If, then, America is something vastly more than has hitherto been understood by the word nation, it is proper that we attach to that other word, patriotism, a significance broader and loftier than has been conceived till now. By so much as the idea that we represent is great, by so much are we, in comparison with it, inevitably chargeable with littleness and short-comings. For we are of the same flesh and blood as our neighbors; it is only our opportunities and our responsibilities that are fairer and weightier than theirs. Circumstances afford every excuse to them, but none to us. "_E Pluribus Unum_" is a frivolous motto; our true one should be, "_Noblesse oblige_." But, with a strange perversity, in all matters of comparison between ourselves and others, we display what we are pleased to call our patriotism by an absurd touchiness as to points wherein Europe, with its settled and polished civilization, must needs be our superior; and are quite indifferent about those things by which our real strength is constituted. Can we not be content to learn from Europe the graces, the refinements, the amenities of life, so long as we are able to teach her life itself? For my part, I never saw in England any appurtenance of civilization, calculated to add to the convenience and commodiousness of existence, that did not seem to me to surpass anything of the kind that we have in this country. Notwithstanding which--and I am far, indeed, from having any pretensions to asceticism--I would have been fairly stifled at the idea of having to spend my life there. No American can live in Europe, unless he means to return home, or unless, at any rate, he returns here in mind, in hope, in belief. For an American to accept England, or any other country, as both a mental and physical finality, would, it seems to me, be tantamount to renouncing his very life. To enjoy English comforts at the cost of adopting English opinions, would be about as pleasant as to have the privilege of retaining one's body on condition of surrendering one's soul, and would, indeed, amount to just about the same thing. I fail, therefore, to feel any apprehension as to our literature becoming Europeanized, because whatever is American in it must lie deeper than anything European can penetrate. More than that, I believe and hope that our novelists will deal with Europe a great deal more, and a great deal more intelligently, than they have done yet. It is a true and healthy artistic instinct that leads them to do so. Hawthorne--and no American writer had a better right than he to contradict his own argument--says, in the preface to the "Marble Faun," in a passage that has been often quoted, but will bear repetition:--