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CIVILIZATION 
 IN THE UNITED STATES 
 
 FIRST AND LAST IMPRESSIONS 
 OF AMERICA 
 
GENERAL GRANT. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 I. General Grant. An Estimate. 
 
 Part I 
 
 Part II 
 
 II. A Word about America 
 
 III. A Word More about America 
 
 IV. Civilization in the United States 
 
 3 
 
 33 
 
 69 
 in 
 
 157 
 
CIVILIZATION 
 IN THE UNITED STATES 
 
 FIRSTHAND LAST IMPRESSIONS 
 OF AMERICA 
 
 BY 
 
 MATTHEW ARNOLD 
 
 
 
 
 BOSTON 
 
 CUPPLES AND HURD 
 
 PUBLISHERS 
 
 18S8 
 

 Copyright, 1SS8, 
 By Cupples and Kurd. 
 
 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. 
 
GENERAL GRANT. 
 Part I. 
 
 J have heard it said, I know not with what 
 degree of truth, that while the sale in America 
 ©f General Grant's Personal Memoirs has pro- 
 duced three hundred thousand dollars for the 
 benefit of his widow and family, there have not 
 in England been sold of the book three hundred 
 copies. Certainly the book has had no wide 
 circulation here, it has not been much read or 
 much discussed. There are obvious reasons for 
 this. The book relates in great detail the mili- 
 tary history of the American Civil War, so far 
 as Grant bore part in it ; such a history cannot 
 possibly have for other nations the interest 
 which it has for the United States themselves. 
 For the general reader outside of America, it 
 certainly cannot ; as to the value and importance 
 of the history to the military specialist, that is 
 a question on which I hear very conflicting opin- 
 ions expressed, and one on which I myself can 
 
4 General Grant. 
 
 have, of course, no opinion to offer. So far as 
 the general European reader might still be at- 
 tracted to such a history, in spite of its military 
 details, for the sake of the importance of the 
 issues at stake and of the personages engaged, we 
 in Europe have, it cannot be denied, in approach- 
 ing an American recital of the deeds of "the 
 greatest nation upon earth," some apprehension 
 and mistrust to get over. We may be pardoned 
 for doubting whether we shall in the recital find 
 measure, whether we shall find sobriety. Then, 
 too, General Grant, the central figure of these 
 Memoirs, is not to the English imagination the 
 hero of the American Civil War ; the hero is 
 Lee, and of Lee the Memoirs tell us little. 
 Moreover General Grant, when he was in Eng- 
 land, did not himself personally interest people 
 much. Later he fell in America into the hands 
 of financing speculators, and his embarrass- 
 ments, though they excited sorrow and compas- 
 sion, did not at all present themselves to us as 
 those of " a good man struggling with adversity. " 
 For all these reasons, then, the Personal Memoirs 
 have in England been received with coldness and 
 indifference. 
 
 I, too, had seen General Grant in England, and 
 did not find him interesting. If I said the truth, 
 I should say that I thought him ordinary-looking, 
 
General Grant 5 
 
 dull and silent. An expression of gentleness 
 and even sweetness in the eyes, which the por- 
 traits in the Memoirs show, escaped me. A 
 strong, resolute, business-like man, who by pos- 
 session of unlimited resources in men and 
 money, and by the unsparing use of them, had 
 been enabled to wear down and exhaust the 
 strength of the South, this was what I supposed 
 Grant to be, this and little more. 
 
 Some documents published by General Badeau 
 in the American newspapers first attracted my 
 serious attention to Grant. Among those docu- 
 ments was a letter from him which showed quali- 
 ties for which, in the rapid and uncharitable view 
 which our cursory judgments of men so often 
 take, I had by no means given him credit. It 
 was the letter of a man with the virtue, rare 
 everywhere, but more rare in America, perhaps, 
 than anywhere else, the virtue of being able to 
 confront and resist popular clamour, the civium 
 ardor prava jubentium. Public opinion seemed 
 in favour of a hard and insolent course, the au- 
 thorities seemed putting pressure upon Grant to 
 make him follow it. He resisted with firmness 
 and dignity. After reading that letter I turned 
 to General Grant's Personal Memoirs, then just 
 published. This man, I said to myself, deserves 
 respect and attention ; and I read the two bulky 
 volumes through. 
 
 
6 General Grant. 
 
 I found shown in them a man, strong, resolute, 
 and business-like, as Grant had appeared to me 
 when I first saw him ; a man with no magical 
 personality, touched by no divine light and giv r 
 ing out none. I found a language all astray in 
 its use of will and shall, should and would, an 
 English employing the verb to conscript and the 
 participle conscripting, and speaking in a de- 
 spatch to the Secretary of War of having badly 
 whipped the enemy ; an English without charm 
 and without high breeding. But at the same 
 time I found a man of sterling good-sense as well 
 as of the firmest resolution ; a man, withal, hu- 
 mane, simple, modest ; from all restless self-con- 
 sciousness and desire for display perfectly free ; 
 never boastful where he himself was concerned, 
 and where his nation was concerned seldom 
 boastful, boastful only in circumstances where 
 nothing but high genius or high training, I sup- 
 pose, can save an American from being boastful. 
 I found a language straightforward, nervous, 
 firm, possessing in general the high merit of say- 
 ing clearly in the fewest possible words what had 
 to be said, and saying it, frequently, with shrewd 
 and unexpected turns of expression. The Me- 
 moirs renewed and completed the expression 
 which the letter given by General Badeau had 
 made upon me. And now I want to enable 
 
General Grant. J 
 
 Grant and his Memoirs as far as possible to 
 speak for themselves to the English public, 
 which knows them, I believe, as imperfectly as 
 a few months ago I myself did. 
 
 General Grant was born at Point Pleasant, in 
 the State of Ohio, on the 27th of April, 1822. 
 His name, Ulysses, makes one think of Tristram 
 Shandy ; but how often do American names 
 make one think of Tristram Shandy! The 
 father of the little Ulysses followed the trade of 
 a tanner ; he was a constant reader both of 
 books and newspapers, and " before he was 
 twenty years of age was a constant contributor," 
 his son tells us, " to Western newspapers, and 
 was also, from that time, until he was fifty years 
 old, an able debater in the societies for this 
 purpose, which were then common in the 
 West." Of many and many an American 
 farmer and tradesman this is the history. 
 General Grant, however, never shared the 
 paternal and national love for public speaking. 
 As to his schooling, he never, he tells us, missed 
 a quarter from school, from the time he was old 
 enough to attend till the time when he left 
 home, at the age of seventeen, for the Military 
 Academy at West Point. But the instruction 
 in the country schools at that time was very 
 poor : — ■ 
 
 
8 General Grant. 
 
 "A single teacher — who was often a man or a 
 woman incapable of teaching much, even if they 
 imparted all they knew — would have thirty or 
 forty scholars, male and female, from the infant 
 learning the ABC, up to the young lady of 
 eighteen and the boy of twenty studying the 
 highest branches taught — the three R's. I 
 never saw an algebra, or other mathematical 
 work higher than the arithmetic, until after I 
 was appointed to West Point. I then bought a 
 work on algebra in Cincinnati ; but, having no 
 teacher, it was Greek to me." 
 
 This schooling is unlike that of our young 
 gentlemen preparing for Sandhurst or Woolwich, 
 but still more unlike theirs is Grant's life out of 
 school-hours. He has told us how regularly 
 he attended his school, such as it was. He 
 proceeds : 
 
 " This did not exempt me from labour. In 
 my early days, every one laboured more or less 
 in the region where my youth was spent, and 
 more in proportion to their private means. It 
 was only the very poor who were exempt. While 
 my father carried on the manufacture of leather 
 and worked at the trade himself, he owned and 
 tilled considerable land. I detested the trade, 
 preferring almost any other labour ; but I was 
 fond of agriculture and of all employments in 
 
General Grant. 9 
 
 which horses were used. We had, among other 
 lands, fifty acres of forest within a mile of the 
 village. In the fall of the year choppers were 
 employed to cut enough wood to last a twelve- 
 month. When I was seven or eight years of age 
 I began hauling all the wood used in the house 
 and shops. I could not load it on the wagons, 
 of course, at that time, but I could drive, and 
 the choppers would load, and some one at the 
 house unload. When about eleven years old, I 
 was strong enough to hold a plough. From that 
 age until seventeen I did all the work done with 
 horses, such as breaking up the land, furrowing, 
 ploughing corn and potatoes, bringing in the 
 crops when harvested, hauling all the wood, be- 
 sides tending two or three horses, a cow or two, 
 and sawing wood for stoves, &c, while still at- 
 tending school. For this I was compensated by 
 the fact that there never was any scolding or 
 punishing by my parents : no objection to ra- 
 tional enjoyments, such as fishing, going to the 
 creek a mile away to swim in summer ; taking a 
 horse and visiting my grandparents in the ad- 
 joining county, fifteen miles off ; skating on the 
 ice in winter, or taking a horse and sleigh when 
 there was snow on the ground." 
 
 The bringing up of Abraham Lincoln was 
 also, I suppose, much on this wise ; and meagre, 
 
io General Grant. 
 
 too meagre, as may have been the schooling, I 
 confess I am inclined on the whole to exclaim : 
 "What a wholesome bringing up it was ! " 
 
 I must find room for one story of Grant's boy- 
 hood, a story which he tells against himself :— 
 
 " There was a Mr. Ralston living within a few 
 miles of the village, who owned a colt that I 
 very much wanted. My father had offered 
 twenty dollars for it, but Ralston wanted twenty- 
 five. I was so anxious to have the colt, that, 
 after the owner left, I begged to be allowed to 
 take him at the price demanded. My father 
 yielded, but said twenty dollars was all the horse 
 was worth, and told me to offer that price; if it 
 was not accepted, I might offer twenty-two and 
 a half, and if that would not get him, might give 
 the twenty-five. I at once mounted a horse and 
 went for the colt. When I got to Mr. Ralston's 
 house, I said to him : ' Papa says I may offer you 
 twenty dollars for the colt, but if you won't take 
 that, I am to offer twenty-two and a half, and if 
 you won't take that, to give you twenty-five.' 
 It would not require a Connecticut man to guess 
 the price finally agreed upon. I could not have 
 been over eight years old at the time. This 
 transaction caused me great heart-burning. The 
 story got amongst the boys of the village, and it 
 was a long time before I heard the last of it. " 
 
General Grant. 1 1 
 
 The boys of the village may well have been 
 amused. How astounding to find an American 
 boy so little "'cute," so little "smart." But 
 how delightful also, and how refreshing ; how 
 full of promise for the boy's future character ! 
 Grant came in later lite to see straight and 
 to see clear, more than most men, more than 
 even most Americans, whose virtue it is that in 
 matters within their range they see straight and 
 see clear; but he never was in the least "smart," 
 and it is one of his merits. 
 
 The United States Senator for Ohio procured 
 for young Grant, when he was seventeen years 
 old, a nomination to West Point. He was not 
 himself eager for it. His father one day said to 
 him : * 'Ulysses, I believe you are going to receive 
 the appointment." "What appointment?" I 
 enquired. "To West Point ; I have applied for 
 it." "But I won't go," I said. He said he 
 thought I would, and I thought so too, if he did. 
 I really had no objection to going to West 
 Point, except that I had a very exalted idea of 
 the acquirements necessary to get through. I 
 did not believe I possessed them, and could not 
 bear the idea of failing." 
 
 He did go. Although he had no military 
 ardour he desired to see the world. Already he 
 had seen more of it than most of the boys of his 
 
12 General Grant. 
 
 village ; he had visited Cincinnati, the principal 
 city of his native State, and Louisville, the 
 principal city of the adjoining State of Ken- 
 tucky ; he had also been out as far as Wheeling 
 in Virginia, and now, if he went to West Point, 
 he would have the opportunity of seeing Phila- 
 delphia and New York. "When these places 
 were visited," he says, "I would have been glad 
 to have had a steamboat or railroad collision, or 
 any other accident happen, by which I might 
 have received a temporary injury sufficient to 
 make me ineligible for awhile to enter the Acad- 
 emy." He took his time on the road, and hav- 
 ing left home in the middle of May, did not 
 arrive at West Point until the end of the month. 
 Two weeks later he passed his examination for 
 admission, very much, he tells us, to his surprise. 
 But none of his professional studies interested 
 him, though he did well in mathematics, which 
 he found, he says, very easy to him. Through- 
 out his first year he found the life tedious, read 
 novels, and had no intention of remaining in 
 the army, even if he should succeed in gradu- 
 ating at the end of his four years' course, a 
 success which he did not expect to attain. 
 When in 1839 a Bill was discussed in Congress 
 for abolishing the Military Academy, he hoped 
 the Bill might pass, and so set him free. But 
 
General Grant. 13 
 
 it did not pass, and a year later he would have 
 been sorry, he says, if it had passed, although 
 he still found his life at West Point dull. His 
 last two years went quicker than his first two ; 
 but they still seemed to him " about five times 
 as long as Ohio years." At last all his exam- 
 inations were passed, he was appointed to an 
 infantry regiment, and, before joining, went 
 home on leave with a desperate cough and a 
 stature which had run up too fast for his 
 strength. 
 
 In September, 1843, he joined his regiment, 
 the 4th United States infantry, at Jefferson 
 Barracks, St. Louis. No doubt his training at 
 West Point, an establishment with a public and 
 high standing, and with serious studies, had 
 been invaluable to him. But still he had no 
 desire to remain in the army. At St. Louis he 
 met and became attached to a young lady whom 
 he afterwards married, Miss Dent, and his hope 
 was to become an assistant professor of mathe- 
 matics at West Point. With this hope he re- 
 read at Jefferson Barracks his West Point 
 mathematics, and pursued a course of historical 
 study also. But the Mexican war came on and 
 kept him in the army. 
 
 With the annexation of Texas in prospect, 
 Grant's regiment was moved to Fort Jessup, on 
 
14 General Grant. 
 
 the western border of Louisiana. Ostensibly 
 the American troops were to prevent filibuster- 
 ing into Texas ; really they were sent as a 
 menace to Mexico in case she appeared to con- 
 template war. Grant's life in Louisiana was 
 pleasant. He had plenty of professional duty, 
 many of his brother officers having been de- 
 tailed on special duty away from the regiment. 
 He gave up the thought of becoming a teacher 
 of mathematics, and read only for his own 
 amusement, "and not very much for that ; " he 
 kept a horse and rode, visited the planters on 
 the Red River ; and was out of doors the whole 
 day nearly ; and so he quite recovered from the 
 cough, and the threatenings of consumption, 
 which he had carried with him from West 
 Point. "I have often thought," he adds, "that 
 my life was saved, and my health restored, by 
 exercise and exposure enforced by an adminis- 
 trative act and a war, both of which I dis- 
 approved." 
 
 For disapprove the menace to Mexico, and 
 the subsequent war, he did. One lingers over 
 a distinguished man's days of growth and for- 
 mation, so important for all which is to come 
 after. And already, under young Grant's plain 
 exterior and air of indifference, there had grown 
 up in him an independent and sound judgment. 
 
General Grant. 15 
 
 " Generally the officers of the army were indif- 
 ferent whether the annexation was consum- 
 mated or not ; but not so all of them. For my- 
 self, I was bitterly opposed to the measure, and 
 to this day regard the war which resulted as one 
 of the most unjust ever waged by a stronger 
 against a weaker nation." 
 
 Texas was annexed, a territory larger than 
 the Austrian Empire ; and after taking military 
 possession of Texas, the American army of 
 occupation, under General Taylor, went on and 
 occupied some more disputed territory beyond. 
 Even here they did not stop, but went further 
 on still, meaning apparently to force the Mexi- 
 cans to attack them and begin war. " We were 
 sent to provoke war, but it was essential that 
 Mexico should commence it. It was very doubt- 
 ful whether Congress would declare war ; but if 
 Mexico should attack our troops, the Executive 
 could announce: 'Whereas war exists by the 
 acts of, etc.,' and prosecute the contest with 
 vigour. Once initiated, there were few public 
 men who would have the courage to oppose it." 
 
 Incensed at the Americans fortifying them- 
 selves on the Rio Grande, opposite Matamoras, 
 the Mexicans at last fired the necessary shot, 
 and the war was commenced. This was in 
 March 1846. In September 1847 the American 
 
1 6 General Grant. 
 
 army entered the city of Mexico. Vera Cruz, 
 Puebla, and other principal cities of the country, 
 were already in their possession. In February 
 1848 was signed the treaty which gave to the 
 United States Texas with the Rio Grande for 
 its boundary, and the whole territory then in- 
 cluded in New Mexico and Upper California. 
 For New Mexico and California, however, the 
 Americans paid a sum of fifteen millions of dol- 
 lars. 
 
 Grant marks with sagacity and justness the 
 causes and effects of the Mexican war. As the 
 North grew in numbers and population, the South 
 required more territory to counterbalance it ; to 
 maintain through this wide territory the institu- 
 tion of slavery, it required to have control of the 
 national Government. With great energy and 
 ability, it obtained this control; it r acquired 
 Texas and other large regions for slavery ; it 
 proceeded to use the powers of Government, in 
 the North as well as in the South, for the pur- 
 pose of securing and maintaining its hold upon 
 its slaves. But the wider the territory over 
 which slavery was spread, and the more numer- 
 ous the slaves, the greater became the difficulty 
 of making this hold quite secure, and the 
 stronger grew the irritation of the North to see 
 the powers and laws of the whole nation used 
 
 - 
 
General Gra?it. ly 
 
 for the purpose. The Fugitive Slave Law 
 brought this irritation to its height, made it 
 uncontrollable, and the War of Secession was 
 the result. "The Southern rebellion," says 
 Grant, "was largely the outgrowth of the Mexi- 
 can war. Nations, like individuals, are punished 
 for their transgressions. We got our punish- 
 ment in the most sanguinary and expensive war 
 of modern times." 
 
 The part of Grant in the Mexican war was of 
 course that of a young subaltern only, and is 
 described by him with characteristic modesty. 
 He showed, however, of what good stuff he was 
 made, and his performances with a certain how- 
 itzer in a church-steeple so pleased his general 
 that he sent for Grant, commended him, and 
 ordered a second howitzer to be placed at his 
 disposal. A captain of voltigeurs came with 
 the gun in charge. "I could not tell the gen- 
 eral," says Grant, "that there was not room 
 enough in the steeple for another gun, because 
 he probably would have looked upon such a 
 statement as a contradiction from a second lieu- 
 tenant. I took the captain with me, but did 
 not use his gun." 
 
 When the evacuation of Mexico was com- 
 pleted, Grant married, in August 1848, Miss 
 Julia Dent, to whom he had been engaged more 
 
1 8 General Grant. 
 
 than four years. For two years the young cou- 
 ple lived at Detroit in Michigan, where Grant 
 was now stationed ; he was then ordered to the 
 Pacific coast. It was settled that Mrs. Grant 
 should, during his absence, live with her own 
 family in St. Louis. The regiment went first 
 to Aspinwall, then to California and Oregon. 
 In 1853 Grant became captain, but he had now 
 two children, and saw no chance of supporting 
 his family on his pay as an army officer. He 
 determined to resign, and in the following year 
 he did so. He left the Pacific coast, he tells 
 us, very much attached to it, and with the full 
 intention of one day making his home there, an 
 intention which he did not abandon until, in the 
 winter of 1863-4, Congress passed the Act ap- 
 pointing him Lieutenant-Gen eral of the armies 
 of the United States. 
 
 His life on leaving the army offers, like his 
 early training, a curious contrast to what usually 
 takes place amongst ourselves. First he tried 
 farming, on a farm belonging to his wife near 
 St. Louis ; but he could not make it answer, 
 though he worked hard. He had insufficient 
 capital, and more than sufficient fever and ague. 
 After four years he established a partnership 
 with a cousin of his wife named Harry Boggs, 
 in a real estate agency business in St. Louis. He 
 
General Grant. 19 
 
 found that the business was not more than one 
 person could do, and not enough to support two 
 families. So he withdrew from the co-partnership 
 with Boggs, and in May i860 removed to 
 Galena, Illinois, and took a clerkship in a leather 
 shop there belonging to his father. 
 
 Politics now began to interest him, and his 
 reflexions on them at the moment when the 
 War of Secession was approaching I must 
 quote : 
 
 " Up to the Mexican, war there were a few out 
 and out abolitionists, men who carried their hos- 
 tility to slavery into all elections, from those for 
 a justice of the peace up to the Presidency of 
 the United States. They were noisy but not 
 numerous. But the great majority of people at 
 the North, where slavery did not exist, were 
 opposed to the institution, and looked upon its 
 existence in any part of the country as unfortu- 
 nate. They did not hold the States where 
 slavery existed responsible for it, and believed 
 that protection should be given to the right of 
 property in slaves until some satisfactory way 
 could be reached to be rid of the institution. 
 Opposition to slavery was a creed of neither 
 political party. But with the inauguration of 
 the Mexican war, in fact with the annexation of 
 Texas, the inevitable conflict commenced. As 
 
20 General Grant. 
 
 the time for the Presidental election of 1856 — 
 the first at which I had the opportunity of voting 
 — approached, party feeling began to run high." 
 
 Grant himself voted in 1856 for Buchanan, 
 the candidate of the Slave States, because he 
 saw clearly, he says, that in the exasperation of 
 feeling at that time, the election of a Republican 
 President meant the secession of all the Slave 
 States, and the plunging of the country into a 
 war of which no man could foretell the issue. 
 He hoped that in the course of the next four 
 years — the Slave States having got a President 
 of their own choice, and being without a pretext 
 for secession — men's passions would quiet 
 down, and the catastrophe be averted. Even if 
 it was not, he thought the country would by 
 that time be better prepared to receive the 
 shock and to resist it. 
 
 I am not concerned to discuss Grant's reasons 
 for his vote, but I wish to remark how com- 
 pletely his reflexions dispose of the reproaches 
 addressed so often by Americans to England 
 for not sympathising with the North attacking 
 slavery, in a war with the South upholding it. 
 From what he says it is evident how very far 
 the North was, when the war began, from at- 
 tacking slavery. Grant himself was not for 
 attacking it ; Lincoln was not. They, and the 
 
General Grant. 21 
 
 North in general, wished " that protection should 
 be given to the right of property in slaves, until 
 some satisfactory way could be reached to be 
 rid of the institution." England took the North 
 at its word, and regarded its struggle as one for 
 preserving the Union, and the force and great- 
 ness which accrue from the Union, not for 
 abolishing slavery. True, far-sighted people 
 here might perceive that the war must probably 
 issue, if the North prevailed, in the abolition of 
 slavery, and might wish well to the North on 
 that account. They did so ; coldly, it is true, 
 for the attitude of the North was not such as to 
 call forth enthusiasm, but sincerely. A great 
 number of people in England, on the other hand, 
 looking at the surface of things merely, clearly 
 seeing that the North was not meaning to at- 
 tack slavery but to uphold the power and grand- 
 eur of the United States, thought themselves 
 quite free to wish well to the South, the weaker 
 side which was making a gallant fight, and to 
 favour the breaking up of the Union. 
 
 Here was the real offence. The Americans 
 of the North, admiring and valuing their great 
 Republic above all things, could not forgive 
 disfavour or coldness to it ; could only im- 
 pute them to envy and jealousy. Far-sighted 
 people in England might perceive that the main- 
 
 
22 General Grant. 
 
 tenance of the Union was not only likely to 
 bring about the emancipation of the slave, but 
 was also on other grounds to be desired for the 
 good of the world. Our artisans might be in 
 sympathy with the popular and unaristocratic 
 institutions of the United States, and be there- 
 fore averse to any weakening of the great Re- 
 public. And these feelings prevailed here, as 
 is well known, so as to govern the course taken 
 by this country during the War of Secession. 
 Still, there was much disfavour and more cold- 
 ness. Americans were, and are, indignant that 
 the upholding of their great Republic should 
 have had in England such cold friends, and so 
 many actual enemies. It is like the indignant 
 astonishment of George Sand during the Ger- 
 man war, "to see Europe looking on with indif- 
 ference to the danger of such a civilization as 
 that of France." But admiration and favour 
 are uncompellable ; we admire and favour only 
 an object which delights us, helps us, elevates 
 us, and does us good. The thing is to make us 
 feel that the object does this. Self-admiration 
 and self-laudation will not convince us ; on the 
 contrary, they indispose us. France would be 
 more attractive to us if she were less prone to 
 call herself the head of civilization and the pride 
 of the world ; the United States, if they were 
 
Ge7ieral Grant. 23 
 
 
 more backward in proclaiming themselves " the 
 greatest nation upon earth." 
 
 In i860 Lincoln was elected President, and 
 the catastrophe, which Grant hoped might have 
 been averted, arrived. He had in i860 no vote, 
 but things were now come to that pass that 
 he felt compelled to make his choice be- 
 tween minority rule and rule by the majority, 
 and he was glad, therefore, to see Lincoln 
 elected. Secession was imminent, and with 
 secession, war ; but Grant confesses that his 
 own views at that time were those officially ex- 
 pressed later on by Mr. Seward, that " the war 
 would be over in ninety days." He retained 
 these views, he tells us, until after the battle of 
 Shiloh. 
 
 Lincoln was not to come into office until the 
 spring of 1861. The South was confident and 
 defiant, and in the North there were prominent 
 men and newspapers declaring that the gov- 
 ernment had no legal right to coerce the South. 
 It was unsafe for Mr. Lincoln, when he went to 
 be sworn into office in March 1861, to travel as 
 President-elect ; he had to be smuggled into 
 Washington. When he took on the 4th of 
 March his oath of office to maintain the Union, 
 eleven States had gone out of it. On the nth 
 of April, Fort Sumter in Charleston harbour 
 
24 General Grant. 
 
 was fired upon, and a few days after was captured. 
 Then the President issued a call for 75,000 men. 
 " There was not a State in the North of a mil- 
 lion inhabitants," says Grant, "that would not 
 have furnished the entire number faster than 
 arms could have been supplied to them, if it 
 had been necessary." 
 
 As soon as news of the call for volunteers 
 reached Galena, where Grant lived, the citizens 
 were summoned to meet at the Court House in 
 the evening. The Court House was crammed. 
 Grant, though a comparative stranger, was called 
 upon to preside, because he had been in the 
 army, and had seen service. " With much em- 
 barrassment and some prompting, I made out 
 to announce the object of the meeting." 
 Speeches followed ; then volunteers were called 
 for to form the company which Galena had 
 to furnish. The company was raised, and the 
 officers and non-commissioned officers were 
 elected, before the meeting adjourned. Grant 
 declined the captaincy before the balloting, but 
 promised to help them all he could, and to be 
 found in the. service, in some position, if there 
 should actually be war. " I never," he adds, 
 " went into our leather store after that meeting, 
 to put up a package or do other business." 
 
