troubled state of our social life has anything to do with the thirty
years' blind worship of their nostrums by himself and our Liberal
friends, or that it throws any doubts upon the sufficiency of this
worship. But he thinks what is still amiss is due to the stupidity
of the Tories, and will be cured by the thoughtfulness and
intelligence of the great towns, and by the Liberals going on
gloriously with their political operations as before; or that it will
cure itself. So we see what Mr. Bright means by thoughtfulness and
intelligence, and in what manner, according to him, we are to grow in
them. And, no doubt, in America all classes read their newspaper and
take a commendable interest in politics more than here or anywhere
else in Europe.

But, in the following essay, we have been led to doubt the
sufficiency of all this political operating of ours, pursued
mechanically as we pursue it; and we found that general intelligence,
as Monsieur Renan calls it, or, in our own words, a reference of all
our operating to a firm intelligible law of things, was just what we
were without, and that we were without it because we worshipped our
machinery [xxx] so devoutly. Therefore, we conclude that Monsieur
Renan, more than Mr. Bright, means by reason and intelligence the
same thing as we do; and when he says that America, that chosen home
of newspapers and politics, is without general intelligence, we think
it likely, from the circumstances of the case, that this is so; and
that, in culture and totality, America, instead of surpassing us all,
falls short.

And,--to keep to our point of the influence of religious
establishments upon culture and a high development of our humanity,--
we can surely see reasons why, with all her energy and fine gifts,