Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Women and Men

[23] Americans yearned to be presented; they uniformly preferred to live on the other side of the English Channel; and I remember to have had this explained to me by a man of some fashion, on the ground that if an ambitious American family lived in Paris they were not vexed at being omitted from this or that entertainment of the nobility; whereas in England, where their own language was spoken, that sort of omission chafed them far more. The reason thus assigned may have been flimsy, but the fact recognized was important; it indicated a period when French standards, not English, prevailed in our more fashionable society. The change coincided with the fall of the French Empire. While that prevailed, it was the smile of the emperor, not of the Prince of Wales, which gave distinction and currency to a society belle. There is not much gained, perhaps, by the substitution of one roue; for another, as the arbiter of manners for our young people; but it is something to know that it is only a temporary swing of the pendulum after all.

It must be remembered that Anglomania is confined among us to a limited class, and to certain very limited pursuits and interests of that class. It does not exist, for instance, among our men of science, inasmuch as they go to Germany in shoals for study, and rarely visit England since the death of Darwin. It is not now charged upon our literary