 After seeing the company mustered at Spring- 
 
General Grant. 25 
 
 field, the capital of Illinois, Grant was asked by 
 the Governor of the State to give some help in 
 the military office, where his old army experi- 
 ence enabled him to be of great use. But on 
 the 24th of May he wrote to the Adjutant-Gen- 
 eral of the Army, saying that, "having been 
 fifteen years in the regular army, including four 
 at West Point, and feeling it the duty of every 
 one who has been educated at the Government 
 expense to offer their services for the support 
 of the Government," he wished to tender his 
 services until the close of the war, "in such 
 capacity as may be offered." He got no answer. 
 He then thought of getting appointed on the 
 staff of General McClellan, whom he had known 
 at West Point, and went to seek the General at 
 Cincinnati. He called twice, but failed to see 
 him. While he was at Cincinnati, however, the 
 President issued his second call for troops, this 
 time for 300,000 men ; and the Governor of 
 Illinois, mindful of Grant's recent help, ap- 
 pointed him colonel of the 21st Illinois regi- 
 ment of infantry. In a month he had brought 
 his regiment into a good state of drill and dis- 
 cipline, and was then ordered to a point on a 
 railroad in Missouri, where an Illinois regiment 
 was surrounded by "rebels." His own account 
 of his first experience as a Commander is very 
 characteristic of him ; 
 
26 General Grant. 
 
 " My sensations as we approached what I sup- 
 posed might be a 'field of battle,' were anything 
 but agreeable. I had been in all the engage- 
 ments in Mexico that it was possible for one 
 person to be in ; but not in command. If some 
 one else had been colonel, and I had been lieu- 
 tenant-colonel, I do not think I would have felt 
 any trepidation. Before we were prepared to 
 cross the Mississippi River at Quincy, my anx- 
 iety was relieved ; for the men of the besieged 
 regiment came straggling into the town. I am 
 inclined to think, both sides got frightened and 
 ran away." 
 
 Now, however, he was started ; and from this 
 time until he received Lee's surrender at Appo- 
 mattox Court House, four years later, he was 
 always the same strong man, showing the same 
 valuable qualities. He had not the pathos and 
 dignity of Lee, his power of captivating the 
 admiring interest, almost the admiring affec- 
 tion, of his profession and of the world. He 
 had not the fire, the celerity, the genial cordial- 
 ity of Sherman, whose person and manner emit- 
 ted a ray (to adopt, with a very slight change, 
 Lamb's well-known lines) — 
 
 " a ray 
 Which struck a cheer upon the day, 
 A cheer which would not go away — " 
 
General Grant. 27 
 
 Grant had not these. But he certainly had a 
 good deal of the character and qualities which 
 we so justly respect in the Duke of Wellington. 
 Wholly free from show, parade, and pomposity ; 
 sensible and sagacious ; scanning closely the 
 situation, seeing things as they actually were, 
 then making up his mind as to the right thing 
 to be done under the circumstances, and doing 
 it ; never flurried, never vacillating, but also not 
 stubborn, able to reconsider and change his 
 plans, a man of resource ; when, however, he 
 had really fixed on the best course to take, the 
 right nail to drive, resolutely and tenaciously 
 persevering, driving the nail hard home — Grant 
 was all this, and surely in all this he resembles 
 the Duke of Wellington. 
 
 The eyes of Europe, during the War of Seces- 
 sion, were chiefly fixed on the conflict in the 
 East. Grant, however, as we have seen, began 
 his career, not on the great and conspicuous 
 stage of the East, but in the West. He did 
 not come to the East until, by taking Vicks- 
 burg, he had attracted all eyes to the West, and 
 to the course of events there. 
 
 We have seen how Grant's first expedition in 
 command ended. The second ended in much 
 the same way, and is related by him with the 
 same humour. He was ordered to move against 
 
28 General Grant. 
 
 a Colonel Thomas Harris, encamped on the Salt 
 River. As Grant and his men approached the 
 place where they expected to find Harris, "my 
 heart," he says, "kept getting higher and higher, 
 until it felt to me as if it was in my throat." 
 But when they reached the point from which 
 they looked down into the valley where they 
 supposed Harris to be, behold, Harris was gone! 
 " My heart resumed its place. It occurred to 
 me at once that Harris had been as much afraid 
 of me as I had been of him. This was a view 
 of the question I had never taken before, but I 
 never forgot it afterwards. I never forgot that 
 an enemy had as much reason to fear my forces 
 as I had his. The lesson was valuable." 
 
 But already he inspired confidence. Shortly 
 after his return from the Salt River, the Presi- 
 dent asked the Congressmen from Illinois to 
 recommend seven citizens of that State for the 
 rank of brigadier-general, and the Congressmen 
 unanimously recommended Grant first on the 
 list. In August he was appointed to the com- 
 mand of a district, and on the 4th of Septem- 
 ber assumed command at Cairo, where the Ohio 
 River joins the Mississippi. His first important 
 success was to seize and fortify Paducah, an 
 important post at the mouth of the Tennessee 
 River, about fifty miles from Cairo. By the 1st 
 
General Grant. 29 
 
 of November he had 20,000 well-drilled men 
 under his command. In November he fought a 
 smart action at Belmont, on the western bank 
 of the Mississippi, with the object of prevent- 
 ing the Confederates who were in strong force 
 at Columbus in Kentucky, on the eastern bank, 
 from detaching troops to the West. He suc- 
 ceeded in his object, and his troops, who came 
 under fire for the first time, behaved well. 
 Grant himself had a horse shot under him. 
 
 Very important posts to the Confederates 
 were Fort Henry on the Tennessee and Fort 
 Donelson on the Cumberland River. Grant 
 thought he could capture Fort Henry, He 
 went to St. Louis to see General Halleck, 
 whose subordinate he was, and to state his 
 plan. " I was received with so little cordial- 
 ity that I perhaps stated the object of my visit 
 with less clearness than I might have done, and 
 I had not uttered many sentences before I was 
 cut short as if my plan was preposterous. I 
 returned to Cairo very much crest-fallen." 
 
 He persevered, however, and after consulting 
 with the officer commanding the gunboats at 
 Cairo, he renewed, by telegraph, the suggestion 
 that, if permitted, he "could take and hold 
 Fort Henry on the Tennessee." This time he 
 was backed by the officer in command of the 
 
30 General Grant 
 
 gunboats. Next day, he wrote fully to explain 
 his plan. In two days he received instructions 
 from headquarters to move upon Fort Henry, 
 and on the 2nd of February, 1862, the expedi- 
 tion started. 
 
 He took Fort Henry on the 6th of February, 
 and announcing his success to General Halleck, 
 informed him that he would now take Fort Don- 
 elson. On the 16th, Fort Donelson surrendered, 
 and Grant made nearly 15,000 prisoners. There 
 was delight in the North, depression at Rich- 
 mond. Grant was at once promoted to be 
 major-general of volunteers. He thought, both 
 then and ever after, that by the fall of Fort 
 Donelson the way was opened to the forces of 
 the North all over the south-west without 
 much resistance, that a vigorous commander, 
 disposing of all the troops west of the Alle- 
 ghanies, might have at once marched to Chat- 
 tanooga, Corinth, Memphis, and Vicksburg, and 
 broken down every resistance. There was no 
 such commander, and time was given to the 
 enemy to collect armies and fortify new posi- 
 tions. 
 
 The next point for attack was Corinth, at the 
 junction of the two most important railroads in 
 the Mississippi Valley. After Grant had, after 
 a hard and bloody struggle of two days, won 
 
General Grant. 31 
 
 the battle of Shiloah, in which a ball cut in 
 two the scabbard of his sword, and more than 
 10,000 men were killed and wounded on the 
 side of the North, General Halieck, who did 
 not love Grant, arrived on the scene of action 
 and assumed the command. " Although next 
 to him in rank," says Grant, "and nominally in 
 command of my old district and army, I was 
 ignored as much as if I had been at the most 
 distant point of territory within my jurisdic- 
 tion." On the advance to Corinth, "I was little 
 more than an observer. Orders were sent direct 
 to the right wing or reserve, ignoring me, and 
 advances were made from one line of intrench- 
 ments to another without notifying me. My 
 position was so embarrassing, in fact, that I 
 made several applications to be relieved." When 
 he suggested a movement, he was silenced. 
 Presently the Confederate troops evacuated 
 Corinth in safety, carrying with them all pub- 
 lic property. On the side of the North, there 
 was much disappointment at the slackness with 
 which the enemy had been pressed, and at his 
 success in saving his entire army. 
 
 But Corinth was evacuated ; the naval forces 
 of the North took Memphis, and now held 
 the Mississippi River from its source to that 
 point ; New Orleans and Baton Rouge had 
 
32 General Grant. 
 
 fallen into their possession. The Confederates 
 at the West were now narrowed down, for als 
 communication with Richmond, to the single 
 line of road running east from Vicksburg. To 
 dispossess them of Vicksburg, therefore, was of 
 the highest importance. At this point I must 
 stop for the present. Public attention was not 
 yet fixed upon Grant, as it became after his suc- 
 cess at Vicksburg ; and with his success there 
 a second chapter of his life opens. But already 
 he had shown his talent for succeeding. Car- 
 dinal Mazarin used to ask concerning a man 
 before employing him, Est-il heureux f Grant 
 was heureux. 
 
l( I 
 
 Part II. 
 
 We left Grant projecting his attack upon 
 Vicksburg. In the autumn of 1862, the second 
 year of the war, the prospect for the North ap- 
 peared gloomy. The Confederates were further 
 advanced than at the beginning of the struggle. 
 Many loyal people, says Grant, despaired at 
 that time of ever saving the Union ; President 
 Lincoln never himself lost faith in the final tri- 
 umph of the Northern cause, but the adminis- 
 tration at Washington was uneasy and anxious. 
 The elections of 1862 had gone against the 
 party which was for prosecuting the war at all 
 costs and at all risks until the Union was saved. 
 Voluntary enlistments had ceased ; to fill the 
 ranks of the Northern armies the draft had been 
 resorted to. Unless a great success came to 
 restore the spirit of the North, it seemed pro- 
 bable that the draft would be resisted, that men 
 would begin to desert, and that the power to 
 capture and punish deserters would be lost. It 
 was Grant's conviction that there was nothing 
 left to be done but "to go forward to a decisive 
 victory'' 
 
34 General Grant. 
 
 At first, wever, after the battle of Shiloh 
 and the taking of Corinth, he could accomplish 
 little. General Halleck, his chief, appears to 
 have been at this time ill-disposed to him, and 
 to have treated him with coldness and incivility. 
 In July 1862, General Halleck was appointed 
 general-in-chief of all the armies of the North, 
 with his headquarters in Washington, and Grant 
 remained in Tennessee in chief command. But 
 his army suffered such depletion by detaching 
 men to defend long lines of communication, to 
 repair ruined railroads, to reinforce generals in 
 need of succour, that he found himself entirely 
 on the defensive in a hostile territory. Never- 
 theless in a battle fought to protect Corinth he 
 repulsed the enemy with great slaughter, and 
 being no longer anxious for the safety of the 
 territory within his command, and having been 
 reinforced, he resolved on a forward movement 
 against Vicksburg. 
 
 Vicksburg occupies the first high ground on 
 the Mississippi below Memphis. Communica- 
 tion between the parts of the Confederacy divid- 
 ed by the Mississippi was through Vicksburg, 
 So long as the Confederates held Vicksburg- 
 and Port Hudson lower down, the free naviga- 
 tion of the river was prevented. The fall of 
 Vicksburg, as the event proved, was sure to 
 
General Grant. 35 
 
 bring with it the fall of Port Hudson also. 
 Grant saw nearly his whole force absorbed in 
 holding the railway lines north of Vicksburg ; 
 he considered that if he moved forward, driving 
 the enemy before him into Southern territory 
 not as yet subdued, those lines in his rear would 
 almost hold themselves, and most of his force 
 would be free for field operations. But in mov- 
 ing forward he moved farther from his bases of 
 supplies. One of these was at Holly Springs, 
 in the north of the state of Mississippi ; the 
 enemy appeared there, captured the garrison, 
 and destroyed all the stores of food, forage, and 
 munitions of war. This loss taught Grant a 
 lesson by which he, and Sherman after him, 
 profited greatly : the lesson that in a wide and 
 productive country, such as that in which he 
 was operating, to cling to a distant base of 
 supply was not necessary ; the country he was 
 in would afford the supplies needed. He was 
 amazed, he says, when he was compelled by the 
 loss of Holly Springs to collect supplies in the 
 country immediately around him, at the abundant 
 quantity which the country afforded. He found , 
 that after leaving two months' supplies for the 
 use of the families whose stores were taken, he 
 could, off the region where he was, have sub- 
 sisted his army for a period four times as long 
 
36 General Grant. 
 
 as he had actually to remain there. Later in 
 the campaign he took full advantage of the ex- 
 perience thus gained. 
 
 The fleet under Admiral Porter co-operated 
 with him, but all endeavours to capture Vicks- 
 burg from the north were unavailing. The 
 Mississippi winds and winds through its rich 
 alluvial valley ; the country is intersected by 
 bayous or water-courses filled from the river, 
 with overhanging trees and with narrow and 
 tortuous channels, where the bends could not 
 be turned by a vessel of any length. To cross 
 this country in the face of an enemy was impos- 
 sible. The problem was to get in rear of the 
 object of attack, and to secure a footing upon 
 dry ground on the high or eastern side of the 
 Mississippi — the side on which Vicksburg 
 stands — for operating against the place. On 
 the 30th of January, 1863, Grant having left 
 Memphis, took the command at Young's Point 
 in Louisiana, on the western bank of Mississippi, 
 not far above Vicksburg, bent on solving the 
 problem. 
 
 It was a wet country and a wet winter, with 
 high water in the Mississippi and its tributaries. 
 The troops encamped on the river bank had, in 
 order to be out of the water, to occupy the 
 levees, or dykes, along the river edge, and the 
 
General Grant. 37 
 
 ground immediately behind. This gave so limited 
 a space, that one corps of Grant's army, when 
 he assumed the command at Young's Point, 
 was at Lake Providence, seventy miles above 
 Vicksburg. The troops suffered much from 
 malarial fevers and other sickness, but the 
 hospital arrangements were excellent. 
 
 Four ineffectual attempts were in the course 
 of the winter made to get at the object of attack 
 by various routes. Grant, meanwhile, was 
 maturing his plan. His plan was to traverse 
 the peninsula where he lay encamped, then to 
 cross the Mississippi, and thus to be able to 
 attack Vicksburg from the south and east. 
 Above Young's Point, at Milliken's Bend, be- 
 gins a series of bayous, forming, as it were, the 
 chord of an immense bend of the Mississippi, 
 and falling into the river some fifty miles below 
 Vicksburg. Behind the levees bordering these 
 bayous were tolerable roads, by which, as soon 
 as they emerged from the waters, Grant's troops 
 and waggon-trams could cross the peninsula.* 
 The difficulties were indeed great : four bridges 
 had to be built across wide bayous, and the rapid 
 fall of the waters increased the current, and 
 made bridge-building troublesome ; but at work 
 of this kind the " Yankee soldier " is in his ele- 
 ment. By the 24th of April Grant had his 
 
38 General Grant. 
 
 headquarters at the southern extremity of the 
 bend. The navy under Admiral Porter, escort- 
 ing steamers and barges to serve as ferries and 
 for the transport of supplies, had run fourteen 
 miles of batteries, passed Vicksburg, and come 
 down the river to join Grant. A further march 
 of twenty-two miles was still necessary in order 
 to reach the first high ground, where the army 
 might land and establish itself on the eastern 
 shore. This first high land is at Grand Gulf, a 
 place strongly held at that time by the Con- 
 federates, and as unattackable from the river as 
 Vicksburg itself. Porter ran the batteries of 
 Grand Gulf as he had run those of Vicksburg ; 
 the army descended the river a few miles, and on 
 the 30th of April was landed at Bruinsburg, on 
 the eastern shore, without meeting an enemy. 
 
 Grant's plan had succeeded. He was estab- 
 lished on the eastern bank, below and in rear 
 of Vicksburg. Though Vicksburg was not yet 
 taken, and though he was in the enemy's 
 country, with a vast river and the stronghold of 
 Vicksburg between him and his base of supplies, 
 yet he " felt a degree of relief scarcely ever 
 equalled, since I was on dry ground on the same 
 side of the river with the enemy." 
 
 And indeed from this moment his success 
 was continuous. The enemy had at Grand 
 
General Grant. 39 
 
 Gulf, at Haines Bluff north of Vicksburg, and 
 at Jackson, the capital of the State of Missis- 
 sippi, in which State all these places are, about 
 60,000 men. After fighting and losing an 
 action to cover Grand Gulf, the Confederates 
 evacuated that place, and Grant occupied it on 
 the 3rd of May. By the 7th of May Sherman 
 joined him at Grand Gulf, and he found him- 
 self with a force of 33,000 men. He then 
 determined at once to attack the enemy's 
 forces in the rear of Vicksburg, and then to 
 move on the stronghold itself. In order to use 
 Grand Gulf as his base of supplies for these 
 operations, he must have constructed addi- 
 tional roads, and this would have been a work 
 of time. He determined therefore merely to 
 bring up by the single road available from 
 Grand Gulf, what rations of biscuit, coffee, 
 and salt he could, and to make the country he 
 traversed furnish everything else. Beef, mut- 
 ton, poultry, molasses, and forage were to be 
 found, he knew, in abundance. The cautious 
 Halleck would be sure to disapprove this bold 
 plan of almost abandoning the base of sup- 
 plies, but Grant counted on being able to ob- 
 tain his object before he could be interfered 
 with from Washington. 
 
 The nature of the ground making Vicksburg 
 
 . ! 
 
40 General Grant. 
 
 easily defensible on the south, Grant deter- 
 mined to get on the railroad running east from 
 Vicksburg to Jackson, the State capital, and to 
 approach the stronghold from that side. At 
 Jackson was a strong Confederate force, the 
 city was an important railway centre, and all 
 supplies of men and stores for Vicksburg came 
 thence ; this source of aid had to be stopped. 
 But in order to reach Jackson, Grant had to 
 abandon even that one road by which he had 
 partially supplied his army hitherto, to cut 
 loose from his base of supplies altogether. He 
 did so without hesitation. After a successful 
 action he entered Jackson on the 14th of May, 
 driving out of it the Confederates under Gen- 
 eral Johnston, and destroyed the place in so 
 far as it was a railroad centre and a manufac- 
 tory of military supplies. Then he turned 
 westward, and after a severe battle shut up 
 Pemberton in Vicksburg. An assault on Pem- 
 berton's defences was unsuccessful, but Vicks- 
 burg was closely invested. Pemberton's stores 
 began to run short. Johnston was unable to 
 come to his relief, and on the 4th of July, Inde- 
 pendence Day, he surrendered Vicksburg, 
 with its garrison of nearly thirty-two thousand 
 men, ordnance and stores. As Grant had fore: 
 seen, Port Hudson surrendered as soon as the 
 
General Grant. 4! 
 
 fall of Vicksburg became known, and the great 
 river was once more open from St. Louis to the 
 sea. 
 
 In the north the victory of Gettysburg was 
 won on the same day on which Vicksburg sur- 
 rendered. A load of anxiety was lifted from 
 the minds of the President and his ministers; 
 the North took heart again, and resolved to con- 
 tinue the war with energy, in the hope of soon 
 bringing it to a triumphant issue. The great 
 and decisive event bringing about this change 
 was the fall of Vicksburg, and the merit of that 
 important success was due to Grant. 
 
 He had been successful, and in his success 
 he still retained his freedom from "bounce" 
 and from personal vanity ; his steadfast concern 
 for the public good ; his moderation. Let us 
 hear his account of being under fire during a 
 fruitless attack by Admiral Porter's gunboats 
 on the batteries of Grand Gulf: 
 
 " I occupied a tug, from which I could see the 
 effect of the battle on both sides, within range 
 of the enemy's guns ; but a small tug, without 
 armament, was not calculated to attract the fire 
 of batteries while they were being assailed them- 
 selves" 
 
 He has to mention a risk incurred by himself ; 
 but mentioning it, he is at pains to minimise it. 
 
42 
 
 General Grant. 
 
 When he assumed command in person at 
 Young's Point, General McCler.nand, from 
 whom the command now passed to Grant, his 
 senior and superior, showed temper and remon- 
 strated : 
 
 "His correspondence with me on the subject 
 was more in the nature of a reprimand than a 
 protest. It was highly insubordinate, but J 
 overlooked it, as I believed, for the good of the 
 service. General McClernand was a member 
 of Congress when the Secession War broke 
 out ; he belonged to that party which furnished 
 all the opposition there was to a vigorous prose- 
 cution of the war for saving the Union ; but 
 there was no delay in his declaring himself for 
 the Union at all hazards, and there was no un- 
 certain sound in his declaration of where he 
 stood in the contest before the country." 
 
 To such a man Grant wished to be forbear- 
 ing when he could say to himself that, after all, 
 it was only his own dignity which was con- 
 cerned. But later, when an irregularity of the 
 same General was injurious to good feeling and 
 unity in the army, Grant was prompt and 
 severe : 
 
 " 1 received a letter from General Sherman, 
 and one from General MePherson, saying that 
 their respective commands had complained to 
 
General Grant. 
 
 43 
 
 l 
 
 them of a fulsome congratulatory order pub- 
 lished by General McClernand to the 13th 
 Corps, which did great injustice to the other 
 troops engaged in the campaign. This order 
 had been sent north and published, and now 
 papers containing it had reached our camps. 
 The order had not been heard of by me ; I at 
 once wrote to McClernand, directing him to 
 send me a copy of this order. He did so, and I 
 at once relieved him from the command of the 
 13th Army Corps. The publication of his order 
 in the press was in violation of War Department 
 orders, and also of mine." 
 
 The newspaper press is apt to appear to an 
 American, even more than to an Englishman, 
 as part of the order of nature, and contending 
 with it seems like contending with destiny. 
 Grant had governing instincts. " I always ad- 
 mired the South, as bad as I thought their 
 cause, for the boldness with which they silenced 
 all opposition and all croaking by press or by 
 individuals within their control." His instincts 
 would have led him to follow this example. 
 But since he could do nothing against the news- 
 paper nuisance, and was himself the chief suf- 
 ferer by it, he bore it with his native phil- 
 osophy : 
 
 " Visitors to the camps went home with dismal 
 
44 General Grant. 
 
 stories. Northern papers came back to the sol- 
 diers with these stones exaggerated. Because 
 I would not divulge my ultimate plans to visi- 
 tors they pronounced me idle, incompetent, and 
 unfit to command men in an emergency, and 
 clamoured for my removal. They were not 
 to be satisfied, many of them, with my simple 
 removal, but named who my successor should 
 be. I took no steps to answer these complaints, 
 but continued to do my duty, as I understood 
 it, to the best of my ability." 
 
 Surely the Duke of Wellington would have 
 read these Memoirs with pleasure. He might 
 himself have issued, too, this order respecting 
 behaviour to prisoners : " Instruct the com- 
 mands to be quiet and orderly as these prisoners 
 pass, and to make no offensive remark." And 
 this other, respecting behaviour in a conquored 
 enemy's country : " Impress upon the men the 
 importance of going through the State in an 
 orderly manner, abstaining from taking any- 
 thing not absolutely necessary for their sub- 
 sistence while travelling. They should try to 
 create as favourable an impression as possible 
 upon the people." 
 
 But what even at this stage of the war is very 
 striking, and of good augury for the re-union 
 which followed, is the absence, in general, of 
 
General Grant. 45 
 
 bitter hatred between the combatants. There 
 is nothing of internicene, inextinguishable, irre- 
 concilable enmity, or of the temper, acts, and 
 words which beget this. Often we find the 
 vanquished Southerner showing a good-hum- 
 oured audacity, the victorious Northerner a 
 good-humoured forbearance. Let us remember 
 Carrier at Nantes, or Davoust at Hamburg, and 
 then look at Grant's picture of himself and 
 Sherman at Jackson, when their troops had just 
 driven the enemy out of this capital of a 
 " rebel " State, and were destroying the stores 
 and war-materials there : 
 
 " Sherman and I went together into a manu- 
 factory which had not ceased work on account 
 of the battle, nor for the entrance of Yankee 
 troops. Our entrance did not seem to attract 
 the attention of either the manager or the ope- 
 ratives, most of whom were girls. We looked 
 on for a while to see the tent cloth which they 
 were making roll out of the looms, with"C.S. 
 A."* woven in each bolt. Finally I told Sher- 
 man I thought they had done work enough. 
 The operatives were told they could leave, and 
 take with them what cloth they could carry. In 
 a few minutes the factory was in a blaze. The 
 proprietor visited Washington, while I was Presi- 
 
 * Confederate States Army. 
 
46 General Gra?it. 
 
 dent, to get his pay for this property, claiming 
 that it was private." 
 
 The American girls coolly continuing to make 
 the Confederate tents under the eye of the hos- 
 tile generals, and the proprietor claiming after- 
 wards to be paid by Congress for them as private 
 property, are charming. 
 
 It was one of Grant's superstitions, he tells 
 us, never to apply for a post, or to use personal 
 or political influence for obtaining it. He be- 
 lieved that if he had got it in this way he would 
 have feared to undertake any plan of his own 
 conception for fear of involving his patrons in 
 responsibility for his possible failure. If he 
 were selected for a post, his responsibility ended, 
 he said, with "his doing the best he knew how.' 
 
 "Every one has his superstitions. One of 
 mine is that in positions of great responsibility 
 every one should do his duty to the best of his 
 ability, where assigned by competent authority, 
 without application or the use of influence to 
 change his position. While at Cairo I had 
 watched with very great interest the operations 
 of the Army of the Potomac, looking upon that 
 as the main field of the war. I had no idea, my- 
 self, of ever having any large command, nor did I 
 suppose that I was equal to one ; but I had the 
 vanity to think that, as a cavalry officer, I might 
 
General Grant. 
 
 47 
 
 succeed very well in the command of a brigade. 
 On one occasion, in talking about this to my 
 staff officers, I said that I would give anything 
 if I were commanding a brigade of cavalry in 
 the Army of the Potomac, and I believed I could 
 do some good. Captain Hellyer suggested that 
 I should make application to be transferred 
 there to command the cavalry. I then told him 
 that I would cut my right arm off first, and 
 mentioned this superstition." 
 
 But now he was to be transferred, without any 
 solicitation on his own part, to " the main field 
 of the war." At first, however, he was ap- 
 pointed to the command of the " Military Divis- 
 ion of the Mississippi," and after fighting a severe 
 and successful battle at Chattanooga in Novem- 
 ber (1863), relieved that place and Knoxville, 
 which the Confederates were threatening. 
 President Lincoln, who had daily, almost hourly, 
 been telegraphing to him to " remember Burn- 
 side," to "do something for Burnside," be- 
 sieged in Knoxville, was overjoyed. "I wish," 
 he wrote to Grant, "to tender you, and all under 
 your command, my more than thanks, my pro- 
 foundest gratitude, for the skill, courage and 
 perseverance with which you and they, over so 
 great difficulties, have effected this important 
 object. God bless you all ! " Congress voted 
 
48 
 
 General Grant. 
 
 him thanks and a gold medal for his achieve- 
 ments at Vicksburg and Chattanooga. 
 
