An almost equal display of Philistinism—­perhaps greater in proportion to its length—­is exhibited by an article entitled “Twelve Hours of New York,” published by Count Gleichen in Murray’s Magazine (February, 1890).  This energetic young man succeeded (in his own belief) in seeing all the sights of New York in the time indicated by the title of his article, and apparently met nothing to his taste except the Hoffman House bar and the large rugs with which the cab-horses were swathed.  He found his hotel a den of incivility and his dinner “a squashy, sloppy meal.”  He wishes he had spent the day in Canada instead.  He is great in his scorn for the “glue kettle” helmets of the New York police, and for the ferry-boats in the harbour, to which he vastly prefers what he wittily and originally styles the “common or garden steamer.”  His feet, in his own elegant phrase, felt “like a jelly” after four hours of New York pavement.  What are the Americans to think of us when they find one of our innermost and most aristocratic circle writing stuff like this under the aegis of, perhaps, the foremost of British publishers?

As a third instance of the ingratiating manner in which Englishmen write of Americans, we may take the following paragraph from “Travel and Talk,” an interesting record of much journeying by that well-known London clergyman, the Rev. H.R.  Haweis:  “Among the numerous kind attentions I was favoured with and somewhat embarrassed by was the assiduous hospitality of another singular lady, also since dead.  I allude to Mrs. Barnard, the wife of the venerable principal of Columbia College, a well-known and admirably appointed educational institution in New York.  This good lady was bent upon our staying at the college, and hunted us from house to house until we took up our abode with her, and, I confess, I found her rather amusing at first, and I am sure she meant most kindly.  But there was an inconceivable fidgetiness about her, and an incapacity to let people alone, or even listen to anything they said in answer to her questions, which poured as from a quick-firing gun, that became at last intolerable.”  Comment on this passage would be entirely superfluous; but I cannot help drawing attention to the supreme touch of gracefulness added by the three words I have italicised.

There is one English critic of American life whose opinion cannot be treated cavalierly—­least of all by those who feel, as I do, how inestimable is our debt to him as a leader in the paths of sweetness and light.  But even in the presence of Matthew Arnold I desire to preserve the attitude of “nullius addictus jurare in verba magistri,” and I cannot but believe that his estimate of America, while including much that is subtle, clear-sighted, and tonic, is in certain respects inadequate and misleading.  He unfortunately committed the mistake of writing on the United States before visiting the country, and had made up his mind in advance that it was almost exclusively peopled by, and entirely run in the interests of, the British dissenting Philistine with a difference.