=263. Dominance of the Colonial Spirit.=—In their mental attitude toward life the American people had changed about as little as in their occupations and customs. Although in Jonathan Edwards and Benjamin Franklin they had produced two great writers, in Franklin and Benjamin Thompson (Count Rumford, 1733–1814) eminent scientists, and in Benjamin West (1738–1820) and J. S. Copley (1737–1815) distinguished painters; although they had developed as great statesmen and political writers as any country could name, they still had no literature, or art, or science worthy of being called national. In other words, though the people of the United States had won their political independence, they were still, in their modes of thought and action, dominated by the spirit of colonial dependence. There were many persons who not merely imitated English manners and dress, read English books, and wrote in the current English style, but who even shared, in the main, English political ideas and prejudices. There were others who were fully as much influenced by French modes of thought and life. Here and there, in great men like Washington or Franklin, we find a sturdy originality that smacks of the soil, and undoubtedly the plainer people were little affected by foreign ideas and customs. But the towns still preserved their colonial attitude of dependence on Europe, and this was in the main true of the prosperous country families as well. In fact, the seaboard colonies were, in a way, outskirts of Europe, just as the Western communities were outskirts of the Atlantic seaboard. There was little of the enterprise and activity which throughout America to-day keep small communities from stagnating. In short, our forefathers of three generations ago were in many ways a very different race of beings from their descendants of to-day. =264. Virtue and Happiness of the People.=—Yet it would be a great mistake to suppose that the drawbacks just enumerated were in the main apparent to the American people themselves, or that they are greatly to be insisted upon in a sketch of the civilization of the period. American life might at the close of the eighteenth century seem dull and narrow to travelers from Europe, but we know that a happy, brave, free, religious people inhabited a land that yielded abundant returns to their labors, and we may readily believe that their lives were fully as useful as ours are to-day. Nor should it ever be forgotten that amid these provincial surroundings arose the greatest figure that modern history can show, and that the American people were wise enough to choose electors who would make him President. * * * * *