 In the dead of the winter, with the ther- 
 mometer below zero, he made an excursion into 
 Kentucky, and had the pleasure of finding the 
 people along his route, both in Tennessee and 
 Kentucky, in general intensely loyal to the 
 Union : 
 
 " They would collect in little places where we 
 would stop of evenings, to see me. The people 
 naturally expected to see the commanding gen- 
 eral the oldest person in the party. I was then 
 forty-one years of age, while my medical director 
 was grey-haired, and probably twelve or more 
 years my senior. The crowds would generally 
 swarm around him, and thus give me an oppor- 
 tunity of quietly dismounting and getting into 
 the house." 
 
 At the beginning of the next year, 1864, a 
 Bill was passed through Congress for restoring 
 the grade of Lieutenant-General in the army. 
 Grant was nominated to that rank, and having 
 been summoned to Washington he received his 
 commission from the President on the 9th of 
 March, in the presence of the Ministers. Before 
 he came to Washington, he had meant to return 
 to his command in the West even after being 
 made lieutenant-general ; but at Washington he 
 
General Grant. 49 
 
 saw reason to change his mind. The important 
 struggle was now between the Army of the 
 Potomac and Lee. From what he saw, Grant 
 was convinced that in that struggle no one ex- 
 cept himself, with the superior rank he now 
 bore, could, probably, " resist the pressure that 
 would be brought to bear upon him to desist 
 from his own plans and pursue others." He 
 obtained, therefore, the nomination of Sherman 
 to succeed him in command of the Military 
 Division of the Mississippi. On the 12th of 
 March orders were published by the War De- 
 partment, placing Grant in chief command of 
 all the armies. 
 
 The position of General Meade, who was at 
 that time in command of the Army of the Poto- 
 mac, and who had won the important battle of 
 Gettysburg in the previous summer, underwent 
 a grave change through Grant's promotion. 
 Both Meade and Grant behaved very well. 
 Meade suggested to Grant that he might wish 
 to have immediately under him Sherman, who 
 had been serving with Grant in the West. He 
 begged him not to hesitate in making the 
 change if he thought it for the good of the ser- 
 vice. The work in hand, he said, was of such 
 vast importance, that the feelings and wishes of 
 no one person should stand in the way of select- 
 
50 General Grant 
 
 ing the right men. He was willing himself to 
 serve to the best of his ability wherever placed. 
 Grant assured him that he had no thought of 
 moving him, and in his Memoirs, after relating 
 what had passed, he adds : " This incident gave 
 me even a more favorable opinion of Meade than 
 did his great victory at Gettysburg the July 
 before. It is men who wait to be selected, 
 and not those who seek, from whom we may 
 always expect the most efficient service." He 
 tried to make Meade's position as nearly as pos- 
 sible what it would have been had he himself 
 been away in Washington or elsewhere ; he 
 gave all orders for the movements of the Army 
 of the Potomac to Meade for execution, and to 
 avoid the necessity of having to give direct 
 orders himself, he established his headquarters 
 close to Meade's whenever he could. Meade's 
 position, however, was undoubtedly a somewhat 
 embarrassing one ; but its embarrassment was 
 not increased by soreness on his part, or by 
 want of delicacy on Grant's. 
 
 In the West, the great objects to be attained 
 by Sherman were the defeat of Johnston and 
 his army, and the occupation of Atlanta. These 
 objects he accomplished, proceeding afterwards 
 to execute his brilliant and famous march to 
 Savannah and the sea, sweeping the whole 
 
General Grant. 5 1 
 
 State of Georgia. In the East, the opposing 
 forces stood between the Federal and Confed- 
 erate capitals, and substantially in the same 
 relations to each other as when the war began 
 three years before. President Lincoln told 
 Grant, when he first saw him in private, that 
 although he had never professed to know how 
 campaigns should be conducted, and never 
 wanted to interfere in them, yet " procrasti- 
 nation on the part of commanders, and the 
 pressure from the people at the North and 
 Congress, which was always with him, forced 
 him into issuing his series of Military Orders. 
 He did not know but they were all wrong, and 
 did know that some of them were. What he 
 wanted," he continued, "was a general who 
 would take the responsibility and act ; he would 
 support him with all the power of the Govern- 
 ment." He added that he did not even ask to 
 know what Grant's plans were. But such is 
 human nature, that the next moment he 
 brought out a map of Virginia, showed Grant 
 two streams running into the Potomac, and 
 suggested a plan of his own for landing the 
 army between the mouths of these streams, 
 which would protect its flanks while it moved 
 out. " I listened respectfully," says Grant, 
 with dry humour, " but did not suggest that the 
 
52 General Grant. 
 
 same streams would protect Lee's flanks while 
 he was shutting us up." 
 
 In Grant the President had certainly found 
 a general who would take the responsibility, 
 would act, and would keep his plans to him- 
 self. To beat Lee and get possession of his 
 army, was the object. If Lee was beaten and 
 his army captured, the fall of Richmond must 
 necessarily follow. If Richmond were taken 
 by moving the army thither on transports up 
 the James River, but meanwhile Lee's army 
 were to remain whole and unimpaired, the end 
 of the war was not brought any nearer. But 
 the end of the war must be reached soon, or 
 the North might grow weary of continuing the 
 struggle. For three years the war had raged, 
 with immense losses on either side, and no de- 
 cisive consummation reached by either. If the 
 South could succeed in prolonging an indeci- 
 sive struggle year after year still, the North 
 might probably grow tired of the contest, and 
 agree to a separation. Persuaded of this, Grant, 
 at the beginning of May 1864, crossed the Rap- 
 idan with the Army of the Potomac, and com- 
 menced the forty-three days' Campaign of the 
 Wilderness. 
 
 The Wilderness is a tract north of Richmond, 
 between the Rapidan and the James River, 
 
General Grant. 53 
 
 much cut up with streams and morasses, full 
 of broken ground, densely clothed with wood, 
 and thinly inhabited. The principal streams 
 between the Rapidan and the James River are 
 the branches of the Anna, uniting in the 
 Pamunkey, and the Chickahominy. The coun- 
 try was favorable for defence, and Lee was a 
 general to make the most of its advantages. 
 Grant was in an enemy's country, but, moving 
 by his left flank, was in connection with the 
 sea, of which the Northerners were masters, 
 and was abundantly supplied with everything. 
 Of artillery, in particular, he had so much that 
 he was embarrassed by it, and had to send some 
 of it away. Overwhelmingly superior in num- 
 bers and resources, he pressed steadily forward, 
 failing and repulsed sometimes, but coolly per- 
 severing. This campaign, of which the stages 
 are the battles of Chancellorsville, Spottsyl- 
 vania, North Anna and Cold Harbour, was 
 watched at the time in Europe with keen at- 
 tention, and is much better known than the 
 operations in the West. I shall not attempt 
 any account of it ; for its severity let the losses 
 of Grant's successful army speak. When he 
 crossed the Rapidan the Army of the Potomac 
 numbered 11 5,000 men; during the forty-three 
 days' campaign reinforcements were received 
 
54 General Grant. 
 
 amounting to 40,000 men more. When the 
 army crossed the James River, it was 1 16,000 
 strong, almost exactly the same strength as 
 at the beginning of the campaign. Thirty- 
 nine thousand men had been lost in forty- 
 three days. 
 
 A yet greater loss must have been incurred 
 had Grant attacked Lee's lines in front of Rich- 
 mond ; and therefore crossing the James River, 
 he invested, after failing to carry it by assault, 
 Petersburg, the enemy's important stronghold 
 south of Richmond. Winter came and passed. 
 Lee's army was safe in its lines, and Richmond 
 had not yet fallen ; but the Confederates' re- 
 sources were failing, their foes gathering, and 
 the end came visibly near. After sweeping 
 Georgia and taking Savannah in December, 
 Sherman turned north and swept the Caro- 
 linas, ready to join with Grant in moving upon 
 Lee in the spring. Sheridan made himself 
 master of the Shenandoah Valley, and closed 
 to the Confederates that great source of sup- 
 ply. Finally Grant, resuming operations in 
 March 1865, possessed himself of the outer 
 works of Petersburg, and of the railroad by 
 which the place was supplied from the south- 
 west, and on the 3rd of April Petersburg was 
 evacuated. Then Grant proceeded to possess 
 
General Grant. 55 
 
 himself of the railroad by which Lee's army 
 and Richmond itself now drew their supplies. 
 Lee had already informed his government that 
 he could hold out no longer. The Confederate 
 President was at church when the despatch 
 arrived, the congregation were told that there 
 would be no evening service, and the authori- 
 ties abandoned Richmond that afternoon. In 
 the field there was some sharp fighting for a 
 day or two still ; but Lee's army was crumb- 
 ling away, and on the 9th of April he wrote to 
 Grant, requesting an interview with him for the 
 purpose of surrendering his army. Grant was 
 suffering from sick headache when the officer 
 bearing Lee's note reached him, "but the in- 
 stant I saw," he says, "the contents of the 
 note, I was cured." 
 
 Then followed, in the afternoon of that same 
 day, the famous interview at Appomattox Court 
 House. Grant shall himself describe the meet- 
 ing : 
 
 "When I had left camp that morning I had 
 not expected so soon the result that was then 
 taking place, and consequently was in rough 
 garb. I was without a sword, as I usually was 
 when on horseback in the field, and wore a sol- 
 dier's blouse for a coat, with the shoulder-straps 
 of my rank to indicate to the army who I was. 
 
$6 General Grant. 
 
 When I went into the house I found General 
 Lee. We greeted each other, and, after shak- 
 ing hands, took our seats. 
 
 "What General Lee's feelings were I do not 
 know. As he was a man of much dignity, with 
 an impassible face, it was impossible to say 
 whether he felt inwardly glad that the end had 
 finally come, or felt sad over the result and was 
 too manly to show it. Whatever his feelings, 
 they were entirely concealed from my observa- 
 tion ; but my own feelings, which had been 
 quite jubilant on the receipt of his letter, were 
 sad and depressed. I felt like anything rather 
 than rejoicing at the downfall of a foe who had 
 fought so long and valiantly, and had suffered 
 so much for a cause, though that cause was, I 
 believe, one of the worst for which a people 
 ever fought. 
 
 " General Lee was dressed in a full uniform 
 which was entirely new, and was wearing a 
 sword of considerable value, very likely the 
 sword which had been presented by the State 
 of Virginia. In my rough travelling suit, the 
 uniform of a private with the straps of a lieu- 
 tenant-general, I must have contrasted very 
 strangely with a man so handsomely dressed, 
 six feet high and of faultless form. But this 
 was not a matter that I thought of until after- 
 wards. 
 
General Grant. 57 
 
 " We soon fell into a conversation about old 
 army times. He remarked that he remembered 
 me well in the old army (of Mexico) ; and I told 
 him that as a matter of course I remembered him 
 perfectly, but from the difference in our rank 
 and years (there being about sixteen years' dif- 
 ference in our ages) I had thought it likely that 
 I had not attracted his attention sufficiently to 
 be remembered by him after such a long in- 
 terval. Our conversation grew so pleasant that 
 I almost forgot the object of our meeting. 
 After the conversation had run on in this style 
 for some time, General Lee called my atten- 
 tion to the object of our meeting, and said that 
 he had asked for this interview for the purpose 
 of getting from me the terms I proposed to 
 give his army. I said that I meant merely 
 that his army should lay down their arms, not 
 to take them up again during the continuance 
 of the war unless duly and properly ex- 
 changed." 
 
 Lee acquiesced, and Grant, who throughout 
 the interview seems to have behaved with true 
 delicacy and kindness, proceeded to write out 
 the terms of surrender. It occurred to him, as 
 he was writing, that it would be an unnecessary 
 humiliation to the officers to call upon them to 
 surrender their side-arms, and also that they 
 
58 General Grant. 
 
 would be glad to retain their private horses and 
 effects, and accordingly he inserted in the 
 terms that the^ surrender of arms and prop- 
 erty was not to include the side-arms, horses 
 and property of the officers. Lee remarked 
 that this would have a happy effect on the 
 army. Grant then said that most of the men 
 in Lee's ranks were, he supposed, small farm- 
 ers ; that the country had been so raided by 
 either army that it was doubtful whether they 
 would be able to put in a crop to carry them- 
 selves and their families through the next win- 
 ter without the aid of the horses they were then 
 riding ; that the United States did not want 
 them, and he would therefore give instructions 
 to let every man of the Confederate army, who 
 claimed to own a horse or mule, take the ani- 
 mal to his home. Again Lee remarked that 
 this would have a happy effect. 
 
 At half-past four Grant could telegraph to 
 the Secretary of War at Washington: " Gen- 
 eral Lee surrendered the army of Northern 
 Virginia this afternoon." As soon as the news 
 of the surrender became known, Grant's army 
 began to fire a salute of a hundred guns. Grant 
 instantly stopped it. 
 
 The war was at an end. Johnston surren- 
 dered to Sherman in North Carolina. Presi- 
 
General Grant. 59 
 
 dent Lincoln visited Richmond, which had been 
 occupied by the Army of the Potomac the day 
 after the Confederate Government abandoned 
 it. The President on his return to Washington 
 invited Grant, who also had now gone thither, to 
 accompany him to the theatre on the evening 
 of the 14th of April. Grant declined, because 
 he was to go off that evening to visit his chil- 
 dren who were at school in New Jersey ; when 
 he reached Philadelphia, he heard that the 
 President and Mr. Seward had been assassin- 
 ated. He immediately returned to Washington, 
 to find the joy there turned to mourning. With 
 this tragic event, and with the grand review in 
 the following month of Meade's and Sherman's 
 armies by the new President, Mr. Johnson, the 
 Memoirs end. 
 
 Modest for himself, Grant is boastful, as 
 Americans are apt to be, for his nation. He 
 says with perfect truth that troops who have 
 fought a few battles and won, and followed up 
 their victories, improve upon what they were 
 before to an extent that can hardly be counted 
 by percentage ; and that his troops and Sher- 
 man's which had gone through this training, 
 were by the end of the war become very good 
 and seasoned soldiers. But he is fond of add- 
 ing, in what I must call the American vein, 
 
60 General Grant. 
 
 "better than any European soldiers." And the 
 reason assigned for this boast is in the Ameri- 
 can vein too : " Because they not only worked 
 like a machine, but the machine thought. Euro- 
 pean armies know very little what they are 
 fighting for, and care less." Is the German 
 army a machine which does not think ? Did 
 the French revolutionary armies know very 
 little what they were fighting for, and care 
 less ? Sainte-Beuve says charmingly that he 
 " cannot bear to have it said that he is the first 
 in anything ; it is not a thing that can be ad- 
 mitted, and these ways of classing people 
 give offence." German military men read 
 Grant's boast, and are provoked into replying 
 that the campaigns and battles of the Ameri- 
 can Civil War were mere straggles of militia ; 
 English military men say that Americans have 
 been steady enough behind breastworks and 
 entrenchments against regulars, but never in 
 the open field. Why cannot the Americans, 
 in speaking of their nation, take Sainte-Beuve's 
 happy and wise caution ? 
 
 The point is worth insisting on, because to be 
 always seeking to institute comparisons, and 
 comparisons to the advantage of their own coun- 
 try, is with so many Americans a tic, a mania, 
 which every one notices in them, and which 
 
General Grant. 
 
 61 
 
 sometimes drives their friends half to despair. 
 Recent greatness is always apt to be sensitive 
 and self-assertive ; let us remember Dr. Her- 
 mann Grimm on Goethe. German literature, as 
 a power, does not begin before Lessing ; if Ger- 
 many had possessed a great literature for six 
 centuries, with names in it like Dante, Mon- 
 taigne, Shakespeare, probably Dr. Hermann 
 Grimm would not have thought it necessary to 
 call Goethe the greatest poet that has ever 
 lived. But the Americans in the rage for com- 
 parison-making beat the world. Whatever ex- 
 cellence is mentioned, America must, if possible, 
 be brought in to balance or surpass it. That 
 fine and delicate naturalist, Mr. Burroughs, 
 mentions trout, and instantly he adds : " British 
 trout, by the way, are not so beautiful as our 
 own ; they are less brilliantly marked and have 
 much coarser scales, there is no gold or vermil- 
 ion in their colouring." Here superiority is 
 claimed ; if there is not superiority there must 
 be at least balance. Therefore in literature we 
 have "the American Walter Scott," the " Ameri- 
 can Wordsworth " ; nay, I see advertised The 
 Primer of American Literature. Imagine the 
 face of Philip or Alexander at hearing of a 
 Primer of Macedonian Literature ! Are we to 
 have a Primer of Canadian Literature too, and 
 
62 General Grant. 
 
 a Primer of Australian ? We are all contribu- 
 tories to one great literature — English Litera- 
 ture. The contribution of Scotland to this 
 literature is far more serious and important than 
 that of America has yet had time to be ; yet a 
 "Primer of Scotch Literature" would be an 
 absurdity. And these things are not only ab- 
 surd ; they are also retarding. 
 
 My opinion on any military subject is of 
 course worth very little, but I should have 
 thought that in what Napier calls "strength 
 and majesty " as a fighter, the American soldier, 
 if we are to institute these comparisons, had his 
 superiors ; though as brave as any one, he is too 
 ingenious, too mental, to be the perfection of a 
 fighting animal. Where the Yankee soldier has 
 an unrivalled advantage is in his versatility and 
 ingenuity ; dexterous, willing, suggestive, he 
 can turn his hand to anything, and is of twenty 
 trades at the same time with that of soldier. 
 Grant's Memoirs are full of proofs of this faculty, 
 which might perhaps be of no great use in a 
 campaign in the Low Countries, but was invalu- 
 able in such campaigns as those which Grant and 
 Sherman conducted in America. When the bat- 
 teries at Vicksburg were to be run with hired 
 river steamers, there were naturally but very few 
 masters or crews who were willing to accompany 
 
General Grant. 
 
 63 
 
 their vessels on this service of danger. Volun- 
 teers were therefore called for from the army, 
 men who had any experience in river naviga- 
 gation. " Captains, pilots, mates, engineers, and 
 deck-hands, enough presented themselves," says 
 Grant, " to take five times the number of ves- 
 sels we were moving." The resource and 
 rapidity shown by the troops in the repair of 
 railroads wrecked by the enemy were marvellous. 
 In Sherman's Atlanta campaign, the Confeder- 
 ate cavalry lurking in his rear to burn bridges 
 and obstruct his communications had become so 
 disgusted at hearing trains go whistling by, 
 within a few hours after a bridge had been 
 burned, that they proposed to try blowing up 
 some of the tunnels. One of them said on this : 
 " No use, boys ; old Sherman carries duplicate 
 tunnels with him, and will replace them as fast 
 as you can blow them up ; better save your 
 powder! " 
 
 But a leader to use these capable and in- 
 telligent forces, to use all the vast resources of 
 the North, was needed, a leader wise, cool, firm, 
 bold, persevering, and at the same time, as Car- 
 dinal Mazarin says, heurenx ; and such a leader 
 the United States found in General Grant. 
 
 He concludes his Memoirs by some advice to 
 his own country and some remarks on ours. 
 
64 General Grant. 
 
 The United States, he says, are going on as if 
 in the greatest security, " when they have not 
 the power to resist an invasion by the fleets of 
 fourth-rate European Powers for a time until we 
 could prepare for them." The United States 
 " should have a good navy, and our sea-coast 
 defences should be put in the finest possible 
 condition. Neither of these cost much when it 
 is considered where the money goes and what 
 we get in return." 
 
 The tone and temper of his remarks on Eng- 
 land, and on her behaviour during the war, are 
 in honourable contrast with the angry acrimony 
 shown by many who should have known better. 
 He regretted, he said, the exasperation. " The 
 hostility of England to the United States, dur- 
 ing our rebellion, was not so much real as it was 
 apparent. It was the hostility of the leaders of 
 one political party. England and the United 
 States are natural allies, and should be the best 
 of friends." 
 
 The Memoirs stop, as I have said, in 1865, 
 and do not embrace Grant's Presidency, his 
 journey to Europe, his financial disaster, his 
 painful illness and death. As to his financial 
 disaster, I will repeat what one of Grant's best 
 friends, a man of great business faculty and of 
 great fortune, remarked to me. I had been 
 
General Grant. 65 
 
 I f 
 saying, what one says so easily, that it was a 
 
 pity Grant had suffered himself to be drawn in 
 by speculators. "Yes," answered his friend, 
 " it was a pity. But see how it happened, and 
 put yourself in Grant's place. Like Grant, you 
 may have a son to whom you are partial, and 
 like Grant, you have no knowledge of business. 
 Had you been, like Grant, in a position to make 
 it worth while for a leader in business and 
 finance to come to you, saying that your son had 
 a quite exceptional talent for these matters, that 
 it was a thousand pities his talent should be 
 thrown away, ' give him to me and I will make 
 a man of him,' would you not have been flattered 
 in your parental pride, would you not have 
 yielded ? This is what happened to Grant, and 
 all his financial misfortunes flowed from hence." 
 I listened, and could not deny that most proba- 
 bly I should have been flattered to my ruin, as 
 Grant was. 
 
 Grant's Memoirs are a mine of interesting 
 things; I have but scratched the surface and 
 presented a few samples. When I began, I did 
 not know that the book had been reprinted in 
 England ; I find that it has,* and that its circu- 
 lation here, though trifling indeed compared to 
 that in America, has been larger than I sup- 
 
 * By Messrs. Sampson JLow, Marston & Co., 
 
66 General Grant. 
 
 posed. But certainly the book has not been 
 read here anything like so much as it deserves. 
 It contains a gallery of portraits, characters of 
 generals who served in the war, for which alone 
 the book, if it contained nothing else, would be 
 well worth reading. But after all, its great 
 value is in the character which, quite simply 
 and unconsciously, it draws of Grant himself. 
 The Americans are too self-laudatory, too apt to 
 force the tone and thereby, as Sainte-Beuve 
 says, to give offence ; the best way for them to 
 make us forgive and forget this is to pro- 
 duce what is simple and sterling. Instead 
 of Primers of American Literature, let them 
 bring forth more Maxims of Poor Richard ; in- 
 stead of assurances that they are " the greatest 
 nation upon earth," let them give us more 
 Lees, Lincolns, Shermans, and Grants. 
 
A WORD ABOUT AMERICA. 
 
II. 
 
 A WORD ABOUT AMERICA. 
 
 Mr. Lowell, in an interesting but rather 
 tart essay, " On a certain Condescension in 
 Foreigners," warns off Englishmen who may be 
 disposed to write or speak about the United 
 States of America. " I never blamed England 
 for not wishing well to democracy," he cries ; 
 "how should she?" But the criticisms and 
 dealings of Englishmen, in regard to the object 
 of their ill-will, are apt, Mr. Lowell declares, to 
 make him impatient. " Let them give up trying 
 to understand us, still more thinking that they 
 do, and acting in various absurd ways as the 
 necessary consequence ; for they will never 
 arrive at that devoutly to be wished consum- 
 mation, till they learn to look at us as we are, 
 and not as they suppose us to be." 
 
 On the other hand, from some quarters in 
 America come reproaches to us for not speaking 
 about America enough, for not making sufficient 
 use of her in illustration of what we bring for- 
 ward. Mr. Higginson expresses much surprise 
 69 
 
JO A Word about America. 
 
 that when, for instance, I dilate on the benefits 
 of equality, it is to France that I have recourse 
 for the illustration and confirmation of my the- 
 sis, not to the United States. A Boston news- 
 paper supposes me to " speak of American 
 manners as vulgar," and finds, what is worse, 
 that the Atlantic Monthly, commenting on this 
 supposed utterance of mine, adopts it and car- 
 ries it further. For the writer in the Atlantic 
 Monthly says that, indeed, "the hideousness 
 and vulgarity of American manners are unde- 
 niable," and that "redemption is only to be 
 expected by the work of a few enthusiastic 
 individuals, conscious of cultivated tastes and 
 generous desires " ; or, as these enthusiasts are 
 presently called by the writer, "rather highly 
 civilized individuals, a few in each of our great 
 cities and their environs." The Boston news- 
 paper observes, with a good deal of point, that 
 it is from these exceptional enthusiasts that the 
 heroes of the tales of Mr. James and Mr. 
 Howells seem to be recruited. It shrewdly 
 describes them as " people who spend more 
 than half their life in Europe, and return only 
 to scold their agents for the smallness of their 
 remittances " ; and protests that such people 
 " will have, and can have, no perceptible influ- 
 ence for good on the real civilization of Amer- 
 
A Word about America. Ji 
 
 ica." Then our Boston friend turns to me 
 again, says that " it is vulgar people from the 
 large cities who have given Mr. Arnold his 
 dislike of American manners," and adds, that 
 "if it should ever happen that hard destiny 
 should force Mr. Arnold to cross the Atlantic," 
 I should find " in the smaller cities of the inte- 
 rior, in the northern, middle, and southwestern 
 states, an elegant and simple social order, as 
 entirely unknown in England, Germany, or 
 Italy, as the private life of the dukes or princes 
 of the blood is unknown in America." Yes, I 
 "should find a manner of life belonging to the 
 highest civilization, in towns, in counties, and 
 in states whose names had never been heard " by 
 me ; and, if I could take the writer in the At- 
 lantic Monthly to see it along with me, it would 
 do him, says his compatriot, a great deal of 
 good. 
 
 I do not remember to have anywhere, in 
 my too numerous writings, spoken of American 
 manners as vulgar, or to have expressed my 
 dislike of them. I have long accustomed myself 
 to regard the people of the United States as 
 just the same people with ourselves, as simply 
 "the English on the other side of the Atlantic." 
 The ethnology of that American diplomatist, 
 who the other day assured a Berlin audience 
 
72 A Word about America. 
 
 that the great admixture of Germans had now 
 made the people of the United States as much 
 German as English, has not yet prevailed with 
 me. I adhere to my old persuasion, the Amer- 
 icans of the United States are English people 
 on the other side of the Atlantic. I learned it 
 from Burke. But from Burke I learned, too, with 
 what immense consequences and effects this 
 simple matter — the settlement of a branch of 
 the English people on the other side of the At- 
 lantic — was, from the time of their consti- 
 tution as an independent power, certainly and 
 inevitably charged. Let me quote his own 
 impressive and profound words on the acknowl- 
 edgment of American independence, in 1782 : — 
 
 A great revolution has happened — a revolution made, 
 not by chopping and changing of power in any of the ex- 
 isting states, but by the appearance of a new state, of a 
 new species, in a new part of the globe. It has made as 
 great a change in all the relations, and balances, and 
 gravitations of power, as the appearance of a new planet 
 would in the system of the solar world. 
 
 As for my esteeming it a hard destiny which 
 should force me to visit the United States, I will 
 borrow Goethe's words, and say, that " not the 
 spirit is bound, but the foot " ; with the best 
 will in the world, I have never yet been able to 
 
A Word about America. 73 
 
 go to America, and probably I never shall be 
 able. But many a kind communication I re- 
 ceive from that quarter ; and when one has 
 much discoursed on equality and on civilization, 
 and then is told that in America a lover of these 
 will find just what suits him, and is invited, and 
 almost challenged, to turn one's eyes there, and 
 to bear testimony to what one beholds, it seems 
 ungracious or cowardly to take no notice at all 
 of such challenges, but to go on talking of 
 equality and civilization just as if America had 
 never existed. True, there is Mr. Lowell's 
 warning. Englishmen easily may fall into ab- 
 surdities in criticising America, most easily of 
 all when they do not, and cannot, see it with 
 their own eyes, but have to speak of it from 
 what they read. Then, too, people are sensi- 
 tive ; certainly, it would be safer and pleasanter 
 to say nothing. And as the prophet Jonah, 
 when he had a message for Nineveh, hurried 
 off in alarm down to Joppa, and incontinently 
 took ship there for Tarshish, in just the oppo- 
 site direction, so one might find plenty of reasons 
 for running away from the task, when one is 
 summoned to give one's opinion of American 
 civilization. But Ewald says that it was a sorry 
 and unworthy calculation, petty human reason- 
 mongering — menscJiliche Veniimftelei — which 
 
74 A Word about America. 
 
 made Jonah run away from his task in this 
 fashion ; and we will not run away from ours, 
 difficult though it be. 
 
