They saw before them
no sinister political economy; no ominous Malthus; no Paris or London;
no pitiless subdivision of classes,--the doom of the pinmakers, the
doom of the weavers, of dressers, of stockingers, of carders, of
spinners, of colliers; no Ireland; no Indian caste, superinduced by
the efforts of Europe to throw it off. The understanding was in its
health and prime. Art was in its splendid novelty. They cut the
Pentelican marble as if it were snow, and their perfect works in
architecture and sculpture seemed things of course, not more difficult
than the completion of a new ship at the Medford yards, or new mills
at Lowell. These things are in course, and may be taken for granted.
The Roman legion, Byzantine legislation, English trade, the saloons
of Versailles, the cafes of Paris, the steam-mill, steamboat,
steam-coach, may all be seen in perspective; the town-meeting, the
ballot-box, the newspaper and cheap press.
Meantime, Plato, in Egypt, and in Eastern pilgrimages, imbibed the
idea of one Deity, in which all things are absorbed. The unity of Asia,
and the detail of Europe; the infinitude of the Asiatic soul, and the
defining, result-loving, machine-making, surface-seeking, opera-going
Europe,--Plato came to join, and by contact to enhance the energy of
each.
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