Das Schaudern ist der Menschheit bestes Theil.But, if there be a discipline in which the Americans are wanting, it is the discipline of awe and respect. An austere and intense religion imposed on their Puritan founders the discipline of respect, and so provided for them the thrill of awe; but this religion is dying out. The Americans have produced plenty of men strong, shrewd, upright, able, effective; very few who are highly distinguished. Alexander Hamilton is indeed a man of rare distinction; Washington, though he has not the high mental distinction of Pericles or Caesar, has true distinction of style and character. But these men belong to the pre-American age. Lincoln's recent American biographers declare that Washington is but an Englishman, an English officer; the typical American, they say, is Abraham Lincoln. Now Lincoln is shrewd, sagacious, humorous, honest, courageous, firm; he is a man
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nature seeks from enjoying the effect made upon it by what is elevated, the case is much the same.
There is very little to create such an effect, very much to thwart it. Goethe says somewhere that “the thrill of awe is the best thing humanity has” :--
Boston. De Wolfe, Fiske &c Co. 361 and 365 Washington Street. 1888.
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