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THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.— SUPPLEMENT. 



exert no influence upon them. We need here to 

 draw a distinction between the metaphysical world 

 and the phenomenal physical world, which serves 

 as its basis, but which can borrow nothing from it. 

 Leibnitz expressed that discrimination in those 

 words of his we repeated at the beginning of this 

 essay ; science recognizes and adopts it in our day. 

 To conclude, if it is possible to define life by 



the help of a particular metaphysical conception 

 it remains no less the truth that mechanical, 

 chemical, and physical forces are the only efficient 

 agents in the living organism, and the physiolo- 

 gist has nothing else than their action to note 

 and explain. Descartes's phrase must be accept- 

 ed : " We think metaphysically, but we live and 

 act physically." 



IMPRESSIONS OF AMERICA. 



By E. W. DALE. 



I. — SOCIETY. 



IN the autumn of last year I spent two very 

 pleasant months on the other side of the At- 

 lantic. Since my return I have been asked, as a 

 matter of course, by all my friends, what I think 

 of America. I had to answer or to evade the 

 question almost as soon as I was on the landing- 

 stage at Liverpool, and before my portmanteaus 

 were fairly through the custom-house ; I am near- 

 ly sure, indeed, that the question was asked me 

 on the tender before we had reached the landing- 

 stage. I have had to answer or to evade it nearly 

 every day since. 



I say that I have had to " answer or to evade " 

 it ; for the question cannot be fairly answered in 

 an omnibus, or between the courses at a dinner- 

 party, or while putting on one's great-coat after 

 a committee-meeting, or while talking under an 

 umbrella to a friend one has happened to meet 

 in the street in a shower of rain. Indeed, I am 

 not sure that I have a right to express any 

 opinion on America and the American people, 

 even when there is the opportunity for express- 

 ing it deliberately and fully. I sailed from Liv- 

 erpool on the 1st of September, and reached 

 Liverpool again on the 17th of November. In 

 seven or eight weeks what trustworthy judgment 

 can a man form of the habits, manners, temper, 

 and character, of a population so varied in its 

 origin and occupations as that of the United 

 States, and covering so vast a territory ? After 

 so brief a visit, what right have I to form any 

 confident opinion on American institutions ? 



I do not imagine that all Americans are like 

 the accomplished professors at Yale, or like the 

 clergymen I met in New York, Brooklyn, Bos- 

 ton, and in several of the smaller cities of New 



England, or like the distinguished physicians who 

 showed me hospitality at Philadelphia and Chi- 

 cago, or like the Education Commissioners and 

 the chairmen and members of school committees, 

 with whom I spent many interesting days in sev- 

 eral great cities, or like the heads of famous 

 commercial houses to whom I was introduced by 

 my friend and fellow-traveler Mr. Henry Lee. 

 Nor do I suppose that I have a complete and 

 exhaustive knowledge of American manners and 

 character because I staid in many American 

 hotels, and traveled several thousands of miles on 

 steamboats and in railway-carriages. I can but 

 tell what I saw. But I saw enough to convince 

 me that some of the representations of the Amer- 

 ican people which have become popular in Eng- 

 land are gross and slanderous libels. 



An American who had formed his conception 

 of Englishmen from the typical " John Bull " in 

 top-boots, with a cudgel in his hand, would be 

 rather perplexed on meeting Dean Stanley, whose 

 hospitality to Americans has given him a repu- 

 tation on the other side of the Atlantic almost 

 as enviable as that which he has won by his 

 literary genius ; nor would his perplexity be less- 

 ened if from the deanery at Westminster he 

 crossed over to the House of Commons, and 

 happened to see and hear Mr. Gladstone. He 

 might go to fifty London dinners and still won- 

 der where the ideal Englishman was to be found. 

 At churches, concerts, museums, picture-galleries, 

 and theatres, his curiosity would still be unsat. 

 isfied. He might ride in innumerable omnibuses, 

 he might travel morning after morning by the 

 underground railway, and go from London Bridge 

 to Chelsea every afternoon in a penny boat, and 

 never see the object of his search. He might go 

 down to Oxford, or York, or Brighton, or Salis- 



