and general structure of social life and public institutions; yet they are generally the very last to be and feel at home in America.  A Norwegian mountaineer, in his deerskin doublet, and with a dozen English words picked up on the voyage, will Americanise himself more in one year on an Illinois prairie than an intelligent, middle-class Englishman will do in ten, in the best society of Massachusetts.  Now, I am not dallying with a facetious fantasy when I express the opinion, that the life and song of the English lark in America, superadded to the other institutions and influences indicated, would go a great way in fusing this hitherto insoluble element, and blending it harmoniously with the best vitalities of the nation.  And this consummation would well repay a special and extraordinary effect.  Perhaps this expedient would be the most successful of all that remain untried.  A single incident will prove that it is more than a mere theory.  Here it is, in substance:—­

Some years ago, when the Australian gold fever was hot in the veins of thousands, and fleets of ships were conveying them to that far-off, uncultivated world, a poor old woman landed with the great multitude of rough and reckless men, who were fired to almost frenzy by dreams of ponderous nuggets and golden fortunes.  For these they left behind them all the enjoyments, endearments, all the softening sanctities and surroundings of home and social life in England.  For these they left mothers, wives, sisters and daughters.  There they were, thinly tented in the rain, and the dew, and the mist, a busy, boisterous, womanless camp of diggers and grubbers, roughing-and-tumbling it in the scramble for gold mites, with no quiet Sabbath breaks, nor Sabbath songs, nor Sabbath bells to measure off and sweeten a season of rest.  Well, the poor widow, who had her cabin within a few miles of “the diggings,” brought with her but few comforts from the old homeland—­a few simple articles of furniture, the bible and psalm-book of her youth, and an English lark to sing to her solitude the songs that had cheered her on the other side of the globe.  And the little thing did it with all the fervor of its first notes in the English sky.  In her cottage window it sang to her hour by hour at her labor, with a voice never heard before on that wild continent.  The strange birds of the land came circling around in their gorgeous plumage to hear it.  Even four-footed animals, of grim countenance, paused to hear it.  Then, one by one, came other listeners.  They came reverently, and their voices softened into silence as they listened.  Hard-visaged men, bare-breasted and unshaven, came and stood gentle as girls; and tears came out upon many a tanned and sun-blistered cheek as the little bird warbled forth the silvery treble of its song about the green hedges, the meadow streams, the cottage homes, and all the sunny memories of the fatherland.  And they came near unto the lone widow with pebbles of gold in their