Page:Cambridge Modern History Volume 7.djvu/755

CHAPTBE XXIII. THE AMERICAN INTELLECT. THE American Revolution revealed to Europe that there was such a thing as American nationality. As the nation which then came into being has developed into the world-power now so conspicuous, this nationality has become a matter of general interest. Like any other of those im- palpable, indefinable facts, the nationality of old Rome, of Renaissance Italy, of France, of England, of modern Germany, this American nation- ality has traits peculiarly its own. Nothing could be more natural than the general assumption of those who have tried to define it than that it is a new thing. Europeans of various races, it is generally supposed, have mingled their blood in a new race ; and this race, under the new conditions of a continent which almost within human memory was principally untamed wilderness, has developed national characteristics absolutely its own. "America," it has been said, "is the grave-yard of Europe"; and the remark seems true. No one who has had occasion to deal much with American-born children of immigrants, whatever their social class, can fail to be struck by the swiftness with which their ancestral characteristics are absorbed by those of their environment. -In the depths of native American life and temper, the traits which widely differing races bring from their European homes are soon buried from sight. Few inquirers, however, have troubled themselves to ask when this power of universal assimilation first declared itself. Such a question, indeed, is not one to which any precise answer can be given; yet without some con- jectural answer to it no clear impression can be formed of how the typical American has come to differ from the typical Englishman or even from the typical European. The evidence on which such a con- jectural answer may be based must be drawn from the records which Americans have left, during the three centuries which have elapsed since the foundation of those colonies in Virginia and Massachusetts, from which the principal national traditions of America have sprung. Any consideration of American expression must result in one con- clusion. Since the Revolution the type of national character has changed CH. xxin. 462