AMERICA TO-DAY _OBSERVATIONS AND REFLECTIONS_ BYWILLIAM ARCHER NEW YORKCHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS1899 CONTENTS _PART I--OBSERVATIONS_ I. The Straits of New York--When is a Ship not a Ship?--Nationality ofPassengers--A Dream Realized II. Fog in New York Harbor--The Customs--The Note-Taker'sHyperæsthesia--A Literary Car-Conductor--Mr. Kipling and the AmericanPublic--The City of Elevators III. New York a much-maligned City--Its Charm--Mr. Steevens'Antithesis--New York compared with Other Cities--ItsSlums--Advertisements--Architecture in New York and Philadelphia IV. Absence of Red Tape--"Rapid Transit" in New York--The Problem andits Solution--The Whirl of Life--New York by Night--The "White Magic" ofthe Future V. Character and Culture--American Universities--Is the American"Electric" or Phlegmatic?--Alleged Laxity of the Family Tie--Postscript:The University System VI. Washington in April--A Metropolis in the Making--The White House, the Capitol, and the Library of Congress--The Symbolism of Washington VII. American Hospitality--Instances--Conversation andStory-Telling--Overprofusion In Hospitality--Expensiveness of Life inAmerica--The American Barber--Postscript: An Anglo-American Club VIII. Boston--Its Resemblance to Edinburgh--Concord, Walden Pond, andSleepy Hollow--Is the "Yankee" Dying Out?--America for theAmericans--Detroit and Buffalo--The "Middle West" IX. Chicago--Its Splendour and Squalour--Mammoth Buildings--Wind, Dust, and Smoke--Culture--Chicago's Self-Criticism--Postscript: Social Servicein America X. New York in Spring--Central Park--New York not an Ill-GovernedCity--The United States Post Office--The Express System--Valedictory _PART II--REFLECTIONS_ North and South, I North and South, II North and South, III North and South, IV The Republic and The Empire, I The Republic and The Empire, II The Republic and The Empire, III The Republic and The Empire, IV American Literature The American Language, I The American Language, II The American Language, III The American Language, IV The letters and essays which make up this volume appeared in theLondon _Pall Mall Gazette_ and _Pall Mall Magazine_ respectively, andare reprinted by kind permission of the editors of these periodicals. The ten letters which were sent to the _Pall Mall Gazette_ appeared alsoin the _New York Times_. PART I OBSERVATIONS LETTER I The Straits of New York--When is a Ship not a Ship?--Nationality ofPassengers--A Dream Realized. R. M. S. _Lucania_. The Atlantic Ocean is geographically a misnomer, socially andpolitically a dwindling superstition. That is the chief lesson onelearns--and one has barely time to take it in--between Queenstown andSandy Hook. Ocean forsooth! this little belt of blue water that we crossbefore we know where we are, at a single hop-skip-and-jump! From northto south, perhaps, it may still count as an ocean; from east to west wehave narrowed it into a strait. Why, even for the seasick (and on thispoint I speak with melancholy authority) the Atlantic has not half theterrors of the Straits of Dover; comfort at sea being a question, not ofthe size of the waves, but of the proportion between the size of thewaves and the size of the ship. Our imagination is still beguiled by thefuss the world made over Columbus, whose exploit was intellectually andmorally rather than physically great. The map-makers, too, throw dustin our eyes by their absurd figment of two "hemispheres, " as thoughNature had sliced her orange in two, and held one half in either hand. We are slow to realise, in fact, that time is the only true measure ofspace, and that London to-day is nearer to New York than it was toEdinburgh a hundred and fifty years ago. The essential facts of thecase, as they at present stand, would come home much more closely to thepopular mind of both continents if we called this strip of sea theStraits of New York, and classed our liners, not as the successors ofColumbus's caravels, but simply as what they are: giant ferry-boatsplying with clockwork punctuality between the twin landing-stages of theEnglish-speaking world. To-morrow we shall be in New York harbour; it seems but yesterday thatwe slipped out of the Cove of Cork. As I look at the chart on thecompanion staircase, where our daily runs are marked off, I feel theabject poverty of our verbs of speed. We have not rushed, or dashed, orhurtled along--these words do grave injustice to the majesty of ourprogress. I can think of nothing but the strides of some Titan, so vastas to beggar even the myth-making imagination. It is not seven-league, no, nor hundred-league boots that we wear--we do our 520, 509, 518, 530knots at a stride. Nor is it to be imagined that we are anywhere nearthe limit of speed. Already the _Lucania's_ record is threatened by the_Oceanic_; and the _Oceanic_, if she fulfils her promises, will onlyspur on some still swifter Titan to the emprise. [A] Then, again, it ishard to believe that the difficulties are insuperable which as yetprevent us from utilising, as a point of arrival and departure, thatalmost mid-Atlantic outpost of the younger world, Newfoundland--or atthe least Nova Scotia. By this means the actual waterway between the twocontinents will be shortened by something like a third. What with theacceleration of the ferry-boats and the narrowing of the ferry, it issurely no visionary Jules-Vernism to look forward to the time when onemay set foot on American soil, within, say, sixty-five hours of leavingthe Liverpool landing-stage; supposing, that is to say, that steamnavigation be not in the meantime superseded. As yet, to be sure, the Atlantic possesses a certain strategicimportance as a coal-consuming force. To contract its time-width we haveto expand our coal-bunkers; and the ship which has crossed it in sixdays, be she ferryboat or cruiser, is apt to arrive, as it were, alittle out of breath. But even this drawback can scarcely be permanent. Science must presently achieve the storage of motive-power in some lessbulky form than that of crude coal. Then the Atlantic will be asextinct, politically, as the Great Wall of China; or, rather, it willretain for America the abiding significance which the "silver streak"possesses for England--an effectual bulwark against aggression, but ahighway to influence and world-moulding power. Think of the time when the _Lucania_ shall have fallen behind in therace, and shall be plying to Boston or Philadelphia, while larger andswifter hotel-ships shall put forth almost daily from Liverpool, Southampton, and New York! Think of the growth of intercourse which eventhe next ten years will probably bring, and the increase of mutualcomprehension involved in it! Is it an illusion of mine, or do we notalready observe in England, during the past year, a new interest andpride in our trans-Atlantic service, which now ranks close to the Navyin the popular affections? It dates, I think, from those first days ofthe late war, when the _Paris_ was vainly supposed to be in danger ofcapture by Spanish cruisers, and when all England was wishing hergod-speed. For my own taste, this sumptuous hotel-ship is rather too much of ahotel and too little of a ship. I resent the absolute exclusion of thepassengers from even the most distant view of the propelling and guidingforces. Practically, the _Lucania_ is a ship without a deck; and thedeck is to the ship what the face is to the human being. The so-calledpromenade-deck is simply a long roofed balcony on either side of thehotel building. It is roofed by the "shade deck, " which is rigidlyreserved "for navigators only. " There the true life of the ship goes on, and we are vouchsafed no glimpse of it. One is reminded of theChinaman's description of a three-masted screw steamer with two funnels:"Thlee piecee bàmboo, two piecee puff-puff, wàlk-along ìnside, no cansee. " Here the "wàlk-along, " the motive power, is "ìnside" with avengeance. I have not at this moment the remotest conception where theengine-room is, or where lies the descent to that Avernus. Not even thecommunicator-gong can be heard in the hotel. I have not set eyes on anengineer or a stoker, scarcely on a sailor. The captain I do not evenknow by sight. Occasionally an officer flits past, on his way up to ordown from the "shade deck"; I regard him with awe, and guess reverentlyat his rank. The ship's company, as I know it, consists of the purser, the doctor, and the army of stewards and stewardesses. The roof of thepromenade-deck weighs upon my brain. It shuts off the better half of thesky, the zenith. In order even to see the masts and funnels of the shipone has to go far forward or far aft and crane one's neck upward. Not asingle human being have I ever descried on the "shade-deck" or on thetowering bridge. The genii of the hundred-league boots remain not onlyinaccessible but invisible. The effect is inhuman, uncanny. All theluxury of the saloons and staterooms does not compensate for the lack ofa frank, straightforward deck. The _Lucania_, in my eyes, has noindividuality as a ship. It--I instinctively say "it, " not "she"--ismerely a rather low-roofed hotel, with sea-sickness superadded to allthe comforts of home. But a first-class hotel it is: the living goodand plentiful, if not superfine, the service excellent, and the charges, all things considered, remarkably moderate. What chiefly strikes one about the passengers is their homogeneity ofrace. Apart from a small (but influential) Semitic contingent, the wholebody is thoroughly Anglo-Saxon in type. About half are British, I takeit, and half American; but in most cases the nationality is to bedistinguished only by accent, not by any characteristic of appearance orof demeanour. The strongly-marked Semites always excepted, there is nota man or woman among the saloon passengers who strikes me as aforeigner, a person of alien race. I do not feel my sympathies chilltoward my very agreeable table-companion because he drinks ice-water atbreakfast; and he views my tea with an eye of equal tolerance. It is nottill one looks at the second-class passengers that one sees signs of theheterogeneity of the American people; and then one remembers withmisgivings the emigrants who crowded on board at Queenstown, with theirhousehold goods done up in bundles and gaping, ill-roped boxes. Thethought of them recalls an anecdote which was new to me the other day, and may be fresh to some of my readers. In any case it will bearrepetition. An Irishman coming to America for the first time, found NewYork gay with bunting as he sailed up the harbour. He asked an Americanfellow-passenger the reason of the display, and was told it was inhonour of Evacuation Day. "And what's that?" he inquired. "Why, the daythe British troops evacuated New York. " Presently an Englishman came upto the Irishman and asked him if he knew what the flags were for. "ForEvacuation Day, to be sure!" was the reply. "What is Evacuation Day?"asked the Sassenach. "The day we drove you blackguards out of thecountry, bedad!" was the immediate reply. If not literally true, thestory is at least profoundly typical. There is a light on our starboard bow: my first glimpse, for two andtwenty years, of America. It has been literally the dream of my life torevisit the United States. Not once, but fifty times, have I dreamedthat the ocean (which loomed absurdly large even in my waking thoughts)was comfortably crossed, and I was landing in New York. I can clearlyrecall at this moment some of the fantastic shapes the city put on inmy dreams--utterly different, of course, from my actual recollections ofit. Well, that dream is now realised; the gates of the Western world areopening to me. What experience awaits me I know not; but this I do know, that the emotion with which I confront it is not one of idle curiosity, or even of calmly sympathetic interest. It is not primarily to myintelligence, but to my imagination, that the word "America" appeals. Tomany people that word conveys none but prosaic associations; to me it iselectric with romance. Only one other word in existence can give me acomparable thrill; the word one sees graven on a roadside pillar as onewalks down the southern slope of an Alpine pass: ITALIA. But that wordcarries the imagination backward only, whereas AMERICA stands for themeeting-place of the past and the future. What the land of Cooper andMayne Reid was to my boyish fancy, the land of Washington and Lincoln, Hawthorne and Emerson, is to my adult thoughts. Does this mean that Iapproach America in the temper of a romantic schoolboy? Perhaps; but, bias for bias, I would rather own to that of the romantic schoolboy thanto that of the cynical Old-Worldling. FOOTNOTES: [Footnote A: The _Oceanic_, it appears, is designed to break the recordin punctuality, not in speed. Nevertheless there are several indicationsthat our engineers are not resting on their oars, but will presently puton another spurt. The very shortest Atlantic passage, I understand, hasbeen made by a German ship. Surely England and America cannot long becontent to leave the record for speed, of all things, in the hands ofGermany. ] LETTER II Fog in New York Harbour--The Customs--The Note-Taker's Hyperæsthesia--aLiterary Car-Conductor--Mr. Kipling and the American Public--The City ofElevators. NEW YORK. By way of making us feel quite at home, New-York receives us with a dankScotch mist. On the shores of Staten Island the leafless trees stand outgrey and gaunt against the whity-grey snow, a legacy, no doubt, from thegreat blizzard. Though I keep a sharp look-out, I can descry no LibertyEnlightening the World. Liberty (_absit omen!_) is wrapped away in grimycotton-wool. There, however, are the "sky-scraper" buildings, loomingout through the mist, like the Jotuns in Niflheim of Scandinavianmythology. They are grandiose, certainly, and not, to my thinking, ugly. That word has no application in this context. "Pretty" and "ugly"--whyshould we for ever carry about these æsthetic labels in our pockets, andinsist on dabbing them down on everything that comes in our way? If wecannot get, with Nietzsche, _Jenseits von Gut und Böse_, we might atleast allow our souls an occasional breathing-space in a region "Back ofthe Beautiful and the Ugly, " as they say in President's English. While Iam trying to formulate my feelings with regard to this deputation ofgiants which the giant Republic sends down to the waterside to welcomeus, behold, we have crept up abreast of the Cunard wharf, and therestands a little crowd of human welcomers, waving handkerchiefs andAmerican flags. An energetic tug-boat butts her head gallantly into theflank of the huge liner, in order to help her round. She glides up toher berth, the gangway is run out, and at last I set foot uponAmerican--lumber. What are my emotions? I have only one; single, simple, easily-expressed:dread of the United States Custom House. Its terrors and its tyrannieshave been depicted in such lurid colours on the other side that I amalmost surprised to observe no manifest ogres in uniform caps, but only, it would seem, ordinary human beings. And, on closer acquaintanceship, they prove to be civil and even helpful human beings, with none of thelazy superciliousness which so often characterises the Europeantoll-taker. At first the scene is chaotic enough, but, by aid of anarrangement in alphabetical groups, cosmos soon emerges. The system bywhich you declare your dutiable goods and are assigned an examiner, andif necessary an appraiser, is admirably simple and free from red-tape. Ishall not describe it, for it would be more tedious in description thanin act. Enough that the whole thing is conducted, so far as I could see, promptly, efficiently, and with perfect good temper. One briefdiscussion I heard, between an official and an American citizen, who washeavily assessed on some article or articles which he declared to havebeen manufactured in America and taken out of the country by himselfonly a few months before. The official insisted that there was no proofof this; but just as the discussion threatened to become an altercation(a "scrap" they would call it here) some one found a way out. The goodswere forwarded in bond to the traveller's place of residence (Hartford, I think) where he declared that he could produce proof of their Americanorigin. For myself, I had to pay two dollars and a half on somemagic-lantern slides. I could have imported the lantern, had I ownedone, free of charge, as a philosophical instrument used in myprofession; but the courts have held, it appears, that though thelantern comes under that rubric, the slides do not. I cannot pretend tograsp the distinction, or to admire the system which necessitates it. But whatever the economic merits or demerits of the tariff, I takepleasure in bearing testimony to the civility with which I found itenforced. My companion and I express our baggage to our hotel and jump on theplatform of a horse-car on West-street, skirting the wharves. Theroadway is ill paved, certainly, and the clammy atmosphere has congealedon its surface into an oily black mud; while in the middle of the sidestreets one can see relics of the blizzard in the shape of little grubbyglaciers slowly oozing away. The prospect is not enlivening; nor do thelow brick houses, given up to nondescript longshore traffic, and freelypunctuated with gilt-lettered saloons, add to its impressiveness. Squalid it is without doubt, this particular aspect of New York; butwhat is the squalor of West-street to that of Limehouse or Poplar? Areour own dock thoroughfares always paved to perfection? And if we had ablizzard like that of three weeks ago, how long would its vestigeslinger in the side-streets of Millwall? Even as I mark the grimness ofthe scene, I am conscious of a sort of hyperæsthesia against which oneought to be on guard. The note-taking traveller is very apt to forgetthat the mere act of note-taking upsets his normal perceptivity. Hebecomes feverishly observant, morbidly critical. He comparesincommensurables, and flies to ideal standpoints. He is so eager todescry differences, that he overlooks similarities--nay, identities. Thus only can I account for many statements about New York, occurring inthe pages of recent and reputable travellers, both French and English, which I find to be exaggerated almost to the point of monstrosity. Whatshould we say of an American who should criticise the Commercial Roadfrom the point of view of Fifth Avenue? After a week's experience of NewYork, I cannot but fancy that certain travellers I could mention havebeen guilty of similar errors of proportion. To return to our street-car platform. The conductor gathers from ourconversation that we have just landed from the English steamer, and heat once overflows upon the one great topic of all classes in New York. "I s'pose you've heard, " he says, "that Kipling has been very ill?" Yes, we had heard of his illness before we left England. "He's pullingthrough now, though, " says the conductor with heartfelt satisfaction. That, too, we had ascertained on board. "He ought to be the nextpoet-laureate, " our friend continues eagerly; "_he_ don't follow nobeaten tracks. He cuts a road for himself, every time, right through;and a mighty good road, too. " He then proceeded to make some remarks, which in the rattle of the street I did not quite catch, about"carpet-bag knights. " I gathered that he held a low opinion of thepresent wearer of the bays, and confounded him (not inexcusably) withone or other of his titled compeers. My companion and I were too muchtaken aback to pursue the theme and ascertain our friend's opinions onMr. Ruskin, Mr. Meredith, Mrs. Humphry Ward, and Miss Marie Corelli. Think of it! We have travelled three thousand miles to find atram-conductor whose eyes glisten as he tells us that Kipling is better, and who discusses with a great deal of sense and acuteness the questionof the English poet-laureateship! Could anything be more marvellous ormore significant? Said I not well when I declared the Atlantic Ocean ofless account than the Straits of Dover? This was indeed a welcome to the New World. Fate could not have deviseda more ingenious and at the same time tactful way of making us feel athome; though at home, indeed, a Mile End 'bus conductor is scarcely theauthority one would turn to for enlightened views upon the Laureateship. The mere fact of our friend's having heard of Mr. Kipling's existencestruck us as surprising enough, until we learned that the poet of TommyAtkins is at the present moment quite the most famous person in theUnited States. When his illness was at its height, hourly bulletins wereposted in factories and workshops, and people meeting in the streetsasked each other, "How is he?" without deeming it necessary to supply anantecedent to the pronoun. It was grammatically as well as spiritually acase of "Kipling understood. " At a low music-hall into which I strayed one evening, one of the niggercorner-men sang a song of which the nature may be sufficiently divinedfrom the refrain, "And the tom-cat was the cause of it all. " This lyricbeing loudly encored, the performer came forward, and, to myastonishment, began to recite a long series of doggerel verses upon Mr. Kipling's illness, setting forth how "His strong will made him famous, and his strong will pulled him through. " They were imbecile, they were maudlin, they were in the worst possibletaste. So far as the reciter was concerned, they were absolutelyinsincere clap-trap. But the crowded audience received them withrapture; and the very fact that an astute caterer should serve up thisparticular form of clap-trap showed how the sympathy with Mr. Kiplinghad permeated even the most un-literary stratum of the public. To anEnglishman, nothing can be more touching than to find on every hand thisenthusiastic affection for the poet of the Seven Seas--a writer, too, who has not dealt over-tenderly with American susceptibilities, and has, by sheer force of genius, lived down a good deal of unpopularity. For the moment, neither President McKinley nor Mr. Fitzsimmons can viewith him in notoriety. His sole rival as a popular hero is AdmiralDewey, whose name is in every mouth and on every boarding. He is the oneliving celebrity whom the Italian image-vendors admit to their pantheon, where he rubs shoulders with Shakespeare, Dante, Beethoven, and theVenus of Milo. It is related that, at a Camp of Exercise last year, President McKinley chanced to stray beyond bounds, and on returning wasconfronted by a sentry, who dropped his rifle and bade him halt. "I haveforgotten the pass-word, " said Mr. McKinley, "but if you will look atme you will see that I am the President. " "If you were George Deweyhimself, " was the reply, "you shouldn't get by here without thepass-word. " This anecdote has a flavour of ancient history, but it isaptly brought up to date. [B] We bid adieu to our poetical conductor, take a cross-town car, and arepresently pushing at the revolving doors--a draught-excludingplate-glass turn-stile--of a vast red-brick hotel, luxurious andlabyrinthine. A short colloquy with the clerk at the bureau, and we findourselves in a gorgeously upholstered elevator, whizzing aloft to thethirteenth floor. Not the top floor--far from it. If you could slice offthe stories above the thirteenth, as you slice off the top of an egg, and plant them down in Europe, they would of themselves make a biggishhotel according to our standards. This first elevator voyage is theprelude to how many others! For the past week I seem to have spent thebest part of my time in elevators. I must have travelled miles on milesat right angles to the earth's surface. If all my ascensions could beput together, they would out-top Olympus and make Ossa a wart. This is the first sensation of life in New York--you feel that theAmericans have practically added a new dimension to space. They movealmost as much on the perpendicular as on the horizontal plane. Whenthey find themselves a little crowded, they simply tilt a street on endand call it a sky scraper. This hotel, for example (theWaldorf-Astoria), is nothing but a couple of populous streets soaring upinto the air instead of crawling along the ground. When I was here in1877, I remember looking with wonder at the _Tribune_ building, hard bythe Post Office, which was then considered a marvel of architecturaldaring. Now it is dwarfed into absolute insignificance by a dozenCyclopean structures on every hand. It looks as diminutive as theAdelphi Terrace in contrast with the Hotel Cecil. I am credibly informedthat in some of the huge down-town buildings they run "express"elevators, which do not stop before the fifteenth, eighteenth, twentiethfloor, as the case may be. Some such arrangement seems very necessary, for the elevator _Bummelzugs_, which stop at every floor, take quite anappreciable slice out of the average New York day. I wonder thatAmerican ingenuity has not provided a system of pneumaticpassenger-tubes for lightning communication with these aërial suburbs, these "mansions in the sky. " FOOTNOTES: [Footnote B: A similar story is told of the Confederate President. Challenged by a sentinel, he said, "Look at me and you will see that Iam President Davis. " "Well, " said the soldier, "you _do_ look like aused postage-stamp. Pass, President Davis!"] LETTER III New York a much-maligned City--Its Charm--Mr. Steevens' Antitheses--NewYork compared with Other Cities--Its Slums--Advertisements--Architecturein New York and Philadelphia. NEW YORK. Many superlatives have been applied to New York by her own children, bythe stranger within her gates, and by the stranger without her gates, ata safe distance. I, a newcomer, venture to apply what I believe to be anew superlative, and to call her the most maligned city in the world. Even sympathetic observers have exaggerated all that is uncouth, unbeautiful, unhealthy in her life, and overlooked, as it seems to me, her all-pervading charm. One must be a pessimist indeed to feel noexhilaration on coming in contact with such intensity of upward-strivinglife as meets one on every hand in this league-long island city, stretching oceanward between her eastern Sound and her western estuary, and roofed by a radiant dome of smokeless sky. "Upward-striving life, " Isay, for everywhere and in every branch of artistic effort the desirefor beauty is apparent, while at many points the achievement isremarkable and inspiriting. I speak, of course, mainly of materialbeauty; but it is hard to believe that so marked an impulse toward thegood as one notes in architecture, painting, sculpture, and literature, can be unaccompanied by a cognate impulse toward moral beauty, even inrelation to civic life. The New Yorker's pride in New York is much morealert and active than the Londoner's pride in London; and this feelingmust ere long make itself effective and dominant. For the greatadvantage, it seems to me, that America possesses over the Old World isits material and moral plasticity. Even among the giant structures ofthis city, one feels that there is nothing rigid, nothing oppressive, nothing inaccessible to the influence of changing conditions. If thebuildings are Cyclopean, so is the race that reared them. The materialworld seems as clay on the potter's wheel, visibly taking on the impressof the human spirit; and the human spirit, as embodied in this superblyvital people, seems to be visibly thrilling to all the forces ofcivilisation. One of the latest, and certainly one of the most keen-sighted, ofEnglish travellers in America is Mr. G. W. Steevens, a master journalistif ever there was one. I turn to his _Land of the Dollar_ and I find NewYork writ down "uncouth, formless, piebald, chaotic. " "Never have Iseen, " says Mr. Steevens, "a city more hideous. .. . Nothing is given tobeauty; everything centres in hard utility. " Mr. Steevens must forgiveme for saying that this is simply libellous. It is true, I do not quotehim fairly: I omit his laudatory antitheses. The truncated phrase in theabove passage reads in the original "more hideous or more splendid, " andafter averring that "nothing is given to beauty, " Mr. Steevensimmediately proceeds to celebrate the beauty of many New York buildings. Are we to understand, then, that the architects thought of nothing but"hard utility, " and that it was some æsthetic divinity that shaped theirblocks, rough-hew them how they might? For my part, I cannot see howtruth is to result from the clash of contradictory falsehoods. There area few cities more splendid than New York; many more hideous. In point ofconcentrated architectural magnificence, there is nothing in New York tocompare with the Vienna Ringstrasse, from the Opera House to the VotiveChurch. In the splendour which proceeds from ordered uniformity andspaciousness, Paris is, of course, incomparable; while a Scotchman mayperhaps be excused for holding that, as regards splendour of situation, Edinburgh is hard to beat. Nor is there any single prospect in New Yorkso impressive as the panorama of London from Waterloo Bridge, when ithappens to be visible--that imperial sweep of river frontage from theHouses of Parliament to the Tower. Except in the new region, far up theHudson, New York shares with Dublin the disadvantage of turning hermeaner aspects to her river fronts, though the majesty of the riversthemselves, and the grandiose outlines of the Brooklyn Bridge, largelycompensate for this defect. In the main, then, the splendour of New Yorkis as yet sporadic. It is emerging on every hand from comparativemeanness and commonplace. At no point can one as yet say, "This prospectis finer than anything Europe can show. " But everywhere there are purplepatches of architectural splendour; and one can easily foresee the timewhen Fifth Avenue, the whole circuit of Central Park, and the up-townriverside region will be magnificent beyond compare. As for the superlative hideousness attributed by Mr. Steevens to NewYork, I can only inquire, in the local idiom: "What is the matter withGlasgow?" Or, indeed, with Hull? or Newcastle? or the north-east regionsof London? No doubt New York contains some of the very worst slums inthe world. That melancholy distinction must be conceded her. But simplyto the outward eye the slums of New York have not the monotonoushideousness of our English "warrens of the poor. " In spite of her hardwinter, New York cannot quite forget that her latitude is that of Madridand Naples, not of London, or even of Paris. Her slums have a Southernair about them, a variety of contour and colour--in some aspects onemight almost say a gaiety--unknown to Whitechapel or Bethnal Green. Forone thing, the ubiquitous balconies and fire escapes serve of themselvesto break the monotony of line, and lend, as it were, a peculiar textureto the scene; to say nothing of the oportunities they afford for thedisplay of multifarious shreds and patches of colour. Then the housesthemselves are often brightly, not to say loudly, painted; so that inthe clear, sparkling atmosphere characteristic of New York, the mostsqualid slum puts on a many-coloured Southern aspect, which suggestsNaples or Marseilles rather than the back streets of any English city. Add to this that the inhabitants are largely of Southern origin, and areapt, whenever the temperature will permit, to carry on the main part oftheir daily lives out of doors; and you can understand that, appallingas poverty may be in New York, the average slum is not so dank, dismal, and suicidally monotonous as a street of a similar status in London. "The whole city, " says Mr. Steevens, "is plastered, and papered, andpainted with advertisements;" and he instances the huge "H-O" (whateverthat may mean) which confronts one as one sails up the harbour, and theomnipresent "Castoria" placards. Here Mr. Steevens shows symptoms of thenote-taker's hyperæsthesia. The facts he states are undeniable, but theimplication that advertisement is carried to greater excess in New Yorkthan in London and other European cities seems to me utterly groundless. The "H-O" advertisement is not one whit more monstrous than, forinstance, the huge announcements of cheap clothing-shops, &c. , paintedall over the ends of houses, that deface the railway approaches toParis; nor is it so flagrant and aggressive as the illuminatedadvertisements of whisky and California wines that vulgarise the augustspectacle of the Thames by night. It is true that the proprietors of"Castoria" have occupied nearly every blank wall that is visible fromBrooklyn Bridge; but their advertisements are so far from garish that Ishould scarcely have noticed them had not Mr. Steevens called myattention to them. Sky-signs, as Mr. Steevens admits, are unknown in NewYork; so are the flashing out-and-in electric advertisements which makenight hideous in London. One or two large steady-burning advertisementsirradiate Madison Square of an evening; but being steady they arecomparatively inoffensive. Twenty years ago, when I crossed thecontinent from San Francisco, I noticed with disgust the advertisementsstencilled on every second rock in the canyons of Nevada, and defacingevery coign of vantage around Niagara. Whether this abuse continues Iknow not; but I know that the pill placards and sauce puffs whichblossom in our English meadows along every main line of railway arequite as offensive. Far be it from me to deny that advertising iscarried to deplorable excesses in America; but in picking this out as adifferentia, Mr. Steevens shows that his intentness of observation inNew York has for the moment dimmed his mental vision of London. It is acase, I fancy, in which the expectation was father to the thought. Similarly, Mr. Steevens notes, "No chiropodist worthy of the name butkeeps at his door a modelled human foot the size of a cab-horse; andother trades go and do likewise. " The "cab-horse" is a monumentalexaggeration; but it is true that some chiropodists use as a sign a footof colossal proportions--the size of a small sheep, let us say, if wemust adopt a zoological standard. So far good; but the implication thatthe streets of New York swarm, like a scene in a harlequinade, withsimilarly Brobdingnagian signs is quite unfounded. Thus it is, I think, that travellers are apt to seize on isolated eccentricities orextravagances (have we no monstrous signs in England?) and treat them astypical. Mr. Steevens came to America prepared to find everythinggigantic, and the chiropodist's foot so agreeably fulfilled hisexpectation that he thought it unnecessary to look any further--"ex pedeHerculem. "[C] The architecture of New York, according to Mr. Steevens, is "theoutward expression of the freest, fiercest individualism. .. . Seeing it, you can well understand the admiration of an American for somethingordered and proportioned--for the Rue de Rivoli or Regent Street. " Iheard this admiration emphatically expressed the other day by one of theforemost and most justly famous of American authors; but, unlike Mr. Steevens, I could not understand it. "What!" I said, "you wouldHaussmannise New York! You would reduce the glorious variety of FifthAvenue to the deadly uniformity of the Avenue de l'Opéra, where eachblock of buildings reproduces its neighbour, as though they had all beenstamped by one gigantic die!" Such an architectural ideal isinconceivable to me. It is all very well for a few short streets, for asquare or two, for a quadrant like that of Regent Street, or a crescentor circus like those of Bath or Edinburgh. But to apply it throughout awhole quarter of a city, or even throughout the endless vistas of agreat American street, would be simply maddening. Better the mostheaven-storming or sky-scraping audacity of individualism than anyattempt to transform New York into a Fourierist phalanstery or a modelprison. I do not doubt that there will one day be some legal restrictionon Towers of Babel, and that the hygienic disadvantages of themicrobe-breeding "well" or air-shaft will be more fully recognised thanthey are at present. A time may come, too, when the ideal of an unforcedharmony in architectural groupings may replace the now dominant instinctof aggressive diversity. But whatever developments the future may havein store, I must own my gratitude to the "fierce individualism" of thepresent for a new realisation of the possibilities of architecturalbeauty in modern life. At almost every turn in New York, one comesacross some building that gives one a little shock of pleasure. Sometimes, indeed, it is the pleasure of recognising an old friend in anew place--a patch of Venice or a chunk of Florence transported bodilyto the New World. The exquisite tower of the Madison Square Garden, forinstance, is modelled on that of the Giralda, at Seville; while the newUniversity Club, on Fifth Avenue, is simply a Florentine fortress-palaceof somewhat disproportionate height. But along with a good deal of sheerreproduction of European models, one finds a great deal of ingeniousand inventive adaptation, to say nothing of a very delicate taste in thetreatment of detail. New York abounds, it is true, with monuments ofmore than one bygone and detestable period of architectural fashion; butthey are as distinctly survivals from a dead past as is the woodenshanty which occupies one of the best sites on Fifth Avenue, in the veryshadow of the new Delmonico's. I wish tasteless, conventional, andmachine-made architecture were as much of a "back-number" in