struggles, and of their ultimate success. For the first time I looked upon this continent as peopled by the white race, and the shame I felt for my past ignorance was only mitigated by my desire to atone for it. I mapped out a thorough course of reading, and all the spare time of that year and the next was devoted to systematic study of American history, literature and poetry.
And, as I read American history, it came over me how different the beginning of this race was from the beginning of all the other civilized nations of the world. Whereas the others all started by a strong barbaric race descending upon a weaker people and seizing their cattle and their lands by brute force, America alone started with the great middle classes of all civilized races, who came to the new world, not with brute force as their weapon, but with the desire to carry out in a wild and virgin country the spiritual and social development they craved. What a marvellous, unprecedented beginning! What a heritage for their sons! I am afraid many of them do not appreciate the greatness of that beginning, otherwise why should they try to go beyond those early settlers and seek to establish their descent from William the Conqueror, or some little sprig of nobility, and make themselves ridiculous where they ought to be sublime?
