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M. Renan (search for this): chapter 2
s his shirt more than once a week, or eats with a fork? It is not credible; to me, at any rate, it is not credible. And I feel more sure than ever, that our Boston informant has told us of groups where he ought to have told us of individuals; and that many of his individuals, even, have hopped over, as he wittily says, to Europe. Mr. Lowell himself describes his own nation as the most common-schooled and the least cultivated people 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 sma
Bright (search for this): chapter 2
oers of English race, with their industry and religion, are the salt of the earth. The cities you have built, exclaims Mr. Bright, the railroads you have made, the manufactures you have produced, the cargoes which freight the ships of the greatest mtheir religion, their own specially invented and indomitably maintained form of religion. Let a man consider, exclaims Mr. Bright again, how much of what there is free and good and great, and constantly growing in what is good, in this country, is oigious, and unshakable Nonconformists in all the towns, small and great, of England, whose praise is here celebrated by Mr. Bright. But he has an even more splendid tribute of praise for their brethren of the very same stock, and sort, and virtue, in America also. The great scale of things in America powerfully impresses Mr. Bright's imagination always; he loves to count the prodigious number of acres of land there, the prodigious number of bushels of wheat raised. The voluntary principle, th
Matthew Arnold (search for this): chapter 2
America. Then our Boston friend turns to me again, says that it is vulgar people from the large cities who have given Mr. Arnold his dislike of American manners, and adds, that if it should ever happen that hard destiny should force Mr. Arnold to cMr. Arnold to cross the Atlantic, I should find in the smaller cities of the interior, in the northern, middle, and southwestern states, an elegant and simple social order, as entirely unknown in England, Germany, or Italy, as the private life of the dukes or princfrom the example of the people of the United States. I go back again to my Boston newspaper:-- In towns whose names Mr. Arnold never heard, and never will hear, there will be found almost invariably a group of people of good taste, good manners, . It is they who maintain the national credit, it is they who steadily improve the standard of national education. If Mr. Arnold should ever see them in their own homes, it is they who will show him what is the normal type of American manners.
Denver (search for this): chapter 2
at I should be able to invade the English realm of Murdstone and Quinion with the support of an overpowering body of allies from America. But now 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 described him for us. Denver — I hear some one say scornfully-Denver! A new territory, the outskirts of civilization, the Rocky Mountains! But I prefer to follow a course which would, I know, deliver me over a prey into the Americans' hands, if I were really holding a controversy with them and attacking their civilization. I am not holding a controversy with them. I am not attacking their civilization. I am much disquieted about the state of our own. But I am holding a friendly conversation with American lovers of
M. Victor Hugo (search for this): chapter 2
of view, a very rude and primitive soil, only to be cultivated by violent methods. These childish and half-savage minds are not moved except by very elementary narratives composed without art, in which burlesque and melodrama, vulgarity and eccentricity, are combined in strong doses. It may be said that Frenchmen, the present generation of Frenchmen at any rate, themselves take seriously, as of the family of Shakespeare, Moliere, and Goethe, an author half genius, half charlatan, like M. Victor Hugo. They do so; but still they may judge, soundly and correctly enough, another nation's false literature which does not appeal to their weaknesses. I am not blaming America for falling a victim to Quinion, or to Murdstone either. We fall a victim to Murdstone and Quinion ourselves, as I very well know, and the Americans are just the same people that we are. But I want to deliver England from Murdstone and Quinion, and I look round me for help in the good work. And when the Boston newsp
Ewald (search for this): chapter 2
d 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. Besides, there are considerations which diminish its difficulty. When one has confessed the belief that the social system of one's own country is so far from being perfect that it presents us with the spectacle of an upper class materialized, a middle class vulgarized,
Christian (search for this): chapter 2
the pressure and false ideal of our Barbarians. It is generally industrious and religious, as our middle class. Its religion is even less invaded, I believe, by the modern spirit than the religion of our middle class. An American of reputation as a man of science tells me that he lives in a town of a hundred and fifty thousand people, of whom there are not fifty who do not imagine the first chapters of Genesis to be exact history. Mr. Dale, of Birmingham, found, he says, that orthodox Christian people in America were less troubled by attacks on the orthodox creed than the like people in England. They seemed to feel sure of their ground and they showed no alarm. Public opinion requires public men to attend regularly some place of worship. The favorite denominations are those with which we are here familiar as the denominations of Protestant dissent; when Mr. Dale tells us of the Baptists, not including the Free Will Baptists, Seventh Day Baptists, Six Principle Baptists, and so
English (search for this): chapter 2
ot remember to have anywhere, in my too numerous writings, spoken of American manners as vulgar, or to have expressed my dislike of them. I have long accustomed myself to regard the people of the United States as just the same people with ourselves, as simply the English on the other side of the Atlantic. The ethnology of that American diplomatist, who the other day assured a Berlin audience that the great admixture of Germans had now made the people of the United States as much German as English, has not yet prevailed with me. I adhere to my old persuasion, the Americans of the United States are English people on the other side of the Atlantic. I learned it from Burke. But from Burke I learned, too, with what immense consequences and effects this simple matter — the settlement of a branch of the English people on the other side of the Atlantic — was, from the time of their constitution as an independent power, certainly and inevitably charged. Let me quote his own impressive and
Burke (search for this): chapter 2
mans had now made the people of the United States as much German as English, has not yet prevailed with me. I adhere to my old persuasion, the Americans of the United States are English people on the other side of the Atlantic. I learned it from Burke. But from Burke I learned, too, with what immense consequences and effects this simple matter — the settlement of a branch of the English people on the other side of the Atlantic — was, from the time of their constitution as an independent powerBurke I learned, too, with what immense consequences and effects this simple matter — the settlement of a branch of the English people on the other side of the Atlantic — was, from the time of their constitution as an independent power, certainly and inevitably charged. Let me quote his own impressive and profound words on the acknowledgment of American independence, in 1782:-- A great revolution has happened — a revolution made, not by chopping and changing of power in any of the existing states, but by the appearance of a new state, of a new species, in a new part of the globe. It has made as great a change in all the relations, and balances, and gravitations of power, as the appearance of a new planet would in the
Hussey Vivian (search for this): chapter 2
; but we are worth nothing, says Mr. Lowell of himself and his countrymen, we are worth nothing except so far as we have disinfected ourselves of Anglicism. Mr. Hussey Vivian, the member for Glamorganshire, goes to travel in America, and when he comes back, delighted with the country and the people, he publishes his opinion that jm to be a highly aristocratic people. I suppose this may serve as a specimen of the Anglicism which is so exasperating to Mr. Lowell. I do not share it. Mr. Hussey Vivian has a keen eye for the geological and mining facts of America, but as to the political facts of that country, the real tendencies of its life, and its futurense for beauty, or the sense for social life and manners, in the nation at large, it does nothing or next to nothing. So we must not hastily pronounce, with Mr. Hussey Vivian, that American civilization suffers by its absence. Indeed they are themselves developing, it is said, a class of very rich people quite sufficiently materi
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