England asit is here. A practised observer could confidently date any prominentbuilding in New York, to within a year or two, by its architecturalmerit; and the greater the merit the later the year. In short, architecture is here a living art. Go where you will in theseup-town regions, you can see imagination and cultured intelligence inthe act, as it were, of impressing beauty of proportion and detail uponbrick and terra-cotta, granite and marble. And domestic or middle-classarchitecture is not neglected. The American "master builders" do notconfine themselves to towers and palaces, but give infinite thought andloving care to "homes for human beings. " The average old-fashioned NewYork house, so far as I have seen it, is externally unattractive (thecharacteristic material, a sort of coffee-coloured stone, being trulyhideous), and internally dark, cramped, and stuffy. But modern houses, even of no special pretensions, are generally delightful, with theirpolished wood floors and fittings, and their airy suites of rooms. TheAmerican architect has a great advantage over his English colleague inthe fact that in furnace-heated houses only the bedrooms require to beshut off with doors. The halls and public rooms can be grouped so that, when the curtains hung in their wide doorways are drawn back, two, three, or four rooms are open to the eye at once, and charming effectsof space and light-and-shade can be obtained. Of this advantage themodern house-planner makes excellent use, and I have seen more than onequite modest family house which, without any sacrifice of comfort, givesone a sense of almost palatial spaciousness. An architectural exhibitionwhich I saw the other day proved that equal or even greater care andattention is being bestowed upon the country house, in which acharacteristically American style is being developed, mainly founded, Itake it, upon the suave and graceful classicism of Colonialarchitecture. The wide "piazza" is its most noteworthy feature, and theopportunity it offers for beautiful cloister-work is being utilised tothe full. Furthermore, the large attendance at the exhibition showedwhat a keen interest the public takes in the art--a symptom of highvitality. In Philadelphia, too, where I spent some time last week, there is a gooddeal of exquisite architecture to be seen. The old Philadelphia dwellinghouse, "simplex munditiis, " with its plain red-brick front and whitemarble steps, has a peculiar charm for me; but it, of course, is not aproduct of the present movement. I do not know the date of some lovelywhite marble palazzetti scattered about the Rittenhouse Square region;but the Art Club on Broad Street, and the Houston Club for Students ofthe University of Pennsylvania, are both quite recent buildings, andboth very beautiful. I could mention several other buildings that are, as they say here, "pretty good" (a phrase of high commendation); but Ihad better get safely out of New York before I enlarge on the merits ofPhiladelphia. There is only one city the New Yorker despises more thanPhiladelphia, and that is Brooklyn. The New York schoolboy speaks ofPhiladelphia as "the place the chestnuts go to when they die;" and tothe most popular wit in New York at this moment (an AmericanisedEnglishman, by the way) is attributed the saying, "Mr. So-and-so hasthree daughters--two alive, and one in Philadelphia. " Six differentpeople have related this gibe to me; it is only less admired than thesame gentleman's observation as he alighted from an electric car at thefurther end of the Suspension Bridge, when he heaved a deep sigh, andremarked, "In the midst of life we are in Brooklyn. " Another favouriteanecdote in New York is that of the Philadelphian who went to a doctorand complained of insomnia. The doctor gave him a great deal of sageadvice as to diet, exercise, and so forth, concluding, "If after thatyou haven't better nights, let me see you again. " "But you mistake, doctor, " the patient replied; "I sleep all right at night--it's in thedaytime I can't sleep!" FOOTNOTES: [Footnote C: One method of advertisement which I observed in Chicago hasnot yet, so far as I know, been introduced into England. One of thewindows of a vast dry-goods store on State Street was fitted up as adentists parlour; and when I passed a young lady was reclining in theoperating-chair and having her teeth stopped, to the no smalldelectation of a little crowd which blocked the side-walk. ] LETTER IV Absence of Red Tape--"Rapid Transit" in New York--The Problem and itsSolution--The Whirl of Life--New York by Night--The "White Magic" of theFuture. NEW YORK. Whatever turn her fiscal policy may take in the future, I hope Americawill keep an absolutely prohibitive duty upon the import of red tape, while at the same time discouraging the home manufacture of the article. The absence of red tape is, to me, one of the charms of life in thiscountry. One gathers, indeed, that the art of running a CircumlocutionOffice is carried to a high pitch in the political sphere. But there itis exercised with a definite object; it is a means to an end, cunninglydevised and skillfully applied; it is not a mere matter of instinct, inertia, and routine. The Tite Barnacles of Dickens's satire wereperfectly honest people according to their lights. They were sincerelyconvinced that the British Empire would crumble to pieces the momentits ligaments of red tape were in the slightest degree relaxed. Theirstrength lay in the fact that they represented an innate tendency in thenation, or at any rate in the dominant class at the period of whichDickens wrote. In America there is no such innate tendency. The TiteBarnacles do not imagine or pretend that they are saving the Republic;they simply make use of a convenient political machinery to serve theirprivate ends. Therefore their position, however strong it may seem forthe moment, is insecurely founded. It rests upon no moral basis, itfinds no stronghold in the national character. Outsiders may think theaverage American citizen strangely tolerant of abuses, and indeed I findhim smiling with placid amusement at things which, were I in his place, would make my blood boil. But he is under no illusion as to the realnature of these things. An abuse remains an abuse in his eyes, though hemay not for the moment see his way to rectifying it. The red tape whichis used to embarrass justice or "tie up" reform commands no reverenceeven from the party that employs it. Cynicism may endure for the night, but indignation ariseth in the morning. The American character, in a word, does not naturally run to red tape. Observe, for instance, the system of transit in New York: it isadmirably successful in grappling with a very difficult problem, and itssuccess proceeds from the absence of by-laws and restrictions, theomnipresence of good-nature and common-sense. The problem is rendereddifficult, not only by the enormous numbers to be conveyed, but by thestocking-like configuration of Manhattan Island. The business quarter ofNew York is in the foot, the residential quarters in the calf and knee. Therefore there is a great rush of people down to the foot in themorning and up to the knee in the afternoon. The business quarter ofLondon is like the hub of a wheel, from which the railway and omnibuslines radiate like spokes. In New York there is very little radiation ordispersion of the multitude. Practically the whole tide sets down anarrow channel in the morning, and up again in the evening. At the time, then, of these tidal waves, it is a flat impossibility that transit canbe altogether comfortable. The "elevated" trains and electric trolleysare overcrowded, certainly; but you can always find a place in them, andthey carry you so rapidly that the discomfort is rendered as littleirksome as possible. A society has been formed, I see, to agitateagainst this overcrowding; but it seems to me it will only waste itspains. Let it agitate for an underground railway, by all means; and if, as I gather, the underground railway scheme is obstructed byself-seeking vested interests, let it do its best to break down theobstruction. Until some altogether new means of transport are provided, the attempt to restrict the number of passengers which a car or trolleymay carry is, I think, antisocial, and must prove futile. The force ofpublic convenience would break the red-tape barrier like a cobweb. Thetrains and trolleys follow each other at the very briefest intervals; itdoes not seem possible that a greater number should be run on theexisting lines; and, that being so, there is no alternative betweenovercrowding and the far greater inconvenience of indefinite delay. Fancy having to "take a number, " as they do in Paris, and await yourturn for a seat! New York would be simply paralysed. It is needless topoint out, of course, that where steam or electricity is the motivepower there is no cruelty to animals in overcrowding. The American people, rightly and admirably as it seems to me, choose thelesser of two evils, and minimise it by good temper and mutual civility. At a certain hour of every morning, the "L" railroad trains are asdensely packed as our Metropolitan trains on Boat-Race Day. There arepeople clinging in clusters to each of the straps, and even theplatforms between the cars are crowded to the very couplings. It oftenappears hopelessly impossible for any new-comer to squeeze in, or forthose who are wedged in the middle of a long car to force their way out. Yet when the necessity arises, no force has to be applied. People managesomehow or other to "welcome the coming, speed the parting guest. " Everyone recognises that cantankerous obstructiveness would only make mattersworse, nay, absolutely intolerable. The first comer makes no attempt toinsist upon his position of advantage, because he knows that to-morrowhe may be the last comer. The sense of individual inconvenience isswamped in the sense of general convenience. People laugh and ratherenjoy the joke when a too sudden start or an abrupt curve sends a wholegroup of them cannoning up against one another. It must be rememberedthat the transit is rapid, so that there is no irritating sense ofwasted time: and that the cars are brilliantly lighted, and, on thewhole, well ventilated, so that there is no fog, smoke, or sulphurousair to get on the nerves and strain the temper. The scene as a whole, even on a wet, disagreeable evening, is not depressing, but rathercheerful. For my part, I regard it with positive pleasure, as amanifestation of the national character. Less admirable, to be sure, isthe public acquiescence in the political manoeuvring, which blocks theproposed underground railway. Yet the opponents of the scheme havedoubtless something to say on their side. It appears, at any rate, thatthe profits of the "L" road are not exorbitant. It is said to be onlythrough overcrowding that it pays at all. The passengers it seats barelysuffice to cover expenses, and "the profits hang on to the straps. " Idealists hope that when the underground comes, the elevated will go;but I, as an outsider, cannot share his hope. In the first place, Idon't see how the mere substitution of one line for another is torelieve the congestion of traffic; in the second place, the elevatedseems to me an admirable institution, which it would be a great pity toabolish. Even æsthetically there is much to be said for it. The road, itself, to be sure, does not add to the beauty of the avenues alongwhich it runs, but it is not by any means the eyesore one might imagine;and the trains, with their light, graceful, and elegantly-proportionedcars, so different from our squat and formless railway carriages, seemto me a positively beautiful feature of the city life. They are not verynoisy, they are not very smoky, and they will be smokeless and almostnoiseless when they are run by electricity. The discomfort they cause, to dwellers on the avenues is, I am sure, greatly exaggerated. Peoplewho do not live on the avenues suffer in their sympathetic imaginationmuch more than the actual martyrs to the "L" road suffer in fact. Imagination makes cowards of us all. For my part, I endured agonies fromthe rush, whirl and clatter of New York before I left London; but here Ifind nothing that, to healthy nerves, is not rather enjoyable thanotherwise. Neither up town nor down town is the traffic so dense, theroar and bustle so continuous, as that of London; while the service oftrains and cars is so excellent and so simply arranged that it costsmuch less thought, effort, and worry to "get about" in Manhattan than inMiddlesex. In saying this I may perhaps offend Americansusceptibilities. There is nothing we moderns are more apt to brag ofthan the nervous overstrain of our life. But sincerity comes beforecourtesy, and I must gently but firmly decline to allow New York amonopoly of neurasthenia, or of the conditions that produce it. One great difference is, I take it, that while New York exhausts it alsostimulates, whereas the days of the year when there is any positivestimulus in the air of London may be counted on the ten fingers. Muggyand misty days do occur here, it is true; but though the natives tell methat this month of March has been exceptionally unpleasant, theprevailing impression I have received is that of a lofty and radiantvault of sky, with keen, sweet, limpid air that one drank in eagerly, like sparkling wine. More than once, after a slight snowfall, I haveseen the air full of dancing particles of light, like the gold leaf inDantzic brandy. One of the most impressive things I ever saw, though Idid not then realise its tragic significance, was the huge column ofsmoke that rose into the clear blue air from the Windsor Hotel fire. Ihappened to come out on Fifth Avenue, close to the Manhattan Club, justas the tail of the St. Patrick's Day procession was passing; and, looking up the avenue after it, I was ware of a gigantic white pillarstanding motionless, as it seemed to me, and cleaving the limitless bluedome almost to the zenith. The procession moved quietly on; no oneappeared to take any notice; and as fires are ineffective in thedaylight, I turned down the avenue instead, of up, and saw no more ofthe spectacle. But I shall never forget that "pillar of cloud by day, "standing out in the sunshine, white as marble or sea foam. At night, again, under the purple, star-lit sky, street life in thecentral region of New York is indescribably exhilarating. From UnionSquare to Herald Square, and even further up, Broadway and many of thecross streets flash out at dusk into the most brilliant illumination. Theatres, restaurants, stores, are outlined in incandescent lamps; thehuge electric trolleys come sailing along in an endless stream, profusely jewelled with electricity; and down the thickly-gemmed vistaof every cross street one can see the elevated trains, like luminouswinged serpents, skimming through the air. [D] The great restaurants arecrowded with gaily-dressed merry-makers; and altogether there is asense of festivity in the air, without any flagrantly meretriciouselement in it, which I plead guilty to finding very enjoyable. From themoral, and even from the loftily æsthetic point of view, this gaudy, glittering Vanity Fair is no doubt open to criticism. What reconciles meto it æsthetically is the gemlike transparency of its colouring. Garishit is, no doubt, but not in the least stifling, smoky, or lurid. Theapplication of electricity--light divorced from smoke and heat--to thebeautifying of city life is as yet in its infancy. Even the Americanshave scarcely got beyond the point of making lavish use of the rawmaterial. But the raw material is beautiful in itself, and in thispellucid air (the point to which one always returns) it produces magicaleffects. The other night, at a restaurant, I sat at the next table to Mr. Edison, and could not but look with interest and admiration at his furrowed, anxious, typically American and truly beautiful face. Here, if you like, was an example of nervous overstrain; but the soft and yet brilliantlight of the restaurant was in itself a sufficient reminder that theoverstrain had not been incurred for nothing. Electricity is the true"white magic" of the future; and here, with his pallid face and silverhair, sat the master magician--one of the great light-givers of theworld. A light-giver, I think, in more than a merely material sense. Themoral influence of the electric lamp, its effect upon the hygiene of thesoul, has not yet been duly estimated. But even in a merely materialsense, what has not the Edison movement, as it may be called, done forthis city of New York! Its influence is felt on every hand, in comfort, convenience, and beauty. The lavish use of electricity, both as anilluminant and as a motive power, combines with its climate, itssituation, and its architecture to make New York one of the mostfascinating cities in the world. Why, good Americans, when they die, should go to Paris, is a theological enigma which more and more puzzlesme. POSTSCRIPT. --Since my return to England, I have carefully reconsideredmy impression that the rush, whirl, and clamour of street life isgreater in London than in New York. Every day confirms it. On our mainthoroughfares, the stream of omnibuses is quite as unbroken as thestream of electric and cable cars in New York; our van traffic is atleast as heavy; and we have in addition the host of creeping "growlers"and darting hansoms, which is almost without counterpart in New York. Iknow of no crossing in New York so trying to the nerves as PiccadillyCircus or Charing Cross (Trafalgar Square). The intersection ofBroadway, Fifth Avenue and 23rd Street, at Madison Square, is thenearest approach to these bewildering ganglia of traffic. It must beowned, too, that the Bowery, with its two "elevated" tracks and fourlines of trolley-cars, is a place where one cannot safely let one's witsgo wool-gathering, especially on a rainy evening when the roadway isunder repair. Let me add that there is one place in New York where thewhirl of traffic ("whirl" in a literal sense) is unique and amazing. Imean the covered area at the New York end of Brooklyn Bridge where thetranspontine electric cars, in an incessant stream, swoop down thecurves of the bridge and sweep round on their return journey. The sceneat night is indescribable. The air seems supersaturated withelectricity, flashing and crackling on every hand. One has a sense ofhaving strayed unwittingly into the midst of a miniature planetarysystem in full swing, with the boom of the trolleys, in their mazycourses, to represent the music of the spheres. FOOTNOTES: [Footnote D: I find the same idea (a sufficiently obvious one) finelyexpressed by Mr. Richard Hovey in his book of poems entitled _Along theTrail_: Look, how the overhead train at the Morningside curve Loops like a sea-born dragon its sinuous flight. Loops in the night in and out, high up in the air, Like a serpent of stars with the coil and undulant reach of waves. ] LETTER V Character and Culture--American Universities--Is the American "Electric"or Phlegmatic?--Alleged Laxity of the Family Tie--Postscript; theUniversity System. NEW YORK. It is four weeks to-day since I landed in New York, and, save for fortyhours in Philadelphia and four hours in Brooklyn, I have spent all thattime in Manhattan Island. Yet, to my shame be it spoken, I am notprepared with any generalisation as to the American character. It hasbeen my good fortune to see a great deal of literary and artistic NewYork, and, comparing it with literary and artistic London, I am inclinedto say "Pompey and Cæsar berry much alike--specially Pompey!" The NewYorker is far more cosmopolitan than the Londoner; of that there is nodoubt. He knows all that we know about current English literature. Heknows all that we do _not_ know about current American literature. He ismuch more interested in and influenced by French literature and artthan the average educated Englishman--so much so that the leading Frenchcritics, such as M. Brunetière and M. Rod, lecture here to crowded andappreciative audiences. Moreover an excellent German theatre permanentlyestablished in the city keeps the literary world well abreast ofcosmopolitanism of the educated New Yorker the dramatic movement inGermany. But the merely means that he has everything in common with theeducated Londoner--and a little over. His traditions are ours, hisstandards are ours, his ideals are ours. He is busied with the sameproblems of ethics, of æsthetics, of style, even of grammar. I had notbeen three days in New York when I found myself plunged in a hotdiscussion of the "split infinitive, " in which I was ranged with twoAmericans against a recreant Briton who defended the collocation. "It isa mistake to regard it is an Americanism, " said one of the Americans. "It is as old as the English language, or at least as old as Wickliff. But it is unnecessary, and the best modern practice discountenances it. "I felt like falling on the neck of an ally of half an hour's standing, and swearing eternal friendship. What matters Alaska, or Venezuela, orNicaragua, "or all the stones of stumbling in the world, " so long as wehave a common interest in (and some of us a common distaste for) thesplit infinitive? To put the matter briefly, while the outlook of theNew Yorker is wider than ours, his standpoint is the same. We gatherfrom a well-known anecdote that some, at least, of the cultivatedAmericans of Thackeray's time were inclined to "think of Tupper. " To-daythey do not "think of Tupper" any more than we do--and by Tupper I mean, of course, not the veritable Martin Farquhar, but the Tuppers of thepassing hour. In America as in England, no doubt, there is a hugehalf-educated public, ravenous for doughnuts of romance served up withsyrup of sentiment. The enthusiasms of the American shopgirl, I take it, are very much the same as those of her English sister. But the line ofdemarkation between the educated and the half-educated is just as clearin New York as in London. For the cultivated American of to-day, theBoomster booms and the Sibyl sibyllates in vain. I find nojustification, in this city at any rate, for the old saying whichdescribed America as the most common-schooled and least educated countryin the world. If we must draw distinctions, I should say that the effectof the American system of university education was to raise the levelof general culture, while lowering the standard of special scholarship. I believe that the general American tendency is to insist less than wedo on sheer mental discipline for its own sake, whether in classics ormathematics, to allow the student a wider latitude of choice, and toenable him to specialise at an earlier point in his curriculum upon thestudies he most affects, or which are most likely to be directly usefulto him in practical life. Thus the American universities, probably, donot turn out many men who can "read Plato with their feet on the hob, "but many who can, and do, read and understand him as Colonel Newcomeread Cæsar--"with a translation, sir, with a translation. " The width ofoutlook which I have noted as characteristic of literary New York isdeliberately aimed at in the university system, and most successfullyattained. The average young man of parts turned out by an Americanuniversity has a many-sided interest in, and comprehension of, Europeanliterature and the intellectual movement of the world, which may go farto compensate for his possible or even probable inexpertness in Greekaorists and Latin elegiacs. The academic and literary New Yorker, I am well aware, is not "theAmerican. " But who is "the American?" I turn to Mr. G. W. Steevens, andfind that "the American is a highly electric Anglo-Saxon. Histemperament is of quicksilver. There is as much difference in vivacityand emotion between him and an Englishman as there is between anEnglishman and an Italian. " Well, Mr. Steevens is a keener observer thanI; when he wrote this, he had been two months in America to my one; andhe had travelled far and wide over the continent. I am not rash enough, then, to contradict him; but I must own that I have not met this"American, " or anything like him, in the streets, clubs, theatres, restaurants, or public conveyances of New York. On the contrary, as Itake my walks abroad between Union Square and Central Park, or hang onto the straps of an Elevated train or cable car, I am all the timeoccupied in trying--and failing--to find marked differences ofappearance and manners between the people I see here and the people Ishould expect to see under similar circumstances in London. Differencesof dress and feature there are, of course--but how trifling! Differenceof manners there is none, unless it lie in the general good-nature andunobtrusive politeness of the American crowd, upon which I have alreadyremarked. We all know that there is a distinctively American physicaltype, recognisable especially in the sex which aims at self-development, instead of self-suppression, in its attire. When one meets her inBloomsbury (where she abounds in the tourist season) one readilydistinguishes the American lady; but here specific distinctions areobsorbed in generic identity, and the only difference between Americanand English ladies of which I am habitually conscious lies in the addedtouch of Parisian elegance which one notes in the costumes on FifthAvenue. The average of beauty is certainly very high in New York. I willnot say higher than in London, for there too it is remarkable; but thisI will say, that night after night I have looked round the audiences inNew York theatres, and found a clear majority of notably good-lookingwomen. There are few European cities where one could hope to make thesame observation. It is especially to be noted, I think, that theAmerican lady has the art of growing old with comely dignity. She losesher complexion, indeed, but only to put on a new beauty in the contrastbetween her olive skin and her silvering or silver hair. This contrastmay almost be called the characteristic feature of the speciallyAmerican type, which is much more clearly discernible in middle-aged andold than in young women. As for the men, what strikes one in New York is the total absence of thetraditional "Yankee" type. It must have a foundation in fact, since theAmericans themselves have accepted it in political caricature. No doubtI shall find it in its original habitat--New England. It has certainlynot penetrated into New York. On close examination, the averageman-in-the-street is distinguishable from his fellow in London bycertain trifling differences in "the cut of his jib"--his fashion inhats, in moustaches, in neckties. But the intense electricity that Mr. Steevens discovers in him has totally eluded my observation. The faultmay be mine, but assuredly I have failed to "faire jaillir l'étincelle. "I have looked in vain for any symptom of the "temperament ofquicksilver. " Mr. Steevens, it is true, made his observations during thelast Presidential election. Perhaps the quicksilver is generated in theAmerican citizen by political excitement, and when that is over "runsout at the heels of his boots. " But, surely, it is a monstrous exaggeration to state in general termsthat the difference in "vivacity and emotion" between the averageAmerican and the average Englishman is as great as the differencebetween an Englishman and an Italian. By what inconceivable error, doesit happen, then, that the American of fiction and drama--English, Continental, and American to boot--is always represented as outdoingJohn Bull himself in Anglo-Saxon phlegm? In the courts of ethnology, Ishall be told, "what the caricaturist says is not evidence;" but nocaricature could ever have gained such world-wide acceptance without asubstratum of truth to support it. The probabilities of the case aregreatly against the development of any special "vivacity" oftemperament, for though there has no doubt been a large Keltic admixturein the Anglo-Saxon stock, there has been a large Teutonic infusion(German and Scandinavian) to counterbalance it. Simply as a matter ofobservation, the differences between English and Italian manners hit youin the eye, while the differences between American and English mannersare really microscopic; and manners, I take it, are the outward andvisible signs of temperament. A Scotchman by birth, a Londoner by habit, I walk the streets of New York undetected, to the best of my belief, until I begin to speak; in Rome, on the contrary, every one recognisesme at a glance as an "Inglese, " unless they mistake me for an"Americano. " To me it is amazing how inessential is the change producedby the Anglo-Saxon type and temperament by influences of climate andadmixture of foreign blood. There are great foreign cities in NewYork--German, Italian, Yiddish, Bohemian, Hungarian, Chinese--but theNew York of the New Yorker is scarcely, to the Englishman, a foreigncity. The other day I heard an Englishman, who has lived for twenty-five yearsin America, maintaining very emphatically that the chief differencebetween England and America lay in the greater laxity of the family bondon this side of the Atlantic. He declared that, in the main, "home"meant less to the American than to the Englishman, and especially thatthe American boy between thirteen and twenty was habitually insurgentagainst home influences. It would be ludicrous, of course, to set up theobservations of a month against the experience of a quarter of acentury; yet I cannot but feel that either I have been miraculouslyfortunate in the glimpses I have obtained of American home life, or elsethere is something amiss with my friend's generalisation. Perhaps hebrought away with him from England in the early seventies a conceptionof the "patria potestas" which he would now find out of date there aswell as here. No doubt the migratory habit is stronger in America thanin England, and family life is not apt to flourish in hotels orboarding-houses. The Saratoga trunk is not the best cornerstone for thehome: so much we may take for granted. But the American families who arecontent to go through life without a threshold and hearthstone of theirown must, after all, be in a vanishing minority. They very naturally cuta larger figure in fiction than in fact. It has been my privilege to seesomething of the daily life of a good many families living under theirown roof-tree, and in every case without exception I have been struckwith the beauty and intimacy of the relation between parents andchildren. When my friend laid down his theory of the intractableAmerican boy, I could not but think of a youth of twenty whom I had seenonly two days before, whose manner towards his father struck me as anideal blending of affectionate comradeship with old-fashionedrespect. [E] True, this was in Philadelphia, "the City of Homes, " andeven there it may have been an exceptional case. I am not so illogicalas to pit a single observation against (presumably) a wide induction; Imerely offer for what it is worth one item of evidence. Again, it has been my good fortune here in New York to spend an eveningin a household which suggested a chapter of Dickens in his tenderest andmost idyllic mood. It was the home of an actor and actress. Twodaughters, of about eighteen and twenty, respectively, are on the stage, acting in their father's company; but the master of the house is abright little boy of seven or eight, known as "the Commodore. " As ithappened, the mother of the family was away for the day; yet in thehundred affectionate references made to her by the father and daughters, not to me, but to each other, I read her character and influence moreclearly, perhaps, than if she had been present in the flesh. A moresimple, natural, unaffectedly beautiful "interior" no novelist couldconceive. If the family tie is seriously relaxed in America, it seems anodd coincidence that I should in a single month have chanced upon twohouseholds where it is seen in notable perfection, to say nothing ofmany others in which it is at least as binding as in the average Englishhome. POSTSCRIPT. --The American university system is a very large subject, towhich none but a specialist could do justice, and that in a volume, nota postscript. Nevertheless I should like slightly to supplement theabove allusion to it. In the first place, let me quote from the_Spectator_ (February 12, 1898) the following passage:-- "Some of the American Universities, in our judgment, come nearer to the ideal of a true University than any of the other types. Beginning on the old English collegiate system, they have broadened out into vast and splendidly endowed institutions of universal learning, have assimilated some German features, and have combined successfully college routine and discipline with mature and advanced work. Harvard and Princeton were originally English colleges; now, without entirely abandoning the college system, they are great semi-German seats of learning. Johns Hopkins at Baltimore is purely of the German type, with no residence and only a few plain lecture rooms, library, and museums. Columbia, originally an old English college (its name was King's, changed to Columbia at the Revolution), is now perhaps the first University in America, magnificently endowed, with stately buildings, and with a school of political and legal science second only to that of Paris. Cornell, intended by its generous founder to be a sort of cheap glorified technical institute, has grown into a great seat of culture. The quadrangles and lawns of Harvard, Yale, and Princeton almost recall Oxford and Cambridge; their lecture-rooms, laboratories, and post-graduate studies hint of Germany, where nearly all American teachers of the present generation have been educated. " Some authorities, however, deplore the Germanising of Americaneducation. A Professor of Greek, himself trained in Germany, andrecognised as one of the foremost of American scholars, confessed to mehis deep dissatisfaction with the results achieved in his own teaching. His students did good work on the scientific and philological side, buttheir relation to Greek literature as literature was not at all what hecould desire. This bears out the remark which I heard another authoritymake, to the effect that American scholarship was entirely absorbed inthe counting of accents, and the like mechanical details; while it seemsto run counter to the above suggestion that the university system tendsto raise the level of culture while lowering the standard of erudition. At the same time there can be no doubt that the immense width of thefield covered by university teaching in America must, in some measure, make for "superficial omniscience" rather than for concentration andresearch. The truth probably is that the system cuts both ways. Theaverage student seeks and finds general culture in his universitycourse, while the born specialist is enabled to go straight to the studyhe most affects and concentrate upon it. To exemplify the latitude of choice offered to the American student, letme give a list of the "course" in English and Literature at ColumbiaUniversity, New York, extracted from the Calendar for 1898-99: RHETORIC AND ENGLISH COMPOSITION COURSES 1. English Composition. Lectures, daily themes, and fortnightly essays. Professor G. R. CARPENTER. Three hours[F] first half-year. 2. English Composition. Essays, lectures, and discussions in regard to style. Professor G. R. CARPENTER. Three hours, second half-year. 3. English Composition, Advanced Course. Essays, lectures and consultations. Dr. ODELL. Two hours. 4. Elocution. Lectures and Exercises. Mr. PUTNAM. Two hours. [5. The Art of English Versification. Professor BRANDER MATTHEWS. _Not given in 1898-9_. ] 6. Argumentative Composition. Lectures, briefs, essays, and oral discussions. Mr. BRODT. Three hours. 7. Seminar. The topics discussed in 1898-9 will be: Canons of rhetorical propriety (first half-year); the teaching of formal rhetoric in the secondary school (second half-year). Professor G. R. CARPENTER. ENGLISH AND LITERATURE COURSES 1 and 2. Anglo-Saxon Language and Historical English Grammar. Mr. SEWARD. Two hours. 3. Anglo-Saxon Literature: Poetry and Prose. Professor JACKSON. Two hours. 4. Chaucer's Language, Versification, and Method of Narrative Poetry. Professor JACKSON. Two hours. [5. English Language and Literature of the Eleventh, Twelfth, and Thirteenth Centuries. Professor PRICE. _Not given in 1898-9. _] [6. English Language and Literature of the Fourteenth Century, exclusive of Chaucer, and of the Fifteenth Century; Reading of authors, with investigation of special questions and writing of essays. Professor Price. _Not given in 1898-9. _] 7. English Language and Literature of the Sixteenth Century; Reading of authors, with investigation of special questions and writing of essays. Professor Jackson. Two hours. Courses 5, 6, and 7 are designed for the careful study of the language and literature of Early and Middle English periods: Course 6 was given in 1897-8. [8. Anglo-Saxon Prose and Historical English Syntax. Investigation of special questions and writing of essays. Professor Price. _Not given in 1898-9. To be given in 1899-1900. _] [10. English Verse-Forms: Study of their historical development. Professor Price. _Not given in 1898-9. _] 11. History of English Literature from 1789 to the death of Tennyson: Lectures. Professor Woodberry. Three hours. 