It should be observed that the individualism which characterizes American life was more marked in the first years of the republic than it is now. After we have reasoned away all we will of a revolutionary cataclysmal element in the separation of the United States from the British Empire, there still remains a sharp determination of individual life, historically evident, and very influential in the formation of national character. In the earliest years the centripetal force for union was barely superior to the centrifugal force for state independence; but the political thought which justified state sovereignty had its logical issue in an isolated individuality. Common sense and prudence, to be sure, are always defeating logic; but the logical conception helps us to understand tendencies, and it is not difficult to see that the word independence, which was on every one's lips at the close of the last century, was not the sign of a political thought only, but expressed the habit of mind with which persons everywhere regarded life in its varied relations. The breaking up of old political connections not only unsettled the social fabric, it affected necessarily all the relations which the person held to society; and it was only as a profounder political unity disclosed itself in the nation that each man put forth more confidently his hand to his fellow. The historian of the Union will not fail to observe how with the growth of that Union there began to spring up societies and corporations of every kind, the interdependence of the States extending itself to the interdependence of all interests involved in the State, and the whole fabric of society feeling its web and woof grow firmer and denser. The career of Webster illustrates this truth. He worked alone, and his solitariness was not wholly due to his idiosyncrasies. It was in part the penalty paid by a student of the time. The resolution and self-reliance of an American were his, and so was the individuality. That such enterprises are not now conducted single-handed is owing not to a lack of courage but to the greater complexity of life, the more constant sense of interdependence, the existence of greater solidarity in intellectual pursuits. Webster was unable to believe that a company of scholars could ever be formed who should carry forward a revision of the Bible, and therefore he made the attempt himself. Individual criticism has been abundant ever since, but no one, however learned or popular, has ever been able to impress his work upon the community. The most carefully organized body of scholars submits the results of its ten years' conference to the votes of the world. The history of Webster's Dictionary is parallel with the growth of national life out of individualism. INDEX. Adams, John and Abigail, letters of, compared with those of John and Margaret Winthrop, 49. Adams, J. Q., 22. Adams, Samuel, a pet aversion of the Hartford wits, 99, 100.