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

I found shown in them a man, strong, resolute, and business-like, as Grant had appeared to me when I first saw him; a man with no magical personality, touched by no divine light and giving out none. I found a language all astray in its use of will and shall, should and would, an English employing the verb to conscript and the participle conscripting, and speaking in a despatch to the Secretary of War of having badly whipped the enemy; an English without charm and without high breeding. But at the same time I found a man of sterling good-sense as well as of the firmest resolution; a man, withal, humane, simple, modest; from all restless self-consciousness and desire for display perfectly free; never boastful where he himself was concerned, and where his nation was concerned seldom boastful, boastful only in circumstances where nothing but high genius or high training, I suppose, can save an American from being boastful. I found a language straightforward, nervous, firm, possessing in general the high merit of saying clearly in the fewest possible words what had to be said, and saying it, frequently, with shrewd and unexpected turns of expression. The Memoirs renewed and completed the expression which the letter given by General Badeau had made upon me. And now I want to enable