worst part of it comes from lacking first principles in morals. Thereby
our eyes are holden so that we see not the great social evils all about
us. We attempt to justify slavery, even to do it in the name of Jesus
Christ. The whig party of the North loves slavery; the democratic party
does not even seek to conceal its affection therefor. A great politician
declares the Mexican war wicked, and then urges men to go and fight it;
he thinks a famous general not fit to be nominated for President, but
then invites men to elect him. Politics are national morals, the morals
of Thomas and Jeremiah, multiplied by millions. But it is not decided
yet that honesty is the best policy for a politician; it is thought that
the best policy is honesty, at least as near it as the times will allow.
Many politicians seem undecided how to turn, and so sit on the fence
between honesty and dishonesty. Mr. Facing-both-ways is a popular
politician in America just now, sitting on the fence between honesty and
dishonesty, and, like the blank leaf between the Old and New Testaments,
belonging to neither dispensation. It is a little amusing to a trifler
to hear a man's fitness for the Presidency defended on the ground that
he has no definite convictions or ideas!
There was once a man who said he always told a lie when it would serve
his special turn. It is a pity he went to his own place long ago. He
seemed born for a party politician in America. He would have had a large
party, for he made a great many converts before he died, and left a
numerous kindred busy in the editing of newspapers, writing addresses
for the people, and passing "resolutions."
It must strike a stranger as a little odd, that a republic should have a
slaveholder for President five sixths of the time, and most of the
important offices be monopolized by other slaveholders; a little
surprising that all the pulpits and most of the presses should be in
favor of slavery, at least not against it. But such is the fact.
Everybody knows the character of the American government for some years
past, and of the American parties in politics. "Like master, like man,"
used to be a true proverb in old England, and "Like people, like ruler,"
is a true proverb in America; true now. Did a decided people ever choose
dough-faces?--a people that loved God and man, choose representatives
that cared for neither truth nor justice? Now and then, for dust gets
into the brightest eyes; but did they ever choose such men continually?
The people are always fairly represented; our representatives do
actually represent us, and in more senses than they are paid for.
Congress and the Cabinet are only two thermometers hung up in the
capital, to show the temperature of the national morals.
But amid this general uncertainty there are two capital maxims which
prevail amongst our huxters of politics: To love your party better than
your country, and yourself better than your party. There are, it is
true, real statesmen amongst us, men who love justice and do the right,
but they seem lost in the mob of vulgar politicians and the dust of
party editors.
Since the nation loves freedom above all things, the name democracy is a
favorite name. No party could live a twelvemonth that should declare
itself anti-democratic. Saint and sinner, statesman and politician,
alike love the name. So it comes to pass that there are two things
which bear that name; each has its type and its motto. The motto of one
is, "You are as good as I, and let us help one another." That represents
the democracy of the Declaration of Independence, and of the New
Testament; its type is a free school, where children of all ranks meet
under the guidance of intelligent and Christian men, to be educated in
mind, and heart, and soul. The other has for its motto, "I am as good as
you, so get out of my way." Its type is the bar-room of a tavern--dirty,
offensive, stained with tobacco, and full of drunken, noisy, quarrelsome
"rowdies," just returned from the Mexican war, and ready for a "buffalo
hunt," for privateering, or to go and plunder any one who is better off
than themselves, especially if also better. That is not exactly the
democracy of the Declaration, or of the New Testament; but of--no matter
whom.
