The seething materialistic and business vortices of the United States,
in their present devouring relations, controlling and belittling
everything else, are, in my opinion, but a vast and indispensable
stage in the new world's development, and are certainly to be follow'd
by something entirely different--at least by immense modifications.
Character, literature, a society worthy the name, are yet to be
establish'd, through a nationality of noblest spiritual, heroic
and democratic attributes--not one of which at present definitely
exists--entirely different from the past, though unerringly founded on
it, and to justify it.
To that composite American identity of the future, Spanish character
will supply some of the most needed parts. No stock shows a grander
historic retrospect--grander in religiousness and loyalty, or for
patriotism, courage, decorum, gravity and honor. (It is time to
dismiss utterly the illusion-compound, half raw-head-and-bloody-bones
and half Mysteries-of-Udolpho, inherited from the English writers
of the past 200 years. It is time to realize--for it is certainly
true--that there will not be found any more cruelty, tyranny,
superstition, &c., in the _resume_ of past Spanish history than in the
corresponding _resume_ of Anglo-Norman history. Nay, I think there
will not be found so much.)
Then another point, relating to American ethnology, past and to come,
I will here touch upon at a venture. As to our aboriginal or Indian
population--the Aztec in the South, and many a tribe in the North and
West--I know it seems to be agreed that they must gradually dwindle
as time rolls on, and in a few generations more leave only a
reminiscence, a blank.
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