Nothing gives
place, recollect, and never ought to give place, except to its clean
superiors. There is more rude and undevelopt bravery, friendship,
conscientiousness, clear-sightedness, and practical genius for any
scope of action, even the broadest and highest, now among the American
mechanics and young men, than in all the official persons in these
States, legislative, executive, judicial, military, and naval, and
more than among all the literary persons. I would be much pleas'd to
see some heroic, shrewd, fully-inform'd, healthy-bodied, middle-aged,
beard-faced American blacksmith or boatman come down from the West
across the Alleghanies, and walk into the Presidency, dress'd in a
clean suit of working attire, and with the tan all over his face,
breast, and arms; I would certainly vote for that sort of man,
possessing the due requirements, before any other candidate.
(The facts of rank-and-file workingmen, mechanics, Lincoln, Johnson,
Grant, Garfield, brought forward from the masses and placed in the
Presidency, and swaying its mighty powers with firm hand--really with
more sway than any king in history, and with better capacity in using
that sway--can we not see that these facts have bearings far, far
beyond their political or party ones?)
MONUMENTS--THE PAST AND PRESENT
If you go to Europe, (to say nothing of Asia, more ancient and
massive still,) you cannot stir without meeting venerable
mementos--cathedrals, ruins of temples, castles, monuments of the
great, statues and paintings, (far, far beyond anything America can
ever expect to produce,) haunts of heroes long dead, saints, poets,
divinities, with deepest associations of ages.
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