Thomas Wentworth Higginson, The new world and the new book

[22] in the type, let us know that also. In truth, the difference is already so marked that Mr. Arnold himself concedes it at every step in his argument, and has indeed stated it in very much the same terms which an American would have employed. In a paper entitled ‘From Easter to August,’¹ he says frankly: ‘Our countrymen [namely, the English], with a thousand good qualities, are really perhaps a good deal wanting in lucidity and flexibility;’ and again in the same essay: ‘The whole American nation may be called intelligent; that is, quick.’ This would seem to be conceding the very point at issue between himself and the American writer whom he is criticising.

The same difference of temperament, in the direction of a greater quickness—what the wit of Edmund Quincy once designated as ‘specific levity’—on the part of Americans is certainly very apparent to every one of us who visits England; and not infrequently makes itself perceptible, even without a surgical operation, to our English visitors. Professor Tyndall is reported to have said—and if he did not say it,