insular narrowness in the conception of what is interesting. When he
finds a want of soul and delicacy in the American as compared with
John Bull, some of us must feel that if he is right the latitude of
interpretation of these terms must indeed be oceanic. When he gravely
cites the shrewd and ingenious Benjamin Franklin as the most
considerable man whom America has yet produced, we must respectfully
but firmly take exception to his standard of measurement. When he
declares that Abraham Lincoln has no claim to distinction, we feel
that the writer must have in mind distinction of a singularly
conventional and superficial nature; and we are not reassured by the
_quasi_ brutality of the remark in one of his letters, to the effect
that Lincoln's assassination brought into American history a dash of
the tragic and romantic in which it had hitherto been so sadly lacking
("_sic semper tyrannis_ is so unlike anything Yankee or English middle
class"). When he asserts that from Maine to Florida and back again all
America Hebraises, we reflect with some bewilderment that hitherto we
had believed the New Orleans creole (_e.g._) to be as far removed from
Hebraising as any type we knew of. It is strikingly characteristic of
the weak side of Mr. Arnold's outlook on America that he went to stay
with Mr. P.T. Barnum, the celebrated showman, without the least idea
that his American friends might think the choice of hosts a peculiar
one. To him, to a very large extent, Americans were all alike
middle-class, dissenting Philistines; and so far as appears on the
surface, Mr. Barnum's desire to "belong to the minority" pleased him
as much as any other sign of approval conferred upon him in America.

A native of the British Isles is sometimes apt to be a little nettled
when he finds a native of the United States regarding him as a
"foreigner" and talking of him accordingly. An Englishman never means
the natives of the United States when he speaks of "foreigners;" he