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

[89] scale, of a type of civilization combining all those powers which go to the building up of a truly human life — the power of intellect and knowledge, the power of beauty, the power of social life and manners, as well as the great power of conduct and religion, and the indispensable power of expansion. “Is it not the highest act of a republic,” asks Mr. Lowell, “to make men of flesh and blood, and not the marble ideals of such?” Let us grant it. “Perhaps it is the collective, not the individual humanity,” Mr. Lowell goes on, “that is to have a chance of nobler development among us.” Most true, the well-being of the many, and not of individuals and classes solely, comes out more and more distinctly to us all as the object which we must pursue. Many are to be made partakers of well-being, of civilization and humanization; we must not forget it, and America, happily, is not likely to let us forget it. But the ideal of well-being, of civilization, of humanization, is not to be, on that account lowered and coarsened.

Now the New York Nation--a newspaper which I read regularly and with profit, a newspaper which is the best, so far as my experience goes, of all American newspapers, and one of the best newspapers anywhere — the New York