everence for man which is the
loveliest feature of American morals and manners.

From the aristocratic pride of the English the stranger might draw
inferences no less correct. If it is found that there is scarcely a
gamekeeper or a tradesman among us who is not stiffened with prejudices
about rank; that gossips can tell what noblemen pay, and which do not
pay, their tradesmen's bills; that persons who have never seen a lord
can furnish all information about the genealogy and intermarriages of
noble families; that every class is emulating the manners of the one
above it; and that democratic principles are held chiefly in the
manufacturing districts, or, if in country regions, among the tenantry
of landlords of liberal politics;--the moral condition of such a people
lies, as it were, mapped out beneath the eye of the observer. They must
be orderly, eminently industrious, munificent in their grants to rulers,
and mechanically oppressive to the lowest class of the ruled; nationally
complacent, while wanting in individual self-respect; reverentially
inclined towards the lofty minority, and contemptuously disposed
towards the lowly majority of their race; a generous devotion being
advantageously mingled, however, with the select reverence, and a kindly
spirit of protection with the gross contempt. Such, to the eye of an
observer, are the qualities involved in English pride. Upon this moral
material, everywhere diffused, should the traveller observe and reflect.

* * * * *

Man-worship is as universal a practice as that of the higher sort of
religion. As men everywhere adore some supposed agents of unseen things,
they are, in like manner, disposed to do homage to what is venerable
when it is presented to their eyes in the actions of a living man. This
man-worship is one of the most honourable and one of the most hopeful
circumstances in the mind of the race. An individual here and there may
scoff at the credulity of others, and profess unbelief in human virtue;
but no society has ever yet wanted faith in man. Every community has its
saints, its heroes, its sages,--whose tombs are visited, whose deeds are
celebrated, whose words have become the rules by which men live.

Now, the moral taste of a people is nowhere more clearly shown than in
its choice of idols. Of these idols there are two kinds;--those whose
divinity is confirmed by the lapse of time, like Gustavus Adolphus among
the Swedes, Te