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

[73] go to America, and probably I never shall be able. But many a kind communication I re. ceive from that quarter; and when one has much discoursed on equality and on civilization, and then is told that in America a lover of these will find just what suits him, and is invited, and almost challenged, to turn one's eyes there, and to bear testimony to what one beholds, it seems ungracious or cowardly to take no notice at all of such challenges, but to go on talking of equality and civilization just as if America had never existed. True, there is Mr. Lowell's warning. Englishmen easily may fall into absurdities in criticising America, most easily of all when they do not, and cannot, see it with their own eyes, but have to speak of it from what they read. Then, too, people are sensitive; certainly, it would be safer and pleasanter to say nothing. And as the prophet Jonah, when he had a message for Nineveh, hurried off in alarm down to Joppa, and incontinently took ship there for Tarshish, in just the opposite direction, so one might find plenty of reasons for running away from the task, when one is summoned to give one's opinion of American civilization. But Ewald says that it was a sorry and unworthy calculation, petty human reasonmongering--menschliche Vernunftelei--which