"I cannot overlook that latent force of virtue and wisdom, which makes itself, as yet, too little felt in public affairs, but which assuredly is there, and will come forth, I am convinced, when the hour of trial comes to save the country."

“The American nation will wrestle victoriously with these social and political hydras."

Mr. Stirling gives a most true analysis of an American popular speaker in his estimate of Beecher. He discrimi nates well the local traits of the country, calling Florida the "Alsatia of the Union," because it is such a paradise for sportsmen and squatters; and explaining the superiority in race of the Kentuckians by their hunting habits and progenitors. "The little step," he writes, "from the South to the North, is a stride from barbarism to civilization-a step from the sixteenth to the nineteenth century."

Of the physiognomy of the people he says: "You read upon the nation's brow the extent of its enterprise and the intensity of its desires. The deepest-rooted cause of American disease is the overworking of the brain and the overexcitement of the nervous system."

Equally clear and earnest, humane and noble, is his view of the relation of this country to Great Britain: "Never werę two nations," he writes, "so eminently fitted to aid and comfort each other in the vast work of civilization, than England and America." He reproaches Great Britain with her indifference, as manifest in sending second-class ambassadors to the United States; and invokes "the spiritual ruler, the press," to do its part, "by speaking more generously and wisely." If the prescience of this writer is remarkable in estimating aright the temper and tendencies of Southern treason while yet latent, and of Northern integrity and patriotism before events had elicited their active development, no less prophetic is his appeal to English magnanimity:

"Why, in God's name, should we not give them every assurance of respect and affection? Are they not our children, blood of our blood and bone of our bone? Are they not progressive, and fond of power, like ourselves? Are they not our best customers? Have

they not the same old English, manly virtues? What is more befitting for us Englishmen, than to watch with intense study and deepest sympathy the momentous strivings of this noble people? It is the same fight we ourselves are fighting-the true and absolute supremacy of Right. Surely nothing can more beseem two great and kindred nations, than to aid and comfort one another in that career of self-ennoblement, which is the end of all national as well as individual existence."*

* "The stupendous greatness of England is factitious, and will only be come natural when that empire shall have found its real centre: that centre is the United States."-" The New Rome; or, The United States of the World" (New York, 1843).

A remarkably bold and comprehensive theory of American progress, unity, and empire, by Theodore Posche and Charles Goepp-one an Americanized German, the other a Teutonic philosopher. In this little treatise the geography, politics, races, and social organization of the United States are analyzed, and shown to be "at work upon the fusion of all nations-not of this continent alone, but of all continents-into one people."

CHAPTER VII.

ENGLISH ABUSE OF AMERICA.

Ir has often been remarked, that there is a fashion in bookcraft, as in every other phase and element of human society; and the caprices thereof are often as inexplicable and fantastic as in manners, costume, and other less intellectual phenomena. The history of modern literature indicates extreme fluctuations of popular taste. Waller and Cowley introduced the concetti of the Italians into English verse, which, in Elizabeth's reign, was so preeminent for robust affluence; in Pope's day we had satire and sense predominant; Byron initiated the misanthropic and impassioned style; while Steele and Addison inaugurated social criticism, the lake poets a recurrence to the simplicity of nature, and the Scotch reviewers bold analysis and liberal reform. But the uniform tone of books and criticism in England for so many years, in relation to America, is one of those literary phenomena the cause of which must be sought elsewhere than among the whims and oddities of popular taste or the caprice of authors. A French writer, at one period, declared it was the direct result of official bribery, to stop emigration; but its motives were various, and its origin far from casual or temporary; and the attitude and animus of England during the war for the Union, give to these systematic attacks and continuous detraction a formidable significance. The American abroad may have grown indifferent to the derogatory

facts or fictions gleaned for Galignani's Messenger, and served up with his daily breakfast; he may treat the prejudice and presumption of English censors with amusing nonchalance, when discussing them with an esteemed and kindly friend of that race; but the subject assumes a more grave aspect, when he finds his country's deadly struggle for nationality against a selfish and profane oligarchy, understood and vindicated by the press of Turin and St. Petersburg, and maligned or discouraged by that of London. Cockneyism may seem unworthy of analysis, far less of refutation; but, as Sydney Smith remarked by way of apology for hunting small game to the death in his zeal for reform, “in a country surrounded by dikes, a rat may inundate a province;" and it is the long-continued gnawing of the tooth of detraction that, at a momentous crisis, let in the cold flood at last upon the nation's heart, and quenched its traditional love.

We have seen how popular a subject of discussion were American manners, institutions, and character, by British writers; and it is amusing, in the retrospect, to consider with what avidity were read, and with what self-confidence were written, these monotonous protests against the imperfect civilization prevalent in the United States. That there was a certain foundation for such discussion, and a relation between the institutions of the country and the behavior of its people, cannot be denied; but both were exaggerated, and made to pander infinitely more to prejudice than to truth. The same investigation applied to other lands in the same spirit, would have furnished quite as salient material; and the antecedents as well as the animus of most of these self-appointed censors should have absolved their attacks from any power to irritate. The violations of refinement and propriety thus "set in a note book" were by no means universal. Many of them were temporary, and, taken at their best significance, to a philosophical mind bore no proportion to the more impor tant traits and tendencies which invite the attention and enlist the sympathy of lovers of humanity. It is remarkable, also, that the most severe comments came from persons

whose experience of the higher usages and refinements of social life was in the inverse ratio of their critical complaints. Lord Carlisle found, in the vast social possibilities of this country, an interest which rendered him indifferent to the discomfort and the anomalies to which his own habits and associations might have naturally made him sensitive; while the latter exclusively occupied Dickens, whose early experience had made him familiar with the least elegant and luxurious facilities of life. The arrant cockneyism and provincial impertinence of many of these superficial and sensation writers, on a subject whose true and grand relations they were incapable of grasping, and the mercenary or sycophantic motive of many of their tirades, were often exposed; while in cases where incidental popular errors were truly stated, the justice of the criticism was acknowledged, and, in some instances, practically acted upon. The reckless expectoration, angular attitudes, and intrusive curiosity which formed the staple reproach, have always been limited to a class or section, and are now comparatively rare; and these and similar superficial defects, when gravely treated as national, seem almost devoid of significance, when the grand human worth, promise, and beauty of our institutions and opportunities as a people, are considered and compared with the iron caste, the hopeless routine, the cowed and craven status of the masses in older and less homogeneous and unhampered communities.

We must look far back to realize the prevalent ignorance in regard to this country wherein prejudice found root and nurture. In colonial days, many bitter and perverse records found their way to the press; and Colonel Barre said to the elder Quincy, in England, before the Revolutionary war: "When I returned to this country, I was often speaking of America, and could not help speaking well of its climate, soil, and inhabitants; but-will you believe it ?-more than two thirds of the people of this island thought the Americans were all negroes."

Goldsmith's muse, in 1765, warned the impoverished peas ants, eager to seek a new home in the Western hemisphere,