row the institutions of a country, the entire habits among us, and to justify our complaint, is, unhapand objects of which are singularly adverse to the pily, beyond all question. Such a condition of leading ideas upon which our own government is dependence must always prove a difficult, but not, founded. We still, as a people, entertain most of I trust, an impassable barrier to the moral prothose feelings of implicit deference for the men gress of any nation which has not gone through an and measures of Great Britain,-her opinions and infancy of its own. Its feelings, tone and characsome of her worst prejudices-which distinguished ter, however different may be its necessities, its our provincial dependency upon her; and so con - objects, its climate and condition, will still be imscious is she of this fact, that, but recently, within pressed and determined, in the absence of an indea few months, one of her leading reviews has had pendent native Literature, by all the qualities which the audacity to assert, that we cannot confer repu- marked it as a colony. The mere severance of tation at all; that domestic opinion, in the United that public interest which bound it to the maternal States, cannot, in Literary History, distinguish a nation, by no means constitutes mental, or even favorite son;-that the verdict of British autho- political independence; and the enfranchised peority is absolutely necessary before we can dare ple, may, in most respects, be as thoroughly, if not take to our hearts, and acknowledge with pride, as explicitly, the subject people still, as at that the intellectual achievements of a native. Mr. humiliating period when their proudest distinction Alison, in his recent History of Europe,-a work was to prove their loyalty under stripes, and to add in which it is difficult to say whether the ignorance, the tribute of free gifts, to the unsparing exactions or the malignity of the author, in all that concerns of a power of which they felt little but the weight. the United States, is greatest,-adds his testimony It was the policy of the Mother Country then, as to the same effect. He says, "Literature and it is her hate now, which sought to keep down the intellectual ability of the highest class meet with national intellect, to suppress thinking, to throw little encouragement in America, the names of every impediment in the way of knowledge, and Cooper, Channing and Washington Irving, indeed, to perpetuate her tyranny over American industry, amply demonstrate that the American soil is not by paralyzing, to the utmost extent of her power, wanting in genius of the most elevated and fasci- the original energies of American genius. The nating character, but their works are almost all declaration against printing presses and newspapublished in London-a decisive proof that Euro-pers, so bluntly made by one of the Colonial Gopean habits and ideas are necessary to their due vernors-Berkeley, of Virginia-was the insidious, development.' As if the same writers, and a if unavowed, principle of the powers which he thousand more, were not also published in Ame- represented, in all that related to the concerns of rica! But the assertion, and not its correctness, is America. That the colonies should be officered what we have to deal with. That it is not wholly correct, we know-that it is sufficiently so, however, to prove the servility of an influential class

from abroad-that the provincial should neither preside in the cabinet, nor command in the field, was one of the admirable means by which she contrived for so long a season to maintain this * The ability to create, should be, we think, prima facie evidence of an equal ability to judge of the thing created. policy. It was this portion of her scheme, howThe country which produces the genius cannot be incapa- ever, more than any other-more than tea-acts or ble of determining his degree. One faculty seems inevita- stamp-acts, or butcher acts-that led to the final bly to involve the other. The reflection of a single mothrowing off of her authority. It was the native ment would stifle the absurdity which denies it; and, if it cannot silence the malignant sneer of our enemies, should mind of America beginning to assert its claims to be sufficient to overcome the doubts and cavils of our friends. self-government-beginning then, to assert in poliOur own people, at least, may learn from the fact a satistics that which the same native mind, within the factory lesson of confidence in themselves, which should last twenty years, has, for the first time, begun tend very much to free them from the usurpations of fo- nobly to assert for itself in letters and the arts. reign judgment. But the statement of Mr. Alison, quoted It is still the policy of Great Britain that we should above, goes one stride further in absurdity. That the wri

tings of certain American authors are published in London, not succeed in this assertion-that we should still "is a decisive proof that European habits and ideas are ne- be her subject province, in one respect, if not in cessary to their due development." It is impossible to say all. Her thought, on this subject, is very much where that law of logic is to be found, which leads to any the offspring of her wish!

