Thomas Wentworth Higginson, The new world and the new book

‘ [226] used. It is a great political and moral revolution, and we are in the first stage of it.’¹ This was the period of which the English Hayward wrote,—the translator of ‘Faust,’ —‘I passed a day with the Motleys at their villa, and found him more unreasonable than ever, vowing that the restoration of the Union in its entirety was as sure as the sun in heaven.’ It was the period of which Motley himself afterward wrote, ‘All English “society,” except half a dozen individuals, was then entirely Southern.’

It was, in short, the opening of that period of cleavage between the English and American literary classes which still bears its fruit in the habits of mind of this generation, and will never be forgotten till a new generation has wholly taken its place. The fact that the literary class especially, which in other countries is usually found on the side of progress, in this case echoed all the sympathies of the people of rank, and left only the workingmen of England, with a few illustrious exceptions, to be our friends—this it was that made Motley not merely a patriot, but a man of democratic