Chapter 15

First and foremost, one essential is that the country is full of youth. I have discovered this for myself, and I have learned what the fact means and how it affects the country. I had heard this said over and over again. It used to irritate me to hear a monotonous repetition of the words, 'Sir, we are a young county.' Young? At least, it is three hundred years old; nor was it till I had passed through New England, and seen Buffalo and Chicago--those cities which stand between the east and time west--and was able to think and compare, that I began to understand the reality and the meaning of those words, which have now become so real and mean so much. It is not that the cities are new and the buildings put up yesterday; it is in the atmosphere of buoyancy, elation, self-reliance, and energy, which one drinks in everywhere, that this sense of youth is apprehended. It is youth full of confidence. Is there such a thing anywhere in America as poverty or the fear of poverty? I do not think so. Men may be hard up or even stone-broke; there are slums; there are hard-worked women; but there is no general fear of poverty. In the old countries the fear of poverty lies on all hearts like lead. To be sure, such a fear is a survival in England. In the last century the strokes of fate were sudden and heavy, and a merchant sitting to-day in a place of great honour and repute, an authority on 'Change, would find himself on the morrow in the Marshalsea or the Fleet, a prisoner for life; once down a man could not recover; he spent the rest of his life in captivity; he and his descendants, to the third and fourth generations--for it was as unlucky to be the son of a bankrupt as the son of a convict--grovelled in the gutter. There is no longer a Marshalsea or a Fleet prison; but the dread of failure survives. In the States that dread seems practically absent.

Again, youth is extravagant; spends with both hands, cannot hear of economy; burns the candle at both ends; eats the corn while it is green; trades upon the future; gives bills at long dates without hesitation, and while the golden flood rolls past takes what it wants and sends out its sons to help themselves. Why should youth make provisions for the sons of youth? The world is young; the riches of the world are beyond counting; they belong to the young; let us work, let us spend; let us enjoy, for youth is the time for work and for enjoyment.

In youth, again, one is careless about little things; they will right themselves: persons of the baser sort pervert the freedom of the country to their own uses; they make 'corners' and 'rings' and steal the money of the municipality; never mind; some day, when we have time, we will straighten things out. In youth, also, one is tempted to gallant apparel, bravery of show, a defiant bearing, gold and lace and colour. In cities this tendency of youth is shown by great buildings and big institutions. In youth, there is a natural exaggeration in talk: hence the spread-eagle of which we hear so much. Then everything which belongs to youth must be better--beyond comparison better--than everything that belongs to age. In the last century, if you like, youth followed and imitated age; it is the note of this, our country, that youth is always advancing and stepping ahead of age. Even in the daily press the youth of the country shows itself. Let age sit down and meditate; let such a paper as the London _Times_--that old, old paper--give every day three laboured and thoughtful essays written by scholars and philosophers on the topics of the day. It is not for youth to ponder over the meaning and the tendencies of things; it is for youth to act, to make history, to push things along; therefore let the papers record everything that passes; perhaps when the country is old, when the time comes for meditation, the London _Times_ may be imitated, and even a weekly collection of essays, such as the _Saturday Review_ or the _Spectator_, may be successfully started in the United States. Again, youth is apt to be jealous over its own pretensions. Perhaps this quality also might be illustrated; but, for obvious reasons, we will not press this point. Lastly, youth knows nothing of the time which came immediately before itself. It is not till comparatively late in life that a man connects his own generation--his own history--with that which preceded him. When does the history of the United States begin--not for the man of letters or the professor of history--but for the average man? It begins when the Union begins: not before. There is a very beautiful and very noble history before the Union. But it is shared with Great Britain. There is a period of gallant and victorious war--but beside the colonials marched King George's red-coats. There was a brave struggle for supremacy, and the French were victoriously driven out--but it was by English fleets and with the help of English soldiers. Therefore, the average American mind refuses to dwell on this period. His country must spring at once, full armed, into the world. His country must be all his own. He wants no history, if you please, in which any other country has also a share.

In a word, America seems to present all the possible characteristics of youth. It is buoyant, confident, extravagant, ardent, elated, and proud. It lives in the present. The young men of twenty-one cannot believe in coming age; people do get to fifty, he believes; but, for himself, age is so far off that he need not consider it. I observed the youthfulness of America even in New England, but the country as one got farther west seemed to become more youthful. At Chicago, I suppose, no one owns to more than five-and-twenty--youth is infectious. I felt myself while in the city much under that age.

