as Europe
would seem to represent his pre-Raphaelite period, in its wealth of
detail, its variety of figure, costume, architecture, landscape, its
crudely contrasted colours and minute precision of individual form.

"And as with the countries, so with their civilizations. Europe is the
home of class, America of democracy. By democracy I do not mean a mere
form of government--in that respect, of course, America is less
democratic than England: I mean the mental attitude that implies and
engenders Indistinction. Indistinction, I say, rather than equality,
for the word equality is misleading, and might seem to imply, for
example, a social and economic parity of conditions, which no more
exists in America than it does in Europe. Politically, as well as
socially, America is a plutocracy; her democracy is spiritual and
intellectual; and its essence is, the denial of all superiorities save
that of wealth. Such superiorities, in fact, hardly exist across the
Atlantic. All men there are intelligent, all efficient, all energetic;
and as these are the only qualities they possess, so they are the only
ones they feel called upon to admire. How different is the case with
Europe! How innumerable and how confusing the gradations! For
diversities of language and race, indeed, we may not be altogether
responsible; but we have superadded to these, distinctions of manner,
of feeling, of perception, of intellectual grasp and spiritual insight,
unknown to the simpler and vaster consciousness of the West. In
addition, in short, to the obvious and fundamentally natural standard
of wealth, we have invented others impalpable and artificial in their
character; and however rapidly these may be destined to disappear as
the race progresses, and the influence of the West begins to dominate
the East, they do, nevertheless, still persist, and give to our effete
civilization the character of Aristocracy, that is of Caste. In all
this we see, as I have suggested, the influence of environment. The
old-world stock, transplanted across the ocean, imitates the
characteristics of its new home. Sloughing off artificial
distinctions, it manifests itself in bold simplicity, broad as the
plains, turbulent as the rivers, formless as the mountains, crude as
the fruits of its adopted country."

"Yet while thus forming themselves into the image of the new world, the
Americans have not disdained to make use of such acquisitions of the
Past as might be u