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Mark Twain: An Americans View of Europe from Innocents Abroad (1869) Throughout its early history Americans suffered from ambivalent feelings about Europe. As settlers in the New World, they claimed to have begun civilization afresh on a fairer footing than the corrupt culture of old Europe, and often took some pleasure in boasting about the superior attractions of their native land. However, they also had to acknowledge that the United States lacked the long historical traditions and great artistic achievements of a country like France. Having founded their nation on a rejection of monarchy they were often fascinated by the actual monarchs they encountered. As many writers such as Henry James and Edith Wharton were to do later, Mark Twain was fascinated by the splendors and wretchedness he encountered on this first trip to Europe, where he had been sent by a newspaper to report on a grand tour mostly populated with pious travelers whose main interest was in the culminating exploration of sacred sites in Palestine. Twain was self-consciously a rowdy westerner and a scoffer, but he was also a Victorian in his attitudes toward sex, which reveals itself in his account of the popular French can-can. He appreciated little of the art he saw, and many of the pictures in the Louvre offended his democratic instincts. Although there are many lavish portraits of nobles in that museum, he may have been reacting even more to the numerous pictures which depict titled lords and ladies familiarly posing with Mary and the infant Jesus. What is his reaction when he encounters a real-life monarch in the Bois de Boulogne? What contrast in attitudes toward history does he suggest between the U.S. and Europe in the final paragraph? The dance had begun, and we adjourned to the temple (1). Within it was a drinking-saloon; and all around it was a broad circular platform for the dancers. I backed up against the wall of the temple, and waited. Twenty sets formed, the music struck up, and the