Let us pass to another point--also an essential--the flaunting of the flag, I had the honour of assisting at the 'Sollemnia Academica,' the commencement of Harvard on the 28th of June last. I believe that Harvard is the richest, as it is also the oldest, of American universities; it is also the largest in point of numbers. The function was celebrated in the college theatre; it was attended by the governor of the State with the lieutenant-governor and his aide-de-camp; there was a notable gathering on the stage or platform, consisting of the president, professors and governors of the university, together with those men of distinction whom the university proposed to honour with a degree. The floor, or pit, of the house was filled with the commencing bachelors; the gallery was crowded with spectators, chiefly ladies. After the ceremony we were invited to assist at the dinner given by the students to the president, and a company among whom it was a distinction for a stranger to sit. The ceremony of conferring degrees was interesting to an Englishman and a member of the older Cambridge, because it contained certain points of detail which had certainly been brought over by Harvard himself, the founder, from the old to the new Cambridge. The dinner, or luncheon, was interesting for the speeches, for which it was the occasion and the excuse. The president, for his part, reported the addition of $750,000 to the wealth of the college, and called attention to the very remarkable feature of modern American liberality in the lavish gifts and endowments going on all over the States to colleges and places of learning. He said that it was unprecedented in history. With submissions to the learned president, not quite without precedent. The fourteenth and fifteenth centuries witnessed a similar spirit in the foundation and endowment of colleges and schools in England and Scotland. About half the colleges of Oxford and Cambridge, and three out of the four Scottish universities, belong to the period. Still, it is very remarkable to find this new largeness of mind. Since one has received great fortune, let this wealth be passed on, not to make a son into an idle man, but to endow, with the best gifts of learning and science, generation after generation of men born for work. We, who are ourselves so richly endowed, and have been so richly endowed for four hundred years, have no need to envy Harvard all her wealth, We may applaud the spirit which seeks not to enrich a family but to advance the nation; all the more because we have many instances of a similar spirit in our own country. It is not the further endowment of Oxford and Cambridge that is continued by one rich man, but the foundation of new colleges, art galleries, and schools of art. Angerstein, Vernon, Alexander, Tate, are some of our benefactors in art.

The endowments of Owens College, the Mason College, the Firth College, University College, London, are gifts of private persons. Since we do not produce rich men so freely as America, our endowments are neither so many nor so great; but the spirit of endowment is with us as well.

Presently one observed at this dinner a note of difference, which afterwards gave food for reflection. It was this: All the speakers, one after the other, without exception, referred to the free institutions of the nation, to the duty of citizens, and especially to the responsibilities of those who were destined by the training and education of this venerable college to become the leaders of the country. Nothing whatever was said, by any of the speakers, on the achievements in scholarship, literature, or science made by former scholars of the college; nothing was said of the promise in learning or science of the young men now beginning the world. Now, a year or so ago, the master and fellows of a certain college of the older Cambridge bade to a feast as many of the old members of that college as would fill the hall. It was, of course, a very much smaller hall than that of Harvard; but it was still a venerable college, the mother, so to speak, of Emmanuel, and therefore the grandmother of Harvard. The master, in his speech after dinner, spoke about nothing but the glories of the college in its long list of worthies and the very remarkable number of men, either living or recently passed away, whose work in the world had brought distinction to themselves and honour to the college. In short, the college only existed in his mind, and in the minds of those present, for the advancement of learning, nor was there any other consideration possible for him in connection with the college. Is there, then, another view of Harvard College? There must be. The speakers suggested this new and American view. The college, if my supposed discovery is true, is regarded as a place which is to furnish the State, not with scholars, for whom there will always be a very limited demand, but with a large and perennial supply of men of liberal education and sound principles, whose chief duty shall be the maintenance of the freedom to which they are born, and a steady opposition to the corruption into which all free institutions readily fall without unceasing watchfulness. This thing I advance with some hesitation. But it explains the inflated patriotism of the carefully-prepared speech of the governor and the political (not partisan) spirit of all the other speakers. Oxford and Cambridge have long furnished the country with a learned clergy, a learned Bar, and (but this is past) a learned House of Commons. The tradition of learning lingers still; nay, they are centres of learning beyond comparison with any other universities in the world. Harvard also, I suppose, provides a learned clergy; but its principal function, as its rulers seemed to think, is to send out into the world every year a great body of young men fully equipped to be leaders in the country. This is its chief glory; to do this effectively, I take it, is the chief desire of the president and the society.

