LETTER IV

FOOTNOTES:

[C]

One method of advertisement which I observed in Chicago has not yet, so far as I know, been introduced into England. One of the windows of a vast dry-goods store on State Street was fitted up as a dentists parlour; and when I passed a young lady was reclining in the operating-chair and having her teeth stopped, to the no small delectation of a little crowd which blocked the side-walk.

Absence of Red Tape—"Rapid Transit" in New York—The Problem and its Solution—The Whirl of Life—New York by Night—The "White Magic" of the Future.

NEW YORK.

Whatever turn her fiscal policy may take in the future, I hope America will keep an absolutely prohibitive duty upon the import of red tape, while at the same time discouraging the home manufacture of the article. The absence of red tape is, to me, one of the charms of life in this country. One gathers, indeed, that the art of running a Circumlocution Office is carried to a high pitch in the political sphere. But there it is exercised with a definite object; it is a means to an end, cunningly devised and skillfully applied; it is not a mere matter of instinct, inertia, and routine. The Tite Barnacles of Dickens's satire were perfectly honest people according to their lights. They were sincerely convinced that the British Empire would crumble to pieces the moment its ligaments of red tape were in the slightest degree relaxed. Their strength lay in the fact that they represented an innate tendency in the nation, or at any rate in the dominant class at the period of which Dickens wrote. In America there is no such innate tendency. The Tite Barnacles do not imagine or pretend that they are saving the Republic; they simply make use of a convenient political machinery to serve their private ends. Therefore their position, however strong it may seem for the moment, is insecurely founded. It rests upon no moral basis, it finds no stronghold in the national character. Outsiders may think the average American citizen strangely tolerant of abuses, and indeed I find him smiling with placid amusement at things which, were I in his place, would make my blood boil. But he is under no illusion as to the real nature of these things. An abuse remains an abuse in his eyes, though he may not for the moment see his way to rectifying it. The red tape which is used to embarrass justice or "tie up" reform commands no reverence even from the party that employs it. Cynicism may endure for the night, but indignation ariseth in the morning.

The American character, in a word, does not naturally run to red tape. Observe, for instance, the system of transit in New York: it is admirably successful in grappling with a very difficult problem, and its success proceeds from the absence of by-laws and restrictions, the omnipresence of good-nature and common-sense. The problem is rendered difficult, not only by the enormous numbers to be conveyed, but by the stocking-like configuration of Manhattan Island. The business quarter of New York is in the foot, the residential quarters in the calf and knee. Therefore there is a great rush of people down to the foot in the morning and up to the knee in the afternoon. The business quarter of London is like the hub of a wheel, from which the railway and omnibus lines radiate like spokes. In New York there is very little radiation or dispersion of the multitude. Practically the whole tide sets down a narrow channel in the morning, and up again in the evening. At the time, then, of these tidal waves, it is a flat impossibility that transit can be altogether comfortable. The "elevated" trains and electric trolleys are overcrowded, certainly; but you can always find a place in them, and they carry you so rapidly that the discomfort is rendered as little irksome as possible. A society has been formed, I see, to agitate against this overcrowding; but it seems to me it will only waste its pains. Let it agitate for an underground railway, by all means; and if, as I gather, the underground railway scheme is obstructed by self-seeking vested interests, let it do its best to break down the obstruction. Until some altogether new means of transport are provided, the attempt to restrict the number of passengers which a car or trolley may carry is, I think, antisocial, and must prove futile. The force of public convenience would break the red-tape barrier like a cobweb. The trains and trolleys follow each other at the very briefest intervals; it does not seem possible that a greater number should be run on the existing lines; and, that being so, there is no alternative between overcrowding and the far greater inconvenience of indefinite delay. Fancy having to "take a number," as they do in Paris, and await your turn for a seat! New York would be simply paralysed. It is needless to point out, of course, that where steam or electricity is the motive power there is no cruelty to animals in overcrowding.

The American people, rightly and admirably as it seems to me, choose the lesser of two evils, and minimise it by good temper and mutual civility. At a certain hour of every morning, the "L" railroad trains are as densely packed as our Metropolitan trains on Boat-Race Day. There are people clinging in clusters to each of the straps, and even the platforms between the cars are crowded to the very couplings. It often appears hopelessly impossible for any new-comer to squeeze in, or for those who are wedged in the middle of a long car to force their way out. Yet when the necessity arises, no force has to be applied. People manage somehow or other to "welcome the coming, speed the parting guest." Every one recognises that cantankerous obstructiveness would only make matters worse, nay, absolutely intolerable. The first comer makes no attempt to insist upon his position of advantage, because he knows that to-morrow he may be the last comer. The sense of individual inconvenience is swamped in the sense of general convenience. People laugh and rather enjoy the joke when a too sudden start or an abrupt curve sends a whole group of them cannoning up against one another. It must be remembered that the transit is rapid, so that there is no irritating sense of wasted time: and that the cars are brilliantly lighted, and, on the whole, well ventilated, so that there is no fog, smoke, or sulphurous air to get on the nerves and strain the temper. The scene as a whole, even on a wet, disagreeable evening, is not depressing, but rather cheerful. For my part, I regard it with positive pleasure, as a manifestation of the national character. Less admirable, to be sure, is the public acquiescence in the political manoeuvring, which blocks the proposed underground railway. Yet the opponents of the scheme have doubtless something to say on their side. It appears, at any rate, that the profits of the "L" road are not exorbitant. It is said to be only through overcrowding that it pays at all. The passengers it seats barely suffice to cover expenses, and "the profits hang on to the straps."

