tableau. There is only one shrill discord, and that is slavery in the South. But of that later.
TO MALWIDA VON MEYSENBUG[1]
[No date given; autumn or early winter of 1852.]
I have not yet seen much in America, but I have learned much. I have never before lived in a democratic country and been able to observe the conduct of a free people. I confess without a blush that until now I had only a faint conception of it. My political views have undergone a kind of internal revolution since I began to read the book that alone contains the truth—the book of reality. When I now picture to myself the majority of the hot-headed professional revolutionists that are fostered by emigration or many of the strong-minded ladies of the educated class with their sentimental ideas of democracy; when I imagine them all transplanted in the conditions prevailing here, and when I think how terribly they would harangue, the former about the tone of the bourgeoisie and the machinations of the clericals and the latter about the wild lawlessness of the people, and how they would come to the conclusion that, after all, their Eldorado is not realized here—then, indeed, I begin to fear a little for the future European Republic that must find its support in these two elements. It is true, indeed, that the first sight of this country fills one with dumb amazement. Here you see the principle of individual freedom carried to its ultimate consequences: voluntarily made laws treated with contempt; in another place you notice the crassest religious fanaticism venting itself in brutal acts; on the one hand you see the great mass of the laboring people in complete freedom striving for emancipation, and by their side the
- ↑ Published in her Memoiren einer Idealistin, ii., 77-82. Translated from the German.
