easily readjust his mental attitude; who has learned to let the new
comforts of a new country make up, temporarily at least, for the loss
of the old; who finds nothing alien to him that is human, and has a
genuine love for mankind; who can appreciate the growth of general
comfort at the expense of caste; who delights in promising experiments
in politics, sociology, and education; who is not thrown off his
balance by the shifting of the centre of gravity of honour and
distinction; who, in a word, is not congealed by conventionality, but
is ready to accept novelties on their merits,--he, unless I am very
grievously mistaken, will find compensations in the United States that
will go far to make up for Swiss Alp and Italian lake, for Gothic
cathedral and Palladian palace, for historic charters and
time-honoured tombs, for paintings by Raphael and statues by Phidias.

Perhaps, in the last analysis, our appreciation of America will depend
on whether we are optimistic or pessimistic in regard to the great
social problem which is formed of so many smaller problems. If we
think that the best we can do is to preserve what we have, America
will be but a series of disappointments. If, however, we believe that
man's sympathies for others will grow deeper, that his ingenuity will
ultimately be equal to at least a partial solution of the social
question, we shall watch the seething of the American crucible with
intensest interest. The solution of the social problem, speaking
broadly, must imply that each man must in some direction, simple or
complex, work for his own livelihood. Equality will always be a word
for fools and doctrinaires to conjure with, but those who believe in
man's sympathy for man must have faith that some day relative human
justice will be done, which will be as far beyond the justice of
to-day as light is from dark.[1] And it would be hard to say where we
are to look for this consummation if not in the United States of