CHAPTER VI.
He is too picked, too spruce, too affected, too odd, As it were too peregrinate, as I may call it.
-- Shakspeare.
The Anglo-American is apt to boast, and not without reason, that his nation may claim a descent more truly honourable than that of any other people whose history is to be credited.

Whatever might have been the weaknesses of the original colonists, their virtues have rarely been disputed.

If they were superstitious, they were sincerely pious, and, consequently, honest.

The descendants of these simple and single-minded provincials have been content to reject the ordinary and artificial means by which honours have been perpetuated in families, and have substituted a standard which brings the individual himself to the ordeal of the public estimation, paying as little deference as may be to those who have gone before him.

This forbearance, self-denial, or common sense, or by whatever term it may be thought proper to distinguish the measure, has subjected the nation to the imputation of having an ignoble origin.