On a comprehensive summing up of the processes and present and
hitherto condition of the United States, with reference to their
future, and the indispensable precedents to it, my point, below all
surfaces, and subsoiling them, is, that the bases and prerequisites
of a leading nationality are, first, at all hazards, freedom, worldly
wealth and products on the largest and most varied scale, common
education and intercommunication, and, in general, the passing through
of just the stages and crudities we have passed or are passing through
in the United States.
Then, perhaps, as weightiest factor of the whole business, and of the
main outgrowths of the future, it remains to be definitely avow'd
that the native-born middle-class population of quite all the United
States--the average of farmers and mechanics everywhere--the real,
though latent and silent bulk of America, city or country, presents
a magnificent mass of material, never before equal'd on earth. It is
this material, quite unexpress'd by literature or art, that in every
respect insures the future of the republic. During the secession war I
was with the armies, and saw the rank and file, north and south, and
studied them for four years. I have never had the least doubt about
the country in its essential future since.
Meantime, we can (perhaps) do no better than to saturate ourselves
with, and continue to give imitations, yet awhile, of the esthetic
models, supplies, of that past and of those lands we spring from.
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