Everybody in America knows the story of the _Mayflower_ and her
Pilgrims in 1620, and the coming of the Puritans in 1630 under John
Winthrop and the Massachusetts Company. I suppose, also, that all
Americans know of the _Ark_ and the _Dove_, and of Lord Baltimore's
Catholic, but tolerant, colony of Maryland. They know as well the very
odd story of Carolina and its 'Lords Proprietors' and the aristocratic
form of government attempted there; of the Quakers in Pennsylvania,
and the Temperance Colony of Georgia. One may recall as well the
influx of Germans by thousands in the early part of the eighteenth
century, and the first immigration of Irish Presbyterians, the flower
of the Irish nation, driven abroad by the stupidity and fanaticism of
their own Government, which wanted to make them conform to the Irish
Episcopal Church. In the whole history of Irish misgovernment there is
nothing more stupid than this persecution of Irish Presbyterians. But,
indeed, we may not blame our forefathers for this stupidity.
Persecution of this kind belonged to the times. It seems to us
inconceivably stupid that men should be exiled because they would not
acknowledge the authority of a bishop, but, out of Maryland, there was
nowhere any real religious toleration; the dream of every sect was to
trample down and to destroy all other sects. Our people in Ireland
were no worse than the people of Salem and Boston. Religious
toleration was not yet understood. Therefore, it was only playing the
game according to the laws of the game when the United Kingdom threw
away tens of thousands--the strongest, the most able, the most
industrious, the most loyal--of her Irish subjects, because they would
not change one sect for another; and retained the Roman Catholics,
hereditary rebels, who were numerically too strong to be turned out.
All these things are perfectly well known to the American reader. But
is it also well known to the American reader--has he ever asked
himself--how these things affected and impressed the mind of England?
In this way. The Land of Romance was no longer the fable land where a
dozen Protestant soldiers, headed by the invincible Dragon, could
drive out a whole garrison of Catholic Spaniards and sack a town. It
had ceased to be another Ophir and a richer Golconda; but it was the
Land of Religious Freedom. The Church of England and Ireland, by law
established, had no power across the ocean. America, to the
Nonconformist of the seventeenth century, was a haven and a refuge
ever open in case of need. The history of Nonconformity shows the
vital necessity of such a refuge. The very existence of free America
gave to the English Nonconformist strength and courage. Such a
persecution as that of the Irish Presbyterians became impossible when
it had been once demonstrated that, should the worst happen, the
persecuted religionists would escape by voluntary exile.
That the spirit of persecution long survived is proved by the
lingering among us down to our own days of the religious disabilities.
Within the memory of living men, no one outside the Church of England
could be educated at a public school; could take a degree at Oxford or
Cambridge; could hold a scholarship or a fellowship at any college;
could become a professor at either university; could sit in the House
of Commons; could be appointed to any municipal office; could hold a
commission in the army or navy. These restrictions practically--though
with some exceptions--reduced Nonconformity in England to the lower
middle class, the small traders. Their ministers, who had formerly
been scholars and theologians, fell into ignorance; their creeds
became narrower; they had no social influence; but for the example of
their brethren across the ocean they would have melted away and been
lost like the Non-Jurors who expired fifty years ago in the last
surviving member; or, like a hundred sects which have arisen, made a
show of flourishing for a while, and then perished. They were
sustained, first, by the memory of a _victorious_ past; next, by the
tradition of religious liberty; and, thirdly, by the report of a
country--a flourishing country--where there were no religious
disabilities, no social inferiority on account of faith and creed. Not
reports only: there was a continual passing to and fro between Bristol
and Boston during three-fourths of the eighteenth century. The
colonies were visited by traders, soldiers and sailors. John Dunton in
the year 1710 thought nothing of a voyage to Boston with a consignment
of books for sale. Ned Ward, another bookseller, made the same journey
with the same object. There exists a whole library of Quaker
biographies showing how these restless apostles travelled backwards
and forwards, crossing and recrossing the Atlantic, and journeying up
and down the country, to preach their gospel. And the life of John
Wesley also proves that the Colonies were regarded as easily
accessible. I have seen a correspondence between a family in London
and their cousins in Philadelphia, in the reign of Queen Anne, which
brings out very clearly the fact that they thought nothing of the
voyage, and fearlessly crossed the ocean on business or pleasure. The
connection between the Colonies and England was much closer than we
are apt to imagine. The Colonies were much better known by us than we
are given to believe; they were regarded by the ecclesiastical mind as
the home of schismatic rebellion; but by the layman as the land where
thought was free.