12. History of English Literature from 1660 to 1789: Lectures. Mr. Kroeber. Three hours. [13. History of English Literature from the birth of Shakespeare to 1660, with special attention to the origin of the drama in England and to the poems of Spenser and Milton. Professor Woodberry. _Not given in 1898-9. _] Courses 12 and 13 are given in alternate years. [14. Pope: Language, Versification, and Poetical Method. Professor Price. _Not given in 1898-9. _] 15. Shakespeare: Language, Versification, and Method of Dramatic Poetry. Text: Cambridge Text of Shakespeare. Professor JACKSON. Two hours. 16. American Literature. Professor BRANDER MATTHEWS. Two hours. [17. The Poetry, Lyrical, Narrative, and Dramatic, of Tennyson, Browning, and Arnold. Professor PRICE. _Not given in 1898-9. _] LITERATURE. COURSES. 1. The History of Modern Fiction. Professor BRANDER MATTHEWS. Two hours. 2. The Theory, History, and Practice of Criticism, with special attention to Aristotle, Boileau, Lessing, and English and later French writers, and a study of the great works of imagination. Professor WOODBERRY. Three hours. [3. Epochs of the Drama. Professor BRANDER MATTHEWS. _Not given in 1898-9. _] 4. Dramatists of the Nineteenth Century. Professor BRANDER MATTHEWS. Two hours. [5. Molière and Modern Comedy. Professor BRANDER MATTHEWS. _Not given in 1898-9. _] [6. The Evolution of the Essay. Professor BRANDER MATTHEWS. _Not given in 1898-9. _] 7. Studies in Literature, mainly Critical: Selected Works, in Prose and Verse, illustrating the Character and Development of Natural Literature. Lectures. Professor WOODBERRY. Three hours. 8. Studies in Literature, mainly Historical: Narrative Poetry of the Middle Ages. Lectures and Conferences. Mr. TAYLOR. Two hours. [9. The Lyrical Poetry of the Middle Ages. Professor G. R. CARPENTER. _Not given in 1898-9. _] 10. Hellenism: Its Origin, Development, and Diffusion with some account of the Civilisations that preceded it. Lectures and Conferences. Mr. TAYLOR Three hours. 11. Literary Phases of the Transition from Paganism to Christianity, with illustrations from the other Arts of Expression. Lectures and Conferences. Mr. TAYLOR. One hour. Seminar in Literature. Professor WOODBERRY. Seminar in the History of the Drama. Professor BRANDER MATTHEWS. A "seminar" is an institution borrowed from Germany. The professor and asmall number of students (six or eight at the outside) sit togetherround a table, with their books at hand, and pass an hour inco-operative study and discussion. In going through the noble library ofColumbia University, I came upon an alcove devoted to Scandinavianliterature, with a table on which lay some Danish books. The gentlemanwho was guiding me round happened to be an instructor in theScandinavian languages. He pointed to the books and said, "I have justbeen having a seminar here, in Danish literature. " Seeing on the shelvesan edition of Holberg, I asked him if he had ever considered thequestion why Holberg's comedies, so delightful in the original, appeared to be totally untranslatable into English. "One of mystudents, " he said, "put the same question to me only to-day. " One couldscarcely desire a better example of the all-embracing range of thestudies which an American University provides for and encourages. I haveheard it said, with a sneer, that "You can take an honours degree inMarie Corelli. " If you can graduate with honours in Holberg, your time, in so far, has certainly not been misemployed. Whatever the drawbacks of the German influence which is so marked inAmerica, I cannot doubt that in one thing, at any rate, the Americansare far ahead of us--in the careful study they devote to the science ofeducation. No fewer than twenty courses of lectures on the theory andpractice of education were given in Columbia College during 1898-99. Teaching, I take it, is an art founded upon, and intimately associatedwith, the science of psychology. Why should we be content withantiquated and rule-of-thumb methods, instead of going to the root ofthe thing, studying its principles, and learning to apply them to thebest advantage? FOOTNOTES: [Footnote E: "Affectionate comradeship" rather than "old-fashionedrespect" is exemplified in the following anecdote of young America. AProfessor of Pedagogy in a Western university brings up his children onthe most advanced principles. Among other things, they are encouraged tosink the antiquated terms "father" and "mother, " and call their parentsby their Christian names. On one occasion, the children, playing in thebathroom, turned on the water and omitted to turn it off again. Observing it percolating through the ceiling of his study, their fatherrushed upstairs to see what was the matter, flung open the bathroomdoor, and was greeted by the prime mover in the mischief, a boy of six, with the remark, "Don't say a word, John--bring the mop!"] [Footnote F: That is, three hours a week; so, too, in all subsequentinstances. ] LETTER VI Washington in April--A Metropolis in the Making--The White House, theCapitol, and the Library of Congress--The Symbolism of Washington. WASHINGTON. To profess oneself disappointed with Washington in this first week ofApril, 1899, would be like complaining of the gauntness of a rosebush inDecember. What would you have? It is not the season, either politicallyor atmospherically. Congress is gone, and spring has not come. In thecity of leafy avenues there is not a leaf to be seen, and, except theirrepressible crocus, not a flower. A fortnight hence, as I am assured, the capital of the Great Republic will have put on a regal robe ofmagnolia and other blossoms, that will "knock spots out of" Solomon inall his glory. In the meantime, the trees line the avenues in skeletonrows, like a pyrotechnic set-piece before it is ignited. It is uselessto pretend, then, that I have seen Washington. The trumpet of March hasblown, the pennon of May is not yet unfurled; and even the cloudlesssunshine of the past two days has only reduplicated the skeleton treesin skeleton shadows. Washington is not responsible for the tardiness ofthe spring. It would be unjust to take umbrage at the city because onefinds none in its avenues. Yet I cannot but feel that I have, so to speak, found Washington out. Ihave chanced upon her without her make-up, and seen the real face of thecity divested of its wig of leafage and rouge of blossoms. Here, for thefirst time, at any rate, I am impressed by that sense of rawness andincompleteness which is said to be characteristic of America. Washingtonwill one day be a magnificent city, of that there is no doubt; but forthe present it is distinctly unfinished. The very breadth of itsavenues, contrasted with the comparative lowness of the buildings whichline them, gives it the air rather of a magnified and glorified frontiertownship than of a great capital on the European scale. Here, for thefirst time, I am really conscious of the newness of things. The easterncities--Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore--are, in effect, not awhit newer than most English towns. Oxford and Cambridge, no doubt, anda few cathedral cities, give one a habitual consciousness of dwellingamong the relics of the past. They are our Nuremburg or Prague, Siena orPerugia. In most English cities, on the other hand, as in London itself, one has no habitual sense of the antiquity of one's surroundings. Apartfrom a few tourist-haunted monuments, which the resident passes withscarcely a glance, the general run of buildings and streets, if notpalpably modern, can at most lay claim to a respectable, ordisreputable, middle-age. Now, an eminently respectable middle-age isprecisely the characteristic of the central regions of Philadelphia andBaltimore; while in New York both reputable and disreputable middle-ageare amply represented. One may almost say that these Eastern cities arefundamentally old-fashioned, and that all their modern mechanism ofelectric cars, telephone wires, and what not, is but a thin andtransparent outer network, through which the older order of things iseverywhere peering. And from this very contrast between the old and thenew, this sense of visible time-strata in the structure of a city, thereresults a very real effect of age. Here, in Washington, one instinctively craves for something of thatuniformity which one instinctively deprecates as an ideal for New York. The buildings on the main streets are too haphazard, like the books onan ill-arranged shelf: folios, quartos, and duodecimos huddled pell-melltogether. But when some approach to a definite style is achieved, hownoble will be the radiating vistas of this spacious city! The plan ofthe avenues and streets, as has been aptly said, suggests a cartwheelsuperimposed upon a gridiron--an arrangement, by the way, which may bestudied on a small scale in Carlsruhe. The result is dire bewildermentto the traveller; my bump of locality, usually not ill-developed, seemsto shrink into a positive indentation before the problems presented insuch formulas as "K Street, corner of 13th Street, N. E. " But from theCapitol, whence most of the avenues spread fanwise, the views they offerare superb; and Pennsylvania Avenue, leading to the Government officesand the White House, will one day, undoubtedly, be one of the greatstreets of the world. For the present its beauty is not heightened bythe new Postal Department, a massive but somewhat forbidding structurein grey granite, which dominates and frowns upon the whole street. Fromcertain points of view, it seems almost to dwarf the Washington Obelisk, the loftiest stone structure in the world. It is a pity that this finemonument should be placed in such a low situation, on the very shore ofthe Potomac. From the central parts of the city it loses much of itseffect, but seen from the distance it stands forth impressively. People are discontented, it would seem, with the White House, and talkof replacing it with a larger and showier edifice. The latter change, atany rate, would be a change for the worse. There could not be a moreappropriate and dignified residence for the Chief Magistrate of arepublic. On the other hand, one cannot but foresee a gradual enrichmentand ennoblement of the interior of the Capitol. Externally it ismagnificent, especially now that the side towards the city has beenterraced and balustraded; but internally its decorations are quiteunworthy of modern America. The floors, the doors, the cornices andmouldings are cheap in material, dingily garish in colour. Especiallypainful are the crude blue-and-yellow mosaic tiles of the corridors. Themural decorations belong to several artistic periods, all equallydebased. On the whole, it is inconceivable that Congress should for longcontent itself with an abode which, without being venerable, is simplyout of date. The main architectural proportions of the interior aredignified enough. What is wanted is merely the transmutation of stuccointo marble, painted pine into oak, and pseudo-Italian arabesques intoAmerican frescoes and mosaics. Why should Congress itself be more meanlyhoused than its Library? This new Library of Congress is certainly the crown and glory of theWashington of to-day. It is an edifice and an institution of which anynation might justly boast. It is simple in design, rich in material, elaborate, and for the most part beautiful, in decoration. The generaleffect of the entrance hall and galleries is at first garish, and somedetails of the decoration will scarcely bear looking into. Yet thebuilding is, on the whole, in fresco, mosaic, and sculpture, a veritabletreasure-house of contemporary American art. Even in this clear Southernclimate, the effect of gaudiness will in time pass off. Fifty yearshence, perhaps, when there are no living susceptibilities to be hurt, some of the less successful panels and medallions may be "hatched overagain, and hatched different. " But many of the decorations, I amconvinced, will prove possessions for ever to the American people. Asfor the Rotunda Reading Room, it is, I think, almost above criticism inits combination of dignity with splendour. Far be it from me tobelittle that great and liberal institution, the British Museum ReadingRoom. It is considerably larger than this one; it is no less imposing inits severe simplicity; and it offers the serious student a vaster quarryof books to draw upon, together with wider elbow-room and completeraccommodations. But the Library of Congress is still more liberal, forit admits all the world without even the formality of applying for aticket; and it substitutes for the impressiveness of simplicity theallurements of splendour. It is impossible to conceive a more brilliantspectacle than this Rotunda when it is lighted at night by nearlyfifteen-hundred incandescent lamps. Nor is it possible for me todescribe in this place the mechanical marvels of the institution--thehuge underground boiler-house, with its sixteen boilers; theelectrician's room, clean and bright as a new dollar, with its "purringdynamos" and its immense switch-board; the tunnel through which booksare delivered by electric trolley to the legislators in the Capitol, within eight minutes of the time they are applied for; and, mostwonderful of all, the endless chain, with its series of baskets, wherebybooks are not only brought down to the reading room, but re-delivered, at the mere touch of a button on whatever "deck" of the nine-storied"book-stacks" they happen to belong to. So ingenious is this triumph ofmechanism that the baskets seem positively to go through complexprocesses of thought and selection. Talking of thought and selection, bythe way, every one connected with the library speaks with enthusiasm ofPresident McKinley's wise and public-spirited choice of the new chieflibrarian. Mr. Herbert Putnam, late of the Boston Public Library, is theideal man for the post, and his appointment was made, not only withoutsuspicion of jobbery, but in the teeth of strong political influence. Mr. McKinley's action in this matter is considered to be not only rightin itself, but an invaluable precedent. Let me not be understood, I beg, to make light of the National Capital. I merely say that to the outward eye it is not yet the city it ismanifestly destined to become. Its splendid potentialities do some wrongto its eminently spacious and seemly actuality. But to the mind's eye, to the ideal sense, it has the imperishable beauty of absolute fitness. Omniscient Baedeker informs us that when it was founded there was somethought of calling it "Federal City. " How much finer, in its heroic andyet human associations, is the name it bears! Since Alfred the Great, the Anglo-Saxon race has produced no loftier or purer personality thanGeorge Washington, and his country could not blazon on her shield a moreinspiring name. Carlyle's treatment of Washington is, perhaps, the mostunpardonable of his many similar offences. One almost wonders at theforgiving spirit in which the decorators of the Library of Congress haveinscribed upon the walls of the new building certain maxims from thesplenetic Sage. And if the city is named with exquisite fitness, so areits radiating avenues. Each of them takes its name from one of theStates of the Union--names which, as Stevenson long ago pointed out, form an unrivalled array of "sweet and sonorous vocables. " In its wholeconception, Washington is an ideal capital for the United States--notleast typical, perhaps, in its factitiousness, since this Republic isnot so much a product of natural development as a deliberate creation ofwill and intelligence. It represents the struggle of an Idea against thecrude forces of nature and human nature. The Capitol, with its clear andlogical design, is as aptly symbolic of its history and function as areour Houses of Parliament, with their bewildering but grandioseagglomeration of shafts and turrets, spires and pinnacles; and the twobuildings should rank side by side in the esteem of the English-speakingpeoples, as the twin foci of our civilisation. LETTER VII American Hospitality--Instances--Conversation andStory-Telling--Over-Profusion in Hospitality--Expensiveness of Life inAmerica--The American Barber--Postscript: An Anglo-American Club. BOSTON. Much has been said of American hospitality; too much cannot possibly besaid. Here am I in Boston, the guest of one of the foremost clubs of thecity. I sit, as I write, at my bedroom window, with a view over thewhole of Boston Common, and the beautiful spires of the Back-Bay regionbeyond. I step out on my balcony, and the gilded dome of the StateHouse--"the Hub of the Universe"--is but a stone's-throw off. Throughthe leafless branches of the trees I can see the back of St. Gaudens'beautiful Shaw Monument, and beyond it the graceful dip of upperBeacon-street. My room is as spacious and luxurious as heart can desire, lighted by half a dozen electric lamps, and with a private bath-roomattached, which is itself nearly as large as the bedroom assigned me inthe "swagger" hotel of New York--an establishment, by the way, of whichit has been wittily said that its purpose is "to provide exclusivenessfor the masses. " All the comforts of the club are at my command; therooms are delightful, the food and service excellent. In short, I couldnot be more conveniently or agreeably situated. Of course I pay the clubcharges for my room and meals, but it is mere hospitality to allow me todo so. And how do I come to be established in these quarters? The littlestory is absolutely commonplace, but all the more typical. In Washington I made the acquaintance of a gentleman who invited me tolunch at the leading diplomatic and social club. I had no claim upon himof any sort, beyond the most casual introduction. He regaled me withlittle-neck clams, terrapin, and all the delicacies of the season, andinvited to meet me half a dozen of the most interesting men in the city, all of them strangers to me until that moment. I found myself seatednext an exceedingly amiable man, whose name I had not caught when wewere introduced. One of the first things he asked me was--not "What didI think of America?" no one ever asked me that--but "Where was I goingnext?" To Boston. "Where was I going to put up?" I thought of going to the T---- Hotel. "Much better go to the U---- Club, " he replied; "I've no doubt they willbe able to give you a room. As soon as lunch is over, I shall telegraphto the club and make sure that everything is ready for you. " I, ofcourse, thanked him warmly. "But what credentials shall I present?" "Youdon't require any--just present your card. I shall make it all right foryou. " This was a man whom I had met ten minutes before, whose name I didnot know, and to whom I had been introduced by a man whom I barely knew!It did not appear that he, on his side, knew or cared about anything Ihad said or done in the world. He simply obeyed the national instinct ofcourtesy and helpfulness. And he was as good as his word. Arriving inBoston at a somewhat unearthly hour in the morning, I found my roomallotted me and the club servants ready to receive me with everyattention. I felt like the Prince in the fairy tale, only that I haddone nothing whatever to oblige the good fairy. Another example. I had a letter of introduction to the Governor of oneof the States of the Union, probably (what does not always happen) themost universally respected man in the State, and a member of one of itsoldest and most distinguished families. I left the letter, with my card, at this gentleman's house, and in the course of a few hours received anote from his wife, telling me that, owing to a death in the family, they were not then entertaining at all, but saying that the Governorwould call upon me to offer me any courtesy or assistance in his power. And so he did. He called, not once, but twice. He presented me with acard for one of the leading clubs of the city, and if my time hadallowed me to avail myself of his courtesy, he would have put me in theway of seeing any or all of the State institutions to the bestadvantage. The governorship of an American State, let me add, is noornamental sinecure. This was not only a man in high position, but avery busy man. Is there any other country where a mere letter ofintroduction is so generously honoured? If so, it is to me anundiscovered country. These are but two cases out of a hundred. The Americans are said to bethe busiest people in the world (I have my doubts on that point), butthey have always leisure to give a stranger "a good time. " Even, be itnoted, during the working hours of the day. My evenings being occupiedwith theatre-going, I could not accept invitations to dinner; whereforethose who were hospitably inclined towards me had to invite me to lunch;and a luncheon party in America invariably absorbs the best part of anafternoon. A score of these delightful gatherings will always remain inmy memory. The "bright" American is, to my thinking, the best talker inthe world--certainly the best talker in the English language. A lightand facile humour, a power of giving a pleasant little sparkle even tosufficiently commonplace sayings, is in this country the rule and notthe exception. I must have met at these luncheon parties, and actuallyconversed with, at least a hundred different men of all ages andoccupations, and I do not remember among them a single dull, pompous, morose, or pedantic person. The parties did not usually exceed six oreight in number, so that there was no necessity for breaking up intogroups. The shuttlecock of conversation was lightly bandied to and froacross the round table. Each took his share and none took more. Alltopics--even the, burning question of "expansion"--were touched upongaily, humorously, and in perfect good temper. It is said that American conversation among men tends to degenerate intoa mere exchange of anecdotes. I can remember only one party which wasin the least degree open to this reproach; and there the anecdotes werewithout exception so good, and so admirably told, that I, for one, should have been sorry to exchange them for even the loftiest discourseon Shakespeare and the musical glasses. Here, for instance, is anexample of the American gift of picturesque exaggeration. On board oneof the Florida steamboats, which have to be built with exceedingly lightdraught to get over the frequent shallows of the rivers, an Englishmanaccosted the captain with the remark, "I understand, captain, that youthink nothing of steaming across a meadow where there's been a heavyfall of dew. " "Well, I don't know about that, " replied the captain, "butit's true we have sometimes to send a man ahead with a watering-pot!" Ortake, again, the story of the Southern colonel who was conducted to thetheatre to see Salvini's Othello. He witnessed the performance gravely, and remarked at the close, "That was a mighty good show, and I don't seebut the coon did as well as any of 'em. " A third anecdote that charmedme on this occasion was that of the man who, being invited to take adrink, replied, "No, no, I solemnly promised my dear dead mother neverto touch a drop; besides, boys, it's too early in the morning; besides, I've just had one!" Furthermore, as I recall the party in question, I feel that I am wrongin implying that the conversation was mainly composed of anecdotes. Itwas mainly composed of narratives; but that is a different matter. Thereis a clear distinction between the mere story-teller and the narrator. Two or three of the party were brilliant narrators, and delighted uswith accounts of personal experiences, quaint character-sketches, novelsin a nutshell. One of the guests was, without exception, the mostready-witted man I ever met. His inexhaustible gift of lightningrepartee I saw illustrated on another occasion, when he presided at themidnight "gambol" of a Bohemian club, at which it needed the utmost tactand presence of mind to "ride the whirlwind and direct the storm. " Atthe luncheon party, he related several episodes from his chequeredjournalistic career in a style so easy and yet so graphic that one felt, if they could have been taken down in shorthand, they would have beenliterature ready-made. It is a clear injustice to confound such talk asthis with a mere bandying of Joe-Millers. The one drawback to American hospitality is that it is apt to be tooprofuse. I have more than once had to offer a mild protest against beingentertained by a hard-working brother journalist on a scale that wouldhave befitted a millionaire. The possibility of returning the complimentin kind affords the canny Scot but poor consolation. A dinner threetimes more lavish and expensive than you want is not sweetened by thethought that you may, in turn, give your host a dinner three times moreexpensive and lavish than _he_ wants. Both parties, on this system, suffer in digestion and in pocket, while only Delmonico is the gainer. It seems to me, on the whole, that in this country the millionaire istoo commonly allowed to fix the standard of expenditure. Society wouldnot be less, but more, agreeable if, instead of always emulating thesplendours of Lucullus, people now and then studied the art of Horatianfrugality. And I note that in club life, if the plutocrat sets thestandard of expenditure, the aristocrat looks to the training of theservants. Their obsequiousness is almost painful. There is not theslightest trace of democratic equality in their dress, their manners, ortheir speech. Take it all and all, America is a trying place of sojourn for theaforesaid canny Scot--the man who without being stingy (oh, dear, no!)has "all his generous impulses under perfect control. " The sixpences donot "bang" in this country: they crepitate, they crackle, as though shotfrom a Maxim quick-firer. For instance, the lowest electric-trolley fareis twopence-halfpenny. It is true that for five cents you can, if youwish it, ride fifteen or twenty miles; but that advantage becomesinappreciable when you don't want to ride more than half a mile. Take, again, the harmless, necessary operation of shaving. In a good Englishbarber's shop it is a brief and not unpleasant process; in an American"tonsorial parlour" it is a lingering and costly torture. One of themany reasons which lead me to regard the Americans as a leisurely peoplerather than a nation of "hustlers" is the patience with which theysubmit to the long-drawn tyranny of the barber. In England, one grudgesfive minutes for a shave, and one pays from fourpence to sixpence; inAmerica one can hardly escape in twenty-five minutes, and one pays (withthe executioner's tip)[G] from a shilling to eighteenpence. The chargewould be by no means excessive if one wanted or enjoyed all the endlessprocesses to which one is subjected; but for my part I would willinglypay double to escape them. The essential part of the business, theactual shaving, is, as a rule, badly performed, with a heavy hand, and agood deal of needless pawing-about of the patient's head. But when theshave is over the horrors are only beginning. First, your whole face iscooked for several minutes in relays of towels steeped in boiling water. Then a long series of essences is rubbed into it, generally with thetorturer's naked hand. The sequence of these essences varies indifferent "parlours, " but one especially loathsome hell-brew, known as"witchhazel" is everywhere inevitable. Then your wounds have to beelaborately doctored with stinging chemicals; your hair, which has beenhopelessly touzled in the pawing process, has to be drenched in somesickly-smelling oil and brushed; your moustache has to be lubricatedand combed; and at last you escape from the tormentor's clutches, irritated, enervated, hopelessly late for an important appointment, andso reeking with unholy odours that you feel as though all greatNeptune's ocean would scarcely wash you clean again. Only once or twicehave I submitted, out of curiosity, to the whole interminable process. Inow cut it short, not without difficulty, before the "witchhazel" stageis reached, and am regarded with blank astonishment and disapproval bythe tonsorial professor, who feels his art and mystery insulted in hisperson, and is scarcely mollified by a ten-cent tip. Americans, on theother hand, go through all these processes, and more, with stolid andlong-suffering patience. Yet this nation is credited with havinginvented the maxim "Time is money, " and is supposed to act up to it withfeverish consistency! POSTSCRIPT. --As I have said a good deal about clubs in this letter, letme add to it a word as to the influence of club life in keeping Americain touch with England. At all the leading clubs one or two English dailypapers and all the more important weekly papers are taken as a matter ofcourse; so that the American club-man has not the slightest difficultyin keeping abreast of the social, political, and literary life ofEngland. As a matter of fact, the educated American's knowledge ofEngland every day puts to shame the Englishman's ignorance of America. Reciprocity in this matter would be greatly to the advantage of bothcountries. I am much mistaken if there is a single club in London whereAmerican periodicals are so well represented on the reading-room tableas are English periodicals in every club in New York. Yet there isassuredly no dearth of interesting weekly papers in America, someconnected with daily papers, others independent. It may be said thatthey are not taken at English clubs because they would not be read. Ifso, the more's the pity; but I do not think it is so; for this is a casein which supply would beget demand. At any rate, there must be numbersof people in London who would be glad to keep fairly in touch withAmerican life, if they could do so without too much trouble. Why shouldthere not be an Anglo-American social club, organised with the specialpurpose of bringing America home (in a literal sense) to London andEngland? Why should not (say) the Century Club of New York be reproducedin London, with American periodicals as fully represented in itsnews-room and reading-room as are English periodicals in an Americanclub of the first rank? Interest in and sympathy with America would bethe implied condition of membership; and by a judiciously-devised systemof non-resident membership, American visitors to London would be enabledto read their home newspapers in greater comfort than at the existingAmerican reading-rooms, and would, moreover, come into easy contact withsympathetically-minded Englishmen, to their mutual pleasure and profit. Such a club might, in process of time, become a potent factor ininternational relations, and form a new bond of union, of quiteappreciable strength, between the two countries. FOOTNOTES: [Footnote G: I had read or been told that the tip system did not obtainin America, except in the case of negroes and waiters. A very few daysin New York undeceived me. I went twice to a barber's shop in thebasement of the house in which I lived, paid fifteen cents to be shaved, and gave the operator nothing; but at my second visit I found myself solowered upon by that portly and heavy-moustached citizen that I neveragain ventured to place myself under his razor, but went to a moredistant establishment and tipped from the outset. There are, indeed, certain classes of people--railroad conductors for instance--who do notexpect the tips which in England they consider their due; but, accordingto my experience, the safe rule in America is, "when in doubt--tip. "] LETTER VIII Boston--Its Resemblance to Edinburgh--Concord, Walden Pond, and SleepyHollow--Is the "Yankee" Dying Out?--America for the Americans--Detroitand Buffalo--The "Middle West. " CHICAGO. The luxury of my quarters in Boston seduced me into a disquisition onAmerican hospitality which would have come in equally well withreference to any other city. Were I to search very deeply into my soul(an exercise much in vogue in Boston), I might perhaps find reasons formy rambling off. To say that Boston did not interest me would be thereverse of the truth. It interested me deeply; but it did not excite mewith a sense of novelty or vastness. One can only repeat the obvioustruth that it is like an exceptionally dignified and stately Englishtown. One instinctively looks around for a cathedral, and finds theState House in its stead. To the founders of this city, the glory of Godwas not a thing to be furthered, or even typified, by any work of men'shands; but the salvation of men's souls, they thought, could be bestachieved in a well-ordered democratic polity. Their descendants have oflate years taken to decorating their places of worship, and TrinityChurch (by H. H. Richardson), and the new Old South Church, are ambitiousand beautiful pieces of ecclesiastical architecture. But the old OldSouth Meeting-House, the ecclesiastical centre of the city, is the flatand somewhat sour negation of all that is expressed or implied in anEnglish cathedral. Let me not be understood to disparage the Old Southor the spirit which fashioned it. In my eyes, minster and meeting-houseare equally interesting historic monuments, and to my hereditaryinstincts the latter is the more sympathetic. I merely note the factthat the most conspicuous edifice in Boston, its Duomo, its St. Peter'sor St. Paul's, is dedicated, not to the glory of God, but to thewell-being of man. Not physically, of course, but intellectually, Boston has been likenedto Edinburgh. The parallel is fair enough, with this importantreservation, that the theological element in the atmosphere is notPresbyterian but Unitarian. The Boston of to-day, it must be added, especially resembles Edinburgh in the fact that its pre-eminence as anintellectual centre has virtually departed. The _Atlantic Monthly_survives, as _Blackwood_, survives, a relic of the great days of old;but Boston has no Scott Monument to bear visual testimony to herspiritual achievement. She ought certainly to treat herself to a worthyEmerson Monument on the Common, whither the boy Emerson used to drivehis mother's cows: not, of course, a Gothic pile like that whichcommemorates the genius of Scott, but a statue by the incomparable St. Gaudens, under a modest classic canopy. But if, or when, such a monument is erected, it will absolve no one ofthe duty of making a pilgrimage to Concord. Even if it had no historicor literary associations, this simple, dignified, beautiful New Englandvillage, with its plain frame houses and its stately elm avenues, wouldbe well worth a visit. Village I call it, but township would be a betterword. Let no one go there with less than half a day to spare, for theplaces of interest are widely scattered. My companion and I went firstto Walden Pond, then to the Emerson and Hawthorne houses, then to thatideal burying-place, Sleepy Hollow, where Emerson and Hawthorne andThoreau rest side by side, and finally to the bridge-- Where once the embattled farmers stood, And fired the shot heard round the world. Everything here is beautifully appropriate. The commemorative statue ofthe "minute-man" with his musket is simple and expressive, and the fourlines of Emerson's hymn graven on the pedestal are the right wordswritten by the right man, entwining, as it were, the historical andliterary associations of the place. An exquisite appropriateness, too, presides over the Poets' Corner of Sleepy Hollow. The grave of Emersonis marked by a rough block of pure white quartz, in which is inserted abronze tablet bearing the words:-- The passive master lent his hand To the vast soul that o'er him planned. Altogether, among the places of pilgrimage of the English-speaking race, there is none more satisfactory or more inspiring than Concord, Mass. If Boston is no longer a great centre of literary production, itremains, with its noble public library in its midst, and with HarvardUniversity on its outskirts, a great centre of culture. I shall alwaysremember a luncheon party at Harvard, where I was the guest of aneminent Shakespearean critic, and had for my fellow guests a verylearned Dante scholar (one of the most delightful talkers imaginable), afamous psychologist, a political economist, and a lecturer on Englishliterature. The talk fell upon the depopulation of New England, orrather the substitution of an alien race for (I had almost said) theindigenous Yankee stock. There was some discussion as to whether theYankee was really dying out, or had merely spread throughout the West, taking with him and disseminating the qualities which had made thegreatness of New England. It was not denied, of course, that westwardemigration has much to do with the matter. The New England farmer, unable to stand up against the competition of the prairies, has betakenhimself to the prairies so as to compete on the winning side. But one ofthe company maintained that this did not account for the wholephenomenon. "The real key to it, " he said, "lies in such a familyhistory as mine. My grandmother was the youngest of thirteen children;my mother was the eldest of five; my brother and I are two; and we areunmarried. " I am inclined to think that this story of a dwindling stock is typical, not for New England alone, but for other parts of the Union. It seems asthough the pressure of life in the Eastern States, and perhaps somesubtle influence of climate upon temperament, were rendering the peopleof old Teutonic blood--British, Dutch, and German--unwilling to face theresponsibility of large families, and so were giving the country over tothe later and usually inferior immigrant and his progeny. I am not surethat it might not be well to cultivate a new sense of social duty inthis matter. Is it Utopian to suggest a policy of "America for theAmericans"--some effectual restriction of immigration before it is toolate, so as to leave room for the natural increase of the Americanpeople? This is an "expansion, " a "taking up of the white man's burden, "which would command my warmest sympathy. It is to the interest of thewhole world that the America of the future should be peopled by "whitemen" in every sense of the word. New England, however, cannot be utterly depopulated of its old stocks, for at every turn you come up against those good old Puritan names whichbespeak a longer ancestry than many an English peer can claim. I findamong the signatures to a petition against the reinstatement of anelevated railroad in Boston, such names as Adams, Morse, Lowell, Emerson, Bowditch, Lothrop, Storey, Dabney, Whipple, Ticknor, and Hale. Of the fifty signatures, only three (or, at the outside five, if weinclude two doubtful cases) are of other than English origin. Incontrast to this I may mention another list of names which came under mynotice at the same time--a list of the purchasers at a sale by auctionof seats for a New York first-night. Here twenty-six names out of fortyare obviously of non-English origin, while several of the remainingfourteen have a distinctly Hebraic ring. Though very much smaller than New York, Chicago, and Philadelphia, Boston is essentially a great city, with a very animated street life, and nothing in the least provincial about it. But it is not in thesegreat capitals, not even in this marvellous Chicago where I am nowwriting, that one most clearly realises the bewildering potentialitiesof the United States. It is precisely in the minor, the provincialcities, which to us in Europe are no more than names--perhaps not somuch. For instance, what does the average Englishman know of Detroit?