If some international literary snobs' gallery were
establish'd, it is certain that America could contribute at least her
full share of the portraits, and some very distinguish'd ones. Observe
that the most impudent slanders, low insults, &c., on the great
revolutionary authors, leaders, poets, &c., of Europe, have their
origin and main circulation in certain circles here. The treatment of
Victor Hugo living, and Byron dead, are samples. Both deserving so
well of America, and both persistently attempted to be soil'd here by
unclean birds, male and female.
Meanwhile I must still offset the like of the foregoing, and all it
infers, by the recognition of the fact, that while the surfaces of
current society here show so much that is dismal, noisome, and vapory,
there are, beyond question, inexhaustible supplies, as of true gold
ore, in the mines of America's general humanity. Let us, not ignoring
the dross, give fit stress to these precious immortal values also.
Let it be distinctly admitted, that--whatever may be said of our
fashionable society, and of any foul fractions and episodes--only here
in America, out of the long history and manifold presentations of
the ages, has at last arisen, and now stands, what never before took
positive form and sway, _the People_--and that view'd en masse, and
while fully acknowledging deficiencies, dangers, faults, this people,
inchoate, latent, not yet come to majority, nor to its own religious,
literary, or esthetic expression, yet affords, to-day, an exultant
justification of all the faith, all the hopes and prayers and
prophecies of good men through the past--the stablest, solidest-based
government of the world--the most assured in a future--the beaming
Pharos to whose perennial light all earnest eyes, the world over, are
tending--and that already, in and from it, the democratic principle,
having been mortally tried by severest tests, fatalities of war and
peace, now issues from the trial, unharm'd, trebly-invigorated,
perhaps to commence forthwith its finally triumphant march around the
globe.
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