FOOTNOTES:

"Benny runs the White House,Levi keeps a bar,Johnny runs a Sunday School—And, damme, there you are!"

The gentlemen named are the then President, Mr. Harrison; the Vice-President, Mr. Morton, who was owner or part owner of one of the large Washington hotels; and Mr. Wanamaker, Postmaster General, well known as "an earnest Christian worker."

I have seen even the sacred Declaration of Independence imitated, both in wording and in external form, as the advertisement of a hotel.

A story current in Philadelphia refers to Mr. Richard Vaux, an eminent citizen and member of a highly respected old Quaker family, who in his youth had been anattachéof the American Legation in London. One of his letters home narrated with pardonable pride that he had danced with the Princess Victoria at a royal ball and had found her a very charming partner. His mother replied: "It pleaseth me much, Richard, to hear of thy success at the ball in Buckingham Palace; but thee must remember it would be a great blow to thy father to have thee marry out of meeting."

Philosophy, art, and letters receive no greater deference at the hands of the American humorist. Even an Oliver Wendell Holmes will say of metaphysics that it is like "splitting a log; when you have done, you have two more to split." A poster long used by the comedians Crane and Robson represented these popular favourites in the guise of the two lowermost cherubs in the Sistine Madonna. Bill Nye's assertion that "the peculiarity of classical music is that it is so much better than it sounds" is typical of a whole battalion of quips. Scenery, even when associated with poetry, fares no better. The advertising fiend who defaces the most picturesque rocks with his atrocious announcements is, perhaps, hardly entitled to the name of humorist; but the man who affixed the name of Minniegiggle to a small fall near the famous Minnehaha evidently thought himself one. So, doubtless, did one of my predecessors in a dressing-cabin at Niagara, who had inscribed on its walls:

"Cannon to right of them,Cannon to left of them,Cannon in front of them,Volleyed and thundered!But the man who descindsThrough the Cave of the WindsCan give points to the noble six hundred."

Of the extravagant exaggeration of American humour it is hardly necessary to give examples. This, to the ordinary observer, has perhaps been always its salient feature; and stock examples will occur to everyone. It is easy to see how readily this form of humour can be abused, and as a matter of fact it is abused daily and hourly. Many would-be American humorists fail entirely to see that exaggerationaloneis not necessarily funny.

To illustrate: the story of the woman who described the suddenness of the American cyclone by saying that, as she looked up from her gardening, "she saw the air black with her intimate friends," seems to me a thoroughly humorous application of the exaggeration principle. So, too, is the description of a man so terribly thin that he never could tell whether he had the stomach-ache or the lumbago. But the jester who expects you to laugh at the tale of the fish that was so large that the water of the lake subsided two feet when it was drawn ashore simply does not know where humour ends and drivelling idiocy begins.

The dry suggestiveness of American humour is also a well-known feature. In its crudest phase it assumes such forms as the following: "Mrs. William Hankins lighted her fire with coal oil on February 23. Her clothesfit the present Mrs. Hankins to a T." The ordinary Englishman will see the point of a jest like this (though his mind will not fly to it with the electric rapidity of the American's), but the more delicate forms of this allusive style of wit will often escape him altogether. Or, if he now begins to "jump" with an almost American agility it is because the cleverest witticisms of the DetroitFree Pressare now constantly served up to him in the comic columns of his evening paper. We have got the length of being consumers if not producers of this style of jest.

In its higher developments this quality of humour melts imperceptibly into irony. This has been cultivated by the Americans with great success—perhaps never better than in the columns of that admirable weekly journal theNation. Anyone who cares to search the files of about eight or ten years back will find a number of ironical leaders, which by their subtlety and wit delighted those who "caught on," while, on the other hand, they often deceived even the elect Americans themselves and provoked a shower of innocently approving or depreciatory letters.

Apart altogether from the specific difference between American and English humour we cannot help noticing how humour penetrates and gives savour to thewholeof American life. There is almost no business too important to be smoothed over with a jest; and serio-comic allusions may crop up amongst the most barren-looking reefs of scrip and bargaining. It is almost impossible to imagine a governor of the Bank of England making a joke in his official capacity, but wit is perfected in the mouth of similar sucklings in New York. Of recentprominent speakers in America all except Carl Schurz and George William Curtis are professed humorists.

When Professor Boyesen, at an examination in Columbia College, set as one of the questions, "Write an account of your life," he found that seventeen out of thirty-two responses were in a jocular vein. Fifteen of the seventeen students bore names that indicated American parentage, while all but three of the non-jokers had foreign names. Abraham Lincoln is, of course, the great example of this tendency to introduce the element of humour into the graver concerns of life; and his biography narrates many instances of its most happy effect.Allthe newspapers, including the religious weeklies, have a comic column.

The tremendous seriousness with which the Englishman takes himself and everything else is practically unknown in America; and the ponderous machinery of commercial and political life is undoubtedly facilitated in its running by the presence of the oil of a sub-conscious humorous intention. The American attitude, when not carried too far, seems, perhaps, to suggest a truer view of the comparative importance of things; the American seems to say: "This matter is of importance to you and for me, but after all it does not concern the orbit of a planet and there is no use talking and acting as if it did." This sense of humour often saves the American in a situation in which the Englishman would have recourse to downright brutality; it unties the Gordian knot instead of cutting it. A too strong conviction of being in the right often leads to conflicts that would be avoided by a more humorous appreciation of the relative importance of phenomena. To look on lifeas a jest is no doubt a deep of cynicism which is not and cannot lead to good, but to recognise the humorous side, the humorous possibilities running through most of our practical existence, often works as a saving grace. To his lack of this grace the Englishman owes much of his unpopularity with foreigners, much of the difficulty he experiences in inducing others to take his point of view, even when that point of view is right. You may as well hang a dog as give him a bad name; and a sense of humour which would prevent John Bull from calling a thing "un-English," when he means bad or unpractical, would often help him smoothly towards his goal. To his possession of a keen sense of humour the Yankee owes much of his success; it leads him, with a shrug of his shoulders, to cease fighting over names when the real thing is granted; it may sometimes lean to a calculating selfishness rather than spontaneous generosity, but on the whole it softens, enriches, and facilitates the problems of existence. It may, however, be here noted that some observers, such as Professor Boyesen, think that there is altogether too much jocularity in American life, and claim that the constant presence of the jest and the comic anecdote have done much to destroy conversation and eloquence.