That was one side--perhaps the most important side. But the halo of
adventure still lay glowing in the western land. No colony but had its
history of massacre, treachery, and war to the knife with the Red
Indian. Long before the time of Fenimore Cooper the English lad could
read stories of dreadful tortures, of heroic daring, of patience and
endurance, of revenges fierce, of daily and hourly peril. The blood of
the Dragon ran yet in English veins. America was still to the heirs
and successors of that Great Heart the Land of Romance and the Land of
Gallant Fights.
And such stories! That of Captain John Smith laying his head upon the
block that it might be smashed by the Indians' clubs, and of his
rescue by the Indian girl, afterwards the 'Princess Rebecca'; the
massacre of three hundred and fifty men, women and children of the
infant colony of Virginia, a hundred stories of massacre. Or, that
story of the mother's revenge, told, I believe, by Thoreau. Her name
was Hannah Dunstan. Her house was attacked by Indians; her husband and
her elder children fled for their lives; she, with an infant of a
fortnight, and her nurse, were left behind. The Indians dashed out the
brains of the baby and forced the two women to march with them through
the forest to their camp. Here they found an English boy, also a
prisoner. Hannah Dunstan made the boy find out from one of the Indians
the quickest way to strike with the tomahawk so as to kill and to
secure the scalp. The Indian told the boy. Now there were in the camp
two men, three women, and seven children. In the dead of night Hannah
got up, awakened her nurse and the boy, secured the tomahawks, and in
the way the unsuspecting Indian had taught the boy, she tomahawked
every one--man, woman and child--except a boy who fled into the
woods--and took their scalps. Then she scuttled all the canoes but
one, and taking the scalps with her as proof of her revenge, she put
the nurse and the boy into the canoe and paddled down the river. She
escaped all roving bands and won her way home again to find her
husband and sons safe and well, and to show the scalps--the blood
payment for her murdered child. Such were the stories told and retold
in every colonial township, round every fire; such were the stories
brought home by the sailors and the merchants; they were published in
books of travel. Think you that our English blood had grown so
sluggish that it could not be fired by such tales? Think you that the
romance of the Colonies was one whit less enthralling than the romance
of the Spanish Main?
I say nothing of the wars in which the British troops and the
Colonial, side by side, at last succeeded in driving the French out of
the country. They belong to the history of the eighteenth century and
to the expansion of the English-speaking race. But for them, North
America would now be half French and a quarter Spanish. These,
however, were regular wars, with no more romance about them than
belongs to war wherever it is conducted according to the war-game of
the day. The manuvres of generals and the deploying of men in masses
inspire none but students, just as a fine game of chess can only be
judged by one who knows the game. Louisburg, Quebec, 'Queen Anne's
War,' 'King George's War'--Wolfe and Montcalm--these things and these
men produced little effect upon the popular view of America. In the
colonies themselves murmurings and complaints began to make themselves
heard; as they became stronger, the discontent increased; but they did
not reach the ear of the average Englishman, who still looked across
the ocean and still saw the country bathed in all the glories of the
West. Then--violently, suddenly--all this romance which had grown up
around and after so much fighting, so many achievements, was broken
off and destroyed. It perished with the War of Independence; it was no
longer possible when the Colonies had become not only a foreign
country, but a country bitterly hostile. The romance of America was
dead.
