But we did not expect to see this sure prophecy turning itself
into history in our day. We thought the people were too busy with the
spade and the quill to care for any other sceptres at present. But it
is now plain that they have been dreaming princely dreams and thinking
royal thoughts all the while, and are now ready to put them into costly
expression.
Passing by all other evidences of this, we come at once to the most
majestic and indisputable witness of this fact, the actual existence
of the Central Park in New York,--the most striking evidence of
the sovereignty of the people yet afforded in the history of free
institutions,--the best answer yet given to the doubts and fears which
have frowned on the theory of self-government,--the first grand proof
that the people do not mean to give up the advantages and victories of
aristocratic governments, in maintaining a popular one, but to engraft
the energy, foresight, and liberality of concentrated powers upon
democratic ideas, and keep all that has adorned and improved the past,
while abandoning what has impaired and disgraced it.
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