Page:The Homes of the New World- Vol. II.djvu/258

Rh interesting and unusually agreeable people I also saw (and these I place among the sheep), who have enough to say without living by questions, and who afforded me some hours of very interesting conversation. Foremost among these must I mention the Chancellor of the University of Wisconsin, Mr. Lathrop, an agreeable and really intellectual man, full of life, and a clear and intelligent sense of the value of that youthful State in the group of the United States, and their common value in the history of the world. I derived much pleasure from his conversation, and from the perusal of a speech which he made a short time since in the Capitol here, on his installation as Chancellor of the University. This, together with another speech on the same occasion, by Mr. Hyatt Smith, one of the directors of the Educational Committee, shows a great understanding of the social relationship in general, and of that of the New World in particular; of the relationship of the past with the present, and of the present with the future, and both speeches breathe the noblest spirit. I have heard it remarked, that the characteristic of the speeches of the New World, which distinguishes them from those of Europe, is that they embrace a much larger extent of subject, and take much broader views, and generally aim at comprehending the whole past, present and future, and the whole of the human race. They take an immense range, place their subjects in large groups, and obtain large views of the relationship of these to the divine law of progressive advance. And to this I may add also, as characteristic, that they do it all by railway, or with railway speed, which brings together the near and the remote with incredible rapidity, and presents the greatest possible opposite to that German circumstantiality which never reaches its goal. I seem to find these characteristics in a high degree in these speeches delivered on the prairie land of the West, in the youngest state of the Union.