 Besides, there are considerations which dimin- 
 ish its difficulty. When one has confessed the 
 belief that the social system of one's own 
 country is so far from being perfect that it pre- 
 sents us with the spectacle of an upper class 
 materialized, a middle class vulgarized, a lower 
 class brutalized, one has earned the right, per- 
 haps, to speak with candor of the social systems 
 of other countries. Mr. Lowell complains that 
 we English make our narrow Anglicism, as he 
 calls it, the standard of all things ; but " we are 
 worth nothing," says Mr. Lowell of himself 
 and his countrymen, "we are worth nothing 
 except so far as we have disinfected ourselves 
 of Anglicism." Mr. Hussey Vivian, the mem- 
 ber for Glamorganshire, goes to travel in Amer- 
 ica, and when he comes back, delighted with 
 the country and the people, he publishes his 
 opinion that just two things are wanting to 
 their happiness, — a sovereign of the British 
 type, and a House of Lords : — 
 
 If Americans could only get over the first wrench, and 
 elect a king of the old stock, under the same limited con- 
 stitutional conditions as our sovereigns, and weld their 
 separate states into one compact and solid nation, many 
 
A Word about America. 75 
 
 of them would be only too thankful. I cannot help sus- 
 pecting, also, that they would not be sorry to transform 
 their Senate into a House of Lords. There are fortunes 
 amply large enough to support hereditary rule, and men 
 who will not now enter political life upon any consideration 
 would doubtless do their duty as patriotically as our peers, 
 if not compelled to face the dirt of candidature. As to 
 aristocratic ideas being foreign to Americans, I do not 
 believe it for a moment ; on the contrary, I believe them 
 to be a highly aristocratic people. 
 
 I suppose this may serve as a specimen of the 
 Anglicism which is so exasperating to Mr. Low- 
 ell. I do not share it. Mr. Hussey Vivian has 
 a keen eye for the geological and mining facts 
 of America, but as to the political facts of that 
 country, the real tendencies of its life, and its 
 future, he does not seem to me to be at all at 
 the centre of the situation. Far from "not 
 wishing well to democracy," far from thinking 
 a king and a House of Lords, of our English 
 pattern, a panacea for social ills, I have freely 
 said that our system here, in my opinion, has 
 too much thrown the middle classes in upon 
 themselves, that the lower classes likewise are 
 thus too much thrown in upon themselves, and 
 that we suffer from the want of equality. 
 Nothing would please me better than to find 
 the difficulty solved in America, to find democ- 
 racy a success there, with a type of equality 
 
?6 A Word about America. 
 
 producing such good results, that, when one 
 preaches equality, one should illustrate its 
 advantages not from the example of the French, 
 but, as Mr. Higginson recommends, from the 
 example of the people of the United States. I 
 go back again to my Boston newspaper : — 
 
 In towns whose names Mr. Arnold never heard, and 
 never will hear, there will be found almost invariably a 
 group of people of good taste, good manners, good educa- 
 tion, and of self-respect, peers of any people in the world. 
 Such people read the best books, they interpret the best 
 music, they are interested in themes world-wide, and they 
 meet each other with that mutual courtesy and that self- 
 respect which belong to men and women who are sure of 
 their footing. 
 
 This is what we want ; and if American democ- 
 racy gives this, Mr. Lowell may rely upon it 
 that no narrow Anglicism shall prevent my 
 doing homage to American democracy. 
 
 Only, we must have a clear understanding- 
 about one thing. This is a case where the 
 question of numbers is of capital importance. 
 Even in our poor old country, with its aristo- 
 cratic class materialized, its middle class vulgar- 
 ized, its lower class brutalized, there are to be 
 found individuals, as I have again and again 
 said, lovers of the humane life, lovers of perfec- 
 tion, who emerge in all classes, and who, while 
 
A Word about America. JJ 
 
 they are more or less in conflict with the pres- 
 ent, point to a better future. Individuals of 
 this kind I make no doubt at all that there are 
 in American society as well as here. The 
 writer in the Atlantic Monthly himself, unfavor- 
 able as is his judgment on his country's civiliza- 
 tion in general, admits that he can find a certain 
 number of " enthusiastic individuals conscious 
 of cultivated tastes and generous desires." Of 
 these "rather highly civilized individuals " there 
 are, he says, " a few in each of our great cities 
 and their environs." His rebuker in the Boston 
 newspaper says that these centres of sweetness 
 and light are rather in the small towns than in 
 the large ones ; but that is not a matter of much 
 importance to us. The important question is : 
 In what numbers are they to be found ? Well, 
 there is a grotift of them, says the Boston news- 
 paper, in almost any small town of the northern, 
 middle, and southwestern states. This is in- 
 deed civilization. A group of lovers of the 
 humane life, an " elegant and simple social 
 order," as its describer calls it, existing in almost 
 every small town of the northern, middle, and 
 southwestern states of America, and this in 
 addition to circles in New York and other great 
 cities with " a social life as dignified, as elegant, 
 and as noble as any in the world" — all this 
 
y8 A Word about America. 
 
 must needs leaven American society, and must 
 surely, if we can take example from it, enable 
 us to leaven and transform our own. Leaven 
 American society it already does, we hear : — 
 
 It is such people who keep the whole sentiment of the 
 land up to a high standard. While the few " rather highly 
 civilized individuals " are hopping backwards and forwards 
 over the Atlantic to learn what is the last keynote which 
 a pinchbeck emperor has decided on, or what is the last 
 gore which a man-milliner has decreed, these American 
 gentlemen and ladies, in the dignity of their own homes, 
 are making America. It is they who maintain the na- 
 tional credit, it is they who steadily improve the standard 
 of national education. If Mr. Arnold should ever see 
 them in their own homes, it is they who will show him 
 what is the normal type of American manners. 
 
 Our Boston informant writes so crisply and 
 smartly that one is unwilling to part with him. 
 I can truly say that I would rather read him 
 and quote him than join issue with him. He 
 has seen America, and I have not. Perhaps 
 things in America are as he says. I am sure I 
 hope they are, for, as I have just said, I have 
 been long convinced that English society has to 
 transform itself, and long looking in vain for a 
 model by which we might be guided and inspired 
 in the bringing forth of our new civilization ; 
 and here is the model ready to hand. But I own 
 
A Word' about America. 79 
 
 that hitherto I have thought that, as we in 
 England have to transform our civilization, so 
 America has hers still to make ; and that, though 
 her example and co-operation might, and proba- 
 bly would, be of the greatest value to us in the 
 future, yet they were not of much use to our 
 civilization now. I remember, that when I first 
 read the Boston newspaper from which I have 
 been quoting, I was just fresh from the perusal 
 of one of the best of Mr. James's novels, " Rod- 
 erick Hudson." That work carries us to one of 
 the "smaller cities of the interior," a city of 
 which, I own, I had never heard — the Ameri- 
 can Northampton. Those who have read " Rod- 
 erick Hudson " will recollect, that in that part of 
 the story where the scene is laid at Northamp- 
 ton, there occurs a personage called Striker, an 
 auctioneer. And when I came upon the Boston 
 newspaper's assurances that, in almost every 
 small town of the Union, I should find "an 
 elegant and simple social order," the comment 
 which rose to my lips was this : " I suspect 
 what I should find there, in great force, is 
 Striker." Now Striker was a Philistine. 
 
 I have said somewhere or other that, whereas 
 our society in England distributes itself into 
 Barbarians, Philistines, and Populace, America 
 is just ourselves, with the Barbarians quite left 
 
8o A Word about America. 
 
 out, and the Populace nearly. This would leave 
 the Philistines for the great bulk of the nation ; 
 a livelier sort of Philistines than our Philistine 
 middle class which made and peopled the 
 United States — a livelier sort of Philistine 
 than ours, and with the pressure and the false 
 ideal of our Barbarians taken away, but left all 
 the more to himself, and to have his full swing. 
 That this should be the case seemed to me 
 natural, and that it actually was the case, every- 
 thing which I could hear and read about Amer- 
 ica tended to convince me. And when my 
 Boston friend talks of the " elegant and simple 
 social order established in almost every small 
 town in America, and of the group, in each, of 
 people of good taste, good manners, good edu- 
 cation and self-respect, peers of any people in 
 the world," I cannot help thinking that things 
 are not quite so bright as he paints them, and 
 so superior to anything of which we have expe- 
 rience elsewhere ; that he is mixing two impres- 
 sions together, the impression of individuals 
 scattered over the country, real lovers of the 
 humane life, but not yet numerous enough or 
 united enough to produce much effect, and the 
 impression of groups of worthy respectable 
 people to be found in almost every small town 
 of the Union, people with many merits, but not 
 
A Word about America. Si 
 
 yet arrived at that true and happy goal of civili- 
 zation, "an elegant and simple social order." 
 
 We, too, have groups of this kind everywhere, 
 and we know what they can do for us and what 
 they cannot do. It is easy to praise them, to 
 flatter them, to express unbounded satisfaction 
 with them, to speak as if they gave us all that 
 we needed. We have done so here in England. 
 These groups, with us, these serious and effec- 
 tive forces of our middle class, have been ex- 
 tolled as " that section of the community which 
 has astonished the world by its energy, enter- 
 prise, and self-reliance, which is continually 
 striking out new paths of industry and subdu- 
 ing the forces of nature, which has done all the 
 great things that have been done in all depart- 
 ments, and which supplies the mind, the will, 
 and the power for all the great and good things 
 that have still to be done." So cry the news- 
 papers ; our great orators take up the same 
 strain. The middle-class doers of English 
 race, with their industry and religion, are the 
 salt of the earth. " The cities you have built," 
 exclaims Mr. Bright, " the railroads you have 
 made, the manufactures you have produced, 
 the cargoes which freight the ships of the 
 greatest mercantile navy the world has ever 
 seen ! " There we have their industry. Then 
 
82 A Word about America. 
 
 comes the praise of their religion, their own 
 specially invented and indomitably maintained 
 form of religion. " Let a man consider," ex- 
 claims Mr. Bright again, " how much of what 
 there is free and good and great, and constantly 
 growing in what is good, in this country, is 
 owing to Nonconformist action. Look at the 
 churches and chapels it has reared over the 
 whole country ; look at the schools it has 
 built ; look at the ministers it has supported ; 
 look at the Christian work which it has con- 
 ducted. It would be well for the Nonconform- 
 ists, especially for the young among them, that 
 they should look back to the history of their 
 fathers, and that they should learn from them 
 how much is due to truth and how much they 
 have sacrificed to conscience." 
 
 It is the groups of industrious, religious, and 
 unshakable Nonconformists in all the towns, 
 small and great, of England, whose praise is 
 here celebrated by Mr. Bright. But he has 
 an even more splendid tribute of praise for 
 their brethren of the very same stock, and sort, 
 and virtue, in America also. The great scale of 
 things in America powerfully impresses Mr. 
 Bright's imagination always ; he loves to count 
 the prodigious number of acres of land there, 
 the prodigious number of bushels of wheat 
 
A Word about America. 83 
 
 raised. The voluntary principle, the principle 
 of modern English Nonconformity, is on the 
 same grand and impressive scale. " There is 
 nothing which piety and zeal have ever offered 
 on the face of the earth as a tribute to religion 
 and religious purposes, equal to that which has 
 been done by the voluntary principle among the 
 people of the United States." 
 
 I cannot help thinking that my Boston infor- 
 mant mixes up, I say, the few lovers of perfec- 
 tion with the much more numerous representa- 
 tives, serious, industrious, and in many ways 
 admirable, of middle-class virtue ; and imagines 
 that in almost every town of the United States 
 there is a group of lovers of perfection, whereas 
 the lovers of perfection are much less thickly 
 sown than he supposes, but what there really is 
 in almost every town is a group of representa- 
 tives of middle-class virtue. And the fruits by 
 which he knows his men, the effects which they 
 achieve for the national life and civilization, are 
 just the fruits, be it observed, which the repre- 
 sentatives of middle-class virtue are capable of 
 producing and produce for us here in England, 
 too, and for the production of which we need 
 not have recourse to an extraordinary supply 
 of lovers of perfection. " It is such people," 
 he saySj " who keep the whole sentiment of the 
 
84 A Word about America. 
 
 land up to a high standard when war comes, or 
 rebellion." But this is just what the middle- 
 class virtue of our race is abundantly capable 
 of doing ; as Puritan England in the seventeenth 
 century, and the inheritors of the traditions of 
 Puritan England since, have signally shown. 
 " It is they who maintain the national credit, it 
 is they who steadily improve the standard of 
 national education. " By national education our 
 informant means popular education ; and here, 
 too, we are still entirely within the pale of mid- 
 dle-class achievement. Both in England and in 
 America, the middle class is abundantly capable 
 of maintaining the national credit, and does 
 maintain it. It is abundantly capable of rec- 
 ognizing the duty of sending to school the chil- 
 dren of the people ; nay, of sending them also, 
 if possible, to a Sunday school, and to chapel or 
 church. True ; and yet, in England at any rate, 
 the middle class, with all its industry and with 
 all its religiousness, — the middle class well typi- 
 fied, as I long ago pointed out, by a certain Mr. 
 Smith, a secretary to an insurance company, 
 who " labored under the apprehension that he 
 would come to poverty and that he was eter- 
 nally lost," — the English middle class presents 
 us at this day, for our actual needs, and for 
 the purposes of national civilization, with a de- 
 
A Word about America. 85 
 
 fective type of religion, a narrow range of intel- 
 lect and knowledge, a stunted sense of beauty, 
 a low standard of manners. For the building 
 up of human life, as men are now beginning to 
 see. there are needed not only the powers of 
 industry and conduct, but the power, also, of 
 intellect and knowledge, the power of beauty, 
 the power of social life and manners. And 
 that type of life of which our middle class in 
 England are in possession is one by which 
 neither the claims of intellect and knowledge 
 are satisfied, nor the claim of beauty, nor the 
 claims of social life and manners. 
 
 That which in England we call the middle 
 class is in America virtually the nation. It is 
 in America in great measure relieved, as I have 
 said, of what with us is our Populace, and it is 
 relieved of the pressure and false ideal of our 
 Barbarians. It is generally industrious and 
 religious, as our middle class. Its religion is 
 even less invaded, I believe, by the modern 
 spirit than the religion of our middle class. An 
 American of reputation as a man of science tells 
 me that he lives in a town of a hundred and 
 fifty thousand people, of whom there are not 
 fifty who do not imagine the first chapters of 
 Genesis to be exact history. Mr. Dale, of Bir- 
 mingham, found, he says, that " orthodox Chris- 
 
86 A Word about America. 
 
 tian people in America were less troubled by 
 attacks on the orthodox creed than the like 
 people in England. They seemed to feel sure 
 of their ground and they showed no alarm." 
 Public opinion requires public men to attend 
 regularly some place of worship. The favorite 
 denominations are those with which we are 
 here familiar as the denominations of Protest- 
 ant dissent; when Mr. Dale tells us of "the 
 Baptists, not including the Free Will Baptists, 
 Seventh Day Baptists, Six Principle Baptists, 
 and some other minor sects," one might fancy 
 oneself reading the list of the sects in Whita- 
 kers Almanack. But in America this type of 
 religion is not, as it is here, a subordinate type, 
 it is the predominant and accepted one. Our 
 Dissenting ministers think themselves in para- 
 dise when they visit America. In that univer- 
 sally religious country, the religious denomina- 
 tion which has by much the largest number of 
 adherents is that, I believe, of Methodism origi- 
 nating in John Wesley, and which we know in 
 this country as having for its standard of doc- 
 trine Mr. Wesley's fifty-three sermons and 
 notes on the New Testament. I have a sin- 
 cere admiration for Wesley, and a sincere 
 esteem for the Wesleyan Methodist body in 
 this country ; I have seen much of it, and for 
 
A Word about America. 8? 
 
 many of its members my esteem is not only 
 sincere but also affectionate. I know how one's 
 religious connections and religious attachments 
 are determined by the circumstances of one's 
 birth and bringing up ; and probably, if I had 
 been born and brought up among the Wesley- 
 ans, I should never have left their body. But 
 certainly I should have wished my children to 
 leave it ; because to live with one's mind, in 
 regard to a matter of absorbing importance as 
 Wesleyans believe religion to be, to live with 
 one's mind, as to a matter of this sort, fixed 
 constantly upon a mind of the third order, such 
 as was Mr. Wesley's, seems to me extremely 
 trying and injurious for the minds of men in 
 general. And people whose minds, in what is 
 the chief concern of their lives, are thus con- 
 stantly fixed upon a mind of the third order, 
 are the staple of the population of the United 
 States, in the small towns and country districts 
 above all. Yet our Boston friend asks us to 
 believe, that a population of which this is the 
 staple can furnish what we cannot furnish, cer- 
 tainly, in England, and what no country that I 
 know of can at present furnish, — a group, in 
 every small town throughout the land, of people 
 of good taste, good manners, good education, 
 peers of any people in the world, reading the 
 
88 A Word about America. 
 
 best books, interpreting the best music, and 
 interested in themes world-wide ! Individuals 
 of this kind, America can doubtless furnish, 
 peers of any people in the world ; and in every 
 town, groups of people with excellent qualities, 
 like the representatives of middle-class industry 
 and virtue among ourselves. And a country 
 capable of furnishing such groups will be strong 
 and prosperous, and has much to be thankful 
 for ; but it must not take these groups for what 
 they are not, or imagine that having produced 
 them it possesses what it does not possess, or 
 has provided for wants which are in fact still 
 unprovided for. 
 
 " The arts have no chance in poor countries," 
 says Mr. Lowell. " From sturdy father to 
 sturdy son, we have been making this continent 
 habitable for the weaker Old World breed that 
 has swarmed to it, during the last half-century." 
 This may be quite true, and the achievements 
 wrought in America by the middle-class indus- 
 try, the middle-class energy and courage, the 
 middle-class religion of our English race, may 
 be full as much as we have any right to expect 
 up to the present time, and only a people of 
 great qualities could have produced them. But 
 this is not the question. The question is as to 
 the establishment in America, on any consider- 
 
A Word about America. 89 
 
 able scale, of a type of civilization combining all 
 those powers which go to the building up of a 
 truly human life — the power of intellect and 
 knowledge, the power of beauty, the power of 
 social life and manners, as well as the great 
 power of conduct and religion, and the indis- 
 pensable power of expansion. " Is it not the 
 highest act of a republic," asks Mr. Lowell, " to 
 make men of flesh and blood, and not the 
 marble ideals of such ? " Let us grant it. 
 " Perhaps it is the collective, not the individual 
 humanity," Mr. Lowell goes on, "that is to 
 have a chance of nobler development among 
 us." Most true, the well-being of the many, 
 and not of individuals and classes solely, comes 
 out more and more distinctly to us all as the 
 object which we must pursue. Many are to be 
 made partakers of well-being, of civilization and 
 humanization ; we must not forget it, and 
 America, happily, is not likely to let us forget 
 it. But the ideal of well-being, of civilization, 
 of humanization, is not to be, on that account 
 lowered and coarsened. 
 
 Now the New York Nation — a newspaper 
 which I read regularly and with profit, a news- 
 paper which is the best, so far as my experience 
 goes, of all American newspapers, and one of the 
 best newspapers anywhere — the New York 
 
90 A Word about America. 
 
 Nation had the other day some remarks on the 
 higher sort of education in America, and the 
 utility of it, which were very curious : — 
 
 In America (says the Natioti) scarcely any man who 
 can afford it likes to refuse his son a college education 
 if the boy wants it ; but probably not one boy in one 
 thousand can say, five years after graduating, that he has 
 been helped by his college education in making his start 
 in life. It may have been never so useful to him as a 
 means of moral and intellectual culture, but it has not 
 helped to adapt him to the environment in which he has 
 to live and work ; or, in other words, to a world in which 
 not one man in a hundred thousand has either the man- 
 ners or cultivation of a gentleman, or changes his shirt 
 more than once a week, or eats with a fork. 
 
 Now upon this remarkable declaration many 
 comments might be made, but I am going now 
 to make one comment only. Is it credible, if 
 there were established in almost every town of 
 the great majority of the United States a type 
 of " elegant and simple social order," a " group 
 of people of good taste, good manners, reading 
 the best books, interpreting the best music, 
 interested in themes world-wide, the peers of 
 any people in the world," is it credible, with the 
 instinct of self-preservation which there is in 
 humanity, and choice things being so naturally 
 attractive as they undoubtedly are, — is it credi- 
 
A Word about America. 91 
 
 ble, that all this excellent leaven should pro- 
 duce so little result, that these groups should 
 remain so impotent and isolated, that their 
 environment, in a country where our poverty is 
 unknown, should be "a world in which not one 
 man in a hundred thousand has either the man- 
 ners or cultivation of a gentleman, or changes 
 his shirt more than once a week, or eats with 
 a fork ? " It is not credible ; to me, at any 
 rate, it is not credible. And I feel more sure 
 than ever, that our Boston informant has told 
 us of groups where he ought to have told us of 
 individuals ; and that many of his individuals, 
 even, have " hopped over," as he wittily says, 
 to Europe. 
 
 Mr. Lowell himself describes his own nation 
 as "the most common-schooled and the least 
 cultivated people in the world." They strike 
 foroigners in the same way. M. Renan says 
 that the " United States have created a con- 
 siderable popular instruction without any seri- 
 ous higher instruction, and will long have to 
 expiate this fault by their intellectual medioc- 
 rity, their vulgarity of manners, their superfi- 
 cial spirit, their lack of general intelligence." 
 Another acute French critic speaks of a " hard 
 unintelligence " as characteristic of the people 
 of the United States — la dure ini?itelligeuce 
 
92 A Word about America. 
 
 des Amiricains du Nord. Smart they are, as 
 all the world knows ; but then smartness is un- 
 happily quite compatible with a " hard unintelli- 
 gence." The Quinionian humour of Mr. Mark 
 Twain, so attractive to the Philistine of the 
 more gay and light type both here and in 
 America, another French critic fixes upon as 
 literature exactly expressing a people of this 
 type, and of no higher. " In spite of all its 
 primary education," he says, " America is still, 
 from an intellectual point of view, a very rude 
 and primitive soil, only to be cultivated by 
 violent methods. These childish and half-sav- 
 age minds are not moved except by very ele- 
 mentary narratives composed without art, in 
 which burlesque and melodrama, vulgarity and 
 eccentricity, are combined in strong doses." 
 It may be said that Frenchmen, the present 
 generation of Frenchmen at any rate, them- 
 selves take seriously, as of the family of 
 Shakespeare, Moliere, and Goethe, an author 
 half genius, half charlatan, like M. Victor Hugo. 
 They do so ; but still they may judge, soundly 
 and correctly enough, another nation's false 
 literature which does not appeal to their weak- 
 nesses. I am not blaming America for falling 
 a victim to Quinion, or to Murdstone either. 
 We fall a victim to Murdstone and Quinion our 
 
A Word about America. 93 
 
 selves, as I very well know, and the Americans 
 are just the same people that we are. But I 
 want to deliver England from Murdstone and 
 Quinion, and I look round me for help in the 
 good work. And when the Boston newspaper 
 told me of the elegant and simple social order, 
 and the group of people in every town of the 
 Union with good taste and good manners, read- 
 ing the best books and interpreting the best 
 music, I thought at first that I had surely 
 found what I wanted, and that I should be able 
 to invade the English realm of Murdstone and 
 Quinion with the support of an overpowering 
 body of allies from America. But now it 
 seems doubtful whether America is not suffer- 
 ing from the predominance of Murdstone and 
 Quinion herself — of Quinion at any rate. 
 
 Yes, and of Murdstone too. Miss Bird, the 
 best of travellers, and with- the skill to relate 
 her travels delightfully, met the rudimentary 
 American type of Murdstone not far from Den- 
 ver, and has described him for us. Denver — I 
 hear some one say scornfully — Denver! A 
 new territory, the outskirts of civilization, the 
 Rocky Mountains ! But I prefer to follow a 
 course which would, I know, deliver me over a 
 prey into the Americans' hands, if I were really 
 holding a controversy with them and attacking 
 
94 A Word about America. 
 
 their civilization. I am not holding a contro- 
 versy with them. I am not attacking their 
 civilization. I am much disquieted about the 
 state of our own. But I am holding a friendly 
 conversation with American lovers of the hu- 
 mane life, who offer me hopes of improving 
 British civilization by the example of a great 
 force of true civilization, of elegant and simple 
 social order, developed in the northern, middle, 
 and southwestern states of the Union. I am 
 not going to pick holes in the civilization of 
 those well-established States. But in a new 
 territory, on the outskirts of the Union, I take 
 an example of a spirit which we know well 
 enough in the old country, and which has done 
 much harm to our civilization ; and I ask my 
 American friends how much way this spirit — 
 since on their borders, at any rate, they seem 
 to have it — has made and is even now making 
 amongst themselves ; whether they feel sure of 
 getting it under control, and that the elegant 
 and simple social order in the older states will 
 be too strong for it ; or whether, on the other 
 hand, it may be too strong for the elegant and 
 simple social order. 
 
 Miss Bird then describes the Chalmers fam- 
 ily, a family with which, on her journey from 
 Denver to the Rocky Mountains, she lodged for 
 
A Word about America. 95 
 
 some time. Miss Bird, as those who have read 
 her books well know, is not a lackadaisical per- 
 son, or in any way a fine lady ; she can ride, 
 catch, and saddle a horse, " make herself agree- 
 able," wash up plates, improvise lamps, teach 
 knitting. But — 
 
 Oh (she says), what a hard, narrow life it is with which 
 I am now in contact ! A narrow and unattractive relig- 
 ion, which I believe still to be genuine, and an intense 
 but narrow patriotism, are the only higher influences. 
 Chalmers came from Illinois nine years ago. He is 
 slightly intelligent, very opinionated, and wishes to be 
 thought well-informed, which he is not. He belongs to 
 the strictest sect of Reformed Presbyterians ; his great 
 boast is that his ancestors were Scottish Covenanters. 
 He considers himself a profound theologian, and by the 
 pine logs at night discourses to me on the mysteries of 
 the eternal counsels and the divine decrees. Colorado, 
 with its progress and its future, is also a constant theme. 
 He hates England with a bitter personal hatred. He 
 trusts to live to see the downfall of the British monarchy 
 and the disintegration of the empire. He is very fond of 
 talking, and asks me a great deal about my travels, but if 
 I speak favorably of the climate or resources of any other 
 country, he regards it as a slur on Colorado. 
 
