CHAPTER I.
LITERATURE.
Theglory of the vegetable world is realized in the aloe, as from the single stately blossom which a century has matured it diffuses the balm and beauty of consummate life. And such seems to be the destiny of nations, to pour forth the accumulation of their ruling qualities, and then disappear. Greece blossomed, and Pericles was her central flower, proud, elegant, and voluptuous, "the Corinthian capital of society." Rome towered in a trunk of glory, and Augustus was revealed, grand and ambitious, bearing the imperial nest on high. Mediæval Europe blossomed around the garden of the Medici, and Leo X. would have been lost in the multitude of concomitant glories, literary, artistic, and chivalrous, had he not been supreme by virtue of both nature and office, even while the twin-flowers adorned opposite borders of the mighty field, Godfrey the captor of Rome and king of Jerusalem, and Richard of the lion-heart, smiting for England with the hammer hand. The old world having exhibited the preliminary exponents of an unbounded design, America produced a specimen bearing a superiority of majesty and duration of bloom commensurate with the protracted period of its growth, and the more glorious intention of its use.
Every successive epoch of civilization, with the correlative ideas on which it was founded, and from which it derived its peculiar aspect, after maintaining its ground with graduated lustre andutility, has arrived at its inevitable period of decline and dissolution. But in ceasing, apparently, to grow and to imbue society with its beneficial influence, in exchanging an erect attitude for a prostrate one, no vital principle has undergone an entire extinction, so as actually to disappear, and leave no trace of its reproductive benefits. A portion of its vitality forever survives in the monuments which attest the reign of the power to which they owe their existence; and these are not only sufficient to prolong and sanctify its memory, but are in turn themselves the sources of yet ampler and nobler influence. For example, the Teutonic spirit, so long disciplined in Arctic regions, at the fall of the Roman empire was infused into degenerate races, and for eight centuries continued to press toward lower latitudes, everywhere disseminating hardy habits, pure ethics, and the deep sentiments of freedom. Italy received the Lombards; Spain, the Goths; Gaul, the Franks; while Britain in due time fell to the vigorous Saxons, and Norman superiority finally added the accumulated wealth of all. Diagonal forces are the strongest, and while human progress has from the first moved westward only, the great redeeming and ennobling power has always descended from the North. The skill that tames the war-horse, the courage that rules the wave, and the energy, honor, and perseverance best adapted to beautify a barbarous continent, germinated on the field of Hastings, and were transplanted hither at the moment of most auspicious growth.
From Pericles to Augustus, there was a rapid transition through Alexander, armed tyranny. From Augustus to Leo X. a protracted depreciation extended from the Apostles through monks and crusaders, armed superstition. From Leo to Washington transpired the great preliminary age of scientific discovery through the agency of Galileo, Columbus, and Guttenberg, heaven's luminary, ocean's guide, and earth's fulcrum of all power, the press, armed invention. From Washington onward, literature, art, science, philosophy, and religion, perfectly revived and divinely harmonized, will constitute armed freedom. The close of the mediæval period left universal intellect in revolt. The western rim of the old world was all on fire, and through the flooding light let us now scan the new realms beyond.
When the fourteenth century expired, there was no healthfulpolitical organization extant, but in the fifteenth all Europe entered upon a grand system of centralization, as if expecting one general commonwealth. The sixteenth century was one of direct preparation; and the seventeenth, above all other epochs, was characterized by the establishment and extension of colonial empire. Preparatory to this, the choicest elements were driven into England by persecution, with the shuttle and the loom, the graver and the press. Drakes and Raleighs scattered armadas, and for the first time in human history, the great mass of the common people stood revealed. Settlements were made about the year 1606 by the French in Nova Scotia, and in 1608 in Canada. Cape Breton, and Placentia in Newfoundland, afterward attracted their attention, and a disastrous effort was made to gain a foothold in Florida. But voluntary emigration from France never existed, nor is it the fitting character to be perpetuated unmixed. Ambitious of wielding the sword, and not the spade, that martial people allied themselves with savages, and endeavored to seize on the whole vast territory north and west of the Ohio and Mississippi. Providence however, had in reserve a better element, destined to combine the whole continent in one great republic, while France has at present no prosperous colony in the eastern hemisphere, and scarcely a foot of ground upon the coveted western world.
