NORTH KENNEBEC SOCIETY. 195 



emigrate to the prairies of Wisconsin and Illinois. It is no 

 doubt the will of Providence, that some of us should go to the 

 unoccupied territories of the west, to establish and build up 

 New England institutions, and to give direction to all great con- 

 cerns. Let not the rest of us, however, remain here with heavy 

 and desponding hearts. It is God's will that we take care of our 

 own land as a grand nursery of new and similar commonwealths. 

 By nature, England was a harder land than ours. Now that 

 island is the garden of the world. What may not be done here, 

 by a people claiming with the English the same origin, the same 

 blood, the same genius, the same energy, and the same skill? 



Emerson says, speaking of Englishmen and English Traits : 

 " Their self-respect, their faith in causation, and their realistic 

 logic or coupling of means to ends, have given them the lead- 

 ership of the modern world." Montesquieu said, " no people 

 have true common sense but those who are born in England." 

 This common sense is a perception of all the conditions of our 

 earthly existence, of laws that can be stated, and of laws that 

 cannot be stated, or that are learned by practice, in whicb 

 allowance for friction is made. They are impious in their 

 skepticism of theory, and in high departments they are cramped 

 and sterile. But the unconditional surrender to facts, and the 

 choice of means to reach their ends, are as admirable as with 

 ants and bees." 



•' The bias of the nation," he continues, " is a passion for 

 utility. They love the lever, the screw, and pully, the Flanders 

 draught horse, the waterfall, wind mills, tide mills ; the sea and 

 the wind to bear their freight ships. More than the diamond 

 Koh-i-noor, which glitters among their crown jewels, they prize 

 that dull pebble which is wiser than a man, whose poles turn 

 themselves to the poles of the world, and whose axis is parallel 

 to the axis of the world. Now, their toys are steam and gal- 

 vanism. They are heavy at the fine arts, but adroit at the 

 coarse ; not good in jewelry or mosaics, but the best iron mas- 

 ters, colliers, wool-combers, and tanners, in Europe. They 

 apply themselves to agriculture, to draining, to resisting en- 

 croachments of sea, wind, traveling sands, cold and wet subsoil ; 

 to fishery, to manufacture of indispensible staples, — salt, plum- 



