the one sort of facts and never
collecting the other, we do, as poets in their diction and quacks of
all denominations do in their reasoning, put a part for the whole, and
at once soothe our envy and gratify our love of the marvelous, by the
sweeping proverb, "Fortune favors fools."

II

THE DESTINY OF THE UNITED STATES[16]

The possible destiny of the United States of America--as a nation of a
hundred millions of freemen--stretching from the Atlantic to the
Pacific, living under the laws of Alfred, and speaking the language of
Shakespeare and Milton, is an august conception. Why should we not
wish to see it realized? America would then be England viewed through
a solar microscope; Great Britain in a state of glorious
magnification! How deeply to be lamented is the spirit of hostility
and sneering which some of the popular books of travels have shown in
treating of the Americans! They hate us, no doubt, just as brothers
hate; but they respect the opinion of an Englishman concerning
themselves ten times as much as that of a native of any other country
on earth. A very little humoring of their prejudices, and some
courtesy of language and demeanor on the part of Englishmen, would
work wonders, even as it is, with the public mind of the Americans.

Capt. Basil Hall's[17] book is certainly very entertaining and
instructive; but, in my judgment, his sentiments upon many points, and
more especially his mode of expression, are unwise and uncharitable.
After all, are not most of the things shown up with so much bitterness
by him mere national foibles, parallels to which every people has and
must of necessity have?

What you say about the quarrel in the United States is sophistical. No
doubt, taxation may, and perhaps in some cases must, press unequally,
or apparently so, on different classes of people in a state. In such
cases there is a hardship; but in the long run, the matter is fully
compensated to the overtaxed class. For example, take the householders
in London who complain so bitterly of the house and window taxes. Is
it not pretty clear that, whether such householder be a tradesman who
indemnifies himself in the price of his goods; or a letter of lodgings
who does so in his rent; or a stockholder who receives it back again
in his dividends; or a country gentleman who has saved so much fresh
levy on his land or his other property; one way or other, it comes at
last pretty nearly to the same thing, tho the p