178 



AN OCTOBER ABROAD. 



favor of the greater 'cuteness, wideawakeness, and en- 

 terprise of the American, but is simply a difference 

 expressive of our greater forwardness. We are a for- 

 ward people, and the god we worship is Smartness. 

 In one of the worst tendencies of the age, namely, an 

 impudent, superficial, journalistic intellectuality and 

 glibness, America, in her polite and literary circles, no 

 doubt, leads all other nations. English books and 

 newspapers show more homely veracity, more single- 

 ness of purpose, in short, more character than ours. 

 The great charm of such a man as Darwin, for in- 

 stance, is his simple manliness and transparent good 

 faith, and the absence in him of that finical, self-com- 

 placent smartness which is the bane of our literature. 



A London crowd I" thought the most normal and un- 

 sophisticated I had ever seen, with the least admixture 

 of rowdyism and ruffianism. No doubt it is there, 

 but this scum is not upon the surface, as with us. I 

 went about very freely in the hundred and one places 

 of amusement where the average working classes as- 

 semble, with their wives and daughters and sweet- 

 hearts, and smoke villainous cigars, and drink ale and 

 stout. There was to me something notably fresh and 

 canny about them, as if they had only yesterday ceased 

 to be shepherds and shepherdesses. They certainly 

 were less developed, in certain directions, or shall I 

 say depraved, than similar crowds in our great cities. 

 They are easily pleased, and laugh at the simple and 

 childlike, but there is little that hints of an impure 



