s mingled in our
friendship--patriotism itself being a form of selfishness--but our ideas
of civilization so nearly coincide, and we have so many common
aspirations for humanity that we must draw nearer together,
notwithstanding old grudges and present differences in social structure.
Our intercourse is likely to be closer, our business relations will
become more inseparable. I can conceive of nothing so lamentable for the
progress of the world as a quarrel between these two English-speaking
peoples.

But, in one respect, we are likely to diverge. I refer to literature; in
that, assimilation is neither probable nor desirable. We were brought up
on the literature of England; our first efforts were imitations of it; we
were criticised--we criticised ourselves on its standards. We compared
every new aspirant in letters to some English writer. We were patted on
the back if we resembled the English models; we were stared at or sneered
at if we did not. When we began to produce something that was the product
of our own soil and our own social conditions, it was still judged by the
old standards, or, if it was too original for that, it was only accepted
because it was curious or bizarre, interesting for its oddity. The
criticism that we received for our best was evidently founded on such
indifference or toleration that it was galling. At first we were
surprised; then we were grieved; then we were indignant. We have long ago
ceased to be either surprised, grieved, or indignant at anything the
English critics say of us. We have recovered our balance. We know that
since Gulliver there has been no piece of original humor produced in
England equal to "Knickerbocker's New York"; that not in this century has
any English writer equaled the wit and satire of the "Biglow Papers." We
used to be irritated at what we called the snobbishness of English
critics of a certain school; we are so no longer, for we see that its
criticism is only the result of ignorance--simply of inability to
understand.

And we the more readily pardon it, because of the inability we have to
understand English conditions, and the English dialect, which has more
and more diverged from the language as it was at the time of the
separation. We have so constantly read English literature, and kept
ourselves so well informed of their social life, as it is exhibited in
novels and essays, that we are not so much in the dark with regard to
them as they are with regard to