the Transatlantic madness of mere Greed, and their blood has been temporarily poisoned by infection. But one may hope and believe that it is only a passing malady, and that the old healthy life will re-invest the veins of the nation all the more strongly for partial sickness and relapse. In the meantime it occasionally happens that the "free" Briton bows his head like a whipped mongrel cur to the bulging Bank-Account of the American Millionaire-Bounder. And the American Millionaire-Bounder plants his flat foot on the so foolishly bent pate and walks over it with a commercial chuckle. "You talk of your 'Noblesse oblige,' your honour, your old historic tradition and aristocratic Order!" he says, sneeringly—"Why there isn't a man alive in Britain that I couldn't buy, principles and all, for fifty thousand pounds!"
This kind of vaunt at Britain's expense is common to the American Millionaire-Bounder—and whether it arises out of his conscious experience of the British, or his braggart conceit, must be left to others to query or determine. Certain it is that he does buy a good deal, and that the owners of such things as he wants seem always ready to sell. Famous estates are knocked down to him—manuscripts and pictures which should be the preciously guarded property of the nation, are easily purchased by him,—and, laughing in his sleeve at the purblind apathy of the British Government, which calmly looks on while he pockets such relics of national greatness as unborn generations will vainly and indignantly ask for,—he congratulates himself on possessing, as he says, "the only few things the old country has got left worth having." One can but look
