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

[94] their civilization. I am not holding a controversy with them. I am not attacking their civilization. I am much disquieted about the state of our own. But I am holding a friendly conversation with American lovers of the humane life, who offer me hopes of improving British civilization by the example of a great force of true civilization, of elegant and simple social order, developed in the northern, middle, and southwestern states of the Union. I am not going to pick holes in the civilization of those well-established States. But in a new territory, on the outskirts of the Union, I take an example of a spirit which we know well enough in the old country, and which has done much harm to our civilization; and I ask my American friends how much way this spirit — since on their borders, at any rate, they seem to have it — has made and is even now making amongst themselves; whether they feel sure of getting it under control, and that the elegant and simple social order in the older states will be too strong for it; or whether, on the other hand, it may be too strong for the elegant and simple social order.

Miss Bird then describes the Chalmers family, a family with which, on her journey from Denver to the Rocky Mountains, she lodged for