Page:The Homes of the New World- Vol. II.djvu/410

Rh is different to that of the Eastern. It has more breadth and cosmopolitanism; its people are a people of many nations, and it is asserted that this character betrays itself in a more liberal form of state's-government, as well as by more unprejudiced views, and an easier mode of social life. The various religious sects become more and more amalgamated; the clergy prophesy the advent of a Millennium church, which shall gather all sects into its embrace, and maintain the necessity of secular education, of science, and of polite literature, for the full development of the religious life.

The cities of the West are all of them pre-eminently cosmopolitan cities. The Germans have their quarters there, sometimes half the city, their newspapers and their clubs; the Irish have theirs; and the French theirs. The Mississippi river is the great cosmopolitan which unites all people, which gives a definite purpose to their activity, and determines their abode, and which enables the life of every zone, the inhabitants themselves and their products, to circulate from the one end to the other of this great central valley.

But here ends my admiration and my oration about greatness and growth, for the cities of the West appear to me in no respect larger or better than those of the East. St. Louis is only another New York placed on the western bank of the Mississippi; and San Francisco, on the shores of the Pacific Ocean, is merely a third repetition of the first city. The western state which glances forth beautifully in Wisconsin, sinks again in Missouri and Arkansas. The Western portion of the American continent is no better than the Eastern. Will it ever become so?

Will there be anything different in development, in character? will it become higher and nobler? will it approach somewhat nearer to perfection? That kingdom of the Millennium where the lion shall lie down with