.. I
went lately to St. Louis and saw the Mississippi again. The
powers of the River, the insatiate craving for nations of men to
reap and cure its harvests, the conditions it imposes,--for it
yields to no engineering,--are interesting enough. The Prairie
exists to yield the greatest possible quantity of adipocere. For
corn makes pig, pig is the export of all the land, and you shall
see the instant dependence of aristocracy and civility on the fat
four legs. Workingmen, ability to do the work of the River,
abounded. Nothing higher was to be thought of. America is
incomplete. Room for us all, since it has not ended, nor given
sign of ending, in bard or hero. 'T is a wild democracy, the
riot of mediocrities, and none of your selfish Italies and
Englands, where an age sublimates into a genius, and the whole
population is made into Paddies to feed his porcelain veins, by
transfusion from their brick arteries. Our few fine persons are
apt to die. Horatio Greenough, a sculptor, whose tongue was far
cunninger in talk than his chisel to carve, and who inspired
great hopes, died two months ago at forty-seven years.
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