{"id":"01KG8AMXWE724Z140WSJBFJA1D","cid":"bafkreiafwcqf3gkyrizcsxd26qzot7gru2w5f4wpogtlt6sq7wfayah3wa","type":"chunk","properties":{"end_line":377,"extracted_at":"2026-01-30T20:48:52.918Z","extracted_by":"structure-extraction-lambda","label":"Chunk 1","source_file":"01KG89J1JSYKSGCE149MH9HF6A","start_line":327,"text":"III.\r\n\r\nIt has been said that the beautiful country round about Pierre appealed\r\nto very proud memories. But not only through the mere chances of things,\r\nhad that fine country become ennobled by the deeds of his sires, but in\r\nPierre's eyes, all its hills and swales seemed as sanctified through\r\ntheir very long uninterrupted possession by his race.\r\n\r\nThat fond ideality which, in the eyes of affection, hallows the least\r\ntrinket once familiar to the person of a departed love; with Pierre that\r\ntalisman touched the whole earthly landscape about him; for remembering\r\nthat on those hills his own fine fathers had gazed; through those woods,\r\nover these lawns, by that stream, along these tangled paths, many a\r\ngrand-dame of his had merrily strolled when a girl; vividly recalling\r\nthese things, Pierre deemed all that part of the earth a love-token; so\r\nthat his very horizon was to him as a memorial ring.\r\n\r\nThe monarchical world very generally imagines, that in demagoguical\r\nAmerica the sacred Past hath no fixed statues erected to it, but all\r\nthings irreverently seethe and boil in the vulgar caldron of an\r\neverlasting uncrystalizing Present. This conceit would seem peculiarly\r\napplicable to the social condition. With no chartered aristocracy, and\r\nno law of entail, how can any family in America imposingly perpetuate\r\nitself? Certainly that common saying among us, which declares, that be a\r\nfamily conspicuous as it may, a single half-century shall see it abased;\r\nthat maxim undoubtedly holds true with the commonalty. In our cities\r\nfamilies rise and burst like bubbles in a vat. For indeed the democratic\r\nelement operates as a subtile acid among us; forever producing new\r\nthings by corroding the old; as in the south of France verdigris, the\r\nprimitive material of one kind of green paint, is produced by\r\ngrape-vinegar poured upon copper plates. Now in general nothing can be\r\nmore significant of decay than the idea of corrosion; yet on the other\r\nhand, nothing can more vividly suggest luxuriance of life, than the idea\r\nof green as a color; for green is the peculiar signet of all-fertile\r\nNature herself. Herein by apt analogy we behold the marked anomalousness\r\nof America; whose character abroad, we need not be surprised, is\r\nmisconceived, when we consider how strangely she contradicts all prior\r\nnotions of human things; and how wonderfully to her, Death itself\r\nbecomes transmuted into Life. So that political institutions, which in\r\nother lands seem above all things intensely artificial, with America\r\nseem to possess the divine virtue of a natural law; for the most mighty\r\nof nature's laws is this, that out of Death she brings Life.\r\n\r\nStill, are there things in the visible world, over which ever-shifting\r\nNature hath not so unbounded a sway. The grass is annually changed; but\r\nthe limbs of the oak, for a long term of years, defy that annual decree.\r\nAnd if in America the vast mass of families be as the blades of grass,\r\nyet some few there are that stand as the oak; which, instead of\r\ndecaying, annually puts forth new branches; whereby Time, instead of\r\nsubtracting, is made to capitulate into a multiple virtue.\r\n\r","title":"Chunk 1"},"relationships":[{"peer":"01KG8AKK0K9V8STV8CZ3GBYPDD","peer_type":"section","predicate":"in"},{"peer":"01KG89J1JSYKSGCE149MH9HF6A","peer_type":"file","predicate":"extractedFrom"},{"peer":"01KG89HMDZKNY753EZE1CJ8HZW","peer_type":"collection","predicate":"collection"},{"peer":"01KG8AMXWE79YWH8NFXBM2Q3BQ","peer_type":"chunk","predicate":"next"}],"ver":2,"created_at":"2026-01-30T20:48:53.134Z","ts":"2026-01-30T20:49:01.107Z","edited_by":{"method":"manual","user_id":"01KFF0H3YRP9ZSM033AM0QJ47H"}}