52

SCOTLAND AND AMERICA.

1

nature, and to his character. He had a high and a generous appreciation of America; he rejoiced in all its developing greatness; he seemed to realize a personal interest in its prosperity; he had no atrabiliary fears, no arrogant and ultra-English prognostications, against the glorious hopes and promises of our republic. We are to view him as a friend, even where his free-spoken thought seems to question, to impeach, or to accuse us. Scotland, indeed, has some special reasons, and some patriotic affinities, of friendship for America. The land o' cakes and the land o' hearts may well love the vaster and the related land far off, the land of cataracts and mountains; of enterprise and independence; of emigrants and natives in national brotherhood commingling; of Christianity, and Protestant religious freedom for all mankind; the land of refuge, and of welcome, and of home for thousands of Scotia's brave sons and bonny daughters; and, finally, the hospitable and the capacious country of refuge for the millions of the persecuted and the persecuting world. We have, indeed, our inconsistencies, our faults, our sins! The mercy of Heaven shield us from our deserts, at the hand of his terrible righteousness, who reigns there and here! and that same mercy correct us, that we may be, to please HIM, the great model nation of the world! But to our colloquy.

1. I am surprised, Dr. Chalmers, to speak plainly, at some of the questions, and the manner of putting them, which meet me in Europe, about the younger hemisphere. Is it the policy of the Holy Alliance, or of local monarchy and establishments, to make us such an enigma to clever persons even in Great Britain, to say nothing of the more papal tenebrosity of the Continent?

2. Well, many causes conspire, I think, to produce the result. It is a fact that you are not known by us as you ought to be, or even as we are by you; and you are to us a wonder, a curiosity, and a theme of ever-varying interest and complexity; or, rather, a great thesaurus or museum of these,

OURS THE DAUGHTER COUNTRY.

53

in particular and often in astounding phases of demonstration. Yours is a wonderful country and a great one; and it strikes me as a mighty original, since history affords no parallel to it in many of its great aspects. But I am yet to study, perhaps literally to explore you, that I may feel that my data are trustworthy, when I speak or argue about the United States, or the daughter country, as we sometimes call you.

1. Our filial feelings are not offended at the designation. Some of us, however, with too many fitting monuments, recollect some very unmotherly and very cruel conduct that we have endured from the parent country. But let us register even our real wrongs in the sand, our received benefactions on tablets of granite rock. You speak of exploring us; I hope that means that you will actually visit our country.

2. It does. I should rejoice to accomplish such a plan. But its difficulties are various, perhaps insuperable. Still, I entertain the pleasant imagination, and am not sure at all that it will not yet be realized. At any rate, I intend to tell you now my beau ideal of it, yes, of a tour through the states of your great country.

1. I shall rejoice to hear it, especially if there is any probability at all that it may ever be realized.

3. Pa, will you go alone or take ma and some of us with you? I should like to be of the party.

Now

2. We shall attend to details afterward, my dear. I am getting on in life. In another heptade of years I shall have reached threescore; and the chair of Theology in Edinburgh ought hardly to have an incumbent who is over sixty. Hence, if I live to reach that age,* I am thinking to vacate my post, and go to America-if Mrs. Chalmers will go with me. It will be easy just to take a steamer in the Clyde, go to Liverpool, and in one of your good and safe liners embark for the London of the West, your famous New * He died, May, 1847, in his sixty-eighth year.

54

HIS BEAU IDEAL OF A VISIT.

York; that would be my port and my route, you know. And yet it would seem a vast undertaking for me and for her, at that period of our advancing age and infirmities-should

it ever occur.

1. Quite formidable in prospect, less probably in experience. At least, if it were perilous for you, our Americans would care little or nothing for it, except to embrace it with avidity, and rejoice in the opportunity, with no hesitation or tardiness.

2. But I should wish to go through your land, and over your mountains, to see the mouth of your Ohio, and your Mississippi, as well as your other rivers. Would you go with me, Dr. Cox, if I come, and be my compagnon du voyage in

America?

