MATTHEW ARNOLD'S CKITICISM 83 



tuie, of the best that is known and thought in the 

 world — it is not interesting. 



It could hardly be otherwise. America is the 

 product of the commercial and iadustrial age, the 

 age of prose. K"early all its features are the out- 

 come of a spirit that makes little account of taste or 

 the beautiful — the spirit of gain. The spirit that 

 still rules it, and rules more or less all modern 

 European nations, is the spirit of gain, the greed of 

 wealth, and nothing but the ugly, the prosaic, can 

 be born of this spirit. The Old World is the pro- 

 duct of quite a different spirit, the religious spirit 

 and the spirit of chivalry and feudalism. Life seems 

 much riper and fuller there, — has much more flavor, 

 and one can well see how a cultivated European 

 would find America almost intolerable. 



Yet the two principles of which Arnold makes so 

 much, Hellenism and Hebraism, the power of ideas 

 and the power of conduct, are doubtless more evenly 

 blended in our people than among those of Great 

 Britain. Indeed, it often appears that, if we need 

 more of either, it is of the latter rather than of the 

 former, a little more of the old Hebrew's reverence 

 and depth and solemnity of character, rather than 

 of the Hellene's flexibility and desire to hear or to 

 tell some new thing. 



The equality, also, for which Arnold pleads, we 

 already practically have; and the Irish question, the 

 Church and the State question, and the burning 

 question. May a man marry his deceased wife's sis- 

 ter? we have not. But the question of culture, 



