to give the American race clear consciousness of its strength, its aims, and its works; no writer had bound the race together in the consciousness of community, although the statesmen have frequently done this. Yet I do not deny that there have been national writers, and I notice that President Roosevelt condemns the 'futility of talking of a Northern literature, or a Southern literature, an Eastern or a Western school of art or science. Joel Chandler Harris is emphatically a national writer; as is Mark Twain. They do not write merely for Georgia, or Missouri, or California, any more than for Illinois or Connecticut; they write as Americans, and for all people who can read English."

As to poetry, it is scarce in America, although there are any number of facile versifiers. There are no Longfellows, no Bryants, no Poes, no Whittiers, no Lowells-not even a Whitman.

The real poetry is not of the classic mould, but it has the marks of genuine poetry about it for all that.

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Mr. Whitcomb Riley is as true a poet as Robert Burns, and so is Mr. F. L. Stanton. Mr. Markham has also given signs of having great gifts. But after these men we must turn to the other sex for passion and metre. In America there has always been a superabundance of female poets. Mr. Stedman's recent anthology of American poetry is distinguished among books of this sort by the number of its female names; the Mary Annes and Harriets appearing more than a third as often as the Johns and the Jameses and the Williams. We read herein of the "glowing, prophetic periods of Emma Lazurus, the highly sensitized lyrics of Helen Jackson, the playful fancies of Katherine Lee Bates, and the exquisitely finished verses of Edith Thomas."

But there are no Mrs. Brownings or Christina Rosettis to be found amongst them.

When we turn to the domain of art-i.e. pictorial art-we find an astonishing record of progress in the past dozen years. It is not merely that the owners of some of the most famous names in contemporary British art are Americans by birth and up-bringing; for the significance of that may be easily exaggerated. None of these men received their art training in America, and have passed most of their lives in Europe.1 Yet Mr. Abbey, Mr. Sargent, and Mr. Whistler are distinctly American in their temperaments and in the character of their work. It is informed by a certain vigour, and reveals a quite American perception of effect and hatred of convention, such as we see exhibited in everything

1 Mr. Roosevelt condemns the American painter who lives abroad. But the question is, Can he be produced at home?

the American workman handles. There is no largeness or nobility of conception, no Rubens-like purity of colour or outline; because these qualities, in their equivalent form, are not characteristic of any American art or achievement.

Perhaps a distinctive school of American art may arise-is arising-in America.

"What struck one most in the American work at Paris, in 1900," remarked an English critic recently, "was the beauty, the strength, the originality of the landscapes, most of which came from American painters living, not in Paris or London, but at home. Their canvasses were not mere reflections of French models, as American painting often is; so that it seemed as if, were an original American school to be looked for anywhere, it would be among the landscape men who are working quietly in their own country."

As for American journalism, it is hardly necessary to explain its salient features to Englishmen, since the establishment within their own community of newspapers conducted on similar lines and animated by the same ideals. As one recent observer has said, "The American newspaper has simply become an industry-a business conducted for the usual ends of business, with public teaching and influence, but by a by-product." As to the number and value of newspapers in the United States, there are, it appears, over 15,000 establishments for the publication of periodicals; an increase of 24 per cent. in the decade since the previous census. About 400 are started every year, or more than one for every day of the year, including Sundays. Of the 15,000 existing journals, about 2000

are dailies, and 13,000 weeklies. Considerably more than the half of these publications are really very unimportant, as but 6000 out of the 15,000 have more than 1000 circulation. After giving the amount of the capital invested in the newspapers and their output in wages and material, it is reckoned that "the value of the product is $223,000,000, that is £44,600,000. As a "business proposition," therefore, the American newspaper is exceedingly attractive.

The mainspring of such journals being in the counting-house, there are no longer any editors in America in the old sense of the term. In fact, most of the American newspapers are equipped with leaderwriters, news editors, city editors, theatrical editors, sporting editors, "exchange" editors, every kind of editor except a real editor. Yet there are exceptions to this rule, and I think the exceptions have been growing more numerous of late. The reaction against the Yellow Press is already felt, and it is possible that the new journalism will find a method to maintain itself in spite of commercial disadvantages.1

1 Anything more hideous to the eye and repulsive to good taste than the advertisements and head-lines in the American newspapers can hardly be conceived. One marvels how it is they are tolerated by the reader.

CHAPTER XVIII

PROGRESS AND CHARACTER

IN inquiring into the growth of what we may call the American Empire we learn that in the lapse of a century and a quarter the number of States has increased from thirteen to forty-eight, that from an area of 860,000 square miles it is now over three millions, that from a population of three millions it is now eighty millions.

America proper is thus a big country, but it is not the biggest country on the planet, as nine-tenths of its inhabitants piously believe.' In mere area it is smaller than our Canada. Leaving out Alaska and the Philippines there are 3,025,600 square miles of territory under the Stars and Stripes. Australasia has a territory of 3,077,374 square miles. So it would perhaps be well for us to rid ourselves of the mere idea of size. Life being counted not by moments but by actions, so a country should be estimated not by its superficial area, but by the number of its settlements. Deserts, prairies, forests and lakes add nothing to actual civilization. A wheat farm of half a million acres and two hundred inhabitants is a consideration merely equivalent

1 Russia, which has all the natural resources of America, and is already matching its progress, has an area of 8,450,081 square miles and a population of 129,211,113.