fidelity: whilst Raphael sought for
something better than nature. They have left us an exact portraiture
of man; but he discloses in his works a glimpse of the Divinity. This
remark as to the manner of treating a subject is no less applicable to
the choice of it. The painters of the Middle Ages generally sought far
above themselves, and away from their own time, for mighty subjects,
which left to their imagination an unbounded range. Our painters
frequently employ their talents in the exact imitation of the details
of private life, which they have always before their eyes; and they are
forever copying trivial objects, the originals of which are only too
abundant in nature.

Chapter XII: Why The Americans Raise Some Monuments So Insignificant,
And Others So Important

I have just observed, that in democratic ages monuments of the arts tend
to become more numerous and less important. I now hasten to point out
the exception to this rule. In a democratic community individuals are
very powerless; but the State which represents them all, and contains
them all in its grasp, is very powerful. Nowhere do citizens appear so
insignificant as in a democratic nation; nowhere does the nation itself
appear greater, or does the mind more easily take in a wide general
survey of it. In democratic communities the imagination is compressed
when men consider themselves; it expands indefinitely when they think
of the State. Hence it is that the same men who live on a small scale in
narrow dwellings, frequently aspire to gigantic splendor in the erection
of their public monuments.

The Americans traced out the circuit of an immense city on the site
which they intended to make their capital, but which, up to the present
time, is hardly more densely peopled than Pontoise, though, according
to them, it will one day contain a million of inhabitants. They have
already rooted up trees for ten miles round, lest they should interfere
with the future citizens of this imaginary metropolis. They have erected
a magnificent palace for Congress in the centre of the city, and have
given it the pompous name of the Capitol. The several States of the
Union are every day planning and erecting for themselves prodigious
undertakings, which would astonish the engineers of the great European
nations. Thus democracy not only leads men to a vast number of
inconsiderable productions; it also leads them to raise some monuments
on the largest scale: but between