Thomas Wentworth Higginson, The new world and the new book

[19]

II

An American temperament

the recent assertion of the London correspondent of the New York Tribune, that Englishmen like every American to be an American, has a curious interest in connection with some remarks of the late Matthew Arnold, which seem to look in an opposite direction. Lord Houghton once told me that the earlier American guests in London society were often censured as being too English in appearance and manner, and as wanting in a distinctive flavor of Americanism. He instanced Ticknor and Sumner; and we can all remember that there were at first similar criticisms on Lowell. It is indeed a form of comment to which all Americans are subject in England, if they have the ill-luck to have color in their cheeks and not to speak very much through their noses; in that case they are apt to pass for Englishmen by no wish of their own, and to be suspected of a little double dealing when they hasten to reveal their