256 MY AMERICAN FRIENDS -

probably continue for some time, but I notice
that the history books now used in thef Common
schools contain less nonsense about tiie Revolution
than the samples I saw twenty-five years ago.

From various small signs here and there I
have got the impression that Americans attribute
to the British a greater degree of sensitiveness
about the loss of the Colonies than we really
feel. They think, perhaps, that their own just
pride in the achievement of their independence
is matched by a corresponding soreness on the
British side, that we are still haunted, as it were,
by a dim feeling that the country ought to be
ours and by regret that it isn't. The only
visitations of such feelings that I can remember
in my own case occurred at times when I was
lingering in exceptionally beautiful regions, such
as the Berkshire Hills in Massachusetts or the
mountains of Western Virginia; but never in
cities, never in consequence of anything that
has been shown me of the wealth, splendour
or power of America. In beautiful places such
as I have named the thought would pass through
my mind that we lost something precious when
we lost the American Colonies, #ftd the wish
that it h^d never happened would follow. As
to the wealth, splendour and power of Ajtnerica^
if I think of all that as inside the British Empire,
my next thought is of the British Empire bursting
through internal pressure and going up sky-
high in a thousand fragments. But it was