CHAPTER III.
WHY AN UNREASONABLE FANCY WAS ACTED ON—THE HISTORY OF THE CAUSE OF AMERICAN PROGRESSIVENESS—WHAT PASSES IN AMERICA IMPORTANT TO US—THE NORTHERN STATES SOWN BROADCAST WITH HOUSES.
WHY AN UNREASONABLE FANCY WAS ACTED ON—THE HISTORY OF THE CAUSE OF AMERICAN PROGRESSIVENESS—WHAT PASSES IN AMERICA IMPORTANT TO US—THE NORTHERN STATES SOWN BROADCAST WITH HOUSES.
I had had good times at New York, and I was rather eagerly looking forward to good times at Washington, and so was somewhat disinclined to tarry on the way thither. Still I thought it would be unwise to lose an opportunity which offered itself for seeing something of the second city of the Union, which lay upon my route. I therefore stopped at the place, and having secured comfortable quarters at the best hotel (in America there is a wider difference between the best and second-rate hotels than there is elsewhere), I sallied forth to get some idea of the external appearance of the town. There are occasions, it is said, when imagination overpowers our judgment, and makes fools of us all. I now became, I suppose, an illustration of this process. As I walked along the streets they appeared to me distressingly straight. Their nomenclature, too, was painfully dull and formal. This is a place, I began to think, where men and women profess a form of virtue too exalted for ordinary mortals. Such a city as this appears to be, must be inhabited bypeople who are not so human as to err, nor so divine as to forgive. If I had not been alone, it would probably have been impossible for so groundless a fancy to have taken possession of my mind. Still I was rational enough, when I had finished my breakfast the next morning, to think of delivering some of my letters of introduction. It seemed best to begin with one addressed to a gentleman whose official position need not now be mentioned. On finding the house I was in search of, I sent in my letter. The gentleman was not himself at home, but his wife opened the letter, and sent out to say that she would see me. I have not the slightest idea that she had any thought of being rude or discourteous. If so, I should not say anything about what passed; for then it would have been the only instance of discourtesy I met with in my travels through the United States, and a single instance of discourtesy would be obliterated by the recollection of helpfulness and kindness everywhere else. It was, however, an instance of precisely what my fancy had been suggesting of the kind of virtue which would be the natural growth of the place. ‘Sir,’ said the lady, without asking me to be seated, or taking a seat herself, and in a tone and with a manner which proclaimed that she belonged to the order of beings who cannot err, and who regard the disposition to forgive as one of the weaknesses of ordinary mortals: ‘Sir, I will not attempt to conceal from you that our feelings are completely changed towards Englishmen. Formerly we used to think that England was always on the side of right. But since we found that, during the late war, she sided with the South,our opinion of England has been reversed; and the reversal of our feelings has accompanied the reversal of our opinion.’
How a Fanciful Idea was Confirmed.
‘Madam,’ I replied, ‘it is true that there were many in England who felt towards the South, just as the schoolboy feels, while he reads Homer’s “Iliad,” about Hector, when he finds him battling manfully against destiny and a host of heroes. His sympathies, if he has any generosity in his character, are naturally enlisted on behalf of the brave man who is acquitting himself so well, and who must in the end he overwhelmed.’
With these two little speeches the brief interview ended. For the moment my fancies seemed hard and established facts. What could I gain by remaining longer in such a place?—and so I left it by the first train.
People look upon the progressiveness and enterprise of the Americans as if it were somethingsui generis. This, however, is a mistake; the difference is only one of degree, and not of kind. The character of the American, just like every other product, whether in external nature or in man, is the result of a chain of precedent events. In his case the links of this chain can be traced back to dates and events long anterior to the dawn of history, or even to the twilight of tradition, but which, thanks to modern science, are not altogether irrecoverable. Philology reveals to us that race of mankind to which the American belongs, seated at a very remote date somewhere in Central Asia. As there is no ground for supposing that it came from the South, which was occupied by another and very differentbranch of the human family, or from the West or the North, for reasons with which the philologist and ethnologist will be familiar, we must conclude that if it had not sprung from the soil, it must have come from a more distant east. If then the Aryans of Central Asia had been the product of a migration, of course only those had come who had had the enterprise and the hardihood to go in quest of a new home. This then was the spirit which presided over the race at its birth, and launched it upon its long career. Again and again—we know not how often, for the records of history had not yet begun—the same process must have been repeated. Of this hardy and enterprising race, the most hardy and enterprising again renewed their westward movement. All the while the characteristics of the advancing race were being confirmed and strengthened; the infirm and feeble in body or purpose were ever being left behind, and the primeval and now hereditary impulse to move on at all risks was becoming in those who from time to time sought new homes an ever-strengthening instinct. At last—and this is when ordinary history first takes cognisance of them—we find them settled on the southern and northern shores of the Baltic.
The Cause of American Progressiveness.
