Thomas Wentworth Higginson, The new world and the new book

[45] country, but they acknowledged no jurisdiction there. The consensus of the civilized world, then and for nearly a century after, viewed the American government as a mere experiment, and republican institutions as a bit of shortlived folly; yet the existence of the new nation gave it a voice henceforth in every tribunal calling itself cosmopolitan. Henceforth that word includes the judgment of the New World on the Old, as well as that of the Old World on the New; and when we construe literary cosmopolitanism in the same way, we shall be on as firm ground in literature as in government.

So long as we look merely outside of ourselves for a standard, we are as weak as if we looked merely inside of ourselves; probably weaker, for timidity is weaker than even the arrogance of strength. There is no danger that the foreign judgment will not duly assert itself; the danger is, that our own self-estimate will be too apologetic. What with courtesy and good-nature, and a lingering of the old colonialism, we are not yet beyond the cringing period in our literary judgment. The obeisance of all good society in London before a successful circus-manager