n, which so filled Webster's eyes, was
unquestionably a great historic event by reason of its connection with
the formal institution of a new nation; but the roots of our national
life were not then planted. They run back to the first settlements and
the first charters and agreements; nor is the genesis of the nation to
be found there; sharp as are the beginnings of our history on this
continent, no student could content himself with a conception of our
national life which took into account only the events and conditions
determined by the people and the soil of America. Even in actual
relations between America and Europe there never has been a time when
the Atlantic has not had an ebbing as well as a flowing tide, and the
instinct which now sends us to the Old World on passionate pilgrimages
is a constituent part of our national life, and not an unfilial
sentiment. In the minds of Webster and many others, England was an
unnatural parent, and the spirit of anger, together with an elation at
success in the severing of governmental ties, made them impatient of
even a spiritual connection. But the Revolution was an outward, visible
sign of an organic growth which it accelerated, but did not produce; and
the patriotic outcries of the generation were incoherent expressions of
a profounder life which had been growing, scarcely heeded, until wakened
by this event. The centripetal force of nationality was at work, and it
is possible now, even from our near station, to discover the conjunction
of outward circumstance and inward consciousness which marks nationality
as an established fact. It was a weak conception of nationality which
was bounded by Webster's definition; but his belief in his country and
his energetic action were, in reality, constantly overpassing that
conception. In spite of the disposition to regard a written constitution
as the bottom fact, there was the real, substantial, organic nation, and
that saved the paper nation from erasure,--a fate which easily overtakes
South American republics. A nation which could immediately be placed in
the world's museum, duly ticketed and catalogued, with its distinct
manners, dress, language, and literature,--this was a conception which
resulted logically from theories which held the nation itself to be the
creation of popular will or historic accident; but a nation slowly
struggling against untoward outward circumstance and inward dissension,
collecting by degrees its constitu