such conclusion. As well may we say that, as the writings

A native Literature is the means, and the only

of Walter Scott and Bulwer are published in New York, it is "a decisive proof that American habits and ideas are ne-means, of our perfect independence. Of the imcessary to their due development." The fact is, that this view of the case presents an additional argument in its favor, derived from the greater diffusion of their books among us than is probably the case in England. The number of copies in an American edition of a successful novel writer is very far greater usually than the English editions-a fact arising not from any superior appreciation of the merits of the author, but simply from the greater chicapness of the volumes.

portance of this agent to a people, and to the American people in particular, it may be necessary that we should fortify our own views, by reference to those of a deservedly great authority. We are the more anxious to do this, as it appears to us that our people have really but a very imperfect appreciation of the subject, and regard with a strange

indifference, as if the matter did not in any ways sure? Shall America be only an echo of what is concern them, the great and singular struggle, now thought and written under the aristocracies beyond in progress, between the native and the foreign ge- the ocean?" nius;-the genius loci now, for the first time, struggling into birth and claiming to be heard; and that maternal mind, throned in the empire of song and thought, and upheld by the mightiest masters of art that ever made a nation famous, from which we proudly claim to have derived all the qualities which should accord, in the progress of time, a like eminence to the genius of our country! We take, from the writings of Dr. Channing, the following lucid and comprehensive paragraph.

No language could put the importance of this subject more clearly before the mind; and, without dwelling upon the point, we will proceed to show that the necessity of a national Literature, great as it is, to the people of every country, is of far more importance to the people of the United States, than it can, by any possibility, be to any other. In our case, the colonial habit of deferring to the Mother Country is maintained and strengthened, in spite of our political emancipation, by our "The facility," says that great writer, "with employment of the same language. Could we which we receive the literature of foreign coun- have found a new dialect-a tongue of our own, tries, instead of being a reason for neglecting our suitable to our condition, and expressive of our own, is a strong motive for its cultivation. We liberties, on the same battle-field where they were mean not to be paradoxical, but we believe it would won, we should, by this time, have been in possesbe better to admit no books from abroad, than to sion of a Literature, in which they might have make them substitutes for our own intellectual ac- been proportionably and permanently enshrined. tivity. The more we receive from other coun- The securities for mental independence on the part tries, the greater the need of an original literature. of France, Germany and other great nations of A people, into whose minds the thoughts of fo- Europe, are to be found chiefly in the obstacles reigners are poured perpetually, needs an energy which their several languages present, as it were, within itself to resist and to modify this mighty in- upon the very threshold, to the invasion and usurfluence; and without it will inevitably sink under pation of strangers. The unknown tongue stands the worst bondage-will become intellectually en- to the intruder in the guise of a bearded sentinel, slaved. We have certainly no desire to complete jealous of every approach, and resisting the inour restrictive system, by adding to it a literary gress of all not possessing the parole. We have non-intercourse law. We rejoice in the increasing no such securities. The enemy approaches us intellectual connexion between this country and with the smooth and insidious utterance of our the old world. But sooner would we rupture it, mother tongue, and we are naturally slow to susthan see our country sitting passively at the feet of pect hostility in any such approach. How admiforeign teachers. Better have no Literature than rably may we illustrate the important bearing of to form ourselves unresistingly on a foreign one. this isolated fact, by a reference to the social and The true sovereigns of a country are those who political relation in which we stand, comparatively, determine its mind-its modes of thinking-its with France and England. The former we know, taste, its principles; and we cannot consent to lodge almost entirely, by acts of kindness. By her aid, this sovereignty in the hands of strangers. A coun- we struggled into national individuality. With the try, like an individual, has dignity and power only in exception of the quasi war with the Directory, the proportion as it is self-formed. There is a great stir result of that Ishmaelite aspect in which that body to secure to ourselves the manufacturing of our own stood to all the world, she has borne towards us, clothing. We say, let others spin and weave for from the first day of our political freedom, the us, but let them not think for us. A people, whose most encouraging and friendly countenance. Such, government and laws are nothing but the embody- too, has been the aspect of her people. The books ing of public opinion, should jealously guard this and bearing of her distinguished travellers among opinion against foreign dictation. We need a Lite- us have been marked by an equal sense of urbanirature to counteract, and to use wisely, the Lite- ty and justice.* England, on the contrary, almost rature which we import. We need an inward power proportionate to that which is exerted upon us, as the means of self-subsistence. It is par-honorable and impartial commentary on the character of their feelings toward this country, let them compare-conticularly true of a people, whose institutions detrast rather-the deportment of the distinguished Frenchmand for their support a free and bold spirit, that men who have honored us with their presence, and that of they should be able to subject to a manly and in- their own travellers. Let them read the Beaumonts and dependent criticism whatever comes from abroad. De Tocquevilles, and turn from their thoughtful, candid, These views seem to us to deserve serious atten- and elevated views, to the sickening spite, the low mation. We are becoming, more and more, a read-lice, the cavilling and querulous peevishness, the dishonest ing people. Books are already among the most powerful influences here. The question is, shall Europe, through these, fashion us after its plea