 Mrs. Chalmers looks like one of the English poor 
 women of our childhood — lean, clean, toothless, and 
 speaks, like some of them, in a piping, discontented voice, 
 which seems to convey a personal reproach. She is never 
 idle for one moment, is severe and hard, and despises 
 everything but work. She always speaks of me as this 
 or that woman. The family consists of a grown-up son, 
 
g6 A Word about America. 
 
 a shiftless, melancholy-looking youth, who possibly pines 
 for a wider life ; a girl of sixteen, a sour, repellant-looking 
 creature, with as much manners as a pig ; and three 
 hard, unchildlike younger children. By the whole family 
 all courtesy and gentleness of act or speech seem regarded 
 as works of the flesh, if not of the devil. They knock 
 over all one's things without apologizing or picking them 
 up, and when I thank them for anything they look grimly 
 amazed. I wish I could show them " a more excellent 
 way." This hard greed, and the exclusive pursuit of 
 gain, with the indifference to all which does not aid in its 
 acquisition, are eating up family love and life throughout 
 the West. I write this reluctantly, and after a total expe- 
 rience of nearly two years in the United States. Mrs. 
 Chalmers is cleanly in her person and dress, and the food, 
 though poor, is clean. Work, work, work, is their day 
 and their life. They are thoroughly uncongenial. There 
 is a married daughter across the river, just the same hard, 
 loveless, moral, hard-working being as her mother. Each 
 morning, soon after seven, when I have swept the cabin, 
 the family come in for " worship." Chalmers wails a 
 psalm to the most doleful of dismal tunes ; they read a 
 chapter round, and he prays. Sunday was a dreadful day. 
 The family kept the commandment literally, and did no 
 work. Worship was conducted twice, and was rather 
 longer than usual. The man attempted to read a well- 
 worn copy of Bostoii's Fourfold State, but shortly fell 
 asleep, and they only woke up for their meals. It was an 
 awful day, and seemed as if it would never come to an 
 end. You will now have some idea of my surroundings. 
 It is a moral, hard, unloving, unlovely, unrelieved, un- 
 beautified, grinding life. These people live in a discom- 
 fort and lack of ease and refinement which seem only 
 possible to people of British stock. 
 
A Word about America. 97 
 
 What is this but the hideousness, the immense 
 ennui, of the life on which we have touched so 
 often, the life of our serious British Philistine, 
 our Murdstone ; that life with its defective type 
 of religion, its narrow range of intellect and 
 knowledge, its stunted sense of beauty, its low 
 standard of manners ? Only it is this life at its 
 simplest, rudimentary stage. 
 
 I have purposely taken the picture of it from 
 a region outside the settled states of the Union, 
 that it might be evident I was not meaning to 
 describe American civilization, and that Ameri- 
 cans might at once be able to say, with perfect 
 truth, that American civilization is something 
 totally different. And if, to match this picture 
 of our Murdstone in other lands and other cir- 
 cumstances, we are to have — as, for the sake 
 of clearness in our impressions, we ought to 
 have — a picture of our Quinion too, under like 
 conditions, let us take it, not from America at 
 all, but from our own Australian colonies. The 
 special correspondent of the Bathurst Sentinel 
 criticises an Italian singer who, at the Sydney 
 Theatre, plays the Count in the Somnambula ; 
 and here is the criticism : " Barring his stom- 
 ach, he is the finest-looking artist I have seen 
 on the stage for years ; and if he don't slide 
 into the affections or break the gizzards of half 
 
98 A Word about America. 
 
 our Sydney girls, it's a pretty certain sign there's 
 a scarcity of balm in Gilead." This is not Mark 
 Twain, not an American humorist at all ; it is 
 the Bat hurst Sentinel. 
 
 So Lhave gone to the Rocky Mountains for 
 the New World Murdstone, and to Australia for 
 the New World Quinion. I have not assailed 
 in the least the civilization of America in those 
 northern, middle, and southwestern states, to 
 which Americans have a right to refer us when 
 we seek to know their civilization, and to which 
 they, in fact, do refer us. What I wish to say 
 is 3 and I by no means even put it in the form of 
 an assertion — I put it in the form of a question 
 only, a question to my friends in America who 
 are believers in equality and lovers of the hu- 
 mane life as I also am, and who ask me why I 
 do not illustrate my praise of equality by refer- 
 ence to the humane life of America — what I 
 wish to say is : How much does the influence 
 of these two elements, natural products of our 
 race, Murdstone and Quinion, the bitter, serious 
 Philistine and the rowdy Philistine, enter into 
 American life and lower it ? I will not pro- 
 nounce on the matter myself ; I have not the 
 requisite knowledge. But all that we hear from 
 America — hear from Americans themselves — 
 points, so far as I can see, to a great presence 
 
A Word about America. 99 
 
 and power of these middle-class misgrowths 
 there as here. We have not succeeded in 
 counteracting them here, and while our states- 
 men and leaders proceed as they do now, and 
 Lord Frederick Cavendish congratulates the 
 middle class on its energy and self-reliance in 
 doing without public schools, and Lord Salis- 
 bury summons the middle class to a great and 
 final stand on behalf of supernaturalism, we 
 never shall succeed in counteracting them. We 
 are told, however, of groups of children of light 
 in every town of America, and an elegant social 
 order prevailing there, which make one, at first, 
 very envious. But soon one begins to think, I 
 say, that surely there must be some mistake. 
 The complaints one hears of the state of public 
 life in America, of the increasing impossibility 
 and intolerableness of it to self-respecting men, 
 of the " corruption and feebleness," of the bla- 
 tant violence and exaggeration of language, the 
 profligacy of clap-trap — the complaints we hear 
 from America of all this, and then such an 
 exhibition as we had in the Guiteau trial the 
 other day, lead one to think that Murdstone 
 and Quinion, those misgrowths of the English 
 middle-class spirit, must be even more rampant 
 in the United States than they are here. Mr. 
 Lowell himself writes, in that very same essay 
 
ioo A Word about America. 
 
 in which he is somewhat sharp upon foreigners, 
 he writes of the sad experience in America of 
 "government by declamation." And this very 
 week, as if to illustrate his words, we have the 
 American newspapers raising " a loud and per- 
 emptory voice " against the " gross outrage on 
 America, insulted in the persons of Americans 
 imprisoned in British dungeons " ; we have them 
 crying : "The people demand their release, and 
 they must be released ; woe to the public men 
 or the party that stand in the way of this act of 
 justice ! " We have them turning upon Mr. 
 Lowell himself in such style as the following : 
 " This Lowell is a fraud, and a disgrace to the 
 American nation ; Minister Lowell has scoffed 
 at his own country, and disowned everything in 
 its history and institutions that makes it free 
 and great." 
 
 I should say, for my part, though I have not, 
 I fully own, the means for judging accurately, 
 that all this points to an American development 
 of our Murdstone and Quinion, the bitter Phil- 
 istine and the rowdy Philistine, exhibiting 
 themselves in conjunction, exhibiting themselves 
 with great luxuriance and with very little check. 
 As I write from Grub Street, I will add that, to 
 my mind, the condition of the copyright ques- 
 tion between us and America appears to point 
 
A Word about America. 101 
 
 to just the same thing. The American refusal 
 of copyright to us poor English souls is just 
 the proceeding which would naturally commend 
 itself to Murdstone and Ouinion ; and the way 
 in which Mr. Conant justifies and applauds the 
 proceeding, and continues to justify and applaud 
 it, in disregard of all that one may say, and 
 boldly turns the tables upon England, is just the 
 way in which Murdstone and Quinion, after re- 
 gulating copyright in the American fashion, 
 would wish and expect to be backed up. In 
 Mr. Conant they have a treasure : Mi robur et 
 <bs triplex, indeed. And no doubt a few Ameri- 
 cans, highly civilized individuals, " hopping 
 backwards and forwards over the Atlantic," 
 much disapprove of these words and works of 
 Mr. Conant and his constituents. But can there 
 be constant groups of children of light, joined 
 in an elegant order, everywhere throughout the 
 Union ? for, if there were, would not their sense 
 of equity, and their sense of delicacy, and even 
 their sense of the ridiculous, be too strong, even 
 in this very matter of copyright, for Mr. Conant 
 and his constituents ? 
 
 But on the creation and propagation of such 
 groups the civilized life of America depends for 
 its future, as the civilized life of our own coun- 
 try, too, depends for its future upon the same 
 
102 A Word about America. 
 
 thing; — so much is certain. And if America 
 succeeds in creating and installing hers, before 
 we succeed in creating and installing ours, then 
 they will send over help to us from America, 
 and will powerfully influence us for our good. 
 Let us see, then, how we both of us stand at 
 the present moment, and what advantages the 
 one of us has which are wanting to the other. 
 We in England have liberty and industry and 
 the sense for conduct, and a splendid aristocracy 
 which feels the need for beauty and manners, 
 and a unique class, as Mr. Charles Sumner 
 pointed out, of gentlemen, not of the landed 
 class or of the nobility, but cultivated and re- 
 fined. America has not our splendid aristocracy, 
 but then this splendid aristocracy is material- 
 ized, and for helping the sense for beauty, or 
 the sense for social life and manners, in the na- 
 tion at large, it does nothing or next to nothing. 
 So we must not hastily pronounce, with Mr. 
 Hussey Vivian, that American civilization suf- 
 fers by its absence. Indeed they are themselves 
 developing, it is said, a class of very rich people 
 quite sufficiently materialized. America has 
 not our large and unique class of gentlemen ; 
 something of it they have, of course, but it is 
 not by any manner of means on the same scale 
 there as here. Acting by itself, and untram 
 
A Word about America. 103 
 
 melled, our English class of gentlemen has 
 eminent merits ; our rule in India, of which we 
 may well be proud, is in great measure its work. 
 But in presence of a great force of Barbarian 
 power, as in this country, or in presence of a 
 great force of Philistinism, our class of gentle- 
 men, as we know, has not much faith and ar- 
 dor, is somewhat bounded and ineffective, is 
 not much of a civilized force for the nation at 
 large ; not much more, perhaps, than the few 
 " rather civilized individuals " in America, who, 
 according to our Boston informant, go " hopping 
 backwards and forwards over the Atlantic." 
 Perhaps America, with her needs, has no very 
 great loss in not having our special class of 
 gentlemen, Without this class, and without the 
 pressure and false ideal of our Barbarians, the 
 Americans have, like ourselves, the sense for 
 conduct and religion ; they have industry, and 
 they have liberty ; they have, too, over and 
 above what we have, they have an excellent 
 thing — equality. But we have seen reason for 
 thinking, that as we in England, with our aris- 
 tocracy, gentlemen, liberty, industry, religion, 
 and sense for conduct, have the civilization of 
 the most important part of our people, the im- 
 mense middle class, impaired by a defective type 
 of religion, a narrow range of intellect and 
 
104 A Word about America. 
 
 knowledge, a stunted sense of beauty, a low 
 standard of manners ; so in America, too, where 
 this class is yet more important and all-pervad- 
 ing than it is here, civilization suffers in the like 
 way. With a people of our stock it could not, 
 indeed, well be otherwise, so long as this people 
 can be truly described as " the most common- 
 schooled and least cultivated people in the 
 world." 
 
 The real cultivation of the people of the 
 United States, as of the English middle class, 
 has been in and by its religion, its " one thing 
 needful." But the insufficiency of this religion 
 is now every day becoming more manifest. It 
 deals, indeed, with personages and words which 
 have an indestructible and inexhaustible truth 
 and salutariness ; but it is rooted and grounded 
 in preternaturalism, it can receive those person- 
 ages and those words only on conditions of pre- 
 ternaturalism, and a religion of preternaturalism 
 is doomed — whether with or without the battle 
 of Armageddon for which Lord Salisbury is pre- 
 paring — to inevitable dissolution. Fidelity to 
 conscience ! cries the popular Protestanism of 
 Great Britain and America, and thinks that it 
 has said enough. But the modem analysis re- 
 lentlessly scrutinizes this conscience, and com- 
 pels it to give an account of itself. What sort 
 
A Word about America. 105 
 
 of a conscience ? a true conscience or a false 
 one ? " Conscience is the most changing of 
 rules ; conscience is presumptuous in the strong, 
 timid in the weak and unhappy, wavering in the 
 undecided ; obedient organ of the sentiment 
 which sways us and of the opinions which gov- 
 ern us ; more misleading than reason and na- 
 ture." So says one of the noblest and purest of 
 moralists, Vauvenargues ; and terrible as it may 
 be to the popular Protestanism of England and 
 of America to hear it, Vauvenargues thus de- 
 scribes with perfect truth that conscience to 
 which popular Protestanism appeals as its sup- 
 posed unshakable ground of reliance. 
 
 And now, having up to this point neglected 
 all the arts of the controversialist, having merely 
 made inquiries of my American friends as to 
 the real state of their civilization, inquiries 
 which they are free to answer in their own 
 favor if they like, I am going to leave the ad- 
 vantage with them to the end. They kindly of- 
 fered me the example of their civilization as a 
 help to mend ours ; and I, not with any vain 
 Anglicism, for I own our insular civilization to 
 be very unsatisfactory, but from a desire to get 
 at the truth and not to deceive myself with 
 hopes of help from a quarter where at present 
 there is none to be found, have inquired whether 
 
io6 A Word about America. 
 
 the Americans really think, on looking into the 
 matter, that their civilization is much more sat- 
 isfactory than ours. And in case they should 
 come to the conclusion, after due thought, that 
 neither the one civilization nor the other is in a 
 satisfactory state, let me end by propounding a 
 remedy which really it is heroic in me to pro- 
 pound, for people are bored to death, they say, 
 by me with it, and every time I mention it I 
 make new enemies and diminish the small num- 
 ber of friends that I have now. Still, I cannot 
 help asking whether the defects of American 
 civilization, if it is defective, may not probably 
 be connected with the American people's being, 
 as Mr. Lowell says, " the most common-schooled 
 and the least cultivated people in the world." 
 A higher, larger cultivation, a finer lucidity, is 
 what is needed. The friends of civilization, in- 
 stead of hopping backwards and forwards over 
 the Atlantic, should stay at home a while, and 
 do their best to make the administration, the 
 tribunals, the theatre, the arts, in each state, to 
 make them become visible ideals to raise, purge, 
 and ennoble the public sentiment. Though they 
 may be few in number, the friends of civiliza- 
 tion will find, probably, that by a serious apos- 
 tolate of this kind they can accomplish a good 
 deal. But the really fruitful reform to be looked 
 
A Word about America. 107 
 
 for in America, so far as I can judge, is the very 
 same reform which is so urgently required here 
 — a reform of secondary instruction. The pri- 
 mary and common schools of America we all 
 know ; their praise is in every one's mouth. 
 About superior or University instruction one 
 need not be uneasy, it excites so much ambition, 
 is so much in view, and is required by compara- 
 tively so small a number. An institution like 
 Harvard is probably all that one could desire. 
 But really good secondary schools, to form a due 
 proportion of the youth of America from the 
 age of twelve to the age of eighteen, and then 
 every year to throw a supply of them, thus 
 formed, into circulation — this is what America, 
 I believe, wants, as we also want it, and what 
 she possesses no more than we do. I know she 
 has higher schools, I know their programme : 
 Latin, Greek, German, French, Surveying, 
 Chemistry, Astrology, Natural History, Mental 
 Philosophy, Constitution, Bookkeeping, Trigono- 
 metry, etc. Alas, to quote Vauvenargues again: 
 " On ne corrigera jamais les homines a" ap prendre 
 des choses inutiles ! " But good secondary 
 schools, not with the programme of our classi- 
 cal and commercial academies, but with a seri- 
 ous programme — a programme really suited to 
 the wants and capacities of those who are to be 
 
108 A Word about America. 
 
 trained — this, I repeat, is what American civi- 
 lization in my belief most requires, as it is what 
 our civilization, too, at present most requires. 
 The special present defects of both American 
 civilization and ours are the kind of defects for 
 which this is a natural remedy. I commend it 
 to the attention of my friendly Boston critic in 
 America ; and some months hence, perhaps, 
 when Mr. Barnum begins to require less space 
 for his chronicles of Jumbo, my critic will tell 
 me what he thinks of it. 
 
A WORD MORE ABOUT AMERICA. 
 
III. 
 
 A WORD MORE ABOUT AMERICA. 
 
 When I was at Chicago last year, I was 
 asked whether Lord Coleridge would not write 
 a book about America. I ventured to answer 
 confidently for him that he would do nothing of 
 the kind. Not at Chicago only, but almost 
 wherever I went, I was asked whether I myself 
 did not intend to write a book about America. 
 For oneself one can answer yet more confi- 
 dently than for one's friends, and I always 
 replied that most assuredly I had no such 
 intention. To write a book about America, on 
 the strength of having made merely such a 
 tour there as mine was, and with no fuller 
 equipment of preparatory studies and of local 
 observations than I possess, would seem to me 
 an impertinence. 
 
 It is now a long while since I read M. de 
 Tocqueville's famous work on Democracy in 
 America. I have the highest respect for M. de 
 Tocqueville ; but my remembrance of his book 
 is that it deals too much in abstractions for my 
 
 HI 
 
112 A Word More about America. 
 
 taste, and that it is written, moreover, in a 
 style which many French writers adopt, but 
 which I find trying — a style cut into short' par- 
 agraphs and wearing an air of rigorous scientific 
 deduction without the reality. Very likely, 
 however, I do M. de Tocqueville injustice. My 
 debility in high speculation is well known, and 
 I mean to attempt his book on Democracy 
 again when I have seen America once more, 
 and when years may have brought to me, per- 
 haps, more of the philosophic mind. Mean- 
 while, however, it will be evident how serious a 
 matter I think it to write a worthy book about 
 the United States, when I am not entirely sat- 
 isfied with even M. de Tocqueville's. 
 
 But before I went to America, and when I 
 had no expectation of ever going there, I pub- 
 lished, under the title of "A Word about 
 America," not indeed a book, but a few modest 
 remarks on what I thought civilization in the 
 United States might probably be like. I had 
 before me a Boston newspaper article, which 
 said that if I ever visited America I should find 
 there such and such things ; and taking this 
 article for my text I observed that from all I 
 had read and all I could judge I should for my 
 part expect to find there rather such and such 
 other things, which I mentioned. I said that 
 
A Word More about America. 113 
 
 of aristocracy, as we know it here, I should 
 expect to find, of course, in the United States 
 the total absence ; that our lower class I should 
 expect to find absent in a great degree, while 
 my old familiar friend, the middle class, I should 
 expect to find in full possession of the land. 
 And then betaking myself to those playful 
 phrases which a little relieve, perhaps, the 
 tedium of grave disquisitions of this sort, I said 
 that I imagined one would just have in Amer- 
 ica our Philistines, with our aristocracy quite 
 left out, and our populace very nearly. 
 
 An acute and singularly candid American, 
 whose name I will on no account betray to his 
 countrymen, read these observations of mine, 
 and he made a remark upon them to me which 
 struck me a good deal. Yes, he said, you are 
 right, and your supposition is just. In general, 
 what you would find over there would be the 
 Philistines, as you call them, without your aris- 
 tocracy and without your populace. Only this, 
 too, I say at the same time : you would find 
 over there something besides, something more, 
 something which you do not bring out, which 
 you cannot know and bring out, perhaps, with- 
 out actually visiting the United States, but 
 which you would recognize if you saw it. 
 
 My friend was a true prophet. When I saw 
 
114 A Word More about America. 
 
 the United States I recognized that the general 
 account which I had hazarded of them was, 
 indeed, not erroneous, but that it required to 
 have something added to supplement it. I 
 should not like either my friends in America or 
 my countrymen here at home to think that my 
 " Word about America" gave my full and final 
 thoughts respecting the people of the United 
 States. The new and modifying impressions 
 brought by experience I shall communicate, as 
 I did my original expectations, with all good 
 faith, and as simply and plainly as possible. 
 Perhaps when I have yet again visited Amer- 
 ica, have seen the great West, and have had a 
 second reading of M. de Tocqueville's classical 
 work on Democracy, my mind may be enlarged 
 and my present impressions still further modi- 
 fied by new ideas. If so, I promise to make my 
 confession duly ; not indeed to make it, even 
 then, in a book about America, but to make it 
 in a brief " Last Word " on that great subject 
 — a word, like its predecessors, of open- 
 hearted and free conversation with the readers 
 of this review. 
 
 I suppose I am not by nature disposed to 
 think so much as most people do of " institu- 
 tions." The Americans think and talk very 
 
A Word More about America. 115 
 
 much of their "institutions;" I am by nature 
 inclined to call all this sort of thing machinery, 
 and to regard, rather, men and their characters. 
 But the more I saw of America, the more I 
 found myself led to treat " institutions " with 
 increased respect. Until I went to the United 
 States I had never seen a people with institu- 
 tions which seemed expressly and thoroughly 
 suited to it. I had not properly appreciated 
 the benefits proceeding from this cause. 
 
 Sir Henry Maine, in an admirable essay 
 which, though not signed, betrays him for its 
 author by its rare and characteristic qualities of 
 mind and style — Sir Henry Maine, in the 
 Quarterly Review, adopts and often reiterates a 
 phrase of M. Scherer, to the effect that " Democ- 
 racy is only a form of government." He holds 
 up to ridicule a sentence of Mr. Bancroft's 
 History, in which the American democracy is 
 told that its ascent to power " proceeded as 
 uniformly and majestically as the laws of being, 
 and was as certain as the decrees of eter- 
 nity." Let us be willing to give Sir Henry 
 Maine his way, and to allow no magnificent 
 claim of this kind on behalf of the American 
 democracy. Let us treat as not more solid the 
 assertion in the Declaration of Independence, 
 that "all men are created equal, and endowed 
 
ii6 A Word More about America. 
 
 by their Creator with certain inalienable rights, 
 among them life, liberty, and the pursuit of 
 happiness." Let us concede that these natural 
 rights are a figment ; that chance and circum- 
 stance, as much as deliberate foresight and 
 design, have brought the United States into 
 their present condition ; that, moreover, the 
 British rule which they threw off was not the 
 rule of oppressors and tyrants which declaimers 
 suppose, and that the merit of the Americans 
 was not that of oppressed men rising against 
 tyrants, but rather of sensible young people 
 getting rid of stupid and overweening guardians 
 who misunderstood and mismanaged them. 
 
 All this let us concede, if we will ; but in 
 conceding it let us not lose sight of the really 
 important point, which is this : that their insti- 
 tutions do in fact suit the people of the United 
 States so well, and that from this suitableness 
 they do derive so much actual benefit. As one 
 watches the play of their institutions, the image 
 suggests itself to one's mind of a man in a suit 
 of clothes which fits him to perfection, leaving 
 all his movements unimpeded and easy. It is 
 loose where it ought to be loose, and it sits 
 close where its sitting close is an advantage. 
 The central government of the United States 
 keeps in its own hands the functions which, if 
 
A Word More about America. 117 
 
 the nation is to have real unity, ought to be 
 kept there ; those functions it takes to itself, 
 and no others. The state governments and the 
 municipal governments provide people with the 
 fullest liberty of managing their own affairs, 
 and afford, besides, a constant and invaluable 
 school of practical experience. This wonderful 
 suit of clothes, again (to recur to our image), 
 is found also to adapt itself naturally to the 
 wearer's growth, and to admit of all enlarge- 
 ments as they successively arise. I speak of 
 the state of things since the suppression of 
 slavery, — of the state of things which meets a 
 spectator's eye at the present time in America. 
 There are points in which the institutions of 
 the United States may call forth criticism. 
 One observer may think that it would be well 
 if the President's term of office were longer, if 
 his ministers sate in Congress, or must possess 
 the confidence of Congress. Another observer 
 may say that the marriage laws for the whole 
 nation ought to be fixed by Congress, and not 
 to vary at the will of the legislatures of the 
 several States. I myself was much struck with 
 the inconvenience of not allowing a man to sit 
 in Congress except for his own district ; a man 
 like Wendell Phillips was thus excluded, be- 
 cause Boston would not return him. It is as if 
 
Ii8 A Word More about America. 
 
 Mr. Bright could have no other constituency 
 open to him if Rochdale would not send him to 
 Parliament. But all these are really questions 
 of machinery (to use my own term), and ought 
 not so to engage our attention as to prevent our 
 seeing that the capital fact as to the institutions 
 of the United States is this : their suitableness 
 to the American people, and their natural and 
 easy working. If we are not to be allowed to 
 say, with Mr. Beecher, that this people has "a 
 genius for the organization of states," then at 
 all events we must admit that in its own organ- 
 ization it has enjoyed the most signal good 
 fortune. 
 
 Yes ; what is called in the jargon of the pub- 
 licists, the political problem and the social 
 problem, the people of the United States does 
 appear to me to have solved, or Fortune has 
 solved it for them, with undeniable success. 
 Against invasion and conquest from without 
 they are impregnably strong. As to domestic 
 concerns, the first thing to remember is, that 
 the people over there is at bottom the same 
 people as ourselves, — a people with a strong 
 sense for conduct. But there is said to be 
 much corruption among their politicians, and in 
 the public service, in municipal administration, 
 and in the administration of justice. Sir Lepel 
 
A Word More about America. 119 
 
 Griffin would lead us to think that the adminis- 
 tration of justice, in particular, is so thoroughly 
 corrupt, that a man with a lawsuit has only to 
 provide his lawyer with the necessary funds for 
 bribing the officials, and he can make sure of 
 winning his suit. The Americans themselves 
 use such strong language in describing the cor- 
 ruption prevalent amongst them, that they can- 
 not be surprised if strangers believe them. For 
 myself, I had heard and read so much to the 
 discredit of American political life, how all the 
 best men kept aloof from it, and those who 
 gave themselves to it were unworthy, that I 
 ended by supposing that the thing must actually 
 be so, and the good Americans must be looked 
 for elsewhere than in politics. Then I had the 
 pleasure of dining with Mr. Bancroft in Wash- 
 ington ; and however he may, in Sir Henry 
 Maine's opinion, overlaud the pre-established 
 harmony of American democracy, he had at any 
 rate invited to meet me half a dozen politicians 
 whom in England we should pronounce to be 
 members of Parliament of the highest class, in 
 bearing, manners, tone of feeling, intelligence, 
 information. I discovered that in truth the 
 practice, so common in America, of calling a 
 politician "a thief" does not mean so very 
 much more than is meant in England when we 
 
120 A Word More about America. 
 
 have heard Lord Beaconsfield called "a liar," 
 and Mr. Gladstone, "a madman." It means, 
 that the speaker disagrees with the politician in 
 question, and dislikes him. Not that I assent, 
 on the other hand, to the thick-and-thin Ameri- 
 can patriots, who will tell you that there is no 
 more corruption in the politics and administra- 
 tion of the United States than in those of 
 England. I believe there is more, and that the 
 tone of both is lower there ; and this from a 
 cause on which I shall have to touch hereafter. 
 But the corruption is exaggerated ; it is not the 
 wide and deep disease it is often represented ; 
 it is such that the good elements in the nation 
 may, and I believe will, perfectly work it off ; 
 and even now the truth of what I have been 
 saying as to the suitableness and successful 
 working of American institutions is not really 
 in the least affected by it. 
 
