, so brazen-fronted and blush-proof that only
the spectacle itself makes its credibility;--the prior possibility of
it we should one and all hasten, for the honor of human nature, to
deny. Yet in the midst of all this are visible the victorious
influences that mould the imported Teuton to the spiritual form which
his appointed tasks imply. These we now hasten to indicate.

And first, every breath of American air helps to make him the American
Man. The atmosphere of America was early noted as a wonder-worker. Ten
years subsequent to the landing at Plymouth, the Rev. Francis
Higginson, an acute observer, wrote to the mother country,--"A sup of
New England air is better than a whole flagon of old English ale." Jean
Paul says that the roots of humankind are the lungs, and that, being
rooted in air,--we are properly children of the aether. Truly, children
of the aether,--and so, children of fire. For the oxygen, upon which
the lungs chiefly feed, is _the_ fiery principle in Nature,--all that
we denominate fire and flame being but the manifestation of its action.
We are severe upon fire-eaters, Southern and other; yet here are we,
cool Northerns, quaffing this very principle and essence of fire in
large lung-draughts every moment, each of us carrying a perpetual
furnace in his bosom. Now it is doubtless true that we inhale more
oxygen, or at least inhale it less drenched with damp, than the people
of Europe, and are, therefore, more emphatically children of fire than
they. Be this, or be some other, the true theory of the fact, the fact
itself unquestionably is, that our climate produces the highest nervous
intensity. As there are conditions of atmosphere in which the magnetic
telegraph works well, and others in which it works ill, so some
conditions stimulate, while others repress nervous action. The air of
England seems favorable to richness and abundance of blood; there the
life-vessels sit deep, and bring opulent cargoes to the flesh-shores;
and the rotund figure, the ruddy solid cheek, and the leisurely
complacent movement, all show how well supported and stored with vital
resources the Englishman is. But to the American's lip the great
foster-mother has proffered a more pungent and rousing draught,--not an
old Saxon sleeping-cup for the night, but a waking-cup for the bright
morning and busy day. It is forenoon with him. He is up and dressed,
and at work by the job. Bring an Englishman here, and nothing short of
Egyptia