Page:The American Democrat, James Fenimore Cooper, 1838.djvu/169

Rh America occupies a middle place in the scale, wanting most of the higher tastes, and excelling in that species of civilization which marks ease and improvement in the middling and lower classes. There is one feature connected with the civilization of this country that is peculiar; for while the people have long been accustomed to the habits of England, they have not been possessed of those arts by which the different objects of the comforts they have enjoyed are produced. For a long time articles as humble as hats, shovels and hoes, were not fabricated in the country, though the time never has been when the Anglo-Americans were unaccustomed to their use.

Although there is a difference between the civilization of the towns, and that of the country, in America, it is less marked than in Europe. The disparity between the refinement, mental cultivation and the elegances of life, is much less apparent than usual, as between an American capital and an American village, though the localities, of course, make some distinctions. As a whole, civilization, while it is less perfect in this country than in the European nations, is more equally diffused throughout the entire community. Still it better becomes the American people to strive to advance their condition than to manifest a weak, unmanly and provincial sensibility to the faults that are occasionally commented on, nations, like individuals, merely betraying a consciousness of their own demerits, by meeting admonition with insult and anger.

The Americans are deficient on many points of civilization, solely for the want of physical force in given places, the practice of covering large surfaces unavoidably retarding the improvements of the nation. This is rather the subject of regret, than a matter of reproach. They are almost ignorant of the art of