 Furthermore, American society is not in 
 danger from revolution. Here, again, I do not 
 mean that the United States are exempt from 
 the operation of every one of the causes — such 
 a cause as the division between rich and poor, 
 for instance — which may lead to revolution. 
 But I mean that comparatively with the old 
 countries of Europe they are free from the dan- 
 ger of revolution ; and I believe that the good 
 
A Word More about America. 121 
 
 elements in them will make a way for them to 
 escape out of what they really have of this 
 danger also, to escape in the future as well as 
 now — the future for which some observers 
 announce this danger as so certain and so for- 
 midable. Lord Macaulay predicted that the 
 United States must come in time to just the 
 same state of things which we witness in Eng- 
 land ; that the cities would fill up and the lands 
 become occupied, and then, he said, the division 
 between rich and poor would establish itself on 
 the same scale as with us, and be just as embar- 
 rassing. He forgot that the United States are 
 without what certainly fixes and accentuates the 
 division between rich and poor, — the distinc- 
 tion of classes. Not only have they not the 
 distinction between noble and bourgeois, be- 
 tweeen aristocracy and middle class ; they have 
 not even the distinction between bourgeois and 
 peasant or artisan, between middle and lower 
 class. They have nothing to create it and 
 compel their recognition of it. Their domestic 
 service is done for them by Irish, Germans, 
 Swedes, negroes. Outside domestic service, 
 within the range of conditions which an Amer- 
 ican may, in fact, be called upon to traverse, he 
 passes easily from one sort of occupation to 
 another, from poverty to riches, and from riches 
 
122 A Word More about America. 
 
 to poverty. No one of his possible occupations 
 appears degrading to him or makes him lose 
 caste ; and poverty itself appears to him las 
 inconvenient and disagreeable rather than as 
 humiliating. When the immigrant from Europe 
 strikes root in his new home, he becomes as the 
 American. 
 
 It may be said that the Americans, when 
 they attained their independence, had not the 
 elements for a division into classes, and that 
 they deserve no praise for not having invented 
 one. But I am not now contending that they 
 deserve praise for their institutions, I am saying 
 how well their institutions work. Considering, 
 indeed, how rife are distinctions of rank and 
 class in the world, how prone men in general 
 are to adopt them, how much the Americans 
 themselves, beyond doubt, are capable of feel- 
 ing their attraction, it shows, I think, at least 
 strong good sense in the Americans to have 
 forborne from all attempt to invent them at the 
 outset, and to have escaped or resisted any 
 fancy for inventing them since. But evidently 
 the United States constituted themselves, not 
 amid the circumstances of a feudal age, but in a 
 modern age ; not under the conditions of an 
 epoch favorable to subordination, but under 
 those of an epoch of expansion. Their institu- 
 
A Word More about America. 123 
 
 tions did but comply with the form and pressure 
 of the circumstances and conditions then pres- 
 ent. A feudal age, an epoch of war, defence, 
 and concentration, needs centres of power and 
 property, and it reinforces property by joining 
 distinctions of rank and class with it. Property 
 becomes more honorable, more solid. And in 
 feudal ages this is well, for its changing hands 
 easily would be a source of weakness. But in 
 ages of expansion, where men are bent that 
 every one shall have his chance, the more 
 readily property changes hands the better. 
 The envy with which its holder is regarded 
 diminishes, society is safer. I think whatever 
 may be said of the worship of the almighty 
 dollar in America, it is indubitable that rich 
 men are regarded there with less envy and 
 hatred than rich men are in Europe. Why is 
 this ? Because their condition is less fixed, 
 because government and legislation do not take 
 them more seriously than other people, make 
 grandees of them, aid them to found families 
 and endure. With us, the chief holders of 
 property are grandees already, and every rich 
 man aspires to become a grandee if possible. 
 And therefore an English country gentleman 
 regards himself as part of the system of nature ; 
 government and legislation have invited him so 
 
124 A Word More about America. 
 
 to do. If the price of wheat falls so low that 
 his means of expenditure are greatly reduced, 
 he tells you that if this lasts he cannot possibly 
 go on as a country gentleman ; and every well- 
 bred person amongst us looks sympathizing and 
 shocked. An American would say, " Why 
 should he ? " The conservative newspapers are 
 fond of giving us, as an argument for the game 
 laws, the plea that without them a country 
 gentleman could not be induced to live on his 
 estate. An American would say, " What does 
 it matter ? " Perhaps to an English ear this 
 will sound brutal ; but the point is that the 
 American does not take his rich man so seri- 
 ously as we do ours, does not make him into a 
 grandee ; the thing, if proposed to him, would 
 strike him as an absurdity. I suspect that Mr. 
 Winans himself, the American millionaire who 
 adds deer-forest to deer-forest, and will not 
 suffer a cottier to keep a pet lamb, regards his 
 own performance as a colossal stroke of Ameri- 
 can humor, illustrating the absurdities of the 
 British system of property and privilege. Ask 
 Mr. Winans if he would promote the introduc- 
 tion of the British game laws into the United 
 States, and he would tell you with a merry 
 laugh that the idea is ridiculous, and that these 
 British follies are for home consumption. 
 
A Word Afore about America. 125 
 
 The example of France must not mislead us. 
 There the institutions, an objector may say, are 
 republican, and yet the division and hatred 
 between rich and poor is intense. True ; but 
 in France, though the institutions may be re- 
 publican, the ideas and morals are not republic 
 can. In America not only are the institutions 
 republican, but the ideas and morals are pre^ 
 vailingly republican also. They are those of a 
 plain, decent middle class. The ideal of those 
 who are the public instructors of the people is 
 the ideal of such a class. In France the ideal 
 of the mass of popular journalists and popular 
 writers of fiction, who are now practically the 
 public instructors there, is, if you could see 
 their hearts, a Pompadour or du Barry regime, 
 with themselves for the part of Faublas. With 
 this ideal prevailing, this vision of the objects 
 for which wealth is desirable, the possessors of 
 wealth become hateful to the multitude which 
 toils and endures, and society is undermined. 
 This is one of the many inconveniences which 
 the French have to suffer from that worship of 
 the great goddess Lubricity to which they are 
 at present vowed. Wealth excites the most 
 savage enmity there, because it is conceived as 
 a means for gratifying appetites of the most 
 selfish and vile kind. But in America, Faublas 
 
126 A Word More about America. 
 
 is no more the ideal than Coriolanus. Wealth 
 is no more conceived as the minister to the 
 pleasures of a class of rakes, than as the minis- 
 ter to the magnificence of a class of nobles. It 
 is conceived as a thing which almost any 
 American may attain, and which almost every 
 American will use respectably. Its possession, 
 therefore, does not inspire hatred, and so I 
 return to the thesis with which I started — 
 America is not in danger of revolution. The 
 division between rich and poor is alleged to us 
 as a cause of revolution which presently, if not 
 now, must operate there, as elsewhere ; and yet 
 we see that this cause has not there, in truth, 
 the characters to which we are elsewhere accus- 
 tomed. 
 
 A people homogeneous, a people which had 
 to constitute itself in a modern age, an epoch of 
 expansion, and which has given to itself institu- 
 tions entirely fitted for such an age and epoch, 
 and which suit it perfectly — a people not in 
 danger of war from without, not in danger of 
 revolution from within — such is the people of 
 the United States. The political and social 
 problem, then, we must surely allow that they 
 solve successfully. There remains, I know, the 
 human problem also ; the solution of that too 
 has to be considered : but I shall come to that 
 
A Word More about America. 127 
 
 hereafter. My point at present is, that politi- 
 cally and socially the United States are a 
 community living in a natural condition, and 
 conscious of living in a natural condition. And 
 being in this healthy case, and having this 
 healthy consciousness, the community there 
 uses its understanding with the soundness of 
 health ; it in general sees its political and social 
 concerns straight, and sees them clear. So 
 that when Sir Henry Maine and M. Scherer 
 tells us that democracy is " merely a form of 
 government," we may observe to them that it 
 is in the United States a form of government 
 in which the community feels itself in a natural 
 condition and at ease ; in which, consequently, 
 it sees things straight and sees them clear. 
 
 More than half one's interest in watching the 
 English people of the United States comes, of 
 course, from the bearing of what one finds there 
 upon things at home, amongst us English 
 people ourselves in these islands. I have 
 frankly recorded what struck me and came as 
 most new to me in the condition of the English 
 race in the United States, I had said before- 
 hand, indeed, that I supposed the American 
 Philistine was a livelier sort of Philistine than 
 ours, because he had not that pressure of the 
 Barbarians to stunt and distort him which be- 
 
128 A Word More about America. 
 
 falls his English brother here. But I did not 
 foresee how far his superior liveliness and natu- 
 ralness of condition, in the absence of that 
 pressure, would carry the American Philistine. 
 I still use my old name Philistine, because it 
 does in fact seem to me as yet to suit the bulk 
 of the community over there, as it suits the 
 strong central body of the community here. 
 But in my mouth the name is hardly a reproach. 
 so clearly do I see the Philistine's necessity, so 
 willingly I own his merits, so much I find of 
 him in myself. The American Philistine, how- 
 ever, is certainly far more different from his 
 English brother than I had beforehand sup- 
 posed. And on that difference we English of 
 the old country may with great profit turn our 
 regards for a while, and I am now going to speak 
 of it. 
 
 Surely, if there is one thing more than another 
 which all the world is saying of our community 
 at present, and of which the truth cannot well 
 be disputed, it is this : that we act like people 
 who do not think straight and see clear. I 
 know that the Liberal newspapers used to be 
 fond of saying that what characterized our 
 middle class was its " clear, manly intelligence, 
 penetrating through sophisms, ignoring com- 
 monplaces, and giving to conventional illu- 
 
A Word More about America. 129 
 
 sions their true value." Many years ago I took 
 alarm at seeing the Daily News and the Morn- 
 ing Star, like Zedekiah the son of Chenaanah, 
 thus making horns of iron for the middle class 
 and bidding it " Go up and prosper ! " and my 
 first efforts as a writer on public matters were 
 prompted by a desire to utter, like Micaiah, the 
 son of Imlah, my protest against these mislead- 
 ing assurances of the false prophets. And 
 though often and often smitten on the cheek, 
 just as Micaiah was, still I persevered ; and at 
 the Royal Institution I said how we seemed to 
 flounder and to beat the air, and at Liverpool I 
 singled out as our chief want the want of lucid- 
 ity. But now everybody is really saying of us 
 the same thing : that we fumble because we 
 cannot make up our mind, and that we cannot 
 make up our mind because we do not know 
 what to be after. If our foreign policy is not 
 that of " the British Philistine, with his likes 
 and dislikes, his effusion and confusion, his hot 
 and cold fits, his want of dignity and of the 
 steadfastness which comes from dignity, his 
 want of ideas, and of the steadfastness which 
 comes from ideas," then all the world at the 
 present time is, it must be owned, very much 
 mistaken. 
 
 Let us not, therefore, speak of foreign affairs ; 
 
130 A Word More about America. 
 
 it is needless, because the thing I wish to show 
 is so manifest there to everybody. But we will 
 consider matters at home. Let us take the 
 present state of the House of Commons. Can 
 anything be more confused, more unnatural ? 
 That assembly has got into a condition utterly 
 embarrassed, and seems impotent to bring itself 
 right. The members of the House themselves 
 may find entertainment in the personal inci- 
 dents which such a state of confusion is sure 
 to bring forth abundantly, and excitement in 
 the opportunities thus often afforded for the 
 display of Mr. Gladstone's wonderful powers. 
 But to any judicious Englishman outside the 
 House the spectacle is simply an afflicting and 
 humiliating one ; the sense aroused by it is not 
 a sense of delight at Mr. Gladstone's tireless 
 powers, it is rather a sense of disgust at their 
 having to be so exercised. Every day the 
 House of Commons does not sit, judicious 
 people feel relief; every day that it sits, they 
 are oppressed with apprehension. Instead of 
 being an edifying influence, as such an assem- 
 bly ought to be, the House of Commons is at 
 present an influence which does harm ; it sets 
 an example which rebukes and corrects none of 
 the nation's faults, but rather encourages them. 
 The best thing to be done at present, perhaps, 
 
A Word Afore about America. 131 
 
 is to avert one's eye from the House of Com- 
 mons as much as possible ; if one keeps on con- 
 stantly watching it welter in its baneful confu- 
 sion, one is likely to fall into the fulminating 
 style of the wrathful Hebrew prophets, and to 
 call it " an astonishment, a hissing, and a 
 curse." 
 
 Well, then, our greatest institution, the 
 House of Commons, we cannot say is at pres- 
 ent working, like the American institutions, 
 easily and successfully. Suppose we now pass 
 to Ireland. I will not ask if our institutions 
 work easily and successfully in Ireland ; to ask 
 such a question would be too bitter, too cruel a 
 mockery. Those hateful cases which have been 
 tried in the Dublin Courts this last year sug- 
 gest the dark and ill-omened word which ap- 
 plies to the whole state of Ireland — anti-natu- 
 ral. Anti-natural, anti-nature ; that is the 
 word which rises irresistibly in the mind as I 
 survey Ireland. Everything is unnatural there : 
 the proceedings of the English who rule, the 
 proceedings of the Irish who resist. But it is 
 with the working of our English institutions 
 there that I am now concerned. It is unnat- 
 ural that Ireland should be governed by Lord 
 Spencer and Mr. Campbell Bannerman ; as un- 
 natural as for Scotland to be governed by Lord 
 
132 A Word More about America. 
 
 Cranbrook and Mr. Heally. It is unnatural 
 that Ireland should be governed under the 
 Crimes Act. But there is necessity, replies 
 the Government. Well, then, if there is such 
 an evil necessity, it is unnatural that the Irish 
 newspapers should be free to write as they 
 write and the Irish members to speak as they 
 speak, — free to inflame and further to exasper- 
 ate a seditious people's mind, and to promote 
 the continuance of the evil necessity. A neces- 
 sity for the Crimes Act is a necessity for abso- 
 lute government. By our patchwork proceedings 
 we set up, indeed, a make-believe of Ireland's 
 being constitutionally governed. But it is not 
 constitutionally governed ; nobody supposes it 
 to be constitutionally governed, except, perhaps, 
 that born swallower of all clap-trap, the British 
 Philistine. The Irish themselves, the all-im- 
 portant personages in this case, are not taken 
 in ; our make-believe does not produce in them 
 the very least gratitude, the very least soften- 
 ing. At the same time, it adds an hundredfold 
 to the difficulties of an absolute government. 
 
 The working of our institutions being thus 
 awry, is the working of our thoughts upon them 
 more smooth and natural ? I imagine to myself 
 an American, his own institutions and his habits 
 of thought being such as we have seen, listen- 
 
A Word More about America. 133 
 
 ing to us as we talk politics and discuss the 
 strained state of things over there. " Certainly 
 these men have considerable difficulties," he 
 would say ; " but they never look at them 
 straight, they do not think straight." Who 
 does not admire the fine qualities of Lord 
 Spencer ? — and I, for my part, am quite ready 
 to admit that he may require for a given period 
 not only the present Crimes Act, but even yet 
 more stringent powers of repression. For a 
 given period, yes ! — but afterwards ? Has 
 Lord Spencer any clear vision of the great, 
 the profound changes still to be wrought be- 
 fore a staple and prosperous society can arise 
 in Ireland ? Has he even any ideal for the fu- 
 ture there, beyond that of a time when he can 
 go to visit Lord Kenmare, or any other great 
 landlord who is his friend, and find all the 
 tenants punctually paying their rents, prosper- 
 ous and deferential, and society in Ireland set- 
 tling quietly down again upon the old basis ? 
 And he might as well hope to see Strongbow 
 come to life again ! Which of us does not 
 esteem and like Mr. Trevelyan, and rejoice in 
 the high promise of his career ? And how all 
 his friends applauded when he turned upon the 
 exasperating and insulting Irish members, and 
 told them that he was " an English gentle- 
 
134 A Word More about America. 
 
 man ! " Yet, if one thinks of it, Mr. Trevel- 
 yan was thus telling the Irish members simply 
 that he was just that which Ireland does not 
 want, and which can do her no good. England, 
 to be sure, has given Ireland plenty of her 
 worst, but she has also given her not scantily 
 of her best. Ireland has had no insufficient 
 supply of the English gentleman, with his hon- 
 esty, personal courage, high bearing, good in- 
 tentions, and limited vision ; what she wants 
 is statesmen with just the qualities which the 
 typical English gentleman has not — flexibility, 
 openness of mind, a free and large view of 
 things. 
 
 Everywhere we shall find in our thinking, a 
 sort of warp inclining it aside of the real mark, 
 and thus depriving it of value. The common 
 run of peers who write to the Times about Re- 
 form of the House of Lords one would not 
 much expect, perhaps, to " understand the signs 
 of this time." But even the Duke of Argyle, 
 delivering his mind about the land question in 
 Scotland, is like one seeing, thinking, and 
 speaking in some other planet than ours. A 
 man of even Mr. John Morley's gifts is pro- 
 voked with the House of Lords, and straight- 
 way he declares himself against the existence of 
 a Second Chamber at all ; although — if there 
 
A Word More about America. 135 
 
 be such a thing as demonstration in politics — ■ 
 the working of the American Senate demon- 
 strates a well-composed Second Chamber to be 
 the very need and safeguard of a modern democ- 
 racy. What a singular twist, again, in a man of 
 Mr. Frederic Harrison's intellectual power, not, 
 perhaps, to have in the exuberance of youthful 
 energy weighted himself for the race of life by 
 taking up a grotesque old French pedant upon 
 his shoulders, but to have insisted, in middle 
 age, in taking up the Protestant Dissenters too ; 
 and now, when he is becoming elderly, it seems 
 as if nothing would serve him but he must add 
 the Peace Society to his load ! How perverse, 
 yet again, in Mr. Herbert Spencer, at the very 
 moment when past neglects and present needs 
 are driving men to co-operation, to making the 
 community act for the public good in its collec- 
 tive and corporate character of the State, how- 
 perverse to seize this occasion for promulgating 
 the extremest doctrine of individualism ; and 
 not only to drag this dead horse along the pub- 
 lic road himself, but to induce Mr. Auberon 
 Herbert to devote his days to flogging it ! 
 
 We think thus unaccountably because we are 
 living in an unnatural and strained state. We 
 are like people whose vision is deranged by 
 their looking through a turbid and distorting 
 
136 A Word More about America. 
 
 atmosphere, or whose movements are warped 
 by the cramping of some unnatural constraint. 
 Let us just ask ourselves, looking at the thing 
 as people simply desirous of finding the truth, 
 how men who saw and thought straight would 
 proceed, how an American, for instance, — 
 whose seeing and thinking has, I have said, if 
 not in all matters, yet commonly in political 
 and social concerns, this quality of straight- 
 ness, — how an American would proceed in the 
 three confusions which I have given as in- 
 stances of the many confusions now embar- 
 rassing us : the confusion of our foreign affairs, 
 the confusion of the House of Commons, the 
 confusion of Ireland. And then, when we have 
 discovered the kind of proceeding natural in 
 these cases, let us ask ourselves, with the same 
 sincerity, what is the cause of that warp of 
 mind hindering most of us from seeing straight 
 in them, and also where is our remedy. 
 
 The Angra Pequena business has lately called 
 forth from all sides many and harsh animad- 
 versions upon Lord Granville, who is charged 
 with the direction of our foreign affairs. I 
 shall not swell the chorus of complainers. 
 Nothing has happened but what was to be 
 expected. Long ago I remarked that it is not 
 Lord Granville himself who determines our 
 
A Word More about America. 137 
 
 foreign policy and shapes the declarations of 
 Government concerning it, but a power behind 
 Lord Granville. He and his colleagues would 
 call it the power of public opinion. It is really 
 the opinion of that great ruling class amongst 
 us on which Liberal Governments have hitherto 
 had to depend for support, — the Philistines or 
 middle class. It is not, I repeat, with Lord 
 Granville in his natural state and force that a 
 foreign Government has to deal ; it is with 
 Lord Granville waiting in devout expectation to 
 see how the cat will jump, — and that cat the 
 British Philistine ! When Prince Bismarck 
 deals with Lord Granville, he finds that he is 
 not dealing mind to mind with an intelligent 
 equal, but that he is dealing with a tumult of 
 likes and dislikes, hopes and fears, stock-job- 
 bing intrigues, missionary interests, quidnuncs, 
 newspapers ; — dealing, in short, with ignorance 
 behind his intelligent equal. Yet ignorant as 
 our Philistine middle class may be, its volitions 
 on foreign affairs would have more intelligi- 
 bility and consistency if uttered through a 
 spokesman of their own class. Coming through 
 a nobleman like Lord Granville, who has neither 
 the thoughts, habits, nor ideals of the middle 
 class, and yet wishes to act as proctor for it, 
 they have every disadvantage. He cannot even 
 
138 A Word More about America. 
 
 do justice to the Philistine mind, such as it is, 
 for which he is spokesman ; he apprehends it 
 uncertainly and expounds it ineffectively. And 
 so with the house and lineage of Murdstone 
 thundering at him (and these, again, through 
 Lord Derby as their interpreter) from the Cape, 
 and the inexorable Prince Bismarck thundering 
 at him from Berlin, the thing naturally ends by 
 Lord Granville at last wringing his adroit hands 
 and ejaculating disconsolately : " It is a misun- 
 derstanding altogether ! " Even yet more to 
 be pitied, perhaps, was the hard case of Lord 
 Kimberly after the Majuba Hill disaster. Who 
 can ever forget him, poor man, studying the 
 faces of the representatives of the dissenting 
 interest and exclaiming : " A sudden thought 
 strikes me ! May we not be incurring the sin 
 of blood-guiltiness?" To this has come the 
 tradition of Lord Somers, the Whig oligarchy 
 of 1688, and all Lord Macaulay's Pantheon. 
 
 I said that a source of strength to America, 
 in political and social concerns, was the homo- 
 geneous character of American society. An 
 American statesman speaks with more effect 
 the mind of his fellow-citizens from his being in 
 sympathy with it, understanding and sharing it. 
 Certainly, one must admit that if, in our coun- 
 try of classes, the Philistine middle class is 
 
A Word More about America. 139 
 
 really the inspirer of our foreign policy, that 
 policy would at least be expounded more for- 
 cibly if it had a Philistine for its spokesman. 
 Yet I think the true moral to be drawn is 
 rather, perhaps, this : that our foreign policy 
 would be improved if our whole society were 
 homogeneous. 
 
 As to the confusion in the House of Com- 
 mons, what, apart from defective rules of pro- 
 cedure, are its causes ? First and foremost, no 
 doubt, the temper and action of the Irish mem- 
 bers. But putting this cause of confusion out 
 of view for a moment, every one can see that 
 the House of Commons is far too large, and 
 that it undertakes a quantity of business which 
 belongs more properly to local assemblies. The 
 confusion from these causes is one which is 
 constantly increasing, because, as the country 
 becomes fuller and more awakened, business 
 multiplies, and more and more members of the 
 House are inclined to take part in it. Is not 
 the cure for this found in a course like that 
 followed in America, in having a much less 
 numerous House of Commons, and in making 
 over a large part of its business to local assem- 
 blies, elected, as the House of Commons itself 
 will henceforth be elected, by household suf- 
 frage ? I have often said that we seem to me 
 
140 A Word More about America. 
 
 to need at present, in England, three things in 
 especial : more equality, education for the mid- 
 dle classes, and a thorough municipal system. 
 A system of local assemblies is but the natural 
 complement of a thorough municipal system. 
 Wholes neither too large nor too small, not 
 necessarily of equal population by any means, 
 but with characters rendering them in them- 
 selves fairly homogeneous and coherent, are 
 the fit units for choosing these local assemblies. 
 Such units occur immediately to one's mind in 
 the provinces of Ireland, the Highlands and 
 Lowlands of Scotland, Wales, north and south, 
 groups of English counties such as present 
 themselves in the circuits of the judges or 
 under the names of East Anglia or the Mid- 
 lands. No one will suppose me guilty of the 
 pedantry of here laying out definitive districts ; 
 I do but indicate such units as may enable the 
 reader to conceive the kind of basis required 
 for the local assemblies of which I am speak- 
 ing. The business of these districts would be 
 more advantageously done in assemblies of the 
 kind ; they would form a useful school for the 
 increasing number of aspirants to public life, 
 and the House of Commons would be relieved. 
 The strain in Ireland would be relieved too, 
 and by natural and safe means. Irishmen are 
 
A Word More about America. * 141 
 
 to be found, who, in desperation at the present 
 state of their country, cry out for making Ire- 
 land independent and separate, with a national 
 Parliament in Dublin, with her own foreign 
 office and diplomacy, her own army and navy, 
 her own tariff, coinage, and currency. This is 
 manifestly impracticable. But here again let 
 us look at what is done by people who in poli- 
 tics think straight and see clear ; let us observe 
 what is done in the United States. The Gov- 
 ernment at Washington reserves matters of im- 
 perial concern, matters such as those just enu- 
 merated, which cannot be relinquished without 
 relinquishing the unity of the empire. Neither 
 does it allow one great South to be constituted, 
 or one great West, with a Southern Parliament, 
 or a Western. Provinces that are too large are 
 broken up, as Virginia has been broken up. 
 But the several States are nevertheless real and 
 important wholes, each with its own legisla- 
 ture ; and to each the control, within its own 
 borders, of all except imperial concerns is freely 
 committed. The United States Government 
 intervenes only to keep order in the last resort. 
 Let us suppose a similar plan applied in Ireland. 
 There are four provinces there, forming four 
 natural wholes — or perhaps (if it should seem 
 expedient to put Munster and Connaught to- 
 
142 A Word More about America. 
 
 gether) three. The Parliament of the empire 
 would still be in London, and Ireland would 
 send members to it. But at the same time each 
 Irish province would have its own legislature, 
 and the control of its own real affairs. The 
 British landlord would no longer determine the 
 dealings with land in an Irish province, nor the 
 British Protestant the dealings with church and 
 education. Apart from imperial concerns, or 
 from disorders such as to render military inter- 
 vention necessary, the government in London 
 would leave Ireland to manage itself. Lord 
 Spencer and Mr. Campbell Bannerman would 
 come back to England. Dublin Castle would 
 be the State House of Leinster. Land ques- 
 tions, game laws, police, church, education, would 
 be regulated by the people and legislature of 
 Leinster for Leinster, of Ulster for Ulster, of 
 Munster and Connaught for Munster and Con- 
 naught. The same with the like matters in 
 England and Scotland. The local legislatures 
 would regulate them. 
 
