The `Nowhere & Nobody`.

One might ennumerate the items of high civilization, as it exists in other countries, which are
absent from the texture of American life, until it should become a wonder to know what was left.
No State, in the European sense of the word, and indeed barely a specific national name. No
sovereign, no court, no personal loyalty, no aristocracy, no church, no clergy, no army, no
diplomatic service, no country gentlemen, no palaces, no castles, nor manors, nor old country
houses, nor parsonages, nor thatched cottages, nor ivied ruins; no cathedrals nor abbeys, nor little
Norman churches; no great universities nor public schools—no Oxford, nor Eton, nor Harrow; no
literature, no novels, no museums, no pictures, no political society, no sporting class—no Epsom
nor Ascot!...The natural remark in the almost lurid light of such an indictment, would be that if
these things are left out, everything is left out.

Whatever question there may be of his talent, there can be none, I think, of his genius. It was a
slim and crooked one; but it was eminently personal. He was imperfect, unfinished, inartistic; he
was worse than provincial—he was parochial