It was on the eastern coast, and in English colonies alone, that the great foundations of the seventeenth century were laid. In 1607, the Cavalier element was planted at Jamestown, Virginia; and in 1620, the Roundheads landed at Plymouth, Massachusetts. But these are antagonists by nature. A little descendant of the one genus can not meet an equally diminutive specimen of the other without the imminent and instantaneous peril of a very small fight. But there isvis inertiaenough in a Dutchman to regulate any thing; and therefore, in 1624, the island of Manhattan was bought of the Indians for twenty-four dollars. At that time, Holland was the greatest of maritime nations, and so God chose them appropriately to plant the city which is already the commercial metropolis of our continent, and which eventually may rank supreme on the globe. Other colonies followed, till the sifted wheat of the old world was sown all along the nearest coast of the new. Three years after the Puritans landed in Massachusetts, other PilgrimFathers settled in New Hampshire, and Swedes united with Finlanders in procuring a tract of land near the falls of the Delaware. In 1633 the old feudal elements were colonized in Maryland, under the auspices of Lord Baltimore; and in 1635 Roger Williams moved from Massachusetts to found Rhode Island, unfurled the banner of civil and religious liberty in his city of Providence, and left "What-Cheer Rock" as the first goel of westward progress in America. At the revocation of the edict of Nantes, the best element of French society was persecuted in the Huguenots, and these fled to the wilds yet remoter from the original colonies. North Carolina was settled in 1628, and South Carolina in 1669. New Jersey, in 1664, opened an asylum to the Germans whom the sword of Louis XIV. drove from the Palatinate; and in 1682 the persecuted Quakers, embodying the peaceful element of English history, came to possess themselves and the fruits of their quiet industry beneath the oaks of Pennsylvania. If we glance beyond this great century of colonization, we see Georgia planted by General Oglethrope in 1733, which fact, in common with all the preceding, reminds us of the wonderful care manifested by the God of nations in selecting the primary germs of a new civilization, and in giving them their relative positions on the border of a predestined and immense domain. The birth of many pioneer Washingtons necessitated the services of one transcendent hero clearly authenticated as the chosen lieutenant of the Almighty. Liberty's great battle was fought and won. Soon the area of freedom became too narrow, and the danger of internal strife too great. The third President of the United States buys Louisiana. Why then? Because, on the Hudson, the steamboat is at the same time put afloat. The rightful possession of those great western waters gives us more available inland navigation than can elsewhere be found on the entire globe. The grand instrument of progress, therefore, like all other needful agencies, appears in the fitting time and place. The middle of the nineteenth century arrives, and great danger again threatens; when lo! far in the West rings out the cry, "Gold! gold!" Why then, and there? Because Americans, in general, and New Englanders, in particular, will go to the mouth of the cannon, or dare yet more fearful terrors, at any time for a dollar, and free States are speedily planted on the Pacific. It is nolonger pertinent for a little Northerner or a little Southerner to talk about dividing this Union; great Westerners spring to their feet in predominating millions, crying, "No, you shall not divide!" Simultaneously with the discovery of California, the keel of the first successful steamship was laid in New York, not to run to Havre or Liverpool, but to New Orleans—the first link in a stupendous chain of commerce, destined soon to carry and bring the choicest treasures of earth. The trade winds of God blow westward. The west end of nearly every great city in Europe and America is the growing end. Soon a guide-board, standing east of "Pilgrim Rock," will point over a great inland thoroughfare, saying, "To the Pacific direct;" and west of San Francisco, its counterpart will read, "To the Atlantic direct," while on each hand countless myriads will ennoble their toil with intelligence, and build the sublimest monuments of power with faculties the most free. As the rude archaic sculptures of Silenus were gradually refined into the perfected glories of the Parthenon, so all the vitalities successively developed and superseded through sixty centuries will become resuscitated and harmonized on this American continent.
