when