IMPRESSIONS OF AMERICA. 



529 



as close as they could in the several conveyances 

 — some of them having to climb to the summit 

 of a mountain of luggage on the top of the om- 

 nibus — and were driven, still in excellent humor, 

 round the country and over a bridge which crossed 

 the river a mile above or below the point where 

 the flames revealed the scene of the disaster. 

 At the little town on the other side we had to 

 wait two or three hours more ; but still there was 

 not a sign of bad temper, there was no abuse of 

 the railway in general, and only a very measured 

 and moderate condemnation of the official whose 

 political zeal had led him away from his post, 

 where he might have prevented the accident. It 

 occurred to me that if the Limited Mail between 

 London and Edinburgh were stopped for three or 

 four hours by a similar accident, there would be 

 the expenditure of a great deal of stormy elo- 

 quence ; the company would be denounced for 

 having even a single wooden bridge on the line ; 

 there would be loud threats of letters to the 

 Times, and of actions to recover damages caused 

 by the delay ; the zealous Liberal who had de- 

 serted his duty to listen to Mr. Chamberlain or to 

 some other orator of his party would be vigor- 

 ously abused ; the offense would be treated as a 

 characteristic illustration of the effect of Liberal 

 principles ; Mr. Gladstone would be made indi- 

 rectly responsible for the whole business. But 

 the Americans treated the delay with as much 

 equanimity as if it had been an eclipse of the 

 moon, for which no one was to be blamed, and 

 at which no one had a right to grumble. This 

 was not because they are more accustomed to 

 railway accidents and delays than we are. The 

 trains seem to me to keep as good time in Amer- 

 ica as in England, and it is maintained by the 

 Americans that their accidents are not more fre- 

 quent than ours. 



It is possible, I think, that the war produced 

 a great effect on the national manners. An im- 

 mense number of men went into the army, and 

 had to learn to obey the word of command, and to 

 submit to a rigid drill. For three or four years 

 they were " under authority." While in the 

 army they had no time for idleness and dissipat- 

 ing pleasures. They had to make long marches 

 and to do a great deal of fighting. The self-control 

 and orderliness which seem to me to characterize 

 the mass of the American people may be partly 

 the effect of the discipline, the serious work, and 

 the perils and sufferings of those terrible years. 

 Such an experience could hardly fail to produce a 

 deep impression on the national character. 



The absence of a powerful and hereditary 



70 



aristocracy, the trustees and heirs of the culture 

 and refinement of many generations, produces, 

 no doubt, a sensible difference between American 

 society and our own. In England the classes 

 which are never brought into contact with the 

 country gentry or with families wearing old titles 

 are affected more or less powerfully by aristocrat- 

 ic traditions and manners. Even the servants 

 and tradesmen of great people acquire habits 

 of courtesy and deference which are not likely to 

 be found in societies organized on a democratic 

 basis, and these habits have an effect on their 

 friends and neighbors. But, on the other hand, 

 when the power of an aristocracy has begun to 

 wane, their position and their pretensions will 

 probably provoke in the classes which do not 

 share their dignity a spirit of self-assertion which 

 is far more "vulgar" and far more alien from 

 the " sweet reasonableness " which Mr. Arnold 

 wishes us to cultivate than the spirit of equality 

 which troubles some English travelers in America. 

 When the mass of the English people supposed 

 that a duke with estates covering a whole coun- 

 ty was as much an ordinance of Nature as Skid- 

 daw or Ben Nevis — when the existence of an 

 aristocracy of wealth and of title was accepted 

 just in the same spirit in which men accept the 

 succession of day and night — there were certain 

 gracious habits of mind produced by the ine- 

 qualities of our social order. But for good or 

 evil that time has gone by. The best men of the 

 middle classes are, indeed, almost unconscious of 

 the existence of the classes above them, and de- 

 vote themselves to their business, their books, 

 their pictures, and their public work, without 

 troubling themselves about " society." But the 

 men of inferior quality cannot make themselves 

 quite happy unless they can penetrate into the 

 charmed circle. There is a certain measure of 

 suppressed resentment as long as they are ex- 

 cluded from it ; and even when they obtain occa- 

 sional admission, and are tolerably well content 

 with their own good-fortune, the mischief is not 

 over. They begin to draw invisible lines between 

 themselves and the " ruck " of the people about 

 them. This in its turn provokes ill-feeling and 

 self-assertion, and the feeling spreads — assump- 

 tion on the one side and resentment on the other 

 — through all the imaginary degrees of social in- 

 feriority beneath them. Some years ago, a Bir- 

 mingham manufacturer told me that the girls who 

 wrapped up his goods in the warehouse refused 

 to tolerate the humiliation of leaving the premises 

 by the same entrance as the girls who made them 

 in the workshops. The " uppishness " which of- 