 But there is more. Everybody who watches 
 the working of our institutions perceives what 
 strain and friction is caused in it at present, by 
 our having a Second Chamber composed almost 
 entirely of great landowners, and representing 
 the feelings and interests of the class of land- 
 
A Word More about America. 143 
 
 owners almost exclusively. No one, certainly, 
 under the' conditions of a modern age and our 
 actual life, would ever think of devising such a 
 Chamber. But we will allow ourselves to do 
 more than merely state this truism, we will 
 allow ourselves to ask what sort of Second 
 Chamber, people who thought straight and saw 
 clear would, under the conditions of a modern 
 age and of our actual life, naturally make. And 
 we find from the experience of the United 
 States, that such provincial legislatures as we 
 have just now seen to be the natural remedy 
 for the confusion in the House of Commons, 
 the natural remedy for the confusion in Ireland, 
 have the further great merit, besides, of giving 
 us the best basis possible for a modern Second 
 Chamber. The United States Senate is per- 
 haps, of all the institutions of that country, the 
 most happily devised, the most successful in its 
 working. The legislature of each State in the 
 Union elects two senators to the Second Cham- 
 ber of the national Congress at Washington. 
 The senators are the Lords - — if we like to keep, 
 as it is surely best to keep, for designating the 
 members of the Second Chamber, the title to 
 which we have been for so many ages habitu- 
 ated. Each of the provincial legislatures of 
 Great Britain and Ireland would elect members 
 
144 A Word More about America. 
 
 to the House of Lords. The colonial lesrisla- 
 tures also would elect members to it ; and thus 
 we should be complying in the most simple and 
 yet the most signal way possible with the pres- 
 ent desire of both this country and the colonies 
 for a closer union together, for some represen- 
 tation of the colonies in the Imperial Parlia- 
 ment. Probably, it would be found expedient 
 to transfer to the Second Chamber the repre- 
 sentatives of the universities. But no scheme 
 for a Second Chamber will at the present day be 
 found solid unless it stands on a genuine basis 
 of election and representation. All schemes 
 for forming a Second Chamber through nomin- 
 ation, whether by the Crown or by any other 
 voice, of picked noblemen, great officials, lead- 
 ing merchants and bankers, eminent men of 
 letters and science, are fantastic. Probably, 
 they would not give us by any means a good 
 Second Chamber. But, certainly, they would 
 not satisfy the country or possess its confidence, 
 and therefore they would be found futile and 
 unworkable. 
 
 So we discover what would naturally appear 
 the desirable way out of some of our worst con- 
 fusions, to anybody who saw clear and thought 
 straight. But there is little likelihood, probably, 
 of any such way being soon perceived and fol- 
 
A Word More about America. 145 
 
 lowed by our community here. And why is 
 this ? Because, as a community, we have so 
 little lucidity, we so little see clear and think 
 straight. And why, again, is this ? Because our 
 community is so little homogeneous. The lower 
 class has yet to show what it will do in politics. 
 Rising politicians are already beginning to flat- 
 ter it with servile assiduity, but their praise is 
 as yet premature ; the lower class is too little 
 known. The upper class and the middle class 
 we know. They have each their own supposed 
 interests, and these are very different from the 
 true interests of the community. Our very 
 classes make us dim-seeing. In a modern time, 
 we are living with a . ystem of classes so in- 
 tense, a society of such unnatural complication, 
 that the whole action of our minds is hampered 
 and falsened by it. I return to my old thesis : 
 inequality is our bane. The great impediments 
 in our way of progress are aristocracy and Prot- 
 estant dissent. People think this is an epi- 
 gram ; alas, it is much rather a truism ! 
 f An aristocratical society like ours is often 
 said to be the society from which artists and 
 men of letters have most to gain. But an 
 institution is to be judged, not by what one 
 can oneself gain from it, but by the ideal which 
 it sets up. An aristocracy — if I may once 
 
146 A Word More about America. 
 
 more repeat words, which, however often re- 
 peated, have still a value, from their truth — 
 aristocracy now sets up in our country a false 
 ideal, which materializes our upper class, vul- 
 garizes our middle class, brutalizes our lower 
 class. It misleads the young, makes the 
 worldly more worldly, the limited more limited, 
 the stationary more stationary. Even to the 
 imaginative, whom Lord John Manners thinks 
 its sure friend, it is more a hindrance than a 
 help. Johnson says well : " Whatever makes 
 the past, the distant, or the future, predominate 
 over the present, advances us in the dignity of 
 thinking beings." But what is a Duke of Nor- 
 folk or an Earl of Warwick, dressed in broad- 
 cloth and tweed, and going about his business or 
 pleasure in hansom cabs and railway carriages, 
 like the rest of us ? Imagination herself would 
 entreat him to take himself out of the way, and 
 to leave us to the Norfolks and Warwicks of 
 history. 
 
 I say this without a particle of hatred, and 
 with esteem, admiration, and affection for many 
 individuals in the aristocratical class. But the 
 action of time and circumstance is fatal. If 
 one asks oneself what is really to be desired, 
 what is expedient, one would go far beyond the 
 substitution of an elected Second Chamber for 
 
A Word More about America. 147 
 
 the present House of Lords. All confiscation 
 is to be reprobated, all deprivation (except in 
 bad cases of abuse) of what is actually pos- 
 sessed. But one would wish, if one set about 
 wishing, for the extinction of title, after the 
 death of the holder, and for the dispersion of 
 property by a stringent law of bequest. Our 
 society should be homogeneous, and only in 
 this way can it become so. 
 
 But aristocracy is in little danger. " I sup- 
 pose, sir," a dissenting minister said to me, the 
 other day, "you found, when you were in Amer- 
 ica, that they envied us there our great aristoc- 
 racy." It was his sincere belief that they did, 
 and such probably, is the sincere belief of our 
 middle class in general ; or, at any rate, that if 
 the Americans do not envy us this possession, 
 they ought to. And my friend, one of the great 
 Liberal party which has now, I suppose, pretty 
 nearly run down its deceased wife's sister, poor 
 thing, has his hand and heart full, so far as 
 politics are concerned, of the question of church 
 disestablishment. He is eager to set to work 
 at a change which, even if it were desirable 
 (and I think it is not), is yet off the line of 
 those reforms which are really pressing. 
 
 Mr. Lyulph Stanley, Professor Stuart, and 
 Lord Richard Grosvenor are waiting ready to 
 
14-3 A Word More about America. 
 
 help him, arid perhaps Mr. Chamberlain him- 
 self will lead the attack. I admire Mr. Cham- 
 berlain as a politician, because he has the 
 courage — and it is a wise courage — to state 
 large the reforms we need, instead of mini- 
 mizing them. But like Saul, before his con- 
 version, he breathes out threatenings and 
 slaughter against the Church, and is likely, 
 perhaps, to lead an assault upon her. He is a 
 formidable assailant, yet I suspect he might 
 break his finger-nails on her walls. If the 
 Church has the majority for her, she will of 
 course stand. But in any case, this institution, 
 with all its faults, has that merit which makes 
 the great strength of institutions — it offers an 
 ideal which is noble and attaching. Equality 
 is its profession, if not always its practice. It 
 inspires wide and deep affection, and possesses, 
 therefore, immense strength. Probably the 
 establishment will not stand in Wales probably 
 it will not stand in Scotland. In Wales, it 
 ought not, I think, to stand. In Scotland, I 
 should regret its fall : but Presbyterian churches 
 are born to separatism, as the sparks fly up- 
 wards. At any rate, it is through the vote of 
 local legislatures that disestablishment is likely 
 to come, as a measure required in certain prov- 
 inces, not as a general measure for the whole 
 
A Word More about America. 149 
 
 country. In other words, the endeavor for dis- 
 establishment ought to be postponed to the 
 endeavor for far more important reforms, not 
 to precede it. Yet I doubt whether Mr. 
 Chamberlain and Mr. Lyulph Stanley will listen 
 to me when I plead thus with them ; there is 
 so little lucidity in England, and they will say 
 I am priest-ridden. 
 
 One man there is, whom above all others I 
 would fain have seen in Parliament during the 
 last ten years, and beheld established in influ- 
 ence there at this juncture, — • Mr. Goldwin 
 Smith. I do not say that he was not too em- 
 bittered against the Church ; in my opinion he 
 was. But with singular lucidity and penetra- 
 tion he saw what great reforms were needed in 
 other directions, and the order of relative im- 
 portance in which reforms stood. Such were 
 his character, style, and faculties, that alone per- 
 haps among men of his insight he was capable 
 of getting his ideas weighed and entertained by 
 men in power ; while amid all favor and under 
 all temptations he was certain to have still re- 
 mained true to his insight, "unshaken, unse- 
 duced, unterrified." I think of him as a real 
 power for good in Parliament at this time, had 
 he by now become, as he might have become, 
 one of the leaders there. His absence from the 
 
150 A Word More about America. 
 
 scene, his retirement in Canada, is a loss to his 
 friends, but a still greater loss to his country. 
 
 Hardly inferior in influence to Parliament it- 
 self is journalism. I do not conceive of Mr. 
 John Morley as made for filling that position in 
 Parliament which Mr. Goldwin Smith would, I 
 think, have filled. If he controls, as Protesilaos 
 in the poem advises, hysterical passion (the be- 
 setting danger of men of letters on the plat- 
 form and in Parliament) and remembers to ap- 
 prove "the depth and not the tumult of the 
 soul," he will be powerful in Parliament ; he will 
 rise, he will come into office ; but he will not do 
 for us in Parliament, I think, what Mr. Goldwin 
 Smith would have done. He is too much of a 
 partisan. In journalism, on the other hand, he 
 was as unique a figure as Mr. Goldwin Smith 
 would, I imagine, have been in Parliament. As 
 a journalist, Mr. John Morley showed a mind 
 which seized and understood the signs of the 
 times ; he had all the ideas of a man of the best 
 insight, and alone, perhaps, among men of his 
 insight, he had the skill for making these ideas 
 pass into journalism. But Mr. John Morley has 
 now left journalism. There is plenty of talent 
 in Parliament, plenty of talent in journalism, 
 but no one in either to expound " the signs of 
 this time " as these two men might have ex- 
 
A Word More about America. 151 
 
 pounded them. The signs of the time, political 
 and social, are left, I regret to say, to bring 
 themselves as they best can to the notice of the 
 public. Yet how ineffective an organ is litera- 
 ture for conveying them, compared with Parlia- 
 ment and journalism ! 
 
 Conveyed somehow, however, they certainly 
 should be, and in this disquisition I have tried 
 to deal with them. But the political and social 
 problem, as the thinkers call it, must not so oc- 
 cupy us as to make us forget the human prob- 
 lem. The problems are connected together, but 
 they are not identical. Our political and social 
 confusions I admit ; what Parliament is at this 
 moment, I see and deplore. Yet nowhere but 
 in England even now, not in France, not in Ger- 
 many, not in America, could there be found 
 public men of that quality — so capable of fair 
 dealing, of trusting one another, keeping their 
 word to one another — as to make possible such 
 a settlement of the ^Franchise and Seats Bills as 
 that which we have lately seen. Plato says 
 with most profound truth : " The man who 
 would think to good purpose must be able to 
 take many things into his view together." How 
 homogeneous American society is, I have done 
 my best to declare ; how smoothly and naturally 
 the institutions of the United States work, how 
 
152 A Word More about America. 
 
 clearly, in some most important respects, the 
 Americans see, how straight they think. Yet 
 Sir Lepel Griffin says that there is no country 
 calling itself civilized where one would not 
 rather live than in America, except Russia. In 
 politics I do not much trust Sir Lepel Griffin. 
 I hope that he administers in India some dis- 
 trict where a profound insight into the being 
 and working of institutions is not requisite. 
 But, I suppose, of the tastes of himself and of 
 that large class of Englishmen whom Mr. 
 Charles Sumner has taught us to call the class 
 of gentlemen, he is no untrustworthy reporter. 
 And an Englishman of this class would rather 
 live in France, Spain, Holland, Belgium, Ger- 
 many, Italy, Switzerland, than in the United 
 States, in spite of our community of race and 
 speech with them ! This means that, in the 
 opinion of men of that class, the human prob- 
 lem, at least, is not well solved in the United 
 States, whatever the political and social problem 
 may be. And to the human problem in the 
 United States we ought certainly to turn our 
 attention, especially when we find taken such an 
 objection as this ; and some day, though not 
 now, we will do so, and try to see what the ob- 
 jection comes to. I have given hostages to the 
 United States, I am bound to them by the 
 
A Word More about America. 153 
 
 memory of great, untiring, and most attaching 
 kindness. I should not like to have to own 
 them to be of all countries calling themselves 
 civilized, except Russia, the country where one 
 would least like to live. 
 
CIVILIZATION IN THE UNITED 
 STATES. 
 
IV. 
 
 CIVILIZATION IN THE UNITED 
 STATES. 
 
 Two or three years ago I spoke in this Re- 
 view * on the subject of America; and after 
 considering the institutions and the social con- 
 dition of the people of the United States, I 
 said that what, in the jargon of the present day, 
 is called "the political and social problem," does 
 seem to be solved there with remarkable suc- 
 cess. I pointed out the contrast which in this 
 respect the United States offer to our own 
 country, — a contrast, in several ways, much to 
 their advantage. But I added that the solution 
 of the political and social problem, as it is 
 called, ought not so to absorb us as to make us 
 forget the human problem ; and that it remained 
 to ask how the human problem is solved in the 
 United States. It happened that Sir Lepel 
 Griffin, a very acute and distinguished Indian 
 official, had just then been travelling in the 
 United States, and had published his opinion, 
 
 * The Nineteenth Century, London. 
 157 
 
158 Civilization in the United States. 
 
 from what he saw of the life there, that there 
 is no country calling itself civilized where one 
 would not rather live than in America, except 
 Russia. Certainly then, I said, one cannot rest 
 satisfied, when one finds such a judgment passed 
 on the United States as this, with admiring 
 their institutions and their solid social condition, 
 their freedom and equality, their power, energy, 
 and wealth. One must, further, go on to exam- 
 ine what is done there towards solving the 
 human problem, and must see what Sir Lepel 
 Griffin's objection comes to. 
 
 And this examination I promised that I would 
 one day make. However, it is so delicate a 
 matter to discuss how a sensitive nation solves 
 the human problem, that I found myself inclined 
 to follow the example of the Greek moralist 
 Theophrastus, who waited, before composing 
 his famous characters, until he was ninety-nine 
 years old. I thought I had perhaps better wait 
 until I was about that age, before I discussed 
 the success of the Americans 4n solving the 
 human problem. But ninety-nine is a great 
 age ; it is probable that I may never reach it, 
 or even come near it. So I have determined, 
 finally, to face the question without any such 
 long delay, and thus I come to offer to the 
 readers of this Review the remarks following. 
 
Civilization in the United States. 159 
 
 With the same frankness with which I discussed 
 here the solution of the political and social 
 problem by the people of the United States, I 
 shall discuss their success in solving the human 
 problem. 
 
 Perhaps it is not likely that any one will now 
 remember what I said three years ago here 
 about the success of the Americans in solving 
 the political and social problem. I will sum it 
 up in the briefest possible manner. I said that 
 the United States had constituted themselves 
 in a modern age ; that their institutions com- 
 plied well with the form and pressure of those 
 circumstances and conditions which a modern 
 age presents. Quite apart from all question 
 how much of the merit for this may be due to 
 the wisdom and virtue of the American people, 
 and how much to their good fortune, it is unde- 
 niable that their institutions do work well and 
 happily. The play of their institutions suggests, 
 I said, the image of a man in a suit of clothes 
 which fits him to perfection, leaving all his 
 movements unimpeded and easy ; a suit of 
 clothes loose where it ought to be loose, and 
 sitting close where its sitting close is an advan- 
 tage ; a suit of clothes able, moreover, to adapt 
 itself naturally to the wearer's growth, and to 
 admit of all enlargements as they successively 
 arise. 
 
160 Civilization in the United States. 
 
 So much as to the solution, by the United 
 States, of the political problem. As to the 
 social problem, I observed that the people of 
 the United States were a community singularly 
 free from the distinction of classes, singularly 
 homogeneous ; that the division between rich 
 and poor was consequently less profound there 
 than in countries where the distinction of classes 
 accentuates that division. I added that I be- 
 lieved there was exaggeration in the reports of 
 their administrative and judicial corruption ; and 
 altogether, I concluded, the United States, politi- 
 cally and socially, are a country living prosper- 
 ously in a natural modern condition, and con- 
 scious of living prosperously in such a condition. 
 And being in this healthy case, and having this 
 healthy consciousness, the community there uses 
 its understanding with the soundness of health ; 
 it in general, as to its own political and social con- 
 cerns, sees clear and thinks straight. Compar- 
 ing the United States with ourselves, I said that 
 while they are in this natural and healthy con- 
 dition, we, on the contrary, are so little homo- 
 geneous, we are living with a system of classes 
 so intense, with institutions and a society so 
 little modern, so unnaturally complicated, that 
 the whole action of our minds is hampered and 
 falsened by it ; we are in consequence wanting 
 
Civilization in the United States. 161 
 
 in lucidity, we do not see clear or think straight, 
 and the Americans have here much the advan- 
 tage of us. 
 
 Yet we find an acute and experienced Eng- 
 lishman saying that there is no country, calling 
 itself civilized, where one would not rather live 
 than in the United States, except Russia ! The 
 civilization of the United States must some- 
 how, if an able man can think thus, have short- 
 comings, in spite of the country's success and 
 prosperity. What is civilization ? It is the 
 humanization of man in society, the satisfaction 
 for him, in society, of the true law of human 
 nature. Man's study, says Plato, is to discover 
 the right answer to the question how to live f 
 our aim, he says, is very and true life. We are 
 more or less civilized as we come more or less 
 near to this aim, in that social state which the 
 pursuit of our aim essentially demands. But 
 several elements or powers, as I have often 
 insisted, go to build up a complete human life. 
 There is the power of conduct, the power of 
 intellect and knowledge, the power of beauty, 
 the power of social life and manners ; we have 
 instincts responding to them all, requiring them 
 all. And we are perfectly civilized only when 
 all these instincts in our nature, all these ele- 
 ments in our civilization, have been adequately 
 
1 62 Civilization in the United States. 
 
 recognized and satisfied. But of course this 
 adequate recognition and satisfaction of all the 
 elements in question is impossible ; some of 
 them are recognized more than others, some of 
 them more in one community, some in another ; 
 and the satisfactions found are more or less 
 worthy. 
 
 And, meanwhile, people use the term civiliza- 
 tion in the loosest possible way, for the most 
 part attaching to it, however, in their own 
 mind some meaning connected with their own 
 preferences and experiences. The most com- 
 mon meaning thus attached to it is perhaps 
 that of a satisfaction, not of all the main 
 demands of human nature, but of the demand 
 for the comforts and conveniences of life, and 
 of this demand as made by the sort of person 
 who uses the term. 
 
 Now we should always attend to the common 
 and prevalent use of an important term. Prob- 
 ably Sir Lepel Griffin had this notion of the 
 comforts and conveniences of life much in his 
 thoughts when he reproached American civili- 
 zation with its shortcomings. For men of his 
 kind, and for all that large number of men, so 
 prominent in this country and who make their 
 voice so much heard, men who have been at 
 the public schools and universities, men of the 
 
Civilization in the United States. 163 
 
 professional and official class, men who do the 
 most part of our literature and our journalism, 
 America is not a comfortable place of abode. 
 A man of this sort has in England everything 
 in his favor ; society appears organized ex- 
 pressly for his advantage. A Rothschild or a 
 Vanderbilt can buy his way anywhere, and can 
 have what comforts and luxuries he likes, 
 whether in America or in England. But it is 
 in England that an income of from three or 
 four to fourteen or fifteen hundred a year does 
 so much for its possessor, enables him to live 
 with so many of the conveniences of far richer 
 people. For his benefit, his benefit above all, 
 clubs are organized and hansom cabs ply ; 
 service is abundant, porters stand waiting at 
 the railway stations. In America all luxuries 
 are dear except oysters and ice ; service is in 
 general scarce and bad ; a club is a most expen- 
 sive luxury : the cab-rates are prohibitive — 
 more than half of the people who in England 
 would use cabs must in America use the horse- 
 cars, the tram. The charges of tailors and 
 mercers are about a third higher than they are 
 with us. I mention only a few striking points 
 as to which there can be no dispute, and in 
 which a man of Sir Lepel Griffin's class would 
 feel the great difference between America and 
 
164 Civilization in the United States. 
 
 England in the conveniences at his command. 
 There are a hundred other points one might 
 mention, where he would feel the same thing. 
 When a man is passing judgment on a coun- 
 try's civilization, points of this kind crowd to 
 his memory, and determine his sentence. 
 
 On the other hand, for that immense class of 
 people, the great bulk of the community, the 
 class of people whose income is less than three 
 or four hundred a year, things in America are 
 favorable. It is easier for them there than in 
 the Old World to rise and to make their fortune ; 
 but I am not now speaking of that. Even with- 
 out making their fortune, even with their 
 income below three or four hundred a year, 
 things are favorable to them in America, society 
 seems organized there for their benefit. To 
 begin with, the humbler kind of work is better 
 paid in America than with us ; the higher kind, 
 worse. The official, for instance, gets less, his 
 office-keeper gets more. The public ways are 
 abominably cut up by rails and blocked with 
 horse-cars ; but the inconvenience is for those 
 who use private carriages and cabs, the con- 
 venience is for the bulk of the community who 
 but for the horse-cars would have to walk. 
 The ordinary railway cars are not delightful, 
 but they are cheap, and they are better fur- 
 
Civilization in the United States. 165 
 
 nished and in winter are warmer than third- 
 class carriages in England. Luxuries are, as I 
 have said, very dear — above all, European 
 luxuries ; but a working-man's clothing is 
 nearly as cheap as in England, and plain food 
 is on the whole cheaper. Even luxuries of a 
 certain kind are within a laboring man's easy 
 reach. I have mentioned ice ; I will mention 
 fruit also. The abundance and cheapness of 
 fruit is a great boon to people of small incomes 
 in America. Do not believe the Americans 
 when they extol their peaches as equal to any 
 in the world, or better than any in the world ; 
 they are not to be compared to peaches grown 
 under glass. Do not believe that the American 
 Newtown pippins appear in the New York and 
 Boston fruit-shops as they appear in those of 
 London and Liverpool ; or that the Americans 
 have any pear to give you like the Marie 
 Louise. But what laborer, or artisan, or small 
 clerk, ever gets hot-house peaches, or Newtown 
 pippins, or Marie Louise pears ? Not such 
 good pears, apples, and peaches as those, but 
 pears, apples, and peaches by no means to be 
 despised, such people and their families do in 
 America get in plenty. 
 
 Well, now, what would a philosopher or a 
 philanthropist say in this case ? which would he 
 
1 66 Civilization in the United States. 
 
 say was the more civilized condition — that of 
 the country where the balance of advantage, as 
 to the comforts and conveniences of life, is 
 greatly in favor of the people with incomes be- 
 low three hundred a year, or that of the country 
 where it is greatly in favor of those with incomes 
 above that sum ? 
 
 Many people will be ready to give an answer 
 to that question without the smallest hesitation. 
 They will say that they are, and that all of us 
 ought to be, for the greatest happiness of the 
 greatest number. However, the question is not 
 one which I feel bound now to discuss and 
 answer. Of course, if happiness and civilization 
 consists in being plentifully supplied with the 
 comforts and conveniences of life, the question 
 presents little difficulty. But I believe neither 
 that happiness consists, merely or mainly, in 
 being plentifully supplied with the comforts and 
 conveniences of life, nor that civilization consists 
 in being so supplied ; therefore, I leave the ques- 
 tion unanswered. 
 
 I prefer to seek for some other and better 
 tests by which to try the civilization of the 
 United States. I have often insisted on the 
 need of more equality in our own country, and 
 on the mischiefs caused by inequality over here. 
 In the United States there is not our intense 
 
Civilization in the United States. 167 
 
 division of classes, our inequality ; there is great 
 equality. Let me mention two points in the 
 system of social life and manners over there in 
 which this equality seems to me to have done 
 good. The first is a mere point of form, but it 
 has its significance. Every one knows it is the 
 established habit with us in England, if we write 
 to people supposed to belong to the class of 
 gentlemen, of addressing them by the title of 
 Esquire, while we keep Mr. for people not sup- 
 posed to belong to that clsss. If we think of it, 
 could one easily find a habit more ridiculous, 
 more offensive ? The title of Esquire, like most 
 of our titles, comes out of the great frippery 
 shop of the Middle Age ; it is alien to the sound 
 taste and manner of antiquity, when men said 
 Pericles and Camillas. But unlike other titles, 
 it is applied or withheld quite arbitrarily. 
 Surely, where a man has no specific title proper 
 to him, the one plain title of Master or Mr. is 
 enough, and we need not be encumbered with a 
 second title of Esquire, now quite unmeaning, 
 to draw an invidious and impossible line of dis- 
 tinction between those who are gentlemen and 
 those who are not ; as if we actually wished to 
 provide a source of embarrassment for the 
 sender of a letter, and of mortification for the 
 receiver of it. 
 
1 68 Civilization in the United States, 
 
 The French, those great authorities in social 
 life and manners, find Mr, enough, and the 
 Americans are more and more, I am glad to say, 
 following the French example. I only hope 
 they will persevere, and not be seduced by Es- 
 quire being " so English, you know." And I do 
 hope, moreover, that we shall one day take the 
 same course and drop our absurd Esquire, 
 
 The other point goes deeper. Much may be 
 said against the voices and intonation of Ameri- 
 can women. But almost every one acknowl- 
 edges that there is a charm in American women 
 — a charm which you find in almost all of them, 
 wherever you go. It is the charm of a natural 
 manner, a manner not self-conscious, artificial 
 and constrained. It may not be a beautiful 
 manner always, but it is almost always a natural 
 manner, a free and happy manner ; and this 
 gives pleasure. Here we have, undoubtedly, a 
 note of civilization, and an evidence, at the same 
 time, of the good effect of equality upon social 
 life and manners. I have often heard it ob- 
 served that a perfectly natural manner is as rare 
 among Englishwomen of the middle classes as 
 it is general among American women of like 
 condition with them. And so far as the observ- 
 ation is true, the reason of its truth no doubt is, 
 that the Englishwoman is living in presence of 
 
Civilization in the United States. 169 
 
 an upper class, as it is called — in presence, 
 that is, of a class of women recognized as being 
 the right thing in style and manner, and whom 
 she imagines criticising her style and manner, 
 finding this or that to be amiss with it, this or 
 that to be vulgar. Hence, self-consciousness and 
 constraint in her. The American woman lives 
 in presence of no such class ; there may be cir- 
 cles trying to pass themselves off as such a class, 
 giving themselves airs as such, but they com- 
 mand no recognition, no authority. The Amer- 
 ican woman in general is perfectly unconcerned 
 about their opinion, is herself, enjoys her exist- 
 ence, and has, consequently, a manner happy and 
 natural. It is her great charm ; and it is more- 
 over, as I have said, a real note of civilization, 
 and one which has to be reckoned to the credit 
 of American life, and of its equality. 
 
