In the Parliament House at Westminster, among the scenes from English
history painted on the walls, the American is most stirred when he comes
to the Departure of the Pilgrim Fathers to found New England.
England--the England descended from the England which "harried them
out"--will not let that scene go as a part of American history only, but
claims it now as one of the proudest scenes in her own history, too. So
the American will no more view Wyclif and Shakespeare and Cromwell and
Milton and Gladstone as chiefly Englishmen, but as fellow-citizens,--as
he views Victor Hugo and Kant and Tolstoi and Mazzini. The American is
to be pitied who does not feel himself native to Stratford and to
London, as to St. Louis or St. Paul,--native to Leyden and to Weimar and
Geneva. Each narrower circle only gains in richness and in sacredness
and power as it expands into the larger; each community and state and
nation, as it enters into a broader and completer organic life. This is
the divine message to the world. Let there be peace; let there be order;
and, that there may be, let us know what manner of men we are.
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