Humour also acts as a great safety-valve for the excitement of political contests. When I was in New York, just before the election of President Harrison in 1888, two great political processions took place on the same day. In the afternoon some thirty thousand Republicans paraded the streets between lines of amused spectators, mostly Democrats. In the evening as many Democrats carried their torches through the same thoroughfares.No collisions of any kind took place; no ill humour was visible. The Republicans seemed to enjoy the jokes and squibs and flaunting mottoes of the Democrats; and when a Republican banner appeared with the legend, "No frigid North, no torrid South, no temperate East, noSackville West," nobody appeared to relish it more than the hard-hit Democrat. The Cleveland cry of "Four, four, four years more" was met forcibly and effectively with the simple adaptation, "Four, four, fourmonthsmore," which proved the more prophetic of that gentleman's then stay at the White House. At midnight, three days later, I was jammed in the midst of a yelling crowd in Chestnut Street, Philadelphia, watching the electoral returns thrown by a stereopticon light, as they arrived, on large white sheets. Keener or more interested partisans I never saw; but at the same time I never saw a more good-humored crowd. If I encountered one policeman that night that was all I did see; and the police reports next morning, in a city of a million inhabitants let loose in the streets on a public holiday, reported the arrest of five drunk men and one pickpocket!

Election bets are often made payable in practical jokes instead of in current coin. Thus, after election day you will meet a defeated Republican wheeling his Democratic friend through the chuckling crowd in a wheelbarrow, or walking down the Bond Street of his native town with a coal-black African laundress on his arm. But in such forms of jesting as in "White Hat Day," at the Stock Exchange of New York, Americans come perilously near the Londoner's standard of the truly funny.

In comparing American humour with English we must take care that we take class for class. Those of us who find it difficult to get up a laugh atJudge, or Bill Nye, or Josh Billings, have at least to admit that they are not quite so feeble asAlly Sloperand other cognate English humorists. When we reach the level of Artemus Ward, Ik Marvel, H.C. Bunner, Frank Stockton, and Mark Twain, we may find that we have no equally popular contemporary humorists of equal excellence; and these are emphatically humorists of a pure American type. If humour of a finer point be demanded it seems to me that there are few, if any, living English writers who can rival the delicate satiric powers of a Henry James or the subtle suggestiveness of Mr. W.D. Howells' farces, for an analogy to which we have to look to the best French work of the kind. But this takes us beyond the scope of this chapter, which deals merely with the humour of the "Man on the Cars."

FOOTNOTES:[16]In an English issue of Artemus Ward, apparently edited by Mr. John Camden Hotten (Chatto and Windus), this passage is accompanied with the following gloss: "Here again Artemus called in the aid of pleasant banter as the most fitting apology for the atrocious badness of the painting."This note is an excellent illustration of English obtuseness—if needed, on the part of the reading public; if needless, on the part of the editor.

[16]In an English issue of Artemus Ward, apparently edited by Mr. John Camden Hotten (Chatto and Windus), this passage is accompanied with the following gloss: "Here again Artemus called in the aid of pleasant banter as the most fitting apology for the atrocious badness of the painting."This note is an excellent illustration of English obtuseness—if needed, on the part of the reading public; if needless, on the part of the editor.

This note is an excellent illustration of English obtuseness—if needed, on the part of the reading public; if needless, on the part of the editor.

The average British daily newspaper is, perhaps, slightly in advance of its average reader; if we could imagine an issue of theStandard, or theDaily Chronicle, or theScotsmanmetamorphosed into human form, we should probably have to admit that the being thus created was rather above the average man in taste, intelligence, and good feeling. Speaking roughly, and making allowances for all obvious exceptions, I should be inclined to say that a similar statement would not be as universally true of the American paper and the American public, particularly if the female citizen were included under the latter head. If the intelligent foreigner were to regard the British citizen as practically an incarnation of his daily press, whether metropolitan or provincial, he would be doing him more than justice; if he were to apply the same standard to the American press and the American citizen, it would not be the latter who would profit by the assumption. The American paper represents a distinctly lower level of life than the English one; it would often seem as if the one catered for the least intelligent class of its readers, while the other assumed a standard higher than most of its readers could reach. The cultivated American is certainly not so slangy as the paper he reads; he is certainly not keenly interested in theextremely silly social items of which it contains several columns. Such journals as the New YorkEvening Postand the SpringfieldRepublicanare undoubtedly worthy of mention alongside of our most reputable dailies; but journals of their admirably high standard are comparatively rare, and no cultivated English visitor to the United States can have been spared a shock at the contrast between his fastidious and gentlemanly host and the general tone of the sheet served up with the matutinal hot cakes, or read by him on the cars and at the club.

Various causes may be suggested for this state of affairs. For one thing, the mass of half-educated people in the United States—people intelligent enough to take a lively interest in all that pertains to humanity, but not trained enough to insist on literaryform—is so immense as practically to swamp the cultivated class and render it a comparatively unimportant object for the business-like editor. In England a standard of taste has been gradually evolved, which is insisted on by the educated class and largely taken on authority by others. In America practically no such standard is recognised; no one there would continue to take in a paper he found dull because the squire and the parson subscribed for it. The American reader—even when himself of high education and refinement—is a much less responsible being than the Englishman, and will content himself with a shrug of his shoulders where the latter would write a letter of indignant protest to the editor. I have more than once asked an American friend how he could endure such a daily repast of pointless vulgarity, slipshod English, and general second-rateness; but elicited no better answer than that one had to see the news, that the editorialpart of the paper was well done, and that a man had to make the best of what existed. This is a national trait; it has simply to be recognised as such. Perhaps the fact that there is no metropolitan press in America to give tone to the rest of the country may also count for something in this connection. The press of Washington, the political capital, is distinctly provincial; and the New York papers, though practically representative of the United States for the outside world, can hardly be said to play a genuinely metropolitan rôle within the country itself.

The principal characteristics of American journalism may be summed up in the word "enterprise." No one on earth is more fertile in expedients than an American editor, kept constantly to the collar by a sense of competing energies all around him. No trouble, or expense, or contrivance is spared in the collection of news; scarcely any item of interest is overlooked by the army of alert reporters day and night in the field. The old-world papers do not compete with those of the new in the matter ofquantityof news. But just here comes in one of the chief faults of the American journal, one of the besetting sins of the American people,—their well-known love of "bigness," their tendency to ask "How much?" rather than "Of what kind?" There is a lack of discrimination in the daily bill of fare served up by the American press that cannot but disgust the refined and tutored palate. It is only the boor who demands a savoury and a roast of equal bulk; it is only the vulgarian who wishes as much of his paper occupied by brutal prize-fights or vapid "personals" as by important political information or literary criticism. There isundoubtedly a modicum of truth in Matthew Arnold's sneer that American journals certainly supply news enough—but it is the news of the servants' hall. It is as if the helm were held rather by the active reporter than by the able editor. It is said that while there are eight editors to one reporter in Denmark, the proportion is exactly reversed in the United States. The net of the ordinary American editor is at least as indiscriminating as that of the German historiographer: every detail is swept in, irrespective of its intrinsic value. The very end for which the newspaper avowedly exists is often defeated by the impossibility of finding out what is the important news of the day. The reporter prides himself on being able to "write up" the most intrinsically uninteresting and unimportant matter. The best American critics themselves agree on this point. Mr. Howells writes: "There are too many things brought together in which the reader can and should have no interest. The thousand and one petty incidents of the various casualties of life that are grouped together in newspaper columns are profitless expenditure of money and energy."

