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Unluckily, history cannot be made to order. It is the product of ages. The proper substitute for it, as well as for the spectacular effects of monarchy, in new democratic societies, is perfection. There is no way in which we can here kindle the imaginations of the large body of men and women to whom we are every year giving an increasingly high education so well as by finish in the things we undertake to do. Nothing does so much to produce despondency about the republic, or alienation from republican institutions, among the young of the present day, as the condition of the civil service, the poor working of the post-office and the treasury or the courts, or the helplessness of legislators in dealing with the ordinary every- day problems. The largeness of the country, and the rapidity of its growth, and the comparatively low condition of foreign nations in respect to freedom, which roused people in Fourth-of-July orations forty years ago, have, like the historical reminiscences, lost their magic, and the material prosperity is now associated in people’s minds with so much moral corruption that the mention of it produces in some of the best of us a feeling not far removed from nausea. Nothing will do so much now to rouse the old enthusiasm as the spectacle of the pure working of our administrative machinery, of able and independent judges, a learned and upright bar, a respectable and purified custom-house, an enlightened and efficient treasury, and a painstaking post-office. The colleges of the country and the railroads, and indeed everything that depends on private enterprise, are rapidly becoming objects of pride; but a good deal needs to be done by the government to prevent its being a source of shame.

Mrs. Stevenson, a Philadelphia lady; the president of the Civic Club in that city, delivered an address to the club some weeks ago on its work of reform, in which we find the following passage:

“There seems to exist a mysterious, unwritten law governing the social organism which causes a natural and wholesome reaction to take place whenever tendencies, perhaps inherent in certain classes, threaten to become general, and thereby dangerous to the community. A few years ago, for instance, with the increasing facilities for foreign travel, and the corresponding increase of international intercourse, Anglomania had become so much in vogue as to form an incipient danger to the true democratic American spirit that constitutes the real strength of our nation. It was fast becoming a national habit to extol everything European–from monarchy and its aristocratic institutions down to the humblest article of dress or of household use–to the detriment of everything American; and from the upper ‘four hundred’ this habit was fast extending to the upper forty thousand. But just as our wealthy classes were beginning to make themselves positively ridiculous abroad, and almost intolerable at home, a reaction set in, and upon all sides there sprang up patriotic associations of a social order–‘Sons and Daughters of the Revolution,’ ‘Colonial Dames,’ etc.–which revived proper American self-respect among our people by teaching us to rest our pride, if pride we must have, where it legitimately should rest–upon good service rendered to our own country.”

This seems to be a shaft aimed at the practice of “going to Europe,” for the decline of “the true American spirit” and the growth of Anglomania are ascribed to the “increasing facilities for foreign travel” and “the corresponding increase of international intercourse.” If the charge be true, it is one of the most afflicting over made, because it shows that “the true democratic American spirit” suffers from what the world has hitherto considered one of the greatest triumphs of modern science, and one of the greatest blessings conferred on the race–the enormous improvement in oceanic steam navigation; that, in fact, American patriotism is very much like the Catholic faith in the Middle Ages–something naturally hostile to progress in the arts.