them as
to present to you, in a sudden flash of the imagination, the Virgin
Mary dressed like the Empress Eugenie? Readers both, did not that
fancy trouble you, as if an unholy thought had fallen into the soul?
Well, a thought like that must trouble the American when his fancy
passes before his mind's eye the image of Old England Americanised.
And a faculty more serious and trusty than fancy will present this
transformation to him, day by day, as he visits the great centres of
the nation's life and industry. In London, Manchester, Liverpool,
and all the most busy and prosperous commercial and manufacturing
towns, he will see that England is becoming Americanised shockingly
fast. In all these populous places it is losing the old
individuality that once distinguished the grandfatherland of fifty
millions who now speak its language beyond the sea. Look at London!
look at the miles of three and four story houses under the mason's
hands, now running out in every direction from the city. Will you
see a single feature of the Old England of our common memories in
them? No, not one! no more than in a modern English dress-coat, or
in one of the iron rails of the British Great Western, or of the
Illinois Central. It is doubtful if there will be anything of
England left in London at the end of the next fifty years, unless it
be the fog and the Lord Mayor's Show. Already the radicals are
crying out against both of these institutions, which are merely
local, by the way. The tailor's shears, the mason's trowel, and the
carpenter's edge-tools are evening everything in Christendom to one
dead level of uniformity. The railroads and telegraphs are all
working to the same end. All these agencies of modern civilization
at first lay their innovating hands upon large cities or commercial
centres. Thence they work outward slowly and transform the
appearance and habits of the country. The transformations I have
noticed in England since 1846 are wonderful, utilitarian, and
productive of absolute and rigid comfort to the people; still, I
must confess, they inspire in me a sentiment akin to that which our
village fathers experienced when the old church in which they
worshipped from childhood was pulled down to make room for a better
one.

To every American, sympathising with these sentiments, it must be
interesting to visit such a rural little city as Ripon, and find
populations that cling with reverence and affection to the old Sax