[H] What State is it in? Is it in the North or the South, the East or theWest? For my part I knew in a general way, having been there before, that Detroit was situated somewhere between Chicago and Niagara Falls, but until a few days ago I should have been puzzled to describe itssituation more precisely. Well, I arrive in this obscure, insignificantplace, and find it a city of considerably more than a quarter of amillion inhabitants, beautifully laid out, magnificently paved andlighted, its broad and noble avenues lined with handsome commercialhouses and roomy if not always beautiful villas, trees shading itssidewalks, electric cars swimming in an endless stream along itsbustling thoroughfares, its imposing public library swarming withreaders, its theatres crowded, its parks alive with bicyclists, an eageractivity, whether in business, culture, or recreation, manifestingitself on every hand. Or take, again, Buffalo, somewhat larger thanDetroit, but still by no means a city of the first rank. Everything thatI have said of Detroit applies to it, with the addition that some ofits commercial buildings are not only palatial in their dimensions, butoriginal and impressive in their architecture. An afternoon stroll alongWoodward-avenue, Detroit, or Main-street, Buffalo, reassures one as tothe future--the physical, at any rate--of the American people. Theprevailing type is, if not definitely Anglo-Saxon, at any rate Teutonic, and the average of physical development is very high, especially amongthe women. It may have some bearing upon what I have been saying aboveto note that, in point of stature and beauty, the Bostonian woman, as arule, seemed to me to fall far short of her sisters in the other citiesI have visited. I have before my mind's eye many distinguished anddelightful exceptions to this rule; but, postponing gallantry tosociological candour, I state my general impression for what it isworth. Here, in Chicago, gallantry and candour go hand in hand. A legend of theenvious East represents that a Chicago young man travelling in Louisianawrote to his sweetheart: "DEAR MAMIE, --I have shot an alligator. When Ihave shot another, I will send you a pair of slippers. " The implicationis, to the best of my knowledge and belief, a base and baselesscalumny. New York itself does not present a higher average of femalebeauty than Chicago, and that is saying a great deal. But I must notenlarge on this fascinating topic. A Judgment of Paris is always adelicate business, and I am in nowise called upon to make the invidiousaward. Were I compelled to undertake it, I could only distribute theapple, and my homage, in equal shares to the goddesses of the East, theSouth, and the Middle West. When I was in Chicago in '77, it was the metropolis of the West, withoutqualification. Now it is merely the frontier city of the Middle West. From the standpoint of Omaha and Denver, it seems to fill the Easternhorizon, and shut out the further view. Many stories are told to showhow absolutely and instinctively your true Westerner ignores the EasternStates and cities. Here is one of the most characteristic. A little girlcame into the smoking car of a train somewhere in Kansas or Nebraska, and stood beside her father, who was in conversation with another man. The father put his arm round her and said to his companion, "She's beena great traveller, this little girl of mine. She's only ten years old, and she's been all over the United States. " "You don't say!" replied the other; "all over the United States?" "Yes, sir; all over the United States, " said the proud father; and thenadded, as though the detail was scarcely worth mentioning, "except eastof Chicago. " Chicago, unfortunately, marks the limit of my wanderings; so I shallreturn to England without having seen anything of the United States, except for a sort of Pisgah-glimpse from the tower of the Auditorium. FOOTNOTES: [Footnote H: My own visit to Detroit illustrated this vagueness of theaverage Englishman. I was anxious to see Mr. James A. Herne's famousplay, _Shore Acres_, and learned from Mr. Herne that it would be playedby a travelling company at Buffalo on a certain date. I carefully notedthe place and day, but contrived to mix up Buffalo and Detroit in mymind, and arrived on the appointed day in Detroit--nearly two hundredand fifty miles from the appointed place! It was as though, havingarranged to be in Brighton at a certain time, one should go instead toScarborough. ] LETTER IX Chicago--Its Splendour and Squalor--Mammoth Buildings--Wind, Dust, andSmoke--Culture--Chicago's Self-Criticism--Postscript: Social Service inAmerica. CHICAGO. When I was in America twenty-two years ago, Chicago was the city thatinterested me least. Coming straight from San Francisco--which, in theeyes of a youthful student of Bret Harte, seemed the fitting metropolisof one of the great realms of romance--I saw in Chicago the negation ofall that had charmed me on the Pacific slope. It was a flat and grimyabode of mere commerce, a rectilinear Glasgow; and to an Edinburgh man, or rather boy, no comparison could appear more damaging. How differentis the impression produced by the Chicago of to-day! In 1877 the citywas extensive enough, indeed, and handsome to boot, in a commonplace, cast-iron fashion. It was a chequer-board of Queen-Victoria-streets. To-day its area is appalling, its architecture grandiose. It is theyoung giant among the cities of the earth, and it stands but on thethreshold of its destiny. It embraces in its unimaginable amplitudeevery extreme of splendour and squalor. Walking in Dearborn-street orAdams-street of a cloudy afternoon, you think yourself in a frowning andfuliginous city of Dis, piled up by superhuman and apparently sinisterpowers. Cycling round the boulevards of a sunny morning, you rejoice inthe airy and spacious greenery of the Garden City. Driving along theLake Shore to Lincoln Park in the flush of sunset, you wonder that thedwellers in this street of palaces should trouble their heads aboutNaples or Venice, when they have before their very windows theinnumerable laughter, the ever-shifting opalescence, of theirfascinating inland sea. Plunging in the electric cars through the riversubway, and emerging in the West Side, you realise that the slums ofChicago, if not quite so tightly packed as those of New York or London, are no whit behind them in the other essentials of civilised barbarism. Chicago, more than any other city of my acquaintance, suggests thatantique conception of the underworld which placed Elysium and Tartarusnot only on the same plane, but, so to speak, round the corner from eachother. As the elephant (or rather the megatherium) to the giraffe, so is thecolossal business block of Chicago to the sky-scraper of New York. Thereis a proportion and dignity in the mammoth buildings of Chicago which islacking in most of those which form the jagged sky-line of ManhattanIsland. For one reason or another--no doubt some difference in thesystem of land tenure is at the root of the matter--the Chicagoarchitect has usually a larger plot of ground to operate on than his NewYork colleague, and can consequently give his building breadth and depthas well as height. Before the lanky giants of the Eastern metropolis, one has generally to hold one's æsthetic judgment in abeyance. They arenot precisely ugly, but still less, as a rule, can they be calledbeautiful. They are simply astounding manifestations of human energy andheaven-storming audacity. They stand outside the pale of æsthetics, likethe Eiffel Tower or the Forth Bridge. But in Chicago proportion goesalong with mere height, and many of the business houses are, if notbeautiful, at least æsthetically impressive--for instance, the grimfortalice of Marshall Field & Company, the Masonic Temple, the Women'sTemperance Temple (a structure with a touch of real beauty), and suchvast cities within the city as the Great Northern Building and theMonadnock Block. The last-named edifice alone is said to have a dailypopulation of 6000. A city ordinance now limits the height of buildingsto ten stories; but even that is a respectable allowance. Moreover, itis found that where giant constructions cluster too close together, they(literally) stand in each other's light, and the middle stories do notlet. Thus the heaven-storming era is probably over; but there is all themore reason to feel assured that the business centre of Chicago will erelong be not only grandiose but architecturally dignified andsatisfactory. A growing thirst for beauty has come upon the city, andarchitects are earnestly studying how to assuage it. In magnificence ofinternal decoration, Chicago can already challenge the world: forinstance, in the white marble vestibule and corridors of The Rookery, and the noble hall of the Illinois Trust Bank. At the same time, no account of the city scenery of Chicago is completewithout the admission that the gorges and canyons of its centraldistrict are exceedingly draughty, smoky, and dusty. Even in theseradiant spring days, it fully acts up to its reputation as the WindyCity. This peculiarity renders it probably the most convenient place inthe world for the establishment of a Suicide Club on the Stevensonianmodel. With your eyes peppered with dust, with your ears full of theclatter of the Elevated Road, and with the prairie breezes playfullybuffeting you and waltzing with you by turns, as they eddy through theravines of Madison, Monroe, or Adams-street, you take your life in yourhand when you attempt the crossing of State-street, with its endlessstream of rattling waggons and clanging trolley-cars. New York does notfor a moment compare with Chicago in the roar and bustle andbewilderment, of its street life. This remark will probably be resentedin New York, but it expresses the settled conviction of an impartialpedestrian, who has spent a considerable portion of his life during thepast few weeks in "negotiating" the crossings of both cities. On the other hand, I observe no eagerness on the part of New York tocontest the supremacy of Chicago in the matter of smoke. In thisrespect, the eastern metropolis is to the western as Mont Blanc toVesuvius. The smoke of Chicago has a peculiar and aggressiveindividuality, due, I imagine, to the natural clearness of theatmosphere. It does not seem, like London smoke, to permeate and blendwith the air. It does not overhang the streets in a uniform canopy, butsweeps across and about them in gusts and swirls, now dropping and nowlifting again its grimy curtain. You will often see the vista of agorge-like street so choked with a seeming thundercloud that you feelsure a storm is just about to burst upon the city, until you look up atthe zenith and find it smiling and serene. Again and again a suddenswirl of smoke across the street (like that which swept acrossFifth-avenue when the Windsor Hotel burst into flames) has led me toprick up my ears for a cry of "Fire!" But Chicago is not so easilyalarmed. It is accustomed to having its airs from heaven blurred bythese blasts from hell. I know few spectacles more curious than thatwhich awaits you when you have shot up in the express elevator to thetop of the Auditorium tower--on the one hand, the blue and laughinglake, on the other, the city belching volumes of smoke from its thousandthroats, as though a vaster Sheffield or Wolverhampton had beentransported by magic to the shores of the Mediterranean Sea. What awonderful city Chicago will be when the commandment is honestlyenforced which declares, "Thou shalt consume thine own smoke!" What a wonderful city Chicago will be! That is the ever-recurring burdenof one's cogitations. For Chicago is awake, and intelligently awake, toher destinies; so much one perceives even in the reiterated complaintsthat she is asleep. Discontent is the condition of progress, and Chicagois not in the slightest danger of relapsing into a condition of inertself-complacency. Her sons love her, but they chasten her. They arenever tired of urging her on, sometimes (it must be owned) with mostunfilial objurgations; and she, a quite unwearied Titan, is bracing upher sinews for the great task of the coming century. I have given myselfa rendezvous in Chicago for 1925, when air-ships will no doubt make thetransit easy for my septuagenarian frame. Nowhere in the world, I amsure, does the "to be continued in our next" interest take hold on onewith such a compulsive grip. Culture is pouring into Chicago as rapidly as pork or grain, and Chicagois insatiate in asking for more. In going over the Public Library (a notquite satisfactory building, though with some beautiful details) I wasmost of all impressed by the army of iron-bound boxes which areperpetually speeding to and fro between the library itself and no fewerthan fifty-seven distributing stations scattered throughout the city. "Ithought the number was forty-eight, " said a friend who accompanied me. "So it was last year, " said the librarian. "We have set up nine morestations during the interval. " The Chicago Library boasts (no doubtjustly) that it circulates more books than any similar institution inthe world. Take, again, the University of Chicago: seven years ago (or, say, at the outside ten) it had no existence, and its site was a dismalswamp; to-day it is a handsome and populous centre of literary andscientific culture. Observe, too, that it is by no means an oasis in thedesert, but is thoroughly in touch with the civic life around it. Forinstance, it actively participates in the admirable work done by theHull House Settlement in South Halsted-street, and in the vigorous andwide-spreading University Extension movement. At the present moment, Chicago is not a little resentful of the sharpadmonitions addressed to her by two of her aforesaid loving but exactingchildren. One, Professor Charles Zueblin, has been telling her that "inthe arrogance of youth she has failed to realise that instead of beingone of the progressive cities of the world, she has been one of thereckless, improvident, and shiftless cities. " Professor Zueblin is notcontent (for example) with her magnificent girdle of parks andboulevards, but calls for smaller parks and breathing spaces in theheart of her most crowded districts. He further maintains that her greatnew sewage canal is a gigantically costly blunder; and indeed one cannotbut sympathise with the citizens of St. Louis in inquiring by what rightChicago converts the Mississippi into her main sewer. But if ProfessorZueblin chastises Chicago with whips, Mr. Henry B. Fuller, it wouldseem, lashes her with scorpions. Mr. Fuller is one of the leadingnovelists of the city--for Chicago, be it known, had a nourishing andcharacteristic literature of her own long before Mr. Dooley sprang intofame. The author of _The Cliff-Dwellers_ is alleged to have said thatthe Anglo-Saxon race was incapable of art, and that in this respectChicago was pre-eminently Anglo-Saxon. "Alleged, " I say, for reports oflectures in the American papers are always to be taken with caution, andare very often as fanciful as Dr. Johnson's reports of the debates inParliament. The reporter is not generally a shorthand writer. He jotsdown as much as he conveniently can of the lecturer's remarks, andpieces them out from imagination. Thus, I am not at all sure what Mr. Fuller really said; but there is no doubt whatever of the indignationkindled by his diatribe. Deny her artistic capacities and sensibilities, and you touch Chicago in her tenderest point. Moreover, Mr. Fuller'sonslaught encouraged several other like-minded critics to back him up, so that the city has been writhing under the scourges of herepigrammatists. I have before me a letter to one of the evening papers, written in a tone of academic sarcasm which proves that even thesupercilious and "donnish" element is not lacking in Chicago culture. "Iknow a number of artists, " says the writer, "who came to Chicago, andafter staying here for a while, went away and achieved much success inNew York, London, and Paris. The appreciation they received here gavethem the impetus to go elsewhere, and thus brought them fame andfortune. " Whatever foundation there may be for these jibes, they are inthemselves a sufficient evidence that Chicago is alive to heropportunities and responsibilities. She is, in her own vernacular, "making, culture hum. " Mr. Fuller, I understand, reproached her with herstockyards--an injustice which even Mr. Bernard Shaw would scarcelyhave committed. Is it the fault of Chicago that the world iscarnivorous? Was not "Nature red in tooth and claw" several æons beforeChicago was thought of? I do not understand that any unnecessary crueltyis practised in the stockyards; and apart from that, I fail to see thatsystematic slaughter of animals for food is any more disgusting thansporadic butchery. But of the stockyards I can speak only from hearsay. I shall not go to see them. If I have any spare time, I shall ratherspend it in a second visit to St. Gaudens' magnificent and magnificentlyplaced statue of Abraham Lincoln, surely one of the great works of artof the century, and of the few entirely worthy monuments ever erected toa national hero. POSTSCRIPT. --The above-mentioned Hull House Settlement in SouthHalsted-street, under the direction of Miss Jane Addams, is probably themost famous institution of its kind in America; but it is only one ofmany. There is no more encouraging feature in American life than thezeal, energy, and high and liberal intelligence with which socialservice of this sort is being carried on in all the great cities. Thisis a line of activity on which England and America are advancing handin hand, and however much one may deplore the necessity for such work, one cannot but see in the common impulse which prompts and directs it asymptom of the deep-seated unity of the two peoples. Nothing I saw inAmerica impressed me more than the thorough practicality as well as theuntiring devotion which was apparent in the work carried on by MissAddams in Chicago and Miss Lillian D. Wald in Henry-street, New York. And in both Settlements I recognised the same atmosphere of culture, thesame spirit of plain living, hard working, and high thinking, thatcharacterises the best of our kindred institutions in England. A ladyconnected with the University of Chicago, who is also a worker at theHull House Settlement, told me a touching little story which illustratesat once the need for such work in Chicago, and the unexpected responsewith which it sometimes meets. She had been talking about the beautiesof nature to a group of women from the slums, and at the end of heraddress one of her hearers said, "I ain't never been outside of Chicago, but I know it's true what the lady says. There's two vacant lots nearour place, an' when the spring comes, the colours of them--they fairmakes you hold your breath. An' then there's the trees on the Avenoo. An' then there's all the sky. " On another occasion the same lady metwith an "unexpected response" of a different order. She was showing aboy from the slums some photographs of Italian pictures, when they cameupon a Virgin and Child. "Ah, " said the boy at once, "that's Jesus an'his Mother: I allus knows _them_ when I sees 'em. " "Yes, " said MissR----, "there is a purity and grandeur of expression about them, isn'tthere--" "Tain't that, " interrupted the boy, "it's the rims round theirheads as gives 'em away!" Apart from the Settlements, there are many energetically-conductedSocieties in America for the social and political enlightenment of themasses. I have before me, for instance, a little bundle of mostexcellent leaflets issued by the League for Social Service of New York. They deal with such subjects as _The Duties of American Citizenship, TheValue of a Vote, The Duty of Public Spirit, The Co-operative City_, &c. They include an admirable abstract in twenty-four pages, of _LawsConcerning the Welfare of Every Citizen of New York_, and the sameSociety issues similar abstracts of the laws of other States. They havea large and well-equipped lecture organisation, and they issueexcellent practical _Suggestions for Conferences and Courses of Study_. The problem to be grappled with by this Society and others working onsimilar lines is no doubt one of immense difficulty. It is nothing lessthan the education in citizenship of the most heterogeneous, polyglot, and in some respects ignorant and degraded population ever assembled ina single city, since the days of Imperial Rome. The spread of politicalenlightenment in New York and other cities cannot possibly be veryrapid; but no effort is being spared to accelerate it. I sometimeswonder whether the obvious necessity for political education in Americamay not, in the long run, prove a marked advantage to her, as compared, for instance, with England. Dissatisfaction, as I have said above, isthe condition of progress. We are apt to assume that every Briton isborn a good citizen; and in the lethargy begotten of that assumption, itmay very well happen that we let the Americans outstrip us in the marchof enlightenment. LETTER X New York in Spring--Central Park--New York not an Ill-governed City--TheUnited States Post Office--The Express System--Valedictory. NEW YORK. It is with a curious sensation of home-coming that I find myself oncemore in New York. Spring has arrived before me. The blue dome of sky haslost its crystalline sparkle, and the trees in Madison-square have puton a filmy veil of green. Going to a luncheon party in the Riversideregion, I determine, for the sheer pleasure and exhilaration of thething, to walk the whole way, up Fifth-avenue and diagonally acrossCentral Park. What a magnificent pleasure ground, vast, various, andseductive! A peerless emerald on the finger of Manhattan! If I were notbound by solemn oaths to present myself at West-End-avenue at half-pastone, I could loaf all the afternoon by the superb expanse of the CrotonReservoir, looking out over the giant city of sunshine, with the whitedome of Columbia College and the pyramid of Grant's Monument on thenorthern horizon, and far to the eastward the low hills of Long Island. Passing the Metropolitan Museum of Art, I am reminded, not only that Ihave never been inside it, but that in all the cities I have visited Ihave not gone to a single show-place, museum, or picture-gallery, saveone remarkable private collection in Baltimore. Of course I must alsoexcept (a large exception!) the public libraries of Washington, Boston, and Chicago, which are, in a very eminent sense, "show-places. " Still, it seems somewhat remarkable (does it not?) that in a country which isunderstood in Europe to be monotonous and unattractive to travellers, Ishould have spent two months not only of intellectual interest but ofæsthetic enjoyment, without once, except in a chance moment of idleness, feeling the least inclination to fall back upon, the treasures ofEuropean art which it undoubtedly contains. I have even ignored themarvels of nature. I passed within twenty miles of Niagara; I saw theserried icefloes sweeping down from Lake Erie to the cataract; and I didnot go to see them plunge over. In the first place, I had been therebefore; in the second place, I should have had to sacrifice six hoursof Chicago, where I wanted, not six hours less, but six weeks more. Before saying farewell--a fond farewell!--to New York, let me supplementmy first impressions with my last. The most maligned of cities, I calledit; and truly I said well. Here is even the judicious Mr. J. F. Muirheadof "Baedeker, " betrayed by his passion for antithesis into describingNew York as "a lady in ball costume, with diamonds in her ears and hertoes out at her boots. " This was written, to be sure, in 1890, and mayhave been true in its day; for it takes an American city much less thana decade to belie a derogatory epigram. Now, at any rate, New York hashad her shoes mended to some purpose. She is not the best paved city inthe world, or even in America, but neither is she by any means theworst; and her splendid system of electric and elevated railroadsrenders her more independent of paving than any European city. Fifth-avenue is paved to perfection; Broadway and Sixth-avenue are not;but at any rate the streets are not for ever being hauled up and laiddown again, like some of our leading London thoroughfares. Holborn, forexample, may be ideally paved on paper, but its roadway is subject tosuch incessant eruptions of one sort or another that it is in practicea much more uncomfortable thoroughfare than any of the New York avenues. For the rest, New York has a copious and excellent water supply, whichLondon has not; it has a splendidly efficient fire-brigade; it has anadmirable telephone system, with underground wires; and even itselectric trolleys get their motive-power from underneath, whereas inPhiladelphia the overhead wires are, I regret to say, killing the treeswhich lend the streets their greatest charm. Altogether, Tammany or noTammany, New York cannot possibly be described as an ill-governed city. Its government may be wasteful and worse; inefficient it is not. Eventhe policemen seem to be maligned. I never found them rude or needlesslydictatorial. In one of the essential conveniences of modern life, New York is farbehind London; but the blame lies, not with the city, but with theUnited States. Its postal arrangements are at best erratic, at worstmiserable. Letters which would be delivered in London in three or fourhours take in New York anywhere from six to sixteen hours. It was a longtime before I realised and learned to allow for the slowness of thepostal service. At first I used mentally to accuse my correspondents ofgreat dilatoriness in attending to notes that called for an immediatereply. On one occasion I posted in Madison Square at 3 P. M. A letteraddressed to the Lyceum Theatre, not a quarter of a mile away, suggesting an appointment for the same evening after the play. Theappointment was not kept, for the letter was not delivered till thefollowing morning! To ensure its delivery the same evening, I ought tohave put a special-delivery stamp on it--price fivepence--in addition tothe ordinary two-cent stamp. No doubt it is the universal employment ofthe telephone in American cities that leads people to put up with suchdefective postal arrangements. But it is not only within city limits that the United States Post Officefunctions with a dignified deliberation. The ordinary time that it takesto write (say) from New York to Chicago, and receive an answer, might beconsiderably reduced without any acceleration of the train service. Itsounds incredible, but it is, I believe, the case, that the simple andeminently time-saving device of a letter-box in the domestic front-dooris practically unknown in America. I did observe one, in Boston, sosmall that a fair sized business letter would certainly have stuck inits throat. One evening I was sitting at dinner in a fashionable streetin New York, close to Central Park, when I was startled by a distinctlyburglarious noise at the window. My host smiled at my look ofbewilderment, and explained that it was only the letter-carrier; and, sure enough, when the servant came into the room she picked up three orfour letters from the floor. The postman was somehow able to reach thefront window from the "stoop, " open it, and throw in the evening'smail--a primitive arrangement, more suggestive of the English than ofthe American Gotham. Even the gum on the United States postage-stampsis apt to be ineffectual. When you are stamping letters in hot hasteto catch the European mail, you are as likely as not to find thatthe head of President Grant has curled up and refuses--mostuncharacteristically--to stick to its post. The conveniences of the express system, again, are, in my judgment, greatly overrated. It is often slow and always expensive. It seems tohave been devised by the makers of Saratoga trunks, for it puts apremium upon huge packages and a tax upon those of moderate size. Ispeak feelingly, for I have just paid, eight shillings for theconveyance of five packages from my room to the wharf, a distance ofabout a mile and a half. A London growler would have taken them andmyself to boot for eighteenpence, three of the packages going outside, and two, with their owner, inside. It is true that had I packed all mybelongings in one huge box the same company would have conveyed them tothe steamer for one and eightpence, which is the regular charge perpackage. But I could not have taken this box into my state-room; I mustin any case have had a cabin trunk; and for an ocean voyage, a bundle ofrugs is, to say the least of it, advisable. Thus I could not haveescaped paying four and tenpence for the conveyance of my baggagealone--rather more than three times as much as it would have cost toconvey my baggage and myself the same distance in London. It must not beforgotten, of course, that the New York Express Company would, ifnecessary, have carried the goods much further for the same charge offorty cents a package. The limit of distance I do not know: it isprobably something like twenty miles. But a potential ell does notreconcile me to paying an exorbitant price for the actual inch which isall I have any use for. This method of simplification--fixing theminimum payment on the basis of the maximum bulk, weight, anddistance--seems to me essentially irrational. In some cases, indeed, itcuts against the Express Company. When I first had occasion to move fromone abode to another in New York--a distance of about a quarter of amile--I thought with glee "Now the famous express system will save meall trouble. " But I found that it would cost two dollars to express mybelongings, whereas even the notoriously extortionate New York cabmanwould convey me and all my goods and chattels for half that sum. So theExpress Company's loss was cabby's gain. "The ship is cheered, the harbour cleared, " and none too merrily are wedropping down by the Statue of Liberty to Sandy Hook and the Atlantic. (There is a point, by the way, a little below the Battery, from whichNew York looks mountainous indeed. Its irregularly serrated profile islost, and the sky-scrapers fall into position one behind the other, likean artistically grouped cohort of giants. "Hills peep o'er hills, andAlps on Alps arise, " while in the background the glorious curve of theBrooklyn Bridge seems to span half the horizon. I could not but think ofValhalla and the Bridge of the Gods in the _Rheingold_. Elevatorarchitecture necessarily sends one to Scandinavian mythology in quest ofsimilitudes. ) It is with acute regret that I turn my back upon New York, or, rather, turn my face to see it receding over the steamer's wake. Notoften in this imperfect world are high anticipations overtopped, as thereal American has overtopped my half-reminiscent dream of it. "The realAmerica?" That, of course, is an absurd expression. I have had only asuperficial glimpse of one corner of the United States. It is as thoughone were to glance at a mere dog-ear on a folio page, and then professto have mastered its whole import. But I intend no such ridiculousprofession. I have seen something of the outward aspect of five or sixgreat cities; I have looked into one small facet of American sociallife; and I have faithfully reported what I have seen--nothing more. Atthe same time my observations, and more especially my conversations withthe scores of "bright" and amiable men it has been my privilege to meet, have suggested to me certain thoughts, certain hopes and apprehensions, respecting the future of America and the English-speaking world, which Ishall try to formulate elsewhere. For the present, let me only sum upmy personal experiences in saying that all the pleasant expectations Ibrought with me to America have been realised, all the forebodingsdisappointed. Even the interviewer is far less terrible than I had beenled to imagine. He always treated me with courtesy, sometimes withcomprehension. One gentleman alone (not an American, by the way) setforth to be mildly humorous at my expense; and even he apologised inadvance, as it were, by prefixing his own portrait to the interview, aswho should say, "Look at me--how can I help it?" Again, I had been ledrather to fear American hospitality as being apt to become importunateand exacting. I found it no less considerate than cordial. Probably Iwas too small game to bring the lion-hunters upon my trail. The allegedhabit of speech-making and speech-demanding on every possible occasion Ifound to be merely mythical. Three times only was I called upon to "saysomething, " and on the first two occasions, being taken unawares, I saideverything I didn't want to say. The third time, having foreseen thedemand, I had noted down in advance the heads of an eloquent harangue;but when the time came I felt the atmosphere unpropitious, andsuppressed my rhetoric. The proceedings opened with an iced beverage, called, I believe, a "Mississippi toddy, " probably as being the longesttoddy on record, the father of (fire) waters; and on its down-lapsingcurrent my eloquence was swept into the gulf of oblivion. The meeting, fortunately, did not know what it had lost, and its serenity remainedunclouded. But it is not to the Mississippi toddies and other creaturecomforts of America that I look back with gratitude and affection. It isto the spontaneous and unaffected human kindness that met me on everyhand; the will to please and to be pleased in daily intercourse; and, inthe spiritual sphere, the thirst for knowledge, for justice, for beauty, for the larger and the purer light. PART II REFLECTIONS NORTH AND SOUTH I In Washington, on the 6th of April last, business was suspended frommid-day onwards, while President McKinley and all the high officers ofState attended the public funeral at Arlington Cemetery of severalhundred soldiers, brought home from the battlefields of Cuba. The burialground on the heights of Arlington--the old Virginian home, by the way, of the Lee family--had hitherto been known as the resting-place ofnumbers of Northern soldiers, killed in the Civil War. But among thebodies committed to earth that afternoon were those of many Southerners, who had stood and fallen side by side with their Northern comrades at ElCaney and San Juan. The significance of the event was widely felt andcommented upon. "Henceforth, " said one paper, "the graves at Arlingtonwill constitute a truly national cemetery;" and the same note was struckin a thousand other quarters. Poets burst into song at the thought oftheir "Resting together side by side, Comrades in blue and grey! "Healed in the tender peace of time, The wounds that once were red With hatred and with hostile rage, While sanguined brothers bled. "They leaped together at the call Of country--one in one, The soldiers of the Northern hills, And of the Southern sun! "'Yankee' and 'Rebel, ' side by side, Beneath one starry fold-- To-day, amid our common tears, Their funeral bells are tolled. " The artlessness of these verses renders them none the less significant. They express a popular sentiment in popular language. But, as hereexpressed, it is clearly the sentiment of the North: how far is itshared and acknowledged by the South? Happening to be on the spot, Icould not but try to obtain some sort of answer to this question. Again, as I stood on the terrace of the Capitol that April afternoon, and looked out across the Potomac to the old Lee mansion at Arlington, while all the flags of Washington drooped at half-mast, a verydifferent piece of verse somehow floated into my memory: "Walk wide o' the Widow at Windsor, For 'alf o' Creation she owns: We 'ave bought 'er the same with the sword and the flame, And salted it down with our bones. (Poor beggars!