Somebody--and we know not whom, for it is an old faded yellow
manuscript scrap in our drawer--thus rebukes an Englishman's
aspiration to be independent of foreigners: A French cook dresses his
dinner for him, and a Swiss valet dresses him for his dinner. He hands
down his lady, decked with pearls that never grew in the shell of a
British oyster, and her waving plume of ostrich-feathers certainly
never formed the tail of a barn-door fowl. The viands of his table are
from all countries of the world; his wines are from the banks of the
Rhine and the Rhone. In his conservatory, he regales his sight with
the blossoms of South American flowers; in his smoking-room, he
gratifies his scent with the weed of North America. His favourite
horse is of Arabian blood, his pet dog of the St Bernard breed. His
gallery is rich with pictures from the Flemish school and statues from
Greece. For his amusement, he goes to hear Italian singers warble
German music followed by a French ballet. The ermine that decorates
his judges was never before on a British animal. His very mind is not
English in its attainments--it is a mere picnic of foreign
contributions. His poetry and philosophy are from ancient Greece and
Rome, his geometry from Alexandria, his arithmetic from Arabia, and
his religion from Palestine. In his cradle, in his infancy, he rubbed
his gums with coral from Oriental oceans; and when he dies, he is
buried in a coffin made from wood that grew on a foreign soil, and his
monument will be sculptured in marble from the quarries of Carrara. A
pretty sort of man this to talk of being independent of
foreigners!--_Harper's Magazine._
* * * * *
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