Page:The Homes of the New World- Vol. II.djvu/419

Rh of the people of the New World, I could not find any other than that of beautiful human beings.

When I imagine to myself a Millennium in the valley of the Mississippi, a resting point in the history of the earth, when Satan is bound, and love, beauty, and joy, and the fulness of love become the portion of all, I then behold there men and women, such as my friends; homes such as their homes; and see these mighty rivers bearing from these flowery prairies, with their ocean-like views, and from these golden fields of maize, all the treasures of earth to all mankind, and mild, fresh winds blow over it, and the clear sun shines! Such was the glorious home of the Hesperides!

It is not at all difficult to predict that the valley of the Mississippi, in consequence of the variety of nations by which it is populated, and from the variety in its scenery and climate, will at a future time produce a popular life of a totally new kind, with infinite varieties of life and temperament, a wholly new aspect of human society on earth. But what appearance will the apex of the pyramid present, the basis of which is now being formed? One thing appears to me certain; the inhabitants of the Mississippi Valley must become citizens of the world—the universal mankind, par excellence.

Let me attempt to delineate some features of that common theatre of the great drama of which the performance has now commenced, (a drama which embraces a thousand years in one act) and of the dramatis personæ, the groups of which fill the stage: for they who in the life of the United States have seen merely uniformity or confusion have not looked into it, or have seen it merely with a dull vision. Nothing strikes me so much in this world's and these States' formation, as a broad, dramatic character.

First behold its theatre! You see two immense stretches of valley between three chains of mountains,