The old
ethnic instincts of human nature are formidable auxiliaries of the
Mother Church. Puseyism would rehallow the saintly wells even of
Protestant, practical England, and send John Bull again on a pilgrimage
to the shrines of Canterbury and Walsingham. Compare a Yankee,
common-school-bred, and an Austrian peasant, if you would learn how the
twelfth and nineteenth centuries live together in the current year. The
one is self-reliant, helpful, and versatile, not freighted with any
old-world rubbish; while the other is abject, and blindly reverent, and
full of the old mythic imagination that is in strong contrast with the
keen common-sense of the Protestant, who dispels all twilight fantasies
with a laugh of utter incredulity. The one sees projected on the outer
world his own imaginings, now fair, now gloomy; while the other sees in
the world, land to be cut up into corner-lots for speculation, and
water for sawmills and cotton-mills, and to float clipper-ships and
steamers. The one is this-worldly; the other is other-worldly. The one
is armed and equipped at all points to deal with the Actual, to subdue
it and make the most of it; he aims for success and wealth, for
elegance, plenty, and comfort in his home;--while the other is
negligent, a frequenter of shrines, in all things too superstitious,
overlooking and slighting mere physical comfort, and content with
misery and dirt.
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