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

[102] thing;--so much is certain. And if America 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 said, a class of very rich people quite sufficiently materialized. America has not our large and unique class of gentlemen; something of it they have, of course, but it is not by any manner of means on the same scale there as here. Acting by itself, and untrammelled,