596 REPORT OF NATIONAL MUSEUM, 1903. 



The marked difference between the external forms of life in England 

 and on the Continent results from the fact that the Island Kingdom 

 has always attended to its own affairs and adhered to its customs and 

 usages, while the rest of the cultivated world has learned to make life 

 more beautiful for itself. This exclusiveness has had as a consequence 

 a remarkable inflexibility in the manner of living, which has been 

 fully realized by enlightened minds there. So Matthew Arnold (died 

 18S8), one of the most esteemed of modern writers, says that the 

 English nation has remained hopelessly in the rear in comparison 

 with the progress of other European peoples, and that what it needs 

 is not personal freedom, not wealth, industry, and the blessing of 

 children, but obedience, culture, and refined enjoyment of life. The 

 Englishman troubles himself even less than a Frenchman concerning 

 what goes on in the rest of the world. Manufacturing and trade 

 interests, and the strife for money, in connection with the provision 

 for so-called domestic "comfort," which, however, in the German sense, 

 is not such, occupy in general the monotonous grind of life from 

 which it is not decorous to depart. Amusements among the higher 

 classes are of a dreary sort, and the external circumstances under 

 which they seek them are often cheerless. As a result of this, the 

 English often enjoy themselves much more on the Continent than the}^ 

 do at home. The Englishman, who when abroad is most exacting, 

 when at home is of a most touching modesty, so that the German in 

 England appears to be exacting. 



I submit these few remarks merely for the purpose of explaining 

 why it is that travel for study in the large cities of P^ngland is not 

 associated with much pleasure, especially since the enjoyment of the 

 hospitality, although extended in richest measure to strangers, is 

 rather a task, both on account of the great distances in the cities and 

 of the customs of the country, which make ease of intercourse difficult. 



to maintain its power, should most of its people be such as the inhabitants of large 

 parts of London, Birmingham, Glasgow, and Manchester now are. Of the evil con- 

 ditions affecting the life of the inhabitants of big towns those which receive most atten- 

 tion are drinking, licentiousness, unwholsome dwellings, smoke-laden air. * * *" 

 And on page 21: "Very little intelligence is needed, for seeing that, if we could 

 raise the life of our towns to even as high a level as that of Geneva or of any German 

 or Dutch town, and escape the shame we now feel at the preventable baseness of 

 English town life, that would be a result which, though it cost him every year half 

 of his income, would make every well-to-do Englishman ten times richer in all that 

 is best worth having than the richest man now is. * * * I greatly fear that 

 England is destined to fall, a land of starved schools, of playgroundless, treeless cities, 

 and of well-supported hospitals, reformatories, and lunatic asylums. ' ' 



