feel free
to understand. Terribly costly editions these are, and in a type
utterly hideous; but while nations refuse to see the fact in a more
agreeable presentation, it may probably feel compelled to go into this
ugly, but indubitable shape.--Well, somewhat less than a century since,
England had committed herself to the proposition, that America was
really a part or dependency of Europe, a lower-caste Europe, having
about the same relation to the Cisatlantic continent that the farmer's
barn has to his house. Mild refutations of this modest doctrine having
been attempted without success, posters in the necessary red-letter
type were issued at Concord, Bunker Hill, Yorktown, etc., which might
be translated somewhat thus:--"America has its own independent root in
the world's centre, its own independent destiny in the Providential
thought." This important fact, having then and there exploded itself
into legibility, and come to be known and read of all men, admits now
of no dispute, and requires no confirmation. It is evidently so. The
New World is not merely a newly-discovered hay-loft and dairy-stall for
the Old, but is itself a proper household, of equal dignity with any.
To draw the due inferences from this, to see what is implied in it, is
all that we are here required to do.

Be it, then, especially noted that the continent by itself can take no
such rank. A spirituality must appear to crown and complete this great
continental body; otherwise America is acephalous. Unless there be an
American Man, the continent is inevitably but an appendage, a kitchen
and laundry for the European parlor. American Man,--and the word Man is
to receive a large emphasis. Observe, that it does not refer to mere
population. The fact required will hardly be reported in the census.
Indeed, there is quite too much talk about population, about
prospective increase of numbers. We are to have thirty millions of
inhabitants, they say, in 1860; soon forty, fifty, one hundred
millions. Doubtless; and if that be all, one yawns over the statem