Ixyiii A LETTER FROM MISS BREMER. 



wealth, aiid would be trampled upoh and utterly riub-ed 

 by tbe democracy of the country, who travel one hundred 

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

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

 aire they not respected by the majority who uSe them as 

 truly as other palaces by their rightful sovereigns .? Alas, 

 for the faithlessness of the few who possess, regarding the 

 capacity for culture of the many who are t^anting. 



"Even upon the lower platforinf of liberty and education 

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

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

 lie 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 repubUcan" America. 

 And yet this broad ground of popular refinement mtist be 

 taken in repubUcan 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 baUot-box leave it, and raises up the 

 working man to the same levej 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 laborfer is a possible "gentleman ; not by the 

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

 ing infiuence of intelhgent and moral culture. Open wide 

 therefore the doors ;of your librariesi and picture-galleries, 

 all ye true repubHcans ! Build halls where knoMedge shall 

 be freely difiused among men, and nyt 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 cidtuie — ^thctrue sun- 

 shine of the soul— win banish the plague-spots of democ- 



