umber this: that the Republic, the human state considered as the
common property of all--the great political creation of ancient
Rome--is reborn here in America, after having died out in Europe. The
Latin seed, lying buried for so many centuries beneath the ruins of
the ancient world, like the grains of wheat buried in Egyptian tombs,
transported from the other side of the ocean, has sprung up in the
land that Columbus discovered. If there had been no Rome; if Rome
had wholly perished in the great barbarian catastrophe; if in the
Renaissance there had not been found among the ruins of the ancient
world, together with beautiful Greek statues and manuscripts, this
great political idea, there would to-day be no Republic in North
America. With the word would probably have perished also the idea and
the thing; and there is no assurance that men would have been able so
easily and so well to rediscover it by their own effort.

I am a student and not a flatterer. I therefore confess to you
frankly, ending these lectures, that I do not belong to that number
of Europeans who most enthusiastically admire things American. I think
that Americans in general, in North America as in South, so readily
recognise in themselves a sufficient number of virtues, that we
Europeans hardly need help them in the belief, easy and agreeable
to all, that they stand first in the world. Having come from an
old society, which has a long historical experience, the most vivid
impression made upon me in the two Americas has been just that
of entering into a society provided with but meagre historical
experience, which therefore easily deludes itself, mistaking for signs
of heroic energy and proofs of a finished superiority, the passing
advantages of an order chiefly economic, which come from the singular
economic condition of the world. In a word, I do not believe that
you are superior to Europe in as many things as you think; but a
superiority I do recognise, great and, for me at least, indisputable,
in the political institutions with which you govern yourselves. The
Republic, which you have made to live again, here in this new land, is
the true political form worthy of a civilised people, because the
only one that is rational and plastic; while the monarchy, the form
of government yet ruling so many parts of Europe, is a mixture of
mysticism and barbarity, which European interests seek in vain to
justify with sophistries unworthy the high grade of cultu