Thomas Wentworth Higginson, The new world and the new book

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XXVII

The evolution of an American

Emerson once wrote, ‘We go to Europe to be Americanized.’ In the recent Correspondence of John Lothrop Motley-the most attractive series of letters which the present writer has for many a day encountered—the most interesting feature, after all, is the gradual evolution of all American. Wendell Phillips used to delight in testifying to the manner in which this process went on in this his classmate and friend, and also in himself. Both came out of Harvard College, Phillips said, the narrow aristocrats of a petty sphere; both—though he did not say this—handsome, elegant, accomplished, the prime favorites of the small but really polished circle of the Boston of that day. In case of Phillips, the emancipation was more rapid; and he too owed it in a sense to Europe, for it was there he met his future wife, through whom he first became interested in the anti-slavery movement. In Motley's case the