--Bancroft told me
that the letters of Montcalm are spurious. We always write and
say Ticonderoga.
I am sorry that Jonathan looks so unamiable seen from your
island. Yet I have too much respect for the writing profession
to complain of it. It is a necessity of rhetoric that there
should be shades, and, I suppose, geography and government always
determine, even for the greatest wits, where they shall lay their
shadows. But I have always 'the belief that a trip across the
sea would have abated your despair of us. The world is laid out
here in large lots, and the swing of natural laws is shared by
the population, as it is not--or not as much--in your feudal
Europe. My countrymen do not content me, but they are
susceptible of inspirations. In the war it was humanity that
showed itself to advantage,--the leaders were prompted and
corrected by the intuitions of the people, they still demanding
the more generous and decisive measure, and giving their sons and
their estates as we had no example before. In this heat, they
had sharper perceptions of policy, of the ways and means and the
life of nations, and on every side we read or heard fate-words,
in private letters, in railway cars, or in the journals.
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