Few appreciate the moral revolutions, our age, which have been profounder far than the material or inventive or war-produced ones. The nineteenth century, now well towards its close (and ripening into fruit the seeds of the two preceding centuries 7 )⁠—the uprisings of national masses and shiftings of boundary-lines⁠—the historical and other prominent facts of the United States⁠—the war of attempted Secession⁠—the stormy rush and haste of nebulous forces⁠—never can future years witness more excitement and din of action⁠—never completer change of army front along the whole line, the whole civilized world. For all these new and evolutionary facts, meanings, purposes, new poetic messages, new forms and expressions, are inevitable.

My Book and I⁠—what a period we have presumed to span! those thirty years from 1850 to ’80⁠—and America in them! Proud, proud indeed may we be, if we have cull’d enough of that period in its own spirit to worthily waft a few live breaths of it to the future!