*Auknican Socian Hisrdty as Recono-"my ay Baivian Teaveans." Com billed' and edited by Allan. Nevina.- (Alen and' Unwin 183).
Eighty years have elapsed since Dickens put into the mouth of Mr. Bevan, the one tolerable human being of American birth and breeding by Martin Chuzzlewit during-his stay in the United States, 'a statement regarding his compat-Niots. which was, at that date, as true as it was devastating. " "No satirist could breathe this air, Tt another Juvenal or Swift could rise up among us to-morrow, he would be hunted down. If you can give me the name of any man, American born and bred, who has anatomised our follies asia people, and not as this or that, partys and who hus escaped the foulest and most brutal slander, the most inveterate hatred and intolerant pursuit; it will be a ange name in my\ ears." The truth" of this statement was sufficiently endorsed by the insanity anger with which the publication of the volume which contained it was greeted in Amer The marvellous rapidity with which the national mind had purified itself of its puerile vanity was illustrated, five-and-twenty—later, by the splendid. hospitality Javished on Dickens on the occasion of his second visit, and by. the exjuanimity with which, at about the same date, the American population accepted such home truths from a home-grown writer as were express ed in Walt Whitman's "Democratic Vistas." To-day, Americans are not tolerant of criticism, domestic or foreign—they invite, digest, and_ profit
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.