Mr. Hutchinson has
given us some excellent English data to begin with.

Then I would follow this up by contrasting the various parallel
forms of life in the two continents. Our naturalists have often
referred to this incidentally or expressly; but the animus of
Nature in the two half globes of the planet is so momentous a point
of interest to our race, that it should be made a subject of
express and elaborate study. Go out with me into that walk which
we call THE MALL, and look at the English and American elms. The
American elm is tall, graceful, slender-sprayed, and drooping as if
from languor. The English elm is compact, robust, holds its
branches up, and carries its leaves for weeks longer than our own
native tree.

Is this typical of the creative force on the two sides of the
ocean, or not? Nothing but a careful comparison through the whole
realm of life can answer this question.

There is a parallelism without identity in the animal and vegetable
life of the two continents, which favors the task of comparison in
an extraordinary manner. Just as we have two trees alike in many
ways, yet not the same, both elms, yet easily distinguishable, just
so we have a complete flora and a fauna, which, parting from the
same ideal, embody it with various modifications. Inventive power
is the only quality of which the Creative Intelligence seems to be
economical; just as with our largest human minds, that is the
divinest of faculties, and the one that most exhausts the mind
which exercises it. As the same patterns have very commonly been
followed, we can see which is worked out in the largest spirit, and
determine the exact limitations under which the Creator places the
movement of life in all its manifestations in either locality. We
should find ourselves in a very false position, if it should prove
that Anglo-Saxons can't live here, but die out, if not kept up by
fresh supplies, as Dr. Knox and other more or less wise persons
have maintained. It may turn out the other way, as I have heard
one of our literary celebrities argue,--and though I took the other
side, I liked his best,--that the American is the Englishman
reinforced.

--Will you walk out and look at those elms with me after
breakfast?--I said to the schoolmistress.

[I am not going to tell lies about it, and say that she blushed,
--as I suppose she ought to have done, at such a tremendous piece of
gallantry as that was for our boarding-house. On the