accepts the lesson with calmness; is not so impatient as has been supposed
that the slough still sticks to opinions and manners and literature while
the life which served its requirements has passed into the new life of the
new forms; perceives that the corpse is slowly borne from the eating and
sleeping rooms of the house; perceives that it waits a little while in the
door, that it was fittest for its days, that its action has descended to
the stalwart and well-shaped heir who approaches, and that he shall be
fittest for his days.

The Americans, of all nations at any time upon the earth, have probably the
fullest poetical Nature. The United States themselves are essentially the
greatest poem. In the history of the earth hitherto the largest and most
stirring appear tame and orderly to their ampler largeness and stir. Here
at last is something in the doings of man that corresponds with the
broadcast doings of the day and night. Here is not merely a nation, but a
teeming nation of nations. Here is action untied from strings, necessarily
blind to particulars and details, magnificently moving in vast masses.

Here is the hospitality which for ever indicates heroes. Here are the
roughs and beards and space and ruggedness and nonchalance that the soul
loves. Here the performance, disdaining the trivial, unapproached in the
tremendous audacity of its crowds and groupings and the push of its
perspective, spreads with crampless and flowing breadth, and showers its
prolific and splendid extravagance. One sees it must indeed own the riches
of the summer and winter, and need never be bankrupt while corn grows from
the ground, or the orchards drop apples, or the bays contain fish, or men
beget children.

Other states indicate themselves in their deputies: but the genius of the
United States is not best or most in its executives or legislatures, nor in