Idealists hope that when the underground comes, the elevated will go; but I, as an outsider, cannot share his hope. In the first place, I don't see how the mere substitution of one line for another is to relieve the congestion of traffic; in the second place, the elevated seems to me an admirable institution, which it would be a great pity to abolish. Even æsthetically there is much to be said for it. The road, itself, to be sure, does not add to the beauty of the avenues along which it runs, but it is not by any means the eyesore one might imagine; and the trains, with their light, graceful, and elegantly-proportioned cars, so different from our squat and formless railway carriages, seem to me a positively beautiful feature of the city life. They are not very noisy, they are not very smoky, and they will be smokeless and almost noiseless when they are run by electricity. The discomfort they cause, to dwellers on the avenues is, I am sure, greatly exaggerated. People who do not live on the avenues suffer in their sympathetic imagination much more than the actual martyrs to the "L" road suffer in fact. Imagination makes cowards of us all. For my part, I endured agonies from the rush, whirl and clatter of New York before I left London; but here I find nothing that, to healthy nerves, is not rather enjoyable than otherwise. Neither up town nor down town is the traffic so dense, the roar and bustle so continuous, as that of London; while the service of trains and cars is so excellent and so simply arranged that it costs much less thought, effort, and worry to "get about" in Manhattan than in Middlesex. In saying this I may perhaps offend American susceptibilities. There is nothing we moderns are more apt to brag of than the nervous overstrain of our life. But sincerity comes before courtesy, and I must gently but firmly decline to allow New York a monopoly of neurasthenia, or of the conditions that produce it.

One great difference is, I take it, that while New York exhausts it also stimulates, whereas the days of the year when there is any positive stimulus in the air of London may be counted on the ten fingers. Muggy and misty days do occur here, it is true; but though the natives tell me that this month of March has been exceptionally unpleasant, the prevailing impression I have received is that of a lofty and radiant vault of sky, with keen, sweet, limpid air that one drank in eagerly, like sparkling wine. More than once, after a slight snowfall, I have seen the air full of dancing particles of light, like the gold leaf in Dantzic brandy. One of the most impressive things I ever saw, though I did not then realise its tragic significance, was the huge column of smoke that rose into the clear blue air from the Windsor Hotel fire. I happened to come out on Fifth Avenue, close to the Manhattan Club, just as the tail of the St. Patrick's Day procession was passing; and, looking up the avenue after it, I was ware of a gigantic white pillar standing motionless, as it seemed to me, and cleaving the limitless blue dome almost to the zenith. The procession moved quietly on; no one appeared to take any notice; and as fires are ineffective in the daylight, I turned down the avenue instead, of up, and saw no more of the spectacle. But I shall never forget that "pillar of cloud by day," standing out in the sunshine, white as marble or sea foam.

At night, again, under the purple, star-lit sky, street life in the central region of New York is indescribably exhilarating. From Union Square to Herald Square, and even further up, Broadway and many of the cross streets flash out at dusk into the most brilliant illumination. Theatres, restaurants, stores, are outlined in incandescent lamps; the huge electric trolleys come sailing along in an endless stream, profusely jewelled with electricity; and down the thickly-gemmed vista of every cross street one can see the elevated trains, like luminous winged serpents, skimming through the air.[D]The great restaurants are crowded with gaily-dressed merry-makers; and altogether there is a sense of festivity in the air, without any flagrantly meretricious element in it, which I plead guilty to finding very enjoyable. From the moral, and even from the loftily æsthetic point of view, this gaudy, glittering Vanity Fair is no doubt open to criticism. What reconciles me to it æsthetically is the gemlike transparency of its colouring. Garish it is, no doubt, but not in the least stifling, smoky, or lurid. The application of electricity—light divorced from smoke and heat—to the beautifying of city life is as yet in its infancy. Even the Americans have scarcely got beyond the point of making lavish use of the raw material. But the raw material is beautiful in itself, and in this pellucid air (the point to which one always returns) it produces magical effects.

The other night, at a restaurant, I sat at the next table to Mr. Edison, and could not but look with interest and admiration at his furrowed, anxious, typically American and truly beautiful face. Here, if you like, was an example of nervous overstrain; but the soft and yet brilliant light of the restaurant was in itself a sufficient reminder that the overstrain had not been incurred for nothing. Electricity is the true "white magic" of the future; and here, with his pallid face and silver hair, sat the master magician—one of the great light-givers of the world. A light-giver, I think, in more than a merely material sense. The moral influence of the electric lamp, its effect upon the hygiene of the soul, has not yet been duly estimated. But even in a merely material sense, what has not the Edison movement, as it may be called, done for this city of New York! Its influence is felt on every hand, in comfort, convenience, and beauty. The lavish use of electricity, both as an illuminant and as a motive power, combines with its climate, its situation, and its architecture to make New York one of the most fascinating cities in the world. Why, good Americans, when they die, should go to Paris, is a theological enigma which more and more puzzles me.

POSTSCRIPT.—Since my return to England, I have carefully reconsidered my impression that the rush, whirl, and clamour of street life is greater in London than in New York. Every day confirms it. On our main thoroughfares, the stream of omnibuses is quite as unbroken as the stream of electric and cable cars in New York; our van traffic is at least as heavy; and we have in addition the host of creeping "growlers" and darting hansoms, which is almost without counterpart in New York. I know of no crossing in New York so trying to the nerves as Piccadilly Circus or Charing Cross (Trafalgar Square). The intersection of Broadway, Fifth Avenue and 23rd Street, at Madison Square, is the nearest approach to these bewildering ganglia of traffic. It must be owned, too, that the Bowery, with its two "elevated" tracks and four lines of trolley-cars, is a place where one cannot safely let one's wits go wool-gathering, especially on a rainy evening when the roadway is under repair. Let me add that there is one place in New York where the whirl of traffic ("whirl" in a literal sense) is unique and amazing. I mean the covered area at the New York end of Brooklyn Bridge where the transpontine electric cars, in an incessant stream, swoop down the curves of the bridge and sweep round on their return journey. The scene at night is indescribable. The air seems supersaturated with electricity, flashing and crackling on every hand. One has a sense of having strayed unwittingly into the midst of a miniature planetary system in full swing, with the boom of the trolleys, in their mazy courses, to represent the music of the spheres.

