This tendency towards idealism becomes exaggeration often, though not intended for such, and the prefixing of superlatives is very noticeable in ordinary language. Thus glory is generally "immortal glory"; knowledge "profound knowledge"; every person partaking in public affairs, if a friend of the speaker, is ever "enlightened and patriotic," and his intelligence becomes "vast intelligence." "Our distinguished and universally beloved Governor" would be the customary reference to such a functionary; and "an era of glorious progress" would be the only way of characterising his administration. Indeed, a glance over a Mexican book or article or speech seems to show that the writer has made use of every elegant and abstruse word in the dictionary. In a dissertation upon any subject he seems called upon to begin from the very beginning of things, _desde la creacion del mundo_--"from the beginning of the world," as the Spanish-American himself sarcastically says at times. Perhaps this is a habit acquired from the early Spanish chroniclers, who often began their literary works with an account of the Creation! The love of linking together the material and the poetic is, of course, at the basis of this striving after effect, and no philosophical observer would pretend to hold it up to ridicule. Anglo-Saxon civilisation grows material and commercial; the Spanish-American preserves and cultivates some poetic and cultured imagery; and perhaps Nature intends the one to affect the other in the future amalgamation of the world's races.