The culminating point of this aimless congeries of reading matter, good, bad, and indifferent, is attained in the Sunday editions of the larger papers. Nothing comes amiss to their endless columns: scandal, politics, crochet-patterns, bogus interviews, puerile hoaxes, highly seasoned police reports, exaggerations of every kind, records of miraculous cures, funny stories with comic cuts, society paragraphs, gossip about foreign royalties, personalities of every description. In fact, they form the very ragbag of journalism. An unreasonable pride is taken in their very bulk—as if forty pagesper sewere better than one; as if the tons of garbage in the Sunday issue of the GothamGasometeroutweighed in any valuable sense the ten or twelve small pages of the ParisianTemps. Not but that there is a great deal of good matter in the Sunday papers.Wer vieles bringt wird manchem etwas bringen; and he who knows where to look for it will generally find some edible morsel in the hog-trough. It has been claimed that the Sunday papers of America correspond with the cheaper English magazines; and doubtless there is some truth in the assertion. The pretty little tale, the interesting note of popular science, or the able sketch of some contemporary political condition is, however, so hidden away amid a mass of feebly illustrated and vulgarly written notes on sport, society, criminal reports, and personal interviews with the most evanescent of celebrities that one cannot but stand aghast at this terrible misuse of the powerful engine of the press. It is idle to contend that the newspaper, as a business undertaking, must supply this sort of thing to meet the demand for it. It is (or ought to be) the proud boast of the press that it leads and moulds public opinion, and undoubtedly journalism (like the theatre) is at least as much the cause as the effect of the depravity of public taste. Enterprising stage-managers have before now proved that Shakespeare doesnotspell ruin, and there are admirable journals in the United States which have shown themselves to be valuable properties without undue pandering to the frivolous or vicious side of the public instinct.[17]

A straw shows how the wind blows; let one item show the unfathomable gulf in questions of tone and taste that can subsist between a great American daily and its English counterparts. In the summer of 1895 an issue of one of the richest and most influential of American journals—a paper that such men as Mr. Cleveland and Mr. McKinley have to take account of—published under the heading "A Fortunate Find" a picture of two girls in bathing dress, talking by the edge of the sea. One says to the other: "How did you manage your father? I thought he wouldn't let you come?" The answer is: "I caught him kissing the typewriter." It is, of course, perfectly inconceivable that any reputable British daily could descend to this depth of purposeless and odious vulgarity. If this be the style of humour desiderated, the Thunderer may take as a well-earned compliment the American sneer that "no joke appears in the LondonTimes, save by accident." If another instance be wanted, take this: Major Calef, of Boston, officiated as marshal at the funeral of his friend, Gen. Francis Walker. In so doing he caught a cold, of which he died. An evening paper hereupon published a cartoon showing Major Calef walking arm in arm with Death at General Walker's funeral.

Americans are also apt to be proud of the number of their journals, and will tell you, with evident appreciation of the fact, that "nearly two thousand daily papers and fourteen thousand weeklies are published in the United States." Unfortunately the character of their local journals does not altogether warrant the inference as to American intelligence that you are expected todraw. Many of them consist largely of paragraphs such as the following, copied verbatim from an issue of the PlattsburgSentinel(September, 1888):

George Blanshard, of Champlain, an experienced prescription clerk and a graduate of the Albany School of Pharmacy, has accepted a position in Breed's drug-store at Malone.Clerk Whitcomb, of the steamer "Maquam," has finished his season's work in the boat, and has resumed his studies at Burlington.

George Blanshard, of Champlain, an experienced prescription clerk and a graduate of the Albany School of Pharmacy, has accepted a position in Breed's drug-store at Malone.

Clerk Whitcomb, of the steamer "Maquam," has finished his season's work in the boat, and has resumed his studies at Burlington.

I admit that the interest of the readers of theSentinelin the doings of their friends Mr. Blanshard and Mr. Whitcomb is, perhaps, saner and healthier than that of the British snob in the fact that "Prince and Princess Christian walked in the gardens of Windsor Castle and afterwards drove out for an airing." But that is the utmost that can be said for the propagation of such utter vapidities; and the man who pays his five cents for the privilege of reading them can scarcely be said to produce a certificate of intelligence in so doing. If the exhibition of such intellectual feebleness were the worst charge that could be brought against the American newspaper, there would be little more to say; but, alas, "there are some among the so-called leading newspapers of which the influence is wholly pernicious because of the perverted intellectual ability with which they are conducted." (Prof. Chas. E. Norton, in theForum, February, 1896.)

The levity with which many—perhaps most—American journals treat subjects of serious importance is another unpleasant feature. They will talk of divorces as "matrimonial smash-ups," or enumerate them underthe caption "Divorce Mill." Murders and fatal accidents are recorded with the same jocosity. Questions of international importance are handled as if the main purpose of the article was to show the writer's power of humour. Serious speeches and even sermons are reported in a vein of flippant jocularity. The same trait often obtrudes into the review of books of the first importance. The traditional "No case—abuse the plaintiff's attorney" is translated into "Can't understand or appreciate this—let's make fun of it."

By the best papers—and these are steadily multiplying—the "interview" is looked upon as a serious opportunity to obtain in a concise form the views of a person of greater or less eminence on subjects of which he is entitled to speak with authority. By the majority of journals, however, the interview is abused to an inordinate extent, both as regards the individual and the public. It is used as a vehicle for the cheapest forms of wit and the most personal attack or laudation. My own experience was that the interviewer put a series of pre-arranged questions to me, published those of my answers which met his own preconceptions, and invented appropriate substitutes for those he did not honour with his approval. A Chicago reporter made me say that English ignorance of America was so dense that "a gentleman of considerable attainments asked me if Connecticut was not the capital of Pittsburgh and notable for its great Mormon temple,"—an elaborate combination due solely to his own active brain. The same ingenuous (and ingenious) youth caused me to invent "an erratic young Londoner, who packed his bag and started at once for any out-of-the-way country for which a newguide-book was published." Another, with equal lack of ground, committed me to the unpatriotic assertion that neither in Great Britain nor in any other part of Europe was there any scenery to compare with that of the United States. But perhaps the unkindest cut of all was that of the reporter at Washington who made me introduce my remarks by the fatuous expression "Methought"! Mr. E.A. Freeman was much amused by a reporter who said of him: "When he don't know a thing, he says he don't. When he does, he speaks as if he were certain of it." Mr. Freeman adds: "To the interviewer this way of action seemed a little strange, though he clearly approved of the eccentricity." This gentleman's mental attitude, like his superiority to grammar, is, unfortunately, characteristic of hundreds of his colleagues on the American press.

