"I try, when I am abroad, to see in what they are superior to us,--not
in what they are inferior.
"Our great idea is, of course, freedom and self-government; probably in
that we are ahead of the rest of the world, although we are certainly
not so much in advance as we suppose; but we are sufficiently inflated
with our own greatness to let that subject take care of itself when we
travel. We travel to learn; and I have never been in any country where
they did not do something better than we do it, think some thoughts
better than we think, catch some inspiration from heights above our
own--as in the art of Italy, the learning of England, and the philosophy
of Germany.
"Let us take the scientific position of Russia. When, half a century
ago, John Quincy Adams proposed the establishment of an astronomical
observatory, at a cost of $100,000, it was ridiculed by the newspapers,
considered Utopian, and dismissed from the public mind. When our
government, a few years since, voted an appropriation of $50,000 for a
telescope for the National Observatory, it was considered magnificent.
Yet, a quarter of a century since (1838), Russia founded an astronomical
observatory. The government spent $200,000 on instruments, $1,500,000 on
buildings, and annually appropriated $38,000 for salaries of observers.
I naturally thought that a million and a half dollars, and Oriental
ideas, combined, would make the observatory a showy place; I expected
that the observatory would be surmounted by a gilded dome, and that
'pearly gates' would open as I approached.
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