If they wish to have an idea of what the French may become, they must keep their faith in all that America finds precious and invaluable,—in free institutions, in popular education, and, above all, in the heart of the people. Never let them believe that while freedom ennobles the Anglo-Saxon, it brutalizes the Gaul. Despotism brutalizes for long centuries, and freedom cannot ennoble in a moment. But give it time and room, and it will ennoble. And let Americans who go to Paris remember that they should there represent republican virtue and intelligence.
How far this is from being the case some of us may know, and others guess. Americans who visit Paris very generally relax their rules of decorum and indulge in practices which they would not venture to introduce at home. Hence they are looked upon with some disfavor by the more serious part of the French people, while the frivolous ridicule them at will. But I could wish that, in visiting a nation to whom we Americans owe so much, we could think of something besides our own amusement and the buying of pretty things to adorn our persons and our houses. I could wish that we might visit schools, prisons, Protestant churches, and hear something of the charities and reforms of the place, and of what the best thinkers are doing and saying. I blush to think of the gold which Americans squander in Paris, and of the bales of merchandise of all sorts which we carry away. Far better would it be if we made friends with the best people, exchanging with them our best thought and experience, helping and being helped by them in the good works which redeem the world. Better than the full trunk and empty purse, which usually mark a return from Paris, will be a full heart and a hand clasping across the water another hand, pure and resolute as itself,—the hand of progress, the hand of order, the hand of brotherly kindness and charity.
Greece Revisited
I SPEAK of a country to which all civilized countries are deeply indebted.
The common speech of Europe and America shows this. In whatever way the languages of the western world have been woven and got together, they all show here and there some golden gleam which carries us back to the Hellenic tongue. Philosophy, science, and common thought alike borrow their phraseology from this ancient source.
I need scarcely say by what a direct descent all arts may claim to have been recreated by Greek genius, nor can I exaggerate the importance of the Greek poets, philosophers, and historians in the history of literature. Rules of correct thinking and writing, the nice balance of rhetoric, the methods of oratory, the notions of polity, of the correlations of social and national interests,—in all of these departments the Greeks may claim to have been our masters, and may call us their slow and blundering pupils.