Those who have done me the honour to read through the earlier pages of this volume will probably find nothing in the present chapter that has not already been implied in them, if not expressed. Indeed, I should not consider these pages written to any purpose if they did not give some indication of what I believe to be the dominant trend of American civilisation. A certain amount of condensed explication and recapitulation may not, however, be out of place.
In spite of the heterogeneous elements of which American civilisation consists, and in spite of the ever-ready pitfalls of spurious generalisation, it seems to me that there is very distinctly an American note, different in pitch and tone from any note in the European concert. The scale to which it belongs is not, indeed, one out of all relation to that of the older hemisphere, in the way, for example, in which the laws governing Chinese music seem to stand apart from all relations to those on which the Sonata Appassionata is constructed. "The American," as Emerson said, "is only the continuation of the English genius into new conditions, more or less propitious;" and the American note, as I understand it, is, with allowance for modifications by other nationalities, after all merely the New World incarnation of a British potentiality.