Mr. Boynton is what a friend of mine called “intensely American.”  He has lately published, under the title of “Our Country the Herald of a New Era,” a lecture delivered before the “Young Men’s Mercantile Library Association.”  To show the magnificent ideas the Americans entertain of themselves and their country, I will transcribe a few passages.

“This nation is an enigma, whose import no man as yet may fully know.  She is a germ of boundless things.  The unfolded bud excites the hope of one-half the human race, while it stirs the remainder with both anger and alarm.  Who shall now paint the beauty and attraction of the expanded flower?  Our Eagle is scarcely fledged; but one wing stretches over Massachusetts Bay, and the other touches the mouth of the Columbia.  Who shall say, then, what lands shall be overshadowed by the full-grown pinion?  Who shall point to any spot of the northern continent, and say, with certainty, Here the starry banner shall never be hailed as the symbol of dominion? [The annexation of Canada!] * * * It cannot be disguised that the idea is gathering strength among us, that the territorial mission of this nation is to obtain and hold at least all that lies north of Panama. * * * Whether the millions that are to dwell on the great Pacific slope of our continent are to acknowledge our banner, or rally to standards of their own; whether Mexico is to become ours by sudden conquest or gradual absorption; whether the British provinces, when they pass from beneath the sceptre of England, shall be incorporated with us, or retain an independent dominion;—­are perhaps questions which a not distant future may decide.  However they may be settled, the great fact will remain essentially the same, that the two continents of this Western Hemisphere shall yet bear up a stupendous social, political, and religious structure, wrought by the American mind, moulded and coloured by the hues of American thought, and animated and united by an American soul.  It seems equally certain that, whatever the divisions of territory may be, these United States are the living centre, from which already flows the resistless stream which will ultimately absorb in its own channel, and bear on its own current, the whole thought of the two Americas. * * * If, then, I have not over-rated the moral and intellectual vigour of the people of this nation, and of the policy lately avowed to be acted upon—­that the further occupation of American soil by the Governments of Europe is not to be suffered,—­then the inference is a direct one, that the stronger elements will control and absorb the lesser, so that the same causes which melted the red races away will send the influence of the United States not only over the territory north of Panama, but across the Isthmus, and southward to Magellan.”

The “New Era” of which America is the “Herald” is, he tells us, to be marked by three grand characteristics,—­

“First.  A new theory and practice in government and in social life, such as the world has never seen, of which we only perceive the germ as yet.”  Already have you indeed presented before the world your “peculiar institution” of slavery in a light new and striking.  Already have you a “theory and practice” in the government of slaves such as the world never beheld!