* * * * *
Then, again, there is a great intensity of life and purpose. This
displays itself in our actions and speeches; in our speculations; in the
"revivals" of the more serious sects; in the excitements of trade; in
the general character of the people. All that we do we overdo. It
appears in our hopefulness; we are the most aspiring of nations. Not
content with half the continent, we wish the other half. We have this
characteristic of genius: we are dissatisfied with all that we have
done. Somebody once said we were too vain to be proud. It is not wholly
so; the national idea is so far above us that any achievement seems
little and low. The American soul passes away from its work soon as it
is finished. So the soul of each great artist refuses to dwell in his
finished work, for that seems little to his dream. Our fathers deemed
the Revolution a great work; it was once thought a surprising thing to
found that little colony on the shores of New England; but young America
looks to other revolutions, and thinks she has many a Plymouth colony in
her bosom. If other nations wonder at our achievements, we are a
disappointment to ourselves, and wonder we have not done more. Our
national idea out-travels our experience, and all experience. We began
our national career by setting all history at defiance--for that said,
"A republic on a large scale cannot exist." Our progress since has shown
that we were right in refusing to be limited by the past. The political
ideas of the nation are transcendant, not empirical. Human history could
not justify the Declaration of Independence and its large statements of
the new idea: the nation went behind human history and appealed to human
nature.
We are more spontaneous than logical; we have ideas, rather than facts
or precedents. We dream more than we remember, and so have many orators
and poets, or poetasters, with but few antiquaries and general
scholars. We are not so reflective as forecasting. We are the most
intuitive of modern nations. The very party in politics which has the
least culture, is richest in ideas which will one day become facts.
Great truths--political, philosophical, religious--lie a-burning in many
a young heart which cannot legitimate nor prove them true, but none the
less feels, and feels them true. A man full of new truths finds a ready
audience with us. Many things which come disguised as truths under such
circumstances pass current for a time, but by and by their bray
discovers them. The hope which comes from this intensity of life and
intuition of truths is a national characteristic. It gives courage,
enterprise, and strength. They can who think they can. We are confident
in our star; other nations may see it or not, we know it is there above
the clouds. We do not hesitate at rash experiments--sending fifty
thousand soldiers to conquer a nation with eight or nine millions of
people. We are up to every thing, and think ourselves a match for any
thing. The young man is rash, for he only hopes, having little to
remember; he is excitable, and loves excitement; change of work is his
repose; he is hot and noisy, sanguine and fearless, with the courage
that comes from warm blood and ignorance of dangers; he does not know
what a hard, tough, sour old world he is born into. We are a nation of
young men. We talked of annexing Texas and northern Mexico, and did
both; now we grasp at Cuba, Central America,--all the continent,--and
speak of a railroad to the Pacific as a trifle for us to accomplish. Our
national deeds are certainly great, but our hope and promise far
outbrags them all.
If this intensity of life and hope have its good side, it has also its
evil; with much of the excellence of youth we have its faults--rashness,
haste, and superficiality. Our work is seldom well done. In English
manufactures there is a certain solid honesty of performance; in the
French a certain air of elegance and refinement: one misses both these
in American works. It is said America invents the most machines, but
England builds them best. We lack the phlegmatic patience of older
nations. We are always in a hurry, morning, noon and night. We are
impatient of the process, but greedy of the result; so that we make
short experiments but long reports, and talk much though we say little.
We forget that a sober method is a short way of coming to the end, and
that he who, before he sets out, ascertains where he is going and the
way thither, ends his journey more prosperously than one who settles
these matters by the way. Quickness is a great desideratum with us. It
is said an American ship is known far off at sea by the quantity of
canvas she carries. Rough and ready is a popular attribute. Quick and
off would be a symbolic motto for the nation at this day, representing
one phase of our character. We are sudden in deliberation; the
"one-hour rule" works well in Congress. A committee of the British
Parliament spends twice or thrice our time in collecting facts,
understanding and making them intelligible, but less than our time in
speech-making after the report; speeches there commonly being for the
purpose of facilitating the business, while here one sometimes is half
ready to think, notwithstanding our earnestness, that the business is to
facilitate the speaking. A State revises her statutes with a rapidity
that astonishes a European. Yet each revision brings some amendment, and
what is found good in the constitution or laws of one State gets
speedily imitated by the rest; each new State of the North becoming more
democratic than its predecessor.
