84 A GREAT PUBLIC CHARACTER. 



Mexico or Peru. The lives of our worthies, like that of 



our nation, are bare of those foregone and far-reaching 



associations with names, the divining-rods of fancy, which 



the soldiers and civilians of the Old World get for 



notliing by the mere accident of birth. Their historians 



and biogTaphei'S have succeeded to the good-will, as 



well as to the long-established stand, of the shop of 



glory. Time is, after all, the greatest of poets, and the 



sons of ]\Iemory stand a better chance of being the heirs 



of Fame- The philosophic poet may find a proud solace 



in saying, 



" Avia Pieridum peragro loca nullius eute 

 Tritasolo"; 



but all tb<; while he has the splendid centuries of Greece 

 and Rome behind him, and can begin his poem with in- 

 voking a goddess from whom legend derived the planter 

 of his race. His exes looked out on a landscape s?tu- 

 rated with gio"'ions recollections ; he had seen Ciesar, 

 and heard Cicero. But who shall conjiu-e with SaugutJ 

 or Cato Four Corners, — with Israel Putnam or Return 

 Jonathan Meigs 1 We have been transplanted, and for 

 us the long hierarchical succession of history is broken. 

 The Past has not laid its venerable hands upon us in 

 consecration, conveying to us that mysterious influence 

 whose force is in its continuity. We are to Europe as 

 the Church of England to her of Rome. The latter old 

 lady may be the Scarlet Woman, or the Beast with ten 

 hoi-ns, if you will, but hers are all the heirlooms, hers 

 that vast spiritual estate of tradition, nowhere yet every- 

 where, whose revenues are none the less fruitful for 

 being levied on the imagination. We ma}' claim that 

 England's histor}^ is also ours, but 'tis ? dejvre, and not 

 a de facto property that we have in it, — son)ething that 

 may be proved indeed, yet is a merely intellectual satis- 

 faction, and does not savor of the realty. Have we not 



