Thomas Wentworth Higginson, The new world and the new book

[223] just beginning to come into vogue. The elder brother was of a more delicate and poetic mould; and it could be said of him, as is said of the prophet Mohammed in the Sheeah traditions, that ‘his manners charmed all mankind.’ Hence he found himself readily at home in the court society of Vienna, to which he was first sent; and when he was transferred to England, he felt keenly the delight at finding, with a shade less of elegance in the society around him, a recognition which he had not before encountered, of purely intellectual claims. Hence we find him in the first volume of his letters lavishing praises on London society, such as he was by no means ready to reaffirm after the crucial test of our Civil War had been applied. In the earlier days, too, he naturally contrasted the accumulated intellectual wealth of Europe with the comparative poverty of his own land in these respects. ‘When I see here in Europe such sums of money spent by the government upon every branch of the fine arts, I cannot help asking why we at home have no picture-galleries, or statue-galleries, or libraries. I cannot see at all that such things are only fit for monarchies.’¹