Yet no
other land in the world has so close an alliance with our own; and,
while we are culpably ignorant of almost everything but its
peculiarities and its vices, no other country studies our history, and
watches our progress, with greater interest or more solicitude. Any
English youngster will tell you that Americans speak through their
noses, spit, and hold slaves; but how few, even of the most
intelligent, know that better English is spoken by the mass of
Americans, than by the majority of English citizens, and that education
is practically an institution of the United States, and universal;
though at home it hardly exists as a system, and can never be extended
in any truly national direction without exciting a war of parties! Be
the reason what it may, we have been in the habit of looking down on
America. We shall soon perhaps have to look up to it.
"It is but sixty-two years since the foundation of the Republic. It
then consisted of thirteen small States. It now comprises twenty-nine
States; without reckoning the new dominions of Oregon, California, New,
Mexico, and Texas. Ten years ago its area was 2,000,000 square miles,
or more than 1,300,000,000 acres. That area has become, in 1850,
3,252,689 square miles, or 2,081,717,760 acres.
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