2. The United States.

The New England Women. Among the Hills. The Other Side. The Factory Girls. Rural Life of the American Woman. Her Part in Education. Society. Aristoc racy. In Religious Movements. In Society. In Public. In Law. In Business. In the National History. In Literature. The South. West. Pacific Slope.

Conclusion.

F the United States it has been said, "God winnowed the wheat of a whole continent to find the seed He planted in America." In no country of the world has such a variety of races and nationalities been thrown together, or mingled with so rapid identification with the central mass. The

original settlements of the Atlantic Coast were made by men starting from widely different points, with objects at heart as diverse as their origins. The English, who were driven. to seek a refuge in Massachusetts, and the neighboring New England States, were far from homogeneous or united among themselves. Persecuted for opinion's sake, they had not learned tolerance of the opinions of their opponents; and drove Quakers and Baptists from their boundaries with as much rigor as they had themselves experienced at the hands of others. The Dutch in New York and New Jersey, the English Quakers in Pennsylvania, the Swedes and Finns who came first to Delaware, and the Cavaliers who sought to mend their decaying fortunes in Virginia, were far from friendly to each other, though united

under the sway of the English government. Most of them were intolerant, and nearly all were jealous of each other. The New England Puritans hunted the Churchmen, and the Virginian Churchmen hunted the Puritans. Strange to say both found a refuge in Maryland, where the enlightened and benevolent head of the noble Calvert family had endeavored to prepare a retreat for the English Catholics, and set an example of Christian Charity which was too slowly adopted and imitated in the new world.

The War of the Revolution moulded and welded these incongruous masses into something like unity, which might have been temporary enough, but for the fact that the prosperity of the New Republic, and the convulsions of the European monarchies which succeeded its establishment, attracted and forced to its shores large numbers of emigrants, the precursors of the human tide which has since set westward in such enormous proportions. Many of these emigrants were men of standing and influence. Nearly all were intelligent and thoughtful. Coming to America in the period of the crystallization of its governmental system, some of them threw themselves with intelligent zeal and energy into the perfection of the new institutions, and aided very largely in their development. Unity of object and aims, and the growth of the settlements, brought the original communities more and more closely into harmony; and emigration flowing over the whole body, and imparting to it a cosmopolitan tone, perfected the work.

Since the Revolution the number of persons of foreign birth who have settled in the United States is perfectly startling. Ireland has poured into the country an army almost equal to her present population. Germany has been little behind her, and scarcely any nationality of Europe is not now represented in America by many of its most respectable citizens. These new comers have swept over the great West, filling its prairies and opening its forests to the sun. But with them, and even more numerous than they, have migrated the people of the Atlantic States, thus leading in the settlements and giving them tone and color, by being always the predominating influence. Thus intermingled with the Americans, the emigrant soon lost the minor features of his nationality. In the race with the sharpest, keenest, most aggressive people in