During a whole score of years, as we have read the English
journals and our own, the thought has over and over again suggested
itself to us that any one who had leisure and taste for the task might
cut out from each series of papers respectively, for a huge commonplace
book, matters of a precisely parallel nature in both countries. A simple
difference in the names of men and of places would be all that would
appear or exist. Every noble and every mean and every mixed exhibition
of character,--every act of munificence and of baseness,--every
narrative of thrilling or romantic interest,--every instance and example
of popular delusion, humbug, man-worship, breach of trust, domestic
infelicity, and of cunning or astounding depravity and hypocrisy,--every
religious, social, and political excitement,--every panic,--and every
accident even, from carelessness or want of skill,--each and all these
have their exact parallels, generally within the same year of time in
Great Britain and in our own country. The crimes and the catastrophes,
in each locality, have seemed almost repetitions of the same things on
either continent. Munificent endowments of charitable institutions, zeal
in reformatory enterprises and in the correction of abuses, have shown
that the people of both regions stand upon the same plane of humanity
and practical Christian culture.
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