tual struggles of the world at large. That there is some truth in this view no serious American, who has held up the mirror to his land and age, can deny.

In all probability it will be admitted by the well-informed and studious among us that, owing to the circumstances of our origin, we have been disposed in controversy to lay too much stress on theory and too little on experience. We were hard-pressed when we forswore allegiance to the English Parliament but admitted fealty to the English crown, when we abandoned the position of basing our liberties on charter grants and appealed to our rights. as Englishmen, when we substituted for the cry of "no representation, no taxation," that of "no representation, no legislation," when we based the legitimacy of revolutionary state conventions upon the authorization of an irregular continental congress, and when finally we appealed to the sympathy of the world and the judgment of the God of battles. The French alliance and our temporary bitterness toward the motherland made us fond of France as of a generous sympathetic ally, but it may later have made us too familiar with the wire-drawn speculations of the eighteenth century and we were probably too receptive to the radicalism of the French Revolution when we saw how England stubbornly repelled even the constructive and righteous elements in that movement. Our historical teachers may have sat too long at the feet of German Gamaliels, imbibing too much dangerous doctrine concerning the sanctity of authority as established; as a people we certainly have come to emphasize unduly the organic character of government, to overestimate the systematic nature of political science, political economy, and jurisprudence, and as a consequence to consider the state as an organism existing only to secure purely economic interests. It seems, too, that public opinion. often substitutes legality for morality and accepts expediency in place of rectitude. Like Achan, we have from motives of selfishness concealed the spoils of the Philistines in the tents of Judah, involving the children in the retribution visited on the fathers. It is no excuse to plead that as a nation we are in this respect but one among many sinners, that it is human for the administrator to lay hold on the easy theories of so-called political science, for a struggling people to admire the sounding phrases of state-craft: the lessons of history are recondite and the commandments of political experience are hard.

Whatever truth may lie in the indictments brought against us. ought to be taken to heart, not in the spirit of sensitiveness, but in one of earnest purpose to weigh the possibilities of reform for

our own and for righteousness' sake. We can well afford to be indifferent to allegations either captious or based on ignorance, and certain charges may be brushed away without ceremony. We are not isolated. The ocean is now less of a barrier at the worst seasons of the year than some of our great rivers were in mid-winter a century ago; we are in quicker, easier communication with Europe than the nations of that continent were with each other three generations since. We ourselves make use of the means of intercourse and travel to a degree that gives uneasiness to American chauvinists, while others come to us, not in proportion as we go to them, but at least in sufficient numbers to awaken interest and to spread abroad such fame as we have beyond the seas. Nor can we justly be charged with unreceptiveness. We are much troubled with a conceit which sometimes makes us appear averse to using foreign ideas, but we have none of that hurt and fiery national pride or of that stolid self-satisfaction which embitter the relations of European nations to each other. At heart our motto is: "Get the Best," and, instead of feeling ashamed of the charge of eclecticism, there is nothing of which we should be prouder than of the desire to get and keep anything good for us, no difference what its origin. Mixed races and mixed civilizations have been the most persistent in the history of man. It is a great mistake to suppose that there can be nothing American except it originate from Anglo-Saxon sources on the soil of the United States. There are men on every part of the globe and ideas in every land that are American in the high sense which we should like to attach to that word. This fact has been fairly well understood, for our history has not been one of origins, but exactly the contrary. No movement with the sententious but false cry of America for the Americans has ever been successful among us. Wise as the forefathers were to generalize from experience, the sons have erected with equal wisdom on their foundation a proud superstructure built of materials more stubborn and heterogeneous than any the founders had to handle, and have devised for the new nation a plan so generous and commodious that it is not likely to be carried to completion for ages to come. To say that we are unwilling to suffer for ideas and indifferent as to the spread of our civilization is amusing. The maps of 1756, when compared with those of 1895, will show what proportion of the earth's surface we have pre-empted for our civilization in something more than a century and a quarter, and it can be asserted without fear of contradiction that more men of Anglo-Saxon blood have perished in battle for a principle in the single county of Spottsylvania, in Virginia, than England

has lost up to this moment in all the conflicts of her foreign

wars.

What, therefore, the historic movement of our democracy may be thought to lack in duration finds ample compensation in intensity. But we must go still further and declare the common admission that it lacks in duration to be both cowardly and dangerous. The civilization of the United States is not an early-ripe one, verging to decay before reaching normal maturity. We are Europeans of ancient stock, and a change of skies did not involve a new physical birth for our society. Doubtless, environment modified our development, but the well-ordered, serious life which we brought with us from England, Scotland, Ireland, Holland, Germany, and France we have preserved and developed, at least as well as those who stayed at home. But we have done far more. Having created a set of distinctively American institutions, we have enlarged and strengthened them for the purposes of millions to whom they were originally foreign, and have already secured for constitutional government a longer life and greater comprehensiveness than it has had in any other country except England. The dreadful system of African slavery which came with us from the Europe of a mercenary and mercantile age, we have painfully destroyed, although we wrestle still with the race problems entailed upon us by its creation and abolition. We have settled at great cost of life and money one of the fundamental questions which the founders left open, that of extreme states' rights. We have ploughed under and assimilated successive deposits of foreign immigrations, and have rendered them as beneficent as those made on Egypt's soil by the inundations of the Nile, feeling ourselves the stronger for their fertility and strength. In this progress, we have not been like a mariner afloat with a compass; we have, rather, been like the explorer of the wilderness, who, while he presses forward, is ever turning to observe the landmarks behind him in order to direct his course by fixing a line from which he must not deviate. To this, and to this alone, we owe the measure of success we have enjoyed. We have been historic in a double sense, not merely by the long duration of our colonial and separate existence, but, in spite of assertions to the contrary, by the careful attention we have given to the past. The most numerous and important of our institutions, being based on experience, have endured, the few and unessential ones which were founded in theory have fallen into disuse.

