Out of the innumerable places which one might
visit in America, there are none which would better reward such careful
observation, or which are more full of interest for the comparative
historian, than the rural towns and mountain villages of New England;
that part of English America which is oldest in civilization (though not
in actual date of settlement), and which, while most completely English
in blood and in traditions, is at the same time most completely American
in so far as it has most distinctly illustrated and most successfully
represented those political ideas which have given to American history
its chief significance in the general work of civilization.
The United States are not unfrequently spoken of as a "new country," in
terms which would be appropriate if applied to Australia or New Zealand,
and which are not inappropriate as applied to the vast region west of
the Mississippi River, where the white man had hardly set foot before
the beginning of the present century. New England, however, has a
history which carries us back to the times of James I.; and while its
cities are full of such bustling modern life as one sees in Liverpool or
Manchester or Glasgow, its rural towns show us much that is
old-fashioned in aspect,--much that one can approach in an antiquarian
spirit.
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