New-York tribune. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1866-1924, 1882-10-01
HONE AGAIN.


! The incoming steamers during the month
inst ended were loaded to the waters edge
with returning tourists. In no previous year
has the outflow of Americans on Europe been
so enormous as in this season; but as usual
they seem to regard the little continent as
summer resort only, and bic homeward with
| the first hint of frost
It is now safe to say that every man of aver
age education in the States who can Afford to
spend a few hundred dollars on his individual
qualification has gone, or means to go, 10
Europe. This migration has become as fixed
national social movement as the annual
emptying Of the great towns into the country.
The reasons for it are much more mixed, how
ever. Consideration for health and fashion
empties our cities in summer. but health.
fashion, associations of art, history and family
drive the American to Europe. Curiosity, pure
and simple, or the love of antiquity, has
really little to do with it he is not curious to
see niagara or Pixies Peak, but rushes enthusi-
astically TO climb lower mountains in Switzer-
land, or 10 be vet by the spray of the Lauter-
brunnen. There are structures telling tales of
human life in his own country which antedate
any rum in Europe, but he does not care to see
acknowledged, in the breast OF the most prCvin-
ca American that he is going back to bis fathers
house. 1t is his home after all the sense OF
fatherand is stronger upon HIM in Strattord-
upon Avon or Abbotsford than in the sage
plains of Arizona or the forests of Oregon.
why Americans stay in Europe Is more easy
to explain than why they go. In London and
IN almost all the large centres on the Continent
there is now fixed and sometimes large
Amer lean society. 1t is made up OF three
classes: those whose official position or bust
ness brings them there those whose education
and taste lead them to prefer the auieter and
more settled modes of life and larger resources
of Europe; and lastly, a class of rich vulgar
men and women who want the unmatched
freedom of a life abroad They venture upon
liberties and tone in Paris which they would
not dare to take in New-York. These are the
Americans who become intoleIable nusances
to foreigners and their own people in every
town i'll Europe.
There are two or three lessons outside of all
technical ones in art, architecture or scholar
ship of any sort, which keen-wt American
cannot help but learn On the other side. The
first is that the American per is better and
no worse than any of his cousins. His laws
may be more just but he does not obey them
so well as the German he does not bend the
knee to King or Kaiser, but he is yoled and
driven by gigantic corporations and by
Bosses his public schools are inferior to those
of Prussia, his prison system to that of Ireland.
When he boasts of the one unparalleled merit
of his lard,-the chance which it gives to the
poorest and most vulgar to walk on a level
highway with the best,-he is forced to confess
that the chance is abused and the highway
consequently neither clean nor pleasant. On
the other hand, he finds himself on the whole
to weigh as heavily in the scale of humanity as
any of his comrades. He is more sober man
than the Englishman, more orthodox than the
German, a more faithful husband than the
Frenchman, and better hammered than any of
them. AS for the little matters with which he
has been revled, he finds vulgar electric lights
shining on Mont Blanc as well as Niagara, and
discovers that the greedy Partisan or tip
begging Briton is quite as fond of the almighty
dollar as himself.
Another lesson he can learn is that the older
nations in the world have succeeded in civilian
ton, i'll art, in development of every sort, pre-
| cisely in proportion as they each made the
DcSI u JHclI luutNluu'il Capital, WITHOUT weak
| imitation of each other. National literature or
art, or even music, was vire and enduring IA
it expressed the nations own character or
| aspiration. Scott, Goethe, Moliere, Tourge-
neff spoke for their own people, not aliens.
Rubens painted his broad-faced Dutch frauen
| and children. and dubbed them the Holy Family.
Michael Angelo painted Italians as gods and
angels. American authors are just beginning
| to find the clay at home ready for handling.
| But our artists have not yet discovered material
| in the Indian, or the negro, or creole or West
ern hunter as picturesque as Norman peasants
| or English fishermen.
| Another lesson not often learned by the tray-
cling American is that the European often
| succeeds by dint of slow, inexorable persist
ence, because lie Ihas been driven by cIcum-
stances to stick to one thing, while he fails by
| attempting half dozen tempting chances.
The German English or Frenchman, however
low the grade of his occupation, is forced to
be a specialist in it. lie comes to this country
,skilled mechanic, o gardener n cook or a
coachman, and earns a living, while the Amori-
can ia crowdiDg into 1.-THE cities in search OF odd