world: nothing, or as good as nothing, to men
that sit idly caucusing and ballot-boxing on the graves of their heroic
ancestors, saying, "It is well, it is well!" Corn and bacon are granted:
not a very sublime boon, on such conditions; a boon moreover which, on
such conditions, cannot last!--No: America too will have to strain its
energies, in quite other fashion than this; to crack its sinews, and all
but break its heart, as the rest of us have had to do, in thousand-fold
wrestle with the Pythons and mud-demons, before it can become a
habitation for the gods. America's battle is yet to fight; and we,
sorrowful though nothing doubting, will wish her strength for it. New
Spiritual Pythons, plenty of them; enormous Megatherions, as ugly as
were ever born of mud, loom huge and hideous out of the twilight Future
on America; and she will have her own agony, and her own victory, but on
other terms than she is yet quite aware of. Hitherto she but ploughs
and hammers, in a very successful manner; hitherto, in spite of her
"roast-goose with apple-sauce," she is not much. "Roast-goose with
apple-sauce for the poorest workingman:" well, surely that is something,
thanks to your respect for the street-constable, and to your continents
of fertile waste land;--but that, even if it could continue, is by
no means enough; that is not even an instalment towards what will be
required of you. My friend, brag not yet of our American cousins! Their
quantity of cotton, dollars, industry and resources, I believe to be
almost unspeakable; but I can by no means worship the like of these.
What great human soul, what great thought, what great noble thing that
one could worship, or loyally admire, has yet been produced there? None:
the American cousins have yet done none of these things. "What they have
done?" growls Smelfungus, tired of the subject: "They have doubled
their population every twenty years. They have begotten, with a rapidity
beyond recorded example, Eighteen Millions of the greatest _bores_
ever seen in this world before,--that hitherto is their feat in
History!"--And so we leave them, for the present; and cannot predict the
success of Democracy, on this side of the Atlantic, from their example.

Alas, on this side of the Atlantic and on that, Democracy, we apprehend,
is forever impossible! So much, with certainty of loud astonished
contradiction from all manner of men at present, but with sure appeal
to the Law of Nature and the ever