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 generis, not merely an exported Teuton. Egypt, says Bunsen, was peopled by a colony from “Western Asia ; but the genius and physiognomy of Egypt are peculiar and its own. Mr. Pocoeke will have it that Greece was a migrated India : it was, of course, a migration from some place that first planted the Hellenic stock in Europe ; but if the man who carved the Zeus, and built the Parthenon, and wrote the “ Prometheus ” and the “ Phædrus,” were a copy, where shall we find the original ? Indeed, there has never been a great migration that did not result in a new form of national genius. And it is the thoroughness of the transformations thus induced which makes the chief difficulty in tracing the affinities of peoples.
So it is that the world is enriched. Every new form of man establishes another current in those reciprocations of thought, in those electrical streams of sympathy,—of wholesome attraction and wholesome repulsion,—by which the intellectual life is kindled and quickened. Thought begins not until two men meet. Col. Hamilton Smith makes it quite clear that civilization has found its first centres there where two highways of national movement crossed, and dissimilar men looked each other in the face. They have met, it may be, with the rudest kind of greetings; but have obtained good thoughts from hard blows, and beaten ideas out of each other’s heads, if not into them, according to the ancient pedagogic tradition. Higher culture brings higher terms of meeting; traffic succeeds war, conversation follows upon traffic; ever the necessity of various men to each other remains. There is no pure white light until seven colors blend ; so to the mental illumination of humanity many hues of national genius must consent: and the value of life to all men is greater so soon as a new man has made his advent.
All this is matter of daily experience with us. We do not, indeed, tire of old friends. A soul whose wealth we have once recognized must be ever rich to us. Gold turns not to copper by keeping; and perhaps old friends are rather like old wine, and can never be too old. Yet who does not mark in the calendar those days wherein he has met a new rich soul, that has a physiognomy, a grace and expression, peculiarly its own ? Even decided repulsions have also a use. We whet our conscience on our neighbors’ faults, as sober Spartans were made by the spectacle of drunken Helots;-—though he who makes habitual talk about his neighbors' faults whets his conscience across the edge. If there be sermons in stones, no less is there blessing in bores and in bullies. We found one day in the face of a black bear what could not be so well found in libraries. The creature regarded us attentively, and with affection rather than malice, — saw simply certain amounts of savory flesh, useful for the satisfaction of ursine hungers,—and saw nothing more. It was an incomparable lesson to teach that the world is an endless series of levels, and that each eye sees what its own altitude commands ; the rest to it is non-extant. That bear was in his natural covering of hair; his brothers we frequently meet in broadcloth.
Now, as Nature keeps up this inexhaustible variety of individual genius which individual quickening requires, so on the larger scale is she ever working and compounding to produce varieties of national genius. Her aim is the same in both cases,—to enrich the whole by this electrical and enlivening relation between its parts. And thus an American man, no copy, but an original, formed in unprecedented moulds, with his own unborrowed grandeur, his own piquancy and charm, is to be looked for,—is, indeed, even now to be seen,—on this shore.
Yes, the man we seek is already found, his features rapidly becoming distinct. He is the offspring of Northern Europe; he occupies Central North-Ameriea. Other fresh forms are doubtless to appear, but, though dimly shaping themselves, are as
