210 INDOOR STUDIES 



great tasks are to be undertaken, our lightness and 

 brightness are less telling. Our second considerable 

 crop of authors, born (say) since 1825, has less 

 force, less body, less breadth, than our first great 

 crop, which included Cooper, Bryant, Irving, Emer- 

 son, Longfellow, Whittier, etc. There are things 

 in Stedman that have the old breadth and generos- 

 ity, but there are not enough of them. It seems 

 to me that we are refining now at the expense of 

 strength. Our poets and critics, like our "bug- 

 gies " and pleasure vehicles, lack timber, lack mass. 

 Our popular novelists have point but lack body. 

 The workmanship is admirable, but the material 

 upon which it is expended is abominable. What 

 a boon to them would be a little of Scott's or 

 Dickens's power and heartiness, or of Turgdnef's 

 grasp of the fundamental human qualities! The 

 men and women turned out are by no means the 

 equal of those one meets daily among aU ranks of 

 the people, except perhaps in the single qualities of 

 wit and "smartness." The rank, primary, inarticu- 

 late human qualities are sufi'ering decay among us; 

 there can be little doubt of that. Probably they 

 are suffering — or are threatened with — the same 

 decay in Europe. A cheap press, much and hasty 

 reading, rapid communication, tend to give us sur- 

 face dominion without corresponding depth. 



Yet, as contrasted with the American, the Eng- 

 lishman reaps great advantage in his greater stolid- 

 ity, inertia, mass, depth of character, because these 

 things make a solid ground to buUd upon; and 