--it's blue with our bones!)" The association was obvious: how the price of lead would go up ifEngland brought home all her dead "heroes" in hermetically-sealedcaskets! My thought (so an anti-Imperialist might say) was like thesmile of the hardened freebooter at the amiable sentimentalism of acomrade who was "yet but young in deed. " But why should Mr. Kipling'srugged lines have cropped up in my memory rather than the smootherverses of other poets, equally familiar to me, and equally well fittedto point the contrast?--for instance, Mr. Housman's:-- "It dawns in Asia, tombstones show, And Shropshire names are read; And the Nile spills his overflow Beside the Severn's dead. " Or Mr. Newbolt's: "_Qui procul hinc_--the legend's writ, The frontier grave is far away; _Qui ante diem periit, Sed miles, sed fro patriâ_. " The reason simply was that during the month I had spent in America theair had been filled with Kipling. His name was the first I had hearduttered on landing--by the conductor of a horse-car. Men of light andleading, and honourable women not a few, had vied with each other inquoting his refrains; and I had seen the crowded audience at a lowmusic-hall stirred to enthusiasm by the delivery of a screed of maudlinverses on his illness. He, the rhapsodist of the red coat, was out andaway the most popular poet in the country of the blue, and that at atime when the blue coat in itself was inimitably popular. Nor couldthere be any doubt that his _Barrack-room Ballads_ were the most popularof his works. Not a century had passed since the Tommy Atkins of thatday had burnt the Capitol on whose steps I was standing (a shamefulexploit, to which I allude only to point the contrast); and here was thepoet of Tommy Atkins so idolised by the grandsons of the men of 1812 and1776, that I, a Briton and a staunch admirer of Kipling, had almost cometo resent as an obsession the ubiquity of his name! It seemed then, that the rancour of the blue coat against the red musthave dwindled no less significantly than the rancour of the grey coatagainst the blue. Into the reality of this phenomenon, too, I made itmy business to inquire. II There can be no doubt that the Spanish War has done a great deal tobring the North and the South together. It has not in any sense createdin the South a feeling of loyalty to the Union, but it has given theyounger generation in the South an opportunity of manifesting thatloyalty to the Union which has been steadily growing for twenty years. Down to 1880, or thereabouts, the wound left by the Civil War was stillraw, its inflammation envenomed rather than allayed by the measures ofthe "reconstruction" period. Since 1880, since the administration ofPresident Hayes, the wound has been steadily healing, until it has cometo seem no longer a burning sore, but an honourable cicatrice. Every one admits that the heaviest blow ever dealt to the South was thatwhich laid Abraham Lincoln in the dust. He, if any one, could haveaverted the mistakes which delayed by fifteen years the very beginningof the process of reconciliation. His wise and kindly influenceremoved, the North committed what is now recognised as the fatal blunderof forcing unrestricted negro suffrage on the South. This measure wasdictated partly, no doubt, by honest idealism, partly by much lowermotives. Then the horde of "carpet-baggers" descended upon the"reconstructed" States, and there ensued a period of humiliation to theSouth which made men look back with longing even to the sharper agoniesof the war. Coloured voters were brought in droves, by their Northernfuglemen, to polling-places which were guarded by United States troops. Utterly illiterate negroes crowded the benches of State legislatures. ANortherner and staunch Union man has assured me that in the Capitol ofone of the reconstructed States he has seen a coloured representativegravely studying a newspaper which he held upside down. The story goesthat in the legislature of Mississippi a negro majority, which hadopposed a certain bill, was suddenly brought round to it in a body by achance allusion to its "provisions, " which they understood to meansomething to eat! This anecdote perhaps lacks evidence; but there can beno doubt that the freedmen of 1865 were, as a body, entirely unfitted toexercise the suffrage thrust upon them. A degrading and exasperatingstruggle was the inevitable result--the whites of the South striving byintimidation and chicanery to nullify the negro vote, the professionalpoliticians from the North battling, with the aid of the United Statestroops, to render it effectual. Such a state of things was demoralisingto both parties, and in process of time the common sense of the Northrevolted against it. United States troops no longer stood round theballot-boxes, and the South was suffered, in one way and another, tothrow off the "Dominion of Darkness. " Different States modified theirconstitutions in different ways. Many offices which had been electivewere made appointive. The general plan adopted of late years has been torestrict the suffrage by means of a very simple test of intelligence, the would-be voter being required to read a paragraph of the Stateconstitution and explain its meaning. The examiner, if one may put itso, is the election judge, and he can admit or exclude a man at hisdiscretion. Thus illiterate whites are not necessarily deprived of thesuffrage. They may be quite intelligent men and responsible citizens, who happened to grow to manhood precisely in the years when the war andits sequels upset the whole system of public education in the South. Atany rate (it is argued), the illiterate white is a totally different manfrom the illiterate negro. How far such modifications of the Stateconstitutions are consistent with the Constitution of the United States, is a nice question upon which I shall not attempt to enter. Thearguments used to reconcile this test of intelligence with AmendmentsXIV. And XV. Of the United States Constitution seem to me more ingeniousthan convincing. But, constitutional or not, the compromise isreasonable; and though people in the South still feel, as one of themput it to me, that the Republican party "may yet wield the flail of thenegro over them, " the flail has been laid aside long enough to permitthe South, in the main, to recover its peace of mind and itsself-respect. The negro problem is still difficult enough, as manytragic evidences prove; but there is no reason to despair of itsultimate solution. Meanwhile material prosperity has been returning to the South;agriculture has revived, and manufactures have increased. Socialintercourse and intermarriage have done much to promote mutualcomprehension between North and South, and to wipe out ranklinganimosities. Each party has made a sincere effort to understand theother's "case, " and the war has come to seem a thing fated andinevitable, or at any rate not to have been averted save by superhumanwisdom and moderation on both sides. With mutual comprehension, mutualadmiration has gone hand in hand. The gallantry and tenacity of theSouth are warmly appreciated in the North, and it is felt on both sidesthat the very qualities which made the tussle so long and terrible arethe qualities which ensure the greatness of the reunited nation. Butchanges of sentiment are naturally slow and, from moment to moment, imperceptible. It needs some outside stimulus or shock to bring themclearly home to the minds of men. Such a stimulus was provided by theconflict with Spain. It did not create a new sense of solidarity betweenthe North and the South, but rather brought prominently to the surfaceof the national consciousness a sense of solidarity that had for yearsbeen growing and strengthening, more or less obscurely andinarticulately, on both sides of Mason and Dixon's line. It consummateda process of consolidation which had been going on for something liketwenty years. Furthermore, the Spanish War deposed the Civil War from its position asthe last event of great external picturesqueness in the nationalhistory. However sincere may be our love of peace, war remainsirresistibly fascinating to the imagination; and the imagination ofyoung America has now a foreign war instead of a civil war to look backupon. The smoke of battle, in which the South stood shoulder to shoulderwith the North, has done more than many years of peace could do tosoften in retrospect the harsh outlines of the fratricidal struggle. At the same time, there is another side to the case which ought not tobe overlooked. The South is proud, very proud; and the older generation, the generation which fought and agonised through the terrible years from'61 to '65, is more than a little inclined to resent what it regards asthe condescending advances of the North. This feeling is not confined tothose out-of-the-way corners where, as the saying goes, they have notyet heard that the war--the Civil War--is over. It is not confined tothe old families, ruined by the war, whom the tide of returningprosperity has not reached, and never will reach. It is strong amongeven the most active and progressive of the veterans of '65. They smilea grim smile in their grizzled beards at the fuss which has been madeover this "picayune war, " as they call it. They, who came crushed, impoverished, heartbroken, out of the duel of the Titans--they, who knowwhat it really means to sacrifice everything, everything, to a patrioticideal--they, to whom their cause seems none the less sacred because theyknow it irrevocably lost--how can they be expected to toss up their capsand help the party which first vanquished, and then, for many bitteryears, oppressed them, to make political capital out of what appears, intheir eyes, a more or less creditable military picnic? It is especiallythe small scale of the conflict that excites their derision. "Did youever hear of the battle of Dinwiddie Court-House?" one of them said tome. I confessed that I had not. "No, " he said, "nor has any one elseheard of the battle of Dinwiddie Court-House. It was one of the mostinsignificant fights in the war. But there were more men killed in halfan hour in that almost forgotten battle, than in all this mighty war wehear so much about. Ah!" he continued, "they think we are vastlygratified when they 'fraternise' with us on our battlefields anddecorate the graves of our dead. I don't know but I prefer the 'wavingof the bloody shirt' to this flaunting of the olive-branch. They havetheir victory; let them leave us our graves. " An intense loyalty, not only to the political theories of the South, butto the memory of the men who died for them--"qui bene pro patria cumpatriaque jacent"--still animates the survivors of the war. With aconfessed but none the less pathetic illogicality, they feel as thoughDeath had not gone to work impartially, but had selected for his preythe noblest and the best. One of these survivors, in a paper now beforeme, quotes from _Das Siegesfest_ the line-- "Ja, der Krieg verschlingt die Besten!" and then remarks: "Still, when Schiller says:-- 'Denn Patroklus liegt begraben, Und Thersites kommt zurück, ' his illustration is only half right. The Greek Thersites did not returnto claim a pension. " The dash of bitterness in this remark must not be taken too seriously. The fact remains, however, that among the veterans of the South thereprevails a certain feeling of aloofness from the national jubilationover the Spanish War. They "don't take much stock in it. " The feeling iswidespread, I believe, but not loud-voiced. If I represented it assurly or undignified, I should misrepresent it grossly. It is simply theoutcome of an ancient and deep-seated sorrow, not to be salved byphrases or ceremonies--the most tragic emotion, I think, with which Iever came face to face. But it prevails almost exclusively among theolder generation in the South, the men who "when they saw the issue ofthe war, gave up their faith in God, but not their faith in the cause. "To the young, or even the middle-aged, it has little meaning. I met ascholar-soldier in the South who had given expression to the sentimentof his race and generation in an essay--one might almost say anelegy--so chivalrous in spirit and so fine in literary form that itmoved me well-nigh to tears. Reading it at a public library, I foundmyself so visibly affected by it that my neighbour at the desk glancedat me in surprise, and I had to pull myself sharply together. Yet thewriter of this essay told me that when he gave it to his son to read, the young man handed it back to him, saying, "All this is a sealed bookto me. I can not feel these things as you do. " More important, perhaps than the sentiment of the veterans is thefeeling, which has been pretty generally expressed, that the South wasslighted in the actual conduct of the late war--that Southern regimentsand Southern soldiers (notably General Fitzhugh Lee) were unduly kept inthe background. Still, there is every reason to believe that the generaleffect of the war has been one of conciliation and consolidation. Fromthe ultra-Southern point of view, the North seems merely to have seizedthe opportunity of making honourable amends for the "horrors ofreconstruction;" but even those who take this view admit that the North_has_ seized the opportunity, and that gladly. As a matter of fact thegood-will of the North, and its desire to let bygones be bygones, areprobably very little influenced by any such recondite motive. It is inmost cases quite simple and instinctive. "There are no rebels now, " saidthe commandant of the Brooklyn Navy Yard when he gave orders to deletethe fourth word of the inscription "Taken from the rebel ram_Mississippi_" over a trophy of the Civil War displayed outside of hisquarters. Admiral Philips had probably no thought of "reconstruction" orof "making amends;" he simply obeyed a spontaneous and generalsentiment. The Southern heroes of the Civil War, moreover, are freelyadmitted, and enthusiastically welcomed, into the national Pantheon. When the thirty-fourth anniversary of "Appomattox Day, " which broughtthe war to an end, was celebrated in Chicago on April 10 last (GovernorRoosevelt being the guest of honour), the memory of Lee was eulogisedalong with that of Grant, and the oration in his honour was receivedwith equal applause. Finally, it is admitted even by those who are mostinclined to make light of the sentiment elicited by the late war, thatall the States of the Atlantic seaboard are instinctively drawingtogether to counterpoise the growing predominance of the West. Thissubstitution of a new line of cleavage for the old one may seem aquestionable matter for rejoicing. But in any great community, conflictsof interest must always arise. The recognition of the problems whichawait the Republic in the near future does not imply any doubt of herability to arrive at a wise and just solution of them. III The most loyal of the Southern veterans, I have said, recognise that thecause of the South is irrevocably lost. By the cause of the South I donot, of course, mean slavery. There is probably no one in the South whowould advocate the reinstatement of that "peculiar institution, " even ifit could be effected by the lifting of a finger. "The cause we foughtfor and our brothers died for, " says Professor Gildersleeve ofBaltimore, "was the cause of civil liberty, not the cause of humanslavery. .. . If the secrets of all hearts could have been revealed, ourenemies would have been astounded to see how many thousands and tens ofthousands in the Southern States felt the crushing burden and the awfulresponsibility of the institution which we were supposed to be defendingwith the melodramatic fury of pirate kings. " What was it, then, that the South fought for? In what sense was itscause the cause of "civil liberty?" A brief inquiry into this questionmay be found to have more than a merely historic interest--to have adirect bearing, indeed, upon the problems of the future, not only forAmerica, but for the English-speaking world. Let me state at once the true inwardness of the matter, as I have beenled to see it. The cause of the South was the cause of small againstlarge political aggregations; and the world regards the defeat of theSouth as righteous and inevitable, because instinct tells it that thewelfare of humanity is to be sought in large political aggregations, andnot in small. Providence, in a word, is on the side of the big (social)battalions. From the point of view of pure logic, of academic argument, the case ofthe South was enormously strong. Consequently, the latter-day apologistsof the Confederacy devote themselves with pathetic fervour, and oftenwith great ingenuity, to what the impartial outsider cannot but feel tobe barren discussions of constitutional law. They point out that theStates--that is, the thirteen original States--preceded the FederalUnion, and voluntarily entered into it under clearly-defined conditions;that the Federal Government actually derived its powers from theconsent of the States, and could have none which they did not conferupon it; that the maintenance of slavery in the Southern States, and theright to claim the extradition of fugitive slaves, were formallysafeguarded in the Constitution; that it was in reliance upon theseprovisions that the Southern States consented to enter the Union; thatthe right of secession had been openly and repeatedly asserted byleading politicians and influential parties in several Northern States, and was therefore no novel and treasonable invention of the South; and, finally, that the right to enter into a compact implied the right torecede from it when its provisions were broken, or obviously on thepoint of being broken, by the other party or parties to the agreement. All this is logically and historically indisputable. The Southernerswere the conservative party, and had the letter of the Constitution ontheir side; the Northerners were the reformers, the innovators. Entrenched in the theory of State Sovereignty, the South denied theright of the North, acting through the Central Government, to interferewith its "peculiar institution;" and even those who deplored theexistence of slavery felt themselves none the less bound to assert anddefend the right of their respective States to manage their ownaffairs. [I] It was a conflict as old as the Revolution--and even, in itsgerms, of still older date--between centripetal and centrifugal forces, between national and local patriotism. The makers of the Constitutionhad tried to hold the scales justly, but in their natural jealousy of astrong central power, they had allowed the balance to deflect unduly onthe side of local independence. The North, the national majority, felt, obscurely and reluctantly, that a revision of the Constitution in thematter of slavery was essential to the national welfare. [J] The Southmaintained that the States were antecedent and superior to the Nation, and said, "If your Nation, in virtue of its mere majority vote, insistson encroaching on State rights which we formally reserved as a conditionof entering the Nation, why then, we prefer to withdraw from this Nationand set up a nation of our own, in which the true principles of theConstitution shall be preserved. " Thereupon the North retorted, "Wedeny your right to withdraw, " and the battle was joined. The North said, "You have no right to withdraw, " but it meant, I think, something rather different. It threw overboard the question of abstract, formal, technical right, and fought primarily, no doubt, for ahumanitarian ideal, but fundamentally to enforce its instinct of thehighest political expediency. The right interpretation of a state-paper, however venerable, would not have been a question worthy of suchterrible arbitrament. Even the emancipation of the negro, had that beenthe sole object of the contest, would have been too dearly paid for inblood and tears. The question at issue was really this: What is theideal political unit? The largest possible? or the smallest convenient?What mattered abstract argument as to the _right_ to secede? Once grantthe _power_ to secede, once suffer the precedent to be established, andthe greatest democracy the world had ever seen was bound to break up, not only into two, but ultimately into many petty republics, wranglingand jangling like those of Spanish America. To this negation of a greatideal the North refused its consent. National patriotism had outgrownlocal patriotism. It had become to all intents and purposes a fictionthat the Federal Government derived its powers from the States; Thirteenof them, indeed, had sanctioned the Federal Government, but the FederalGovernment had sanctioned and admitted to the Union twenty-one more. Inthese the sentiment of priority to the Union could not exist, whileState Sovereignty was a doctrine limited by considerations ofexpediency, rather than a patriotic dogma. Immigration, and westwardmigration from the north-eastern States, had produced a race of men andwomen whose patriotism was divorced, so to speak, from any given patchof soil, but was wedded to the all-embracing idea of the United States, with the emphasis on the epithet. They thought of themselves first ofall as American citizens, and only in the second place as citizens ofthis State or of that. This habit or instinct is still incomprehensible, and almost contemptible, to the Southerner of the older generation; butthe Time-Spirit was clearly on its side. Thus, then, I interpret the fundamental feeling which impelled the Northto take up arms: "Better one stout tussle for the idea of Unity, than afacile acquiescence in the idea, of Multiplicity, with all its sequelsof instability, distrust, rivalry, and rancour. Better for ourchildren, if not for us, one great expenditure of blood and gold, thannever-ending threats and rumours of war, commercial conflicts, politicalcomplications, frontiers to be safeguarded, bureaucracies to befinanced. " Of course I do not put this forward as a new interpretationof the question at issue. It is old and it is obvious. But though thenational significance of the struggle has long been recognised, I am notsure that its international, its world-historic significance, has beensufficiently dwelt upon. We Europeans have been apt to think that, because the theatre of conflict was so distant, we had only aspectacular, or at most an abstract-humanitarian, interest in it. Therecould not be a greater mistake. The whole world, I believe, will one daycome to hold Vicksburg and Gettysburg names of larger historic importthan Waterloo or Sedan. FOOTNOTES: [Footnote I: "Submission to any encroachment, " says ProfessorGildersleeve, "the least as well as the greatest, on the rights of aState, means slavery;" this remark occurring early in an article oftwenty-five columns, in which _negro_ slavery is not so much asmentioned until the twenty-first column. ] [Footnote J: See _Postscript_ to this article. ] IV The iconoclast of to-day is full of scorn for patriotism, which he holdsthe most retrograde of emotions. He may as usefully declaim againstfriendship, comradeship, the love of man for woman or of mother forchild. The lowest savage regards himself, and cannot but regard himself, as a member of some sort of political aggregation. This feeling is oneof the primal instincts of humanity, and as such one of the permanentdata of the problem of the future. It is folly to denounce or seek toeradicate it. The wise course is to give it large and noble instead ofpetty and parochial concepts to which to attach itself. Rightly esteemedand rightly directed, patriotism is not a retrograde emotion, but one ofthe indispensable conditions of progress. "Nothing is, " says Hamlet, "but thinking makes it so. " It is not oceans, straits, rivers, or mountain-barriers, that constitute a Nation, but theidea in the minds of the people composing it. Now, the largestpolitical idea that ever entered the mind--not of a man--not of agoverning class--but of a people, is the idea of the United States ofAmerica. The "Pax Romana" was a great idea in its day, but it wasimposed from without, and by military methods, upon a number of subjectpeoples, who did not realise and intelligently co-operate in it, butmerely submitted to it. It has its modern analogue in the "PaxBritannica" of India. The idea of the United States, on the other hand, gives what may be called psychological unity to one of the largestpolitical aggregates, both in territory and population, ever known tohistory. In the modern world, there are only two political aggregates inany wise comparable to it: the British Empire, whereof the idea is notas yet quite clearly formulated; and the Russian Empire, whereof theidea, in so far as it belongs to the people at all, is a blind andslavish superstition. Holy Russia is a formidable idea, Greater Britainis a picturesque and pregnant idea; but the United States is aself-conscious, clearly defined and heroically vindicated idea, in whosefurther vindication the whole world is concerned. It is only anexperiment, say some--an experiment which, thirty years ago, trembledon the brink of disastrous failure, and which may yet have even greaterperils to encounter. This is true in a sense, but not the essentialtruth. Let us substitute for "experiment" another word which means thesame thing--with a difference. The United States of America, let us say, is a rehearsal for the United States of Europe, nay, of the world. It isthe very difficulties over which the croakers shake their heads thatmake the experiment interesting, momentous. The United States is averitable microcosm: it presents in little all the elements which go tomake up a world, and which have hitherto kept the world, almostunintermittently, in a state of battle and bloodshed. There are widedifferences of climate and of geographical conditions in the UnitedStates, with the resulting conflict of material interest betweendifferent regions of the country. There are differences of race and evenof language to be overcome, extremes of wealth and poverty to be dealtwith. As though to make sure that no factor in the problem ofcivilisation should be omitted, the men of last century were at pains tosaddle their descendants with the burden of the negro--a race incapableof assimilation and yet tenacious of life. In brief, a thousanddifficulties and temptations to dissension beset the giant Republic: inso far as it overcomes them, and carries on its development by peacefulmethods, it presents a unique and invaluable object-lesson to the world. The idea of unity, annealed in the furnace of the Civil War, has as yetbeen stronger than all the forces of disintegration; and there is noreason to doubt that it will continue to be so. When France falls outwith Germany, or Russia with Turkey, there is nothing save a purelymaterial counting of the cost to hinder them from flying at each other'sthroats. The abstract humanitarianism of a few individuals is as afeather on the torrent. Such sentiment as comes into play is all on theside of bloodshed. It takes very little to make a Frenchman and a Germanfeel that they are in a state of war by nature, and that peace betweenthem is an artificial and necessarily unstable condition. But inAmerica, should two States or two groups of States fall out, there is astrong, and we may hope unconquerable, sentiment of unity to be overcomebefore the dissentients even reach the point of counting the materialcost of war. Men feel that they are in a state of peace by nature, andthat war between them, instead of being a hereditary and almostconsecrated habit, would be a monstrous and almost unthinkable crime. The National Government, as established by the Constitution, is in facta permanent court of arbitration between the States; and thecommon-sense of all may be trusted to "hold a fractious State in awe. ""Did not people say and think the same thing in 1859, " it may be asked, "on the eve of the greatest Civil War in history?" Possibly; but thatwar was precisely what was needed to ratify the Union, and lift it outof the experimental stage. "Blut ist ein ganz besondrer Saft, " and it issometimes necessary that other pacts than those of hell should bewritten in blood, before the world recognises their full validity. Heaven forbid that the Deed of Union of the United States should requirea second time to be retraced in red! But it is an illusion, though a salutary one, that civil war is any morebarbarous than international war. What the world wants is therealisation that every war is a civil war, a war between brothers, justifiable only for the repression of some cruelty more cruel than waritself, some barbarism more barbarous. Towards this realisation theUnited States is leading the way, by showing that, under the conditionsof modern life, an effective sense of brotherhood, a resolute loyaltyto a unifying idea, may be maintained throughout a practically unlimitedextent of territory. But, while enumerating the difficulties which the Republic has toovercome, I have said nothing of the one great advantage it enjoys--acommon, or at any rate a dominant, language. The diversity of tongueswhich prevails in Europe is doubtless one of the chief hindrances tothat "Federation of the World" of which the poet dreamed. But if themany tongues of Europe retard its fusion into what I have called apolitical aggregate, there exists in the world a political aggregatelarger in extent than either Europe or the United States, whichpossesses, like the United States, the advantage of one dominantlanguage. I mean, of course, the British Empire; and surely it is, on the face of it, a fact of good augury for the world that thedominant language of these two vast aggregations of democracies shouldhappen to be one and the same. The hopes--and perhaps, too, someapprehensions--arising from this unity of speech will form the subjectof another article. POSTSCRIPT. --My representation of the South as the conservative and theNorth as the innovating party is the only point in this article towhich (so far as I know) serious objection has been made. A very ableand courteous critic--Mr. Norman Hapgood--writes to me as follows: "Ithink the history of the Kansas-Nebraska trouble, in which thepreliminary conflict centred, the speeches of the time, North and South, the party platforms, all proved that the North said, 'Slavery shall keepits rights and have no further extension, ' while the South said, 'Itshall go into any newly-acquired territory it chooses. ' In 1860 theslave interest was more protected and extended by law than ever beforein the history of the country. It had simply made a new claim which theNorth could not allow. The abolitionists were few; the Northerners whosaid that slavery should not be _extended_ were many. .. . I don't believethere is an American historian of standing who does not say that thepropositions of the South, on which the North took issue in 1861, werethese: (1) Slavery shall go into all territory hereafter acquired; (2)We will secede if this is not allowed. " It was inevitable that this protest should be raised, since, in thelimited space at my command, I had imperfectly expressed my meaning. Myreply to Mr. Hapgood puts it, I hope, more clearly. It ran asfollows:". .. . What I was trying to do was not so much to summariseconscious motives as to present my own interpretation (right or wrong)of the sub-conscious, the unconscious forces that were at work. I gobehind the declarations of Northern statesmen, and what, I have nodoubt, was the sincere sentiment of the majority in the North, againstinterference with slavery in the existing slave States. I have tried toallow to this sentiment what weight it deserves, in saying that theNorth '_obscurely and reluctantly_ felt a revision of the Constitutionessential to the national welfare. ' But my view is that whatever theysaid, and whatever, on the surface of their minds, they thought, thepeople of the North knew, even if they denied it to themselves, thatchattel slavery was impossible in the modern world; and furthermore thatthe people of the South were justified in that instinct which told themthat the institution, fatally menaced, was to be saved only bysecession. The kernel of the matter, to my thinking, lay in the fugitiveslave question. The provision of the Constitution for the return offugitive slaves, though it may seem a matter of detail, was, I think, inreality the keystone of the arch. Make it inoperative, and theinstitution was doomed. Now many of the Northern States, by 'personalliberty laws' and the like, had long been picking at that keystone. Whatever were the professions of politicians and people as tonon-interference, they shrank from the logical corollary, which wouldhave been the sincere, whole-hearted and cheerful carrying out ofArticle IV. , Section 2, Paragraph 3 of the Constitution. They were even, I think, logically bound to accept loyally the Dred Scott decision, which was absolutely constitutional. To protest against it, to seek toevade it, was to insist on a revision of the Constitution. But it wasinconceivable that a civilised community, not blinded by local Southernprejudice, could loyally accept the Dred Scott decision, or couldcheerfully assist the Southern slaveholder to capture and carry off fromtheir own hearthstones, as it were, his runaway chattel. Therefore, theposition and the protestations of the North were mutually contradictory. It was a case of trying to run with the hare and hunt with the hounds;and the North was bound to the hare by fundamental considerations ofhumanity and self-interest, to the hounds, only by a compact accepted ata time when its consequences could not possibly be foreseen. I do notdoubt that the North, on the surface of its will, sincerely desired tokeep this compact; but the South, with an instinct which was really thatof self-preservation, looked, as I am trying to look, beneath theconscious surface to the unconscious sweep of current. It is not withreference to the struggle for Western expansion that I call the Souththe conservative and constitutional party. There, as it seems to me, thequestion was entirely an open one, the power of Congress overterritories being undefined in the Constitution; and no doubt the South, in the course of the struggle, often took up violent and extravagantpositions. My argument is that the attitude of the North, whatever itsprotestations, virtually threatened the institution of slavery in theold slave States, and that therefore the South had virtual, if notformal, justification for holding the constitutional compact broken. " THE REPUBLIC AND THE EMPIRE I Though one of the main objects which I proposed to myself in visitingAmerica was to take note of American feeling towards England as affectedby the Spanish War, I soon found that, so far as the gathering ofinformation by way of question and answer was concerned, I might almostas well have stayed at home. A curious diffidence beset me from thefirst. I shrank from recognising that there was any question as to thegood feeling between the two countries, and still more from seeming toappeal to a non-existent or a grudging sense of kinship. It seemed to metactless and absurd for an Englishman to lay any stress on the war asaffecting the relations between the two peoples. What had England done?Nothing that had cost her a cent or a drop of blood. The British peoplehad sympathised with the United States in a war which it felt to be, inthe last analysis, a part of the necessary police-work of the world; ithad applauded in American soldiers and sailors the qualities it wasaccustomed to admire in its own fighting men; and the BritishGovernment, giving ready effect to the instinct of the people, had, at acritical moment, secured a fair field for the United States, and brokenup what might have been an embarrassing, though scarcely a veryformidable, anti-American intrigue on the part of the ContinentalPowers. What was there in all this to make any merit of? Nothingwhatever. It was the simplest matter in the world--we had merely feltand done what came natural to us. The really significant fact was thatany one in America should have been surprised at our attitude, or shouldhave regarded it as more friendly than they had every right and reasonto expect. In short, I felt an irrational but I hope not unnaturaldisinclination to recognise as matter for question and remark a state offeeling which, as it seemed to me, ought to "go without saying. " Above all was I careful to avoid the word "Anglo-Saxon. " I heard it andread it with satisfaction, I uttered it, never. It is for the Americanto claim his Anglo-Saxon birthright, if he feels so disposed; it is notfor the Briton to thrust it upon him. To cheapen it, to send ita-begging, were to do it a grievous wrong. Besides, the term"Anglo-Saxon" is inaccurate, and, so to speak, provisional. Rightlyunderstood, it covers a great idea; but if one chooses to take it in astrict ethnological sense, it lends itself to caricature. The truth is, it has no strict ethnological sense--it may rather be called anethnological countersense, no less in England than in America. Itrepresents an historical