VOL. X-2

* Would the British people desire the best, the most

representation, the perverse will, which cannot be made to see the brighter aspects of the object, but turns perpetually to the more grateful survey of those which may offend, by which the volumes of the Marryatts, the Trollopes and

from the beginning, has put forth all her energies " You cannot be kicked into a war with Great Brito enslave or destroy us. Failing in this attempt, tain." What was the language of the British Comshe resorts to others, which, if less dangerous and missioners at Ghent, met just after war had been dehurtful, are as little legitimate, and prove the cha-clared, to treat with our own, for the consummation racter of her feelings to have remained unchanged. of peace?-a proceeding which smacked so much To this day, her writers, her travellers, her lead- of national timidity, as almost to justify the insolent ing men, with few exceptions-the officers of her demands of the enemy! The substance of their navy-the agents of her government, and those language was, "we do not care to grant you peace, who give utterance usually to her feelings and opi- 'till we have subjected you to a sound thrashing." nions-speak of us, habitually, in terms either of But that the honor of the nation was entrusted to frank hostility, or downright scorn and contempt. sound native minds,-men of stubborn, independent Yet the affinities suggested by the employment of intellect-it must have been dishonored.* But a language in common, make us tolerate all the what must have been thought of the morale of the insults of the one, as if we still yearned for the an-nation when, even in time of war, its special reprecient wallow of colonial dependency;-and with sentatives were approached in such a spirit by the what miserable time-serving sycophancy does a very people with whom we were in conflict! The large and active class among us contrive to solicit intellect of the nation was despised, rather than its the contumelious expression of such among them, spirit. The spirit of a civilized nation depends so as deign to look in person upon us,--examining our greatly upon its intellect, that the estimate which ways and means-our manners and customs, as if we make of the one, involves the other also. What we were in reality, by nature, an inferior people, had the United States done in intellectual matters, and not, unfortunately, too nearly like themselves to compel the respect of other countries? Nothing! not to be confounded with them in every other part literally nothing! Our orators were numerous and of the world!* On the other hand, dealing with the able, it is true-but the achievements of the tribune French, and prompted by the hostile sentiments and the forum are usually of domestic recognition which a foreign tongue seems naturally to inspire, only. They present no enduring, or obvious memowe are ready to quarrel on the slightest provoca- rials, before the eyes of foreign nations. Our comtion. Of their Science, Arts, Literature, their merce was increasing our manufactures. We had inventions and discoveries, we have little, or no shown no mean ingenuity-no inferior skill, in congeneral knowledge, except through discolored Bri- tending in most of the arts of trade, with rival nations. tish media, the prejudices of which we uncon- But in the superior arts, in the sciences, in poetry, sciously imbibe, and thus form antipathies to a great painting, statuary, classical and general Literaand friendly nation, with the same unhappy facility, ture, the nation was totally unrepresented abroad! with which we take on trust all the tastes, senti- There was no sign-manual, characteristic of Amements and opinions of a master, by whom we are rican genius, to be placed before the eyes of legitimuch more frequently reviled than instructed. mate and reluctant Europe. Before this sign-manual could be made, it was necessary that the American mind should be emancipated from its

