AS OTHERS SEE US.
As Others See Us. By John Graham Brooks. (Macmillan and Co. 75. 6d, not.)—We do not quite see why Mr. Brooks describes this book as "a study of social progress." The title can be justified, indeed. A writer who collects the opinions which visitors to the -United States have expressed about the ways and manners of the people from time to time during the last sixty years is certainly gathering materials for such a study. To see, for instance, what Captain Basil Hall wrote in 1828, or Mrs. Trollop° some twenty years later, and set over against them the judgments of Mr. Bryce and Matthew Arnold within what may be called our own time, is a way of marking progress. The earlier criticisms certainly read somewhat strangely. Captain Basil Hall, for instance, thought that the country could not prosper because it lacked a class which could "spend money gracefully." He would be reassured could ho see it now. Possibly he was not so wrong when he thought that to lack an Established Church was to throw away the fly-wheel in a great engine. (Mr. Brooks, curiously enough, comments on this observation : "and yet he was an honoured guest and friend in-the family of Sir Walter Scott,"—as if Scotland had no Established Church.) Our author has collected a vast number of pictures and representations of what "others have seen," and he comments on and contrasts them with great good sense and humour. There is a great temptation to comment on his corn- Jamas and to criticise his contrasts. For the most part we have found them admirably just and true; now and then some doubt or difference suggests itself. But it would be as unfair as it would be inadequate to pick out an instance here or there for comment. We must be content with saying generally that not only is the
book one of the most entertaining and illuminating that we- have ever come across, but that it is from beginning to end a.
happy proof of the good understanding that is growing more, and more complete between the two countries. One story we- must quote, all the more readily because the laugh is not on our• side. An English traveller saw a man who "looked as if he needed a shilling." Would he carry his valise to the hotel? "Stranger, does that pack require two folks to carry it P "—" No,. one person can carry it."—" Well, then, I guess you'll take it yourself ; you're as big as I be, and look as if you'd been livin' at- m better boardin'-house than mine."
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