such a steed proved anything but a sinecure. Spain, indeed, rode in a
high chariot for a time, but at length, in that unlucky Armada drive,
crashed against English oak on the ocean highways, and came off
creaking and rickety,--grew thenceforth ever more unsteady,--finally,
came utterly to the ground, with contusions, fractures, and much
mishap,--and now the poor nation hobbles hypochondriacally upon
crutches, all its brave charioteering sadly ended. England drove more
considerately, but could not avoid fate; so in 1783 she, too, must let
go the rein with some mental disturbance. For the great Destiny was not
exclusively a European Providence,--had meditated the establishment of
a fresh and independent human centre on the western side of the sea.
The excellent citizens of London and Madrid found themselves incapable
of crediting this until it was duly placarded in gunpowder print.--It
is, indeed, an unaccountable foible men have, not to recognize a plain
fact till it has been published in this blazing hieroglyphic. What were
England and France doing at Sebastopol? Merely issuing a poster to this
effect,--"Turkey is not yours,"--in a type that Russia could feel free
to understand. Terribly costly editions these are, and in a type
utterly hideous; but while nations refuse to see the fact in a more
agreeable presentation, it may probably feel compelled to go into this
ugly, but indubitable shape.--Well, somewhat less than a century since,
England had committed herself to the proposition, that America was
really a part or dependency of Europe, a lower-caste Europe, having
about the same relation to the Cisatlantic continent that the farmer's
barn has to his house. Mild refutations of this modest doctrine having
been attempted without success, posters in the necessary red-letter
type were issued at Concord, Bunker Hill, Yorktown, etc., which might
be translated somewhat thus:--"America has its own independent root in
the world's centre, its own independent destiny in the Providential
thought." This important fact, having then and there exploded itself