up a combination never
equalled in the world._"--The late United States Senator Hoar,
in _An Autobiography of Seventy Years_.

"_The result of the organisation of the American colonies into
a state, and of the bringing together of the diverse
communities contained in these colonies, was the creation not
merely of a new nation, but of a new temperament. How far this
temperament was to arise from a change of climate, and how far
from a new political organisation, no one could then foresee,
nor is its origin yet fully analysed; but the fact itself is
now coming to be more and more recognised. It may be that
Nature said at about that time: 'Thus far the English is my
best race; but we have had Englishmen enough; now for another
turning of the globe, and for a further novelty. We need
something with a little more buoyancy than the Englishman; let
us lighten the structure, even at some peril in the process.
Put in one drop more of nervous fluid and make the American.'
With that drop, a new range of promise opened on the human
race, and a lighter, finer, more highly organised type of
mankind was born._"--Thomas Wentworth Higginson, _Atlantic
Monthly_, 1886.

"_The foreign observer in America is at once struck by the
fact that the average of intelligence, as that intelligence
manifests itself in the spirit of inquiry, in the interest
taken in a great variety of things, and in alertness of
judgment, is much higher among the masses in the United States
than anywhere else. This is certainly not owing to any
superiority of the public school system in this country--or,
if such superiority exists, not to that alone--but rather to
the fact that in the United States the individual is
constantly brought into interested contact with a greater
variety of things and is admitted to active participation in
the exercise of functions which in other countries are left to
the care of a superior authority. I have frequently been
struck by the remarkable expansion of the horizon effected by
a few years of American life, in the minds of immigrants who
had come from somewhat benighted regions, and by the mental
enterprise and keen discernment with which they took hold of
problems to which, in their comparatively torpid condition in
their native countrie