characteristic recklessness of Yankeeism in the far west and south may
not be legitimately traced to the neglected youthhead of the States in
which it is most broadly apparent. The deterioration of a single
generation left to run wild may influence for the worse, during whole
centuries, the character of a people; and who can predicate what these
colonies of the southern hemisphere are yet to become? They may be
great nations, influencing for good or evil the destinies of the
species in ages of the world when Britain shall have sunk into a
subordinate power, or shall have no name save in history. Those
records of the past, from which we learn that states and peoples, as
certainly as families and individuals, are born and die, and have
their times of birth and of burial, may serve to convince us that the
melancholy reflection of one of our later poets on this subject is by
no means a fanciful one:
'My heart has sighed in secret, when I thought
That the dark tide of time might one day close,
England, o'er thee, as long since it has closed
On Egypt and on Tyre,--that ages hence,
From the Pacific's billowy loneliness,
Whose tract thy daring search revealed, some isle
Might rise, in green-haired beauty eminent,
And like a goddess glittering from the deep,
Hereafter sway the sceptre of domain
From pole to pole; and such as now thou art,
Perhaps New Zealand be. For who can say
What the Omnipotent Eternal One,
That made the world, hath purposed?'
_June 16, 1847._
FINE-BODYISM.