The birth of a home Literature is the great and sufficient remedy for all these errors and absurdities-and that Literature is born! The war of memories of colonial servitude. The war of 1812 1812 gave an important blow to the mental supremacy of Great Britain over this country. Prior to that war, what was the humiliating position in which we stood to that nation? Politicians will not have forgotten the scornful reproach, uttered, it is said, in the very ears of our President, (Madison,)

the Dickens's, are blackened and branded. The commentary is not less fatal to the nation which receives, than to the travellers who write, with such gout, narratives, which, if true, should give pain rather than pleasure, to the people, who are told such enormities of their kindred and descendants.

gave the first impulse to a consummation so desirable. The scornful deportment of Great Britain forced upon our people, in their own spite, a painful, but proud feeling, of their individuality ;made them sensible of what was due to national character and national pride. Perhaps, the lesson was only taught and learned in part,—but it was a first lesson;-to be followed up by others. The savage excesses in which the British soldiery indulged-their horrible outrages at Hampton and other places, and the Hunlike brutalities at Washington, contributed to disturb our sympathy with *This, so far as our relation to the people of Great Bri- British superiority, while making us properly retain is affected, is an amusing truth which reflects the hap-sentful of their arms. The very disgraces to which piest commentary upon the ridiculous pretensions of the latter, on the subject of manners and politeness: on the the nation was subjected in Canada, were produccontinent, John Bull and Brother Jonathan are usually put into the same category, and pronounced equally incorrigi ble. If, in the estimation of the politer nations of the South, there be any difference between them, it is that Bull is more insolent, and his descendant more impertinent. We know not, so far as other nations are concerned, that either of them, on this score, has any thing to boast.

* The commissioners at Ghent were Clay, Adams, Bayard, Gallatin and Russell-statesmen, who, whatever may be the estimate put upon their course and abilities in home matters, it must be admitted, were about the best persons who could have been chosen to treat with an insolent foreign enemy.

tive of admirable effects, in impressing upon us, even chasers for them. For this was the period, ren-
through shame and stripes, a better sense of na-dered somewhat famous by the contemptuons sneer
tional dignity than we seemed before to entertain. of the British critic, contained in the phrase,-
Our ocean-victories followed, at the happy moment, since made proverbial by the noble commentary
to confirm in us the new-born sense of pride and which American Literature has passed upon it—
patriotism. That war, so equally distinguished by "Who reads an American book ?" Verily, up to this
humiliating disasters and exhilarating successes, period, writers of American books were few indeed.
did very much to sever the links that bound the The national mind, in every thing that belonged to
mind of the nation to its old colonial faith. A gene- the fine arts, belles-lettres and the superior sciences,
ral intellectual awakening seemed to follow it, seems to have acknowledged its incapacity, and to
and we suspect that the records of our patent of have surrendered itself, passively, to the foreign
fice, (taken as one of the signs of intellectual pro- teacher, which had so recently been its tyrant.
gress, though in matters merely utilitarian,) will No works of art issued from the native press-no
show a more remarkable advance in the history of fancy, no fiction, no humor, no romance! The ima-
domestic inventions, from the year 1815 to that of gination of the nation-the resources of which are,
1835-a term of twenty years-than can be shown in reality, wondrous and unsurpassable,* crouching
by any other country, of similar population, in the in shadow, with wing folded, and head drooping
same space of time. The arts are kindred. Those upon its bosom,-was not even conjectured to have
of mere utility and those of beauty and refinement, an existence!
however dissimilar in their uses and habiliments,
belong yet to the same great family. They are not
hostile, though the one presides at the piano, while
to the other is deputed the humbler duties of put-