FOOTNOTES:

[D]

I find the same idea (a sufficiently obvious one) finely expressed by Mr. Richard Hovey in his book of poems entitledAlong the Trail:Look, how the overhead train at the Morningside curveLoops like a sea-born dragon its sinuous flight.Loops in the night in and out, high up in the air,Like a serpent of stars with the coil and undulant reach of waves.

I find the same idea (a sufficiently obvious one) finely expressed by Mr. Richard Hovey in his book of poems entitledAlong the Trail:

Look, how the overhead train at the Morningside curveLoops like a sea-born dragon its sinuous flight.Loops in the night in and out, high up in the air,Like a serpent of stars with the coil and undulant reach of waves.

Character and Culture—American Universities—Is the American "Electric" or Phlegmatic?—Alleged Laxity of the Family Tie—Postscript; the University System.

NEW YORK.

It is four weeks to-day since I landed in New York, and, save for forty hours in Philadelphia and four hours in Brooklyn, I have spent all that time in Manhattan Island. Yet, to my shame be it spoken, I am not prepared with any generalisation as to the American character. It has been my good fortune to see a great deal of literary and artistic New York, and, comparing it with literary and artistic London, I am inclined to say "Pompey and Cæsar berry much alike—specially Pompey!" The New Yorker is far more cosmopolitan than the Londoner; of that there is no doubt. He knows all that we know about current English literature. He knows all that we donotknow about current American literature. He is much more interested in and influenced by French literature and art than the average educated Englishman—so much so that the leading French critics, such as M. Brunetière and M. Rod, lecture here to crowded and appreciative audiences. Moreover an excellent German theatre permanently established in the city keeps the literary world well abreast of cosmopolitanism of the educated New Yorker the dramatic movement in Germany. But the merely means that he has everything in common with the educated Londoner—and a little over. His traditions are ours, his standards are ours, his ideals are ours. He is busied with the same problems of ethics, of æsthetics, of style, even of grammar. I had not been three days in New York when I found myself plunged in a hot discussion of the "split infinitive," in which I was ranged with two Americans against a recreant Briton who defended the collocation. "It is a mistake to regard it is an Americanism," said one of the Americans. "It is as old as the English language, or at least as old as Wickliff. But it is unnecessary, and the best modern practice discountenances it." I felt like falling on the neck of an ally of half an hour's standing, and swearing eternal friendship. What matters Alaska, or Venezuela, or Nicaragua, "or all the stones of stumbling in the world," so long as we have a common interest in (and some of us a common distaste for) the split infinitive? To put the matter briefly, while the outlook of the New Yorker is wider than ours, his standpoint is the same. We gather from a well-known anecdote that some, at least, of the cultivated Americans of Thackeray's time were inclined to "think of Tupper." To-day they do not "think of Tupper" any more than we do—and by Tupper I mean, of course, not the veritable Martin Farquhar, but the Tuppers of the passing hour. In America as in England, no doubt, there is a huge half-educated public, ravenous for doughnuts of romance served up with syrup of sentiment. The enthusiasms of the American shopgirl, I take it, are very much the same as those of her English sister. But the line of demarkation between the educated and the half-educated is just as clear in New York as in London. For the cultivated American of to-day, the Boomster booms and the Sibyl sibyllates in vain. I find no justification, in this city at any rate, for the old saying which described America as the most common-schooled and least educated country in the world. If we must draw distinctions, I should say that the effect of the American system of university education was to raise the level of general culture, while lowering the standard of special scholarship. I believe that the general American tendency is to insist less than we do on sheer mental discipline for its own sake, whether in classics or mathematics, to allow the student a wider latitude of choice, and to enable him to specialise at an earlier point in his curriculum upon the studies he most affects, or which are most likely to be directly useful to him in practical life. Thus the American universities, probably, do not turn out many men who can "read Plato with their feet on the hob," but many who can, and do, read and understand him as Colonel Newcome read Cæsar—"with a translation, sir, with a translation." The width of outlook which I have noted as characteristic of literary New York is deliberately aimed at in the university system, and most successfully attained. The average young man of parts turned out by an American university has a many-sided interest in, and comprehension of, European literature and the intellectual movement of the world, which may go far to compensate for his possible or even probable inexpertness in Greek aorists and Latin elegiacs.

