ON FEMININE TASTE IN RURAL AFFAIRS. 45 



Shall we ever have a distinct national character? Will a 

 country, which is settled by every people of the old world, a dozen 

 nations, all as distinct as the French and the English, ever crys- 

 tallize into a symmetrical form something distinct and homoge- 

 neous ? And what will that national character be ? 



Certainly no one, who looks at our comparative isolation at 

 the broad ocean that separates us from such external influences 

 at the mighty internal forces of new government and new circum- 

 stances, which continually act upon us, and, above all, at the 

 mighty vital force of the Yankee Constitution, which every year 

 swallows hundreds of thousands of foreigners, and digests them all ; 

 no one can look reflectingly on all this, and not see that there is 

 a national type, which will prevail over all the complexity, which 

 various origin, foreign manners, and different religions bring to our 

 shores. 



The English are, perhaps, the most distinct of civilized nations, 

 in their nationality. But they had almost as mixed an origin as 

 ourselves, Anglo-Saxon, Celts, Roman, Danish, Norman ; all these 

 apparently discordant elements, were fused so successfully into a 

 great and united people. 



That a hundred years hence will find us quite as distinct and 

 quite as developed, in our national character, we cannot doubt. 

 What that character will be, in all its phases, no one at present can 

 precisely say ; but that the French and English elements will largely 

 influence it in its growth, and yet, that in morals, in feeling, and in 

 heart, we shall be entirely distinct from either of those nations, is as 

 clear to us as a summer noon. 



We are not going into a profound philosophical dissertation on 

 the political or the social side of national character. We want to 

 touch very slightly on a curious little point that interests us ; one 

 that political philosophers would think quite beneath them ; one 

 that moralists would not trouble themselves about ; and one that 

 wo are very much afraid nobody else will think worth notice at all ; 

 and therefore we shall set about it directly. 



What is the reason American ladies don't love to work in their 

 gardens ? 



It is of no use whatever, that some fifty or a hundred of our fair 



