ggish beside our rushing stream,
because there is a spiritual demand in us which cries louder than the
thin voice of a self-conscious national life. This demand is profoundly
at one with the deeper, holier sense of national being which does not
strut upon the world's stage. The humility of a great nation is in its
reverence for its own past, and, since that is incomplete, in its
admiration for whatever is noble and worthy in other nations. It is out
of this reverence and humility and this self-respect that great works
in literature and art grow, and not out of the overweening sensitiveness
which makes one's nationality but a petty jealousy of other people.

It is possible for us thus to discriminate between a nationality which
is a mere posture and that which is a plain expression of positive
organic life. When we measure the force of the latter we are compelled
to a finer analysis, and its illustrations are to be sought in subtler
manifestations. Webster well exemplifies, by the very rudeness of his
mind, phases of Americanism which may be traced in more delicate lines
elsewhere. There can be no doubt that self-reliance, which was both the
cause and the effect of local self-government long practiced, has been a
powerful factor in American life; that an indifference to the past has
often been only the obverse of an elastic hope, a consciousness of
destiny; that a fearlessness and a spirit of adventure have been invited
by the large promises held out by nature; that an expansiveness of mind,
and an alertness and facility in intellectual device, have been
encouraged by the flexile condition of American society. All things
have seemed possible to the ardent American, and each has secretly said
to himself:--

"I ... had resolved to be
The maker of my destiny."

These elements of character have entered into literature, the exponent
of character; and Webster, with his self-reliance, his indifference to
the past, his consciousness of destiny, his courage and resolution and
quick fitting into his country's work, stands easily as the first
aggressive American in our literature. In him we see roughly marked what
future critics will discern of men more readily assigned a place in
universal literature. The Americanism of Hawthorne, for example, differs
from that of Webster in quality rather than in essence. They were both
content with America and New England. Hawthorne, with his shrug at old
buildings and his wish that all