hide Sorting

You can sort these results in two ways:

By entity
Chronological order for dates, alphabetical order for places and people.
By position (current method)
As the entities appear in the document.

You are currently sorting in ascending order. Sort in descending order.

hide Most Frequent Entities

The entities that appear most frequently in this document are shown below.

Entity Max. Freq Min. Freq
United States (United States) 304 0 Browse Search
Grant 250 10 Browse Search
England (United Kingdom) 114 0 Browse Search
America (Illinois, United States) 78 0 Browse Search
Vicksburg (Mississippi, United States) 66 0 Browse Search
Lee 47 5 Browse Search
Americans 34 0 Browse Search
Europe 34 0 Browse Search
Sherman 33 1 Browse Search
America (Netherlands) 32 0 Browse Search
View all entities in this document...

Browsing named entities in a specific section of Matthew Arnold, Civilization in the United States: First and Last Impressions of America.. Search the whole document.

Found 424 total hits in 47 results.

1 2 3 4 5
Nineveh (Virginia, United States) (search for this): chapter 2
tice at all of such challenges, but to go on talking of equality and civilization just as if America had never existed. True, there is Mr. Lowell's warning. Englishmen easily may fall into absurdities in criticising America, most easily of all when they do not, and cannot, see it with their own eyes, but have to speak of it from what they read. Then, too, people are sensitive; certainly, it would be safer and pleasanter to say nothing. And as the prophet Jonah, when he had a message for Nineveh, hurried off in alarm down to Joppa, and incontinently took ship there for Tarshish, in just the opposite direction, so one might find plenty of reasons for running away from the task, when one is summoned to give one's opinion of American civilization. But Ewald says that it was a sorry and unworthy calculation, petty human reasonmongering--menschliche Vernunftelei--which made Jonah run away from his task in this fashion; and we will not run away from ours, difficult though it be. Besi
Northampton (Massachusetts, United States) (search for this): chapter 2
future, yet they were not of much use to our civilization now. I remember, that when I first read the Boston newspaper from which I have been quoting, I was just fresh from the perusal of one of the best of Mr. James's novels, Roderick Hudson. That work carries us to one of the smaller cities of the interior, a city of which, I own, I had never heard — the American Northampton. Those who have read Roderick Hudson will recollect, that in that part of the story where the scene is laid at Northampton, there occurs a personage called Striker, an auctioneer. And when I came upon the Boston newspaper's assurances that, in almost every small town of the Union, I should find an elegant and simple social order, the comment which rose to my lips was this: I suspect what I should find there, in great force, is Striker. Now Striker was a Philistine. I have said somewhere or other that, whereas our society in England distributes itself into Barbarians, Philistines, and Populace, America is
it seems doubtful whether America is not suffering from the predominance of Murdstone and Quinion herself — of Quinion at any rate. Yes, and of Murdstone too. Miss Bird, the best of travellers, and with the skill to relate her travels delightfully, met the rudimentary American type of Murdstone not far from Denver, and has descrimple social order in the older states will be too strong for it; or whether, on the other hand, it may be too strong for the elegant and simple social order. Miss Bird then describes the Chalmers family, a family with which, on her journey from Denver to the Rocky Mountains, she lodged for some time. Miss Bird, as those who haMiss Bird, as those who have read her books well know, is not a lackadaisical person, or in any way a fine lady; she can ride, catch, and saddle a horse, make herself agreeable, wash up plates, improvise lamps, teach knitting. But-- Oh (she says), what a hard, narrow life it is with which I am now in contact! A narrow and unattractive religion, which I
; he loves to count the prodigious number of acres of land there, the prodigious number of bushels of wheat raised. The voluntary principle, the principle of modern English Nonconformity, is on the same grand and impressive scale. There is nothing which piety and zeal have ever offered on the face of the earth as a tribute to religion and religious purposes, equal to that which has been done by the voluntary principle among the people of the United States. I cannot help thinking that my Boston informant mixes up, I say, the few lovers of perfection with the much more numerous representatives, serious, industrious, and in many ways admirable, of middle-class virtue; and imagines that in almost every town of the United States there is a group of lovers of perfection, whereas the lovers of perfection are much less thickly sown than he supposes, but what there really is in almost every town is a group of representatives of middle-class virtue. And the fruits by which he knows his men
Puritan England (search for this): chapter 2