From this general view let us descend to particular details, that we may enumerate sufficient facts to justify the conclusion just stated. The federal union of twelve cities in Etruria into one state, none of which possessed an absolute superiority over the other, and whose affairs were regulated by deputies from each city, and not by a king or any hereditary officer, constituted the most interesting institution of antiquity. Derived from Asia, and exclusively Pelasgic, it was the first form of republicanism that appeared in the history of the world, the masterly element which, infused into the constitution of the states of Greece, and afterward of Rome, gave rise to that political freedom which was the parent of all their greatness, and which has ever since grown increasingly favorable to the development of peaceful arts and social amelioration. Fortified and refined by the discipline of sixty centuries, the diversified elements of consummate power and progress were auspiciously blended in the thirteen original colonies of the United States. Every event down to the seventeenth century, especially in England, had contributed to render the fathers of our republic most happily adapted to their predestined work. During the seven centurieswhich preceded this great era, our wretched and degraded ancestors became the most highly civilized people the world had ever seen. Macaulay says, "They have spread their dominion over every quarter of the globe—have scattered the seeds of mighty empires and republics over vast continents of which no dim intimation had ever reached Ptolemy or Strabo—have created a maritime power which would annihilate, in a quarter of an hour, the navies of Tyre, Athens, Carthage, Venice, and Genoa together—have carried the science of healing, the means of locomotion and correspondence, every mechanical art, every manufacture, every thing that promotes the convenience of life, to a perfection which our ancestors would have thought magical—have produced a literature abounding with works not inferior to the noblest which Greece has bequeathed to us—have discovered the laws which regulate the motions of the heavenly bodies—have speculated with exquisite subtlety on the operations of the human mind—have been the acknowledged leaders of the human race in the career of political improvement. The history of England is the history of this great change in the moral, intellectual, and physical state of the inhabitants of our own island. There is much amusing and instructive episodical matter; but this is the main action. To us, we will own, nothing is so interesting and delightful as to contemplate the steps by which the England of the Domesday Book—the England of the Curfew and the Forest Laws—the England of crusaders, monks, schoolmen, astrologers, serfs, outlaws—became the England which we know and love—the classic ground of liberty and philosophy, the school of all knowledge, the mart of all trade. The charter of Henry Beauclerc—the Great Charter—the first assembling of the House of Commons—the extinction of personal slavery—the separation from the See of Rome—the Petition of Right—the Habeas Corpus Act—the Revolution—the establishment of the liberty of unlicensed printing—the abolition of religious disabilities—the reform of the representative system—all these seem to us to be the successive stages of one great revolution; nor can we comprehend any one of these memorable events unless we look at it in connection with those which preceded, and with those which followed it. Each of those great and ever-memorable struggles—Saxon against Norman—Vilain against Lord—Protestant againstPapist—Roundhead against Cavalier—Dissenter against Churchman—Manchester against Old Sarum, was, in its own order and season, a struggle on the result of which were staked the dearest interests of the human race; and every man who in the contest which, in his time, divided our country, distinguished himself on the right side, is entitled to our gratitude and respect."
After the above summary, we need not stop to portray the steady progress made in the parent land toward efficient colonization through the agency of such men as Clarendon, Capel, and Falkland, Hampden and Hollis, Ireton, Lambert, and Cromwell, Ludlow, Harrington, and Milton. As soon as the English Commonwealth became the central point of European civilization, the focus where all the noblest powers of humanity concentrated themselves in a prodigious activity, the third continent began to be the luminous side of our planet, the full-grown flower of the terrestrial globe. Thenceforth North America became to all nations the land of the future. The fertility of its soil, and the favorableness of its position, the grandeur of its forms and the extent of its spaces, seem to have prepared it to become the abode of the vastest and most powerful association of men that ever existed. If the order of nature is a foreshadowing of that which is to be, certainly the physical aspects of this western world, as well as the historical facts which connect it with the East, are sublime intimations of the will of Providence. The germinal institutions so evolved and localized were new, like the soil whereon they were planted. The selectest specimens of whole peoples, clustered in homogeneous groups, took root and increased with a rapidity which soon enabled their adopted America to take her position face to face with Europe, not as a dependent minor, but as a full-aged daughter, independent and an equal, a fought-for and acknowledged right. The centre of the civilized world had again been removed to a remoter point in the West, and all the mental splendor of the East was brought over to illuminate the immense realms then first redeemed from barbarism both north and south.