and political, not an ethnological, concept. The Anglo-Saxon was already an infinitely composite personage--Saxon, Scandinavian, Gaul, and Kelt--before he set foot in America; and Americamerely proves her deep-rooted Anglo-Saxonism in accepting and absorbingall sorts of alien and semi-alien race-elements. But when we have to goso far behind the face-value of a word to bring it into consonance withobvious facts, it is safest to use that word sparingly. In brief, I did not wear my Anglo-Saxon heart on my sleeve, or go aboutinviting expressions of gratitude to England for having, like Mr. Gilbert's House of Lords, Done nothing in particular, And done it very well. Yet evidences of a new tone of feeling towards England met me on everyhand, both in the newspapers and in conversation. The subject which Ishrank from introducing was frequently introduced by my Americanacquaintances. It was evident that the change of feeling, though farfrom universal, was real and wide-spread. Americans who had recentlyreturned to their native land, after passing some years abroad, assuredme that they were keenly conscious of it. Many of my acquaintances wereopposed to the policy which brought about the Spanish War, and declaredthe better mutual understanding between England and America to be itsone good result. Others adopted the view to which Mr. Kipling had givensuch far-echoing expression, and frankly rejoiced in the sympathy withwhich England regarded America's determination to "take up the whiteman's burden. " In the Kipling craze as a whole, after making alldeductions, I could not but see a symptom of real significance. It waspartly a mere literary fashion, partly a result of personal andaccidental circumstances; but it also arose in no small degree from anovel sense of kinship with the men, and participation in the ideals, celebrated by the poet of British Imperialism. The change, moreover, extended beyond the book-reading class, wide asthat is in America. It was to be noted even in the untravelled andunlettered American, the man whose spiritual horizon is bounded by hisSunday newspaper, the man in the street and on the farm. The events ofthe past year had taught him--and he rubbed his eyes at therealisation--that England was not an "effete monarchy, " evilly-disposedtowards a Republic as such, [K] and dully resentful of bygonehumiliations by land and sea, but a brotherly-minded people, rememberinglittle (perhaps _too_ little) of those "old, unhappy, far-off things, "willing to be as helpful as the rules of neutrality permitted, and eagerto applaud the achievements of American arms. Millions of people who had hitherto felt no touch of racial sympathy, and had been conscious only of a vague historic antipathy, learned withsurprise that England was in no sense their natural enemy, but rather, among all the nations of Europe, their natural friend. Anglophobes, nodoubt, were still to be found in plenty; but they could no longer reckonon the instant popular response which, a few years ago, would almostcertainly have attended any movement of hostility towards England. AnAmerican publicist, who has perhaps unequalled opportunities for keepinghis finger on the pulse of national feeling, said to me, "It is onlythree or four years since I heard a Federal judge express an earnestdesire for war with England, as a means of consolidating the North andSouth in a great common enthusiasm. Of course this was pernicious talkat any time, " he added; "but it would then have found an echo which itcertainly would not find to-day. " This puts the international situation in a nutshell, so far as to-day isconcerned. But what about to-morrow? FOOTNOTES: [Footnote K: See _Postscript_ to this article. ] II When people spoke to me of the sudden veering of popular sympathy fromFrance and Russia, and towards England, I could not help asking, now andagain, "When is the reaction coming?" "There is no reaction coming, " Iwas told with some confidence. For my part, I hope and believe that apermanent advance has been made, and that any reaction that may set inwill be trifling and temporary. But to ensure this result there is stillthe most urgent need for the exercise of wisdom and moderation on bothsides. The misunderstandings of more than a century are not to be wipedout in two or three months of popular excitement. What we have arrivedat is not a complete mutual understanding, but merely the attitude ofmind which may, in course of time, render such an understandingpossible. That, to be sure, is half the battle; but the longer and moretedious half is before us. The Englishman who visits America for pleasure, and enjoys theinexhaustible hospitality of New York, Boston, and Washington, must becareful not to imagine that he gets really in touch with the sentimentof the American nation. His circle of acquaintance is almost certain tobe composed mainly of people whom he, or friends of his, have met inEurope, people of more or less clearly remembered British descent, whoknow England well, have many English friends and possibly relatives, andare conscious of a distant sentimental attachment to "the Old Country. "They are almost without exception people of culture, as well read as hehimself in the English classics, ancient and modern. They show theirAmericanism not in that they love English literature less, but that veryprobably they love French literature more, than he does. Further, theyare an exceedingly polite people, and, sensitive themselves on points ofnational honour, they instinctively keep in the background all topics onwhich a too free interchange of opinions might be apt to wound thesusceptibilities of their guest. Thus he loses entirely his sense ofbeing in a foreign country, because he moves among people most of whomhave an affection for England almost as deep as his own, while all arecourteous enough to respect his prejudices. This class is large inactual numbers, no doubt, but in proportion to the whole Americanpeople it is infinitesimal, and would be a mere featherweight in thescale at any moment of crisis. Its voice is clearly audible inliterature and even in journalism, but at the polls it would be as awhisper to the thunder of Niagara. The traveller who has "had a goodtime" in literary, artistic, university circles in the Eastern cities, has not felt the pulse of America, but has merely touched the fringe ofthe fringe of her garment. We deceive ourselves if we imagine that there is, or at any rate thatthere was until recently, the slightest sentimental attachment toEngland in the heart of the American people at large. Among the"hyphenated Americans, " as they are called--Irish-Americans, German-Americans, and so forth--it would be folly to look for any suchfeeling. [L] The conciliation of America will never be complete until wehave achieved the conciliation of Ireland. It is evident, indeed, frommany symptoms, that Irish-American hostility to England is declining, ifnot in rancour, at any rate in influence. Still, a popular New Yorkpaper, on St. Patrick's Day, thinks it worth while to propitiate "ThePowerful Race of Ireland" by a leader under that heading, and to thiseffect: "The Irish race is famous as producing the best fighters and poets among men, and the most beautiful and most virtuous of women. "Such a reputation should suffice for any nation. "And note that Ireland still is and always will be a NATION. There is no Anglomania in that fair land, no yearning for reciprocity for the sake of a few dollars, no drinking of the Queen's health first. .. . "Noble patriots like John Dillon and William O'Brien fight for them in the House of Commons, and they are good fighters everywhere, from the glass-covered room in Westminster Abbey (!) to the prize-ring, where a Sullivan, of pure Irish blood, forbids any man to stand three rounds before him. "The English whipped the Irish at the battle of the Boyne--true. But the English on that occasion had the good luck to be led by a Dutchman, and the Irish--sorra the day--had an English King for a leader. The English King was running fast while the Irish were still fighting the Dutchman. "Wellington, of Irish blood, beat Napoleon; Sheridan, of Irish blood, fought here most delightfully. "Here's to the Irish!" This spirited performance no doubt represents fairly enough thepolitical philosophy of the thousands composing the league-longprocession which filed stolidly up Fifth Avenue on the day of itsappearance. But even among unhyphenated Americans--Americans pure and simple--thetendency to regard England as a hereditary foe, though sensibly weakenedby recent events, remains very strong. A good example of this frame ofmind and habit of speech is afforded by the following passage from anaddress delivered by Judge Van Wyck at the Democratic Club's JeffersonDinner in New York on April 13 last. Referring to England, the speakersaid:-- "Let us be influenced by the natural as well as the fixed policy of that nation toward us for a century and a half, rather than by their profuse expressions of friendship during the Spanish War. England's policy has been one of sharp rivalry and competition with America; it impelled the Revolution of 1776, fought for business as well as political independence; brought on the war of 1812, waged against the insolent claim of England for the right to search our ships of commerce while riding the highways of the ocean; caused her to contest every inch of our northern boundary line from ocean to ocean; made her encourage our family troubles from 1860 to 1865, for which she was compelled to pay us millions and admit her wrong; and actuated her, in violation of the Monroe doctrine, to attempt an unwarrantable encroachment on the territory of Venezuela, until ordered by the American Government to halt. " Apart from the obvious begging of the question with reference toVenezuela, there is nothing in this invective that has not somehistorical foundation. It is the studiously hostile turn of thephraseology that renders the speech significant. Everything--even thehonourable amends made for the _Alabama_ blunder--is twisted toEngland's reproach. She is "compelled" to do this, and "ordered" to dothat. There is here no hint of good feeling, no trace of internationalamenity, but sheer undisguised hatred and desire to make the worst ofthings. And this address, be it noted, was the speech of the evening ata huge and representative gathering of the dominant party in New Yorkmunicipal politics. I need scarcely adduce further evidence of the fact that Anglophobia isstill a power in the land, if not the power it once was. But active andaggressive Anglophobia is, I think, a less important factor in thesituation than the sheer indifference to England, with a latent biastowards hostility, which is so widespread in America. To the Englishobserver, this indifference is far more disconcerting than hatred. Theaverage Briton, one may say with confidence, is not indifferent towardsAmerica. He may be very ignorant about it, very much prejudiced againstcertain American habits and institutions, very thoughtless and tactlessin expressing his prejudices; but the United States is not, to him, aforeign country like any other, on the same plane with France, Germany, or Russia. But that is precisely what England is to millions ofAmericans--a foreign country like any other. We see this even in manytravelling Americans; much more is it to be noted in multitudes who stayat home. Many Americans seem curiously indifferent even to the comfortof being able to speak their own language in England; probably becausethey have less false shame than the average Englishman in adventuringamong the pitfalls of a foreign tongue. They--this particular class oftravellers, I mean--land in England without emotion, visit its shrineswithout sentiment, and pass on to France and Italy with no other feelingthan one of relief in escaping from the London fog. These travellers, however, are but single spies sent forth by vast battalions who nevercross the ocean. To them England is a mere name, and the name, moreover, of their fathers' one enemy in war, their own chief rival in trade. Theyhave no points of contact with England, such as almost every Englishmanhas with America. We make use every day of American inventions andAmerican "notions": English inventions and "notions, " if they make theirway to America at all, are not recognised as English. There are fewBritishers, high or low, that have not friends or relatives settled inAmerica, or have not formed pleasant acquaintanceships with Americans onthis side. But there are innumerable families in America who, even ifthey be of British descent, have lost all vital recollection of thefact; who (as the tide of emigration has not yet turned eastwards) haveno friends or relatives settled in England; and who, in their Americanhomes, are far more apt to come in contact with men of almost everyother nationality than with Englishmen. "But surely Englishliterature, " it may be said, "brings England home even to people of thisclass, and differentiates her from France or Germany. " In a measure, doubtless; but I think it will be found that the lower strata of thereading public (not in America alone, of course) are strangelyinsensitive to local colour. To people of culture, the bond ofliterature is a very strong one; but the class of which I am speaking isnot composed of people of culture. They read, it is true, and oftengreedily; but generally, I think, without knowing or greatly caringwhether a book is English or American, and at all events with no suchclear perception of the distinctive qualities of English work as couldbeget in them any imaginative realisation of, or affection for, England. Let us make no mistake--in the broad mass of the American people no suchaffection exists. They are simply indifferent to England, with, as Ihave said, a latent bias towards hostility. Thus the scale of American feeling towards England, while its gradationsare of course infinite, may be divided into three main sections. At oneend of the scale we have the cultured and travelled classes, especiallyin the Eastern States, conscious for the most part of British descent, alive to the historical relationship between the two countries, valuinghighly their birthright in the treasures of English literature, knowing, and (not uncritically) understanding England and her people, andclinging to a kinship of which, taking one thing with another, they haveno reason to be ashamed. This class is intellectually influential, butits direct weight in politics is small. It is, with shining exceptions, a "mugwump" class. At the other end of the scale we have the hyphenatedAmericans, who have imported or inherited European rancours againstEngland, and those unhyphenated Americans whose hatred of England ispartly a mere plank in a political platform, designed to accommodate herhyphenated foe-men, partly a result of instinctive and traditionalchauvinism, reinforced by a (in every sense) partial view ofAnglo-American history. Finally, between these two extremes, we have thegreat mass of the American people, who neither love nor hate England, any more than they love or hate (say) Italy or Japan, but whoseindifference would, until recently, have been much more easily deflectedon the side of hatred than of love. The effect of the Spanish War hasbeen in some measure to alter this bias, and to differentiate England, to her advantage, from the other nations of Europe. FOOTNOTES: [Footnote L: A very distinguished American authority writes to me asfollows with regard to this passage: "I hardly think you lay enoughweight upon the fact that in two or three generations the great bulk ofthe descendants of the immigrants of non-English origin becomeabsolutely indistinguishable from other Americans, and share theirfeelings. This is markedly so with the Scandinavians, and most of theGermans of the second, and all the Germans of the third, generation, whopractically all, during 1898, felt toward Germany and England justexactly as other Americans did. .. . Twice recently I have addressed hugemeetings of eight or ten thousand people, each drawn, as regards theenormous majority, from exactly that class which you pointed out asstanding between the two extremes. In each case the men who introducedme dwelt upon the increased good feeling between the English-speakingpeoples, and every complimentary allusion to England was received withgreat applause. " At the same time my correspondent adds: "Your divisionof the American sentiment into three classes is exactly right; also yoursense of the relative importance of these three classes. "] III It is commonly alleged that the anti-English virulence of the ordinaryschool history of the United States is mainly responsible for this biastowards hostility in the mind of the average American. Mr. GoldwinSmith, a high authority, has contested this theory; and I must admitthat, after a good deal of inquiry, I have been unable to find theAmerican school historians guilty of any very serious injustices toEngland. Some quite modern histories which I have looked into (yetwritten before the Spanish War) seem to me excellently and mostimpartially done. The older histories are not well written: they are aptto be sensational and chauvinistic in tone, and to encourage a somewhatcheap and blusterous order of patriotism; but that they commonly maligncharacter or misrepresent events I cannot discover. They are perhaps alittle too much inclined to make "insolent" the inseparable epithet ofthe British soldier; but there is no reason to doubt that in many casesit was amply merited. I have not come across the history in which Mr. G. W. Steevens discovered the following passages: "The eyes of the soldiers glared upon the people like hungry bloodhounds. The captain waved his sword. The red-coats pointed their guns at the crowd. In a moment the flash of their muskets lighted up the street, and eleven New England men fell bleeding upon the snow. .. . Blood was streaming upon the snow; and though that purple stain melted away in the next day's sun, it was never forgotten nor forgiven by the people. .. . A battle took place between a large force of Tories and Indians and a hastily organised force of patriotic Americans. The Americans were defeated with horrible slaughter, and many of those who were made prisoners were put to death by fiendish torture. .. . More than six thousand American sailors had been seized by British warships and pressed into the hated service of a hated nation. " These passages are certainly not judicial or even judicious in tone; butI fancy that the book or books from which Mr. Steevens culled them mustbe quite antiquated. In books at present on the educational market Ifind nothing so lurid. What I do find in some is a failure todistinguish between the king's share and the British people's share inthe policy which brought about and carried on the Revolutionary War. For instance, in Barnes's _Primary History of the United States_(undated, but brought down to the end of the Spanish War) we read: "_The English people_ after a time became jealous of the prosperity of the colonists, and began to devise plans by which to grasp for themselves a share of the wealth that was thus rolling in. .. . Indeed, _the English people_ acted from the first as if the colonies existed only for the purpose of helping them to make money. " George III. And his Ministers are not so much as mentioned, and theimpression conveyed to the ingenuous student is that the whole Englishnation was consciously and deliberately banded together for purposes ofsheer brigandage. The same history is delightfully chauvinistic in itsaccount of the Colonial Wars. The British officers are all bunglers andpoltroons; if disasters are averted or victories won, it is entirely bythe courage and conduct of the colonists: "When Johnson reached the head of Lake George he met the French, and a fierce battle was fought. Success seemed at first to be altogether with the French; but after a while Johnson was slightly wounded, when General Lyman, a brave colonial officer, took command, and beat the French terribly. .. . Abercrombie's defeat was the last of the English disasters. The colonists now had arms enough, and were allowed to fight in their own way, and a series of brilliant victories followed. .. . By the energy, courage, and patriotism of her colonies, England had now acquired a splendid empire in the New World. And while she reaped all the glory of the war and its fruits, it was the hardy colonists who had throughout, borne the brunt of the conflict. " The child who learns his history from Mr. Barnes may not hate England, but will certainly despise her. Text-books of this type, however, are already obsolescent. A committeeof the New England History Teachers' Association published in the_Educational Review_ for December 1898 a careful survey of no fewer thannineteen school histories of the United States, and summed up theresults as follows: "In discussing the causes of the Revolution, text-book writers have sounded pretty much the whole scale of motives. England has been pictured, on the one hand, as an arbitrary oppressor, and, on the other, as the helpless victim of political environment. Under the influence of deeper study and a keener sense of justice, however, the element of bitterness, which so often entered into the discussion of this subject, has largely disappeared; and while the treatment of the Revolution in the text-books still leaves much to be desired, it is now seldom dogmatic and unsympathetic. " The fact remains, however, that we have still to live down our warswith the United States, in which there was much that was galling to thejust pride of the American people, and much, too, that was perhapsover-stimulating to their self-esteem. There is no doubt, on the onehand, that we were inclined to adopt a supercilious and contemptuousattitude towards the "rebel colonists" of 1775, the new-made nation of1815; no doubt, on the other hand, that they made a splendid fightagainst us, and taught our superciliousness a salutary lesson. They feelto this day the humiliation of having been despised, and the exultationof having put their despisers to shame. These wars, which were, until1861, almost the whole military history of the United States, were butepisodes in our history, and one of them a trifling episode. Therefore, while the average Englishman has not studied them sufficiently torealise how much he ought to deplore them, the average American has beentaught to dwell upon them as the glorious struggles in which his nationwon its spurs. To the juvenile imagination, battles are always the oasesin the desert of history, and the schoolboy never fails to take sidesfiercely and uncompromisingly, exaggerating, with the histrionicinstinct of youth, his enthusiasm and his hatreds. Thus the insolentBritisher became the Turk's-head or Guy Fawkes, so to speak, of theAmerican boy, the butt of his bellicose humours; and a habit of mindcontracted in boyhood is not always to be eradicated by the soberreflection of manhood, even in minds capable of sober reflection. TheCivil War, be it noted, did not depose the insolent Britisher from hisbad eminence in the schoolboy imagination. The Confederates were, afterall, Americans, though misguided Americans; and the fostering, thebrooding upon, intestine rancours was felt by teachers and pupils aliketo be impossible. But there is in the juvenile mind at any given momenta certain amount of abstract combativeness, let us call it, which mustfind an outlet somewhere. Hatred is a natural function of the humanmind, just as much as love; and the healthy boy instinctively exercisesit under the guise of patriotism, without clearly distinguishing theelement of sheer play and pose in his transports. England's attitudeduring the Civil War certainly did nothing to endear her either to thewriters or the readers of school histories; and she remained after thatstruggle, as she had been before, the one great historical adversary onwhom the abstract combativeness of young America could expend itself. How strong this tendency is, or has been, in the American school, may bejudged from the following anecdote. A boy of unmixed English parentage, whose father and mother had settled in America, was educated at thepublic school of his district. On the day when Mr. Cleveland's Venezuelamessage was given to the world, he came home from school radiant, andshouted to his parents: "Hurrah! We're going to war with England! We'vewhipped you twice before, and we're going to do it again. " It is clearthat at this academy Anglomania formed no part of the curriculum; andwho can doubt that in myriads of cases these schoolboy animositiessubsist throughout life, either active, or dormant and easily awakened? Let us admit without shrinking that the history of the United Statescannot be truthfully written in such a way as to ingratiate GreatBritain with the youth of America. There have been painful episodesbetween the two nations, in which England has, on the whole, actedstupidly, or arrogantly, or both. Nor can we shift the whole blame uponGeorge III. Or his Ministers. They were responsible for the actualRevolution; but after the Revolution, down even to the time of theCivil War inclusive, the English people, though guiltless in the main ofactive hostility to America, cannot be acquitted of ignorance andindifference. It is not in the least to be desired that American historyshould be written with a pro-English bias, and, as I have said, I do notfind the anti-English bias, even in inferior text-books, so excessive asit is sometimes represented to be. The anti-English sentiment ofAmerican schools is, as it seems to me, an inevitable phenomenon ofjuvenile psychology, under the given conditions; and it is thealteration in the actual conditions wrought by recent events, ratherthan any marked change in the tone of the text-books, that may, I think, be trusted to soothe the schoolboy's savage breast. England has now donewhat she had never done before: shown herself conspicuously friendly tothe United States; and another European country has given occasion forspirit-stirring manifestations of American prowess. Thus England isdeposed for the time, and we may trust for ever, from her position asthe one traditional arch-enemy. But though the errors of commission in American history-books have beenexaggerated, I cannot but think that a common error of omission isworthy of remark and correction. They begin American history toolate--with the discovery of America--and they do not awaken, as theymight, the just pride of race in the "unhyphenated" American boy. Longbefore Columbus set sail from Palos, American history was a-making inthe shire-moots of Saxon England, at Hastings, and Runnymead, andBannockburn. In all the mediæval achievements of England, in peace andwar--in her cathedrals, her castles, her universities, in Cressy, Poictiers, and Agincourt--Americans may without paradox claim theirancestral part. Why should the sons of the English who emigrated leaveto the sons of those who stayed at home the undivided credit of havingsent to the right-about the Invincible Armada? Nay, it is only the veryoldest American families that can disclaim all complicity in having, asLord Auchinleck put it, "garred kings ken that they had a lith in theirnecks. " Of course I do not mean that the American schoolboy should betaken in detail through British history down to the seventeenth centurybefore, so to speak, he crosses the Atlantic. But I do suggest that hewould be none the worse American for being encouraged to set a due valueon his rightful share in the achievements of earlier ancestors thanthose who fought at Trenton or sailed with Decatur. Let him realise hisbirthright in the glories of Britain, and he will perhaps come to take amore magnanimous view of her errors and disasters. IV Britain has been too forgetful of the past, America, perhaps, toomindful; and in the everyday relations of life Britain has often beentactless and unsympathetic, America suspicious and supersensitive. Thereis every prospect, I think, that such errors will become, in the future, rarer and ever rarer; and it behoves us, on our side, to be careful inguarding against them. We have not hitherto sufficiently respectedAmerica, --that is the whole story. We have taken no pains to know andunderstand her. We have too often regarded her with a careless andsupercilious good feeling, which she has not unnaturally mistaken forill feeling, and repaid in kind. The events of the past year seem tohave brought the two countries almost physically closer to each other, and to have made them more real, more clearly visible, each to each. America has won the respectful consideration of even the mostthoughtless and insular among us. She has come home to us, so to speak, as a vast and vital factor in the problem of the future. Superciliousness towards her is a mere anachronism. Many Englishmen, however, are still guilty of a thoughtless captiousnesstowards America, which is none the less galling because it manifestsitself in the most trifling matters. A friend of my own returned a fewyears ago from a short tour in the United States, declaring that heheartily disliked the country, and would never go back again. Inquiry asto the grounds of his dissatisfaction elicited no more definite ordamning charge than that "they" (a collective pronoun presumed to coverthe whole American people) hung up his trousers instead of foldingthem--or _vice versâ_, for I am heathen enough not to remember which isthe orthodox process. Doubtless he had other, and possibly weightier, causes of complaint; but this was the head and front of America'soffending. Another Englishman of education and position, being asked whyhe had never crossed the Atlantic, gravely replied that he could notendure to travel in a country where you had to black your own boots!Such instances of ignorance and pettiness may seem absurdly trivial, butthey are quite sufficient to act as grits in the machinery of socialintercourse. Americans are very fond of citing as an example of Englishmanners the legend of a great lady who, at an American breakfast, sawher husband declining a dish which was offered to him, and called acrossthe table, "Take some, my dear--it isn't half as nasty as it looks. "Three different people have vouched to me for the truth of thisanecdote, each naming the heroine, and each giving her a different name. True or false, it is held in America to be typical; and it wouldscarcely be so popular as it is unless people had suffered a good dealfrom the tactlessness which it exemplifies. The same vice, in a moreinsidious form, appears in a remark made to me the other day by anEnglishman of very high intelligence, who had just returned from a longtour in America, and was, in the main, far from unsympathetic. "What Ifelt, " he said, "was the suburbanism of everything. It was all Claphamor Camberwell on a gigantic scale. " Some justice of observation maypossibly have lain behind this remark, though I certainly failed torecognise it. But in the form of its expression it exemplified thatillusion of metropolitanism which is to my mind the veriest cockneyismin disguise, and which cannot but strike Americans as either ridiculousor offensive. Englishmen who, as individuals, wish to promote and not impede aninternational understanding, will do well to take some little thought toavoid wounding, even in trifles, the just and inevitablesusceptibilities of their American acquaintances. Our own nationalself-esteem is cased in oak and triple brass, [M] and we are apt toregard American sensitiveness as a ridiculous foible. It is nothing ofthe sort: it is a psychological necessity, deep-rooted in history andsocial conditions. Again, there are certain misunderstandings which Englishmen, not asindividual human beings but as citizens of the British Empire, oughtcarefully to guard against. Let us beware of speaking or thinking asthough friendship for England involved on the part of America anyacceptance of English political ideas or imitation of English methods. In especial, let us carefully guard against the idea that anAnglo-American understanding, however cordial, implies the adoption ofan "expansionist" policy by the United States, or must necessarilystrengthen the hands of the "expansionist" party. If America chooses to"take up the white man's burden" in the Kiplingesque sense, it would illbecome England to object; but her doing so is by no means a condition ofEngland's sympathy. It might seem, indeed, that she had plenty of "whiteman's burden" to shoulder within her own continental boundaries; butthat is a matter which she is entirely competent to determine forherself. Most of all must we beware of anything that can encourage an impression, already too prevalent in America, that we find the "white man's burden"too heavy for us, and are anxious to share it with the United States. This suspicion is very generally felt and very openly expressed. Take, for instance, this paragraph from an editorial in one of the leadingChicago papers: "It would be a strange thing to see Continental Europe take up arms against Great Britain alone. .. . That it is a very reasonable possibility, however, is generally recognised in Europe, and it was doubtless a knowledge of this fact that induced Great Britain to make such unusual exertions to ally itself with the United States. " Here, again, is another journalistic straw floating on the stream: "Referring to the fact that English and American officers had fallen side by side in Samoa while promoting commercial interests, Lord [Charles] Beresford expressed the hope that the two nations would 'always be found working and fighting in unison. ' This might keep us pretty busy, your lordship. " In a rather low-class farce which I saw in a Chicago theatre, two menwandered through the action, with the charming irrelevancecharacteristic of American popular drama, attired, one as John Bull, theother as Brother Jonathan. There came a point in the action where someone had to be kicked out of the house. "You do it, Jonathan, " said JohnBull; whereupon Jonathan retorted: "I know your game; you want me to doyour fighting for you, but _I don't do it_! See?" These are ridiculoustrifles, no doubt, but they might be indefinitely multiplied; and theyshow the set of a certain current in American feeling. Let us beware oflending added strength to this current by any appearance ofself-interested eagerness in our advances towards America. One thing we cannot too clearly realise, and that is that the trueAmerican clings above everything to his Americanism. The status of anAmerican citizen is to him the proudest on earth, and that although hemay clearly enough recognise the abuses of American political life, andthe dangers which the Republic has to encounter. The feeling (which isnot to be confounded with an ignorant chauvinism, though in some casesit may take that form) is the fundamental feeling of the whole nation;and no emotion which threatened to encroach upon it, or compete with itin any way, would have the least chance of taking a permanent place inthe American mind. The feeling which, as one may reasonably hope, is nowgrowing up between the two nations must be based on the mutual admissionof absolute independence and equality. The relation is new to history, and must beget a new emotion. Strong as is the bond of mutual interest, it must have a large idealism to reinforce it--a sentiment (shall wesay?) of mutual admiration--if the English-speaking peoples are to playthe great part in the drama of the future which Destiny seems to beurging upon them. In order to stand together in perfect freedom anddignity, it is essential that each of the brother-nations should beincontestably able to stand alone. If we want to cement theAnglo-American understanding, the first thing we have to do is to cementthe British Empire. There is no more typical and probably no more widely respected Americanat the present moment than Governor Roosevelt, of New York. Even thosewho dissent from his "strenuous" ideal and his expansionist opinions, admit him to be a model of political integrity and public spirit. In anarticle on "The Monroe Doctrine, " published in 1896, Mr. Roosevelt wroteas follows: "No English colony now stands on a footing of genuine equality with the parent State. As long as the Canadian remains a colonist, he remains in a position which is distinctly inferior to that of his cousins, both in England and in the United States. The Englishman at bottom looks down on the Canadian, as he does on any one who admits his inferiority, and quite properly too. The American, on the other hand, with equal propriety, regards the Canadian with the good-natured condescension always felt by the freeman for the man who is not free. A funny instance of the English attitude towards Canada was shown after Lord Dunraven's inglorious fiasco last September, when the Canadian yachtsman Rose challenged for the America Cup. The English journals repudiated him on the express ground that a Canadian was not an Englishman, and not entitled to the privileges of an Englishman. In their comments, many of them showed a dislike for Americans which almost rose to hatred. The feeling they displayed for Canadians was not one of dislike. It was one of contempt. " There are several contestable points in this statement, and