"No need of that, if he ever had a claim to it. You, who know so much about birth, should know that its rights are ineffaceable. This was well understood by those whom it concerned, in the time of our first ancestors. We have it on high heraldic authority of two hundred years ago, that a gentleman has a right so to be styled in legal proceedings, 'although he be a husbandman.' 'For, although a gentleman go to the plough and common labor for a maintenance, yet he is a gentleman.' The New-England founders had no fear of derogating in taking hold of anything that needed to be done; had no fear that their children could derogate in following any calling for which their tastes and their abilities qualified them. Carrying to it the ideas, feelings, and manners of the gentle class, they could ennoble the humblest occupation; it could not lower them.
"It is out of this respect that good blood has for itself, that the true New-Englander, whatever his station, is not ashamed of a humbler relative. You are amazed down here at the hardihood of a Northern man who speaks coolly of a cousin of his who is a blacksmith, it may be, or a small farmer; and you bless yourselves inwardly for your greater refinement. But you are English, you say, not New-English.
"When I was in Perara, dining with one of the great folks there, I happened to inquire after a cousin of his, an unlucky fellow, who, after trying his fortune in half the cities of the Union, had had the indiscretion to settle down in a very humble business, within a stone's throw of his wealthy namesake. I had known him formerly, and could not think of leaving Perara without calling on him. To my surprise, my question threw the family into visible confusion. They gave me his address, indeed, but in a way as if they excused themselves for knowing it. This may be English, but it is not Old-English.
"In the Old England which we may call ours,—for it was before, and not long before, she founded the New,—a laboring man came to the Earl of Huntingdon, Lieutenant of Leicestershire, to pray for the discharge of his only son, the staff of his age, who had been 'pressed into the wars.' The Earl inquires the name of his petitioner. The old man hesitates, fearing to be presumptuous, for his family name is the same with that of the nobleman he addresses; but being urged, he takes courage to pronounce it. 'Cousin Hastings,' said the Earl then, 'my kinsman, your son, shall not be pressed.' This 'modesty in the poor man and courtesy in the great man' were found in that day 'conformable to the gentle blood in both.' Those who know New England know that this absence of assumption and of presumption, this modest kindliness and this dignified reserve, are characteristic there, testifying to the sources from which it derives.
"I am a cosmopolite. I could never see why I should think the better or the worse of a place, for my happening to draw my first breath there. I am of the company of the truth-seekers. A fact, though it were an ugly one, is of more worth to me than a thousand pleasantest fancies. But a fact is not the less one for being agreeable: the extension of a fine race is an agreeable fact to a naturalist.
"The earlier emigrations to New England were emphatically aristocratic emigrations. Their aim was to found precisely what you claim to show here. Their aim was to found a community of gentlemen,—a community, that is to say, religious, just, generous, courteous. They proposed equality, but equality on a high plane. Their work has been hindered by its very success. The claimants for adoption have crowded in faster than full provision could be made for them. They cannot instantly be assimilated. Their voices sometimes rise above those of the true children. But New England is there, strong and tranquil. Her heart has room for all that ask a place in it. She welcomes these orphans to it motherly, and will make them all thoroughly her own with time.
"Come to us, Westlake. I have planned out a tour for you."
And Dr. Borrow, tracing the route he had marked out for his friend, sketched the country it led through, comparing what came before us with reminiscences of other travels. No contrasts here of misery with splendor rebuke a thoughtless admiration. Nowhere the picturesqueness of ruin and squalor; everywhere the lovely, living beauty of healthfulness, dignity, and order.
With what a swell of feeling does the distant New-Englander listen to accounts of family life in the old home! How dear every detail, making that real again which had come to be like a sweet, shadowy dream!