But his nationality hung around
his neck like a millstone; he could never throw off his native
Philistinism. One ploughs through "The Innocents Abroad" and through
parts of "A Tramp Abroad" with incredulous amazement. Is such coarse and
ignorant clowning to be accepted as humour, as great humour, as the best
humour that the most humorous of peoples has produced? Is it really the
mark of a smart fellow to lift a peasant's cackle over "Lohengrin"? Is
Titian's chromo of Moses in the bullrushes seriously to be regarded as
the noblest picture in Europe? Is there nothing in Latin Christianity,
after all, save petty grafting, monastic scandals and the worship of the
knuckles and shin-bones of dubious saints? May not a civilized man,
disbelieving in it, still find himself profoundly moved by its dazzling
history, the lingering remnants of its old magnificence, the charm of
its gorgeous and melancholy loveliness? In the presence of all beauty of
man's creation--in brief, of what we roughly call art, whatever its
form--the voice of Mark Twain was the voice of the Philistine.
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