Every person whose reading is ordinarily extensive, has something of an idea of what the United States are to-day; he likewise has an idea, so far as words can convey it to his mind, of what they were at the commencement of their history.  The only object, then, in presenting statistics and testimony on this point, is to show that our rapid growth has struck mankind with the wonder of a constant miracle.

Said Emile de Girardin, in La Liberte (1868):—­

“The population of America, not thinned by any conscription, multiplies with prodigious rapidity, and the day may before [long be] seen, when they will number sixty or eighty millions of souls.  This parvenu [one recently risen to notice] is aware of his importance and destiny.  Hear him proudly exclaim, ’America for Americans!’ See him promising his alliance to Russia; and we see that power which well knows what force is, grasp the hand of this giant of yesterday.

“In view of his unparalleled progress and combination, what are the little toys with which we vex ourselves in Europe?  What is this needle gun we are anxious to get from Prussia, that we may beat her next year with it?  Had we not better take from America the principle of liberty she embodies, out of which have come her citizen pride, her gigantic industry, and her formidable loyalty to the destinies of her republican land?”

The Dublin (Ireland) Nation, already quoted, says:—­

“In the east, there is arising a colossal centaur called the Russian Empire.  With a civilized head and front, it has the sinews of a huge barbaric body.  There one man’s brain moves 70,000,000.  There all the traditions of the people are of aggression and conquest in the west.  There but two ranks are distinguishable—­serfs and soldiers.  There the map of the future includes Constantinople and Vienna as outposts of St. Petersburg.

“In the west, an opposing and still more wonderful American Empire is emerging.  We islanders have no conception of the extraordinary events which amid the silence of the earth are daily adding to the power and pride of this gigantic nation.  Within three years, territories more extensive than these three kingdoms [Great Britain, Ireland, and Scotland] France and Italy put together, have been quietly, and in almost ‘matter of course’ fashion, annexed to the Union.

“Within seventy years, seventeen new sovereignties, the smallest of them larger than Great Britain, have peaceably united themselves to the Federation.  No standing army was raised, no national debt sunk, no great exertion was made, but there they are.  And the last mail brings news of three more great States about to be joined to the thirty:  Minnesota in the north-west, Deseret in the south-west, and California on the shores of the Pacific.  These three States will cover an area equal to one-half the European continent.”

Mitchel, in his School Geography (4th revised edition), p. 101, speaking of the United States, says:—­