The distinction between the editorial and reportorial functions of a newspaper are apt to be much less clearly defined in the United States than in England. The English reporter, as a rule, confines himself strictly to his report, which is made without bias. A Conservative speech is as accurately (though perhaps not as lengthily) reported in a Liberal paper as in one of its own colour. All comment or criticism is reserved for the editorial columns. This is by no means the case in America. Such an authority as theAtlantic Monthlyadmits that wilful distortion is not infrequent: the reporter seems to consider it as part of his duty to amend the record in the interest of his own paper or party. The American reporter, in a word, may be more active-minded, more original, more amusing, than his English colleague; but he is seldom so accurate. This want of impartiality isanother of the patent defects of the American daily press. It is a too unscrupulous partisan; it represents the ethics of the ward politician rather than the seeker after truth.

If restraint be a sign of power, then the American press is weak indeed. There is no reticence about it. Nothing is sacred to an American reporter; everything that can be in any sense regarded as an item of news is exposed to the full glare of publicity. It has come to be so widely taken for granted that one likes to see his name in the papers, that it is often difficult to make a lady or gentleman of the American press understand that you really prefer to have your family affairs left in the dusk of private life. The touching little story entitled "A Thanksgiving Breakfast," inHarper's Magazinefor November, 1895, records an experience that is almost a commonplace except as regards the unusually thin skin of the victim and the unusual delicacy and good feeling of the operator. The writer of an interesting article in theOutlook(April 25, 1896), an admirable weekly paper published in New York, sums it up in a sentence: "It is no exaggeration to say that the wanton and unrestricted invasion of privacy by the modern press constitutes in certain respects the most offensive form of tyranny which the world has ever known." The writer then narrates the following incident to illustrate the length to which this invasion of domestic privacy is carried:

A cultivated and refined woman living in a boarding-house was so unfortunate as to awaken the admiration of a young man of unbalanced mind who was living under the same roof. He paid her attentions which were courteouslybut firmly declined. He wrote her letters which were at first acknowledged in the most formal way, and finally ignored. No woman could have been more circumspect and dignified. The young man preserved copies of his own letters, introduced the two or three brief and formal notes which he had received in reply, made a story of the incident, stole the photograph of the woman, enclosed his own photograph, mailed the whole matter to a New York newspaper, and committed suicide. The result was a two or three column report of the incident, with portraits of the unfortunate woman and the suicide, and an elaborate and startling exaggeration of the few inconspicuous, insignificant, and colorless facts from which the narrative was elaborated. That a refined woman in American society should be exposed to such a brutal invasion of her privacy as that which was committed in this case reflects upon every gentleman in the country.

No doubt, as theOutlookgoes on to show, the American people are themselves largely responsible for this attitude of the press. They have as a whole not only less reverence than Europeans for the privacy of others, but also less resentment for the violation of their own privacy. The new democracy has resigned itself to the custom of living in glass houses and regards the desire to shroud one's personal life in mystery as one of the survivals of the dark ages. The newspaper personalities are largely "the result of the desperate desire of the new classes, to whom democratic institutions have given their first chance, to discover the way tolive, in the wide social meaning of the word."

One regrettable result of the way in which the American papers turn liberty into license is that it actuallydeters many people from taking their share in public life. The fact that any public action is sure to bring down upon one's head a torrent of abuse or adulation, together with a microscopic investigation of one's most intimate affairs, is enough to give pause to all but the most resolute. Leading journals go incredible lengths in the way they speak of public men. One of the best New York dailies dismissed Mr. Bryan as "a wretched, rattle-pated boy." Others constantly alluded to Mr. Cleveland as "His Corpulency." For weeks the New YorkSunpublished a portrait of President Hayes with the wordfraudprinted across the forehead.

Such competent observers as Mr. George W. Smalley (Harper's Magazine, July, 1898) bear testimony to the fact that the irresponsibility of the press has seriously diminished its influence for good. Thus he points out that "the combined and active support given by the American press to the Anglo-American Arbitration Treaty weighed as nothing with the Senate." In recent mayoralty contests in New York and in Boston, almost the whole of the local press carried on vigorous but futile campaigns against the successful candidates. Several public libraries and reading-rooms have actually put some of the leading journals in an Index Expurgatorius.[18]

The moral and intellectual defects of the American newspaper are reflected in its outward dress. Neither the paper nor the printing of a New York or Bostondaily paper is so good as that of the great English dailies. American editors are apt to claim a good deal of credit for the illustrations with which the pages of their journals are sprinkled; but a less justifiable claim for approbation was surely never filed. In nine cases out of ten the wood-cuts in an American paper are an insult to one's good taste and sense of propriety, and, indeed, form one of the chief reasons for classing the American daily press as distinctly lower than that of England. The reason of this physical inferiority I do not pretend to explain. It is, however, a strange phenomenon in a country which produces the most beautiful monthly magazines in the world, and also holds its own in the paper, printing, and binding of its books. But, as Mr. Freeman remarks, the magazines and books of England and America are merely varieties of the same species, while the daily journals of the two countries belong to totally different orders. Many of the better papers are now beginning to give up illustrations. A bill to prevent the insertion in newspapers of portraits without the consent of the portrayed was even brought before the New York Legislature. An exasperating feature of American newspapers, which seems to me to come also under the head of physical inferiority, is the practice of scattering an article over the whole of an issue. Thus, on reaching the foot of a column on page 1 we are more likely than not to be directed for its continuation on page 7 or 8. The reason of this is presumably the desire to have all the best goods in the window;i.e., all the most important head-lines on the front page; but the custom is a most annoying one to the reader.

It is frequently asserted by Americans that their press is very largely controlled by capitalists, and that its columns are often venal. On such points as these I venture to make no assertion. To prove them would require either a special knowledge of the back-lobbies of journalism or so intimate an understanding of the working of American institutions and the evolution of American character as to be able to decide definitely that no other explanation can be given of the source of such-and-such newspaper actions and attitude. I confine myself to criticism on matters such as he who runs may read. It is, however, true that, contrary to the general spirit of the country, such questions as socialism and the labour movement seldom receive so fair and sympathetic treatment as in the English press.

