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Southland Times, Volume I, Issue 13, 23 December 1862, Page 3

American Modesty.— Nobody doubts that we are a great people. The fact stands out as plainly as the 4th of July or the Battle of Uunker Hill, and is illustrated in a thousand different ways. We have tho handsomest country, the biggest lakes, the longest rivers, the highest mountains, the most extensive railroads, the best and worst of newspapers, to say nothing of fast men, fast and beautiful women, magnificent babies, and ten thousand other illustrious objects of glorification, over which a patriotic Yankee will wave his hat and shout hallelujahs till he is hoarse. We furnish the gold, grain, and cotton of the world. Our earth produces the largest crops, our air flies the highest bulonns, our waters floa; the fastest steamers and clipper sh ; ps,and ti finish, with, the elements, nobody will deny that we get up some of the most extravagant conflagrations and illuminations with which an individual is likely to come in disagreecble contact this side of eternal perdition. Steam has become our serving man, the lightning our errand boy, and fo employ a local term in a general sense, our broad continent is "grid-ironed" with railroads, which carry t j and fro the riches of the world. More than this; we teach the rest of mankind. Our country is the school house of the world. It is here that the present Emperor Napoleon learned some of those lessons by which he has so well profited, which have taught him to employ the electric telegraph on tho field of Solferino to convey his orders from point to point, to patronize manufactures, encourage the ingenuity of his subjects, develop the resources of his empire, and to pursue fiat course in his relations to his people best calculated to enhance their power— in a word — which has demonstrated the fact, that Louis Napoleon is nothi-ig more nor less than a Jive Frenchman in Yankee breeches. We are emphatically a live people. We invent, improve and progress— sowing mijd and reaping wealth. We have talent, energy, enterprise, and opportunity, and whatsover our hands have found to do we have generally done it with all our mieht. " Advance" is the order of the day. The old succumbs to the new, and in a short time an obituary notice is all that marks its former power. — JS'eic York Herald.