National Life and Character 293 



_. c 

 himself in the wilderness, hunting great game; he 



can take part in a campaign here and there. Whither- 

 soever his tastes lead him, he finds that he has far 

 greater capacity conferred upon him by the condi- 

 tions of nineteenth-century civilization to do some- 

 thing of note than ever a man of his kind had before. 

 If he is observant, he notes all around him the play 

 of vaster forces than have ever before been exerted, 

 working, half blindly, half under control, to bring 

 about immeasurable results. He sees going on be- 

 fore his eyes a great transfer of population and civ- 

 ilization, which is making America north of the Rio 

 Grande, and Australia, English-speaking continents ; 

 which has filled Central and South America with 

 States of uncertain possibilities; which is creating 

 for the first time a huge Aryan nation across the 

 entire north of Asia, and which is working changes 

 in Africa infinitely surpassing in importance all those 

 that have ever taken place there since the days when 

 the Bantu peoples first built their beehive-huts on the 

 banks of the Congo and the Zambesi. Our century 

 has teemed with life and interest. 



Yet this is the very century at which Carlyle 

 railed ; and it is strange to think that he could speak 

 of the men at that very moment engaged in doing 

 such deeds, as belonging to a worn-out age. His 

 vision was clear to see the importance and the true 

 bearing of England's civil war of the seventeenth 

 century, and yet he remained mole-blind to the 

 vaster and more important civil war waged be- 

 fore his very eyes in nineteenth-century America. 