After a time the day arrives for another movement, for another winnowing and sifting, far more searching than any of the previous ones. Greater hardihood and enterprise are needed than were ever called for in any of their past movements. The sea has now to be crossed—a new form of danger to be confronted. Those who venture in their open and half-open boats on this great enterprise, to establish a newhome for themselves on the other side of the storm-swept waste of waters, must be men who know no fear, and in whom the instinct of moving onward is irrepressible. The result of this supreme effort is the great English nation—the product of all that is best in Angles, Jutes, Saxons, Danes, and Northmen. Such was the long process by which the men were formed who fought at Crecy, Poitiers, and Agincourt; at Blenheim, and Ramilies, and Malplaquet; at Trafalgar, and at Waterloo; on the Ganges, the Nile, and the St. Lawrence; who produced a Bacon, a Shakespeare, and a Newton; who first tried men by their peers, and first governed themselves by their representatives; who broke the papal yoke, and established freedom of religion, of speech, of the press, and of commerce. In their little island they proved themselves the grandest race the world had seen.
But the great drama was not yet complete. The original impulse had ever been gaining strength, and now appeared to culminate. But it was not so. One more effort had to be made. In grandeur and hardihood it transcended all that had yet been achieved. Not a narrow sea, but the broad Atlantic had to be crossed; not a small island, but a new world had to be occupied. The English race must itself be sifted, and none but those who have nerve as firm as that of the Pilgrim Fathers, and the most active instinct of progression, can take part in this mighty enterprise. And so it comes to pass that America is peopled with that which is most enterprising and progressive in that race in which these qualities had been most highly developed. In these respects shereceives the cream of the cream, the purest selection of that which was most select.
The long series is now completed. The circuit of the world has been made. The hardy, the inventive, the go-ahead American looks out on the Pacific and towards that side of the old continent from which his first ancestors started on the long career which in his person is now consummated.
The like of this has not been done by any other race of men, or in any other part of the world. In human history it is something quite unique. It is the main stream in the history of man. All other series of events—as, for instance, that which resulted in the culture of mind in Greece, and that which resulted in the empire of Rome—only appear to have purpose and value when viewed in connection with it, or rather as subsidiary to it. Their true place in history is that of affluents to this main stream. And even Christianity itself, which so loudly proclaims its indifference to all national or ethnological distinctions, and its equal regard for every branch of the human family, while it has been rejected by the race to which it was first revealed, has become to the more advanced parts of the Teutonic race, in a greater degree than to any other people, their educator and their strength.
A moment’s comparison of the tone in which we write and speak about America with the tone in which we write and speak about other countries, and of the feelings with which we regard what is passing there with the feelings with which we regard what is passing elsewhere, will show that we look upon American events as fraught with a greater amount of goodand of evil to ourselves, than what is happening in all the world besides. Much, for instance, has of late been said and written about what is called the resurrection of Italy, but who expects from that resurrection anything that will affect either the hopes or the fears of mankind? Everybody, however, feels that the future of humanity will be greatly influenced by, and in no small degree depend upon, what is going on in America. Or if we turn to that country which has hitherto been more influential than any other in disturbing, or, which it claims as its right, of directing the course of events on the Continent of Europe, we do not find any causes now in operation which we can suppose likely to result in improving the material circumstances of the French petty proprietors, that is, of the bulk of the French nation, or in giving them more freedom and intellectual energy than they at present possess. The form and character of their government, their church, the division of property that obtains among them, the accepted arrangements and spirit of society, all tend to immobility. In America everyone understands that the stream is all the other way. Mental activity is universal. Public opinion is the opinion of those who in the open arena of public discussion are able to influence the greatest number; and public opinion sweeps away every obstruction.
The Northern States sown with Houses.
The aspect of the country between Philadelphia and Baltimore took me very much by surprise, as I suppose it would anyone whose previous travels had been confined to Europe. I had imagined that old and densely peopled countries, like England and France, must necessarily present to the eye of thetraveller an appearance of their being more closely inhabited than a new country like America. But the very reverse of this is the case, and most strikingly so. All the way from Philadelphia to Baltimore I found the country sown with houses. This arises from the fact that every 100 or 150 acres belong to a separate proprietor (large estates being unknown) who has his house upon his small farm, which he cultivates with his own hands and the assistance of his family. As far as the eye can range over the country you see these white farmhouses. And you may now see them all the way from New York to Omaha on the Missouri, 500 miles beyond Chicago, and 1,500 from New York. The traveller in the United States generally derives his idea of the wealth of the people from what he sees in the towns. The rapidity of their growth, the amount of business done in them, the dimensions of their shops, the goodly appearance of the houses of their merchants, justify him in supposing that the Americans are a very wealthy people. But all this wealth of the towns is in fact only a measure of the wealth of the country. The towns become wealthy and flourishing in proportion to the wealth of the country. These tens of myriads, then, of farmhouses, each of which is evidently the home of a well-to-do family, and of which one is never out of sight in the settled districts of the North, are the truest and most interesting indications of the nature and of the amount of the riches of the United States.