TWENTY-NINTH CONGRESS, 1845-47. 377 



ing a fund sacredly pledj^ed to human improvement, seems 

 to me a somewhat costly and unscrupulous mode of gratify- 

 ing national vanity. It is ineffectual, too; unless we are 

 prepared to add a few millions more, to buy up — if money 

 could buy ! — the means of reply to other taunts, quite as 

 just and quite as likely to be cast up to us. There is the 

 Vatican, with its 



" Statues but known from shapes of the earth, 

 By being too lovely for mortal birth." 



There is the Florence Gallery, with its 



" Paintings, whose colors of life were caught 

 From the fairy tints in the rainbow wrought — " 



images of beauty, living conceptions of grandeur, refining, 

 cultivating, elevating; worth all the musty manuscripts of 

 Oxford, ten times told ! How are we to escape the imputa- 

 tion that our rude land can show no such triumphs of art 

 as these? Are we to follow Bonaparte's plan ? Are we to 

 carry war into the land of the olive and the vine ; and 

 enrich this city, as the French Emperor did his capital, with 

 the artistical spoils of the world ? Unless we adopt some 

 such plan, must not Europe's taunts remain unanswered 

 still ? 



And let them so remain ! I share not the feelings of the 

 learned and eloquent Senator to whose remarks I have 

 taken liberty to reply, when he says : 



" I confess to a pang of envy and grief, that there should be one drop or 

 one morsel more of the bread or water of intellectual life tasted by the 

 European than hy the American mind. Why should not the soul of this 

 country eat as good food, and as much of it, as the soul of Europe." 



It grieves me not, that the fantastic taste of some epicure 

 in learning may chance to find, on the book-shelves of 

 Paris, some literary morsel of choice and ancient flavor, 

 such as our own metropolis supplies not. I feel no envy, if 

 we republicans are outdone by luxurious Europe in some 

 high-seasoned delicacy of the pampered soul. Enough 

 have we to console ourselves ! — objects of national ambi- 

 tion, how much higher, how infinitely nobler than these! — 

 ol)jocts of national pride, before v,'hich these petty antiqua- 

 rian triumphs dwarf down into utter insignificancy ! Look 

 abroad over our far-spreading land, then glance across to 

 the monarchies of the Old World, and say if I speak not 

 truth ! 



I have sojourned among the laborers of England ; I have 

 visited, amid their vineyards, the peasantry of France; i 

 have dwelt for years in the midst of the hardy mountain- 



