Page:The Galaxy, Volume 5.djvu/265



has no reason thus far to be dissatisfied with either the attention he has received or the money he has gained since his arrival in this country. His second visit to America is plainly to be an era in our literary annals as well as in his life. We shall date from the time when Dickens came here to read; and he from the time when he made pots of money in America. This is well, and it is pleasing in our eyes, but not at all surprising. Indeed, we have been somewhat humiliated by observing on the one hand the pleas that were put forth by some of our own journalists for forgiveness and forgetfulness toward him for his "American Notes," accompanied by complacent and self-gratulatory assurances that Mr. Dickens would find the Americans a much better-behaved people on his second than he did on his first visit; and on the other by the approving, "Jonathan is a good boy at heart after all, and bears no malice," comments which the great social caricaturist's reception here has elicited from some of the British journals. For, as to the "American Notes," not having read them until within the last fortnight, and taking them up with the notion that we should find them stuffed with slander and tricked out with ill-natured ridicule, we were surprised to find them fair, perfectly good-natured and respectful; slightly erroneous in some instances, but upon no point of sufficient importance to materially impair the real value of the book; which, however, is slight from its narrowness of view and its superficiality. In his "American Notes," Mr. Dickens is a severe censor upon but three of our national peculiarities, tobacco-chewing and spitting, scurrilous and corrupt newspapers, and slavery, the fit scourging of which is a good reason, if there were no others, for the creation of a Charles Dickens. It was in the American scenes of "Martin Chuzzlewit" that Mr. Dickens misrepresented America; and there he did hold us up unmercifully to unjust ridicule! True, he is a caricaturist, and he has caricatured his own people and the institutions of his own country; but of them he has not written caricature only; while of us and of our society he gave only a caricature of a corner; and the caricature was very great and the corner very small. But what is it to us that he chose thus to pander to a pitiful prejudice, the offspring of ignorance and resentment? If he have any real generosity of soul he will be heartily ashamed of this weakness; if not, and he is content, we, too, may surely be well contented. As to the rest, Mr. Dickens has given us a great deal of amusement and much genuine pleasure, for which he has received little in return; and we can afford to pay him well for his labor. As to his finding us a better-behaved people than we were at the time of his former visit, it must be surprising to any close observer of our society to see such an opinion expressed in quarters of any authority. For nothing is surer, or, it would seem, more manifest, than that during the last twenty years our manners and the tone of our society have suffered a great and a widespread deterioration. Take us by and large, and we are less courteous, less deferential to age and to weakness, less careful in the repression of selfishness, coarser in our pleasures, more grossly material in all our views of life. The change is merely that we are much