The Portland daily press. [volume] (Portland, Me.) 1862-1921, 1881-08-24
The Saturday Review on r. g.
White.

Mr. Richard Grant Whites England With
out and Within is in pleasant contrast to va
rious books which have been written by Eng
lishmen about America as well as by Ameri-
cans about England. We find of course here
and there few absurd mistakes But they are
mistakes; they are due to republican prejudice
and national imperfection of knowledge, not
to spite or even to the wish to be humorous.
Mr.. White was received with that cordial hos
pitality which both Englishmen and Ameri-
cans are prompt to show to one another. He
had introductions to the best society of the
mother country; to see the lower or middle
class-except in railways, on the roads, or on
great public occasions-he had some what to 90
out of his way. The general result of his visit
seems to be somewhat enthusiastic admira-
tion of the best characteristics of Englishmen
and Englishwomen, both those they share with
and those in which they differ from "his own
folk" Naturally he thinks that there is more
female beauty in America; but his general es-
innate of Englishwomen, even on that point,
will, we think, satisfy them. That in voice, in
carriage. and in what we should call manners,
they are vastly superior to very large proper
.
and more often distinctly implies. An Eng
lishwoman, he says, is woman in soul as we'll
as body, in mind as in person. Her voice is
almost always pleasant, her bearing and con-
duct almost always free from the ostentatious
self assertion of her northern sister; northern,
we say, for Mr.. White is a Yankee, aud speaks
of American men and women as if he knew
little of any other type. We cannot say that,
in our own opinion, Virginian gentleman or
gentewoman is wanting in any of the finest
Characteristics he ascribes to the aristocracy of
Great Britain.
According to Mr.. White, thoroughbred
English gentleman is about the finest possible
type of cultivated humanity. Physically, he
maintains, the American is on the average tall
or and scarcely less stalwart, though the ten
rare ON the western side of the Atlantic; and.
certain military statistics which were published
shortly after the war bear out this view. But
the Englishman, he says, whether soldier or
civilian, has the advant age in carriage and
manner. The Horse Guards may be inferior
in stature to many regiment from Maine or
Vermont-as these, we know, were to the
Kentuckians-but the slouch and slovenliness
of American soldiers would not be tolerated
in three months recruit, and is scarcely to
be seen among English civilians of the higher
class. But the distinctive popularity of Eng
land which struck him most forcibly-more
forcibly than even the universal bad dressing
of the ladies-was one that we hardly expected
to find acknowledged by an American. Eng
land is he says, the country of rights par ercel
lence not of equal rights for all, but of rights
whereof every man and woman has his or her
share, and which neither the greatest individ-
ual nor the most powerful can violate with i'm
punity. In America the convenience, the
comfort-what we should call the plain obvi-
GUS rights of individuals and even Of society at
large-are constantly trampled upon. Manu-
facturers, railway companies, rich men and
rich corporations, constantly inaict nuisances
| upon their ineighbors which in England would
| not be tolerated for a moment He ascribes
this in great measure to the resoute self respect
| and indiviJualism of the English character,
| the determination with which each man as
| serts his legal right, however offensive it may
| seem, when it is rudely invaded; while he rec
| ognises frankly the willingness to waive rights
| when once properly acknowledged, without
| which such self assertion would become intol-
| erable selfishness. Whether he recognizes
that such individual self dependence and re-
solve is distinctly aristocratic, is the fruit Of
examples set for centuries by individuals
+ strong enough to hold their own against num-
bers, is not quite so clear.
On the whole the book conveys what, we be-
lieve, is the undoubted truth. America is a
far better country for those who are bent ON
wealth and on physical comfort that they can
| not easily attain at home. For those who have
enough for their wants England is incompara-
| bly, the pleaSanter country to live in. With all
its;magnifcent distances, all its abundance Of
room, all its glorious natural scenery, America
is, as compared with England, an ugly coun-
try. And in American society men are much
more constantly liable to have their toes trod-
den upon by pushing and crowding nejghbors.