So many of the journalists I met in the United States were men of high character, intelligence, and breeding that it may seem ungracious and exaggerated to say that American newspaper men as a class seem to me distinctly inferior to the pressmen of Great Britain. But I believe this to be the case; and indeed a study of the journals of the two countries would alone warrant the inference. The trail of the reporter is over them all. Not that I, mindful of the implied practicability of the passage of a needle's eye by a camel, believe it impossible for reporters to be gentlemen; but I do say that it is difficult for a reporter on the American system to preserve to the full that delicacy of respect for the mental privacy of others which we associate with the idea of true gentlemanliness. Mr. Smalley, in a passage controverting the general opinion that a journalist should always begin at the lowest rung of the ladder, admitsthat a modern reporter has often to approach people in a way that he will find it hard to reconcile with his own self-respect or the dignity of his profession. The representative of the press whom one meets in English society and clubs is very apt to be a university graduate, distinguished from his academic colleagues, if at all, by his superior ability and address. This is also true of many of the editorial writers of large American journals; but side by side with these will be found a large number of men who have worked their way up from the pettiest kind of reporting, and who have not had the advantage, at the most impressionable period of their career, of associating with the best-mannered men of the time. It is, of course, highly honourable to American society and to themselves that they have and take the opportunity of advancement, but the fact remains patent in their slipshod style and the faulty grammar of their writings, and in their vulgar familiarity of manner. It has been asserted that journalism in America is not a profession, and is "subject to none of the conditions that would entitle it to the name. There are no recognised rules of conduct for its members, and no tribunal to enforce them if there were."

The startling contrasts in America which suggested the title of the present volume are, of course, well in evidence in the American press. Not only are there many papers which are eminently unobnoxious to the charges brought against the American press generally, but different parts of the same paper often seem as if they were products of totally different spheres (or, at any rate, hemispheres). The "editorials," or leaders, are sometimes couched in a form of which the scholarlyrestraint, chasteness of style, moral dignity, and intellectual force would do honour to the best possible of papers in the best possible of worlds, while several columns on the front page of the same issue are occupied by an illustrated account of a prize-fight, in which the most pointless and disgusting slang, such as "tapping his claret" and "bunging his peepers," is used with blood-curdling frequency.

In a paper that lies before me as I write, something like a dozen columns are devoted to a detailed account of the great contest between John L. Sullivan and Jim Corbett (Sept. 7, 1892), while the principal place on the editorial page (but onlyonecolumn) is occupied by a well-written and most appreciative article on the Quaker poet Whittier, who had gone to his long home just about the time the pugilists were battering each other at New Orleans.[19]

It would give a false impression of American journalism as a whole if we left the question here. While American newspapers certainly exemplify many of the worst sides of democracy and much of the rawness of a new country, it would be folly to deny that they also participate in the attendant virtues of both the one and the other. The same inspiring sense of largeness and freedom that we meet in other American institutions is also represented in the press: the same absence of slavish deference to effete authority, the same openness of opportunity, the same freshness of outlook, the same spontaneity of expression, the same readiness in windbag-piercing,the same admiration for talent in whatever field displayed. The time-honoured alliance of dulness and respectability has had its decreenisifrom the American press. Several of our own journalists have had the wit to see and the energy to adopt the best feature of the American style; and the result has been a distinct advance in the raciness and readableness of some of our best-known journals. The "Americanisation of the British press" is no bugbear to stand in awe of, if only it be carried on with good sense and discrimination. We can most advantageously exchange lessons of sobriety and restraint for suggestions of candour, humour, and point; and America's share in the form of the ideal English reading journal of the future will possibly not be the smaller.

TheNation, a political and literary weekly, and the religious or semi-religious weekly journals like theOutlookand theIndependent, are superior to anything we have in the samegenre; and the high-water mark even of the daily political press, though not very often attained, is perhaps almost on a level with the best in Europe. Richard Grant White found a richness in the English papers, due to the far-reaching interests of the British empire, which made all other journalism seem tame and narrow; but perhaps he would now-a-days hesitate to attach this stigma to the best journals of New York. And, in conclusion, we must not forget that American papers have often lent all their energies to the championship of noble causes, ranging from the enthusiastic anti-slavery agitation of the New YorkTribune, under Horace Greeley, down to the crusade against body-snatching, successfully carried on by thePressof Philadelphia, and tothe agitation in favour of the horses of the Fifth-avenue stages so pertinaciously fomented by the humorous journalLife.

I cannot resist the temptation of printing part of a notice of "Baedeker's Handbook to the United States," which will show the almost incredible lengths to which the less cultured scribes of the American press carry their "spread-eagleism" even now. It is from a journal published in a city of nearly 100,000 inhabitants, the capital (though not the largest city) of one of the most important States in the Union. It is headed "A Blind Guide:"

It is simply incomprehensible that an author of so much literary merit in his preparation of guides to European countries should make the absolute failure that he has in the building of a guide to the United States intended for European travellers. As a guide, it is a monstrosity, fully as deceptive and misleading in its aims as it is ridiculous and unworthy in its criticisms of our people, our customs and habitations. It is not a guide in any sense, but a general tirade of abuse of Americans and their country; a compilation of mean, unfair statements; of presumed facts that are a tissue of transparent falsehoods; of comparisons with Europe and Europeans that are odius (sic). Baedeker sees very little to commend in America, but a great deal to criticise, and warns Europeans coming to this country that they must use discretion if they expect to escape the machinations of our people and the snares with which they will be surrounded. Any person who has ever travelled in Europe and America will concede that in the United States the tourist enjoys better advantages in every way than he can in Europe. Our hotels possess by far better accommodations, and none of that "flunkeyism" which causes Americans to smile as they witness it on arrival. Our railway service is superior in every respect to that of Europe. As regards civility to strangers the Americans are unequalled on the face of the globe. In antiquity Europe excels; but in natural picturesque scenery the majestic grandeur of our West is so far ahead ofanything to be seen in Europe, even in beautiful Switzerland, that the alien beholder cannot but express wonder and admiration. Baedeker has made a mistake in his attempt to underrate America and Americans, its institutions and their customs. True, our nation is in a crude state as compared with the old monarchies of Europe, but in enterprise, business qualifications, politeness, literary and scientific attainments, and in fact all the essential qualities that tend to constitute a people and a country, America is away in the advance of staid, old foggy (sic) Europe, and Baedeker will find much difficulty to eradicate that all-important fact.

I hasten to assure my English readers that this is no fair sample of transatlantic journalism, and that nine out of ten of my American acquaintances would deem it as unique a literary specimen as they would. At the same time I may remind my American readers that the scutcheon of American journalism is not so bright as it might be while blots of this kind occur on it, and that it is the blatancy of Americans of this type that tends to give currency to the distorted opinion of Uncle Sam that prevails so widely in Europe.

Perhaps I shall not be misunderstood if I say that this review is by no means typical of the notice taken by American journals of "Baedeker's Handbook to the United States." Whatever other defects were found in it, reviewers were almost unanimous in pronouncing it fair and free from prejudice. Indeed, the reception of the Handbook by the American press was so much more friendly than I had any right to expect that it has made me feel some qualms in writing this chapter of criticism, while it must certainly relieve me of any possible charge of a wish to retaliate.