 But we must get nearer still to the heart of 
 the question raised as to the character and worth 
 of American civilization. I have said how much 
 the word civilization really means — the human- 
 ization of man in society ; his making progress 
 there towards his true and full humanity. Par- 
 tial and material achievement is always being 
 put forward as civilization. We hear a nation 
 called highly civilized by reason of its industry, 
 commerce, and wealth, or by reason of its liberty 
 
I/O Civilization in the United States. 
 
 or equality, or by reason of its numerous 
 churches, schools, libraries, and newspapers. 
 But there is something in human nature, some 
 instinct of growth, some law of perfection, 
 which rebels against this narrow account of the 
 matter. And perhaps what human nature 
 demands in civilization, over and above all those 
 obvious things which first occur to our thoughts, 
 
 — what human nature, I say, demands in civiliz- 
 ation, if it is to stand as a high and satisfying 
 civilization, is best described by the word inter- 
 esting. Here is the extraordinary charm of the 
 old Greek civilization : that it is so interesting. 
 Do not tell me only, says human nature, of the 
 magnitude of your industry and commerce ; of 
 the beneficence of your institutions, your free- 
 dom, your equality; of the great and growing 
 number of your churches and schools, libraries 
 and newpapers ; tell me also if your civilization 
 
 — which is the grand name you give to all this 
 development — tell me if your civilization is 
 interesting. 
 
 An American friend of mine, Professor Nor- 
 ton, has lately published the early letters of 
 Carlyle. If any one wants a good antidote to 
 the unpleasant effect left by Mr. Froude's " Life 
 of Carlyle," let him read those letters. Not 
 only of Carlyle will those letters make him 
 
Civilization in the United States. iji 
 
 think kindly, but they will also fill him with 
 admiring esteem for the qualities, character, and 
 family life, as there delineated, of the Scottish 
 peasant. Well, the Carlyle family were numer- 
 ous, poor, and struggling. Thomas Carlyle, the 
 eldest son, a young man in wretched health and 
 worse spirits, was fighting his way in Edinburgh. 
 One of his younger brothers talked of emi- 
 grating. ''The very best thing he could do!" 
 we should all say. Carlyle dissuades him. 
 "You shall never," he writes, "you shall never 
 seriously meditate crossing the great Salt Pool 
 to plant yourself in the Yankee-land. That is 
 a miserable fate for any one, at best ; never 
 dream of it. Could you banish yourself from 
 all that is interesting to your mind, forget the 
 history, the glorious institutions, the noble prin- 
 ciples of old Scotland — that you might eat a 
 better dinner, perhaps ? " 
 
 There is our word launched — the word inter- 
 esting. I am not saying that Carlyle's advice 
 was good, or that young men should not emi- 
 grate. I do but take note, in the word interest- 
 ing, of a requirement, a cry of aspiration, a cry 
 not sounding in the imaginative Carlyle's own 
 breast only, but sure of a response in his 
 brother's breast also, and in human nature. 
 
 Amiel, that contemplative Swiss whose jour- 
 
172 Civilization in the United States. 
 
 nals the world has been reading lately, tells us 
 that " the human heart is, as it were, haunted 
 by confused reminiscences of an age of gold ; 
 or, rather, by aspirations towards a harmony of 
 things which every day reality denies to us." 
 He says that the splendor and refinement of 
 high life is an attempt by the rich and culti- 
 vated classes to realize this ideal, and is "a 
 form of poetry." And the interest which this 
 attempt awakens in the classes which are not 
 rich or cultivated, their indestructible interest 
 in the pageant and fairy tale, as to them it 
 appears, of the life in castles and palaces, the 
 life of the great, bears witness to a like imagi- 
 native strain in them also, a strain tending after 
 the elevated and the beautiful. In short, what 
 Goethe describes as "was uns alle bandigt, das 
 Gemeine — that which holds us all in bondage, 
 the common and ignoble," is, notwithstanding 
 its admitted prevalence, contrary to a deep- 
 seated instinct of human nature, and repelled 
 by it. Of civilization, which is to humanize us 
 in society, we demand, before we will consent 
 to be satisfied with it — we demand, however 
 much else it may give us, that it shall give us, 
 too, the i?ite7'esti?ig. 
 
 Now, the great sources of the interesting are 
 distinction and beauty : that which is elevated, 
 
Civilization in the United States. 173 
 
 and that which is beautiful. Let us take the 
 beautiful first, and consider how far it is present 
 in American civilization. Evidently, this is that 
 civilization's weak side. There is little to nour- 
 ish and delight the sense of beauty there. In 
 the long-settled states east of the Alleghanies 
 the landscape in general is not interesting, the 
 climate harsh and in extremes. The Americans 
 are restless, eager to better themselves and to 
 make fortunes ; the inhabitant does not strike 
 his roots lovingly down into the soil, as in rural 
 England. In the valley of the Connecticut you 
 will find farm after farm which the Yankee set- 
 tler has abandoned in order to go West, leaving 
 the farm to some new Irish immigrant. The 
 charm of beauty which comes from ancientness 
 and permanence of rural life the country could 
 not yet have in a high degree, but it has it in 
 an even less degree than might be expected. 
 Then the Americans come originally, for the 
 most part, from that great class in English 
 society amongst whom the sense for conduct 
 and business is much more strongly developed 
 than the sense for beauty. If we in England 
 were without the cathedrals, parish churches, 
 and castles of the catholic and feudal age, and 
 without the houses of the Elizabethan age, but 
 had only the towns and buildings which the rise 
 
174 Civilization in the United States. 
 
 of our middle class has created in the modern 
 age, we should be in much the same case as the 
 Americans. We should be living with much 
 the same absence of training for the sense of 
 beauty through the eye, from the aspect of out- 
 ward things. The American cities have hardly 
 anything to please a trained or a natural sense 
 for beauty. They have buildings which cost a 
 great deal of money and produce a certain effect 
 — buildings, shall I say, such as our Midland 
 Station at St. Pancras ; but nothing such as 
 Somerset House or Whitehall. One architect 
 of genius they had — Richardson. I had the 
 pleasure to know him : he is dead, alas ! Much 
 of his work was injured by the conditions under 
 which he was obliged to execute it ; I can recall 
 but one building, and that of no great import- 
 ance, where he seems to have had his own way, 
 to be fully himself ; but that is indeed excellent. 
 In general, where the Americans succeed best 
 in their architecture — in that art so indicative 
 and educative of a people's sense for beauty — 
 is in the fashion of their villa-cottages in wood. 
 These are often original and at the same time 
 very pleasing, but they are pretty and coquet- 
 tish, not beautiful. Of the really beautiful in 
 the other arts, and in literature, very little has 
 been produced there as yet. I asked a German 
 
Civilization in the United States. 175 
 
 portrait-painter, whom I found painting and 
 prospering in America, how he liked the coun- 
 try. " How can an artist like it ? " was his 
 answer. The American artists live chiefly in 
 Europe ; all Americans of cultivation and wealth 
 visit Europe more and more constantly. The 
 mere nomenclature of the country acts upon a 
 cultivated person like the incessant pricking of 
 pins. What people in whom the sense for 
 beauty and fitness was quick could have in- 
 vented, or could tolerate, the hideous names 
 ending in ville, the Briggsvilles, Higginsvilles, 
 Jacksonvilles, rife from Maine to Florida ; the 
 jumble of unnatural and inappropriate names 
 everywhere ? On the line from Albany to 
 Buffalo you have, in one part, half the names in 
 the classical dictionary to designate the stations ; 
 it is said that the folly is due to a surveyor 
 who, when the country was laid out, happened 
 to possess a classical dictionary ; but a people 
 with any artist-sense would have put down that 
 surveyor. The Americans meekly retain his 
 names ; and, indeed, his strange Marcellus or 
 Syracuse is perhaps not much worse than their 
 congenital Briggsville. 
 
 So much as to beauty, and as to the provision, 
 in the United States, for the sense of beauty. 
 As to distinction, and the interest which human 
 
176 Civilization in the United States. 
 
 nature seeks from enjoying the effect made up- 
 on it by what is elevated, the case is much the 
 same. There is very little to create such an 
 effect, very much to thwart it. Goethe says 
 somewhere that " the thrill of awe is the best 
 thing humanity has " : — ■ 
 
 Das Schaudern ist der Menschheit bestes Theil. 
 
 But, if there be a discipline in which the Amer- 
 icans are wanting, it is the discipline of awe and 
 respect. An austere and intense religion im- 
 posed on their Puritan founders the discipline of 
 respect, and so provided for them the thrill of 
 awe ; but this religion is dying out. The 
 Americans have produced plenty of men strong, 
 shrewd, upright, able, effective ; very few who 
 are highly distinguished. Alexander Hamilton 
 is indeed a man of rare distinction ; Washing- 
 ton, though he has not the high mental distinc- 
 tion of Pericles or Caesar, has true distinction 
 of style and character. But these men belong 
 to the pre-American age. Lincoln's recent 
 American biographers declare that Washington 
 is but an Englishman, an English officer ; the 
 typical American, they say, is Abraham Lin- 
 coln. Now Lincoln is shrewd, sagacious, hu- 
 morous, honest, courageous, firm ; he is a man 
 
Civilization in the United States. 177 
 
 with qualities deserving the most sincere es- 
 teem and praise, but he has not distinction. 
 
 In truth, everything is against distinction in 
 America, and against the sense of elevation to 
 be gained through admiring and respecting it. 
 The glorification of "the average man," who is 
 quite a religion with statesmen and publicists 
 there, is against it. The addiction to "the 
 funny man," who is a national misfortune there, 
 is against it. Above all, the newspapers are 
 against it. 
 
 It is often said that every nation has the gov- 
 ernment it deserves. What is much more cer- 
 tain is that every nation has the newspapers it 
 deserves. The newspaper is the direct product 
 of the want felt ; the supply answers closely and 
 inevitably to the demand. I suppose no one 
 knows what the American newspapers are, who 
 has not been obliged, for some length of time, 
 to read either those newspapers or none at all. 
 Powerful and valuable contributions occur scat- 
 tered about in them. But on the whole, and 
 taking the total impression and effect made by 
 them, I should say that if one were searching 
 for the best means to efface and kill in a whole 
 nation the discipline of respect, the feeling for 
 what is elevated, one could not do better than 
 take the American newspapers. The absence 
 
i/8 Civilization in the United States. 
 
 of truth and soberness in them, the poverty in 
 serious interest, the personality and sensation- 
 mongering, are beyond belief. There are a 
 few newspapers which are in whole, or in part, 
 exceptions. The New York Nation, a weekly 
 paper, may be paralleled with the Saturday 
 Review as it was in its old and good days ; but 
 the New York Nation is conducted by a for- 
 eigner, and has an extremely small sale. In 
 general, the daily papers are such that when one 
 returns home one is moved to admiration and 
 thankfulness not only at the great London pa- 
 pers, like the Times or the Standard, but quite 
 as much at the great provincial newspapers, too, 
 — papers like the Leeds Mercury and the York- 
 shire Post in the north of England, like the 
 Scotsman and the Glasgow Herald in Scotland. 
 The Americans used to say to me that what 
 they valued was news, and that this their newspa- 
 pers gave them. I at last made the reply: " Yes, 
 news for the servants' hall ! " I remember that 
 a New York newspaper, one of the first I saw 
 after landing in the country, had a long account, 
 with the prominence we should give to the ill- 
 ness of the German Emperor or the arrest of 
 the Lord Mayor of Dublin, of a young woman 
 who had married a man who was a bag of bones, 
 as we say, and who used to exhibit himself as a 
 
Civilization in the United States. 179 
 
 skeleton ; of her growing horror in living with 
 this man, and finally of her death. All this in 
 the most minute detail, and described with all 
 the writer's powers of rhetoric. This has al- 
 ways remained by me as a specimen of what the 
 Americans call news. 
 
 You must have lived amongst their news- 
 papers to know what they are. If I relate some 
 of my own experiences, it is because these will 
 give a clear enough notion of what the news- 
 papers over there are, and one remembers more 
 definitely what has happened to oneself. Soon 
 after arriving in Boston, I opened a Boston 
 newspaper and came upon a column headed : 
 " Tickings." By tickings we are to understand 
 news conveyed through the tickings of the tele- 
 graph. The first " ticking" was: "Matthew 
 Arnold is sixty-two years old " — an age, I must 
 just say in passing, which I had not then 
 reached. The second " ticking " was : " Wales 
 says, Mary is a darling " ; the meaning being that 
 the Prince of Wales expressed great admiration 
 for Miss Mary Anderson. This was at Boston, 
 the American Athens. I proceeded to Chicago. 
 An evening paper was given me soon after 
 I arrived ; I opened it, and found under a 
 large-type heading, " We have seen him ar- 
 rive" the following picture of myself : " He 
 
J 
 
 1 80 Civilization in the United States. 
 
 has harsh features, supercilious manners, parts 
 his hair down the middle, wears a single eye- 
 glass and ill-fitting clothes." Notwithstanding 
 this rather unfavorable introduction, I was most 
 kindly and hospitably received at Chicago. It 
 happened that I had a letter for Mr. Medill, an 
 elderly gentleman of Scotch descent, the editor 
 of the chief newspaper in those parts, the Chi- 
 cago Tribime. I called on him, and we con- 
 versed amicably together. Some time after- 
 wards, when I had gone back to England, a 
 New York paper published a criticism of Chi- 
 cago and its people, purporting to have been 
 contributed by me to the Pall Mall Gazette 
 over here. It was a poor hoax, but many peo- 
 ple were taken in and were excusably angry. 
 Mr, Medill of the Chicago Tribune amongst the 
 number. A friend telegraphed to me to know 
 if I had written the criticism. I, of course, in- 
 stantly telegraphed back that I had not written 
 a syllable of it. Then a Chicago paper is sent 
 to me ; and what I have the pleasure of reading, 
 as the result of my contradiction, is this : " Ar- 
 nold denies ; Mr. Medill [my old friend] refuses 
 to accept Arnold's disclaimer ; says Arnold is a 
 cur." 
 
 I once declared that in England the born 
 lover of ideas and of light could not but feel 
 
Civilization in the United States. 181 
 
 that the sky over his head is of brass and iron. 
 And so I say that, in America, he who craves 
 for the interesting in civilization, he who re- 
 quires from what surrounds him satisfaction for 
 his sense of beauty, his sense for elevation, will 
 feel the sky over his head to be of brass and 
 iron. The human problem, then, is as yet 
 solved in the United States most imperfectly ; 
 a great void exists in the civilization over there ; 
 a want of what is elevated and beautiful, of 
 what is interesting. 
 
 The want is grave ; it was probably, though 
 he does not exactly bring it out, influencing Sir 
 Lepel Griffin's feelings when he said that Amer- 
 ica is one of the last countries in which one 
 would like to live. The want is such as to 
 make any educated man feel that many coun- 
 tries, much less free and prosperous than the 
 United States, are yet more truly civilized ; 
 have more which is interesting, have more to 
 say to the soul ; are countries, therefore, in 
 which one would rather live. 
 
 The want is graver because it is so little rec- 
 ognized by the mass of Americans ; nay, so 
 loudly denied by them. If the community over 
 there perceived the want and regretted it, sought 
 for the right ways of remedying it, and resolved 
 that remedied it should be ; if they said, or 
 
1 82 Civilization in the United States. 
 
 even if a number of leading spirits amongst 
 them said : " Yes, we see what is wanting to 
 our civilization, we see that the average man is 
 a danger, we see that our newspapers are a 
 scandal, that bondage to the common and igno- 
 ble is our snare ; but under the circumstances 
 our civilization could not well have been ex- 
 pected to begin differently. What you see are 
 begi?tnings, they are crude, they are too pre- 
 dominantly material, they omit much, leave 
 much to be desired — but they could not have 
 been otherwise, they have been inevitable, and 
 we will rise above them " ; if the Americans 
 frankly said this, one would have not a word to 
 bring against it. One would then insist on no 
 shortcoming, one would accept their admission 
 that the human problem is at present quite in- 
 sufficiently solved by them, and would press the 
 matter no further. One would congratulate 
 them on having solved the political problem 
 and the social problem so successfully, and only 
 remark, as I have said already, that in seeing 
 clear and thinking straight on our political and 
 social questions, we have great need to follow 
 the example they set us on theirs. 
 
 But now the Americans seem, in certain mat- 
 ters, to have agreed, as a people, to deceive 
 themselves, to persuade themselves that they 
 
Civilization in the United States. 183 
 
 have what they have not, to cover the defects 
 in their civilization by boasting, to fancy that 
 they well and truly solve, not only the political 
 and social problem, but the human problem too. 
 One would say that they do really hope to find 
 in tall talk and inflated sentiment a substitute 
 for that real sense of elevation which human 
 nature, as I have said, instinctively craves — 
 and a substitute which may do as well as the 
 genuine article. The thrill of awe, which Goethe 
 pronounces to be the best thing humanity has, 
 they would fain create by proclaiming them- 
 selves at the top of their voices to be "the 
 greatest nation upon earth," by assuring one 
 another, in the language of their national his- 
 torian, that "American democracy proceeds in 
 its ascent as uniformly and majestically as the 
 laws of being, and is as certain as the decrees 
 of eternity." 
 
 Or, again, far from admitting that their news- 
 papers are a scandal, they assure one another 
 that their newspaper press is one of their most 
 signal distinctions. Far from admitting that in 
 literature they have as yet produced little that 
 is important, they play at treating American 
 literature as if it were a great independent 
 power ; they reform the spelling of the English 
 language by the insight of their average man. 
 
184 Civilization in the United States. 
 
 For every English writer they have an American 
 writer to match ; and him good Americans read. 
 The Western States are at this moment being 
 nourished and formed, we hear, on the novels 
 of a native author called Roe, instead of those 
 of Scott and Dickens. Far from admitting that 
 their average man is a danger, and that his pre- 
 dominance has brought about a plentiful lack of 
 refinement, distinction, and beauty, they declare 
 in the words of my friend Colonel Higginson, a 
 prominent critic at Boston, that " Nature said, 
 some years since: 'Thus far the English is my 
 best race, but we have had Englishmen enough ; 
 put in one drop more of nervous fluid and make 
 the American.' " And with that drop a new 
 range of promise opened on the human race, 
 and a lighter, finer, more highly organized type 
 of mankind was born. Far from admitting that 
 the American accent, as the pressure of their 
 climate and of their average man has made it, 
 is a thing to be striven against, they assure one 
 another that it is the right accent, the standard 
 English speech of the future. It reminds me 
 of a thing in Smollet's dinner-party of authors. 
 Seated by "the philosopher who is writing a 
 most orthodox refutation of Bolingbroke, but in 
 the meantime has just been presented to the 
 Grand Jury as a public nuisance for having 
 
Civilization in the United States. 185 
 
 blasphemed in an alehouse on the Lord's day " 
 — seated by this philosopher is "the Scotch- 
 man who is giving lectures on the pronunciation 
 of the English language." 
 
 The worst of it is, that all this tall talk and 
 self-glorification meets with hardly any rebuke 
 from sane criticism over there. I will mention, 
 in regard to this, a thing which struck me a 
 good deal. A Scotchman who has made a 
 great fortune at Pittsburg, a kind friend of 
 mine, one of the most hospitable and gener- 
 ous of men, Mr. Andrew Carnegie, published 
 a year or two ago a book called " Triumphant 
 Democracy," a most splendid picture of Ameri- 
 can progress. The book is full of valuable 
 information, but religious people thought that 
 it insisted too much on mere material progress, 
 and did not enough set forth America's defi- 
 ciencies and dangers. And a friendly clergy- 
 man in Massachusetts, telling me how he re- 
 gretted this, and how apt the Americans are 
 to shut their eyes to their own dangers, put 
 into my hands a volume written by a leading 
 minister among the Congregationalists, a very 
 prominent man, which he said supplied a good 
 antidote to my friend Mr. Carnegie's book. 
 The volume is entitled " Our Country." I read 
 it through. The author finds in evangelical 
 
1 86 Civilization in the United States. 
 
 Protestanism, as the orthodox Protestant sects 
 present it, the grand remedy for the deficiencies 
 and dangers of America. On this I offer no 
 criticism ; what struck me, and that on which 
 I wish to lay stress, is, the writer's entire fail- 
 ure to perceive that such self-glorification and 
 self-deception as I have been mentioning is one 
 of America's dangers, or even that it is self-de- 
 ception at all. He himself shares in all the 
 self-deception of the average man among his 
 countrymen ; he flatters it. In the very points 
 where a serious critic would find the Americans 
 most wanting he finds them superior ; only they 
 require to have a good dose of evangelical Prot- 
 estantism still added. " Ours is the elect na- 
 tion," preaches this reformer of American 
 faults — " ours is the elect nation for the age 
 to come. We are the chosen people." Al- 
 ready, says he, we are taller and heavier than 
 other men, longer lived than other men, richer 
 and more energetic than other men, above all, 
 "of finer nervous organization" than other men. 
 Yes, this people, who endure to have the Ameri- 
 can newspaper for their daily reading, and to 
 have their habitation in Briggsville, Jacksonville, 
 and Marcellus — this people is of finer, more deli- 
 cate nervous organization than other nations ! It 
 is Colonel Higginson's " drop more of nervous 
 
Civilization in the United States. 187 
 
 fluid," over again. This " drop " plays a stupen- 
 dous part in the American rhapsody of self-praise. 
 Undoubtedly the Americans are highly nervous, 
 both the men and the women. A great Paris 
 physician says that he notes a distinct new 
 form of nervous disease, produced in American 
 women by worry about servants. But this ner- 
 vousness, developed in the race out there by 
 worry, overwork, want of exercise, injudicious 
 diet, and a most trying climate — this morbid 
 nervousness, our friends ticket as the fine sus- 
 ceptibility of genius, and cite it as a proof of 
 their distinction, of their superior capacity for 
 civilization ! " The roots of civilization are the 
 nerves," says our Congregationalist instructor, 
 again ; " and, other things being equal, the 
 finest nervous organization will produce the 
 highest civilization. Now, the finest nervous 
 organization is ours." 
 
 The new West promises to beat in the game 
 of brag even the stout champions I have been 
 quoting. Those belong to the old Eastern 
 States ; and the other day there was sent to 
 me a Californian newspaper which calls all the 
 Easterners " the unhappy denizens of a forbid- 
 ding clime," and adds : " The time wili surely 
 come when all roads will lead to California. 
 Here will be the home of art, science, litera- 
 ture, and profound knowledge." 
 
1 88 Civilization in the United States. 
 
 Common-sense criticism, I repeat, of all this 
 hollow stuff there is in America next to none. 
 There are plenty of cultivated, judicious, de- 
 lightful individuals there. They are our hope 
 and America's hope ; it is through their means 
 that improvement must come. They know per- 
 fectly well how false and hollow the boastful 
 stuff talked is ; but they let the storm of self- 
 laudation rage, and say nothing. For political 
 opponents and their doings there are in America 
 hard words to be heard in abundance ; for the 
 real faults in American civilization, and for the 
 foolish boasting which prolongs them, there is 
 hardly a word of regret or blame, at least in 
 public. Even in private, many of the most cul- 
 tivated Americans shrink from the subject, are 
 irritable and thin-skinned when it is canvassed. 
 Public treatment of it, in a cool and sane spirit 
 of criticism, there is none. I vain I might 
 plead that I had set a good example of frank- 
 ness, in confessing over here, that, so far from 
 solving our problems successfully, we in Eng- 
 land find ourselves with an upper class materi- 
 alized, a middle class vulgarized, and a lower 
 class brutalized. But it seems that nothing 
 will embolden an American critic to say firmly 
 and aloud to his countrymen and to his news- 
 papers, that in America they do not solve the 
 
Civilization in tJie United States. 189 
 
 human problem successfully, and that with their 
 present methods they never can. Consequently, 
 the masses of the American people do really 
 come to believe all they hear about their finer 
 nervous organization, and the rightness of the 
 American accent, and the importance of Amer- 
 ican literature ; that is to say, they see things 
 not as they are, but as they would like them to 
 be ; they deceive themselves totally. And by 
 such self-deception they shut against them- 
 selves the door to improvement, and do their 
 best to make the reign of das Gemeine eternal. 
 In what concerns the solving of the political 
 and social problem they see clear and think 
 straight ; in what concerns the higher civiliza- 
 tion they live in a fools' paradise. This it is 
 which makes a famous French critic speak of 
 " the hard unintelligence of the people of the 
 United States " — la dure inintelligence des 
 Americains du Nord—oi the very people who 
 in general pass for being specially intelligent ; 
 and so, within certain limits, they are. But 
 they have been so plied with nonsense and 
 boasting that outside those limits, and where it 
 is a question of things in which their civilization 
 is weak, they seem, very many of them, as if in 
 such things they had no power of perception 
 whatever, no idea of a proper scale, no sense of 
 
190 Civilization in the United States. 
 
 the difference between good and bad. And at 
 this rate they can never, after solving the polit- 
 ical and social problem with success, go on to 
 solve happily the human problem too, and thus 
 at last to make their civilization full and inter- 
 esting. 
 
 To sum up, then. What really dissatisfies in 
 American civilization is the want of the inter- 
 esting, a want due chiefly to the want of those 
 two great elements of the interesting, which 
 are elevation and beauty. And the want of 
 these elements is increased and prolonged by 
 the Americans being assured that they have 
 them when they have them not. And it seems 
 to me that what the Americans now most 
 urgently require, is not so much a vast addi- 
 tional development of orthodox Protestantism, 
 but rather a steady exhibition of cool and sane 
 criticism by their men of light and leading over 
 there. And perhaps the very first step of such 
 men should be to insist on having for America, 
 and to create if need be, better newspapers. 
 
 To us, too, the future of the United States is 
 of incalculable importance. Already we feel 
 their influence much, and we shall feel it more. 
 We have a good deal to learn from them ; we 
 shall find in them, also, many things to beware 
 of, many points in which it is to be hoped our 
 
Civilization in the United States. 191 
 
 democracy may not be like theirs. As our 
 country becomes more democratic, the malady 
 here may no longer be that we have an upper 
 class materialized, a middle class vulgarized, 
 and a lower class brutalized. But the predomi- 
 nance of the common and ignoble, born of the 
 predominance of the average man, is a malady 
 too. That the common and ignoble is human 
 nature's enemy, that, of true human nature, 
 distinction and beauty are needs, that a civiliza- 
 tion is insufficient where these needs are not 
 satisfied, faulty where they are thwarted, is an 
 instruction of which we, as well as the Ameri- 
 cans, may greatly require to take fast hold, and 
 not to let go. We may greatly require to keep, 
 as if it were our life, the doctrine that we are 
 failures after all, if we cannot eschew vain 
 boasting and vain imaginations, — eschew what 
 flatters in us the common and ignoble, and 
 approve things that are truly excellent. 
 
 I have mentioned evangelical Protestantism. 
 There is a text which evangelical Protestantism 
 — and, for that matter, Catholicism too — trans- 
 lates wrong and takes in a sense too narrow. 
 The text is that well-known one, " except a 
 man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom 
 of God." Instead of again, we ought to trans- 
 late from above ; and instead of taking the 
 
192 Civilization in the United States, 
 
 kingdom of God in the sense of a life in Heaven 
 above, we ought to take it, as its speaker meant 
 it, in the sense of the reign of saints, a reno- 
 vated and perfected human society on earth, — 
 the ideal society of the future. In the life of 
 such a society, in the life from above> the life 
 born of inspiration or the spirit — in that life 
 elevation and beauty are not everything ; but 
 they are much, and they are indispensable. 
 Humanity cannot reach its ideal while it lacks 
 them, " Except a man be born from above y he 
 cannot have part in the society of the future." 
 
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