The academic and literary New Yorker, I am well aware, is not "the American." But who is "the American?" I turn to Mr. G.W. Steevens, and find that "the American is a highly electric Anglo-Saxon. His temperament is of quicksilver. There is as much difference in vivacity and emotion between him and an Englishman as there is between an Englishman and an Italian." Well, Mr. Steevens is a keener observer than I; when he wrote this, he had been two months in America to my one; and he had travelled far and wide over the continent. I am not rash enough, then, to contradict him; but I must own that I have not met this "American," or anything like him, in the streets, clubs, theatres, restaurants, or public conveyances of New York. On the contrary, as I take my walks abroad between Union Square and Central Park, or hang on to the straps of an Elevated train or cable car, I am all the time occupied in trying—and failing—to find marked differences of appearance and manners between the people I see here and the people I should expect to see under similar circumstances in London. Differences of dress and feature there are, of course—but how trifling! Difference of manners there is none, unless it lie in the general good-nature and unobtrusive politeness of the American crowd, upon which I have already remarked. We all know that there is a distinctively American physical type, recognisable especially in the sex which aims at self-development, instead of self-suppression, in its attire. When one meets her in Bloomsbury (where she abounds in the tourist season) one readily distinguishes the American lady; but here specific distinctions are obsorbed in generic identity, and the only difference between American and English ladies of which I am habitually conscious lies in the added touch of Parisian elegance which one notes in the costumes on Fifth Avenue. The average of beauty is certainly very high in New York. I will not say higher than in London, for there too it is remarkable; but this I will say, that night after night I have looked round the audiences in New York theatres, and found a clear majority of notably good-looking women. There are few European cities where one could hope to make the same observation. It is especially to be noted, I think, that the American lady has the art of growing old with comely dignity. She loses her complexion, indeed, but only to put on a new beauty in the contrast between her olive skin and her silvering or silver hair. This contrast may almost be called the characteristic feature of the specially American type, which is much more clearly discernible in middle-aged and old than in young women.

As for the men, what strikes one in New York is the total absence of the traditional "Yankee" type. It must have a foundation in fact, since the Americans themselves have accepted it in political caricature. No doubt I shall find it in its original habitat—New England. It has certainly not penetrated into New York. On close examination, the average man-in-the-street is distinguishable from his fellow in London by certain trifling differences in "the cut of his jib"—his fashion in hats, in moustaches, in neckties. But the intense electricity that Mr. Steevens discovers in him has totally eluded my observation. The fault may be mine, but assuredly I have failed to "faire jaillir l'étincelle." I have looked in vain for any symptom of the "temperament of quicksilver." Mr. Steevens, it is true, made his observations during the last Presidential election. Perhaps the quicksilver is generated in the American citizen by political excitement, and when that is over "runs out at the heels of his boots."

But, surely, it is a monstrous exaggeration to state in general terms that the difference in "vivacity and emotion" between the average American and the average Englishman is as great as the difference between an Englishman and an Italian. By what inconceivable error, does it happen, then, that the American of fiction and drama—English, Continental, and American to boot—is always represented as outdoing John Bull himself in Anglo-Saxon phlegm? In the courts of ethnology, I shall be told, "what the caricaturist says is not evidence;" but no caricature could ever have gained such world-wide acceptance without a substratum of truth to support it. The probabilities of the case are greatly against the development of any special "vivacity" of temperament, for though there has no doubt been a large Keltic admixture in the Anglo-Saxon stock, there has been a large Teutonic infusion (German and Scandinavian) to counterbalance it. Simply as a matter of observation, the differences between English and Italian manners hit you in the eye, while the differences between American and English manners are really microscopic; and manners, I take it, are the outward and visible signs of temperament. A Scotchman by birth, a Londoner by habit, I walk the streets of New York undetected, to the best of my belief, until I begin to speak; in Rome, on the contrary, every one recognises me at a glance as an "Inglese," unless they mistake me for an "Americano." To me it is amazing how inessential is the change produced by the Anglo-Saxon type and temperament by influences of climate and admixture of foreign blood. There are great foreign cities in New York—German, Italian, Yiddish, Bohemian, Hungarian, Chinese—but the New York of the New Yorker is scarcely, to the Englishman, a foreign city.

The other day I heard an Englishman, who has lived for twenty-five years in America, maintaining very emphatically that the chief difference between England and America lay in the greater laxity of the family bond on this side of the Atlantic. He declared that, in the main, "home" meant less to the American than to the Englishman, and especially that the American boy between thirteen and twenty was habitually insurgent against home influences. It would be ludicrous, of course, to set up the observations of a month against the experience of a quarter of a century; yet I cannot but feel that either I have been miraculously fortunate in the glimpses I have obtained of American home life, or else there is something amiss with my friend's generalisation. Perhaps he brought away with him from England in the early seventies a conception of the "patria potestas" which he would now find out of date there as well as here. No doubt the migratory habit is stronger in America than in England, and family life is not apt to flourish in hotels or boarding-houses. The Saratoga trunk is not the best cornerstone for the home: so much we may take for granted. But the American families who are content to go through life without a threshold and hearthstone of their own must, after all, be in a vanishing minority. They very naturally cut a larger figure in fiction than in fact. It has been my privilege to see something of the daily life of a good many families living under their own roof-tree, and in every case without exception I have been struck with the beauty and intimacy of the relation between parents and children. When my friend laid down his theory of the intractable American boy, I could not but think of a youth of twenty whom I had seen only two days before, whose manner towards his father struck me as an ideal blending of affectionate comradeship with old-fashioned respect.[E]True, this was in Philadelphia, "the City of Homes," and even there it may have been an exceptional case. I am not so illogical as to pit a single observation against (presumably) a wide induction; I merely offer for what it is worth one item of evidence.

Again, it has been my good fortune here in New York to spend an evening in a household which suggested a chapter of Dickens in his tenderest and most idyllic mood. It was the home of an actor and actress. Two daughters, of about eighteen and twenty, respectively, are on the stage, acting in their father's company; but the master of the house is a bright little boy of seven or eight, known as "the Commodore." As it happened, the mother of the family was away for the day; yet in the hundred affectionate references made to her by the father and daughters, not to me, but to each other, I read her character and influence more clearly, perhaps, than if she had been present in the flesh. A more simple, natural, unaffectedly beautiful "interior" no novelist could conceive. If the family tie is seriously relaxed in America, it seems an odd coincidence that I should in a single month have chanced upon two households where it is seen in notable perfection, to say nothing of many others in which it is at least as binding as in the average English home.

