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Charles Sumner (search for this): chapter 2
a succeeds in creating and installing hers, before we succeed in creating and installing ours, then they will send over help to us from America, and will powerfully influence us for our good. Let us see, then, how we both of us stand at the present moment, and what advantages the one of us has which are wanting to the other. We in England have liberty and industry and the sense for conduct, and a splendid aristocracy which feels the need for beauty and manners, and a unique class, as Mr. Charles Sumner pointed out, of gentlemen, not of the landed class or of the nobility, but cultivated and refined. America has not our splendid aristocracy, but then this splendid aristocracy is materialized, and for helping the sense 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
Goethe (search for this): chapter 2
nge in all the relations, and balances, and gravitations of power, as the appearance of a new planet would in the system of the solar world. As for my esteeming it a hard destiny which should force me to visit the United States, I will borrow Goethe's words, and say, that not the spirit is bound, but the foot ; with the best will in the world, I have never yet been able to go to America, and probably I never shall be able. But many a kind communication I re. ceive from that quarter; and whe 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
Shakespeare (search for this): chapter 2
ll its primary education, he says, America is still, from an intellectual point 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 Qu
Higginson (search for this): chapter 2
t us as we are, and not as they suppose us to be. On the other hand, from some quarters in America come reproaches to us for not speaking about America enough, for not making sufficient use of her in illustration of what we bring forward. Mr. Higginson expresses much surprise that when, for instance, I dilate on the benefits of equality, it is to France that I have recourse for the illustration and confirmation of my thesis, not to the United States. A Boston newspaper supposes me to speak find the difficulty solved in America, to find democracy a success there, with a type of equality producing such good results, that, when one preaches equality, one should illustrate its advantages not from the example of the French, but, as Mr. Higginson recommends, from 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 t
James (search for this): chapter 2
d by the writer, rather highly civilized individuals, a few in each of our great cities and their environs. The Boston newspaper observes, with a good deal of point, that it is from these exceptional enthusiasts that the heroes of the tales of Mr. James and Mr. Howells seem to be recruited. It shrewdly describes them as people who spend more than half their life in Europe, and return only to scold their agents for the smallness of their remittances ; and protests that such people will have, abe of the greatest value 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 s
Mark Twain (search for this): chapter 2
it, not from America at all, but from our own Australian colonies. The special correspondent of the Bathurst Sentinel criticises an Italian singer who, at the Sydney Theatre, plays the Count in the Somnambula; and here is the criticism: Barring his stomach, he is the finest-looking artist I have seen on the stage for years; and if he don't slide into the affections or break the gizzards of half our Sydney girls, it's a pretty certain sign there's a scarcity of balm in Gilead. This is not Mark Twain, not an American humorist at all; it is the Bathurst Sentinel. So I have gone to the Rocky Mountains for the New World Murdstone, and to Australia for the New World Quinion. I have not assailed in the least the civilization of America in those northern, middle, and southwestern states, to which Americans have a right to refer us when we seek to know their civilization, and to which they, in fact, do refer us. What I wish to say is, and I by no means even put it in the form of an assert
1782 AD (search for this): chapter 2
he 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 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 system of the solar world. As for my esteeming it a hard destiny which should force me to visit the United States, I will borrow Goethe's wo<
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