on.

The separation between England and America which was so effectual in
Webster's conception, and thus determined much of his thought, was
really incipient and not complete. The two countries are more widely
separate to-day than they were then, while the outward signs of
separation are in many ways less conspicuous. The forces of national
life have been diverging, and the resultant in character and literature
is more sure and ineffaceable.

It should be observed that the individualism which characterizes
American life was more marked in the first years of the republic than it
is now. After we have reasoned away all we will of a revolutionary
cataclysmal element in the separation of the United States from the
British Empire, there still remains a sharp determination of individual
life, historically evident, and very influential in the formation of
national character. In the earliest years the centripetal force for
union was barely superior to the centrifugal force for state
independence; but the political thought which justified state
sovereignty had its logical issue in an isolated individuality. Common
sense and prudence, to be sure, are always defeating logic; but the
logical conception helps us to understand tendencies, and it is not
difficult to see that the word independence, which was on every one's
lips at the close of the last century, was not the sign of a political
thought only, but expressed the habit of mind with which persons
everywhere regarded life in its varied relations. The breaking up of old
political connections not only unsettled the social fabric, it affected
necessarily all the relations which the person held to society; and it
was only as a profounder political unity disclosed itself in the nation
that each man put forth more confidently his hand to his fellow. The
historian of the Union will not fail to observe how with the growth of
that Union there began to spring up societies and corporations of every
kind, the interdependence of the States extending itself to the
interdependence of all interests involved in the State, and the whole
fabric of society feeling its web and woof grow firmer and denser.

The career of Webster illustrates this truth. He worked alone, and his
solitariness was not wholly due to his idiosyncrasies. It was in part
the penalty paid by a student of the time. The resolution and
self-reliance of an American were his, and so was the individuality.
That such enterprises