We are so intent on our purpose that we have no time for amusement. We
have but one or two festivals in the year, and even then we are serious
and reformatory. Jonathan thinks it a very solemn thing to be merry. A
Frenchman said we have but two amusements in America--Theology for the
women and politics for the men; preaching and voting. If this be true,
it may help to explain the fact that most men take their theology from
their wives, and women politics from their husbands. No nation ever
tried the experiment of such abstinence from amusement. We have no time
for sport, and so lose much of the poetry of life. All work and no play
does not always make a dull boy, but it commonly makes a hard man.
We rush from school into business early; we hurry while in business; we
aim to be rich quickly, making a fortune at a stroke, making or losing
it twice or thrice in a lifetime. "Soft and fair, goes safe and far," is
no proverb to our taste. We are the most restless of people. How we
crowd into cars and steamboats; a locomotive would well typify our
fuming, fizzing spirit. In our large towns life seems to be only a
scamper. Not satisfied with bustling about all day, when night comes we
cannot sit still, but alone of all nations have added rockers to our
chairs.
All is haste, from the tanning of leather to the education of a boy, and
the old saw holds its edge good as ever--"the more haste the worse
speed." The young stripling, innocent of all manner of lore, whom a
judicious father has barrelled down in a college, or law-school, or
theological seminary, till his beard be grown, mourns over the few years
he must spend there awaiting that operation. His rule is, "to make a
spoon or spoil a horn;" he longs to be out in the world "making a
fortune," or "doing good," as he calls what his father better names
"making noisy work for repentance, and doing mischief." So he rushes
into life not fitted, and would fly towards heaven, this young Icarus,
his wings not half fledged. There seems little taste for thoroughness.
In our schools as our farms, we pass over much ground but pass over it
poorly.
In education the aim is not to get the most we can, but the least we can
get along with. A ship with over-much canvas and over-little ballast
were no bad emblem of many amongst us. In no country is it so easy to
get a reputation for learning--accumulated thought, because so few
devote themselves to that accumulation. In this respect our standard is
low. So a man of one attainment is sure to be honored, but a man of many
and varied abilities is in danger of being undervalued. A Spurzheim
would be warmly welcomed, while a Humboldt would be suspected of
superficiality, as we have not the standard to judge him by. Yet in no
country in the world is it so difficult to get a reputation for
eloquence, as many speak and that well. It is surprising with what
natural strength and beauty the young American addresses himself to
speak. Some hatter's apprentice, or shoemaker's journeyman, at a
temperance or anti-slavery meeting, will speak words like the blows of
an axe, that cut clean and deep. The country swarms with orators, more
abundantly where education is least esteemed--in the West or South.
We have secured national unity of action for the white citizens, without
much curtailing individual variety of action, so we have at the North
pretty well solved that problem which other nations have so often
boggled over; we have balanced the centripetal power, the government and
laws, with the centrifugal power, the mass of individuals, into
harmonious proportions. If one were to leave out of sight the three
million slaves, one sixth part of the population, the problem might be
regarded as very happily solved. As the consequences of this, in no
country is there more talent, or so much awake and active. In the South
this unity is attained by sacrificing all the rights of three million
slaves, and almost all the rights of the other colored population. In
despotic countries this unity is brought about by the sacrifice of
freedom, individual variety of action, in all except the despot and his
favorites; so, much of the nation's energy is stifled in the chains of
the State, while here it is friendly to institutions which are friendly
to it, goes to its work, and approves itself in the vast increase of
wealth and comfort throughout the North, where there is no class of men
which is so oppressed that it cannot rise. One is amazed at the amount
of ready skill and general ability which he finds in all the North,
where each man has a little culture, takes his newspaper, manages
his own business, and talks with some intelligence of many
things--especially of politics and theology. In respect to this general
intellectual ability and power of self-help, the mass of people seem far
in advance of any other nation. But at the same time our scholars, who
always represent the nation's higher modes of consciousness, will not
bear comparison with the scholars of England, France, and Germany, men
thoroughly furnished for their work. This is a great reproach and
mischief to us, for we need most accomplished leaders, who by their
thought can direct this national intensity of life. Our literature does
not furnish them; we have no great men there; Irving, Channing, Cooper,
are not names to conjure with in literature. One reads thick volumes
devoted to the poets of America, or her prose writers, and finds many
names which he wonders he never heard of before, but when he turns over
their works, he finds consolation and recovers his composure.
