The two months which I have spent on these shores seem to me two years in actual work, or two centuries rather, for in them I have lived through all American history.  In Virginia I saw the era of the earliest settlers, and I met John Smith and Pocahontas on the shores of the James River.  In Philadelphia I lived with William Penn, but in a splendor which I fear would have shocked his simple soul.  At Salem I encountered the stern founders of Massachusetts; at Plymouth I watched the Mayflower threading its way round the shoals and promontories of that intricate bay.  On Lake George and at Quebec I followed the struggle between the English and the French for the possession of this great continent.  At Boston and Concord I followed the progress of the War of Independence.  At Mount Vernon I enjoyed the felicity of companionship with Washington and his associates.  I pause at this great name, and carry my recollections no further.  But you will understand how long and fruitful an experience has thus been added to my life, during the few weeks in which I have moved amongst the scenes of your eventful history.

And then, leaving the past for the present, a new field opens before me.  There are two impressions which are fixed upon my mind as to the leading characteristics of the people among whom I have passed, as the almanac informs me, but two short months.  On the one hand I see that everything seems to be fermenting and growing, changing, perplexing, bewildering.  In that memorable hour—­memorable in the life of every man, memorable as when he sees the first view of the Pyramids, or of the snow-clad range of the Alps—­in the hour when for the first time I stood before the cataracts of Niagara, I seemed to see a vision of the fears and hopes of America.  It was midnight, the moon was full, and I saw from the Suspension Bridge the ceaseless contortion, confusion, whirl, and chaos, which burst forth in clouds of foam from that immense central chasm which divides the American from the British dominion; and as I looked on that ever-changing movement, and listened to that everlasting roar, I saw an emblem of the devouring activity, and ceaseless, restless, beating whirlpool of existence in the United States.  But into the moonlight sky there rose a cloud of spray twice as high as the Falls themselves, silent, majestic, immovable.  In that silver column, glittering in the moonlight, I saw an image of the future of American destiny, of the pillar of light which should emerge from the distractions of the present—­a likeness of the buoyancy and hopefulness which characterize you both as individuals and as a nation.

You may remember Wordsworth’s fine lines on “Yarrow Unvisited,” “Yarrow Visited,” and “Yarrow Revisited.”  “America Unvisited”—­that is now for me a vision of the past; that fabulous America, in which, before they come to your shores, Englishmen believe Pennsylvania to be the capital of Massachusetts, and Chicago to be a few miles from New York—­that has now