an American woman; that the poet most read in England was an American; that our two standard dictionaries of the English language are both American; that several American magazines count their subscribers in Great Britain by tens of thousands; that the world owes its use of anaesthetics to an American physician; that American sculptors, painters, and actors hold their own with those of other nations; that America has the largest telescopes, and the most successful astronomers; that American reapers cut the world's harvests, and American sewing machines make its garments; that the telegraph and the telephone are American inventions; that the first steamboat was built in America, and it was an American steamship that first crossed the Atlantic, while our country contains more miles of railway than all Europe; that those who eat from American plates, eat the largest and best dinners in the world; and as for American glasses, altogether too many people drink out of them. Unless we mercifully left his final {352}question unanswered, we should be obliged to say, that the United States had gotten rid of slavery, while to-day five million British subjects, all within two days' journey of the throne, tell us they find themselves virtually slaves. Yet with all our material and intellectual progress, we have hardly a right to be proud. For we have enjoyed peculiar advantages. The _Mayflower_ did not land her pilgrims on a narrow island, but on the edge of a great continent. Of that continent we have the most productive zone, stretching from ocean to ocean, and a thousand miles in breadth; while within that zone our Government has given us, for the support of educational institutions, as much land as the entire area of Great Britain and Ireland. At the same time, we have not been loaded down with a standing army, an established church, a vast landed aristocracy, and all the rubbish of royalty. In America labor receives its highest wages, and pauperism finds its least excuse. It will be no special credit to us if we become in the next half century the most powerful and prosperous and generous of nations; but it will be a great shame to us if we do not.