After the war was over, with much humiliation and shame for the
nation--the better part of which had been against the war from the
outset--the country turned for consolation to the East. But, as has
been said above, neither India, nor Australia, nor New Zealand, has
ever taken such a place in the affections of our country as that
continent which was planted by our own sons, for whose safety and
freedom from foreign enemies we cheerfully spent treasure incalculable
and lives uncounted.
Then came the long twenty-three years' war in which Great Britain, for
the most part single-handed, fought for the freedom of Europe against
the most colossal tyranny ever devised by victorious captain. No
nation in the history of the world ever carried on such a war, so
stubborn, so desperate, so vital. Had Great Britain failed, what would
now be the position of the world? The victories, the defeats, the
successes, the disasters, which marked that long struggle, at least
made our people forget their humiliation in America. The final triumph
gave us back, as it was certain to do, more than our former pride,
more than our old self-reliance. America was forgotten, the old love
for America was gone; how could we remember our former affections
when, at the very time when our need was the sorest, when every ship,
every soldier, every sailor that we could find, was wanted to break
down the power of the man who had subjugated the whole of Europe,
except Russia and Great Britain, the United States--the very Land of
Liberty--did her best to cripple the Armies of Liberty by proclaiming
war against us? And now, indeed, there was nothing left at all of the
old romance. It was quite, quite dead. In the popular imagination all
was forgotten, except that on the other side of the Atlantic lived an
implacable enemy, whose rancour--it then seemed to our people--was
even greater than their boasted love of liberty.
I take it that the very worst time in the history of the relation of
the United States with this country was the first half of this
century. There was very little intercourse between the countries;
there were very few travellers; there was ignorance on both sides,
with misunderstandings, wilful misrepresentations and deliberate
exaggerations. Remember how Nathaniel Hawthorne speaks about the
English people among whom he lived; read how Thoreau speaks of us when
he visits Quebec. Is that time past? Hardly. Among the better class of
Americans one seldom finds any trace of hatred to Great Britain. I
think that, with the exception of Mr. W.D. Howells, I have never found
any American gentleman who would manifest such a passion. But, as
regards the lower class of Americans, it is reported that there still
survives a meaningless, smouldering hostility. The going and the
coming, to and fro, are increasing and multiplying; arbitration seems
to be established as the best way of terminating international
disputes; if the tone of the press is not always gracious, it is not
often openly hostile; we may, perhaps, begin to hope, at last, that
the future of the world will be secured for freedom by the
confederation of all the English-speaking nations.
The old romance is dead. Yet--yet--as Kingsley cried, when he landed
on a West Indian island, 'At last!' so I, also, when I found myself in
New England, was ready to cry. 'At last!' The old romance is not
everywhere dead, since there can be found one Englishman who, when he
stands for the first time on New England soil, feels that one more
desire of his life has been satisfied. To see the East; to see India
and far Cathay; to see the tropics and to live for a while in a
tropical island; to be carried along the Grand Canal of Venice in a
gondola; to see the gardens of Boccaccio and the cell of Savonarola;
to camp and hunt in the backwoods of Canada, and to walk the streets
of New York, all these things have I longed, from youth upwards, to
see and to do--yea, as ardently as ever Drake desired to set an
English sail upon the great and unknown sea, and all these things, and
many more, have been granted to me. One great thing--perhaps more than
one thing, one unsatisfied desire--remained undone. I would set foot
on the shore of New England. It is a sacred land, consecrated to me
long years ago, for the sake of the things which I used to read--for
the sake of the long-yearning thoughts of childhood and the dim and
mystic splendours which played about the land beyond the sunset, in
the days of my sunrise.
'At last!'
Wherever a boy finds a quiet place for reading--an attic lumbered with
rubbish, a bedroom cold and empty, even a corner on the stairs--he
makes of that place a theatre, in which he is the sole audience.
