Washington has the purest and broadest national, distinct American character. Not being commercial or industrial, it does not possess large wealth, and wealth is not an influential or swaying social ingredient there. Neither has Washington the relation to the country in which stand the respective capitals in centralized Europe. Washington, however, truly and largely reflects the democratic element of America-the democratic character of the people, of the institutions, and the essence of democratic urbanity. Social relations and intercourse are regulated and depend mostly upon the intrinsic value of man, or upon what as such, is conceded or recognized to the individual. Neither wealth nor any fictitious assumption or arrogant claims of superiority of blood or birth, are omnipotent or influential. Not these give the tone to society, and no local petty influences direct it. Men coming from all parts of the republic, independent and equal to each other in their public character, give and preserve to society the broad republican features and space wherein every one moves freely and finds his absolute or at least his relative appre-_ ciation. Politics being the cardinal element, the eminent political leaders form of course the cardinal points of attraction. Such leadership, from whatever light it may be considered, is always an evidence of certain individual superiority and ability. A man of learning, a literator, known in any way by his mental and intellectual accomplishments, an artist, will be met with more courtesy in Washington than the man of wealth, who shakes the exchanges of the commercial metropolis, or the leaders of their "best," "purest," and most "exquisite" sets. Gorgeous display is valued at its worth, imposes not oppressingly on relations and intercourse, and these, in general, are easy, elastic, and with a tint of more genuine refinement and better toned than in any other American society. The

conversational topics are diversified on account of the variety of interests, notions, comprehensions, meeting, crossing, or running, agitating, at the side of each other. Courtesy, inborn or conventional, must prevail, resulting from the relations of mutual independence between the legislators and the administration, and from the broad basis on which a society so variously composed, stands and moves.

Óf late, savage violence has stained bloodily and darkly the social relations in Washington. The disgrace came from and attaches to that part of the republic in which a perverted social order perverts public opinion, generates a political fury, superseding culture, civility, and self-respect by the ferocious self-will of the individual. Such occurrences cannot in justice be considered as the true exponents of the social tone in this political and eminently American metropolis.

As the large commercial cities do not exercise a social or conventional supremacy, or affect in such aspects the tone of the country, in the same way they are not the fair exponents or reflections of the prevailing morals. Cities, always and every where, contain inducements, excitements, to moral degradation, corruption, dissipation and dissoluteness, and the American cities do not differ much in that respect from those of Europe. The country alone in many respects has hitherto preserved a superiority over the prevailing morals throughout Europe.

Where the democratic principle is playing in its fulness, America generally outshines Europe in culture, manners, good-breeding, mental superiority. The country, with its towns and villages, and with the laborious, enterprising, intelligent and self-improving population, the sound substratum in the cities constitute integrally the higher development by which the scales of comparison

turn in favor of America. The attempts made by certain portions of society to secede from the normal American element and spirit, to assimilate themselves, to imitate in various ways European aristocracies, are altogether abortions. Such copies are mostly inferior to the originals, and notwithstanding their wealth or superficial varnish, they are thoroughly inferior to the mass of the American people. Undoubtedly this mass possesses more varied culture of mind, more true refinement than those social efflorescences. Undoubtedly likewise, the European aristocracy, together with all its ramifications, embracing the official, financial, commercial, and industrial highest classes, is superior in mind, in scientific and literary information, as well as in exquisiteness of manners to its American imitations.

In the masses, and therefore principally in the country, are salient the luminous and all-embracing results of American civilization, while in Europe hitherto only certain classes, and generally the cities constitute the civilized aggregate. The decline of American culture and social progress, with all its mental, moral, and material features, will begin when the interests of the city and country, instead of harmonizing, shall be at variance; when the country shall be sacrificed to the claims or interests of cities; or when, by a mistake or a curse, the power of legislations shall rise and extend the influence of great commercial cities, and push into the second line that of the country.

CONCLUSION.

THE great life of the people, the unsullied democratic substance, alone generates all the bright and vigorous aspects in the development of America. Beyond, shadows rise and deepen. Whatever breathes the spirit which animates the people, grows and expands; what deviates, separates, fails to emerge, and is not tempered therein, shrivels, corrugates, becomes inefficient, incomplete. This law is absolute. It controls social problems, political and legislative solutions; it prevails in education, literature, poetry, arts, industry; it is felt in habits and customs, in the relations which constitute the daily, private, social intercourse.

Liberty fills the space, and therein as the ethereal bodies in celestial immensities-individualities find their scope less restrained than in any human institutions hitherto known. Each individuality grows self-asserting, according to its vitality and fecundity, each moving freely on its freely selected orbit. Liberty and equality are forces which impel in America varieties of human families and characters to combination and union, precursory of the unity towards which gravitates mankind. Not the flock-like agglomeration of samenesses and uniformities, but the free harmonious combination of varieties is the key-note of social unity.

The progress that has hitherto been accomplished by

America solves the question between authority and liberty, as elements paramount and integrally constitutive of human society. America incarnates liberty, Europe authority. America evidences—contrary to time-honored and still generally asserted axioms—that liberty in superseding authority does not disorganize society. Authority, in its various modes of comprehension, as principle and agency, is the substance of the dominant ideas and actions for Europe, even for the reforming, revolutionary portion of it. Here authority is wholly subordinate to liberty. In her all-embracing, all-creative activity, liberty alternates between lights and shadows, as did, as now does, authority. Short and dim are the shadows of liberty, but protracted in time and deep in tint, where authority is in the ascendant. It is now undeniably evidenced, that in the normal condition of man and society, liberty is cohesive and constructive, and more so than authority. Here liberty alone cements the social structure, it is a central hearth, towards which gravitate elements, passions, interests, activities, once judged irreconcilable in their character and nature. Until the apparition of the American social state, the like elements have been considered as chaotic, dissolving, disorganizing, fit only to be compressed, to be held sternly, and directed by authority. Liberty, not authority, gathers, classifies, combines, adjusts, imparts to them healthy vitality, regulates their orderly association. So almost boundlessly enlarges the range of action of the American people.

The subjugation of authority to liberty corresponds with the dualistic essence and action of the laws of the universe, in their moral and physical functions. Spirit rises above matter, ethical laws finally operate over the physical. Liberty, essentially a moral law and force, absorbs authority, which, even in its most philosophical