It is such people who keep the whole sentiment of the land up to a high standard. While the few “rather highly civilized individuals” are hopping backwards and forwards over the Atlantic to learn what is the last keynote which a pinchbeck emperor has decided on, or what is the last gore which a man-milliner has decreed, these American gentlemen and ladies, in the dignity of their own homes, are making America. It is they who maintain the national credit, it is they who steadily improve the standard of national education. If Mr. Arnold should ever see them in their own homes, it is they who will show him what is the normal type of American manners.Our Boston informant writes so crisply and smartly that one is unwilling to part with him. I can truly say that I would rather read him and quote him than join issue with him. He has seen America, and I have not. Perhaps things in America are as he says. I am sure I hope they are, for, as I have just said, I have been long convinced that English society has to transform itself, and long looking in vain for a model by which we might be guided and inspired in the bringing forth of our new civilization; and here is the model ready to hand. But I own
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must needs leaven American society, and must surely, if we can take example from it, enable us to leaven and transform our own. Leaven American society it already does, we hear:--
Boston. De Wolfe, Fiske &c Co. 361 and 365 Washington Street. 1888.
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