Before his eyes--to him alone--the drama is played, with scenery
complete and costume correct, by such actors as never yet played upon
any other stage, so natural, so lifelike--nay, so godlike, and for
that very reason so lifelike.
This boy sat where he could--in a crowded household it is not always
possible to get a quiet corner; wherever he sat, this stage rose up
before him and the play went on. He saw upon that stage all these
things of which I have spoken, and more. He saw the fight at Nombre de
Dios, the capture of the rich galleon, the sacking of Maracaibo. I do
not know whether other boys of that time were reading the American
authors with such avidity, or whether it was by some chance that these
books were thrown in his way. Washington Irving, Fenimore Cooper,
Prescott, Emerson (in parts), Longfellow, Whittier, Bryant, Edgar
Allan Poe, Lowell, Holmes, not to mention Thoreau, Herman Melville,
Dana, certain religious novelists and many others whose names I do not
recall, formed a tolerably large field of American reading for an
English boy--without prejudice, be it understood, to the writers of
his own country. To him the country of the American writers became
almost as well known as his own. One thing alone he could not read.
When he came to the War of Independence, he closed the book and
ordered his theatre to vanish. And, to this day, the events of that
war are only partly known to him. No boy who is jealous for his
country will read, except upon compulsion, the story of a war which
was begun in stupidity, carried on with incompetence, and concluded
with humiliation.
The attack on Panama, the beginning of the Colonies, the exiles for
religion, the long struggle with the French, the driving back of the
Indians: it was a very fine drama--the Romance of America--in ever so
many acts, and twice as many tableaux, that this boy saw. And always
on the stage, now like Drake, now like Raleigh, now like Miles
Standish, now like Captain John Smith, he saw a young Englishman,
performing prodigies of valour and bearing a charmed life. Yet, do not
think that it was a play with nothing but fighting in it. There were
the Dutch burghers of New Amsterdam, under Walter the Doubter, or the
renowned Peter Stuyvesant; there was Rip Van Winkle on the Catskill
Mountains; there were the king-killers, hiding in the rocks beside
Newhaven; there were the witch trials of Salem; there was the peaceful
village of Concord, from which came voices that echoed round and round
the world; there was the Lake, lying still and silent, ringed by its
woods, where the solitary student of Nature loved to sit and watch and
meditate. Hundreds of things, too many to mention, were acted on that
boy's imaginary stage and lived in his brain as much as if he had
himself played a part in them.
As that boy grew up, the memory of this long pageant survived; there
fell upon him the desire to see some of the places; such a desire, if
it is not gratified, dies away into a feeble spark--but it can always
be blown again into a flame. This year the chance came to the boy, now
a graybeard, to see these places; and the spark flared up again, into
a bright, consuming flame.
I have seen my Land of Romance; I have travelled for a few weeks among
the New England places, and, with a sigh of satisfaction and relief, I
say with Kingsley: 'At Last!'
This romance, which belonged to my boyhood, and has grown up with me,
and will never leave me, once belonged then, more or less, to the
whole of the English people. Except with those who, like me, have been
fed with the poetry and the literature of America, this romance is
impossible. I suppose that it can never come again. Something better
and more stable, however, may yet come to us, when the United States
and Great Britain will be allied in amity as firm as that which now
holds together those Federated States. The thing is too vast, it is
too important, to be achieved in a day, or in a generation. But it
will come--it will come; it must come--it must come; Asia and Europe
may become Chinese or Cossack, but our people shall rule over every
other land, and all the islands, and every sea.
II.-THE LAND OF REALITY
When a man has received kindnesses unexpected and recognition unlooked
for from strangers and people in a foreign country on whom he had no
kind of claim, it seems a mean and pitiful thing in that man to sit
down in cold blood and pick out the faults and imperfections, if he
can descry any, in that country. The 'cad with a kodak'--where did I
find that happy collocation?--is to be found everywhere; that is quite
certain; every traveller, as is well known, feels himself justified
after six weeks of a country to sit in judgment upon that country and
its institutions, its manners, its customs and its society; he
constitutes himself an authority upon that country for the rest of his
life. Do we not know the man who 'has been there'? Lord Palmerston
knew him. 'Beware,' he used to say, 'of the man who has been there!'
As Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs he was privileged to make
quite a circle of acquaintance with the men who 'had been there'; and
he estimated their experience at its true value.
The man who has been there very seldom speaks its language with so
much ease as to understand all classes; he has therefore no real
chance of seeing and understanding things otherwise than as they seem.
When an Englishman travels in America, however, he can speak the
language. Therefore, he thinks that he really does understand the
things he sees. Does he? Let us consider. To understand the true
meaning of things in any strange land is not to see certain things by
themselves, but to be able to see them in their relation to other
things. Thus, the question of price must be taken with the question of
wage; that of supply with that of demand; that of things done with the
national opinion on such things; that of the continued existence of
certain recognised evils with, the conditions and exigencies of the
time; and so on. Before an observer can understand the relative value
of this or that he must make a long and sometimes a profound study of
the history of the country, the growth of the people, and the present
condition of the nation. It is obvious that it is given to very few
visitors to conduct such an investigation. Most of them have no time;
very, very few have the intellectual grasp necessary for an
undertaking of this magnitude. It is obvious, therefore, that the
criticism of a two months' traveller must be worthless generally, and
impertinent almost always. The kodak, you see, in the bands of the
cads, produces mischievous and misleading pictures.
Let us take one or two familiar instances of the dangers of hasty
objection. Nothing worries the average American visitor to Great
Britain more than the House of Lords, and, generally, the national
distinctions. He sees very plainly that the House of Lords no longer
represents an aristocracy of ancient descent, because by far the
greater number of peers belong to modern creations and new families,
chiefly of the trading class; that it no longer represents the men of
whom the country has most reason to be proud, because out of the whole
domain of science, letters, and art there have been but two creations
in the history of the peerage. He sees, also, that an Englishman has,
apparently, only to make enough money in order to command a peerage
for himself, and the elevation to a separate caste of himself and his
children forever. Again, as regards the lower distinctions, he
perceives that they are given for this reason and for that reason; but
he knows nothing at all of the services rendered to the State by the
dozens of knights made every year, while he can see very well that the
men of real distinction, whom he does know, never get any distinctions
at all. These difficulties perplex and irritate him. Probably he goes
home with a hasty generalization.
But the answer to these objections is not difficult. Without posing as
a champion of the House of Lords, one may point out that it is a very
ancient and deep-rooted institution; that to pull it up would cost an
immense deal of trouble; that it gives us a second or upper house
quite free from the acknowledged dangers of popular election; that the
lords have long ceased to oppose themselves to changes once clearly
and unmistakably demanded by the nation; that the hereditary powers
actually exercised by the very small number of peers who sit in the
House do give us an average exhibition of brain power quite equal to
that found in the House of Commons, in which are the six hundred
chosen delegates of the people; that, as regards the elevation of rich
men, a poor man cannot well accept a peerage, because custom does not
permit a peer to work for his livelihood; that it is necessary to
create new peers continually, in order to keep as close a connection
as possible between the Lords and the Commons; _e.g._, if a peer has a
hundred brothers, sisters, sons, daughters, cousins, they are all
commoners and he is the one peer, so that for six hundred peers there
may be a hundred thousand people closely allied to the House of Lords.
Again, as to the habitual contempt with which the advisers of the
Crown pass over the men who by their science, art, and literature
bring honour upon their generation, the answer is, that when the
newspaper press thinks fit to take up the subject and becomes as
jealous over the national distinctions as they are now over the
national finances, the thing will get itself righted. And not till
then. I instance this point and these objections as illustrating what
is often said, and thought, by American visitors who record their
first impressions.