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But amid this general uncertainty there are two capital maxims which prevail amongst our hucksters of Politics: To love your party better than your country, and Yourself better than your party. There are, it is true, real statesmen amongst us, men who love Justice and do the Right, but they seem lost in the mob of vulgar politicians and the dust of party editors.

So it

Since the nation loves Freedom above all things, the name Democracy is a favorite name. No party could live a twelvemonth that should declare itself anti-democratic. Saint and sinner, statesman and politician, alike love the name. comes to pass that there are two things which bear that name; each has its type and its motto. The motto of one is, "You are as good as I, and let us help one another." That represents the Democracy of the Declaration of Independence, and of the New Testament; its type is a Free School, where children of all ranks meet under the guidance of intelligent and Christian men, to be educated in mind, and heart, and soul. The other has for its motto, "I am as good as you, so get out of my way." Its type is the Bar-room of a tavern-dirty, offensive, stained with tobacco, and full of drunken, noisy, quarrelsome "rowdies," just returned from the Mexican war, and ready for a "Buffalo Hunt," for privateering, or to go and plunder any one who is better off than themselves, especially if also better. That is not exactly the Democracy of the Declaration, or of the New Testament; but of-no matter whom.

Then, again, there is a great Intensity of Life and Purpose. This displays itself in our actions and speeches; in our speculations; in the "revivals" of the more serious sects; in the excitements of trade; in the general character of the people. All that we do we overdo. It appears in our Hopefulness; we are the most aspiring of nations. Not content with half the continent, we wish the other half. We have this characteristic of genius: we are dissatisfied with all that we have done. Somebody once said we were too vain to be proud. It is not wholly so; the national ideal is so far above us that any achievement seems little and low. The American soul passes away from its work soon as it is finished. So the soul of each great artist refuses to dwell in his finished work, for that seems little to his dream. Our Fathers deemed the Revolution a great work; it was once thought a surprising thing to found that little colony on the shores of New England; but

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Young America looks to other Revolutions, and thinks she has many a Plymouth colony in her bosom. If other nations wonder at our achievements, we are a disappointment to ourselves, and wonder we have not done more. Our national Idea out-travels our experience, and all experience. We began our national career by setting all history at defiancefor that said, "A Republic on a large scale cannot exist." Our progress since has shown that we were right in refusing to be limited by the Past. The political ideas of the nation are transcendent, not empirical. Human history could not justify the Declaration of Independence and its large statements of the new Idea: the nation went behind human history, and appealed to Human Nature.

We are more spontaneous than logical; we have ideas, rather than facts or precedents. We dream more than we remember, and so have many orators and poets, (or poetasters,) with but few antiquaries and general scholars. We are not so reflective as forecasting. We are the most intuitive of modern nations. The very party in politics which has the least culture, is richest in Ideas which will one day become facts. Great truths-political, philosophical, religious - lie a-burning in many a young heart which cannot legitimate nor prove them true, but none the less feels, and feels them true. A man full of new truths finds a ready audience with us. Many things which come disguised as truths under such cir cumstances pass current for a time, but by and by their bray discovers them. The Hope which comes from this intensity of life and intuition of truths is a national characteristic. It gives courage, enterprise, and strength. They can who think they can. We are confident in our star; other nations may see it or not, we know it is there above the clouds. We do not hesitate at rash experiments-sending fifty thousand soldiers to conquer a nation with eight or nine millions of people. We are up to every thing and think ourselves a match for any thing. The young man is rash, for he only hopes, having little to remember; he is excitable and loves excitement; change of work is his repose; he is hot and noisy, sanguine and fearless, with the courage that comes from warm blood and ignorance of dangers; he does not know what a hard, tough, sour, old world he is born into. We are a nation of young men. We talked of annexing Texas and northern Mexico, and did both; now we grasp at Cuba, Central America,all the continent, and speak of a Railroad to the Pacific as

a trifle for us to accomplish. Our national deeds are certainly great, but our hope and promise far outbrags them all.

