But his colonialism is only provincialism very
articulate. The new air does but make old decadences seem more stale;
the young soil does but set into fresh conditions the ready-made, the
uncostly, the refuse feeling of a race decivilising. American fancy
played long this pattering part of youth. The New-Englander hastened to
assure you with so self-denying a face he did not wear war-paint and
feathers, that it became doubly difficult to communicate to him that you
had suspected him of nothing wilder than a second-hand dress coat. And
when it was a question not of rebuke, but of praise, the American was ill-
content with the word of the judicious who lauded him for some delicate
successes in continuing something of the literature of England, something
of the art of France; he was more eager for the applause that stimulated
him to write romances and to paint panoramic landscape, after brief
training in academies of native inspiration. Even now English voices,
with violent commonplace, are constantly calling upon America to begin--to
begin, for the world is expectant. Whereas there is no beginning for
her, but instead a continuity which only a constant care can guide into
sustained refinement and can save from decivilisation.
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