ENGLISH CHARACTERISTICS. 195 



ence expressive of our greater forwardness. We 

 are a forward people, and the god we worship is 

 Smartness. In one of the worst tendencies of the age, 

 namely, an impudent, superficial, journalistic intel- 

 lectuality and glibness, America, in her polite and 

 literary circles, no doubt, leads all other nations. 

 English books and newspapers show more homely 

 veracity, more singleness of purpose, in short, more 

 character than ours. The great charm of such a man 

 as Darwin, for instance, is his simple manliness and 

 transparent good faith, and the absence in him of that 

 finical, self-complacent smartness which is the bane 

 of our literature. 



The poet Clough thought the New England man 

 more simple than the man of Old England. Haw- 

 thorne, on the other hand, seemed reluctant to admit 

 that the English were a "franker and simpler people, 

 from peer to peasant," than we are ; and that they 

 had not yet wandered so far from that " healthful 

 and primitive simplicity in which man was created " 

 as have their descendants in America. My own im- 

 pression accords with Hawthorne's. We are a more 

 alert and curious people, but not so simple, not so 

 easily angered, nor so easily amused. We have par- 

 taken more largely of the fruit of the forbidden tree. 

 The English have more of the stay-to-home virtues, 

 which, on the other hand, they no doubt pay pretty 

 well for by their more insular tendencies. 



The youths and maidens seemed more simple, with 

 \heir softer and less intellectual faces. When I re- 



