I was free-born."

It is necessary to take long views of American civilisation; not to
fix our gaze upon small evils in the foreground, not to mistake an
attack of moral measles for a scorbutic taint. It is quite conceivable
that a philosophic observer of a century ago might almost have
predicted the moral and social course of events in the United States,
if he had only been informed of the coming material conditions, such
as the overwhelmingly rapid growth of the country in wealth and
population, coupled with a democratic form of government. Even if
assured that the ultimate state of the nation would be satisfactory,
he would still have foreseen the difficulties hemming its progress
toward the ideal: the inevitable delays, disappointments, and
set-backs; the struggle between the gross and the spiritual; the
troubles arising from the constant accession of new raw material
before the old was welded into shape. There is nothing in the present
evils of America to lead us to despair of the Republic, if only we let
a legitimate imagination place us on a view-point sufficiently distant
and sufficiently high to enable us to look backwards and forwards over
long stretches of time, and lose the effect of small roughnesses in
the foreground. Even M. de Tocqueville exaggerated the evils existing
when he wrote his famous work, and forecast catastrophes that have
never arisen and seem daily less and less likely ever to arise. Let it
be enough for the present that America has worked out "a rough average
happiness for the million," that the great masses of the people have
attained a by no means despicable amount of independence and comfort.
Those who are apt to think that the comfort of the crowd must mean the
_ennui_ of the cultured may safely be reminded of Obermann's saying,
that no individual life can (or ought to) be happy _passee au milieu
des generations qui souffrent_. _This_ source of unhappiness, at any
rate, is less potent in the United States than elsewhere. It is only
natural that material prosperity should come more quickly than
emancipation from ignorance, as Professor Norton has noted in a
masterly, though perhaps characteristically pessimistic, article in
the _Forum_ for February, 1896. It may, too, be true, as the same
writer remarks, that the common school system of America does little
"to quicken the imagination, to refine and elevate the moral
intelligence;" and the remark is valuable as a note of warning. But it