art essay, On a certain Condescension in foreigners, warns off Englishmen who may be disposed to write or speak about the United States of America. I never blamed England for not wishing well to democracy, he cries; how should she? But the criticisms and dealings of Englishmen, in regard to the object of their ill-will, are apt, M of the land up to a high standard when war comes, or rebellion. But this is just what the middle-class virtue of our race is abundantly capable of doing; as Puritan England in the seventeenth century, and the inheritors of the traditions of Puritan England since, have signally shown. It is they who maintain the national credit, Puritan England since, have signally shown. It is they who maintain the national credit, it is they who steadily improve the standard of national education. By national education our informant means popular education; and here, too, we are still entirely within the pale of middle-class achievement. Both in England and in America, the middle class is abundantly capable of maintaining the national credit, and does main
Americans (search for this): chapter 2
,--a sovereign of the British type, and a House of Lords:-- If Americans could only get over the first wrench, and elect a king of the olde dirt of candidature. As to aristocratic ideas being foreign to Americans, I do not believe it for a moment; on the contrary, I believe theent I was not meaning to describe American civilization, and that Americans might at once be able to say, with perfect truth, that American crica in those northern, middle, and southwestern states, to which Americans have a right to refer us when we seek to know their civilization,quisite knowledge. But all that we hear from America — hear from Americans themselves — points, so far as I can see, to a great presence and against the gross outrage on America, insulted in the persons of Americans imprisoned in British dungeons ; we have them crying: The people treasure: illi robber et es triplex, indeed. And no doubt a few Americans, highly civilized individuals, hopping backwards and forwards ove
Americains Nord (search for this): chapter 2
ple in the world. They strike foreigners in the same way. M. Renan says that the United States have created a considerable popular instruction without any serious higher instruction, and will long have to expiate this fault by their intellectual mediocrity, their vulgarity of manners, their superficial spirit, their lack of general intelligence. Another acute French critic speaks of a hard unintelligence as characteristic of the people of the United States--la dure inintelligence des Americains du Nord. Smart they are, as all the world knows; but then smartness is unhappily quite compatible with a hard unintelligence. The Quinionian humour of Mr. Mark Twain, so attractive to the Philistine of the more gay and light type both here and in America, another French critic fixes upon as literature exactly expressing a people of this type, and of no higher. In spite of all its primary education, he says, America is still, from an intellectual point of view, a very rude and primitive soil,
Goldwin Smith (search for this): chapter 2
th in England and in America, the middle class is abundantly capable of maintaining the national credit, and does maintain it. It is abundantly capable of recognizing the duty of sending to school the children of the people; nay, of sending them also, if possible, to a Sunday school, and to chapel or church. True; and yet, in England at any rate, the middle class, with all its industry and with all its religiousness,--the middle class well typified, as I long ago pointed out, by a certain Mr. Smith, a secretary to an insurance company, who labored under the apprehension that he would come to poverty and that he was eternally lost, --the English middle class presents us at this day, for our actual needs, and for the purposes of national civilization, with a defective type of religion, a narrow range of intellect and knowledge, a stunted sense of beauty, a low standard of manners. For the building up of human life, as men are now beginning to see, there are needed not only the powers
ve religion, which I believe still to be genuine, and an intense but narrow patriotism, are the only higher influences. Chalmers came from Illinois nine years ago. He is slightly intelligent, very opinionated, and wishes to be thought well-informed,s, but if I speak favorably of the climate or resources of any other country, he regards it as a slur on Colorado. Mrs. Chalmers looks like one of the English poor women of our childhood — lean, clean, toothless, and speaks, like some of them, inhroughout the West. I write this reluctantly, and after a total experience of nearly two years in the United States. Mrs. Chalmers is cleanly in her person and dress, and the food, though poor, is clean. Work, work, work, is their day and their liking being as her mother. Each morning, soon after seven, when I have swept the cabin, the family come in for worship. Chalmers wails a psalm to the most doleful of dismal tunes; they read a chapter round, and he prays. Sunday was a dreadful day.
Roderick Hudson (search for this): chapter 2
e to us in the future, yet they were not of much use to our civilization now. I remember, that when I first read the Boston newspaper from which I have been quoting, I was just fresh from the perusal of one of the best of Mr. James's novels, Roderick Hudson. That work carries us to one of the smaller cities of the interior, a city of which, I own, I had never heard — the American Northampton. Those who have read Roderick Hudson will recollect, that in that part of the story where the scene isRoderick Hudson will recollect, that in that part of the story where the scene is laid at Northampton, there occurs a personage called Striker, an auctioneer. And when I came upon the Boston newspaper's assurances that, in almost every small town of the Union, I should find an elegant and simple social order, the comment which rose to my lips was this: I suspect what I should find there, in great force, is Striker. Now Striker was a Philistine. I have said somewhere or other that, whereas our society in England distributes itself into Barbarians, Philistines, and Popul
1 2 3 4 5