Look, how the overhead train at the Morningside curve
Loops 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.]




LETTER V

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 do _not_ know 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