Thomas Wentworth Higginson, The new world and the new book

[70]

VIII

The fear of the dead level

it is noticeable that foreign observers, who were always a little anxious about the possible monotony of our society, have grown a little more so since they have ventured west of the Alleghanies and crossed the long plain to be traversed before reaching the Rocky Mountains. In the days when an American trip culminated at Niagara, and even Trenton Falls was considered a sight so remarkable that Charles Sumner wrote from England to caution a traveller by no means to quit the country without seeing it, there was no complaint that our scenery was monotonous. The continent was supposed to have done all, in that line, which could fairly be asked of it. Since then, the criticism has grown with the railway journey, and people fear that the horizontal line of the prairies must more than counterbalance the vertical line of Niagara, in moulding the American mind. Then these very travellers are justly