Chapter 6

He is too picked, too spruce, too affected, too odd,
As it were too peregrinate, as I may call it.
--Shakspeare.

The Anglo-American is apt to boast, and not without reason, that his
nation may claim a descent more truly honourable than that of any
other people whose history is to be credited. Whatever might have been
the weaknesses of the original colonists, their virtues have rarely
been disputed. If they were superstitious, they were sincerely pious,
and, consequently, honest. The descendants of these simple and
single-minded provincials have been content to reject the ordinary and
artificial means by which honours have been perpetuated in families,
and have substituted a standard which brings the individual himself to
the ordeal of the public estimation, paying as little deference as may
be to those who have gone before him. This forbearance, self-denial,
or common sense, or by whatever term it may be thought proper to
distinguish the measure, has subjected the nation to the imputation of
having an ignoble origin. Were it worth the enquiry, it would be found
that more than a just proportion of the renowned names of the mother-
country are, at this hour, to be found in her ci-devant colonies; and
it is a fact well known to the few who have wasted sufficient time to
become the masters of so unimportant a subject, that the direct
descendants of many a failing line, which the policy of England has
seen fit to sustain by collateral supporters, are now discharging the
simple duties of citizens in the bosom of this republic. The hive has
remained stationary, and they who flutter around the venerable straw
are wont to claim the empty distinction of antiquity, regardless alike
of the frailty of their tenement and of the enjoyments of the numerous
and vigorous swarms that are culling the fresher sweets of a virgin
world. But as this is a subject which belongs rather to the politician
and historian than to the humble narrator of the homebred incidents we
are about to reveal, we must confine our reflections to such matters
as have an immediate relation to the subject of the tale.

Although the citizen of the United States may claim so just an
ancestry, he is far from being exempt from the penalties of his fallen
race. Like causes are well known to produce like effects. That
tribute, which it would seem nations must ever pay, by way of a weary
probation, around the shrine of Ceres, before they can be indulged in
her fullest favours, is in some measure exacted in America, from the
descendant instead of the ancestor. The march of civilisation with us,
has a strong analogy to that of all coming events, which are known "to
cast their shadows before." The gradations of society, from that state
which