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

[80] out, and the Populace nearly. This would leave the Philistines for the great bulk of the nation; a livelier sort of Philistines than our Philistine middle class which made and peopled the United States--a livelier sort of Philistine than ours, and with the pressure and the false ideal of our Barbarians taken away, but left all the more to himself, and to have his full swing. That this should be the case seemed to me natural, and that it actually was the case, everything which I could hear and read about America tended to convince me. And when my Boston friend talks of the “elegant and simple social order established in almost every small town in America, and of the group, in each, of people of good taste, good manners, good education and self-respect, peers of any people in the world,” I cannot help thinking that things are not quite so bright as he paints them, and so superior to anything of which we have experience elsewhere; that he is mixing two impressions together, the impression of individuals scattered over the country, real lovers of the humane life, but not yet numerous enough or united enough to produce much effect, and the impression of groups of worthy respectable people to be found in almost every small town of the Union, people with many merits, but not