English Writers On America - Prose Poem Rhyme Scheme and Analysis
Rhyme Scheme: AB C D C E F G H I J K L M I N O P J J Q Q EN| Methinks I see in my mind a noble and puissant nation rousting herself like a strong man after sleep and shaking her invincible locks methinks I see her as an eagle mewing her mighty youth and kindling her endazzled eyes at the full mid day beam | A |
| MILTON ON THE LIBERTY OF THE PRESS | B |
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| It is with feelings of deep regret that I observe the literary animosity daily growing up between England and America Great curiosity has been awakened of late with respect to the United States and the London press has teemed with volumes of travels through the Republic but they seem intended to diffuse error rather than knowledge and so successful have they been that notwithstanding the constant intercourse between the nations there is no people concerning whom the great mass of the British public have less pure information or entertain more numerous prejudices | C |
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| English travellers are the best and the worst in the world Where no motives of pride or interest intervene none can equal them for profound and philosophical views of society or faithful and graphical description of external objects but when either the interest or reputation of their own country comes in collision with that of another they go to the opposite extreme and forget their usual probity and candor in the indulgence of splenetic remark and an illiberal spirit of ridicule | D |
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| Hence their travels are more honest and accurate the more remote the country described I would place implicit confidence in an Englishman's description of the regions beyond the cataracts of the Nile of unknown islands in the Yellow Sea of the interior of India or of any other tract which other travellers might be apt to picture out with the illusions of their fancies But I would cautiously receive his account of his immediate neighbors and of those nations with which he is in habits of most frequent intercourse However I might be disposed to trust his probity I dare not trust his prejudices | C |
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| It has also been the peculiar lot of our country to be visited by the worst kind of English travellers While men of philosophical spirit and cultivated minds have been sent from England to ransack the poles to penetrate the deserts and to study the manners and customs of barbarous nations with which she can have no permanent intercourse of profit or pleasure it has been left to the broken down tradesman the scheming adventurer the wandering mechanic the Manchester and Birmingham agent to be her oracles respecting America From such sources she is content to receive her information respecting a country in a singular state of moral and physical development a country in which one of the greatest political experiments in the history of the world is now performing and which presents the most profound and momentous studies to the statesman and the philosopher | E |
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| That such men should give prejudicial accounts of America is not a matter of surprise The themes it offers for contemplation are too vast and elevated for their capacities The national character is yet in a state of fermentation it may have its frothiness and sediment but its ingredients are sound and wholesome it has already given proofs of powerful and generous qualities and the whole promises to settle down into something substantially excellent But the causes which are operating to strengthen and ennoble it and its daily indications of admirable properties are all lost upon these purblind observers who are only affected by the little asperities incident to its present situation They are capable of judging only of the surface of things of those matters which come in contact with their private interests and personal gratifications They miss some of the snug conveniences and petty comforts which belong to an old highly finished and over populous state of society where the ranks of useful labor are crowded and many earn a painful and servile subsistence by studying the very caprices of appetite and self indulgence These minor comforts however are all important in the estimation of narrow minds which either do not perceive or will not acknowledge that they are more than counterbalanced among us by great and generally diffused blessings | F |
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| They may perhaps have been disappointed in some unreasonable expectation of sudden gain They may have pictured America to themselves an El Dorado where gold and silver abounded and the natives were lacking in sagacity and where they were to become strangely and suddenly rich in some unforeseen but easy manner The same weakness of mind that indulges absurd expectations produces petulance in disappointment Such persons become embittered against the country on finding that there as everywhere else a man must sow before he can reap must win wealth by industry and talent and must contend with the common difficulties of nature and the shrewdness of an intelligent and enterprising people | G |
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| Perhaps through mistaken or ill directed hospitality or from the prompt disposition to cheer and countenance the stranger prevalent among my countrymen they may have been treated with unwonted respect in America and having been accustomed all their lives to consider themselves below the surface of good society and brought up in a servile feeling of inferiority they become arrogant on the common boon of civility they attribute to the lowliness of others their own elevation and underrate a society where there are no artificial distinctions and where by any chance such individuals as themselves can rise to consequence | H |
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| One would suppose however that information coming from such sources on a subject where the truth is so desirable would be received with caution by the censors of the press that the motives of these men their veracity their opportunities of inquiry and observation and their capacities for judging correctly would be rigorously scrutinized before their evidence was admitted in such sweeping extent against a kindred nation The very reverse however is the case and it furnishes a striking instance of human inconsistency Nothing can surpass the vigilance with which English critics will examine the credibility of the traveller who publishes an account of some distant and comparatively unimportant country How warily will they compare the measurements of a pyramid or the description of a ruin and how sternly will they censure any inaccuracy in these contributions of merely curious knowledge while they will receive with eagerness and unhesitating faith the gross misrepresentations of coarse and obscure writers concerning a country with which their own is placed in the most important and delicate relations Nay they will even make these apocryphal volumes text books on which to enlarge with a zeal and an ability worthy of a more generous cause | I |
