An octopus of a city, New York, might be taken as the symbol of this extraordinary nation; it displays the vertigo, the audacity, and all the lack of proportion that characterise American life. Near the poverty of the Ghetto and the disturbing spectacle of Chinatown you may admire the wealth of Fifth Avenue and the marble palaces which plagiarise the architecture of the Tuscan cities. Opposite the obscure crowds of emigrants herded in the docks you will see the refined luxury of the plutocratic {309} hotels, and facing the majestic buildings of Broadway, the houses of the parallel avenues, which are like the temporary booths of a provincial fair. Confusion, uproar, instability--these are the striking characteristics of the North American democracy. Neither irony nor grace nor scepticism, gifts of the old civilisations, can make way against the plebeian brutality, the excessive optimism, the violent individualism of the people. All these things contribute to the triumph of mediocrity; the multitude of primary schools, the vices of utilitarianism, the cult of the average citizen, the transatlantic M. Homais, and the tyranny of opinion noted by Tocqueville; and in this vulgarity, which is devoid of traditions and has no leading aristocracy, a return to the primitive type of the redskin, which has already been noted by close observers, is threatening the proud democracy. From the excessive tension of wills, from the elementary state of culture, from the perpetual unrest of life, from the harshness of the industrial struggle, anarchy and violence will be born in the future. In a hundred years men will seek in vain for the "American soul," the "genius of America," elsewhere than in the indisciplined force or the violence which ignores moral laws.