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Matthew Arnold, Civilization in the United States: First and Last Impressions of America., IV: civilization in the United States. (search)
k of it, could one easily find a habit more ridiculous, more offensive? The title of Esquire, like most of our titles, comes out of the great frippery shop of the Middle Age; it is alien to the sound taste and manner of antiquity, when men said Pericles and Camillus. But unlike other titles, it is applied or withheld quite arbitrarily. Surely, where a man has no specific title proper to him, the one plain title of Master or Mr. is enough, and we need not be encumbered with a second title of Esout. The Americans have produced plenty of men strong, shrewd, upright, able, effective; very few who are highly distinguished. Alexander Hamilton is indeed a man of rare distinction; Washington, though he has not the high mental distinction of Pericles or Caesar, has true distinction of style and character. But these men belong to the pre-American age. Lincoln's recent American biographers declare that Washington is but an Englishman, an English officer; the typical American, they say, is Abr