his work, and thence to push on between almost strictly
British lines. The American seeks rather to absorb only so much of the
wisdom and taste of antiquity as may serve for an intelligent
comprehension of the world-art, the world-philosophies, the
world-literature of to-day, and then, borrowing what he will from each
department of those, to strive on that foundation to build something
better than any. There are many scholars and students in America who
would prefer to see the people less eager to push on. There are many
thinkers and educators in England who hold that English scholarship and
training dwell altogether too much in the past and that it were better
if England would look more abroad and would give larger attention to the
conditions of modern life--the conditions which her youth will have to
meet in the coming generation.

If an American were asked which of the two peoples was the more
cultivated, the more widely informed, he would probably say: "You
fellows have been longer at the game than we have. You've had more
experience in the business; but we believe we've got every bit as good
raw material as you and a blamed sight better machinery. Also we are
more in earnest and work that machinery harder than you. Maybe we are
not turning out as good goods yet--and maybe we are. But it's a dead
sure thing that if we aren't yet, we're going to."

A common index to the degree of cultivation in any people is found in
their everyday language--their spoken speech; but here again in
considering America from the British standpoint we have to be careful or
we may be entrapped into the same fallacy as threatens us when we
propose to judge the United States by its newspapers. In the first place
the right of any people to invent new forms of verbal currency to meet
the requirements of its colloquial exchange must be conceded. There was
a time when an Americanism in speech was condemned in England because it
was American. When so many of the Americanisms of ten years ago are
incorporated in the daily speech even of educated Englishmen to-day, it
would be affectation to put forward such a plea nowadays. Going deeper
than this, we undoubtedly find that the educated Englishman to-day
speaks with more precision than the educated American. The educated
Englishman speaks the language of what I have already called the public
school and university class. But while the Englishman speaks the
language of that class, the American speak