It was natural enough that, in the newly-born passion for thorough independence, which distinguished the feelings of our people at the close of the war of 1812,-and which led to the adoption

See

ting the household in proper order. The physical of a government system for the protection of do- p. 64

wants of the individual supplied, those of his intel-mestic manufactures,--the policy which this feel-
lect clamor for their dues. It is a sufficient proof ing declared, should also extend itself to other
of the natural intellectual tendencies of the Ame- objects than those which concerned the physical
rican people, that their anxiety for their mental being only. The policy which declared for making
supplies did not linger and wait upon those which our own woollens, necessarily gave some thought to
concerned the animal nature only. The non-inter- books. But no such protection was afforded by
course with Great Britain, which had cut off the government to this branch of domestic industry.
supplies of blankets, woollens and other commodi- The notion seems to have been, if our bodies are
ties of like nature, had been far more decidedly
beneficial in cutting off the supply of books. It
was in the very midst of the conflict that Ameri-
can Literature, such as it is, first sprang into exis-
tence. The Port-Folio, by Dennie, one of our best
periodicals, was first published in 1812. This was
not the only instance. The laws of demand and
supply did not fail to produce their effects, and the
same national spirit, which clamored for our own
manufactures, was equally busy, if less clamorous,
in striving to supply the lack of Literature. The
preparation of school and classical books, which
has since become one of the most extensive busi-
nesses of the American publisher, may be said to
have begun at this period. At all events, we shall
be perfectly safe in saying that, prior to 1815, the
issues from the American press were not only re-
prints wholly from foreign sources, but were con-
fined chiefly to works of science and education.
We need make no special exception in behalf of the
building great cities, sending forth noble fleets,--penetrating
domestic histories, which, in small editions, were the wildest regions-winning the mastery every where, and
generally so many appeals to local patriotism, and now confronting the masters of the old world and challeng-
accordingly, most usually, were published by sub-ing them to a fair field and no favor. This is the cause of
scription. As little may be said of the young quarrel and-vexation, of sneer, and hate, and disparagement.
poet, who, here and there, in some one or other
eity, sent forth his slender volume at his own ex-
pense, rather with the view to seeing his verses in
print, than with any sanguine hope of finding pur-

* This remark may surprise those, who, not regarding the
thousand circumstances which have tended to discourage
the progress of the American imagination, in its legitimate
ginative Literature-a deficiency, which, we hope to show,
direction, infer its absence, from the deficiency of its ima-
exists only in the ignorance of our critics as to what the
nation has really done. But the proofs of the most vigo-
rous imaginative presence are every where around us-in
and vehement energies of our people, in the very extrava-
the boldness of our public and social designs-in the rapid
gance of their contemplations, the unfamiliar elevation and
novelty of their modes of speech, their swelling character,
and really remarkable progress. The history of the people
of the United States is itself a great and astonishing ro-
mance. It is a history belonging to that school of which
Robinson Crusoe is an admirable example. Here is a na-
tion, like the individual, cast naked upon the desert, igno-
rant, unlettered, poor, desolate, yet, out of themselves and
the wondrous resources of their nature, contriving means
against all enemies, without and within-shaking them-
selves free from the "old inan of the sea"-no inappropriate
term for the mother country-founding a great empire,

And all this the work of fifty years! Verily, it this do not
prove the presence of a daring wing, then never nation
possessed one. The imagination has more to do with the
ordinary works of utilitarianism, than ordinary people seem
o imagine.

