Thomas Wentworth Higginson, The new world and the new book

[49] appeal, and is commonly valuable in proportion as the courts of preliminary jurisdiction have done their duty. The best preparation for going abroad is to know the worth of what one has seen at home. I remember to have been impressed with a little sense of dismay, on first nearing the shores of Europe, at the thought of what London and Paris might show me in the way of great human personalities; but I said to myself, ‘To one who has heard Emerson lecture, and Parker preach, and Garrison thunder, and Phillips persuade, there is no reason why Darwin or Victor Hugo should pass for more than mortal;’ and accordingly they did not. We shall not prepare ourselves for a cosmopolitan standard by ignoring our own great names or undervaluing the literary tradition that has produced them. When Stuart Newton, the artist, was asked, on first arriving in London from America, whether he did not enjoy the change, he answered honestly, ‘I here see such society occasionally, as I saw at home all the time.’ At this day the self-respecting American sometimes hears admissions in Europe which make him feel that we are already creating