1. Well, doctor, I think I will-certainly it would be a rery pleasant journey and a tempting opportunity. But let us hear your plan more particularly, even if theory be the whole of it.

2. Your country, as I was saying, is quite a topic with us, in this present émeute about the voluntary principle.

1. I am glad that something occurs to make you think of us; and yet it seems that, in all Europe, among statesmen and philosophers, but especially among theologians and ecclesiastics, you ought to think, as well as learn and know, more about the facts of our wondrous history, the promise of our grand and our momentous future, the problems we are solving, our enterprise, our commerce, our science, our political economy, our growth, and our achievements, and pre-eminently all that God intends to do with us, for us, and by us, according to his own revealed counsel and eternal plan, in relation to other nations.

2. I quite agree with you. So, arrived in New York, I should look about me, and see with my own eyes the wonders of the New World. It seems there would be quite a new atmosphere in that new world, certainly a glare of nov

HIS PLAN TO MEASURE US.

55

elty on all the scenery; your architecture, your manners, your habits, your costumes, your display, your intensity of action, all would seem strange at first. But soon I should explore you, as I said; gauge the dimensions of your ecclesiastical statistics and your means of Christian education; ascertain, for myself, the ratio of your accommodations, your sittings in churches, as compared with your whole population; know all about your colleges and universities, your standard of scholarship, your modes of teaching, and all the economy of your system for sacred and secular learning-what it is! and see the workings of the voluntary principle, in its own great sphere, in the national laboratory of its proper home, as tested by its results, its fruits.

1. I was lately giving the results in part, and I now assert to you, as what I can prove and do know, that the ratio of our accommodations in the city of New York, all places of worship included, as compared with the entire population, is higher and better than yours, in either chief city of Scotland. Yes, my honored friend; neither Glasgow, nor Edinburgh, in their houses of worship, could accommodate so large a proportion of its inhabitants, by either the voluntary or the involuntary principle, or both united, as the city of New York. And this is a fair sample and criterion of other cities compared, on your and on our side of the ocean, at least for the most part, and so for the general rule.

2. So I have heard, and astonishing as to me it seems, I have no reason to gainsay the statement. The people could do wonders, if they were all as good as they are powerful. But I would put facts and observations, and these alone, in my notes; and then I should next go away to Boston, somewhere in the East, I think. There I would enact the same exploration, and see about that old university in the vicinage that has gone away from the principles of its founders -under the voluntary principle, or the innovations of American Democracy, by a sad deviation, as I hear! How is that?

your

56

VOYAGE TO KENTUCKY.

1. Bad enough, I think. It reminds me of some of your European examples, where lapses of the sort have been defended by the power of establishments around them. But proceed.

2. Well, having explored these two great cities, in my next move I should go straight to Kentucky.

1. You would? There must be some mistake, doctor. The distance is too great from Boston. It could not be your next terminus-and no omnibus or minibus runs that way!

2. Oh! distance, with the modern means of travel, is of little or no account.

1. Still, you would have to encounter en route the intermediate cities and states.

2. What need I care for all the intermediate states? It beau ideal that I am telling you.

is my

1. True. But you could scarce get from Boston to Kentucky, even by an air line, without passing through Rhode Island, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Virginia, and Ohio. And as the people of these states are intelligent enough to read your works, to appreciate your fame, and to desire a glimpse, at least, of your person, they would be apt to find means of detaining you at several places on the way, and for some weeks, I think, if not of hearing Dr. Chalmers in the pulpit, on more than one or five occasions, before he reached Kentucky, about one thousand miles from Boston Your beau ideal, my dear doctor, may be a very fine one, and quite worthy of its projector; but, as you could not ride it there, any more than a witch could ride a broomstick or a philosopher a streak of lightning, I must surmise some breach in the fabric of your ideal plan, which possibly ought now to be rectified. You would next go from Boston to Kentucky?

2. Yes, to that old and venerable university there, you know