Matthew Arnold, Civilization in the United States: First and Last Impressions of America.

[71] 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 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 princes of the blood is unknown in America.” Yes, I “should find a manner of life belonging to the highest civilization, in towns, in counties, and in states whose names had never been heard” by me; and, if I could take the writer in the Atlantic Monthly to see it along with me, it would do him, says his compatriot, a great deal of good.

I do not 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