the State, can be traced no farther back than to the reign of Henry III., an epoch completely Norman. The barons insisted always on being judged by their peers, according to the universal privilege of nobility and chivalry all over Europe. This privilege was extended over the nation, together with all those constitutional liberties, into which she was initiated by the Norman barons. The last but the most beneficial of liberties, that of the free press, wasfor nearly three centuries wholly unknown and unnecessary in England. The cradle of the liberty of the press was Holland, after it became a republic; and from Holland it was transplanted in the 18th century to England, and radiated successively over all Europe.

Human events, by whose diversified influence various European evolutions and changes have been carried out, as well as the liberties of England, nursed in their infant development, those eternal principles which have given to America her lofty position in the history of social progress. As the Englishman has no physical or special mental resemblance to the German or the Anglo-Saxon, so the American has only few and very dim features in common with the Englishman, from whom he descends. Not Anglo-Saxon, therefore, is the character of the Americans, and not to this assumed origin are to be traced the faculties and qualifications which mark the American political and social institutions. Neither history and physiology, nor psychology and logic justify the favorite American theorem, that their freedom and democracy are the fruits of their Anglo-Saxon descent. It is, however, the property of fallacies, in proportion as they extend, to run out into what is absurd and illogical.

Statistics show that in the early periods, when the English began to settle on this continent, two other nations composed the British Empire. The Irish and the

Scotch-both of Celtic origin-migrated to America in such large numbers as to immediately produce a new physiological amalgamation. Various kinds of oppressions expelled them from their native lands; freedom and more equal social organization attracted and fused them in America. Scotch and Irish poured in freely in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Buchanan and other statisticians assert that from 1691 to 1743, 263,000 Irish emigrated to America. This emigration was occasioned partly by the stagnation of the linen trade, partly by political and religious oppression. According to the same authorities, during the eighteenth century down to 1829, about a million of Irish and a quarter of a million of Scotch came to America. The Dutch element in New York, and that of the first French settlers in the Carolinas must likewise be taken into account. All the various elements of population were cemented together by religious and political liberty, embracing every one, and admitting him to equal rights in the community, and not on account of his former descent or nationality. Under the combined action of climate, new habits, new necessities and hardships, new daily pursuits and occupations, new and more intense mental and intellectual activity, the Americans became in a short time totally unlike the English in all external and internal characteristics. Even in the heart of New England it is nearly as easy to point out a genuine Englishman, as to point out a Frenchman, an Italian, or a Hebrew. The elongated, sharp, dried-up features of the American. have nothing in common with the round, slightly turned-up, and juicy-faced Englishman. The long-necked American has not his type in England. Similar divergencies extend to the hair, and to the whole frame. The English phlegm is directly the opposite of the febrile American, who with reckless impetuosity hurries his pursuits, and uses up his

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own life. In proportion as the American character is active and expanding, these differences become more numerous, salient, and puzzling. All these changes were effected by the paramount action of combined physical and mental events, and their all-powerful and uninterrupted influence and activity reveals itself in the various geographical and political sections of the Commonwealth. Not only the man of the Southern States descends originally from the same English social class-for the cavalier descent from English nobility assumed by the Southern planters is not sustained by history-as the man of the North, but New England has to a large degree peopled the Southern States. The Southerner, however, of the present day, has no resemblance in character either to the Englishman, or to his countrymen in the East and in the North. A gulf separates them in mental, social, and moral respects. The language is the only common tie. Two absolutely ethnologically different races of the old world, could not present a deeper contrast with each other. The American world was not called to life, and is not circumscribed by the narrow, blind, fatalistic physical laws of race. Amidst ups and downs, in smooth and in thorny paths, at times overshadowed and then brilliantly luminous, the American world has been the bearer of the all-embracing, truly human manifestation of principles. They inspired the Puritans, and to save them they abandoned the old world with its oppressions and prejudices. Races and tribes are already fully represented in history. Each specially has given the last solution, the last word, if in reality a law of races has presided over human progress. To initiate man into a higher sphere, America issued out of nothingness. The right of reason watched over her first steps. Carried as he is here by the current of time, and of circumstances, man is to make a worthy use of the

principles, and the mental and intellectual qualifications with which he is endowed. Then only they lead him to freedom. Freedom is the mass of all our physical and mental powers. It is the final aim of their combined efforts. It is at once development and consummation. Thus comprehended, freedom has reached its highest expression in the institutions of the American free States, and freedom has carved out and has given the peculiar mark to the character of the man and to the citizens.

CHAPTER II. .

CHARACTERISTICS.

THE character of an individual or of a nation is the result of a mass of variously combined inclinations, affections, volitions, dispositions, convictions, determinations. They are all general and special, and the traits or characteristics determined by them are common, human, or individual, when evoked by the agency and play, in and upon us, of special conditions. Thus nearly every individual, and every nation, aside of what is in its character human and common with others, has certain peculiar features of its own. And so have the Americans. The differences in character between the inhabitant of America and that of any other country whatever in Europe, are as salient as are the differences of their social state, of their political development, of their pursuits, habits, and comprehension of life. Those differences are related to many causes at once; their impartial appreciation explains and solves naturally, and therefore easily, the so-called enigmatical peculiarities of the Americans.

New and powerful interests and strivings have evoked an unwonted and special current of activity, and with it new and diversified manifestations of man's nature. Therein is to be found the source of certain characteristic dis