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| I shall not however dwell on this irksome and hackneyed topic nor should I have adverted to it but for the undue interest apparently taken in it by my countrymen and certain injurious effects which I apprehend it might produce upon the national feeling We attach too much consequence to these attacks They cannot do us any essential injury The tissue of misrepresentations attempted to be woven round us are like cobwebs woven round the limbs of an infant giant Our country continually outgrows them One falsehood after another falls off of itself We have but to live on and every day we live a whole volume of refutation | J |
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| All the writers of England united if we could for a moment suppose their great minds stooping to so unworthy a combination could not conceal our rapidly growing importance and matchless prosperity They could not conceal that these are owing not merely to physical and local but also to moral causes to the political liberty the general diffusion of knowledge the prevalence of sound moral and religious principles which give force and sustained energy to the character of a people and which in fact have been the acknowledged and wonderful supporters of their own national power and glory | K |
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| But why are we so exquisitely alive to the aspersions of England Why do we suffer ourselves to be so affected by the contumely she has endeavored to cast upon us It is not in the opinion of England alone that honor lives and reputation has its being The world at large is the arbiter of a nation's fame with its thousand eyes it witnesses a nation's deeds and from their collective testimony is national glory or national disgrace established | L |
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| For ourselves therefore it is comparatively of but little importance whether England does us justice or not it is perhaps of far more importance to herself She is instilling anger and resentment into the bosom of a youthful nation to grow with its growth and strengthen with its strength If in America as some of her writers are laboring to convince her she is hereafter to find an invidious rival and a gigantic foe she may thank those very writers for having provoked rivalship and irritated hostility Every one knows the all pervading influence of literature at the present day and how much the opinions and passions of mankind are under its control The mere contests of the sword are temporary their wounds are but in the flesh and it is the pride of the generous to forgive and forget them but the slanders of the pen pierce to the heart they rankle longest in the noblest spirits they dwell ever present in the mind and render it morbidly sensitive to the most trifling collision It is but seldom that any one overt act produces hostilities between two nations there exists most commonly a previous jealousy and ill will a predisposition to take offence Trace these to their cause and how often will they be found to originate in the mischievous effusions of mercenary writers who secure in their closets and for ignominious bread concoct and circulate the venom that is to inflame the generous and the brave | M |
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| I am not laying too much stress upon this point for it applies most emphatically to our particular case Over no nation does the press hold a more absolute control than over the people of America for the universal education of the poorest classes makes every individual a reader There is nothing published in England on the subject of our country that does not circulate through every part of it There is not a calumny dropt from an English pen nor an unworthy sarcasm uttered by an English statesman that does not go to blight good will and add to the mass of latent resentment Possessing then as England does the fountain head whence the literature of the language flows how completely is it in her power and how truly is it her duty to make it the medium of amiable and magnanimous feeling a stream where the two nations might meet together and drink in peace and kindness Should she however persist in turning it to waters of bitterness the time may come when she may repent her folly The present friendship of America may be of but little moment to her but the future destinies of that country do not admit of a doubt over those of England there lower some shadows of uncertainty Should then a day of gloom arrive should those reverses overtake her from which the proudest empires have not been exempt she may look back with regret at her infatuation in repulsing from her side a nation she might have grappled to her bosom and thus destroying her only chance for real friendship beyond the boundaries of her own dominions | I |
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| There is a general impression in England that the people of the United States are inimical to the parent country It is one of the errors which have been diligently propagated by designing writers There is doubtless considerable political hostility and a general soreness at the illiberality of the English press but collectively speaking the prepossessions of the people are strongly in favor of England Indeed at one time they amounted in many parts of the Union to an absurd degree of bigotry The bare name of Englishman was a passport to the confidence and hospitality of every family and too often gave a transient currency to the worthless and the ungrateful Throughout the country there was something of enthusiasm connected with the idea of England We looked to it with a hallowed feeling of tenderness and veneration as the land of our forefathers the august repository of the monuments and antiquities of our race the birthplace and mausoleum of the sages and heroes of our paternal history After our own country there was none in whose glory we more delighted none whose good opinion we were more anxious to possess none toward which our hearts yearned with such throbbings of warm consanguinity Even during the late war whenever there was the least opportunity for kind feelings to spring forth it was the delight of the generous spirits of our country to show that in the midst of hostilities they still kept alive the sparks of future friendship | N |
