[25] For fear of mistake, I may as well distinctly specify, as
cheerfully included in the model and standard of these Vistas, a
practical, stirring, worldly, money-making, even materialistic
character. It is undeniable that our farms, stores, offices,
dry-goods, coal and groceries, enginery, cash-accounts, trades,
earnings, markets, &c., should be attended to in earnest, and actively
pursued, just as if they had a real and permanent existence. I
perceive clearly that the extreme business energy, and this almost
maniacal appetite for wealth prevalent in the United States, are parts
of amelioration and progress, indispensably needed to prepare the
very results I demand. My theory includes riches, and the getting
of riches, and the amplest products, power, activity, inventions,
movements, &c. Upon them, as upon substrata, I raise the edifice
design'd in these Vistas.
[26] The whole present system of the officering and personnel of the
army and navy of these States, and the spirit and letter of their
trebly-aristocratic rules and regulations, is a monstrous exotic,
a nuisance and revolt, and belong here just as much as orders of
nobility, or the Pope's council of cardinals. I say if the present
theory of our army and navy is sensible and true, then the rest of
America is an unmitigated fraud.
[27] A: After the rest is satiated, all interest culminates in the
field of persons, and never flags there. Accordingly in this field
have the great poets and literatuses signally toil'd.
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