It seems to be the opinion of the keenest observers beyond the Atlantic that the old world of to-day is weary of the past.

The movements of the hour in Europe claim for themselves independence, long-used models are rejected, and the modern age sets up its own ideals. Some of those most thoroughly versed in history -Grimm, the great art-historian, for example-confess their disappointment at the emptiness of historical study, demanding both comfort and guidance, not from the past but from the present, finding grounds for hope only in the possibilities of the future. And, what is even more instructive, the public of these critics displays no amazement. It was the stock criticism of European newspapers during the Chicago exposition that its buildings and general effect were neither original nor modern. The architecture, they confessed, was beautiful, and the arrangement admirable, but the models were classical, the style European, the aim historic. This they declared was disappointing, the close of the nineteenth century in the most modern of all countries should have produced something not hitherto seen, should have used steel construction boldly and without the concealment of stucco, and it should have devised suitable architectural forms of beauty to display the American spirit, if such a thing there be. It was thought that in this respect our efforts compared unfavorably with those made in the previous world's fair at Paris. The European yearning for modernity and futurity hinted at by these illustrations could be further traced in the art and literature of the "decadence," in the daring socialistic legislation of France and Germany, and in many other directions. This tendency from experience towards theory, from adaptation towards experiment, from progress on traditional lines to advance on untried paths, is in no sense characteristic of America, as yet. The easy circulation of ideas throughout the globe may bring it hither, but if it comes or when it comes, and a conservative democracy guiding itself by the lights of history is transmuted into a radical ochlocracy moving by impulse or steering by wreckers' beacons, then, as it takes no prophetic gift to foretell, we shall have anarchy and ruin.

History, we may rest assured, is none the less history because it is scientific or democratic. But, in an age that is both, the character of it will be of necessity somewhat different from what it was in the days which were imaginative and aristocratic or absolutist. If this be admitted, the final question naturally arises, whether it will continue to be literary in the old or in any sense. Must the bark of literary history be moored to shores from which the waters are receding and, sinking into the ooze, lie forgotten for ages, until disinterred like a Viking ship and preserved as an archæological curiosity; or may it follow the channel

of human life into the new lands whither the stream winds its course? To this question, the answer must be both theoretical and historical. Theoretically considered, the reply will be affirmative; for, after twenty-four centuries, we have no reason to question the validity of the Greek historian's opinion that human nature will remain identical (or nearly so) with what it has always been. There will be, we may suppose, the two sorts of historical writing known in his time, compilation and composition. It does not seem, after examining, contrasting, and comparing the Athenian with the American democracy, as if the proportion of compilers to authors were any greater now than then, the former useful class being in both places overwhelmingly in the majority. The highest form of literary, as it is of historical, criticism is to separate the permanent from the transitory in its own age. Compared with that, the appreciation of what has stood the test of time is child's play, however difficult the adequate and judicious appropriation of the past may be. Investigation, though absolutely essential, resembles the work of the quarryman whose blocks of stone are as enduring as the inert hills, and exactly for the same reason. But the use of the blocks by the artist is quite another matter. To imagine a plan, to inspire it with genius, to adapt the means to the end, to compel unity and harmony, this is the work of the maker, the composer, the poet. No age has been without such creators, and although, like the stars, they differ one from another in glory, yet we may be sure that in our time there are at least minor historians in the best sense and luminaries of the first magnitude also, if only our critical judgment can distinguish them.

Even if we were to admit for the sake of discussion, as we should be unwilling to admit for any other reason, that the materials of history as once written, kings, courts, and battles, were more interesting in themselves than presidents, parliaments, and social conditions, yet still the most modest truth is not destitute of interest, especially when it is the truth about men. It is this which Cervantes thought made all history sacred, truth in some degree being essential to it, y donde está la verdad, está Dios en quanto á verdad. We are accustomed to say and with good reason that the history of art, pure or applied, is the truest of all histories. The meanest potsherd, like the greatest statue, was made to satisfy a want; the objects of daily life throughout the ages were made to gratify natural wholesome desire; they have no concealed motive in them and no pretence to be what they are not; they express sincerely the spirit of their time. So likewise the democratic man

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