POSTSCRIPT.—The American university system is a very large subject, to which none but a specialist could do justice, and that in a volume, not a postscript. Nevertheless I should like slightly to supplement the above allusion to it. In the first place, let me quote from theSpectator(February 12, 1898) the following passage:—

"Some of the American Universities, in our judgment, come nearer to the ideal of a true University than any of the other types. Beginning on the old English collegiate system, they have broadened out into vast and splendidly endowed institutions of universal learning, have assimilated some German features, and have combined successfully college routine and discipline with mature and advanced work. Harvard and Princeton were originally English colleges; now, without entirely abandoning the college system, they are great semi-German seats of learning. Johns Hopkins at Baltimore is purely of the German type, with no residence and only a few plain lecture rooms, library, and museums. Columbia, originally an old English college (its name was King's, changed to Columbia at the Revolution), is now perhaps the first University in America, magnificently endowed, with stately buildings, and with a school of political and legal science second only to that of Paris. Cornell, intended by its generous founder to be a sort of cheap glorified technical institute, has grown into a great seat of culture. The quadrangles and lawns of Harvard, Yale, and Princeton almost recall Oxford and Cambridge; their lecture-rooms, laboratories, and post-graduate studies hint of Germany, where nearly all American teachers of the present generation have been educated."

Some authorities, however, deplore the Germanising of American education. A Professor of Greek, himself trained in Germany, and recognised as one of the foremost of American scholars, confessed to me his deep dissatisfaction with the results achieved in his own teaching. His students did good work on the scientific and philological side, but their relation to Greek literature as literature was not at all what he could desire. This bears out the remark which I heard another authority make, to the effect that American scholarship was entirely absorbed in the counting of accents, and the like mechanical details; while it seems to run counter to the above suggestion that the university system tends to raise the level of culture while lowering the standard of erudition. At the same time there can be no doubt that the immense width of the field covered by university teaching in America must, in some measure, make for "superficial omniscience" rather than for concentration and research. The truth probably is that the system cuts both ways. The average student seeks and finds general culture in his university course, while the born specialist is enabled to go straight to the study he most affects and concentrate upon it.

To exemplify the latitude of choice offered to the American student, let me give a list of the "course" in English and Literature at Columbia University, New York, extracted from the Calendar for 1898-99:

RHETORIC AND ENGLISH COMPOSITIONCOURSES1. English Composition. Lectures, daily themes, and fortnightly essays. Professor G.R. CARPENTER. Three hours[F]first half-year.2. English Composition. Essays, lectures, and discussions in regard to style. Professor G.R. CARPENTER. Three hours, second half-year.3. English Composition, Advanced Course. Essays, lectures and consultations. Dr. ODELL. Two hours.4. Elocution. Lectures and Exercises. Mr. PUTNAM. Two hours.[5. The Art of English Versification. Professor BRANDER MATTHEWS.Not given in 1898-9.]6. Argumentative Composition. Lectures, briefs, essays, and oral discussions. Mr. BRODT. Three hours.7. Seminar. The topics discussed in 1898-9 will be: Canons of rhetorical propriety (first half-year); the teaching of formal rhetoric in the secondary school (second half-year). Professor G.R. CARPENTER.ENGLISH AND LITERATURECOURSES1 and 2. Anglo-Saxon Language and Historical English Grammar. Mr. SEWARD. Two hours.3. Anglo-Saxon Literature: Poetry and Prose. Professor JACKSON. Two hours.4. Chaucer's Language, Versification, and Method of Narrative Poetry. Professor JACKSON. Two hours.[5. English Language and Literature of the Eleventh, Twelfth, and Thirteenth Centuries. Professor PRICE.Not given in 1898-9.][6. English Language and Literature of the Fourteenth Century, exclusive of Chaucer, and of the Fifteenth Century; Reading of authors, with investigation of special questions and writing of essays. Professor Price.Not given in 1898-9.]7. English Language and Literature of the Sixteenth Century; Reading of authors, with investigation of special questions and writing of essays. Professor Jackson. Two hours.Courses 5, 6, and 7 are designed for the careful study of the language and literature of Early and Middle English periods: Course 6 was given in 1897-8.[8. Anglo-Saxon Prose and Historical English Syntax. Investigation of special questions and writing of essays. Professor Price.Not given in 1898-9. To be given in 1899-1900.][10. English Verse-Forms: Study of their historical development. Professor Price.Not given in 1898-9.]11. History of English Literature from 1789 to the death of Tennyson: Lectures. Professor Woodberry. Three hours.12. History of English Literature from 1660 to 1789: Lectures. Mr. Kroeber. Three hours.[13. History of English Literature from the birth of Shakespeare to 1660, with special attention to the origin of the drama in England and to the poems of Spenser and Milton. Professor Woodberry.Not given in 1898-9.]Courses 12 and 13 are given in alternate years.[14. Pope: Language, Versification, and Poetical Method. Professor Price.Not given in 1898-9.]15. Shakespeare: Language, Versification, and Method of Dramatic Poetry. Text: Cambridge Text of Shakespeare. Professor JACKSON. Two hours.16. American Literature. Professor BRANDER MATTHEWS. Two hours.[17. The Poetry, Lyrical, Narrative, and Dramatic, of Tennyson, Browning, and Arnold. Professor PRICE.Not given in 1898-9.]LITERATURE.COURSES.1. The History of Modern Fiction. Professor BRANDER MATTHEWS. Two hours.2. The Theory, History, and Practice of Criticism, with special attention to Aristotle, Boileau, Lessing, and English and later French writers, and a study of the great works of imagination. Professor WOODBERRY. Three hours.[3. Epochs of the Drama. Professor BRANDER MATTHEWS.Not given in 1898-9.]4. Dramatists of the Nineteenth Century. Professor BRANDER MATTHEWS. Two hours.[5. Molière and Modern Comedy. Professor BRANDER MATTHEWS.Not given in 1898-9.][6. The Evolution of the Essay. Professor BRANDER MATTHEWS.Not given in 1898-9.]7. Studies in Literature, mainly Critical: Selected Works, in Prose and Verse, illustrating the Character and Development of Natural Literature. Lectures. Professor WOODBERRY. Three hours.8. Studies in Literature, mainly Historical: Narrative Poetry of the Middle Ages. Lectures and Conferences. Mr. TAYLOR. Two hours.[9. The Lyrical Poetry of the Middle Ages. Professor G.R. CARPENTER.Not given in 1898-9.]10. Hellenism: Its Origin, Development, and Diffusion with some account of the Civilisations that preceded it. Lectures and Conferences. Mr. TAYLOR Three hours.11. Literary Phases of the Transition from Paganism to Christianity, with illustrations from the other Arts of Expression. Lectures and Conferences. Mr. TAYLOR. One hour.Seminar in Literature. Professor WOODBERRY. Seminar in the History of the Drama. Professor BRANDER MATTHEWS.

