res but its invisible name; and even its
name, as I have said, seems to make a boast of novelty.

That is something like a sincere first impression of the atmosphere of
New York. Those who think that is the atmosphere of America have never
got any farther than New York. We might almost say that they have never
entered America, any more than if they had been detained like
undesirable aliens at Ellis Island. And indeed there are a good many
undesirable aliens detained in Manhattan Island too. But of that I will
not speak, being myself an alien with no particular pretensions to be
desirable. Anyhow, such is New York; but such is not the New World. The
great American Republic contains very considerable varieties, and of
these varieties I necessarily saw far too little to allow me to
generalise. But from the little I did see, I should venture on the
generalisation that the great part of America is singularly and even
strikingly unlike New York. It goes without saying that New York is very
unlike the vast agricultural plains and small agricultural towns of the
Middle West, which I did see. It may be conjectured with some confidence
that it is very unlike what is called the Wild and sometimes the Woolly
West, which I did not see. But I am here comparing New York, not with
the newer states of the prairie or the mountains, but with the other
older cities of the Atlantic coast. And New York, as it seems to me, is
quite vitally different from the other historic cities of America. It is
so different that it shows them all for the moment in a false light, as
a long white searchlight will throw a light that is fantastic and
theatrical upon ancient and quiet villages folded in the everlasting
hills. Philadelphia and Boston and Baltimore are more like those quiet
villages than they are like New York.

If I were to call this book 'The Antiquities of America,' I should give
rise to misunderstanding and possibly to annoyance. And yet the double
sense in such words is an undeserved misfortune for them. We talk of
Plato or the Parthenon or the Greek passion for beauty as parts of the
antique, but hardly of the antiquated. When we call them ancient it is
not because they have perished, but rather because they have survived.
In the same way I heard some New Yorkers refer to Philadelphia or
Baltimore as 'dead towns.' They mean by a dead town a town that has had
the impudence not to die. Such people are astonished to find an ancient
thing aliv