The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 02, No. 12, October, 1858 by Various
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up the census columns; and roll out a hallelujah for each additional
thousand. Thus had the great Genoese been destined merely to make a new highway on the ocean and new lines on the map,--to add the potato, maize, and tapioca to the known list of edibles, and tobacco to that of narcotics,--to explode Spain, give England a cotton-field, Ireland a hospital, and Africa a hell. This could by no means seem sufficient. The crew of the Pinta shouted, "Land! Land!"--peering through the dark at the new shores; the Spanish nation chanted, "Gold! Gold!"--gazing out through murky desires toward the wondrous West; but it is only with the cry of "Man! Man!" as at the sight of new cerebral shores and wealth of more than golden humanities, that the true America is discovered and announced. So whatever reason we have to assert for America a really independent existence and destiny, the same have we for predicting an opulence of heart and brain, to which Western prairies and Californian gold shall seem the natural appurtenance. And this noble man must be likewise a _new_ man,--not merely a migrated European. Western Europe pushed a little farther west does not meet our demand. Why should Europe go three thousand miles off to be Europe still? Besides, can we afford to England, France, Spain, a larger room in the world? Are we more than satisfied with their occupancy of that they already possess? The Englishman is undeniably a wholesome picture to the mental eye; but will not twenty million copies of him do, for the present? It would seem like a poverty in Nature, were she unable to vary, but must go helplessly on to reproduce that selfsame British likeness over all North America. But history fully warrants the expectation of a new form of man for the new continent. German and Scandinavian Teutons peopled England; but the Englishman is _sui |
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