Page:Satire in the Victorian novel (IA satireinvictoria00russrich).pdf/156



"Naturally desiring to represent in the most favorable colors the world from which I came, I touched but slightly, though indulgently, on the antiquated and decaying institutions of Europe, in order to expatiate on the present grandeur and prospective pre-eminence of that glorious American Republic, in which Europe enviously sees its model and tremblingly foresees its doom. Selecting for an example of the social life of the United States that city in which progress advances at the fastest rate, I indulged in an animated description of the moral habits of New York. Mortified to see, by the faces of my listeners, that I did not make the favorable impression I had anticipated, I elevated my theme; dwelling on the excellence of democratic institutions, their promotion of tranquil happiness by the government of party, and the mode in which they diffused such happiness throughout the community by preferring, for the exercise of power and the acquisition of honors, the lowest citizens in point of property, education, and character."

This is the ironic version of Matthew Arnold's polished dubiety about majorities in Numbers; and of the robustious satire of Dickens. If we feel that Lytton excels the latter in pithy conciseness and allusive point, we have to remember that he was at this time more than twice the age of Dickens when Martin Chuzzlewit was written, and that in the intervening quarter century some improving changes had taken place in their common object of satire.

Disraeli's irony is less tangible and quotable. His favorite method is to hint at the implication in a burlesque comparison; as in the opening sentence of ''The Young Duke'': *