the Eastern
States to be applied to the inhabitants of the cities, at least, of
the West. The founders of these cities are so largely men of Eastern
birth, the means of their expansion are so largely advanced by Eastern
capitalists, that this tendency is easily explicable. [So far as my
observation went it was to Boston rather than to New York or
Philadelphia that the educated classes of the Western cities looked
as the cynosure of their eyes. Boston seemed to stand for something
less material than these other cities, and the subtler nature of its
influence seemed to magnify its pervasive force.] None the less do the
people of the United States, compared with those of any one European
country, seem to me to have their due share of variety and even of
picturesqueness. This latter quality is indeed denied to the United
States not only by European visitors, but also by many Americans. This
denial, however, rests on a limited and traditional use of the word
picturesque. America has not the European picturesqueness of costume,
of relics of the past, of the constant presence of the potential
foeman at the gate. But apart altogether from the almost theatrical
romance of frontier life and the now obsolescent conflict with the
aborigines, is there not some element of the picturesque in the
processes of readjustment by which the emigrants of European stock
have adapted themselves and are adapting themselves to the conditions
of the New World? In some ways the nineteenth century is the most
romantic of all; and the United States embody and express it as no
other country. Is there not a picturesque side to the triumph of
civilisation over barbarism? Is there nothing of the picturesque in
the long thin lines of gleaming steel, thrown across the countless
miles of desert sand and alkali plain, and in the mighty mass of metal
with its glare of cyclopean eye and its banner of fire-illumined
smoke, that bears the conquerors of stubborn nature from side to side
of the great continent? Is there not an element of the picturesque in
the struggles of the Western farmer? Can anything be finer in its way
than a night view of Pittsburg--that "Hell with its lid off," where
the cold gleam of electricity vies with the lurid glare of the
furnaces and smelting works? I say nothing of the Californian
Missions; of the sallow creoles of New Orleans with their gorgeous
processions of Mardi-Gras; or of the almost equally fantastic fete of
the Veiled Pro