No; what makes one's
pulse to bound when he remembers his own home under foreign skies, is never the rich
man, nor the learned
man, nor the distinguished
man of any sort who - illustrates its history, for in all these petty products almost every country may favorably, at all events tediously, compete with our own; but it is all simply the abstract manhood itself of the country,
man himself unqualified by convention, the
man to whom all these conventional
men have been simply introductory, the
man who — let me say it — for the first time in human history finding himself in his own right the peer of every
other man, spontaneously aspires and attains to a far freer and profounder culture of his nature
than has ever yet illustrated humanity...