276 ANDREW JACKSON 



pigs ran wild in the unpaved streets of the frontier 

 town. Any one who wishes to understand American 

 democracy sixty years ago should read her book. It 

 is evidently a truthful account of a state of society in 

 which very few of us would find it pleasant to live, and 

 it is amusing to see the naivete with which the writer's 

 expressions become mollified as on her homeward 

 journey she reaches Philadelphia and New York. It 

 is noticeable that the examples of Americanism quoted 

 by English travellers of that day were almost always 

 taken from the West. They had very little to say 

 about Boston because it was too much like an Eng- 

 lish town. They came in search of novelty and found 

 it in the valley of the Mississippi, as they now find it 

 in the Rocky Mountains. 



No such novelty, however, can the European trav- 

 eller find anywhere in the United States to-day as 

 that which so astonished him half a century ago. 

 The period of provincialism which I have sought to 

 describe came to an end with our Civil War. The 

 overthrow of slavery removed one barrier to the sym- 

 pathy between America and western Europe. The 

 sacrifices we had to make in order to save our coun- 

 try intensified our love for it, but diminished our 

 boastful ness. In a chastened spirit we were enabled 

 to see that even in American institutions there might 

 be elements of weakness, that perhaps the experience 

 of other nations might have lessons worthy of our 

 study, and that the whole world is none too wide a 

 field wherefrom to gather wisdom. Moreover, the 

 railroad and telegraph, two of the mightiest agencies 

 yet devised for hastening the millennium, have already 

 wrought a marvellous transformation, which is but the 



