Those British virtuosos who later formed the Royal Society of London, once considered (according to an eighteenth century secretary) migrating to Connecticut, “had not the Civil wars happily ended as they did.” Whether true or not, the story indicates the attraction which America offered to the early fellows. Robert Boyle was very interested in the College of William and Mary, opened in 1692, and this interest resulted in the creation of a chair of mathematics and natural philosophy. Of its nine occupants up to the Revolution, Dr. William Small, who held it from 1758–1764 was the most influential. “He fixed the destinies of my life,” wrote Jefferson. He fixed the destinies of several others in England too, for he is generally credited with initiating the Lunar Society of Birmingham on his return to England.

The most important statement of Britain's economic and social aims to emerge from the experience of the depression and the Second World War was Beveridge's “Full Employment in a Free Society”. Published in 1944 it marks a revolution in the thinking of liberal economists. Laissez-faire is almost totally discarded. What replaces it is not socialism, but the socialisation of effective demand; the responsibility is thrust upon the State for the provision of income sufficiently large for the full employment of the human resource of labour. There were in 1944 (as there still are) many unfinished arguments concerning the best means of implementing the aim of full employment, but the responsibility of Central Governments in this matter is not in doubt. As the Times stated editorially “There is no question whether we can achieve full employment: we must achieve it. It is the central factor which will determine the pattern of national life after the war, including, perhaps, the fate of democratic institutions.” The revolution in thought which this editorial view point represents had something to do with the New Deal, but how much? in what respects was the New Deal influential? Can we separate out from the whole Anglo-American depression experience some particular features of America's recovery programme and distinguish them as influential in British thinking? I think that we cannot; but there is no doubt, on the other hand, that in the long conversation between British and American economists which went on through the 1930's and into the war years, American views and American experience made themselves felt amongst British economists.

Before leaving for America, in January 1842, Dickens wrote that he ‘yearned to know its people,’ and that it was the land of his dreams. On returning, only five months later, he declared, “It is no use, I am disappointed. This is not the republic I came to see; this is not the republic of my imagination.” To many of his American critics, the real disappointment was not at what he saw, but at the failure of “an impudent speculative trip” foolishly undertaken in the hope of securing a profitable international copyright agreement. At the time Dickens denied it furiously. There is no doubt that he was right. Yet so great was his fame that we still tend to link Dickens and International copyright, unaware that almost in spite of himself he was caught up in a movement in which he was bound by ties of loyalty to his fellow authors and his own reputation for frankness to assert their rights with all the means he could command. It would be wrong to disassociate Dicken's views on International copyright and his opinions on the United States in general; but the time has come by now to allow that he did not speak solely for himself in the matter, and that he fairly believed that he was acting in the best interests of literature in both Britain and the United States.

This poem, from Stevens' first volume. Harmonium (1923), is frequently referred to by critics; but few of them have advanced an interpretation. Many have been impressed by its stylistic brilliance, its jazzy rhythms and its surface delights, often adding that in spite of the fact that it is a minor tour de force, it should not be considered one of his best poems. Yet it is certainly a key poem in Stevens' early work, and surely merits the effort of interpretation and analysis. Marius Bewley, in The Complex Fate (1952), makes the one extended attempt at interpretation that is readily available. It is ingenious and relevant to Stevens' themes, but seems to us to be rather over-elaborate, and rather inclined to project the themes of Stevens' later verse back over his earlier work.