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The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 02, No. 12, October, 1858 by Various
page 6 of 286 (02%)
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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