=European Interest in America.=—­To the older and more settled Europeans, the democratic experiment in America was either a menace or an inspiration.  Conservatives viewed it with anxiety; liberals with optimism.  Far-sighted leaders could see that the tide of democracy was rising all over the world and could not be stayed.  Naturally the country that had advanced furthest along the new course was the place in which to find arguments for and against proposals that Europe should make experiments of the same character.

=De Tocqueville’s Democracy in America.=—­In addition to the casual traveler there began to visit the United States the thoughtful observer bent on finding out what manner of nation this was springing up in the wilderness.  Those who looked with sympathy upon the growing popular forces of England and France found in the United States, in spite of many blemishes and defects, a guarantee for the future of the people’s rule in the Old World.  One of these, Alexis de Tocqueville, a French liberal of mildly democratic sympathies, made a journey to this country in 1831; he described in a very remarkable volume, Democracy in America, the grand experiment as he saw it.  On the whole he was convinced.  After examining with a critical eye the life and labor of the American people, as well as the constitutions of the states and the nation, he came to the conclusion that democracy with all its faults was both inevitable and successful.  Slavery he thought was a painful contrast to the other features of American life, and he foresaw what proved to be the irrepressible conflict over it.  He believed that through blundering the people were destined to learn the highest of all arts, self-government on a grand scale.  The absence of a leisure class, devoted to no calling or profession, merely enjoying the refinements of life and adding to its graces—­the flaw in American culture that gave deep distress to many a European leader—­de Tocqueville thought a necessary virtue in the republic.  “Amongst a democratic people where there is no hereditary wealth, every man works to earn a living, or has worked, or is born of parents who have worked.  A notion of labor is therefore presented to the mind on every side as the necessary, natural, and honest condition of human existence.”  It was this notion of a government in the hands of people who labored that struck the French publicist as the most significant fact in the modern world.

=Harriet Martineau’s Visit to America.=—­This phase of American life also profoundly impressed the brilliant English writer, Harriet Martineau.  She saw all parts of the country, the homes of the rich and the log cabins of the frontier; she traveled in stagecoaches, canal boats, and on horseback; and visited sessions of Congress and auctions at slave markets.  She tried to view the country impartially and the thing that left the deepest mark on her mind was the solidarity of the people in one great political