d to
fix on the same hotel at our destination; and in the evening, after
dinner, I met in the corridor the staid and severe-looking
_gouvernante_, who saluted me with "Oh, Mr. Muirhead, I have such a
headache! Would you mind going out with my little girl while she makes
some purchases?" I was a little taken aback at first; but a moment's
reflection convinced me that I had just experienced a most striking
tribute to the honour of the American man and the social atmosphere of
the United States.

The psychological method of suggestive criticism has, perhaps, never
been applied with more delicacy of intelligence than in M. Bourget's
chapter on the American woman. Each stroke of the pen, or rather each
turn of the scalpel, amazes us by its keen penetration. As we at last
close the book and meditate on what we have read, it is little by
little borne in upon us that though due tribute is paid to the
charming traits of the American woman, yet the general outcome of M.
Bourget's analysis is truly damnatory. If this sprightly, fascinating,
somewhat hard and calculating young woman be a true picture of the
transatlantic maiden, we may sigh indeed for her lack of the _Ewig
Weibliche_. I do not pretend to say where M. Bourget's appreciation is
at fault, but that it is false--unaccountably false--in the general
impression it leaves, I have no manner of doubt. Perhaps his attention
has been fixed too exclusively on the Newport girl, who, it must again
be insisted on, is too much impregnated with cosmopolitan _fin de
siecle-ism_ to be taken as the American type. Botanise a flower, use
the strongest glasses you will, tear apart and name and analyse,--the
result is a catalogue, the flower with its beauty and perfume is not
there. So M. Bourget has catalogued the separate qualities of the
American woman; as a whole she has eluded his analysis. Perhaps this
chapter of his may be taken as an eminent illustration of the
limitations of the critical method, which is at times so illuminating,
while at times it so utterly fails to touch the heart of things, or,
better, the wholeness of things.

Among the most searching tests of the state of civilisation reached by
any country are the character of its roads, its minimising of noise,
and the position of its women. If the United States does not stand
very high on the application of the first two tests, its name
assuredly leads all the rest in the third. In no other country is the
legal status of