I quote it, though it is but three years old, as a historical rather than acontemporary utterance. At the same time it expresses an almostuniversal American point of view, and indicates errors to be corrected, dangers to be avoided. It is absurd, of course, that the American shouldlook down upon the Canadian as a "man who is not free"; but every shadowof an excuse for such an attitude ought to be removed, and the citizenof the British Empire ought to have as clearly defined a status as thecitizen of the American Republic. Even if such unpleasant incidents should recur as those to which Mr. Roosevelt alludes, we may trust with tolerable confidence that he wouldnow find no "hatred" for America, or "contempt" for Canada, in the toneof the British Press. The years which have passed since 1896 have notonly created a new feeling between England and America, but have drawnthe Empire together. In this respect--in every respect--much remains tobe done. But at least we can say with assurance that a good beginning has beenmade towards that consolidation of the English-speaking countries onwhich the well-being of the world so largely depends. POSTSCRIPT. --The notion of inevitable hostility between a constitutionalMonarchy and a Republic has been fostered by American writers in whomone would have expected greater clearness of perception. We find Lowell, for instance, writing in his well-known essay _On a CertainCondescension in Foreigners_: "I never blamed her (England) for notwishing well to democracy--how should she?" The more obvious questionis, How should not one democracy wish another well? There may have beenat the time when Lowell wrote, and there may even be to-day, a handfulof royalty-worshippers in England who regard a Republic as a vulgar, unpicturesque form of government; but this is not a political opinion, or even prejudice, but mere stolid snobbery. Whatever were England'smisdemeanours towards America at the time of the Civil War, they werenot prompted by any hatred of democracy. I find the same misconception insisted on in a document much later thanLowell's essay: a leaflet by the Rev. Edward Everett Hale, contributedto a _Good Citizenship Series_ especially designed for the enlightenmentof the more ignorant class of American voters. The tract is called _TheRuler of America_, and sets forth that the Ruler of America is "ThePeople with a very large P. " Now, according to Dr. Hale, we benightedEuropeans are absolutely incapable of grasping this truth. He says:"This is at bottom the trouble with the diplomatists of Europe, withprime ministers, and with leaders of ''Er Majesty's Hopposition. '. .. Even men of intelligence. .. . Can make nothing of the central truth ofour system. .. . In my house, once, an English gentleman of greatintelligence told me that he had visited the White House, and was mostglad to pay his respects to 'the Ruler of our Great Nation. ' Poor man!he thought he would please me! But he saw his mistake soon enough. Istormed out, 'Ruler of America? Who told you he was the ruler ofAmerica? He never told you so. He is the First Servant of America. ' AndI hope the poor traveller learned his lesson. " It is true that the poor traveller used a pompous and rather absurdexpression, but if he had had his wits about him he might have remindedDr. Hale that the President is much more effectively the Ruler ofAmerica than the Queen is the Ruler of England. He rules by the directmandate of the People, but he rules none the less. It would greatlyconduce to a just understanding between America and England if thepolitical instructors of the American people would correct instead ofconfirming the prevalent impression that they have a monopoly ofdemocracy. AMERICAN LITERATURE Great Britain and the United States are sister Commonwealths, enjoyingthe advantages and exposed to the dangers of sisterhood. The dangers areas real, though we trust not as great, as the advantages. Familyquarrels are apt to be bitterest; a chance word will seem unkind andunbearable from a near kinsman, which, coming from a stranger, wouldcarry no sting at all. As Lowell very truly said, "The common blood, andstill more the common language, are fatal instruments ofmisapprehension. " But behind this statement there lies a far deeperthough still obvious truth. We misunderstand because we understand; andit would be an extravagance of pessimism to doubt that, in the long run, understanding will carry the day. Light may dazzle here and bewilderthere; but, after all, it is light and not darkness. We English andAmericans hold a talisman that makes us at home over half, and more thanhalf, the world; and we are not going to rob it of its virtue byrenouncing our ties, and wantonly declaring ourselves aliens to eachother. Our unity of speech is such a commonplace that we scarcely notice it. But, rightly regarded, it is a thing to be rejoiced in with a great joy, and not without a certain sense of danger happily escaped. He would havebeen a bold man who should confidently have prophesied at the Revolutionthat American and English would remain the same tongue, and that at theend of the nineteenth century there would not be the slightestperceptible cleavage, or threat of ultimate divergence. No doubt therewere forces obviously tending to preserve the linguistic unity of thetwo nations. There was the English Bible for one thing, and there wasthe whole body of English literature. The Americans, it might have beensaid, could scarcely be so foolish as deliberately to renounce theirspiritual birthright, or let it drift little by little away from them. But, on the other hand, virulent and inveterate political enmity, had itarisen, might quite conceivably have led the Americans to make it apoint of honour to differentiate their speech from ours, as manyNorwegians are at this moment making it a point of honour todifferentiate their language from the Danish, which was until of lateyears the generally accepted medium of literary expression. In theevolution of their literature, the Americans might purposely haverejected our classical tradition, making their effort rather to departfrom than to adhere to it. Again, an observer in 1776 could not haveforeseen the practical annihilation, by steam and electricity, of thatbarrier which then appeared so formidable--the Atlantic Ocean. He mighthave foreseen the immense influx of men of every race and tongue intothe unpeopled West; but he could scarcely have anticipated withconfidence the ready absorption of all these alien elements (save one!)into the dominant Anglo-Saxon polity. It was quite on the cards that anew American language might have developed from a fusion of all thediverse tongues of all the scattered races of the earth. Nothing of the sort, as we know, has happened. The instinct of kinshipfrom the first kept political enmity in check; the Atlantic has beenpractically wiped out; and English has easily absorbed, in America, allthe other idioms which have been brought into contact, rather thancompetition, with it. The result is that the English language occupies aunique position among the tongues of the earth. It is unique in twodimensions--in altitude and in expanse. It soars to the highest heightsof human utterance, and it covers an unequalled area of the earth'ssurface. Undoubtedly it is the most precious heirloom of our race, andas such we must reverence and guard it. Nor must we islanders talk asthough we hold it in fee-simple, and allowed our trans-Atlantic kinsfolkmerely a conditional usufruct of it. Their property in it is as completeand indefeasible as our own; and we should rejoice to accept their aidin the conversation and renovation (equally indispensable processes) ofthis superb and priceless heritage. English critics of the beginning of the century so convincingly setforth the reasons why America, absorbed in the conquest of nature and inmaterial progress, could not produce anything great in the way ofliterature, that their arguments remain embedded in many minds even tothis day, when events have conclusively falsified them. It is acommonplace with some people that America has not developed a great_American_ literature. If this merely means that, in casting off herallegiance to George III. , America did not cast off her allegiance toChaucer, Shakespeare, Milton, Dryden, Addison, Swift, Pope, thereproach, if it be one, must be accepted. If it be a humiliation toAmerican authors to own the traditions and standards established bythese men, and thereby to enrol themselves in their immortal fellowship, why, then it must be owned that they have deliberately incurred thathumiliation. One American of vivid originality tried to escape it, andwith what result? Simply that Whitman holds a place of his own, somewhatlike that of Blake one might say, in the literature of the Englishlanguage, and has produced at least as much effect in England as inAmerica. If, on the other hand, it be implied that American literaturefeebly imitates English literature, and fails to present an original andadequate interpretation of American life, no reproach could well be moreflagrantly unjust. It is not only the abstract merit of Americanliterature, though that is very high, but precisely the Americanism ofit, that gives it its value in the eyes of all thinking Englishmen. Onlyone American author of the first rank could possibly, at a superficialglance, appear--not so much English as--European, cosmopolitan. I mean, of course, Edgar Allan Poe, who has left perhaps a deeper impress uponliterature outside the English-speaking countries than any otherimaginative writer of the century, with the exception of Byron. Poe wasa born idealist, a creature of pure intelligence. Whether in poetry orfiction, he was always solving problems; and it is hard to bedistinctively national in an exercise of pure intelligence. We do notlook for local colour in, for example, the agreeable essays of Euclid. But Poe's intelligence was, at bottom, of a characteristically Americantype. He was the Edison of romance. [N] As for the other great writers ofAmerica, what can be more patent than their Americanism? Speaking only, for the present, of those who have joined the majority, I would name twowho seem to me to stand with Poe in the very front rank of originalgenius. They are Emerson, that starlike spirit, dwelling in a serenerether than ours, which, though we may never attain, it is yet arefreshment to look up to; and Hawthorne, not perhaps the greatestromancer in the English tongue, but certainly the purest artist in thatsphere of fiction. Now, it is a mere truism to say that each of thesemen was, in his way, a typical product of New England, inconceivable asthe offspring of any other soil in the world. Emerson, it has been said, not without truth, was the first of the American humourists, carryinginto metaphysics that gift of realistic vision and inspired hyperbolewhich has somehow been grafted upon the Anglo-Saxon character by theconditions of American life. As for Hawthorne, though he has felt andreproduced the physical charm of Rome more subtly than any other artist, his genius drew at once its strength and its delicacy from his Puritanancestry and environment. To realise how intimately he smacks of thesoil, we have but to think of that marvellous scene in _The BlithedaleRomance_, the search for Zenobia's body. From what does it derive itspeculiar quality, its haunting savour? Simply from the presence of SilasFoster, that delightful incarnation of the New England yeoman. "If Ithought anything had happened to Zenobia, I should feel kind o'sorrowful, " said the grim Silas; and there never was a speech moredramatically true, or, in its context, more bitterly pathetic. Even while English critics were proving that there could be no suchthing as an American literature, Washington Irving and Fenimore Cooperwere laying its foundations on a thoroughly American basis. Irving wasnone the less American for loving the picturesque traditions of hisEnglish ancestry; Cooper, a gallant and fertile genius, did his countryand our language an inestimable service by adding a whole group ofspecifically American figures to the deathless aristocracy of the realmsof romance. Then, in the generation which has just passed away, we havesuch men as Thoreau, racy of his native soil; Longfellow, in his day andway the chief interpreter of America to England; Whittier, so intenselylocal that, as Professor Matthews puts it, "he wrote for New Englandrather than for the whole of the United States;" Lowell, courtly, cultured, cosmopolitan, and yet the creator of Hosea Biglow; Holmes, asAmerican in his humour as Lamb was English, who justly ranks with Lamband Goldsmith among the personally best-beloved writers of the Englishtongue. Prescott, in the sphere of history, paralleled the achievementof Cooper in fiction, by giving literary form to the romance of the NewWorld; while Motley was inspired (too ardently, perhaps) by the spiritof free America in writing the great epic of religious and politicalfreedom in Europe. Finally, it must not be forgotten that in _UncleTom's Cabin_, a tragically American production, Mrs. Beecher Stowe addedto the literature of the English language the most potent, the mostdynamic, pamphlet ever hurled into the arena of national life. Of all that living Americans are doing for the literature of our commontongue it is as yet impossible to speak adequately. Since 1870, a newspirit of nationalism has entered into American literature, which hasnot yet been thoroughly studied in America or appreciated in England. Sofar from having no national literature, America has now, perhaps, themost intimately national body of fiction in the modern world. Before theCivil War there was practically no deliberate and systematic study oflocal and racial idiosyncracies. Hosea Biglow was a mask, not acharacter, and Parson Wilbur was a literary device. Even Hawthornethought primarily of the element of imagination in the romances--theuniversal, not the local, element. His leading characters arepsychological creations, with nothing specifically American about them;his local colour and local character-study, though admirable, areincidental, or at any rate stand on a secondary plane. In the Souththere was no literature at all, local or otherwise, with the onestartling exception of _Uncle Tom's Cabin_. [O] But since 1870, andmainly, indeed, within the past twenty years, a marvellous change hascome over the scene. Not only the national but the localself-consciousness of America has sprung to literary life, until at thepresent day there is scarcely a corner of the country, scarcely anaspect of social life, that has not found its special, and, as a rule, very able interpreter through the medium of fiction. Pursuing technicalmethods partly borrowed from abroad (from France rather than fromEngland), American writers have undertaken what one is tempted to call asociological ordnance-survey of the Republic from Maine to Arizona, fromFlorida to Oregon. There is scarcely a human being in the United States, from the Newport society belle to the "greaser" of New Mexico, that hasnot his or her more or less faithful counterpart in fiction. No Europeancountry, so far as I know, has achieved anything like such comprehensiveself-realisation. Comprehensive, I say--not necessarily profound. Perhaps France in Balzac, perhaps Russia in Turgueneff and Tolstoï, found more searching interpretation than America has found even in herhost of novelists. But never, surely, was there a body of fiction thattouched life at so many points, to mirror if not to probe it. And inmany cases to probe it as well. It would take a volume to criticise these writers in any detail. I canattempt no more than a bald and imperfect enumeration. Miss MaryWilkins's studies of New England life are well known and appreciated inEngland, but the talent of Miss Sarah Orne Jewett is not sufficientlyrecognised. In her _Country of the Pointed Firs_, for example, there arewhole chapters that rise to a classical perfection of workmanship. Thenovelists of the Eastern cities, with Mr. Howells, a master craftsman, at their head, are of course numberless. For studies in the local colourof New York nothing could be better than Professor Brander Matthews'_Vignettes of Manhattan_, and other stories. Mr. Paul Leicester Ford's_Honorable Peter Stirling_, though antiquated in style, gives aremarkable picture of political life in New York. The Bowery Boy iscleverly represented, so far as dialect at any rate is concerned, byMr. E. W. Townsend in his _Chimmie Fadden_. Even the Jewish and theItalian quarters of New York have their portraitists in fiction. Life inWashington has been frequently and ably depicted; for instance, in Mrs. Burnett's _Through one Administration_. Of the many interpreters of theSouth I need mention only three: Mr. Cable, Mr. Thomas Nelson Page, andMr. Chandler Harris. Miss Murfree ("Charles Egbert Craddock") has madethe mountains of Tennessee her special province. Chicago has severalnovelists of her own: for example, Mr. Henry Fuller, author of _TheCliff Dwellers_, Mr. Will Payne, and that close student of Chicagoslang, Mr. George Ade, the author of _Artie_. The Middle West countssuch novelists as Miss "Octave Thanet" and Mr. Hamlin Garland, whose_Main Travelled Roads_ contains some very remarkable work. The Far Westis best represented, perhaps, in the lively and graphic sketches of Mr. Owen Wister; while California has novelists of talent in Miss GertrudeAtherton and Mr. Frank Norris. At least two Americans living abroad havemade noteworthy contributions to this sociological survey of theirnative land: the late Mr. Harold Frederic, who has dealt mainly withcountry life in New York State, and Miss Elizabeth Robins, whosepicture, in _The Open Question_, of a Southern family impoverished bythe war, is exceedingly vivid and bears all the marks of the utmostfidelity. Nor must I omit to mention that the stage has borne a modestbut not insignificant part in this movement of nationalself-portraiture. Mr. Augustus Thomas' _Alabama_ is a delightful pictureof Southern life, while Mr. James A. Herne's _Shore Acres_ takes adistinct place in the literature of New England, his _GriffithDavenport_[P] in the literature of Virginia. There must, of course, be many gaps in this summary enumeration. It isvery probable that many novelists of distinction have altogether escapedmy notice; and I have made no attempt to include in my list the writersof short magazine stories, many of them artists of high accomplishment. One omission, however, I must at once repair. "Mark Twain's"contributions to the work of self-realisation have been in the mainretrospective, but nevertheless of the first importance. He is the"sacred poet" of the Mississippi. If any work of incontestable genius, and plainly predestined to immortality, has been issued in the Englishlanguage during the past quarter of a century, it is that brilliantromance of the Great Rivers, _The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn_. Intensely American though he be, "Mark Twain" is one of the greatestliving masters of the English language. To some Englishmen this may seema paradox; but it is high time we should disabuse ourselves of theprejudice that residence on the European side of the Atlantic confersupon us an exclusive right to determine what is good English, and towrite it correctly and vigorously. We are apt in England to class as an"Americanism" every unfamiliar, or too familiar, locution which we donot happen to like. As a matter of fact, there is a pretty livelyinterchange between the two countries of slipshod and vulgar"journalese;" and as the picturesque reporter is a greater power inAmerica than he is with us, we perhaps import more than we export ofthis particular commodity. But there can be no rational doubt, I think, that the English language has gained, and is gaining, enormously by itsexpansion over the American continent. The prime function of a language, after all, is to interpret the "form and pressure" of life--theexperience, knowledge, thought, emotion, and aspiration of the racewhich employs it. This being so, the more tap-roots a language sendsdown into the soil of life, and the more varied the strata of humanexperience from which it draws its nourishment, whether of vocabulary oridiom, the more perfect will be its potentialities as a medium ofexpression. We must be careful, it is true, to keep the organismhealthy, to guard against disintegration of tissue; but to that dutyAmerican writers are quite as keenly alive as we. It is not a source ofweakness but of power and vitality to the English language that itshould embrace a greater variety of dialects than any other civilisedtongue. A new language, says the proverb, is a new sense; but amultiplicity of dialects means, for the possessors of the main language, an enlargement of the pleasures of the linguistic sense without thefatigue of learning a totally new grammar and vocabulary. So long asthere is a potent literary tradition keeping the core of the languageone and indivisible, vernacular variations can only tend, in virtue ofthe survival of the fittest, to promote the abundance, suppleness, andnicety of adaptation of the language as a literary instrument. TheEnglish language is no mere historic monument, like Westminster Abbey, to be religiously preserved as a relic of the past, and reverenced asthe burial-place of a bygone breed of giants. It is a living organism, ceaselessly busied, like any other organism, in the processes ofassimilation and excretion. It has before it, we may fairly hope, afuture still greater than its glorious past. And the greatness of thatfuture will largely depend on the harmonious interplay of spiritualforces throughout the American Republic and the British Empire. FOOTNOTES: [Footnote M: I do not mean that we are callous to American criticism, oralways take it in good part when it comes home to us. I think withshame, for example, of the stupid insolence with which certain Englishjournalists used for years to treat Mr. W. D. Howells, merely because hehad expressed certain literary judgments from which they dissented. WhatI do mean, and believe to be true, is that we are _habituallyunconscious_ of American criticism, while Americans may rather be saidto be _habitually over-conscious_ that the eyes of England and of theworld are on them. The existence of this habit of mind seems to me noless evident than the fact that it is rapidly correcting itself. ] [Footnote N: I went to see Poe's grave in Baltimore, marked by a meanand ugly monument, little more than a mere tombstone. It is surely timethat a worthy memorial should be raised, at his burial-place orelsewhere, to this unique genius. England and the English-speaking worldwould gladly contribute. For a masterly criticism and vindication ofPoe, let me refer the reader to Mr. John M. Robertson's _New Essaystowards a Critical Method_. London and New York, 1897. ] [Footnote O: For the reasons of this barrenness, see an essay on _TwoStudies in the South_, in Professor Brander Matthews' _Aspects ofFiction_. New York, 1896. ] [Footnote P: Founded on a novel by Miss Helen H. Gardener. ] THE AMERICAN LANGUAGE I Nothing short of an imperative sense of duty could tempt me to set forthon that most perilous emprise, a discussion of the American language. The path is beset with man-traps and spring-guns. Not all the seriouscauses of dissension between England and America have begotten half thebad blood that has been engendered by trumpery questions of vocabulary, grammar, and pronunciation. I cannot hope to escape giving offence, probably on both sides; but if I can induce one or two people on eitherside to think twice before they scoff once, I shall not have written invain. In the way of scoffing, we English have doubtless (and inevitably) beenthe worst offenders. We have habitually used "Americanism" as a term ofreproach, implying, if not saying in so many words, that America was thegreat source of pollution, and of nothing but pollution, to theotherwise limpid current of our speech. Dean Alford wrote offensivelyto this effect; Archbishop Trench, on the other hand, discussed therelations between the English of America and the English of England withcourtesy and good sense. [Q] He protested against certain transatlanticneologisms, including in his list that excellent old word "to berate, "and a word so useful and so eminently consonant with the spirit of thelanguage as "to belittle;" but, whether wise or unwise, his protest wasat least civil. Other writers, both in books and periodicals, have beenapt to take their tone from the Dean rather than from the Archbishop. Itmay even be said that the instinct of the majority of Englishmen, whichfinds heedless expression in the newspapers and common talk, is toregard Americanisms as necessarily vulgar, and (conversely) vulgarismsas probably American. If challenged and brought to book, they cangenerally realise the narrowness and injustice of this way of thinking;yet they relapse into it next moment. It is time we should be on ourguard against so insidious a habit. Its reduction to absurdity may befound (alackaday!) in _Fors Clavigera_ for June 1, 1874. With shame andsorrow I transcribe the passage, for the time has not yet come for itto be forgotten. If it were merely the aberration of an individual, however distinguished, it were better kept out of sight, out of mind;but it is, I repeat, the reckless exaggeration of a not altogetheruncommon habit of thought:-- "England taught the Americans all they have of speech or thought, hitherto. What thoughts they have not learned from England are foolish thoughts; what words they have not learned from England, unseemly words; the vile among them not being able even to be humorous parrots, but only obscene mocking-birds. " Can we wonder that Americans have retorted with some asperity uponcriticisms in which any approach to such insolent insularism is evenremotely or inadvertently implied? The American retort, however, has not always been judicious ordignified. It has too often consisted in the mere pitting of onelinguistic prejudice against another. It is very easy to prove thatthere are bad speakers and bad writers in both countries, and theattempt to determine which country has the more numerous and the greatersinners is exceedingly unprofitable. The "You're another" style ofargument has been far too prevalent. Here we have Mr. Gilbert M. Tucker, for instance, in a book entitled _Our Common Speech_ (1895) implying, if he does not absolutely assert (p. 173), that a "boldness ofinnovation" in matters linguistic, amounting to "absolutelicentiousness, " is more characteristic of England than of America. Thesuggestion leaves my British withers entirely unwrung, for I approve ofbold innovation in language, trusting to the impermanence of the unfitto counteract the effects of licentiousness. If I could believe that weBritish were the bolder innovators, I should admit it without blenching;but observation and probability seem to me to point with one accord inthe opposite direction. New words are begotten by new conditions oflife; and as American life is far more fertile of new conditions thanours, the tendency towards neologism cannot but be stronger in Americathan in England. America has enormously enriched the language, not onlywith new words, but (since the American mind is, on the whole, quickerand wittier than the English) with apt and luminous colloquialmetaphors; and I know not why Mr. Tucker should disclaim the credit. He next sets forth to show how recent English writers are corrupting thelanguage; and, in doing so, he falls into some curious errors. Dickens was boldly innovating when he made Silas Wegg say, "Mr. Boffin, I never bargain"--"haggle, " it would seem, is the proper word. But ifMr. Tucker will look into the matter, he will find it extremely probablethat this was the original sense of the word "bargain, " and quitecertain that it was a very early sense; for instance-- "So worthless peasants bargain for their wives, As market-men for oxen, sheep, or horse. " I HENRY VI. , V. V. 53. And, in any case, is it possible to set up such a distinction between"bargaining" and "haggling" as to be worth an international wrangle?"Starved" for frozen is to Mr. Tucker an innovation; it was used both byShakespeare and Milton. "Assist" in the sense of to "be present at" isan "absurd" innovation; it was used by Gibbon and by Prescott, a"tolerably good authority, " says Mr. Tucker himself, "in the use ofEnglish. " Miss Yonge is taken to task for saying, "Theodora _flung_ awayand was rushing off;" but Milton says, "And crop-full out of doors heflings. " Charles Reade "is guilty of such phrases as 'Wardlaw whippedbefore him, ' 'Ransome whipped before it;'" but the Princess in _Love'sLabour's Lost_ is guilty of saying, "Whip to our tents, as roes runo'er the land, " and the word occurs in the same sense in Ben Jonson andSteele, to search no further. The simple fact is that Mr. Tucker has nothappened to note the intransitive sense of "to fling" and "to whip, "which has been current in the best authors for centuries. He is verysevere on the English habit of "inserting utterly superfluous words, "instancing from Lord Beaconsfield, "He was _by way of_ intimating thathe was engaged on a great work, " and, from a magazine, "She was _by wayof_ painting the shrimp girl. " Now, this is not an elegant expression, and for my part I should be at some pains to avoid it; but it has aperfectly distinct meaning, and is not a mere redundancy. If Mr. Tuckersupposes that "She was by way of painting the shrimp girl" means exactlythe same as "She was painting the shrimp girl, " he misses one of thefine shades of the English language. Similarly, his remark on the"peculiar misuse of the affix _ever_, as in saying 'What_ever_ are youdoing?'" stands in need of reconsideration. It is wrong, certainly, totreat _ever_ as an affix, and to mistake the first two words of "Whatever are you doing?" for the one word "whatever;" but to suppose the"ever" meaningless and inert, is to overlook a clearly marked and veryuseful gradation of emphasis. "What are you doing?" expresses simplecuriosity; "What ever are you doing?" expresses surprise; "What thedevil are you doing?" expresses anger--we need not run farther up thescale. Nor is this use of "ever" an innovation, licentious or otherwise. "Ever" has for centuries been employed as an intensive particle afterthe interrogative pronouns and adverbs how, who, what, where, why. Forinstance, in _The World of Wonders_ (1607), "I shall desire him toconsider how ever it was possible to get an answer from these priests. " One of the most remarkable paragraphs in Mr. Tucker's book is that inwhich he proves "the greater permanence and steadiness of our Americanspeech as compared with that of the mother country" by going throughHalliwell's _Dictionary of Archaisms and Provincialisms_, and pickingout 76 words which Halliwell regards as obsolete, but which in Americaare all alive and kicking. (The vulgarism is mine, not Mr. Tucker's. )Now as a matter of fact not one of these words is really obsolete inEngland, and most of them are in everyday use; for instance, adze, affectation, agape, to age, air (appearance), appellant, apple-pieorder, baker's dozen, bamboozle, bay window, between whiles, bicker, blanch, to brain, burly, catcall, clodhopper, clutch, coddle, copious, cosy, counterfeit money, crazy (dilapidated), crone, crook, croon, cross-grained, cross-patch, cross purposes, cuddle, to cuff (to strike), cleft, din, earnest money, egg on, greenhorn, jack-of-all-trades, loophole, settled, ornate, to quail, ragamuffin, riff-raff, rigmarole, scant, seedy, out of sorts, stale, tardy, trash. How Halliwell ever cameto class these words as archaic I cannot imagine; but I submit that anyone who sets forth to write about the English of England ought to havesufficient acquaintance with the language to check and rejectHalliwell's amazing classification. Does Mr. Tucker so despise BritishEnglish as never to read an English book? How else is one to account forhis imagining for a moment that clodhopper, clutch, copious, cosy, cross-grained, greenhorn, and rigmarole are obsolete in England? Far be it from me to assert that Mr. Tucker makes no good points in hiscatalogue of English solecisms. I merely hint that this game of pot andkettle is neither dignified nor profitable; that purism is almost alwaysover-hasty, and apt to ignore both the history and the psychology oflanguage; and, finally, that nothing is gained by introducing acerbity(though I have admitted the frequent provocation) into a discussionwhich a little exercise of temper should render no less agreeable thaninstructive to both parties. "The speech of the lower orders of ourpeople, " says Mr. Tucker, ". .. Differs from what all admit to bestandard correctness in a much smaller degree[R] than we have everyreason to believe to be the case in England, _our enemies themselvesbeing judges_. " Now I protest I am not Mr. Tucker's enemy, and I know ofno reason why he should be mine. I cannot share the withering contemptwith which he regards the extension of the term "traffic" from barter tomovement to and fro, as in a street or on a railway; but if he prefersanother word (he does not suggest one, by the way) for the traffic onBroadway or on the New York Central, I shall not esteem him one whit theless. [S] Even when he tells me that "bumper" is the English term forthe American "buffer" (on a railway carriage) I do not feel my bloodboil. A very slight elevation of the eyebrows expresses all the emotionof which I am conscious. So long as he does not insist on my saying a"bumper state" when I mean a "buffer state, " I see no reason whateverfor any rupture of that sympathy which ought to subsist between two menwho take a common interest and pride in the subject of histreatise--_Our Common Speech_. FOOTNOTES: [Footnote Q: See _English Past and Present_, ninth edition, pp. 63, 215. ] [Footnote R: "What great city of this country, " Mr. Tucker inquires, "has developed, or is likely to develop, any peculiar class of errors atall comparable in importance to those of the Cockney speech of London?"The answer is pat: New York and Chicago--unless Mr. Townsend's _ChimmieFadden_ and Mr. Ade's _Artie_ are sheer linguistic libels. ] [Footnote S: It must be very painful to Mr. Tucker to find Shakespearetalking of the "two hours' traffic of our stage. " He was a hardenedoffender, was Shakespeare, against Mr. Tucker's ideal of one single, inelastic, cast-iron signification for every word in the language. ] II It is not to be expected that an extremely English intonation shouldever be agreeable to Americans, or an extremely American intonation toEnglishmen. We ourselves laugh at a "haw-haw" intonation in English;why, then, should we forbid Americans to do so? If "an accent like abanjo" is recognised as undesirable in America (and assuredly it is), there is no reason why we in England should pretend to admire it. But avulgar or affected intonation is clearly distinguishable, and ought tobe clearly distinguished, from a national habit in the pronunciation ofa given letter, or accentuation of a particular word, or class of words. For instance, take the pronunciation of the indefinite article. TheAmerican habitually says "[=a] man" (_a_ as in "game"); the Englishman, unless he wants to be emphatic, says, "[)a] man. "[T] Neither is right, neither wrong; it is purely a matter of habit; and to consider eitherhabit ridiculous is merely to exhibit that childishness or provincialismof mind which is moved to laughter by whatever is unfamiliar. Again, when I first read the works of the sagacious Mr. Dooley, I thought it acuriously far-fetched idea on the part of that philosopher to talk ofAdmiral Dewey as his "Cousin George, " and assert that "Dewey" and"Dooley" were practically the same name. I had not then noticed that theAmerican pronunciation of "Dewey" is "Dooey, " and that the liquid "yoo"is very seldom heard in America. In the course of the five minutes Ispent in the Supreme Court at Washington, I heard the Chief Justice ofthe United States make this one remark: "That, sir, is not_constitootional_. " To our ears this "oo" has an old-fashioned ring, like that of the "ee" in "obleeged;" but to call it wrong is absurd, andto find it ridiculous is provincial. Very possibly it can be proved thathad Shakespeare used the word at all, he would have said"constitootional;" but that would make the "oo" neither better nor worsein my eyes. There always have been, and always will be, changingfashions in pronunciation; and the Americans have as good a right totheir fashion as we to ours. Fifty years hence, perhaps, our grandsonswill be saying "constitootional, " and theirs "constityootional. " Iconfess that, in point of abstract sonority, I prefer the "yoo" to thedry "oo;" but that, again, is a pure matter of taste. If Americanschoose to say, "From morn To noon he fell, from noon to dooey eve, A summer's day. " I am perfectly willing that they should do so, reserving always my ownright to say "dyooey. " It would not at all surprise me to learn thatMilton said "dooey;" but neither would it lead me to alter thepronunciation which, as one of the present generation of Englishmen, Ihave learnt to prefer. It is said that when Mr. Daly's company