American literature may be divided into two departments: the permanent
literature, which gets printed in books, that sometimes reach more than
one edition; and the evanescent literature, which appears only in the
form of speeches, pamphlets, reviews, newspaper articles, and the like
extempore productions. Now our permanent literature, as a general thing,
is superficial, tame, and weak; it is not American; it has not our
ideas, our contempt of authority, our philosophical turn, nor even our
uncertainty as to first principles, still less our national intensity,
our hope, and fresh intuitive perceptions of truth. It is a miserable
imitation. Love of freedom is not there. The real national literature is
found almost wholly in speeches, pamphlets, and newspapers. The latter
are pretty thoroughly American; mirrors in which we see no very
flattering likeness of our morals or our manners. Yet the picture is
true: that vulgarity, that rant, that bragging violence, that
recklessness of truth and justice, that disregard of right and duty, are
a part of the nation's everyday life. Our newspapers are low and "wicked
to a fault;" only in this weakness are they un-American. Yet they
exhibit, and abundantly, the four qualities we have mentioned as
belonging to the signs of our times. As a general rule, our orators are
also American, with our good and ill. Now and then one rises who has
studied Demosthenes in Leland or Francis, and got a second-hand
acquaintance with old models: a man who uses literary commonplaces, and
thinks himself original and classic because he can quote a line or so of
Horace, in a Western House of Representatives, without getting so many
words wrong as his reporter; but such men are rare, and after making due
abatement for them, our orators all over the land are pretty thoroughly
American, a little turgid, hot, sometimes brilliant, hopeful, intuitive,
abounding in half truths, full of great ideas; often inconsequent;
sometimes coarse; patriotic, vain, self-confident, rash, strong, and
young-mannish. Of course the most of our speeches are vulgar, ranting,
and worthless, but we have produced some magnificent specimens of
oratory, which are fresh, original, American, and brand new.
The more studied, polished, and elegant literature is not so; that is
mainly an imitation. It seems not a thing of native growth. Sometimes,
as in Channing, the thought and the hope are American, but the form and
the coloring old and foreign. We dare not be original; our American pine
must be cut to the trim pattern of the English yew, though the pine
bleed at every clip. This poet tunes his lyre at the harp of Goethe,
Milton, Pope, or Tennyson. His songs might be better sung on the Rhine
than the Kennebec. They are not American in form or feeling; they have
not the breath of our air; the smell of our ground is not in them. Hence
our poet seems cold and poor. He loves the old mythology; talks about
Pluto--the Greek devil, the fates and furies--witches of old time in
Greece, but would blush to use our mythology, or breathe the name in
verse of our devil, or our own witches, lest he should be thought to
believe what he wrote. The mother and sisters, who with many a pinch and
pain sent the hopeful boy to college, must turn over the classical
dictionary before they can find out what the youth would be at in his
rhymes. Our poet is not deep enough to see that Aphrodite came from the
ordinary waters, that Homer only hitched into rhythm and furnished the
accomplishment of verse to street-talk, nursery tales, and old men's
gossip in the Ionian towns; he thinks what is common is unclean. So he
sings of Corinth and Athens, which he never saw, but has not a word to
say of Boston, and Fall River, and Baltimore, and New York, which are
just as meet for song. He raves of Thermopylae and Marathon, with never a
word for Lexington and Bunker-hill, for Cowpens, and Lundy's Lane, and
Bemis's Heights. He loves to tell of the Ilyssus, of "smooth-sliding
Mincius, crowned with vocal reeds," yet sings not of the Petapsco, the
Susquehanna, the Aroostook, and the Willimantick. He prates of the
narcissus and the daisy, never of American dandelions and blue-eyed
grass; he dwells on the lark and the nightingale, but has not a thought
for the brown thrasher and the bobolink, who every morning in June rain
down such showers of melody on his affected head. What a lesson Burns
teaches us, addressing his "rough bur-thistle," his daisy, "wee crimson
tippit thing," and finding marvellous poetry in the mouse whose nest his
plough turned over! Nay, how beautifully has even our sweet poet sung of
our own Green river, our waterfowl, of the blue and fringed gentian, the
glory of autumnal days.
