[Solar-accesible] Ridges, and the stair-lik

Mon Aug 31 07:23:50 CEST 2009

Tell the tale that America is a second edition of the best work of
English industry and of British valour--a second edition interwoven,
however, with foreign matter, with French _fierte_ without French
_politesse_, with German mysticism without German learning, with the
restless and rabid democracy of the whole world without the salutary
check of venerable laws, and with that strange mixture of freedom and
slavery, of tolerance and intolerance, which distinguishes America of
the nineteenth century. But it is, nevertheless, a most extraordinary
spectacle, to contemplate the rise and progress of the union in so short
a period since the declaration of independence. An Irish gentleman,
apparently a clergyman, last year favoured the public with the result of
an extensive tour in Canada and the United States, in "Letters from
America." He starts in his preface with these remarkable expressions,
which must be well considered and analyzed, because they are the
deliberate convictions of an observant and well-informed man, who had,
moreover, singular opportunities of reflecting upon the people he had so
long travelled amongst. He says that "In energy, perseverance,
enterprise, sagacity, activity, and varied resources" the Americans
infinitely surpass the British; that he never met with "a stupid
American." That our "American children" surpass us not only in our good,
but "in our evil peculiarities." This I cannot understand; for, surely,
if we have _peculiarities_, which there is no denying, they must by all
the rules of logic be limited to 
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