My life : a record of events and opinions - Wallace-online.org

A LECTURE-TOUR IN AMERICA 287over a large part of its surface it has been reducedto a state of unkempt, sordid ugliness ; and it canbe brought back into a state of beauty only byfurther touches of the same hands more intelligentlyapplied." ^Turning now from the land to the people, whatcan we say of our American cousins as a race and asa nation ? The great thing to keep in mind is, thatthey are, largely and primarily, of the same blood andof the same nature as ourselves, with characters andhabits formed in part by the evil traditions inheritedfrom us, in part by the influence of the new environmentto which they have been exposed. Just as weowe our good and bad qualities to the intermixture andstruggle of somewhat dissimilar peoples, so do they.Briton and Roman, Saxon and Dane, Norsemen andNorman-French, Scotch and Irish Celts—all haveintermingled in various proportions, and helped tocreate that energetic amalgam known the world overas Englishmen.So North America has been largelysettled by the English, partly by Dutch, French,and Spanish, whose territories were soon absorbedby conquest or purchase ; while, during the lastcentury, a continuous stream of immigrants—Germans,Irish, Highland and Lowland Scotch, Scandinavians,Italians, Russians—has flowed in, and isslowly but surely becoming amalgamated into onegreat Anglo-American people.Most of the evil influences under which theUnited States have grown to their present conditionof leaders in civilization, and a great power amongWethe nations of the world, they received from us.gave them the example of religious intolerance and»The Century, June, 1887.