FOOTNOTES:[17]Writing of theatrical managers, theCentury(November, 1895) says: "One of the greatest obstacles in the way of reform is the inability of these same men to discern the trend of intelligent, to say nothing of cultivated, public opinion, or to inform themselves of the existence of the widespread craving for higher and better entertainment."[18]The so-called "Yellow Press" has reached such an extreme of extravagance during the progress of the Spanish-American war that it may be hoped that it has at last dug its own grave. On the other hand, many journals were perceptibly steadied by having so vital an issue to occupy their columns, and the tone of a large section of the press was distinctly creditable.[19]It may be doubted, however, whether any American author of similar standing would devote a chapter to the loathsome details of the prize-ring, as Mr. George Meredith does in his novel "The Amazing Marriage."

[17]Writing of theatrical managers, theCentury(November, 1895) says: "One of the greatest obstacles in the way of reform is the inability of these same men to discern the trend of intelligent, to say nothing of cultivated, public opinion, or to inform themselves of the existence of the widespread craving for higher and better entertainment."

[18]The so-called "Yellow Press" has reached such an extreme of extravagance during the progress of the Spanish-American war that it may be hoped that it has at last dug its own grave. On the other hand, many journals were perceptibly steadied by having so vital an issue to occupy their columns, and the tone of a large section of the press was distinctly creditable.

[19]It may be doubted, however, whether any American author of similar standing would devote a chapter to the loathsome details of the prize-ring, as Mr. George Meredith does in his novel "The Amazing Marriage."

By far the most popular novel of the London season of 1894 was "The Manxman," by Mr. Hall Caine. Its sale is said to have reached a fabulous number of thousands of copies, and the testimony of the public press and the circulating library is unanimous as to the supremacy of its vogue. In the United States the favourite book of the year was Mr. George Du Maurier's "Trilby." To the practical and prosaic evidence of the eager purchase of half a million copies we have to add the more romantic homage of the new Western towns (Trilbyville!) and patent bug exterminators named after the heroine. It may, possibly, be worth while examining the predominant qualities of the two books with a view to ascertain what light their similarities and differences may throw upon the respective literary tastes of the Englishman and the American.

There has, I believe, been no important critical denial of the right of "The Manxman" to rank as a "strong" book. The plot is drawn with consummate skill—not in the sense of a Gaborian-like unravelment of mystery, but in its organic, natural, inevitable development, and in the abiding interest of its evolution. The details are worked in with the most scrupulous care. Rarely, inmodern fiction, have certain elemental features of the human being been displayed with more determination and pathos.

The centralmotifof the story—the corrosion of a predominantly righteous soul by a repented but hidden sin culminating in an overwhelming necessity of confession—is so powerfully presented to us that we forget all question of originality until our memory of the fascinating pages has cooled down. Then we may recall the resemblance of theme in the recent novel entitled "The Silence of Dean Maitland," while we find the prototype of both these books in "The Scarlet Letter" of Nathaniel Hawthorne, who has handled the problem with a subtlety and haunting weirdness to which neither of the English works can lay any claim. As our first interest in the story farther cools, it may occur to us that the very perfection of plot in "The Manxman" gives it the effect of a "set piece;" its association with Mr. Wilson Barrett and the boards seems foreordained. It may seem to us that there is a little forcing of the pathos, that a certain artificiality pervades the scene. In a word, we may set down "The Manxman" as melodrama—melodrama at its best, but still melodrama. Its effects are vivid, positive, sensational; its analysis of character is keen, but hardly subtle; it appeals to the British public's love of the obvious, the full-blooded, the thorough-going; it runs on well-tried lines; it is admirable, but it is not new.

"Trilby" is a very different book, and it would be a catholic palate indeed that would relish equally the story of the Paris grisette and the story of the Manx deemster. In "Trilby" the blending of the novel andthe romance, of the real and the fantastic, is as much of a stumbling-block to John Bull as it is, for example, in Ibsen's "Lady from the Sea." "The central idea," he might exclaim, "is utterly extravagant; the transformation by hypnotism of the absolutely tone-deaf girl into the unutterably peerless singer is unthinkable and absurd." The admirers of "Trilby" may very well grant this, and yet feel that their withers are unwrung. It is not in the hypnotic device and its working out that they find the charm of the story; it is not the plot that they are mainly interested in; it is not even the slightly sentimental love-story of Trilby and Little Billee. They are willing to let the whole framework, as it were, of the book go by the board; it is not the thread of the narrative, but the sketches and incidents strung on it, that appeals to them. They revel in the fascinating novelty and ingenuousness of the Du Maurier vein, the art that is superficially so artless, the exquisitely simple delicacy of touch, the inimitable fineness of characterisation, the constant suggestion of the tender and true, the keen sense of the pathetic in life and the humour that makes it tolerable, the lovable drollery that corrects the tendency to the sentimental, the subtle blending of the strength of a man with thenaïvetéof the child, the ambidextrous familiarity with English and French life, the kindliness of the satire, the absence of all straining for effect, the deep humanity that pervades the book from cover to cover.

If, therefore, we take "The Manxman" and "Trilby" as types of what specially appeals to the reading public of England and America, we should conclude that the Englishman calls for strength and directness, the Americanfor delicacy and suggestiveness. The former does not insist so much on originality of theme, if the handling be but new and clever; there are certain elementary passions and dramatic situations of which the British public never wearies. The American does not clamour for telling "curtains," if the character-drawing be keen, the conversations fresh, sparkling, and humorous. John Bull likes vividness and solidity of impasto; Jonathan's eye is often more pleasantly affected by a delicate gradation of half-tones. The one desires the downright, the concrete, the real; the other is titillated by the subtle, the allusive, the half-spoken. The antithesis is betweenforceandfinesse, between the palpable and the impalpable.[20]

If anybody but George Du Maurier could have written "Trilby," it seems to me it would have been an American rather than a full-blooded Englishman. The keenness of the American appreciation of the book corresponds to elements in the American nature. The Anglo-French blend of Mr. Du Maurier's literary genius finds nearer analogues in American literature than in either English or French.