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| Is all this to be at an end Is this golden band of kindred sympathies so rare between nations to be broken forever Perhaps it is for the best it may dispel an allusion which might have kept us in mental vassalage which might have interfered occasionally with our true interests and prevented the growth of proper national pride But it is hard to give up the kindred tie and there are feelings dearer than interest closer to the heart than pride that will still make us cast back a look of regret as we wander farther and farther from the paternal roof and lament the waywardness of the parent that would repel the affections of the child | O |
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| Short sighted and injudicious however as the conduct or England may be in this system of aspersion recrimination on our part would be equally ill judged I speak not of a prompt and spirited vindication of our country or the keenest castigation of her slanderers but I allude to a disposition to retaliate in kind to retort sarcasm and inspire prejudice which seems to be spreading widely among our writers Let us guard particularly against such a temper for it would double the evil instead of redressing the wrong Nothing is so easy and inviting as the retort of abuse and sarcasm but it is a paltry and an unprofitable contest It is the alternative of a morbid mind fretted into petulance rather than warmed into indignation If England is willing to permit the mean jealousies of trade or the rancorous animosities of politics to deprave the integrity of her press and poison the fountain of public opinion let us beware of her example She may deem it her interest to diffuse error and engender antipathy for the purpose of checking emigration we have no purpose of the kind to serve Neither have we any spirit of national jealousy to gratify for as yet in all our rivalships with England we are the rising and the gaining party There can be no end to answer therefore but the gratification of resentment a mere spirit of retaliation and even that is impotent Our retorts are never republished in England they fall short therefore of their aim but they foster a querulous and peevish temper among our writers they sour the sweet flow of our early literature and sow thorns and brambles among its blossoms What is still worse they circulate through our own country and as far as they have effect excite virulent national prejudices This last is the evil most especially to be deprecated Governed as we are entirely by public opinion the utmost care should be taken to preserve the purity of the public mind Knowledge is power and truth is knowledge whoever therefore knowingly propagates a prejudice wilfully saps the foundation of his country's strength | P |
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| The members of a republic above all other men should be candid and dispassionate They are individually portions of the sovereign mind and sovereign will and should be enabled to come to all questions of national concern with calm and unbiassed judgments From the peculiar nature of our relations with England we must have more frequent questions of a difficult and delicate character with her than with any other nation questions that affect the most acute and excitable feelings and as in the adjustment of these our national measures must ultimately be determined by popular sentiment we cannot be too anxiously attentive to purify it from all latent passion or prepossession | J |
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| Opening too as we do an asylum for strangers every portion of the earth we should receive all with impartiality It should be our pride to exhibit an example of one nation at least destitute of national antipathies and exercising not merely the overt acts of hospitality but those more rare and noble courtesies which spring from liberality of opinion | J |
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| What have we to do with national prejudices They are the inveterate diseases of old countries contracted in rude and ignorant ages when nations knew but little of each other and looked beyond their own boundaries with distrust and hostility We on the contrary have sprung into national existence in an enlightened and philosophic age when the different parts of the habitable world and the various branches of the human family have been indefatigably studied and made known to each other and we forego the advantages of our birth if we do not shake off the national prejudices as we would the local superstitions of the old world | Q |
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| But above all let us not be influenced by any angry feelings so far as to shut our eyes to the perception of what is really excellent and amiable in the English character We are a young people necessarily an imitative one and must take our examples and models in a great degree from the existing nations of Europe There is no country more worthy of our study than England The spirit of her constitution is most analogous to ours The manners of her people their intellectual activity their freedom of opinion their habits of thinking on those subjects which concern the dearest interests and most sacred charities of private life are all congenial to the American character and in fact are all intrinsically excellent for it is in the moral feeling of the people that the deep foundations of British prosperity are laid and however the superstructure may be timeworn or overrun by abuses there must be something solid in the basis admirable in the materials and stable in the structure of an edifice that so long has towered unshaken amidst the tempests of the world | Q |
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| Let it be the pride of our writers therefore discarding all feelings of irritation and disdaining to retaliate the illiberality of British authors to speak of the English nation without prejudice and with determined candor While they rebuke the indiscriminating bigotry with which some of our countrymen admire and imitate every thing English merely because it is English let them frankly point out what is really worthy of approbation We may thus place England before us as a perpetual volume of reference wherein are recorded sound deductions from ages of experience and while we avoid the errors and absurdities which may have crept into the page we may draw thence golden maxims of practical wisdom wherewith to strengthen and to embellish our national character | E |
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Washington Irving
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