Chambers's Journal of Popular Literature, Science, and Art, fifth series, no. 134, vol. III, July 24, 1886

No. 134.—Vol. III.
Price 1½ d.
SATURDAY, JULY 24, 1886.
Those who know any part of America, or have even a small acquaintance with Americans, will not have been surprised at the list of names published in the daily papers of the persons who were arrested as the authors of the late disturbance at Chicago. With perhaps one exception, there is not an English name among them; they are all foreign, and to the true American public, must bring home in full force the certain operation of a process hitherto only half apparent—that their country is fast passing through a period of incubation, which, if allowed to continue, will end in the development of a new Germanism, destroying the individuality of the Anglo-Saxon, and flooding the land with theories for the relief of an Old World discontent.
Before steamships and railways had made travel a matter of comparative ease, it was customary to laugh at the peculiarities of our American cousins, in the belief they were the result of the natural growth of transatlantic life; but a wider knowledge of the continent has brought to light the indisputable fact that they are to a very considerable extent the habits and customs of the lower middle class of Germany. The true American, taking into consideration difference of thought, is as much a gentleman, from the English point of view, as the Englishman himself. If there is anything which characterises an Englishman, as distinct from the rest of his species, it is his sensitiveness on the point of similarity to his kind, and his willingness in carrying this out, to submit himself to personal inconvenience, rather than allow any singularity to appear. Where this comes in, the American does not bow to the same strict conventional rule, his constant activity and the dissimilitude of life having of necessity forced him to take circumstances into account. Laying aside the distinction, however, and it is one which does not always intrude itself, making allowance also for a greater conservatism which has retained old English customs and expressions, where is the line to be drawn in cultivated circles between an Englishman and an American? If, also, we look into the great upper middle classes of the two countries, who will grant that the dead level of uniformity in England is more attractive in its outward than its inward form; and who will doubt that for the pleasure of intercourse, the advantage is wholly on the side of America both as regards originality of thought and freedom from restraint?