There is no occasion for any petty prejudice against European science or art or literature or manners; all nations can learn of each other, and we as the younger nation have more to learn, in many ways, than to teach. The nations of Europe are the elder sons of Time; but the youngest-born are also sons. It was not mere imitation that gave us Morse's telegraph, or Bell's telephone, or Emerson's books, or Lowell's speeches, or the American trotting horse, or those illustrated magazines that are printed for two continents. I heard the most eminent of English electricians say, a few years ago, that he had learned more of the possible applications of electricity during his first fortnight in this country than in his whole life before. When I spoke to Mr. Darwin of the Peabody Museum at Yale College, he said, “Huxley tells me that there is more to be learned from that museum than from all the museums of Europe.” I do not urge a foolish insulation from England and Germany, Italy and France, but only to remember that what we need is not imitation, but growth; that a healthy growth implies a certain self-reliance; and that strength, like charity, begins at home.
