ll arts, and to come back to the
apprenticeship system too hastily abandoned....

So long as we continue to be the most common-schooled and the least
cultivated people in the world, I suppose we must consent to endure
this condescending manner of foreigners toward us. The more friendly
they mean to be the more ludicrously prominent it becomes. They can
never appreciate the immense amount of silent work that has been done
here, making this continent slowly fit for the abode of man, and which
will demonstrate itself, let us hope, in the character of the people.
Outsiders can only be expected to judge a nation by the amount it has
contributed to the civilization of the world; the amount, that is,
that can be seen and handled. A great place in history can only be
achieved by competitive examinations, nay, by a long course of them.
How much new thought have we contributed to the common stock? Till
that question can be triumphantly answered, or needs no answer, we
must continue to be simply interesting as an experiment, to be studied
as a problem, and not respected as an attained result or an
accomplished solution. Perhaps, as I have hinted, their patronizing
manner toward us is the fair result of their failing to see here
anything more than a poor imitation, a plaster-cast of Europe.

Are they not partly right? If the tone of the uncultivated American
has too often the arrogance of the barbarian, is not that of the
cultivated as often vulgarly apologetic? In the America they meet with
is there the simplicity, the manliness, the absence of sham, the faith
in human nature, the sensitiveness to duty and implied obligation,
that in any way distinguishes us from what our orators call "the
effete civilization of the Old World"? Is there a politician among us
daring enough (except a Dana[39] here and there) to risk his future on
the chance of our keeping our word with the exactness of superstitious
communities like England? Is it certain that we shall be ashamed of a
bankruptcy of honor, if we can only keep the letter of our bond? I
hope we shall be able to answer all these questions with a frank yes.

[Footnote 39: The reference is to Richard Henry Dana, author of "Two
Years Before the Mast," who in 1876 was appointed by President Grant
minister to England, but failed of confirmation in the Senate, owing
to political intrigues due to his independence. Lowell appears to have
inserted this reference to Dana in an edition published