“Yes, it is only the feeling of self-assertion that rises against the self-complacency of the English,” said the Warden. “Nothing else; for what else have you become the subject of this noble weakness of patriotism? You cannot love anything beyond the soil of your own estate; or in your case, if your heart is very large, you may possibly take in, in a quiet sort of way, the whole of New England. What more is possible? How can you feel a heart’s love for a mere political arrangement, like your Union? How can you be loyal, where personal attachment--the lofty and noble and unselfish attachment of a subject to his prince--is out of the question? where your sovereign is felt to be a mere man like yourselves, whose petty struggles, whose ambition--mean before it grew to be audacious--you have watched, and know him to be just the same now as yesterday, and that to-morrow he will be walking unhonored amongst you again? Your system is too bare and meagre for human nature to love, or to endure it long. These stately degrees of society, that have so strong a hold upon us in England, are not to be done away with so lightly as you think. Your experiment is not yet a success by any means; and you will live to see it result otherwise than you think!” “It is natural for you Englishmen to feel thus,” said Redclyffe; “although, ever since I set my foot on your shores,--forgive me, but you set me the example of free speech,--I have had a feeling of coming change among all that you look upon as so permanent, so everlasting; and though your thoughts dwell fondly on things as they are and have been, there is a deep destruction somewhere in this country, that is inevitably impelling it in the path of my own. But I care not for this. I do aver that I love my country, that I am proud of its institutions, that I have a feeling unknown, probably, to any but a republican, but which is the proudest thing in me, that there is no man above me,--for my ruler is only myself, in the person of another, whose office I impose upon him,--nor any below me. If you would understand me, I would tell you of the shame I felt when first, on setting foot in this country, I heard a man speaking of his birth as giving him privileges; saw him looking down on laboring men, as of an inferior race. And what I can never understand, is the pride which you positively seem to feel in having men and classes of men above you, born to privileges which you can never hope to share. It may be a thing to be endured, but surely not one to be absolutely proud of. And yet an Englishman is so.” “Ah! I see we lack a ground to meet upon,” said the Warden. “We can never truly understand each other. What you have last mentioned is one of our inner mysteries. It is not a thing to be reasoned about, but to be felt,--to be born within one; and I uphold it to be a generous sentiment, and good for the human heart.”