It cannot be denied that this is a very important duty, much more important, for a special reason, in the States than it is in Great Britain. I used to marvel, before making these observations, at the constant flying of the stars and stripes everywhere; at the continual reminding as to freedom. 'Are there,' one asks, 'no other countries in the world which are free? In what single point is the freedom of the American greater than the freedom of the Briton, the Canadian, of the Australian?' In none, certainly. Yet we are not forever waving the Union Jack everywhere and calling each other brothers in our glorious liberty. Well: but let us think. In so vast a population, spread over so many States, each State being a different country, there will always be ignorant men, men ready to give up everything for a selfish advantage: there must always be a danger, unless it be continually met and beaten down, that the United may become the dis-United States. Why, European statesmen used to look forward confidently to the disruption of the States from the Declaration of Independence down to the Civil War. It was a commonplace that the country must inevitably fall to pieces. The very possibility of a disruption is now not even thought of: the thing is never mentioned. Why is this? Surely, because the idea of federation is not only taught and ground in at the elementary schools, but because the flag of federation is always displayed as the chief glory of the nation at every place where two or three Americans are gathered together. The symbol you see is unmistakable: it means Union, once for all; the word, the idea, the symbol, it must be always kept before the eyes of the people; it is in the wisdom of the rulers that the stars and stripes are forever flaunted before the eyes of the people.

And it is not only the ignorant and the selfish among Americans themselves; it is the vast number of immigrants, increasing by half a million every year, who have to be taught what citizenship means. The outward symbol is the readiest teacher; let them never forget that they live under the stars and stripes; let them learn--German, Norwegian, Italian, Irish--what it means to belong to the Great Republic. Is this all that a two months' visitor can bring away from America? It is the most important part of my plunder. What else has been gathered up is hardly worth talking about, in comparison with these two discoveries which are, after all, perhaps only useful to myself: the discovery of the real youthfulness of the country and the discovery of the real meaning and the necessity of the spread-eagle speeches and the flaunting of the flag in season and out of season. It may seem a small thing to learn, but the lesson has wholly changed my point of view. The fact is perhaps hardly worth recording; it matters little what a single Englishman thinks; but if he can induce others to think with him, or to modify their views in the same direction, it may matter a great deal.

And, of course, an Englishman must think of his own future--that of his own country. Before many years the United Kingdom must inevitably undergo great changes: the vastness of the Empire will vanish; Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa will fall away and will become independent republics; what these little islands will become then, I know not. What will become of the English-speaking races, thus firmly planted over the whole globe, is a more important question. If a man had the voice of the silver-mouthed Father, if a man had the inspiration of a prophet, it would be a small thing for that man to consecrate and expend all his life, all his strength, all his soul, in the creation of a great federation of English-speaking peoples. There should be no war of tariffs between them; there should be no possibility of dispute between them; there should be as many nations separate and distinct as might please to call themselves nations; it should make no difference whether Canada was the separate dominion of Canada, or a part of the United States; it should make no difference whether Great Britain and Ireland were a monarchy or a republic. The one thing of importance would be an indestructible alliance for offence and defence among the people who have inherited the best part of the whole world. This alliance can best be forwarded by a promotion of friendship between private persons; by a constant advocacy in the press of all the countries concerned; and by the feeling, to be cultivated everywhere, that such a confederation would present to the world the greatest, strongest, wealthiest, most highly cultivated confederacy of nations that ever existed. It would be permanent, because here would be no war of aggression in tariffs, or of personal quarrel; no territorial ambitions; no conflict of kings.

