ve moved me to a sense of the kinship of all civilisation. I ought to
have felt that as the Scandinavian gentleman wore a collar and tie, and
I also wore a collar and tie, we were brothers and nothing could come
between us. I ought to have felt that we were standing for the same
principles of truth because we were wearing the same pair of trousers;
or rather, to speak with more precision, similar pairs of trousers.
Anyhow, the pair of trousers, that cloven pennon, ought to have floated
in fancy over my head as the banner of Europe or the League of Nations.
I am constrained to confess that no such rush of emotions overcame me;
and the topic of trousers did not float across my mind at all. So far as
those things were concerned, I might have remained in a mood of mortal
enmity, and cheerfully shot or stabbed the best dressed gentleman in the
room. Precisely what did warm my heart with an abrupt affection for that
northern nation was the very thing that is utterly and indeed lamentably
lacking in my own nation. It was something corresponding to the one
great gap in English history, corresponding to the one great blot on
English civilisation. It was the spiritual presence of a peasantry,
dressed according to its own dignity, and expressing itself by its own
creations.

The sketch of America left by Charles Dickens is generally regarded as
something which is either to be used as a taunt or covered with an
apology. Doubtless it was unduly critical, even of the America of that
day; yet curiously enough it may well be the text for a true
reconciliation at the present day. It is true that in this, as in other
things, the Dickensian exaggeration is itself exaggerated. It is also
true that, while it is over-emphasised, it is not allowed for. Dickens
tended too much to describe the United States as a vast lunatic asylum;
but partly because he had a natural inspiration and imagination suited
to the description of lunatic asylums. As it was his finest poetic fancy
that created a lunatic over the garden wall, so it was his fancy that
created a lunatic over the western sea. To read some of the complaints,
one would fancy that Dickens had deliberately invented a low and
farcical America to be a contrast to his high and exalted England. It is
suggested that he showed America as full of rowdy bullies like Hannibal
Chollop, or ridiculous wind-bags like Elijah Pogram, while England was
full of refined and sincere spirits like Jonas Chuzzlewit