The United States During the War/the Civil War in America
By . New York: Bailliere Brothers. Paris : Germer Bailliere.
An Address read at the last Meeting of the Manchester Union and Emancipation Society. By . London : Simpkin, Marshall, & Co. Manchester : A. Ireland & Co.
As a people, we are so used to policeman-like severity or snobbish ridicule from European criticism, that we hardly know what to make of the attentions of a Frenchman who is not an Inspector Javert, or of an Englishman who is not a Commercial Traveller. M. Laugel eulogizes us without the least patronage in his manner ; Mr. Goldwin Smith praises us with those reserves which enhance the value of applause. We are ourselves accustomed to deal generously and approvingly with the facts of our civilization, but our pride in them falls short of M. Laugel’s ; and our most sanguine faith in the national future is not more cordial than Mr. Goldwin Smith’s.
The diverse methods in which these writers discuss the same aspects and events of our history are characteristic and interesting, and the difference in spirit is even greater than that of form, — greater thn the difference between a book, which, made from articles in the Revue de Deux Mondes, recounts the political, military, and financial occurrences of the last four years, sketches popular scenes and characters, and deals with the wonders of our statistics, and a slender pamphlet address, in which the author concerns himself rather with the results than the events of our recent war. This is always Mr. Smith’s manner of dealing with the past; but in considering a period known in all its particulars to his audience, he has been able to philosophize history more purely and thoroughly than usual. He arrives directly and clearly at the moral of the Ilias Americana, and sees that Christianity is the life of our political system, and that this principle, without which democracy is a passing dream, and equality an idle fallacy, triumphed forever in the downfall of slavery. He has been the first of our commentators to discern that the heroism displayed in the war could only come from that principle which made our social life decent and orderly, built the school - house and the church, and filled city and country with prosperous and religious homes. He has seen this principle at work under changing names and passing creeds, and has recognized that here, for the first time in the history of the world, a whole nation strives to govern itself according to the Example and the Word that govern good men everywhere.
In the Introduction to his book, M. Laugel declares as the reasons for his admiration of the United States, that they “have shown that men can found a government on reason, where equality does not stifle liberty, and democracy does not yield to despotism ; they have shown that a people can be religious when the State neither pays the Church nor regulates belief; they have given to woman the place that is her due in a Christian and civilized society.” It is this Introduction, indeed, that will most interest the American reader, for here also the author presents the result of his study of our national character in a sketch that the nation may well glass itself in when low-spirited. The truth is, that we looked our very best to the friendly eyes of M. Laugel, and we cannot but be gratified with the portrait he has made of us. An American would hardly have ventured to draw so flattering a picture, but he cannot help exulting that an alien should see us poetic in our realism, curious of truth and wisdom as well as of the stranger’s personal history, cordial in our friendships, and not ignoble even in our pursuit of wealth, but having the Republic’s greatness at heart as well as our own gain.
In the chapters which succeed this Introduction, M. Laugel discusses, in a spirit of generous admiration, the facts of our civilization as they present themselves in nearly all the States of the North and West ; and while he does not pretend to see polished society everywhere, but very often an elemental ferment, he finds also that the material of national goodness and greatness is sound and of unquestionable strength. He falls into marvellously few errors, and even his figures have not that bad habit of lying to which the figures of travellers so often fall victims.
The books of M. Laugel and Mr. Goldwin Smith come to us, as we hinted, after infinite stupid and dishonest censure from their countrymen , but the intelligent friendship of such writers is not the less welcome to us because we have ceased to care for the misrepresentations of the French and English tourists.