Naturally, I was not called upon to speak at the Harvard dinner. Had I spoken, I should like to have said: 'Men of Harvard, grandsons of that benignant mother--still young--who sits crowned with laurels, ever fresh, on the sedgy bank of Granta, think of the country from which your fathers have sprung. Go out into the world--your world of youthful endeavour and success; do your best to bring the hearts of the people whom you will have to lead back to their kin across the seas to east and west--over the Atlantic and over the Pacific. Do your best to bring about the Indestructible fraternity of the whole English-speaking races. Do this in the sacred name of that freedom of which you have this day heard so much, and of that Christianity to which by the very stamp and seal of your college you are the avowed and sworn servants. Rah!'

[1893.]

ART AND THE PEOPLE. [Paper read at the Birmingham Meeting of the Social Science Congress.]

There is a passage in one of the letters of Edward Denison which exactly interprets the dejection and oppression certain to fall upon one who seriously considers and personally investigates, however superficially, the condition of the poor in great cities. He writes from Philpott Street, Commercial Road, East London, and he says: 'My wits are getting blunted by the monotony and ugliness of the place. I can almost imagine the awful effect upon a human mind of never seeing anything but the meanest and vilest of men and man's work, and of complete exclusion from the sight of God's works.' The very exaggeration of these words shows the profound dejection of the writer, at a moment when his resolution to continue living in a place where there was neither nature nor art, nor beauty anywhere, weighed upon him like a penal sentence, so that the vileness of the surroundings entered into his soul and made him feel as if the men and women in the place, as well as their works, were all alike, mean, vile, and sordid. Edward Denison wrote these words seventeen years ago. The place in which he lived is still ugly and monotonous, a small cross-street leading from the back of the London Hospital into the Commercial Road, about as far from green fields and parks or gardens as can be found anywhere in London; there are still a good many of the vilest of man's works carried on in the neighbourhood, especially the making of clothes for Government contractors, and the making of shirts for private sweaters. But something has been attempted since Denison came here--the pioneer of a great invasion. Many others have followed his example, and are now, like him, living among the people. Clubs have been established, concerts and readings have been given, and excursions into the country, convalescent homes and a thousand different things have grown up for the amelioration of the poor. Better than all, there are now thousands of educated and cultivated men and women who are perpetually considering how existing evils may be remedied and new evils prevented. With philanthropic efforts, with the social questions connected with them, I have now nothing to do. We are at present only concerned with a question of Art: we are to inquire how the love and desire for Art may be introduced and developed, and to ask what has already been attempted In this direction.

I would first desire to explain that I know absolutely nothing about the state of things in any other great city of Great Britain than one. What I say is based upon such small knowledge that I may have gained concerning London, and especially East London. As regards Birmingham, Manchester, Sheffield, Glasgow, and any other place where there is a great industrial population, I know nothing. If, therefore, exception be taken to any expressions of mine as applied to some other city, I beg it to be remembered that East London alone is in my mind. Even concerning East London exception may be taken to anything I may advance. That is because it is impossible to make any general proposition whatever of humanity considered in the mass except the elementary ones, such as that all must eat and sleep, to which objection may not be raised. Thus, I know that it is true, and I am prepared to maintain the assertion, that the lower classes in London care nothing about Art, and know nothing about Art, and have only an elementary appreciation of things beautiful. It is equally true, on the other hand, that there are everywhere some whose hearts are yearning and whose hands are stretched out in prayer for greater beauty and fulness of life. It is also, as a general statement, true that there are no amusements in East London, which contains two and a half millions of people, has no municipality, and is the biggest, ugliest, and meanest city in the whole world. Yet it is equally true that there are in it institutes for education and science, art, and literature, mutual improvement societies, clubs at which there are evenings for singing, dancing, and private theatricals, and rowing, swimming, and cricket clubs. It is again, as a general rule, true that the lower classes are ignorant of science, yet there are everywhere scattered among the working men single cases of earnest devotion to science. And it is painfully true that they do not seem to feel the ugliness of their own streets and houses; yet no one who has been among the holiday folks in the country on a Bank Holiday or a fine Sunday in the summer can deny their profound appreciation of field and forest, flowers and green leaves, sunshine and shade. It is, lastly, perfectly true that their lives, compared with those of the more cultivated classes, do seem horribly dull, monotonous, and poor. Yet the dulness is more apparent than real: ugly houses and mean streets do not necessarily imply mean and ugly lives. Their days may be enlivened in a thousand ways which to the outsider are invisible. Among these are some which directly or indirectly make for the appreciation of Art.