RHETORIC AND ENGLISH COMPOSITION

COURSES

1. English Composition. Lectures, daily themes, and fortnightly essays. Professor G.R. CARPENTER. Three hours[F]first half-year.

2. English Composition. Essays, lectures, and discussions in regard to style. Professor G.R. CARPENTER. Three hours, second half-year.

3. English Composition, Advanced Course. Essays, lectures and consultations. Dr. ODELL. Two hours.

4. Elocution. Lectures and Exercises. Mr. PUTNAM. Two hours.

[5. The Art of English Versification. Professor BRANDER MATTHEWS.Not given in 1898-9.]

6. Argumentative Composition. Lectures, briefs, essays, and oral discussions. Mr. BRODT. Three hours.

7. Seminar. The topics discussed in 1898-9 will be: Canons of rhetorical propriety (first half-year); the teaching of formal rhetoric in the secondary school (second half-year). Professor G.R. CARPENTER.

ENGLISH AND LITERATURE

COURSES

1 and 2. Anglo-Saxon Language and Historical English Grammar. Mr. SEWARD. Two hours.

3. Anglo-Saxon Literature: Poetry and Prose. Professor JACKSON. Two hours.

4. Chaucer's Language, Versification, and Method of Narrative Poetry. Professor JACKSON. Two hours.

[5. English Language and Literature of the Eleventh, Twelfth, and Thirteenth Centuries. Professor PRICE.Not given in 1898-9.]

[6. English Language and Literature of the Fourteenth Century, exclusive of Chaucer, and of the Fifteenth Century; Reading of authors, with investigation of special questions and writing of essays. Professor Price.Not given in 1898-9.]

7. English Language and Literature of the Sixteenth Century; Reading of authors, with investigation of special questions and writing of essays. Professor Jackson. Two hours.

Courses 5, 6, and 7 are designed for the careful study of the language and literature of Early and Middle English periods: Course 6 was given in 1897-8.

[8. Anglo-Saxon Prose and Historical English Syntax. Investigation of special questions and writing of essays. Professor Price.Not given in 1898-9. To be given in 1899-1900.]

[10. English Verse-Forms: Study of their historical development. Professor Price.Not given in 1898-9.]

11. History of English Literature from 1789 to the death of Tennyson: Lectures. Professor Woodberry. Three hours.

12. History of English Literature from 1660 to 1789: Lectures. Mr. Kroeber. Three hours.

[13. History of English Literature from the birth of Shakespeare to 1660, with special attention to the origin of the drama in England and to the poems of Spenser and Milton. Professor Woodberry.Not given in 1898-9.]

Courses 12 and 13 are given in alternate years.

[14. Pope: Language, Versification, and Poetical Method. Professor Price.Not given in 1898-9.]

15. Shakespeare: Language, Versification, and Method of Dramatic Poetry. Text: Cambridge Text of Shakespeare. Professor JACKSON. Two hours.

16. American Literature. Professor BRANDER MATTHEWS. Two hours.

[17. The Poetry, Lyrical, Narrative, and Dramatic, of Tennyson, Browning, and Arnold. Professor PRICE.Not given in 1898-9.]

LITERATURE.

COURSES.

1. The History of Modern Fiction. Professor BRANDER MATTHEWS. Two hours.

2. The Theory, History, and Practice of Criticism, with special attention to Aristotle, Boileau, Lessing, and English and later French writers, and a study of the great works of imagination. Professor WOODBERRY. Three hours.

[3. Epochs of the Drama. Professor BRANDER MATTHEWS.Not given in 1898-9.]

4. Dramatists of the Nineteenth Century. Professor BRANDER MATTHEWS. Two hours.

[5. Molière and Modern Comedy. Professor BRANDER MATTHEWS.Not given in 1898-9.]

[6. The Evolution of the Essay. Professor BRANDER MATTHEWS.Not given in 1898-9.]

7. Studies in Literature, mainly Critical: Selected Works, in Prose and Verse, illustrating the Character and Development of Natural Literature. Lectures. Professor WOODBERRY. Three hours.

8. Studies in Literature, mainly Historical: Narrative Poetry of the Middle Ages. Lectures and Conferences. Mr. TAYLOR. Two hours.

[9. The Lyrical Poetry of the Middle Ages. Professor G.R. CARPENTER.Not given in 1898-9.]

10. Hellenism: Its Origin, Development, and Diffusion with some account of the Civilisations that preceded it. Lectures and Conferences. Mr. TAYLOR Three hours.

