and shows again what little weight historians have attached to national psychology, and yet how essential its knowledge if we are really to understand the minute and often dissociated and seemingly unimportant causes that have resulted in the formation of national character.

We are to study the history of a people who from their beginning and up to the present day have never had a capital, in which there has never been one great centre to which gravitated by the natural force of attraction all that was best and worst, which held the highest intellectual and social development, which set for the whole country the fashions, to which men turned as irresistibly in search of fame or fortune as in the time of Cæsar every Roman looked to Rome, or as in our own day every provincial, who has only his courage and brains to inspire him, "goes up" to London to begin his conquest of the world, or the Frenchman of the departments sets out for Paris hopeful of grasping the end of the rainbow.1 It is true that there is today in the United States a political capital, a commercial metropolis, and numerous local political and commercial centres, and it is equally true that from the beginning, in colonial times and until the Revolution, each colony had its seat of government - in Massachusetts, Boston; in Maryland, Annapolis; in the Carolinas, Charleston, and so on just as to-day each state has its capital; but that is 1 Cf. Bryce: The American Commonwealth, vol. II, chap. cx.

entirely different from Rome or London or Paris. Rome, like a great spider, sucked blood from the provinces,1 and it was in one sense destructive and in another sense beneficial that the capital exercised this centripetal force over the rest of the country. It made both for liberality and intolerance, it broadened as well as narrowed, - curious as the assertion may sound, - it brought about an intense provincialism, or perhaps it would be more correct to term it localism. The metropolis set the fashions in everything, in thought as well as in action; nothing was considered worthy unless it had first received the imprimatur of the capital, with the result that initiative was destroyed, and the country slavishly accepted what the whim of the metropolis saw fit to impose upon it.

In all that went to make progress, whether intellectual or material, the trend of thought was not that of the country at large, but of a comparatively small number of men who lived remote from the great mass of the people, who frequently had little sympathy with them, whose condition was different from theirs, who were, it must be admitted, the superior class, - superior in culture, or courage, or cunning; but whose very superiority made them a class by themselves; who through selfishness, and perhaps more often through ignorance, were unable to understand what the people thought or wanted, or what would best contribute to their welfare. It is

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often observed that to-day the real strength of a nation is to be found not in its capital but in its provinces; that London is not England nor Paris France. This may be true, — my knowledge of France is too superficial to enable me to offer an opinion, but so far as England is concerned, I accept it as a generalization merely, needing modification and qualification, - but it is indisputable that up to the time of the American Revolution, even at a later day, throughout all Europe, it was the capital that was really the country; it was the capital that influenced all outside of it, and not the country which colored the thought of the capital; and in saying this I do not forget the power exercised by the yeomanry of England or the burghers of mediæval Europe.

This centripetal social force exercised another influence equally as great in the evolution of society and the formation of character, and brought about national characteristics and introduced certain desirable social institutions which have never existed in the United States, and the absence of which is felt to-day. Rome, when nations were to be conquered or subject peoples to be governed, sent forth her prætors and her proconsuls, who brought with them the civilization, the virtues, the vices of Rome for the alien to emulate. In other parts of Europe it was the same. Organized society has always been in layers a noble and privileged class at the top, and intermediate strata down to the lowest, the mass

of the people, villeins or serfs or freemen, according to the social conscience of the time. The highest class naturally centred at the capital, but representatives of its order - great landed proprietors, feudal lords, heads of clans - were scattered over the country and their influence was felt throughout the land. Coming down to modern times, we see how this custom has survived in a modified form and the power it has exerted in the civilization of races. In England, in France, in Germany, in Italy, but perhaps more strikingly so in England than in other countries, a modern patriarchal and feudal system still exists, although unrecognized. The great territorial magnates of England, the men of historical name who have been the real rulers of Britain, divide their time between the capital and the country, bringing to the country the social customs of the capital, influencing the manners of and setting a standard for the country to follow. It follows then that there is always a nexus between country and capital; that as in the old days the great lord from the capital brought with him to his province the ways and manners of the city, set up his miniature court and gave to rural life a savor of urban; so today the influence of the capital is constantly widening and is the example set for the countryside. The manners and customs and point of view of the castle or château impress the country gentry who are the intimates of the hereditary proprietor; in turn these persons next in the social scale have a moulding influence on those below them, and in this way the circle is ever expanding and the whole social and intellectual fabric of the nation is woven by the hands of the upper classes whose roots are buried deep in the soil, but who give to the capital its peculiar distinction.

This Old World organization of society has caused many acute European observers of America to make a serious mistake. Recognizing the existence of a governing class in their own countries, that it is the classes who rule or rather, really a very small and select class and not the masses, they believe the same thing exists in America, and that the people are dominated by the intellect and culture of the upper circle of the cities. In America we know that every movement derives its strength by being vitalized from below and not by being quickened from above. It is true that the inspiration may often come from what, in the absence of a more precise terminology, may be described as the "best" people, but it is not true - and the assertion will not be challenged by any exact student of American society - that the "best" people can impose their will or their thought on the people at large, or that there exists a governing or quasi-governing class; for not even the "professional politicians," of whom we hear so much, are a mandarin caste. It is again only the exact truth to say that the inspiration for great political or social movements often comes bubbling from the subterranean depths of "the