Our countrymen once could do it. The stern Puritan of
New England looked upon the grassy meadows beside the Connecticut, and
found them all bubbling with fountains, and called his settlement
"Springfield." But the American has lost the elementary uses of his
mother tongue. He is perpetually inventing new abstract terms,
generalizing with boldness and power and utter contempt of usage. But
the rich idiomatic sources of his speech lie too deep for him. They are
the glory and the joy of our motherland. You may take up "Bradshaw" and
amuse yourself on the wettest day at the dullest inn, nay, even amid
the horrors of the railway station, with deciphering the hidden
meanings of its lists of names, and form for yourself the gliding
panorama of its changing scenery and historic renown. But blank,
indeed, is the American transit through Rome, Marcellus, Carthage,
Athens, Palmyra, and Geneva; and blessed the relief when the Indian
tongue comes musically in to "heal the blows of sound"! And whatever
the expectations of the "Great American Poem," the Transatlantic
"Divina Commedia" or "Iliad," which the public may entertain, we feel
certain they will not be fulfilled in our day.
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