AMERICAN VULGARITY.

Evening Star, Issue 3934, 4 October 1875, Page 3

AMERICAN VULGARITY.

“ What is an A mericau !” is the title of a remarkable article which appeared in the May number of the ‘ Atlantic Monthly.’ The following i« a summing up of the writer’s analysis of the question :—“ The basis of our nationality is English 3 our standards like our language are English—but ‘ why are we so different from the English !’ ” Then follows question on question, each opening a vista of suggestivoness :—“ What is our physical type ! The tall, straight, slender, yet muscular form, large deep eyes with sweeping lashes, clear complexion, [ splendid teeth, calm and serious 1 mien, which one sees commonly among the Maine and New Hampshire lumbermen, which wo knew so well in the western regiments during the late war, and which one meets with nowhere else in the world! Ur the sallow, puny, ill-made, insignificant, nervous, restless human creature whom we know everywhere at a glance as the compatriot! Whence comes our pro ference for knife and pistol as arbiter instead of the fist! the duel instead of law and damages! our excitability, our sensitiveness, our propensity to humbug and be humbugged, our ideality, our headlong haste, our daily inertia ! None of these are English : they cannot ail bo the result of youth, cUum.te, Republican institutions. Finally, who is a representative American ! la he an Adams, a Jefferson, a Lincoln, a Barmim, a Butler, or a Fisk ? Are Longfellow and Lowell, Hawthorne and Emerson, our representative literary men 3 or BretgHarte and his followers I Arc we the most practical or the most speculative of people ! The greediest of gain or the most reckless o expense ! The most lawless or the most superstitiously law-abiding ! The rashost or the most calculating! The most phlegmatic or the most thin-skinned ! The broadest or the narrowest! The chariest of words or the most inveterate talkers ! The most indifferent or the most subservient to public opinion l ? We are cited as the embodiment of all these and many other opposite qualities. Which is the true view 1 or do all extremes meet in us!” To these queries a rather vigorous reply is made m the June number of the same periodical—a reply which must have an intensely soothing effect on Young Ame/ica. The writer asserts that, next to ignorance, his most universal quality is vulgarity. “ Our statesmen,” he observes, “ show it in sprinkling their speeches with cheap classical quotations and literary allusions which the mass of their hearers do not understand 3 our

• i-.i' i puiaOculUV iU • iieu- treatment ,of sacred things, our militia officers are for ever on parade with their eternally recurring title ; our corporations are incessantly giving themselves banquets with the pomp and emphasis of a national celebration; dinners and suppers, Bibles, swords, and pieces of plate are alway being rendered by men nobody ever heard of, to men nobody every heard of, for loing nobotty knows what; our private citizens have a mania for offering receptions to strangers chiefly distinguished by bad standing in their own country, or by haying abused ours ; a mania likewise for calling themselves committees, and for driving about iu hired barouches; a mania for interviewing, for excursions with brass bands. Our young women publish themselves as Miss Nellie, Yinnie, Lulu, Katie. The entries we make in the travellers’ i>ooks at hotels abroad are peculiarly ingenious ; whatever nonsense an Englishman, a Frenchman, or a German may inscribe reflects ridicule only on himself ] our people have the happy gift of making their entire nation disgusting by their remarks.”