AMERICAN VERSATILITY.

595

It is too early to write the history of the present authors of America, of whom it can be truly said that they bid fair to raise authorship higher than ever. They comprise poets like Paul Hamilton Hayne, novelists like William Dean Howells and Henry James, critics like Edmund Clarence Stedman, and

metaphysicians, essayists, theologians, scientists, students of educational problems, all of whom are working with earnest effort, and their future is full of promise.

The age is called a practical age, but it is employed with themes of the loftiest concern, which are not generally classed as practical. Never did discussion of moral, mental or scientific principles have

so strong a hold upon the readers and writers of America as they do at this moment. There is a versatility in the American character, and a determination to master the situation, that gives our thoughtful visitors from abroad

WILLIAM DEAN HOWELLS.

ground for prophesying a future for America grander than any native of the country would have felt like claiming.

It was Herbert Spencer, the latest of these observers, who wrote on his return "The Americans may reasonably look forward to a time when they will have produced a civiliza

tion grander than any the world has known." "The world has never before seen social phenomena at all comparable with those presented in the United States. A society spreading over enormous tracts, while still preserving its political continuity, is a new thing." "The eventual mixture of the allied varieties of the Aryan race forming the population will produce a finer type of man than has hitherto existed. and a type of man more plastic, more adaptable, more capable of undergoing the modifications needful for complete social life."

In emphasizing the plastic and adaptable nature

SPENCER ON AMERICA.

597

of the American character, Mr. Spencer points to marked traits arising from the circumstances through which the people have passed in the New World. They will not forget that their present has grown from their past, and that much that is great among them has come from the devout examples of their Washingtons, and Lincolns, and Garfields, who are but representatives of the thousands of God-fearing men and women who revere the memories of the fathers and worship the God whom they adored.

In closing, let us make our own the eloquent words of Daniel Webster, uttered in the Senate Chamber at Washington, in 1850. They are as applicable in our day as they were a generation ago. "Never," said he, "did there devolve upon any generation of men higher trusts than now devolve upon us, for the preservation of this Constitution, and the harmony and peace of all who are destined to live. under it. Let us make our generation one of the strongest and brightest links in that golden chain which is destined, I fondly believe, to grapple the people of all the States to this Constitution for ages to come. We have a great, popular, constitutional government, guarded by law and by judicature, and defended by the whole affections of the people. No monarchial throes press these States together; no iron chain of military power encircles them; they live and stand upon a government popular in its form, representative in its character, founded upon principles of equality, and so constructed, we hope, as to last forever. In all its history it has been beneficent; it has trodden down no man's liberty: it has crushed no State. Its daily respiration is liberty and patriot

ism; its yet youthful veins are full of enterprise, courage, and honorable love of glory and renown. Large before, the country has now, by recent events, become vastly larger. This Republic now extends with a vast breadth, across the whole Continent. The two great seas of the world wash the one and the other shore. We realize on a mighty scale, the beautiful description of the ornamental edging of the buckler of Achilles :

Now the broad shield complete, the artist crowned
With his last hand, and poured the ocean round;

In living silver seemed the waves to roll,

And beat the buckler's verge and bound the whole."

DOCUMENTS

Illustrating the Constitutional History of the United States from 1620 to the present time.

I. THE SOCIAL COMPACT SIGNED IN THE CABIN OF THE MAYFLOWER, 1620.

II. THE ARTICLES OF CONFEDERATION OF THE NEW ENGLAND COLO

NIES, 1643.

III. THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE, 1776.

IV. ARTICLEs of ConfederATION OF THE THIRTEEN COLONIES, 1778.

V. A DECLARATION OF RIGHTS, MADE BY THE REPRESENTATIVES OF THE GOOD PEOPLE OF VIRGINIA, 1776.

VI. THE CONSTITUTION OF THE UNITED STATES, 1787.

VII. AMENDMENTS TO THE CONSTITUTION.

'VIII. THE VIRGINIA RESOLUTIONS OF 1798.

IX. THE KENTUCKY RESOLUTIONS OF 1798.

X. THE KENTUCKY RESOLUTIONS OF 1799, PASSED IN RESPONSE TO THE RESOLUTIONS OF THE OTHER STATES IN REPLY TO THE RESOLUTIONS OF 1798.