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We “good Europeans,” we also have hours when we allow ourselves a warmhearted patriotism, a plunge and relapse into old loves and narrow views⁠—I have just given an example of it⁠—hours of national excitement, of patriotic anguish, and all other sorts of old-fashioned floods of sentiment. Duller spirits may perhaps only get done with what confines its operations in us to hours and plays itself out in hours⁠—in a considerable time: some in half a year, others in half a lifetime, according to the speed and strength with which they digest and “change their material.” Indeed, I could think of sluggish, hesitating races, which even in our rapidly moving Europe, would require half a century ere they could surmount such atavistic attacks of patriotism and soil-attachment, and return once more to reason, that is to say, to “good Europeanism.” And while digressing on this possibility, I happen to become an earwitness of a conversation between two old patriots⁠—they were evidently both hard of hearing and consequently spoke all the louder. “ He