QUOTE : It is a mistake to view America's posr--Revolutionary emulation of Europe as a legacy of helpless dependence passed on from colonial days. American imitated European styles and forms not because in their naivete they could do nothing else but because they wanted to. Their participation in European or English culture in the early so years f the new Republic was intentional, undertaken with confidence and without apology. Their revolution was very much an international affair, an attempt to fulfill the cosmopolitan dreams of the Enlightenment.