The only thing to do is to grin and bear it, and feel happy
that these unique possessions are preserved with such loving pride and
care. Any idea of retaliation on America on the part of England by
buying up the MSS. of the great American writers, such as Franklin and
Poe, Hawthorne and Emerson, Thoreau and Lowell, Holmes and Whitman, was
rendered futile by the discovery that Mr. Morgan possesses these too. I
had in his library all the Breakfast Table series in my hands, together
with a play by Poe not yet published.
MOUNT VERNON
Mention of the beautiful solicitude with which these treasures are
surrounded, suggests the reflection that the old country has something
to learn from the new in the matter of distinguished custodianship. We
have no place of national pilgrimage in England that is so perfect a
model as Washington's home at Mount Vernon. It is perhaps through lack
of a figure of the Washington type that we have nothing to compare with
it; for any parallel one must rather go to Fontainebleau; but certain
shrines are ours and none of them discloses quite such pious
thoroughness as this. When I think of the completeness of the
preservation and reconstruction of Mount Vernon, where, largely through
the piety of individuals, a thousand personal relics have been
reassembled, so that, save for the sightseers, this serene and simple
Virginian mansion is almost exactly as it was, I am filled with
admiration.
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