free from foreign dominion, it matters little that proach of incapacity, urged, not more by the British our thoughts, our feelings, our souls, should still reviewer, than the European reader. Her eyes remain in bondage. The noble and emphatic sen- suddenly became unscaled, purged, like those of timent, already quoted, of Dr. Channing,-" We the eagle, whose mighty youth had been mewed up; say, let others spin and weave for us, but let them and the universal feeling of her people might be not think for us!"-suggesting, as it does, the only compared, without extravagance of figure, to that great, true and patriotic principle, upon which the of the explorer,-long desponding, wearied in his opinions of a citizen should be moulded, in all that search and hopeless of success,-who, at the least concerns such a relation, would have shocked the expected moment, sees land!—sees the green slopes, genius of the spinning Jenny, and caused the the wild, gorgeous shrubbery, and the huge mounthroes of a moral earthquake in every manufac- tains of the unknown empire, suddenly standing turing mart from Passamaquoddy to Pittsburg. out upon his sight! The "anch' io son pittore!" of The slavish nature, however, which thus preferred the modest painter, was suddenly ours. We, too, the most ordinary interests of humanity, to those could have our possessions in the intellectual, as in which are calculated to lift it into excellence, and the natural world. All was not a blank in taste to the rarer walks of achievement, was rebuked by and Literature. Europe shall yet receive us, and the better genius of the nation: and, without any we shall have our word in her high places of poprotection from government, without a tax on any liteness and refinement! The conviction, that we other branch of business, that of American Litera- too might put in our claims to appear among those ture was begun. To the genius of Fennimore nations which had long before been endowed with Cooper, we feel confident in saying, we owe the the universal tongues of art and song, was one of first signs of a power, the first unfoldings of a those convictions that never sleep until they have wing, which has since soared so famously, and realized all the proofs which are necessary to the which is destined to still higher flights, if not de- full establishment and recognition of their prenied and delayed by untoward and unfriendly cir- tensions.. cumstance. The first writings of this author ap- It does not militate against the claim here adpeared in 1819. How closely upon the footsteps vanced for Mr. Cooper to show that the novels of of war! How soon was the question of the Bri- Charles Brockden Brown-works in fiction of a tish Reviewer--" who reads an American book?" rarely imaginative and highly original complexionanswered by the writer, whose works, but a few were published in America so far back as 1798, years after, were read in the language of every 1801. We could show, with little difficulty, that nation in Christendom! As if to illustrate the con- there were other names of men of genius, at petest through which the nation had just gone, and riods equally remote, by whom-the mere date of to maintain the vigorous spirit which she had shown their publication being alone considered-the wriin dealing with an enemy equally insolent and tings of Mr. Cooper were anticipated. But, so powerful, the earliest work of his pen, which drew far as their effect upon the public taste and spirit the eyes of the country upon him, was founded is concerned, they might as well have remained upon events in the great struggle, with the same unpublished to this day. Their works had no cirenemy, in 1776! The publication of "The Spy," culation, did not, in the least degree, affect the which was the work in question, had an effect upon popular feeling, and prompted no farther search the American people, infinitely beyond any plea- after a vein which was equally rich in quantity and sure which they might have gathered from its pe- kind. It is to their misfortune and to the reproach rusal, as a romance. It was contemporaneous, in of the country that this was the case. But the publication, with "The Pirate" of Walter Scott-truth is, the nation was not then prepared to recoga work which did not give such ample develop-nize its own genius-had not then the courage to ment to the powers of its author, and thus afforded assert a genius at all, without first securing the an additional opportunity to the American reader, British imprimatur. Her training for this, from to institute comparisons between them, not unfa- necessity, the hands of the foe-defeat, shame, vorable to the native writer. Even as a successful foreign and domestic reproach-was yet to come. imitation only of Walter Scott, it was an event to The genius of American Literature was born and rejoice a youthful people, hitherto doubtful of their could only be born, when the American people were resources-nay, denying them-ashamed, for the prepared to receive and entertain her, to acknowfirst time, of their own previous unperformance, ledge her charms and to assert her pretensions. and solicitous of fame in new departments;-when Such seed is seldom wasted-it comes with the octhey discovered, suddenly rising in their midst, a casion that demands it, and is very apt to come, genius-until then unknown-full of vigor, and “broad cast," when the soil is ready for its growth. marching, with admirable bearing, upon the very There is a potential significance in this last little track hitherto trodden only by the "Great Un- paragraph, upon which we have need to linger. known!" The event opened the eyes of the nation, The Literature of a nation, having but the single already anxious to give the lie to the scornful re-audience, cannot long exist, or must exist under