HEADS, HEARTS, AND HEADLINES IN THE STATES.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXV, Issue 9082, 16 June 1888, Page 3 (Supplement)

HEADS, HEARTS, AND HEADLINES IN THE STATES.

MR, MATTHEW ARNOLD ON THE

AMERICAN PRESS AND PEOPLE. Mr. MATTHEW Arnold's articloon "Civilisation in the United States" is the best reading, as it will probably be the best read article, in the month's Nineteenth Century, or indeed in thcnionth'sreviews. Besides the pellucid style, the polite irony, (lie delicate egotism, the conjuring with phrases—in a word, the Matthcwarnoldism of Mr. Arnold, we have here some admirably keon and wellexpressed observation of English and American character. Mr. Arnold impeaches American civilisation as being deficient in the Interesting. The two great sources of the Interesting are distinction, or elevation, and beauty. To becin with, they are handicappod as we in England should be if we were without the cathedrals, parish churches, and castles of the Catholic and feudal ago, and without the houses of the Elizabethan age, but had only tho towns and buildings which the rise of our middle class has created in the modern age. They have had but one ; they have no architect. Their artists fly to Europe. "The more nomenclature of tho country acts on a cultivated person like the incessant pricking of pins." The discipline of awe and respect which Goethe praised they know not. Take the American at his best: take Abraham Lincoin : he is " shrewd, sagacious, humorous, honest, courageous, linn . . . but he has not distinction." No, everything is against that: " the glorification of tho average man, which is quite a religion with statesmen and publicists there ; tho addiction to the funny man, who is a national misfortune ; above all, tho nowspapors, are against it." Every country, Mr. Arnold says" has the newspapers it deserves, and as for theirs : — "Power inland valuablecontributions occur scattered about in thorn. But on the whole, and taking the total impression and etl'ect made by them, I should say that if one were searching for the best means to cH'aoo and kill in a whole nation the discipline of respect, the fooling for what is elevated, one could not do better than take tho American newspapers. The absence of truth and soberness in them, the poverty in serious interest, the personality and sensation-mon-gering are beyond belief. There are a few newspapers which are in a whole, or in part, exceptions. The New York Nation, _ a weekly paper, may bo paralleled with the Saturday Review as it was in its old and good days; but the New York Nation is conducted by a foreigner, and has an extremely small sale. In general, the daily papers are such that when one returns home one is moved to admiration and thankfulness not only at the great London papers, like the Times or the Standard, but quite as much at the groat provincial newspapers too—papers like the Leeds Mercury and the Yorkshire Post in the north of England, like tho Scotsman and the Glasgow Herald in Scotland. The Americans used to say to me that what they valued was news, and that this their newspapers gave them. lat last made the reply : ' Yes, news for the servant.*' hall !'"

Later we have some of Mr. Arnold';: press experience? : — " Soon after arriving in Boston, I opened n Boston newspaper and came upon a column headed 'Tickings. , By tickings we are to understand news conveyed through the tickings of the telegraph. The first ticking ' was : ' Matthew Arnold is sixty-two years old '—an age, 1 must just say in passing, which I had nob then readied. The. second 'ticking' was: ' Wales says Mary is a darling :' the meaning being that the Prince of Wales expressed great admiration for Miss Mary Anderson. This was at Boaton, the American Athens. I proceeded to Chicago. An evening paper was given mo soon after I arrived. I opened it, and found under a large-type heading, ' We have seen him arrive,' the following picture of myself : ' He has harsh features, supercilious manner., parts his hair down the middle, wears a single eyeglass and ill-tit clothes.' Some time afterwards, when I had gone back to England, a New York paper published a criticism of Chicago and its people, purporting to have been contributed by me to the Vail Mall Gazette over here. It was a poor hoax, but many people were taken in and were excusably angry, my friend Mr. Medill, of the Chicago Tribune, amongst the number. A friend telegraphed to me to know if I had written the criticism. I, of course, instantly telegraphed back that I had not written a syllable of it. Then a Chicago paper is sent to me , and what I have the pleasure of reading, as the result of my contradiction, is this: — 'Arnold denies. Mr. Medill refuses to accept Arnold's disclaimer ; says Arnold is a cur." Mr. Arnold concludes that what makes all this work is that the Americans do not see the deficiency, and he makes fun of some cocksure bragging:— " Yes, this people, who endure to have the American newspaper for their daily reading and to have their habitation in Briggsville, Jacksonville, and Marcellus—this people is of tiner, more delicate nervous organisation than other nations ! It is Colonel Higginson's 'drop more of nervous fluid over again. This ' drop' plays a stupendous part in the American rhapsody of selfpraise. Undoubtedly the Americans are highly nervous, both the men and the women. A great Paris physician says that he notes a distinct new form of nervous disease, produced in American women by worry about servants. But this nervousness, developed in the race out there by worry, overwork, want of exercise, injudicicous diet, and a most trying climate— this morbid nervousness our friends ticket as the fine susceptibility of genius, and cite it as a proof of their distinction, of their superior capacity for civilisation !" What, then, is the remedy? Mr. Arnold sums it up thus :— " It seems tome that what the Americans now most urgently require is a steady exhibition of cool and sane criticism by their men of light and leading over there. And perhaps the very first step of such men should be to insist on having for America, and to create if need bo, better newspapers,"