11. Literary Phases of the Transition from Paganism to Christianity, with illustrations from the other Arts of Expression. Lectures and Conferences. Mr. TAYLOR. One hour.

Seminar in Literature. Professor WOODBERRY. Seminar in the History of the Drama. Professor BRANDER MATTHEWS.

A "seminar" is an institution borrowed from Germany. The professor and a small number of students (six or eight at the outside) sit together round a table, with their books at hand, and pass an hour in co-operative study and discussion. In going through the noble library of Columbia University, I came upon an alcove devoted to Scandinavian literature, with a table on which lay some Danish books. The gentleman who was guiding me round happened to be an instructor in the Scandinavian languages. He pointed to the books and said, "I have just been having a seminar here, in Danish literature." Seeing on the shelves an edition of Holberg, I asked him if he had ever considered the question why Holberg's comedies, so delightful in the original, appeared to be totally untranslatable into English. "One of my students," he said, "put the same question to me only to-day." One could scarcely desire a better example of the all-embracing range of the studies which an American University provides for and encourages. I have heard it said, with a sneer, that "You can take an honours degree in Marie Corelli." If you can graduate with honours in Holberg, your time, in so far, has certainly not been misemployed.

Whatever the drawbacks of the German influence which is so marked in America, I cannot doubt that in one thing, at any rate, the Americans are far ahead of us—in the careful study they devote to the science of education. No fewer than twenty courses of lectures on the theory and practice of education were given in Columbia College during 1898-99. Teaching, I take it, is an art founded upon, and intimately associated with, the science of psychology. Why should we be content with antiquated and rule-of-thumb methods, instead of going to the root of the thing, studying its principles, and learning to apply them to the best advantage?

FOOTNOTES:

[E]

"Affectionate comradeship" rather than "old-fashioned respect" is exemplified in the following anecdote of young America. A Professor of Pedagogy in a Western university brings up his children on the most advanced principles. Among other things, they are encouraged to sink the antiquated terms "father" and "mother," and call their parents by their Christian names. On one occasion, the children, playing in the bathroom, turned on the water and omitted to turn it off again. Observing it percolating through the ceiling of his study, their father rushed upstairs to see what was the matter, flung open the bathroom door, and was greeted by the prime mover in the mischief, a boy of six, with the remark, "Don't say a word, John—bring the mop!"

[F]

That is, three hours a week; so, too, in all subsequent instances.

Washington in April—A Metropolis in the Making—The White House, the Capitol, and the Library of Congress—The Symbolism of Washington.

WASHINGTON.

To profess oneself disappointed with Washington in this first week of April, 1899, would be like complaining of the gauntness of a rosebush in December. What would you have? It is not the season, either politically or atmospherically. Congress is gone, and spring has not come. In the city of leafy avenues there is not a leaf to be seen, and, except the irrepressible crocus, not a flower. A fortnight hence, as I am assured, the capital of the Great Republic will have put on a regal robe of magnolia and other blossoms, that will "knock spots out of" Solomon in all his glory. In the meantime, the trees line the avenues in skeleton rows, like a pyrotechnic set-piece before it is ignited. It is useless to pretend, then, that I have seen Washington. The trumpet of March has blown, the pennon of May is not yet unfurled; and even the cloudless sunshine of the past two days has only reduplicated the skeleton trees in skeleton shadows. Washington is not responsible for the tardiness of the spring. It would be unjust to take umbrage at the city because one finds none in its avenues.

Yet I cannot but feel that I have, so to speak, found Washington out. I have chanced upon her without her make-up, and seen the real face of the city divested of its wig of leafage and rouge of blossoms. Here, for the first time, at any rate, I am impressed by that sense of rawness and incompleteness which is said to be characteristic of America. Washington will one day be a magnificent city, of that there is no doubt; but for the present it is distinctly unfinished. The very breadth of its avenues, contrasted with the comparative lowness of the buildings which line them, gives it the air rather of a magnified and glorified frontier township than of a great capital on the European scale. Here, for the first time, I am really conscious of the newness of things. The eastern cities—Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore—are, in effect, not a whit newer than most English towns. Oxford and Cambridge, no doubt, and a few cathedral cities, give one a habitual consciousness of dwelling among the relics of the past. They are our Nuremburg or Prague, Siena or Perugia. In most English cities, on the other hand, as in London itself, one has no habitual sense of the antiquity of one's surroundings. Apart from a few tourist-haunted monuments, which the resident passes with scarcely a glance, the general run of buildings and streets, if not palpably modern, can at most lay claim to a respectable, or disreputable, middle-age. Now, an eminently respectable middle-age is precisely the characteristic of the central regions of Philadelphia and Baltimore; while in New York both reputable and disreputable middle-age are amply represented. One may almost say that these Eastern cities are fundamentally old-fashioned, and that all their modern mechanism of electric cars, telephone wires, and what not, is but a thin and transparent outer network, through which the older order of things is everywhere peering. And from this very contrast between the old and the new, this sense of visible time-strata in the structure of a city, there results a very real effect of age.

