"Every North American is--and who has a better right so to _be_--an enthusiastic _honorer (vereher) of his fatherland_, but he does not measure out by inches the limits of his native land, or bound his patriotism by the clod on which his cradle rested--for to him the roar of the Rio del Norte, the thunder-peal of Niagara, and the murmur of the Pacific or Atlantic oceans have equally a familiar, home-like sound. Nor less than the land of his birth does he esteem its laws, constitution, and institutions, and regards them in nowise as oppressive, but as protective. Those laws he made for himself, and chose himself as their executor. RESPECT FOR THE LAW is to the American self-respect.
"The so often blamed _national pride_ of the American, if not really praiseworthy, is at least pardonable; for a nation which could rise like a single man, and, at every sacrifice, throw off the yoke of England--a nation which has given birth to such men as GEORGE WASHINGTON, THOMAS JEFFERSON, BENJAMIN FRANKLIN, and many others whose names are mentioned with wonder all over this world--a nation which occupies the first rank in trade, commerce, and industry, _may_ be proud, and _must_ be proud, as long as its power is free from sloth and lethargy."
And here we may be permitted to interrupt for an instant our noble Man of Ross (the reader will observe that he wears the aristocratic _von_), for the sake of saying a good word over this honest, hard-fisted go-ahead eulogium of our country. There be those ultra-Europeanized, or _soi-disant_ refinedly educated Americans, who will complacently smile at this recapitulation of United States excellencies, and if slangily inclined, brand it as "pea-nut," "stump eloquence," and "Fourth-of-Julyism." The sum-total being, that it is vulgar rhodomontade. With all due respect, we think differently. Let the reader remember that this is addressed to a German--a _foreign_--audience, who are greatly in need just at present of a few scraps of such oratory as this, were it only to counteract the malignant influences of the English tourists, whose works are far more extensively read in Germany than we imagine. Mrs. Trollope's work on America, which, at the present day, is regarded only with contempt or laughter by the educated in England, has been, and is even yet, read with a feeling akin to wonder by the honest simple-hearted Germans. A wonder indeed so intense, at the marvellous marvels therein narrated, that it generally results in inspiring in the mind of the reader credulous enough to believe, an intense desire to visit the land of liberty.