But Europe held forth all the charms of storied and poetical
association. There were to be seen the masterpieces of art, the
refinements of highly cultivated society, the quaint
peculiarities of ancient and local custom. My native country was
full of youthful promise; Europe was rich in the accumulated
treasures of age. Her very ruins told the history of the times
gone by, and every mouldering stone was a chronicle. I longed to
wander over the scenes of renowned achievement--to tread, as it
were, in the footsteps of antiquity--to loiter about the ruined
castle--to meditate on the falling tower--to escape, in short,
from the commonplace realities of the present, and lose myself
among the shadowy grandeurs of the past.
I had, besides all this, an earnest desire to see the great men
of the earth. We have, it is true, our great men in America: not
a city but has an ample share of them. I have mingled among them
in my time, and been almost withered by the shade into which they
cast me; for there is nothing so baleful to a small man as the
shade of a great one, particularly the great man of a city. But I
was anxious to see the great men of Europe; for I had read in the
works of various philosophers, that all animals degenerated in
America, and man among the number.
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