194 



MY LIFE 



[Chap. 



our "black countries" and our polluted streams. Both 

 countries are creating ugliness, both are destroying beauty ; 

 but in America it is done on a larger scale and with a more 

 hideous monotony. The more refined among the Americans 

 see this themselves as clearly as we see it. One of them has 

 said, "A whole huge continent has been so touched by human 

 hands that, over a large part of its surface it has been reduced 

 to a state of unkempt, sordid ugliness ; and it can be brought 

 back into a state of beauty only by further touches of the 

 same hands more intelligently applied." ^ 



Turning now from the land to the people, what can we 

 say of our American cousins as a race and as a nation 

 The great thing to keep in mind is, that they are, largely 

 and primarily, of the same blood and of the same nature 

 as ourselves, with characters and habits formed in part by 

 the evil traditions inherited from us, in part by the influence 

 of the new environment to which they have been exposed. 

 Just as we owe our good and bad qualities to the inter- 

 mixture and struggle of somewhat dissimilar peoples, so 

 do they. Briton and Roman, Saxon and Dane, Norsemen 

 and Norman-French, Scotch and Irish Celts — all have inter- 

 mingled in various proportions, and helped to create that 

 energetic amalgam known the world over as Englishmen. 

 So North America has been largely settled by the English, 

 partly by Dutch, French, and Spanish, whose territories were 

 soon absorbed by conquest or purchase ; while, during the 

 last century, a continuous stream of immigrants — Germans, 

 Irish, Highland and Lowland Scotch, Scandinavians, Italians, 

 Russians — has flowed in, and is slowly but surely becoming 

 amalgamated into one great Anglo-American people. 



Most of the evil influences under which the United States 

 have grown to their present condition of leaders in civilization, 

 and a great power among the nations of the world, they 

 received from us. We gave them the example of religious 

 intolerance and priestly rule, which they have now happily 

 thrown off more completely than we have done. We gave 



^ The Cenhcry, June, 1887. 



