tuting the meek doctrines of Christ;" he was disgusted at the obsequious attitude rather than delighted with the respectfulness of English servants; he regarded the snobbery of London society in the matter of pronunciation as an evidence of narrow principles; he considered English propriety a mere "boarding-school finish;" and in all he ridiculed the substitution of the "seemly" for the "right." The chief fault of the aristocracy he found to be the "widespread system of studied misrepresentation," and he prophesied its downfall in the none too distant future because influence was narrowing down to fewer and fewer individuals, because the new commercial elements of society were already deriving power in terms of money rather than property, and because the entire existing system was based on a network of lies. For the same reasons that he prophesied a downfall of her internal social organization he anticipated a dissipation of her colonial power, and he saw in the growing reform spirit of the age a complete revolution in the political, social, and all other aspects of the imperial organization. When we realize that this analysis was first made three years before the great Reform Bill passed the English Parliament, Cooper's insight into the underlying factors of human organization is brought forcibly to our attention. For the English ignorance of American conditions and their willingness to criticize without knowledge, he has nothing but the most unqualified scorn, but he is even more bitter against the American servility of mind which was willing to swallow insults in silence and return only sentimental reverence. "Heaven bless the Quarterly Review!" he exclaims, for shocking the American mind into an assertion of its manhood. "God knows what is to be the final result. We may grow out of this weakness, as children get the better of the rickets; or we may succumb to the disease, as children often die." "Here then," he concludes, "we take our leave of England-England, a country that I could fain like, but whose prejudices and national antipathies throw a chill over all my affections, . . . a country that all respect, but few love." Two more novels, Homeward Bound and Home as Found, both published in 1838, carry Cooper's analysis one step further, revealing the disillusionment of a belligerent idealist on his return to his own country. The comparative crassness and vulgarity of American culture was even more abhorrent to him than the glossy hypocrisies of Old World aristocracy. Whichever way he turned he was faced with materialism, and, like many another prophet, he flew in the face of his own times and was lashed and battered by the forces against which he struggled so valiantly and with such effect. His experiences with the Old World had given him a broader basis for his attacks on the evils and the hollow appearances of his day. His ideals were deep rooted; but his one mistake, from a tactical standpoint, was his tendency to take personally those wrongs which a milder temperament would have viewed with a more objective detachment. Samuel F. B. Morse knew Cooper perhaps better than any one else during his days in Europe. "If he was at times severe or caustic in his remarks on others," he said just after Cooper's death, "it was when excited by the exhibition of the little arts of little minds." The same attitude was at the root of his criticism of society. • Letters and Journals, 11, 314-15. CHAPTER X JOURNALIST ADVENTURERS Travel Letters and Travel Books-The Pencil of N. P. I Prior to 1810, Americans who traveled in England did not publish complete records of their impressions. There are travels on the Continent and in other parts of the world in the earlier years of independence, but Silliman's Journal (1810) is the first book of travels by an American which attempted to describe and discuss England as though she were actually a foreign land. Austin's Letters (1804), Sansom's Travels (1805), and the various travel journals of Quakers antedate this important book, but none of these attempts a survey of England as a traveler from another nation would see her. The first assumes a knowledge of many of the facts and deals chiefly in controversial and critical terms, the second omits the English letters as dangerous to the relations of the two countries, and the last are so wholly subjective that they remove themselves from the category of travel literature by that fact alone. There was obviously no public in America at this time for the book of travels in England, although the British were then buying and reading quantities of travels in America, and Americans were visiting England in great numbers and writing informal records of their impressions. The possible explanations of this state of affairs are many, but probably the most reasonable one is to be found in the attitude of the average American toward his "fatherland." England was not to him a foreign nation; in many respects he knew more about her than he did about his own country, especially the outlying parts of it. The majority of Americans were of English stock and many were of the first, second, or third generation in the new land. There were few families in the classes which would care to read travel books that could not boast at least one member who was either born in England or who had spent some time within her shores. Many Americans were also in frequent correspondence with loyalist or English relatives. In addition to these facts was the general familiarity with British authors which made English life and English scenes the proper background even for American-written books. Cooper's first novel told of English aristocracy, and English scenes formed the background of many stories by others. Hannah More, Maria Edgeworth, Joseph Addison, and other earlier English writers made altogether superfluous a traveler's description of London, Windsor, Stonehenge, Bath, an English cottage, or a rugged Welsh or Scotch mountain scene. The American feeling was that all these things had been described a thousand times, for England was still the home of the mind and sentiments of a nation largely composed of pioneers. She was home even to those who had never seen her, but had heard her spoken of with affection in intimate family circles, and with respect in the public print. Nowhere is this attitude more obvious than in the magazines of the day. Blatantly patriotic, as far as their covers were concerned-the majority had the words "American," "United States," or "National" somewhere in their titlesthey copied their form, their spirit, and in large part their matter from English quarterlies, monthlies, and weeklies. The periodical essayists and the Editor of the Gentleman's Magazine, did far more to direct and shape these early journalistic experiments than did any native editors, while the later ones were modeled on the English reviews which originated soon after 1800, notably the Edinburgh and the Quarterly. With such factors at work molding the mind of the reading public, a book of travels in England would have been as great an impertinence and as sure a failure in those days as would be to-day a book of journeys through New England, published at Chicago. Such travel books are usually left to the mercies of railroads and tourist agencies, while the genuine traveler penetrates to the heart of Asia or Afghanistan. The growth of the travel book and the appearance of the periodical travel essay may therefore be taken as very accurate indices of the development of the popular mind into a sense of independence. England was slowly becoming more distant to the American mind, and, strangely enough, it was the English-patterned magazines of America which were most conspicuous in their encouragement and reflection of this tendency. Silliman's comments were never printed serially, but a large proportion of the subsequent travel books appeared, at least in part, in the periodical press of the day, while many single letters or series of letters, which were frequently not republished, began to make their appearance at an early date. The first of these were usually by prominent Americans abroad, and were published for the popular interest in the writer rather than in the scenes and people he described. It was not long before such letters were printed, like most of the matter contained in these periodicals, without signature, showing that the description of English scenes was of sufficient |