returned to New York, after along visit to England, they pronounced "lieutenant" according to theEnglish fashion, "leftenant, " but were called to order by an outburst ofprotest. Though, for my own part, I say "leftenant, " I heartilysympathise with the protesters. "Leftenant, " though a corruption ofrespectable antiquity, is a corruption none the less, and since it hasdied out in America, it would be mere snobbery to reintroduce it. So, too, with questions of accentuation. We say "prim-arily" and"tem-porarily;" most (or at any rate many) Americans say "primar-ily"and "temporar-ily. " Here there is no question of right or wrong, refinement or vulgarity. The one accentuation is as good as the other. It may be argued, indeed, that our accentuation throws into relief theroot, the idea, the soul of the word, not the mere grammatical suffix, the "limbs and outward flourishes;" but on the other hand, it may becontended with equal truth that the American accentuation has the Latinprecedent in its favour. Neither advantage is conclusive; neither, indeed, is, strictly speaking, relevant; for Englishmen do not make aprinciple of accentuating the root rather than the prefix or suffix, else we should say "inund-ation, " "resonant, " "admir-able;" and theAmericans do not make a principle of following the Latin emphasis, elsethey would say "ora-tor" and "gratui-tous, " and the recognisedpronunciation of "theatre" would be "theayter. " It is argued that thereis a general tendency among educated Englishmen to throw the accent asfar back as possible; that, for instance, the educated speaker says"in-teresting, " the uneducated, "interest-ing. " True; but until thistendency can be proved to possess some inherent advantage, there is nota shadow of reason why Americans should be reproached or ridiculed forobeying their own tendency rather than ours. The English tendency is amatter of comparatively recent fashion. "Con-template, " said SamuelRogers, "is bad enough, but bal-cony makes me sick. " Both forms havemaintained themselves up to the present; but will they for long? I thinkone may already trace a reaction against the universal throwing backwardof the accent. I myself say "per-emptory" and "ex-emplary;" but it wouldtake very little encouragement to make me say "peremp-tory" and"exemp-lary, " which seem to me much more expressive words. There issurely no doubt that, in accenting a prefix rather than the root of theword, we lose a certain amount of force. "Con-template, " for instance, is not nearly so strong a word as "contemp-late. " We say an"il-lustrated" book or the "_Il-lustrated London News_" because we donot require any particular force in the epithet; but when the sensedemands a word with colour and emotion in it, we say the "illus-trious"statesman, the "illus-trious" poet, throwing into relief the essentialelement in the word, the "lustre. " What a paltry word would"tri-umphant" be in comparison with "trium-phant!" But the larger ourlist of examples, the more capricious does our accentuation seem, themore evidently subject to mere accidents of fashion. There is scarcely atrace of consistent or rational principle in the matter. To make a meritof one practice, and find in the other a subject for contemptuouscriticism, is simply childish. Mere slovenliness of pronunciation is a totally different matter. Forinstance, the use of "most" for "almost" is distinctly, if not avulgarism, at least a colloquialism. It may be of ancient origin; it mayhave crossed in the _Mayflower_ for aught I know; but the overwhelmingpreponderance of ancient and modern usage is certainly in favour ofprefixing the "al, " and there is a clear advantage in having a specialword for this special idea. If American writers tried to make "most"supplant "almost" in the literary language, we should have a right toremonstrate; the two forms would fight it out, and the fittest wouldsurvive. But as a matter of fact I am not aware that any one hasattempted to introduce "most, " in this sense, into literature. It isperfectly recognised as a colloquialism, and as such it keeps its place. Again, such pronunciations as "mebbe" for "maybe" and "I'd ruther" or "Idruther" for "I'd rather" are obvious slovenlinesses. No American woulddefend them as being correct, any more than an Englishman would defend"I dunno" for "I don't know" or "atome" for "at home. " If an actor, forinstance, were to say, "I druther be a dog and bay the moon Than such a Roman, " American and English critics alike could not but protest against thesolecism; for in poetry absolute precision of utterance is clearlyindispensable. But in everyday speech a certain amount of colloquialismis inevitable. Let him whose own enunciation is chemically free fromlocalism or slovenliness cast the first stone even at "mebbe" and"ruther. " A curious American colloquialism, of which I certainly cannot see theadvantage, in the substitution of "yep, " or "yup" for "yes, " and of"nope" for "no. " No doubt we have in England the coster's "yuss;" butone hears even educated Americans now and then using "yep, " or someother corruption of "yes, " scarcely to be indicated by the ordinaryalphabetical symbols. It seems to me a pity. Much more respectable in point of antiquity is the habit which obtainsto some extent even among educated Americans, of saying "somewheres" and"a long ways. " Here the "s" is an old case-ending, an adverbialgenitive. "He goes out nights, " too, on which Mr. Andrew Lang is sosevere, is a form as old as the language and older. I turn to Dr. LeonKellner's _Historical English Syntax_ (p. 119) and find that the Gothicfor "at night" was "nahts, " and that the form (with its correlative"days ") runs through old Norse, old Saxon, old English, and middleEnglish: for instance, "dages endi nahtes" _(Hêliand)_, "dæges andnihtes" _(Beówulf)_, "dæies and nihtes" (Layamon), all meaning "by dayand by night. " In all, or almost all, words ending in "ward, " thegenitive inflection, according to modern English practice, can either beretained or dropped at will. It is a mere pedantry to declare "toward"better English than "towards, " "upward" than "upwards. " Thus we seethat here again there is neither logical principle nor consistentpractice to be invoked. At the same time, as "somewheres" has becomeirremediably a vulgarism in England, it would, I think, be a gracefulconcession on the part of educated Americans to drop the "s. " After all, "somewhere" does not jar in America, and "somewheres" very distinctlyjars in England. An insidious laxity of pronunciation (rather than of grammar), which istaking great hold in America, is the total omission of the "had" or"have, " in such phrases as "You'd better, " "we've got to. " Mr. Howells'sWillis Campbell, a witty and cultivated Bostonian, says, in _The AlbanyDepot_, "I guess we better get out of here;" Mr. Ade's Artie, a Chicagoclerk, says, "I got a boost in my pay, " meaning "I have got:" thelocution is very common indeed. It is no more defensible than "swelp me"for "so help me. " It arises from sheer laziness, unwillingness to facethe infinitesimal difficulty of pronouncing, "d" and "b" together. As acolloquialism it is all very well; but I regard it with a certain alarm, for where all trace of a word disappears, people are apt to forget thelogical and grammatical necessity for it. Though contracted to its lastletter, a word still asserts its existence; but when even the lastletter has vanished its state is parlous indeed. An Anglicism much ridiculed in America is "different to. " As aScotchman, I dislike it, and would neither use nor defend it. At thesame time I cannot but hint to American critics that the use of aparticular preposition in a particular context is largely a matter ofconvention; that when we learn a new language we have simply to get upby rote the conventions that obtain in this regard, reason being littleor no guide to us; and that within the same language the conventions arealways changing. You may easily nonplus even a good grammarian by askinghim suddenly, "What preposition should you use in such-and-such acontext?" just as you may puzzle a man by asking him to spell a wordwhich, if he wrote it without thinking about it, would present nodifficulty to him. Some very good American writers always say, "at theNorth, " and "at the South, " where an Englishman would certainly say"in. " "At, " to my mind, suggests a very narrow point of space. I shouldsay "at" a village, but "in" a city--"at Concord, " but "in Boston. " Irecognise, however, that this is a mere matter of convention, and donot dream of condemning "at the North" as an error. In the same way Iwould claim tolerance, though certainly not approval, for "differentto. " As a general rule, I think, educated Americans are more apt to err onthe side of purism than of laxity. I have before me, for example, a longlist of rules and warnings for American writers, issued by the _New YorkPress_, many of which are very much to the point, while others seem tome captious and pedantic. For instance, a woman is not to "marry" a man;she is "married to" him; "the clergyman or magistrate marries both. " Thegrammatical suitor, then, when the awful moment arrives, must not say tothe blushing fair, "Will you marry me?" but "Will you be married to me?"Again, you not only must not split infinitives, but you must notseparate an auxiliary from its verb; you must say "probably will be, "not "will probably be. " This is English by the card indeed. I will not waste space upon discussing the different fashions ofspelling in England and America. The rage excited in otherwise rationalhuman beings by the dropping of the "u" in "favor, " or the final "me" in"program, " is one of the strangest of psychological phenomena. Thebaselessness of the reasonings used to bolster up the British clingingto superfluous letters is very ably shown in Professor Matthews'_Americanisms and Briticisms_. Let me only put in a plea for theretention of such abnormal spellings as serve to distinguish two wordsof the same sound. For instance, it seems to me useful that we shouldwrite "story" for a tale and "storey" for a floor, and in the plural"stories" and "storeys. " FOOTNOTES: [Footnote T: "Surely, on Mr. Archer's own showing, " writes Mr. A. B. Walkley, "the Englishman has the advantage here, for 'when he wants tobe emphatic' he can be, whereas the American cannot. " This is amisapprehension on Mr. Walkley's part. The American a can be spoken withor without emphasis, just as the speaker pleases. It is because we areaccustomed always to associate this particular sonority with emphasisthat even when it is spoken without emphasis, we imagine it to beemphatic. ] III Passing now from questions of pronunciation and grammar to questions ofvocabulary, I can only express my sense of the deep indebtedness of theEnglish language, both literary and colloquial, to America, for the oldwords she has kept alive and the new words and phrases she has invented. It is a sheer pedantry--nay, a misconception of the laws which governlanguage as a living organism--to despise pithy and apt colloquialisms, and even slang. In order to remain healthy and vigorous, a literarylanguage must be rooted in the soil of a copious vernacular, from whichit can extract and assimilate, by a chemistry peculiar to itself, whatever nourishment it requires. It must keep in touch with life in thebroadest acceptation of the word; and life at certain levels, obeying apsychological law which must simply be accepted as one of the conditionsof the problem, will always express itself in dialect, provincialism, slang. America doubles and trebles the number of points at which the Englishlanguage comes in touch with nature and life, and is therefore a greatsource of strength and vitality. The literary language, to be sure, rejects a great deal more than it absorbs; and even in the vernacular, words and expressions are always dying out and being replaced by otherswhich are somehow better adapted to the changing conditions. But thoughan expression has not, in the long run, proved itself fitted to survive, it does not follow that it has not done good service in its time. Certain it is that the common speech of the Anglo-Saxon race throughoutthe world is exceedingly supple, well nourished, and rich in forcibleand graphic idioms; and a great part of this wealth it owes to America. Let the purists who sneer at "Americanisms" think for one moment howmuch poorer the English language would be to-day if North America hadbecome a French or Spanish instead of an English continent. I am far from advocating a breaking down of the barrier between literaryand vernacular speech. It should be a porous, a permeable bulwark, allowing of free filtration; but it should be none the less distinct andclearly recognised. Nor do I recommend an indiscriminate hospitality toall the linguistic inspirations of the American fancy. All I say is thatneologisms should be judged on their merits, and not rejected withcontumely for no better reason than that they are new and (presumably)American. Take, for instance, the word "scientist. " It was originallysuggested by Whewell in 1840; but it first came into common use inAmerica, and was received in England at the point of the bayonet. Huxleyand other "scientists" disowned it, and only a few years ago the _DailyNews_ denounced it as "an ignoble Americanism, " a "cheap and vulgarproduct of transatlantic slang. " But "scientist" is undoubtedly holdingits own, and will soon be as generally accepted as "retrograde, ""reciprocal, " "spurious, " and "strenuous, " against which Ben Jonson, inhis day, so--strenuously protested. It holds its own because it is feltto be a necessity. No one who is in the habit of writing will pretendthat it is always possible to fall back upon the cumbrous phrase "man ofscience. "[U] On the other hand, the purist objection to"scientist"--that it is a Latin word with a Greek termination, and thatit implies the existence of a non-existent verb--may be urged withequal force against such harmless necessary words as deist, aurist, dentist, florist, jurist, oculist, somnambulist, ventriloquist, and--purist. Much more valid objection might be made to the word"scientific, " which is not hybrid indeed, but is, if strictly examined, illogical and even nonsensical. The fact is that three-fourths of theEnglish language would crumble away before a purist analysis, and weshould be left without words to express the commonest and most necessaryideas. Contrast with the case of "scientist" a vulgarism such as the use of"transpire" in the sense of "happen. " I do not quote it as anAmericanism; it is probably of English origin; it occurs, I regret tonote, in Dickens. I select it merely as an example of a demonstrablyvicious locution which ought indubitably to be banished from thelanguage. It has its origin in sheer blundering. Some one, at some time, has come upon the phrase "such-and-such a thing has transpired"--thatis, leaked out, become known--and, ignorantly mistaking its meaning, hasnoted and employed the word as a finer-sounding synonym for "occurred"or "happened. " The blunder has been passed on from one penny-a-liner toanother, until at last it has crept into the pages of writers, on bothsides of the Atlantic, who ought to know better. If it served anypurpose, expressed any shade of meaning, it might be tolerated; butbeing at once a useless pedantry and an obvious blunder, it deserves noquarter. My point, then, is that "scientist" ought to live on its merits, "transpire" to die on its demerits. With regard to every neologism weought first to inquire, "Does it fill a gap? Does it serve a purpose?"And if that question be answered in the affirmative, we may nextconsider whether it is formed on a reasonably good analogy and inconsonance with the general spirit of the language. "Truthful, " forexample, is said to be an Americanism, and at one time gave offence onthat account. It is not only a vast improvement on the stilted"veracious, " but one of the prettiest and most thoroughly English wordsin the dictionary. The above-quoted writer in the _New York Press_ is a purist invocabulary, no less than in grammar. He will not allow us to be"unwell, " we must always be "ill;" an inhuman imperative. Why should wesacrifice this clear and useful gradation: unwell, very unwell, ill, very ill? On "sick" he does not deliver judgment. The American use ofthe word is ancient and respectable, but the English limitation of itsmeaning seems to me convenient, seeing we have the general terms"unwell" and "ill" ready to hand. Again, the _New York Press_ authorityfollows Freeman in wishing to eject the word "ovation" from thelanguage; surely a ridiculous literalism. It is true we do not sacrificea sheep at a modern "ovation, " but neither (for example) do we judge bythe flight of birds when we declare the circumstances to be "auspicious"for such and such an undertaking. Again, we are never to "retire" forthe night, but always to "go to bed. " If, as is commonly alleged, Americans say "retire" because they consider it indelicate to go to bed, the feeling and the expression are alike foolish. But I do not believethat either is at all common in America. On the other hand, one mayretire for the night without going to bed. In the case of ladiesespecially, the interval between retiring and going to bed is reputedto be far from inconsiderable. If, then, one really means "retired forthe night" and does _not_ definitely mean "went to bed, " I see no crimein employing the expression that conveys one's exact meaning. Finallythe _New York Press_ will not let us use the word "commence;" we mustalways "begin. " This is an excellent example of unreflecting orhalf-reflecting purism. "Commence" is a very old word; it is used by thebest writers; it is easily pronounceable and not in the leastgrandiloquent; indeed it has precisely the length and cadence of itscompetitor. But somebody or other one day observed that it was Latin, whereas "begin" was Saxon; and since then there has been a systematicattempt, in several quarters, to hound the innocent and useful synonymout of the language. Whence comes this rage for impoverishing ourtongue! The more synonyms we possess the better. Wherefore (by the way)I for my part should not be too rigorous in excluding a forcibleAmericanism merely because it happens to duplicate some word orexpression already current in England. The rich language is that whichpossesses not only the necessaries of life but also an abundance ofsuperfluities. FOOTNOTES: [Footnote U: Mr. Andrew Lang says: "Plenty of other words are formed onthe same analogy: the Greeks, in the verb 'to Medize, ' set the example. But we happen to have no use for 'scientist. '" It is not quite clearwhether Mr. Lang employs "have no use" in the American sense, expressingsheer dislike, or in the literal and English sense. In the latter case Ican only say that he has been fortunate in never coming acrossconjunctures in which "man of science" came in awkwardly andinelegantly. ] IV Let me note a few of the Americanisms, good, bad, and indifferent, whichspecially struck me, whether in talk or in books, during my recent visitto the United States. I call them Americanisms without inquiring intotheir history. Some of them may be of English origin; but for practicalpurposes an Americanism may be taken to mean an expression commonly usedin America and not commonly used in England. I had not been three hours on American soil before I heard a charmingyoung lady remark, "Oh, it was bully!" I gathered that this expressionis considered admissible, in the conversation of grown-up people, onlyin and about New York. I often heard it there, and never anywhere else. A very distinguished officer, who served as a volunteer in Cuba, wasasked to state his impressions of war. "War, " he said, "is a terriblething. You can't exaggerate its horrors. When you sit in your tent thenight before the battle, and think of home and your wife and children, you feel pretty sick and downhearted. But, " he added, "next day, whenyou're in it, oh, it _is_ bully!" The general use of picturesque metaphor is of course a striking featureof American conversation. Many of these expressions have taken firm rootin England, such as "to have no use for" a man, or "to take no stock in"a theory. But fresh inventions crop up on every hand in America. Forinstance, where an English theatrical manager would say, "We must getthis play well talked about and paragraphed in advance, " an Americanmanager puts the whole thing much more briefly and forcibly in thephrase, "We don't want this piece to come in on rubbers. " Metaphorapart, many Americans have a gift of fantastic extravagance of phrasewhich often produces an irresistible effect. A gentleman in highpolitical office had one day to receive a deputation with whose objectshe had no sympathy. He listened for some time to the spokesman of theparty, and then, at a pause, broke in with the remark: "Gentlemen, youneed proceed no further. I am not an entirely dishevelled jackass!" Onewould give something for a snapshot photograph of the faces of thatdeputation. Small differences of expression (other than those with which every oneis familiar--such as "elevator, " "baggage, " "depot, " &c. )--strike one indaily life. The American for "To let" is "For rent;" a "thing one wouldwish to have expressed otherwise" is, more briefly, "a bad break;"instead of "He married money" an American will say "He married rich;"but this, I take it, is a vulgarism--as, indeed, is the Englishexpression. I find that in the modern American novel, setting forth thesayings and doings of more or less educated people, there are apt to be, on an average, about half a dozen words and phrases at which the Englishreader stumbles for a moment. Mr. Howells, a master of English, may betaken as a faithful reporter of the colloquial speech of Boston and NewYork. In one of his comediettas, he makes Willis Campbell say, "Let meturn out my sister's cup" (pour her a cup of tea). Mrs. Roberts, inanother of these delightful little pieces, says, "I'll smash off anote, " where an English Mrs. Roberts would say "dash off "; and where anEnglish Mrs. Roberts would ring the bell, her American namesake "touchesthe annunciator. " It is commonly believed in England that there is nosuch thing as a "servant" in America, but only "hired girls" and"helps. " This is certainly not so in New York. I once "rang up" afriend's house by telephone, and, on asking who was speaking to me, received the answer, in a feminine voice, "I'm one of Mr. So-and-so'sservants. " The heroine of _The Story of a Play_ says to her husband, "Are you stillthinking of our scrap of this morning?" "Scrap, " in the sense of"quarrel, " is one of the few exceedingly common American expressionswhich, have as yet taken little hold in England. [V] Admiral Dewey, forinstance, is admired as a "scrapper, " or, as we should phrase it, afighting Admiral. Mr. Henry Fuller, of Chicago, in his powerful novel_The Cliff Dwellers_, uses a still less elegant synonym for "scrap"--hetalks of a "connubial spat. " In the same book I note the phrases "Heteetered back and forth on his toes, " "He was a stocky young man, " "Oneof his brief noonings, " "That's right, Claudia--score the profession. ""Score, " as used in America, does not mean "score off, " but rather, Itake it, "attack and leave your mark upon. " It is very common in thissense. For instance, I note among the headlines of a New York paper, "Mr. So-and-so scores Yellow Journalism. " Talking of Yellow Journalism, by the way, the expressions "a beat, " and "a scoop, " for what we inEngland call an "exclusive" item of news, were unknown to me until Iwent to America. I was a little bewildered, too, when I was told of afamily which "lived on air-tights. " Their diet consisted of canned (or, as we should say, tinned) provisions. The most popular slang expression of the day is "to rubberneck, " or, more concisely, "to rubber. " Its primary meaning is to crane the neck incuriosity, to pry round the corner, as it were. [W] But it has numerousand surprising extensions of meaning. It appears to be one of the lawsof slang that when a phrase strikes the popular fancy, it is pressedinto service on every possible or impossible occasion. Anotherfavourite expression is "That cuts no ice with me. "[X] I was unable toascertain either its origin or its precise significance. On the otherhand, a piece of slang which supplies a "felt want, " and will one day, Ibelieve, pass into the literary language, is "the limit" in the sense of"le comble. " A theatrical poster, widely displayed in New York while Iwas there, bore this alluring inscription: THE LIMIT AT LAST! "THE MORMON SENATOR AND THE MERMAID" JAGS OF JOY FOR JADED JOHNNIES. A "jag, " be it known, means primarily a load, secondarily a "load, " or"package, " of alcohol. Collectors of slang will find many priceless gems in two recent bookswhich I commend to their notice: _Chimmie Fadden_, by Mr. E. W. Townsend, and _Artie_, by Mr. George Ade. _Chimmie Fadden_ gives us the dialect ofthe New York Bowery Boy, or "tough, " in which the most notable featureis the substitution either of "d" or "t" for "th. " Is this, I wonder, aspontaneous corruption, or is it due to German and Yiddish influence?When Chimmie wants to express his admiration for a young lady, he says:"Well, say, she's a torrowbred, an' dat goes. " When the young lady'sfather comes to thank him for championing her, this is how Chimmiedescribes the visit: "Den he gives me a song an' dance about me being abrave young man for tumping de mug what insulted his daughter, " "Mug, "the Bowery term for "fellow" or "man, " in Chicago finds its equivalentin "guy. " Mr. Ade's Artie is a Chicago clerk, and his dialect is of themost delectable. In comparison with him, Mr. Dooley is a well of Englishundefiled. Here again we find traces of the influence of polyglotimmigration. "Kopecks" for "money" evidently comes from the Russian Jew;"girlerino, " as a term of endearment, from the "Dago" of the sunnysouth; and "spiel, " meaning practically anything you please, from theFatherland. When Artie goes to a wedding, he records that "there was along spiel by the high guy in the pulpit. " After describing theembarrassments of a country cousin in the city, Artie proceeds, "Down atthe farm, he was the wise guy and I was the soft mark. " "Mark" in thesense of "butt" or "gull" is one of the commonest of slang words. WhenArtie has cut out all rivals in the good graces of his Mamie, he puts itthus, "There ain't nobody else in the one-two-sevens. They ain't even inthe 'also rans. '" When they have a lovers' quarrel he remarks, "Well, Is'pose the other boy's fillin' all my dates. " When he is asked whetherMamie cycles, he replies, "Does she? She's a scorchalorum!" When hedisapproves of another young gentleman, this is how "he puts him next"to the fact, as he himself would say-- "You're nothin' but a two-spot. You're the smallest thing in the deck. .. . Chee-e-ese it! You can't do nothin' like that to me and then come around afterwards and jolly me. Not in a million! I tell you you're a two spot, and if you come into the same part o' the town with me I'll change your face. There's only one way to get back at you people. .. . If he don't keep off o' my route, there'll be people walkin' slow behind him one o' these days. .. . But this same two-spot's got a sister that can have my seat in the car any time she comes in. " I plead guilty to an unholy relish for Chimmie's and Artie's racymetaphors from the music-hall, the poker-table, and the "grip-car. "[Y]But it is to be noted that both these profound students of slang, Mr. Townsend and Mr. Ade, like the creator of the delightful Dooley, expressthemselves in pure and excellent English the moment they drop the maskof their personage. This is very characteristic. Many educated Americanstake great delight, and even pride, in keeping abreast of the dailydevelopments of slang and patter; but this study does not in the leastimpair their sense for, or their command of, good English. The idea thatthe English language is degenerating in America is an absolutelygroundless illusion. Take them all round, the newspapers of the leadingAmerican cities, in their editorial columns at any rate, are at least aswell written as the newspapers of London; and in magazines and books theaverage level of literary accomplishment is certainly very high. Thereare bad and vulgar writers on both sides of the Atlantic; but until thebeams are removed from our own eyes, we may safely trust the Americansto attend to the motes in theirs. POSTSCRIPT. --When this paper originally appeared, it formed the text foran editorial article in the _Daily News_, in which Mr. Andrew Lang'ssign manual was not to be mistaken. Mr. Lang brought my somewhatdesultory discussion very neatly to a point. He admitted that wehabitually use "Americanism" as a term of reproach; "but, " he asked, "who is reproached? Not the American (who may do as he pleases) but theEnglish writer, who, in serious work, introduces, needlessly, anAmerican phrase into our literature. We say 'needlessly' when ourlanguage already possesses a consecrated equivalent for the word oridiom. " In the first place, one has to remark that many English critics are farfrom accepting Mr. Lang's principle that "the American may do as hepleases, of course. " Mr. Lang himself scarcely acts up to it in thisvery article. And, for my part, I think the principle a false one. Ithink the English language has been entrusted to the care of all of us, English no less than Americans, Americans no less than English; and if Ifind an American writer debasing it in an essential point, as opposed toa point of mere local predilection, I assert my right to remonstratewith him, just as I admit his right, under similar circumstances, toremonstrate with me. It is not here, however, that I join issue with Mr. Lang: it is on histheory that an English writer necessarily does wrong who unnecessarilyemploys an Americanism. This is a question of great practical moment, and I am glad that Mr. Lang has stated it in this definite form. My viewis perhaps sufficiently indicated above, but I take the opportunity ofreasserting it with all deliberation. I believe that, as a matter bothof literary and of social policy, we ought to encourage the freeinfiltration of graphic and racy Americanisms into our vernacular, andof vigorous and useful Americanisms (even if not absolutely necessary)into our literary language. Where is the harm in duplicating terms, ifonly the duplicates be in themselves good terms? For instance, take theword "fall. " Mr. Brander Matthews writes: "An American with a sense ofthe poetic cannot but prefer to the imported word 'autumn' the nativeand more logical word 'fall, ' which the British have strangely sufferedto drop into disuse. " Well, "autumn" was a sufficiently earlyimportation. "Our ancestors, " wrote Lowell (quoted by Mr. Matthews inthe same article), "unhappily could bring over no English better thanShakespeare's;" and in Shakespeare's (and Chaucer's) English theybrought over "autumn. " The word has inherent beauty as well as splendidpoetical associations. I doubt whether even Shakespeare could have madeout of "fall" so beautiful a line as "The teeming autumn, big with rich increase. " I doubt whether Keats, had he written an _Ode to the Fall_, would haveproduced quite such a miraculous poem as that which begins "Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness. " Still, Mr. Matthews is quite right in saying that "fall" has a poeticvalue, a suggestion, an atmosphere of its own. I wonder, with him, whywe dropped it, and I see no smallest reason why we should not recoverit. The British literary patriotism which makes a point of never saying"fall" seems to me just as mistaken as the American literary patriotism(if such there be) that makes a merit of never saying "autumn. " Byinsisting on such localisms (for the exclusive preference for eitherterm is nothing more) we might, in process of time, bring about aserious fissure in the language. Of course there is no reason why Mr. Lang should force himself to use a word that is uncongenial to him; butif "fall" is congenial to me, I think I ought to be allowed to use it"without fear and without reproach. " Take, now, a colloquialism. How formal and colourless is the Englishphrase "I have enjoyed myself!" beside the American "I have had a goodtime!" Each has its uses, no doubt. I am far from suggesting that theone should drive out the other. It is precisely the advantage of ourlinguistic position that it so enormously enlarges the stock ofsemi-synonyms at our disposal. To reject a forcible Americanism merelybecause we could, at a pinch, get on without it, is--Mr. Lang willunderstand the forcible Scotticism--to "sin our mercies. " Mr. Lang is under a certain illusion, I think, in his belief that inhardening our hearts against Americanism's we should raise no barrierbetween ourselves and the classical authors of America. He says: "Let usremark that they [Americanisms] do not occur in Hawthorne, Poe, Lowell, Longfellow, Prescott, and Emerson, except when these writers areconsciously reproducing conversations in dialect. " He made the sameremark on a previous occasion; when his opponent (see the _Academy_, March 30, 1895) opened a volume of Hawthorne and a volume of Emerson, and in five minutes found in Hawthorne "He had named his two children, one _for_ Her Majesty and one _for_ Prince Albert, " and in Emerson"Nature tells every secret once. Yes; but in man she tells it _all thetime_. " The latter phrase is one which Mr. Lang explicitly puts underhis ban. He is an ingenious and admirable translator: I wish he wouldtranslate Emerson's sentence from American into English, without loss ofbrevity, directness, and simple Saxon strength. For my part, I can thinkof nothing better than "In man she is always telling it, " which strikesme as a feeble makeshift. "All the time, " I suggest, is precisely one ofthe phrases we should accept with gratitude--if, indeed, it be notalready naturalised. Mr. Lang is peculiarly unfortunate in calling Oliver Wendell Holmes towitness against his particular and pet aversion "I belong here" or "Thatdoes not belong there. " Writing of "needless Americanisms, " he says, "The use of 'belong' as a new auxiliary verb [an odd classification, bythe way] is an example of what we mean. Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes was astern opponent of such neologisms. " I turn to the Oxford Dictionary, andthe one quotation I find under "belong" in this sense, is:--"'You belongwith the last set, and got accidentally shuffled with the others. '--_O. W. Holmes, 'Elsie Venner_. '" But this, Mr. Lang may say, is indialogue. Yes, but not in dia_lect_. I am very much mistaken if thelocution does not occur elsewhere in Holmes. If Mr. Lang, in a leisurehour, were to undertake a search for it, he might incidentally findcause to modify his view as to the sternness of the Autocrat'santi-Americanism. Let me not be thought to underrate the services which, by sound preceptand invaluable example, Mr. Lang has rendered to all of us who use theEnglish tongue. Conservatism and liberalism are as inevitable, nay, indispensable, in the world of words as in the world of deeds; and Itrust Mr. Lang will not set down my liberalism as anarchism. He and I, in this little discussion, are simply playing our allotted parts. Ibelieve (and Mr. Lang would probably admit with a shrug) that the forcesof the future are on my side. May I recall to him that charming anecdoteof Thackeray and Viscount Monck, when they were rival candidates for therepresentation of Oxford in Parliament? They met in the street one day, and exchanged a few words. On parting, Thackeray shook hands with hisopponent and said, "Good-bye; and may the best man win!" "I hope _not_, "replied Viscount Monck, with a bow. A hundred years hence, if someEnglish-speaker of the future should chance to disinter this book fromthe recesses of the British Museum or the Library of Congress, andshould read these final paragraphs, I doubt not he will say--for theimmortal soul of the language even anarchism cannot affect--"the race isnot always to the swift, nor the battle to the strong. " FOOTNOTES: [Footnote V: Mr. Walkley reports that he has heard a Cockney policeman, speaking of a street row, "There's been a little scrappin'. "] [Footnote W: "About a dozen ringers followed us into the church andstood around rubberin'. " "Gettin' next to the new kinds o' saddles andrubber-neckin' to read the names on the tyres. "--_Artie_. A writer inthe New York _Sun_ says: "I first heard the term 'rubbernecks' inArizona, about four years ago, applied to the throngs of onlookers inthe gambling-houses, who strove to get a better view of the games inprogress by stretching or bending their necks. "] [Footnote X: "We didn't break into sassiety notes, but that cuts no icein our set. "--_Artie_. ] [Footnote Y: Extract from a letter to the _Chicago Evening Post_: "I donot at all subscribe to the sneering remark of a talented author of myacquaintance, to the effect that there were not enough cultured peoplein Chicago to fill a grip-car. I asked him if he meant a grip-car and atrailer, and he said, 'No; just one car. ' And I told him right therethat I could not agree with him. "] THE END