CHAPTER XXV.
And still New England.—Sui Generis.—Her Ruggedness the Soil of Liberty.—The Contrast.—The New England Conservative.—The New England Man of Business.—The West has no Past.—Fast, and Hospitable.—Saxon Blood and Saxon Spirit.
Such is a picture of some of the old-school New England men, as they flourished years ago. Such are some of the portraits and images that rise up, and stand out vividly before me.
New England is unlike anything the pioneer sees, hears, or feels in a wilderness country. She is unlike his country in her creation. Her solemn mountains, lone lakes—her rushing streams, that dart like arrows from her precipices—the roar of her cataracts, amid her rugged gorges—her long and tranquil reaches of valley—the cold, solemn, and quiet pictures of Nature that she mingles and groups on her canvas, give soul and spirit to the people who are nursed upon her soil; and they, too, grow gigantic, like the objects around them—patriotism, integrity, firmness, germinate and become athletic in such fastnesses: Liberty last expires upon the mountains.
Why was civil and religious liberty planted, amid December snows, upon her inhospitable coast? Why was it committed to her rugged elements of Nature, if not to harden the men, and strengthen and preserve principles? Had the May Flower discharged its freight of ideas amid abundance, soft skies, and a teeming soil, it is not certain that the Declaration would have been signed in 1776.
How different is the great West! One great plain of prairie and woodland, reaching from zone to zone, fairly bursting with the richness of its varied soil and climate—reserved, as it were, by Providence, to receive the less hardy and vigorous generations which time might throw off upon her—tame in scenery, but filled with the resources of wealth and power.
But New England is not only unlike the West in its creation, but her people, from a thousand causes, have fixed and established habits and customs as unlike. And all these have become as stereotyped by ages, as the figures upon a panorama. The New England panorama, in all its essential features, rolls off to-day as it did years ago. Who has not been impressed with this truth? Select an old New England town—analyze it as you once knew it, and as it is now. How was it, how is it made up? It was finished then—the last blow was struck, the last foundation laid, the rubbish all cleared away; as if it only waited for the final explosion of all things—even the magnificent elms that solemnly swept its streets, grew no longer—they, too, had reached maturity, and gone to sleep. So it is now.
A western village, in its general aspect, presents the very reverse of this. Like Jonah's gourd, it is the "son of a night." It seems to have been thrown up by an army on the march—and such is the fact—the mighty army of pioneers, who are here to-day and there to-morrow, and who are only traced by such huge footsteps.
The people of a New England village appear to have been procured, assorted and arranged, for their positions and occupations. Each person treads in his own circle—each is stamped with a value—branded good, bad, or indifferent. There is the conservative gentleman—the dash that connects generations—he who has taken a preëmption right to respectability—whose patent dates away back among historical reminiscences and dead bones—whose presence is prima facie evidence of all that is claimed and exercised. A man of authority is he. He carries an odor of the past around with him—an air—a something that smells of blood—a consciousness that some time, or somehow, somebody or something had given his ancestors a cross that followed and sublimated his whole race.