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only important thing; and this one has far more with the French, Italians, or Germans than with the Americans.β
1 Very well, if this be so, why should Americans not accept the situation, and fraternize more readily with the French, the Italians, or the Germans than with the English?
And if it be said that though kindred may quarrel yet an emergency commonly reunites them, it must be remembered that this was written at the time of our own greatest emergency, the only effect of which was to set these our kindred further off. As the England-loving Motley wrote in those days, βthe greatest war of principle which has been waged in this generation at least was of no more importance to her [England], except as it bore upon the cotton question, than the wretched squabbles of Mexico or South America.β
2--We knew that this was true at that time of the aristocratic class and of the literary class; but Mr. Arnold's correspondence gives us a curious illustration how true it was of the middle class also.
In the very last year of the Civil War, it seems, a class in the
New York, Harper and Brothers, 1897.
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