sure in being pessimistic. He advises them to take note of
how much better certain things are done in England. All this is very
different from Dickens's characteristic way of dealing with a foreign
country. In countries really foreign, such as France, Switzerland, and
Italy, he had two attitudes, neither of them in the least worried or
paternal. When he found a thing in Europe which he did not understand,
such as the Roman Catholic Church, he simply called it an old-world
superstition, and sat looking at it like a moonlit ruin. When he found
something that he did understand, such as luncheon baskets, he burst
into carols of praise over the superior sense in our civilisation and
good management to Continental methods. An example of the first attitude
may be found in one of his letters, in which he describes the
backwardness and idleness of Catholics who would not build a Birmingham
in Italy. He seems quite unconscious of the obvious truth, that the
backwardness of Catholics was simply the refusal of Bob Cratchit to
enter the house of Gradgrind. An example of the second attitude can be
found in the purple patches of fun in _Mugby Junction_; in which the
English waitress denounces the profligate French habit of providing new
bread and clean food for people travelling by rail. The point is,
however, that in neither case has he the air of one suggesting
improvements or sharing a problem with the people engaged on it. He does
not go carefully with a notebook through Jesuit schools nor offer
friendly suggestions to the governors of Parisian prisons. Or if he
does, it is in a different spirit; it is in the spirit of an ordinary
tourist being shown over the Coliseum or the Pyramids. But he visited
America in the spirit of a Government inspector dealing with something
it was his duty to inspect. This is never felt either in his praise or
blame of Continental countries. When he did not leave a foreign country
to decay like a dead dog, he merely watched it at play like a kitten.
France he mistook for a kitten. Italy he mistook for a dead dog.

But with America he could feel--and fear. There he could hate, because
he could love. There he could feel not the past alone nor the present,
but the future also; and, like all brave men, when he saw the future he
was a little afraid of it. For of all tests by which the good citizen
and strong reformer can be distinguished from the vague faddist or the
inhuman sceptic, I know no better test th