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It is but natural that we should wish to know what Mary Anderson thinks of the "fast-anchored isle" and the folk who dwell therein. I wish, indeed, that these "Impressions" could have been given in her own words. The work would have been much better done, and far more interesting; but failing this, I must endeavor, following a recent illustrious example, to give them at second hand.
So, very honestly, with all our hearts we greet you as a kindred people, many of you of the same colonial lineage with ourselves, having many things in your public and private experience identical with our own, still bound to us by antique and indestructible bonds of fellowship in faith, in sympathy, in aspiration, in humane effort, all coincident with the beginnings of English civilization in North America, nay with the beginnings of civilization itself in that fast-anchored isle beyond the sea, which is the beloved mother of us all.
In this go-ahead age, scores of things are made portable that once were fast-anchored solidities. We have portable houses, portable beds, portable stoves and cooking ranges, as well as portable steam-engines.
No tardy repentance can efface the record of the past. We may forgive, but history is inexorable. England was startled the other day by an earthquake. The fast-anchored isle was astonished at such a tropical phenomenon. It was all very well for Jamaica or Manila, but who would have thought of solid, constitutional England shaking like a jelly?
All else which is dear to us on earth may seem changeful, or changed; the property may have disappeared, the home may have been broken tip, the plighted faith and love may have been recalled; the whole condition of life may have been altered: but we visit that burial spot, and there is permanence; that fast-anchored isle has defied the surges and roaring currents; the grave seems beautifully constant; it has not betrayed our confidence; it is not weary of its precious charge; it has kindly staid behind to permit and encourage our griefs when all else may have fled.
We pique ourselves here in New England upon knowing at least as much of what is going on in the literary way in the old Dutch Mother-land as our brethren of the fast-anchored Isle; but thus far we have no tidings whatever of the 'extensive close-printed, close-meditated volume, which forms the subject of this pretended commentary.
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