ille's _Democracy in America_.=--In addition to the casual
traveler there began to visit the United States the thoughtful observer
bent on finding out what manner of nation this was springing up in the
wilderness. Those who looked with sympathy upon the growing popular
forces of England and France found in the United States, in spite of
many blemishes and defects, a guarantee for the future of the people's
rule in the Old World. One of these, Alexis de Tocqueville, a French
liberal of mildly democratic sympathies, made a journey to this country
in 1831; he described in a very remarkable volume, _Democracy in
America_, the grand experiment as he saw it. On the whole he was
convinced. After examining with a critical eye the life and labor of the
American people, as well as the constitutions of the states and the
nation, he came to the conclusion that democracy with all its faults was
both inevitable and successful. Slavery he thought was a painful
contrast to the other features of American life, and he foresaw what
proved to be the irrepressible conflict over it. He believed that
through blundering the people were destined to learn the highest of all
arts, self-government on a grand scale. The absence of a leisure class,
devoted to no calling or profession, merely enjoying the refinements of
life and adding to its graces--the flaw in American culture that gave
deep distress to many a European leader--de Tocqueville thought a
necessary virtue in the republic. "Amongst a democratic people where
there is no hereditary wealth, every man works to earn a living, or has
worked, or is born of parents who have worked. A notion of labor is
therefore presented to the mind on every side as the necessary, natural,
and honest condition of human existence." It was this notion of a
government in the hands of people who labored that struck the French
publicist as the most significant fact in the modern world.

=Harriet Martineau's Visit to America.=--This phase of American life
also profoundly impressed the brilliant English writer, Harriet
Martineau. She saw all parts of the country, the homes of the rich and
the log cabins of the frontier; she traveled in stagecoaches, canal
boats, and on horseback; and visited sessions of Congress and auctions
at slave markets. She tried to view the country impartially and the
thing that left the deepest mark on her mind was the solidarity of the
people in one great political body. "However various may