Here, in Washington, one instinctively craves for something of that uniformity which one instinctively deprecates as an ideal for New York. The buildings on the main streets are too haphazard, like the books on an ill-arranged shelf: folios, quartos, and duodecimos huddled pell-mell together. But when some approach to a definite style is achieved, how noble will be the radiating vistas of this spacious city! The plan of the avenues and streets, as has been aptly said, suggests a cartwheel superimposed upon a gridiron—an arrangement, by the way, which may be studied on a small scale in Carlsruhe. The result is dire bewilderment to the traveller; my bump of locality, usually not ill-developed, seems to shrink into a positive indentation before the problems presented in such formulas as "K Street, corner of 13th Street, N.E." But from the Capitol, whence most of the avenues spread fanwise, the views they offer are superb; and Pennsylvania Avenue, leading to the Government offices and the White House, will one day, undoubtedly, be one of the great streets of the world. For the present its beauty is not heightened by the new Postal Department, a massive but somewhat forbidding structure in grey granite, which dominates and frowns upon the whole street. From certain points of view, it seems almost to dwarf the Washington Obelisk, the loftiest stone structure in the world. It is a pity that this fine monument should be placed in such a low situation, on the very shore of the Potomac. From the central parts of the city it loses much of its effect, but seen from the distance it stands forth impressively.

People are discontented, it would seem, with the White House, and talk of replacing it with a larger and showier edifice. The latter change, at any rate, would be a change for the worse. There could not be a more appropriate and dignified residence for the Chief Magistrate of a republic. On the other hand, one cannot but foresee a gradual enrichment and ennoblement of the interior of the Capitol. Externally it is magnificent, especially now that the side towards the city has been terraced and balustraded; but internally its decorations are quite unworthy of modern America. The floors, the doors, the cornices and mouldings are cheap in material, dingily garish in colour. Especially painful are the crude blue-and-yellow mosaic tiles of the corridors. The mural decorations belong to several artistic periods, all equally debased. On the whole, it is inconceivable that Congress should for long content itself with an abode which, without being venerable, is simply out of date. The main architectural proportions of the interior are dignified enough. What is wanted is merely the transmutation of stucco into marble, painted pine into oak, and pseudo-Italian arabesques into American frescoes and mosaics. Why should Congress itself be more meanly housed than its Library?

This new Library of Congress is certainly the crown and glory of the Washington of to-day. It is an edifice and an institution of which any nation might justly boast. It is simple in design, rich in material, elaborate, and for the most part beautiful, in decoration. The general effect of the entrance hall and galleries is at first garish, and some details of the decoration will scarcely bear looking into. Yet the building is, on the whole, in fresco, mosaic, and sculpture, a veritable treasure-house of contemporary American art. Even in this clear Southern climate, the effect of gaudiness will in time pass off. Fifty years hence, perhaps, when there are no living susceptibilities to be hurt, some of the less successful panels and medallions may be "hatched over again, and hatched different." But many of the decorations, I am convinced, will prove possessions for ever to the American people. As for the Rotunda Reading Room, it is, I think, almost above criticism in its combination of dignity with splendour. Far be it from me to belittle that great and liberal institution, the British Museum Reading Room. It is considerably larger than this one; it is no less imposing in its severe simplicity; and it offers the serious student a vaster quarry of books to draw upon, together with wider elbow-room and completer accommodations. But the Library of Congress is still more liberal, for it admits all the world without even the formality of applying for a ticket; and it substitutes for the impressiveness of simplicity the allurements of splendour. It is impossible to conceive a more brilliant spectacle than this Rotunda when it is lighted at night by nearly fifteen-hundred incandescent lamps. Nor is it possible for me to describe in this place the mechanical marvels of the institution—the huge underground boiler-house, with its sixteen boilers; the electrician's room, clean and bright as a new dollar, with its "purring dynamos" and its immense switch-board; the tunnel through which books are delivered by electric trolley to the legislators in the Capitol, within eight minutes of the time they are applied for; and, most wonderful of all, the endless chain, with its series of baskets, whereby books are not only brought down to the reading room, but re-delivered, at the mere touch of a button on whatever "deck" of the nine-storied "book-stacks" they happen to belong to. So ingenious is this triumph of mechanism that the baskets seem positively to go through complex processes of thought and selection. Talking of thought and selection, by the way, every one connected with the library speaks with enthusiasm of President McKinley's wise and public-spirited choice of the new chief librarian. Mr. Herbert Putnam, late of the Boston Public Library, is the ideal man for the post, and his appointment was made, not only without suspicion of jobbery, but in the teeth of strong political influence. Mr. McKinley's action in this matter is considered to be not only right in itself, but an invaluable precedent.

Let me not be understood, I beg, to make light of the National Capital. I merely say that to the outward eye it is not yet the city it is manifestly destined to become. Its splendid potentialities do some wrong to its eminently spacious and seemly actuality. But to the mind's eye, to the ideal sense, it has the imperishable beauty of absolute fitness. Omniscient Baedeker informs us that when it was founded there was some thought of calling it "Federal City." How much finer, in its heroic and yet human associations, is the name it bears! Since Alfred the Great, the Anglo-Saxon race has produced no loftier or purer personality than George Washington, and his country could not blazon on her shield a more inspiring name. Carlyle's treatment of Washington is, perhaps, the most unpardonable of his many similar offences. One almost wonders at the forgiving spirit in which the decorators of the Library of Congress have inscribed upon the walls of the new building certain maxims from the splenetic Sage. And if the city is named with exquisite fitness, so are its radiating avenues. Each of them takes its name from one of the States of the Union—names which, as Stevenson long ago pointed out, form an unrivalled array of "sweet and sonorous vocables." In its whole conception, Washington is an ideal capital for the United States—not least typical, perhaps, in its factitiousness, since this Republic is not so much a product of natural development as a deliberate creation of will and intelligence. It represents the struggle of an Idea against the crude forces of nature and human nature. The Capitol, with its clear and logical design, is as aptly symbolic of its history and function as are our Houses of Parliament, with their bewildering but grandiose agglomeration of shafts and turrets, spires and pinnacles; and the two buildings should rank side by side in the esteem of the English-speaking peoples, as the twin foci of our civilisation.

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