The best writing of our American cousins has, of course, much that it shares with our own, much that is purely English in source and inspiration. Longfellow, for instance, might almost have been an Englishman, and his great popularity in England probably owed nothing to the attraction exercised by the unfamiliar. The English traits, moreover, are often readily discernible even in those works that smack most of the soil. When, however, we seek the differentiating marks of American literature, we find that many of them are also characteristics of the writings of Mr. Du Maurier, while they are much less conspicuous in those of Mr. Hall Caine. Among such marks are its freshness and spontaneity, untrammelled by authority or tradition; its courage in tackling problems elsewhere tabooed; its breezy intrepidity, rooted half in conscious will and half innaïveignorance. Besides these, we find features that we should hardly have expected ona priorigrounds. A wideness of sweep and elemental greatness in proportion to the natural majesty of the huge new continent are hardly present; Walt Whitman remains an isolated phenomenon. Instead, we meet in the best American literature an almost aristocratic daintiness and feeling for the refined and select. As compared with the British school, the leading American school is marked by an increased delicacy offinesse, a tendency to refine and refine, a perhaps exaggerated dread of the platitude and the commonplace, a fondness for analysis, a preference for character over event, an avoidance of absolutely untempered seriousness and solidity. Mr. Bryce notes that the verdicts of the best literary circles of the United States often seem to "proceed from a more delicate and sympathetic insight" than ours.

This fastidiousness of the best writers and critics of America is by no means inconsistent with the existence of an enormous class of half-educated readers, who devour the kind of "literature" provided for them, and batten in their various degrees on the productions of Mr. E.P. Roe, Miss Laura Jean Libbey, or theSunday War-Whoop. The evolution of democracy in the literary sphere is exactly analogous to its course in the political sphere. In both there is the same tendency to go too far, to overturn the good and legitimate authority as well as the bad and oppressive; both are apt, to use the homely German proverb, "to throw the baby out of the bath along with the dirty water." This lack of discrimination leads to the rushing in of fools where angels might well fear to tread. All sorts of men try to write books, and all sorts of men think they are able to judge them. The old standard of authority is overthrown, and for a time no other takes its place with the great mass of the reading public. This state of affairs is, however, by no means one that need make us despair of the literary future of America. It reminds me of the mental condition of a kindly American tourist who once called at our office in Leipsic to give us the benefit of the corrections he had made on "Baedeker's Handbooks" during his peregrination of Europe. "Here," he said, "is one error which I am absolutely sure of: you call this a statue of Minerva; but I know that's wrong, because I sawPallascarved on the pedestal!" When I told this tale to English friends, they saw in it nothing but a proof of the colossal ignorance of the travelling American. To my mind, however, it redounded more to the credit of America than to its discredit. It showed thatAmericans of defective education felt the need of culture and spared no pains to procure it. A London tradesman with the education of my American friend would probably never extend his ideas of travelling beyond Margate, or at most a week's excursion to "Parry." But this indefatigable tourist had visited all the chief galleries of Europe, and had doubtless greatly improved his taste in art and educated his sense of the refined and beautiful, even though his book-learning had not taught him that the same goddess might have two different names.

The application of this anecdote to the present condition of American literature is obvious. The great fact is that there is an enormous crowd of readers, and the great hope is that they will eventually work their way up through Miss Laura Jean Libbey to heights of purer air. America has not so much degraded a previously existing literary palate as given a taste of some sort to those who under old-world conditions might never have come to it. In American literature as in American life we find all the phenomena of a transition period—all the symptoms that might be expected from the extraordinary mixture of the old and the new, the childlike and the knowing, the past and the present, in this Land of Contrasts. The startling difference between the best and the worst writers is often reflected in different works by the same author; or a real and strong natural talent for writing will be found conjoined with an extraordinary lack of education and training. An excellent piece of English—pithy, forcible, and even elegant—will often shatter on some simple grammatical reef, such as the use of "as" for "that" ("he did not knowas he could"), or of the plural for the singular ("a long ways off"). Mr. James Lane Allen, the author of a series of refined and delicately worded romances, can write such phrases as "In a voice neither could scarce hear" and "Shake hands with me andtellme good-by." ("The Choir Invisible," pp. 222, 297.)

I know not whether the phrase "was graduated," applied not to a vernier, but to a student, be legitimate or not; it is certainly so used by the best American writers. Another common American idiom that sounds queer to British ears is, "The minutes were ordered printed" (for "to be printed"). Misquotations and misuse of foreign phrases are terribly rife; and even so spirited and entertaining a writer as Miss F.C. Baylor will write: "This Jenny, with theesprit de l'escalierof her sex, had at once divined and resented" ("On Both Sides," p. 26). In the same way one is constantly appalled in conversation by hearing college graduates say "acrost" for "across" and making other "bad breaks" which in England could not be conjoined with an equal amount of culture and education.

The extreme fastidiousness and delicacy of the leading American writers, as above referred to, may be to a large extent accounted for by an inevitable reaction against the general tendency to the careless and the slipshod, and is thus in its way as significant and natural a result of existing conditions as any other feature of American literature. Perhaps a secondary cause of this type of writing may be looked for in the fact that so far the spirit of New England has dominated American literature. Even those writers of the South and West who are freshest in their material and vehicle are still permeatedby the tone, the temper, the method, the ideals, of the New England school. And certainly Allibone's dictionary of authors shows that an enormous proportion of American writers are to this day of New England origin or descent.

Among living American writers the two whose names occur most spontaneously to the mind as typical examples are, perhaps, Henry James and W.D. Howells. Of these the former has identified himself so much with European life and has devoted himself so largely to European subjects that we, perhaps, miss to some extent the American atmosphere in his works, though he undoubtedly possesses the American quality of workmanship in a very high degree. Or, to put it in another way, his touch is indisputably American, while his accessories, hisstaffage, are cosmopolitan. His American hand has become dyed to that it works in. This, however, is more true of his later than of his earlier works. That imperishable little classic "Daisy Miller" is a very exquisite and typical specimen of the American suggestiveness of style; indeed, as I have hinted (Chapter IV.), its suggestiveness almost overshot the mark and required the explanation of a dramatic key. His dislike of the obvious and the commonplace sometimes leads Mr. James to become artificial and even obscure,[21]but at its best his style is as perspicuous as it is distinguished, dainty, and subtle; there is, perhaps, no other living artist in words who can give his admirers so rare a literary pleasure in mere exquisiteness of workmanship.

Mr. Howells, unlike Mr. James, is purely and exclusively American, in his style as in his subject, in his main themes as in his incidental illustrations, in his spirit, his temperament, his point of view. No one has written more pleasantly of Venice; but just as surely there is a something in his Venetian sketches which no one but an American could have put there. Mr. James may be as patriotic a citizen of the Great Republic, but there is not so much tangible evidence of the fact in his writings; Mr. Howells may be as cosmopolitan in his sympathies as Mr. James, but his writings alone would hardly justify the inference. Mr. Howells also possesses abonhomie, a geniality, a good-nature veiled by a slight mask of cynicism, that may be personal, but which strikes one as also a characteristic American trait. Mr. James is not, I hasten to say, the reverse of this, but he shows a coolness in his treatment, a lordly indifference to the fate of his creations, an almost pitiless keenness of analysis, which savour a little more of an end-of-the-century European than of a young and genial democracy.

