AN EMANCIPATED MIDDLE-CLASS.
MR. MATTHEW ARNOLD has either been scolding the Americans afresh for their Philistinism, or his arrival has revived discussion about his former lectures in England, in which he implied that Americans were very like the Ehglish Middle-class—wanting in sweetness and light, and given up to " Dissenting" religions, and the pursuit of material interests. At all events, the American Nation thinks this a good opportunity for answering him, and telling him in effect that he spoke in ignorance. • Mr. Arnold is quite right, the Nation thinks, about the English, but quite wrong about the Americans. He "had never seen a middle-class which had no class above it, nor Dissenters who had no Established Church to dissent from." Americans have neither, and when Mr. Arnold has seen more of them, and found Methodists who think their Church as good as any cathedral, and " Dissenting " Ministers who look down on Anglican culture, and traders who smile at the social preten- sions of the idle rich and hardly understand distinctions based on occupation, he will, the Nation thinks, revise a good deal of what he has written both about his countrymen and Americans.
The article is kindly written and full of appreciation for Mr. Matthew Arnold, but the thought penetrating it is obviously that a Middle-class without an aristocracy above it must of necessity not only differ from a middle-class with such an aristocracy, but must be superior to it, must have not only more independence, but more sweetness and light, and a great deal less of that narrow, conventional habit of mind usually denounced as Philistinism ; and we shall be curious to see, when Mr. Arnold comes home, what he has to say on that subject. Are the Americans of a corresponding class less bonzes than theircompeers at home!' We cannot answer the question, except from a study of American literature, which certainly makes us think that, in The older States at least, denunciations of Islington must be quite intelligible ; but a priori, we can see no reason whatever why the assumption should be true. An aristocracy may impel, nay, does impel, a middle-class to waste strength on a false or unattainable ideal, but it cannot make that class more limited or more stupid. That a middle-class with no class above it may be socially a little more independent, and -less tempted to fall down before social distinctions, is, no doubt, true, but this gain is of itself very small. The natural tendency of an English middle-class so situated would not be towards equality, or simplicity of life, but towards introspection, with the result that it would discover a thousand minute differentia: in its own component parts, and would revere or contemn them, instead of broader social distinctions. Having no standard to quote, it would set up one of two, and either worship the dis- tinction which can never be absent, wealth, or regard the usual as the divine, and resent any deviation therefrom as a disregard of the inherent fitness of things. Moreover, partly from this wor- ship of the usual as being the fitting, and partly from the instinctive desire of men to find a " sanction " for their laws, it would elevate the opinion of the majority into a tribunal, and socially sentence every one who-deviated from what " our folks " thought becoming. There would be, in fact, a pressure on the emancipated middle-class from within itself, quite as severe as the old pressure from the aristocracy ; and it would be the pressure of at least as base a material, while it would be far more irresistible. The aristocracy has in social matters no physical force behind it, while the middle-class majority would have. Distinctly unpopular opinions would, therefore, be far more summarily suppressed ; while distinctly unpopular ways would create a certain risk of ejectment. If a middle- class man in Islington chooses to be a teetotaller, the superincumbent aristocracy, though it regards teetotalism as fanatical, can do nothing to him ; but if the middle- class man in Salem persists in drinking wine with his food, the middle-class majority can condemn him as a hopeless castaway, and he will find himself, if so condemned, very un- pleasantly situated. Evangelical as Islington is, a man need not go to church unless he likes ; but if, in an equally religious place in New England, he declined to go, he would find that " our folks " could show him that he was departing from the usual in a very unmistakeable way. The compression, in fact, from middle-class opinion acting on itself would be at least as severe as the compression from the existence of an aristocracy ; and though, no doubt, the one pressure is vertical and the other horizontal, that difference could not make the latter less fatal to the freedom of thought and action which Mr. Arnold first of all desires. There is no middle-class so fettered, and, therefore, so Lying and incapable of appreciating light, as that of a town in England which the upper classes have quitted; and unless we misread all American literature, that is the case also in the Eastern and Middle States. Everybody