The Wheeling daily intelligencer. [volume] (Wheeling, W. Va.) 1865-1903, 1867-01-17

From, one OF Their Devoted Enemies
During the War.
FROM tts london 7slt0rgph, Dec. IS.

ETOHS HtS LOI1uOII 4etfpTupb, Oecs 10
A highly imaginative Transatlantic
geographer has lately informed the
world that America is, or shortly will
be, .'country bounded on the north
by the Arctic circle, on the south by
eternity, on the east by the rising sun,
and on the west by the day of iudg-
ment." There are a set of bitter and
bilious gentlemen, chiefly of the Tory
persuasion, to whom this kind of pat
riotic imagery is gall and wormwood.
They are miserable because America is
big, and because she uses these laugha-
bly, big expressions. The real reason
why they hate her is because her Gov
ernmenJ is so free, and the success of
it is so wonderfu1; but, since it does
are always girding at her faults
of manner and style-a practice
which is about as useful as TO rail at
the Allegheny Mountains for being
huge and craggy. For our part we ex-
perience no more surprise or vexation
at the hyperbolics of our descendants
beyond the Atlantic, than we should
at seeing likely lad split his trowsers
in growing, or a fine healthy baby
reach his plump arms out for the moon.
The thing is natural and even satisfac-
tory with the young giant that we have
bred; and England, the mother of en-
pires, ought TO be heartily pleased and
amused at the glorious gasconade of
her mighty child. Is she to be an ell
derly coQuette, and vex herself because
her sons outstride her, and her daugh-
ters shoot up with beauty and vigor
that remind her how she ages? She
ought, If she were honest and hearty,
to be glad and proud of youngsters
the like of whom history never knew
to knit them to herself in bonds of
firm love, and aim at making out of
them an Anglo-Saxon family of en-
pires which should girdle the world
with the language of Shakespeare,
and the happy influence of the lit
lie matron islandi We like to read
these ridiculous sublimities, wherein
our imperial cockerels crow themselves
well nigh off their legs with lustiness
round their old Brittanic hen. What a
bird the American chicken will be
when all the feathers come. if it can
scratch and crow, and flourish its spurs
like this in an epoch when it is but
going through the barbarism of a new
civilization, and has the best part of its
hackles to shoot. And if bigness justi-
fieS big words, we should like to know
who is to blame these inventive and
tlowery patriots? Has any other ma
tion forty million square acres of fat
corn ground for n back yard, which
will grow six quarters to the acre, as
long as you like to plow the old crop
in? Has any other nation a mountain
of solid iron to make a plow of like
Pilot Knob, in Missouri, or seas of oil
under the ground, and shores of solid
copper along the lakes? Does any
other nation double its population every
twenty years, and such is the emigra-
ton of Europe without counting it.;
or carry cargoes 1000 miles along one
river; or venture the impudence of a
Monroe doctrine; or fight war with a
million soldiers, and have them all
home again, like boys after school, with
in year? Or what other people COL
lects revenue of ELS, ,OOO, 900 sterling,
and with e20, 100000 in gold at time
in its Exchequer, laughs at debt of
ESQ, 100000, and engages to wipe it out
in ten years? Mr.. Artemus Ward says
he never saw a Yankee who didn't talk
about the Rocky Mountains except one
and he was deaf and dumb, but even
he wrote book about them. Who is
stupid enough to laugh at that? 1t is
in the nature of the people; the young
giants must have gigantic topics, words
policies, schemes, and sayings; and if
we laugh, let it be with hearty good,
nature, and as old folks do at the brag
and buncumb of the young ones, whose
strength and health are so beautiful
and full of the promise of noble days
and works.