Hitherto, spite of the great reading public, we have no permanent
literature which corresponds to the American idea. Perhaps it is not
time for that; it must be organized in deeds before it becomes classic
in words; but as yet we have no such literature which reflects even the
surface of American life, certainly nothing which portrays our intensity
of life, our hope, or even our daily doings and drivings, as the
Odyssey paints old Greek life, or Don Quixote and Gil Bias portray
Spanish life. Literary men are commonly timid; ours know they are but
poorly fledged as yet, so dare not fly away from the parent tree, but
hop timidly from branch to branch. Our writers love to creep about in
the shadow of some old renown, not venturing to soar away into the
unwinged air, to sing of things here and now, making our life classic.
So, without the grace of high culture, and the energy of American
thought, they become weak, cold, and poor; are "curious, not knowing,
not exact, but nice." Too fastidious to be wise, too unlettered to be
elegant, too critical to create, they prefer a dull saying that is old
to a novel form of speech, or a natural expression of a new truth. In a
single American work,--and a famous one too,--there are over sixty
similes, not one original, and all poor. A few men, conscious of this
defect, this sin against the Holy Spirit of Literature, go to the
opposite extreme, and are American-mad; they wilfully talk rude, write
in-numerous verse, and play their harps all jangling, out of tune. A yet
fewer few are American without madness. One such must not here be passed
by, alike philosopher and bard, in whose writings "ancient wisdom shines
with new-born beauty," and who has enriched a genius thoroughly American
in the best sense, with a cosmopolitan culture and literary skill, which
were wonderful in any land. But of American literature in general, and
of him in special, more shall be said at another time.
* * * * *
Another remarkable feature is our excessive love of material things.
This is more than a Utilitarianism, a preference of the useful over the
beautiful. The Puritan at Plymouth had a corn-field, a cabbage-garden,
and a patch for potatoes, a school-house, and a church, before he sat
down to play the fiddle. He would have been a fool to reverse this
process. It were poor economy and worse taste to have painters,
sculptors, and musicians, while the rude wants of the body are uncared
for. But our fault in this respect is, that we place too much the charm
of life in mere material things,--houses, lands, well-spread tables, and
elegant furniture,--not enough in man, in virtue, wisdom, genius,
religion, greatness of soul, and nobleness of life. We mistake a
perfection of the means of manliness for the end--manhood itself. Yet
the housekeeping of a Shakspeare, Milton, Franklin, had only one thing
worth boasting of. Strange to say, that was the master of the house. A
rich and vulgar man once sported a coach and four, and at its first
turn-out rode into the great commercial street of a large town in New
England. "How fine you must feel with your new coach and four," said one
of his old friends, though not quite so rich. "Yes," was the reply, "as
fine as a beetle in a gold snuff-box." All of his kindred are not so
nice and discriminating in their self-consciousness.
This practical materialism is a great affliction to us. We think a man
cannot be poor and great also. So we see a great man sell himself for a
little money, and it is thought "a good operation." A conspicuous man,
in praise of a certain painter, summed up his judgment with this: "Why,
Sir, he has made twenty thousand dollars by his pictures." "A good deal
more than Michael Angelo, Leonardo, and Raphael together," might have
been the reply. But it is easier to weigh purses than artistic skill. It
was a characteristic praise bestowed in Boston on a distinguished
American writer, that his book brought him more money than any man had
ever realized for an original work in this country. "Commerce," said Mr.
Pitt, "having got into both houses of Parliament, privilege must be done
away,"--the privilege of wit and genius, not less than rank. Clergymen
estimate their own and their brothers' importance, not by their
apostolical gifts, or even apostolic succession, but by the value of the
living.