But The General Level Of These Things, Of
Material And Intellectual Well-Being - Of Beef, That Is, And Book
Learning - Is No Doubt Infinitely Higher In A New American Than In
An Old European Town.
Such an animal as a beggar is as much
unknown as a mastodon.
Men out of work and in want are almost
unknown. I do not say that there are none of the hardships of
life - and to them I will come by-and-by - but want is not known as a
hardship in these towns, nor is that dense ignorance in which so
large a proportion of our town populations is still steeped. And
then the town of 40,000 inhabitants is spread over a surface which
would suffice in England for a city of four times the size. Our
towns in England - and the towns, indeed, of Europe generally - have
been built as they have been wanted. No aspiring ambition as to
hundreds of thousands of people warmed the bosoms of their first
founders. Two or three dozen men required habitations in the same
locality, and clustered them together closely. Many such have
failed and died out of the world's notice. Others have thriven,
and houses have been packed on to houses, till London and
Manchester, Dublin and Glasgow have been produced. Poor men have
built, or have had built for them, wretched lanes, and rich men
have erected grand palaces. From the nature of their beginnings
such has, of necessity, been the manner of their creation.
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