Note 71 — ESSAYS.

I have heard it objected that the Americans of the United States, though they built towns and established civil governments and so on, thought little of the fine arts for 200 years. That is true. But it should be remembered that the fine arts formed part of the religion of the Egyptian emigrants. The British emigrants, on the contrary, had just quitted a most gorgeous communion, which had employed all the arts in its service, and thus rendered them an abomination to the severe puritans who were in fact flying from the persecutions of the great patrons of art in their days.