If this intensity of life and hope have its good side, it has also its evil; with much of the excellence of youth we have its faults rashness, haste, and superficiality. Our work is seldom well done. In English manufactures there is a certain solid honesty of performance; in the French a certain air of elegance and refinement: one misses both these in American works. It is said America invents the most machines, but England builds them best. We lack the phlegmatic patience of older nations. We are always in a hurry, morning, noon, and night. We are impatient of the process, but greedy of the result; so we make short experiments but long reports, and talk much though we say little. We forget that a sober method is a short way of coming to the end, and that he who, before he sets out, ascertains where he is going and the way thither, ends his journey more prosperously than one who settles these matters by the way. Quickness is a great desideratum with us. It is said an American ship is known far off at sea by the quantity of canvas she carries. Rough and ready is a popular attribute. Quick and off would be a symbolic motto for the nation at this day, representing one phase of our character. We are sudden in deliberation; the one-hour rule" works well in Congress. A committee of the British Parliament spends twice or thrice our time in collecting facts, understanding and making them intelligible, but less than our time in speech-making after the report; speeches there commonly being for the purpose of facilitating the business, while here one sometimes is half ready to think, notwithstanding our earnestness, that the business is to facilitate the speaking. A state revises her statutes with a rapidity that astonishes a European. Yet each revision brings some amendment, and what is found good in the constitution or laws of one state gets speedily imitated by the rest, each new state (of the North) becoming more democratic than its predecessor. We are so intent on our purpose that we have no time for amusement. We have but one or two festivals in the year, and even then we are serious and reformatory. Jonathan thinks it a very solemn thing to be merry. A Frenchman said we have but two amusements in America- Theology for the women and Politics for the men; preaching and voting. If this be true it may help to explain the fact that most men take their theology from their wives, and women politics from

their husbands. No nation ever tried the experiment of such abstinence from amusement. We have no time for sport, and so lose much of the poetry of life. All work and no play does not always make a dull boy, but it commonly makes a hard man.

We rush from school into business early; we hurry while in business; we aim to be rich quickly, making a fortune at a stroke, making or losing it twice or thrice in a lifetime. "Soft and fair, goes safe and far," is no proverb to our taste. We are the most restless of people. How we crowd into cars and steamboats; a locomotive would well typify our fuming, fizzing spirit. In our large towns life seems to be only a scamper. Not satisfied with bustling about all day, when night comes we cannot sit still, but alone of all nations have added rockers to our chairs.

All is haste, from the tanning of leather to the education of a boy, and the old saw holds its edge good as ever-" the more haste the worse speed." The young stripling, innocent of all manner of lore, whom a judicious father has barrelled down in a college, or law school, or theological seminary, till his beard be grown, mourns over the few years he must spend there awaiting that operation. His rule is, " to make a spoon. or spoil a horn;" he longs to be out in the world "making a fortune," or "doing good," as he calls what his father better names "making noisy work for repentance, and doing mischief." So he rushes into life not fitted, and would fly towards Heaven, this young Icarus, his wings not half fledged. There seems little taste for thoroughness. In our schools as our farms, we pass over much ground but pass over it poorly.

In Education the aim is not to get the most we can, but the least we can get along with. A ship with over much canvas and over little ballast were no bad emblem of many amongst us. In no country is it so easy to get a reputation for learning-accumulated thought, because so few devote themselves to that accumulation. In this respect our standard is low. So a man of one attainment is sure to be honored, but a man of many and varied abilities is in danger of being undervalued. A Spurzheim would be warmly welcomed, while a Humboldt would be suspected of superficiality, as we have not the standard to judge him by. Yet in no country in the world is it so difficult to get a reputation for eloquence, as many speak and that well. It is surprising with what natural strength and beauty the young American addresses himself to speak.

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Some hatter's apprentice, or shoemaker's journeyman, at a temperance or anti-slavery meeting, will speak words like the blows of an axe, that cut clean and deep. The country swarms with orators, more abundantly where Education is least esteemed-in the West or South.

We have secured National Unity of Action for the white citizens, without much curtailing Individual Variety of Action, so we have at the North pretty well solved that problem which other nations have so often boggled over; we have balanced the Centripetal Power, the government and laws, with the Centrifugal Power, the mass of individuals, into harmonious proportions. If one were to leave out of sight the three million slaves, one sixth part of the population, the problem might be regarded as very happily solved. As the consequence of this, in no country is there more talent, or so much awake and active. In the South this Unity is attained by sacrificing all the Rights of three million slaves and almost all the Rights of the other colored population. In despotic countries this Unity is brought about by the sacrifice of freedom, individual variety of action, in all except the Despot and his favorites; so much of the nation's energy is stifled in the chains of the State, while here it is friendly to institutions which are friendly to it, goes to its work, and approves itself in the vast increase of wealth and comfort throughout the North, where there is no class of men which is so oppressed that it cannot rise. One is amazed at the amount of ready skill and general ability which he finds in all the North, where each man has a little culture, takes his newspaper, manages his own business, and talks with some intelligence of many things- especially of Politics and Theology. In respect to this general intellectual ability and power of self-help, the mass of people seem far in advance of any other nation. But at the same time our scholars, who always represent the nation's higher modes of consciousness, will not bear comparison with the scholars of England, France, and Germany, men thoroughly furnished for their work. This is a great reproach and mischief to us, for we need most accomplished leaders, who by their thought can direct this national intensity of life. Our literature does not furnish them; we have no great men there; Irving, Channing, Cooper, are not names to conjure with in literature. One reads thick volumes devoted to the Poets of America, or her Prose Writers, and finds many names which he wonders he never heard of before, but when he turns over their works he finds consolation and recovers his composure.

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