Mr. Howells is, perhaps, not always so well appreciated in his own country as he deserves—and this in spite of the facts that his novels are widely read and his name is in all the magazines. What I mean is, that in the conversation of the cultured circles of Boston or New York too much stress is apt to be laid on the prosaic and commonplace character of his materials. There are, perhaps, unusually good reasons for this point of view. Cromwell's wife and daughters would probably prefer to have him painted wartless, but posterity wants him warts and all. So those to whom theaverage—theveryaverage—American is an every-day and all-day occurrence cannot abide him in their literature; while we who are removed by the ocean of space can enjoy these pictures of common life, as enabling us, better than any idealistic romance or study of the rare and extraordinary, to realise the life of our American cousins. To those who can read between the lines with any discretion, I should say that novels like "Silas Lapham" and "A Modern Instance" will give a clearer idea of American character and tendencies than any other contemporary works of fiction; to those who can read between the lines—for it is obvious that the commonplace and the slightly vulgar no more exhaust the field of society in the United States than elsewhere. But to me Mr. Howells, even when in his most realistic and sordid vein, alwayssuggeststhe ideal and the noble; the reverse of the medal proclaims loudly that itisthe reverse, and that there is an obverse of a very different kind to be seen by those who will turn the coin. It seems to me that no very great palæontological skill is necessary to reconstruct the whole frame of the animal from the portion that Mr. Howells sets up for us. His novels remind me of those maps of a limited area which indicate very clearly what lies beyond, by arrows on their margins. In nothing does Mr. Howells more clearly show his "Americanism" than in his almost divinely sympathetic and tolerant attitude towards commonplace, erring, vulgar humanity. "Ah, poor real life, which I love!" he writes somewhere; "can I make others share the delight I find in thy foolish and insipid face!" We must remember in reading him his own theory of the duty of the novelist. "I am extremely opposedto what we call ideal characters. I think their portrayal is mischievous; it is altogether offensive to me as an artist, and, as far as the morality goes, I believe that when an artist tries to create an ideal he mixes some truth up with a vast deal of sentimentality, and produces something that is extremely noxious as well as nauseous. I think that no man can consistently portray a probable type of human character without being useful to his readers. When he endeavors to create something higher than that, he plays the fool himself and tempts his readers to folly. He tempts young men and women to try to form themselves upon models that would be detestable in life, if they were ever found there."

Perhaps the delicacy of Mr. Howells' touch and the gentle subtlety of his satire are nowhere better illustrated than in the little drawing-room "farces" of which he frequently publishes one in an American magazine about Christmas time. I call them farces because he himself applies that name to them; but these dainty little comediettas contain none of the rollicking qualities which the word usually connotes to English ears. They have all thefinesseof the best French work of the kind, combined with a purity of atmosphere and of intent that we are apt to claim as Anglo-Saxon, and which, perhaps, is especially characteristic of America. One is tired of hearing, in this connection, of the blush that rises to the innocent girl's cheek; but why should even those who are supposed to be past the age of blushing not also enjoy humour unspiced by even a suggestion of lubricity? The "Mikado" and "Pinafore" have done yeoman's service in displacing the meretricious delights of Offenbach and Lecocq; and Howells' little pieces yield anexquisite, though innocent, enjoyment to those whose taste in farces has not been fashioned and spoiled by clumsy English adaptations or imitations of intriguinglevers-de-rideau, and to those who do not associate the name of farce with horse-play and practical joking. They form the best illustration of what has been described as Mr. Howells' "method of occasionally opening up to the reader through the bewilderingly intricate mazes of his dialogue clear perceptions of the true values of his characters, imitating thus the actual trick of life, which can safely be depended on to now and then expose meanings that words have cleverly served the purpose of concealing." If I hesitate to call them comediettas "in porcelain," it is because the suggested analogy falls short, owing to the greater reconditeness, the purer intellectual quality, of Mr. Howells' humour as compared with Mr. Austin Dobson's. So intensely American in quality are these scenes from the lives of Mr. and Mrs. Willis Campbell, Mr. and Mrs. Roberts, and their friends, that it sometimes seems to me that they might almost be used as touchstones for the advisability of a visit to the United States. If you can appreciate and enjoy these farces, go to America by all means; you will have a "good time." If you cannot, better stay at home, unless your motive is merely one of base mechanic necessity; you will find the American atmosphere a little too rare.

A recent phase of Mr. Howells' activity—that, namely, in which, like Mr. William Morris, he has boldly risked his reputation as a literary artist in order to espouse unpopular social causes of whose justice he is convinced—will interest all who have hearts to feel as wellas brains to think. He made his fame by consummately artistic work, addressed to the daintiest of literacy palates; and yet in such books as "A Hazard of New Fortunes" and "A Traveller from Altruria" he has conscientiously taken up the defence and propagation of a form of socialism, without blanching before the epicure who demands his literature "neat" or the Philistine householder who brands all socialistic writings as dangerous. Mr. Howells, however, knows his public; and the reforming element in him cannot but rejoice at the hearing he has won through its artistic counterpart. No one of his literary brethren of any importance has, so far as I know, emulated his courage in this particular. Some, like Mr. Bellamy, have made a reputation by their socialistic writings; none has risked so magnificent a structure already built up on a purely artistic foundation. It is mainly on account of this phase of his work, in which he has not forsaken his art, but makes it "the expression of his whole life and the thought and feeling mature life has brought to him," that Mr. Howells has been claimed astheAmerican novelist, the best delineator of American life.[22]

Mr. Howells the poet is not nearly so well known as Mr. Howells the novelist; and there are doubtless many European students of American literature who are unaware of the extremely characteristic work he has done in verse. The accomplished critic, Mr. R.H. Stoddard, writes thus of a volume of poems published by Mr.Howells about three years ago:[23]"There is something here which, if not new in American poetry, has never before made itself so manifest there, never before declared itself with such vivacity and force, the process by which it emerged from emotion and clothed itself in speech being so undiscoverable by critical analysis that it seems, as Matthew Arnold said of some of Wordsworth's poetry, as if Nature took the pen from his hand and wrote in his stead." These poems are all short, and their titles (such as "What Shall It Profit?" "The Sphinx," "If," "To-morrow," "Good Society," "Equality," "Heredity," and so forth) sufficiently indicate that they do not rank among the lighter triflings with the muse. Their abiding sense of an awful and inevitable fate, their keen realisation of the startling contrasts between wealth and poverty, their symbolical grasp on the great realities of life and death, and the consummate skill of the artistic setting are all pervaded with something that recalls the paintings of Mr. G.F. Watts or the visions of Miss Olive Schreiner. One specimen can alone be given here:

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