A LETTER FROM MISS BREMER. 



wealth, and would be trampled upon and utterly ruined 

 by the democracy of the country, who travel one hundred 

 miles for half a dollar. And yet these our floating palaces, 

 and our monster hotels, with their purple and fine linen, 

 are they not respected hy the majority who use them as 

 truly as other palaces hy their rightful sovereigns ? Alas, 

 for the faithlessness of the few who possess, regarding the 

 capacity for culture of the many who are wanting. 



"Even upon the lower platform of liberty and education 

 that the masses stand in Europe, we see the elevating influ- 

 r ences of a wide popular enjoyment of galleries of art, pub- 

 lic libraries, parks and gardens, which have raised the peo- 

 ple in social civilization and social culture, to a far higher 

 level than we have yet attained in republican America. 

 And yet this broad ground of popular refinement must be 

 taken in republican America, for it belongs of right more 

 truly here than elsewhere. It is republican in its very idea 

 and tendency. It takes up popular education where the 

 common school and ballot-box leave it, and raises up the 

 working man to the same level of enjoyment with the man 

 of leisure and accomplishment. The higher social and 

 artistic elements of every man's nature lie dormant within 

 him, and every laborer is a possible gentleman ; not by the 

 possession of money or fine clothes, but through the refin- 

 ing influence of intelligent and moral culture. Open wide 

 therefore the doors of your libraries and picture-galleries, 

 all ye true republicans ! Build halls where knowledge shall 

 be freely diffused among men, and not shut up within the 

 narrow walls of narrower institutions. Plant spacious parks 

 in your cities, and unloose their gates as wide as the gates 

 of the morning, to the whole people. As there are no dark 

 places at noonday, so education and culture the true sun- 

 shine of the soul will banish the plague-spots of democ- 



