The
other side is grown up with dark and thick shrubbery and ancient
trees, rising and embowering the entire place, adding to the retired
and singular effect of the whole. The place is a specimen of a sort of
thing which does not exist in America. It is one of those significant
landmarks which unite the present with the past, for which we must
return to the country of our origin.
Playford Hall is peculiarly English, and Thomas Clarkson, for whose
sake I visited it, was as peculiarly an Englishman--a specimen of the
very best kind of English mind and character, as this is of
characteristic English architecture.
We Anglo-Saxons have won a hard name in the world. There are
undoubtedly bad things which are true about us.
Taking our developments as a race, both in England and America, we may
be justly called the Romans of the nineteenth century. We have been
the race which has conquered, subdued, and broken in pieces other
weaker races, with little regard either to justice or mercy. With
regard to benefits by us imparted to conquered nations, I think a
better story, on the whole, can be made out for the Romans than for
us.
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