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V. The swing of the social pendulum.
The newspapers are constantly satirizing a tendency to Anglomania which is said to prevail just now in American society, or at least in a few cities and watering-places along the
Atlantic shore.
It is not habitually mentioned that this is but a swing of the same pendulum which seemed, twenty years ago, to be swinging the other way, and carrying us away from everything English and towards everything
French.
The same pendulum has been steadily vibrating, indeed, ever since the foundation of our government, and its movements have never had any great or important influence upon the mass of the
American people.
Be this as it may, it is perfectly certain that the whim in fashion thirty and even twenty years ago was quite unlike what it now is. Good
Americans were said, when they died, to go to
Paris, and even the wit of
Tom Appleton never ventured to suggest that they should go to
London.
At
Newport it was for many years held essential to do things in the
French way, not the
English.
It was at the French court that fashionable