there seems to be fairly comfortable ; but outside the great cities, everybody seems to live in a sort of slavery to an opinion the key-note of which is that the customary is to be believed, to be approved, and to be done. There is no appeal from opinion, and origin- ality is crashed out till we have heard clever American women say that the art of the American novelist was more hampered by the expectedness of everything than by any other single cause. Of course, in such a society, material prosperity becomes the pleasantest thing attainable ; and it is sought with a steady, earnest persistence which gradually leavens society with sordid- ness, just as a society in which "pleasure" is the only thingpleas- ant gets leavened through and through either with frivolity or vice. We should expect to find in America millions of men and more millions of women utterly cramped and, so to speak, spoiled, by the most unideaed and sordid conventionalism ; and though we cannot, as outsiders, say we find them, that which we expect is certainly described in American literature. The only differ- ences we as outsiders can see between Islington and Salem is that the emancipated Middle-class in America has accepted an etiquette making the intercourse of the sexes more free, has established complete liberty of religious opinion— though this exists now in Eugland—and owing, we pre- sume, to the difference of temper produced by greater freedom from care, has become in a somewhat marked degree fuller of kindliness. A certain kindliness, which is not " sweetness " exactly, but is a constituent of it, will, we feel certain, be de- scribed by Mr. Arnold when he comes home as the feature in American social civilisation which most impressed him.
Nor do we see that the emancipated Middle-class would tend towards culture more than the unemancipated. On the con- trary, it would tend slightly less. The dislike of culture which is a feature of the class, as producing " dangerous " views and inattention to the business of life, though not necessarily inten- sified, would be much more operative, because the majority which would then rule would be so much stronger than. the aristocracy which now rules, and there would be so much less criticism. Criticism begins to be born when a leisured class begins to survey things, and see what is and what is not perfect and enjoyable of its kind, and to be a little weary with the ordinary and a little blas6 with the habitual. Ultimately, no doubt, a class more studious, and therefore more cultivated, than an aristocracy usually is, assumes the function ; but the impulse originally comes from above, and it is the influence of the higher class, whether higher socially or higher from study, which filters down and excites the spirit of culture, so far as it is excited, in those below. That influence makes for studiousness, if not for righteous.. ness, as two illustrations will help to prove. In England, it is the aristocracy which has succeeded by direct pressure in • keeping the classical culture in the forefront of education, in spite of the pronounced reluctance of Islington to waste time over study so obviously unremunerative. And in America, where no aristocracy presses, there is little, if any, true criticism. The testimony of the Nation to this effect is singularly distinct and, to us at least, entirely new :— " American audiences will find Mr. Arnold interesting also be- cause he is really the first genuine critic of note who has visited these shores, and there is nothing which the American public find it more difficult to comprehend than a critic. The art of criticism, as such, does not stand very high with us. Our con- ception of a critic is apt to be that of a man who, as Doctor Johnson said, sees that the Whig dogs get the worst of it,'— that is, who gives the enemy, whoever he may be, his due, and who, every time that he opens his mouth, strives to advance some ' cause.' The man who lets his mind play round phenomena, who sees them from all points of view, and notes what he sees with scientific indifference to consequences, or who, in other words, mainly cultivates open-mindedness, is a personage to whom Americans still find it very difficult to do justice; or give any definite place in the moral world. Mr. Arnold is not this kind of a person exactly—the type is rarely found in perfection out of France—for he has ideas for which he strives earnestly, and a cause (the cause of ' culture ') which he seeks in season and out of season to advance ; but he is the nearest approach to it we have yet seen." That is a remarkable statement, and certainly strengthens our doubt whether among English-speaking peoples emancipation would of itself strengthen the tendency towards "light," even if it did in some faint degree strengthen that towards sweetness. The existence of an aristocracy has its evils, but it is not to be confounded with an aristocratic system of govern- ment ; and among its evils, that of crushing originality and intel- ligence out of the Middle-class is certainly not to be reckoned.
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