From the rude early dialects of India arose the majestic Sanscrit, the copious and redundant mother of all oriental tongues. The Greek was the purest current from that remote source, and was simplified in its westward flow; and the Latin is a still more recentlysimplified dialect of the Greek. The vernaculars of all modern nations are directly connected with the last mentioned sources, and have still further simplified the original principles. Of linguistic progress the English is a striking example, and may be placed at the head of all the languages of the world, as the most simple. It is the most recently perfected, and at the moment when its vigor was the greatest, and its wealth the most copious, the highest mental abilities coalesced with the noblest political principles and emigrated to America. Our colonial literature began at a period of the highest illumination, and was not unworthy of its foster-fathers Shakspeare and Spenser, Coke and Hooker, Hampden and Sydney, Bacon and Milton. In culminating excellence, Anglo-Saxon literature was transferred to this land in a body, at once; and never was a conception of greater magnitude or evolving more fertilizing effects, started in the vast arena of human progress. That era gave to history a soul and significance, by connecting it with the supreme Deity who anew gathered the divine breath that had swept over the ruins of empires, and with tornado energy dashed down the barriers in the way of man. The colonial period was signalized by a series of pitched battles between the progressive spirit of the seventeenth century and the old feudal ideas, which all the deadly blows of the preceding age had not sufficed to eradicate, and which then threatened to resume their former sway and predominance. Then came the revolution of seventy-six, a yet more potent preliminary to the great struggle destined to throw off the mountains of oppression which still crush the hearts of nations. The morning of this new day was radiant with a numerous galaxy of magnificent intellects. The ages of Pericles, Augustus, and Leo X. were consummated in the epoch of Cromwell, and all was but the vestibule direct to the grander age of Washington. Simultaneous with the advent of the latter, mighty leaders arose who were the personifications and ready agents of whatever appeared necessary to be thought, said, or done. Many of these perished in the struggle, but not their work; from necessitated ruin sprang superior grandeurs, and the general progress paused not needlessly to bemoan its heroes in their individual graves. When the time arrived for old limbs to descend, that new sap might more freely rise and circulate to renew national life and rejuvenate ideas,many colonists in the wilds of America, like Tell amid the glaciers of Switzerland were ready to exclaim, Perish my name, if need be, but let Freedom live! Nor did they doubt the final issue, but devoutly believed that great revolutions, however involved their apparent orbits, like the stars, march in fixed cycles which perpetually tend to the perfection of the common weal. As great and good thoughts, the best gold of earth, are least destroyed when most dispersed, so colonial literature aimed perpetually to equalize all good and hinder none. Public spirit then was an exalted moral virtue, the direct reverse of selfishness, its end being the noblest to which our faculties are capable of aspiring, the welfare of the whole human race. No people ever possessed this in richer abundance than the first writers among our colonists, and the fruits thereof were increasingly conspicuous during their efforts to lay the foundations of that vast temple of liberty they came to rear. Each little community of patriots were almost equally expert with the axe, the sword, and the pen, possessing a brave fortitude which could emulate the magnanimity of the Roman senate, who, though stunned by an unexpected and overwhelming blow, had the spirit to go forth to meet the unfortunate Varro and thank him, because he still had hopes of his country. Not a few of our literary pioneers exemplified the patriotic energy of the individual, who, when Hannibal was encamped at the gates of Rome, went into the market-place, and bought, "at no cheap rate," the ground on which the conqueror's tent was standing. Such especially was the spirit of him who was wiser than the prudent Fabius, greater and better than the great and good Aristides, the unprecedented hero who gave his name to the happy age in which we live.
From 1578 to 1704, under Elizabeth, James the First, Charles the First, the Long Parliament, Cromwell, Charles the Second, James the Second, William the Third, and Queen Anne, the charters of several of the colonies were in succession recognized, contested, restrained or enlarged, lost and regained, which long-continued struggle vigorously exercised and matured all the leading minds. From this and other kindred literary causes resulted the master spirits who achieved national independence and founded the republic. Among these stood Franklin, Adams, Hamilton, Jefferson, Madison, Jay, Henry, Mason, Greene, Knox, Morris, Pinckney,Clinton, Trumbull, and Rutledge. Perhaps the world never saw a national convention wherein the average of mental power rose higher than in the one which held its first session in Philadelphia, on the 14th of May, 1787, with Washington in the chair. Between that date and the 17th of September following, the Constitution of the United States was formed; and on the 30th of April, 1789, at the very moment when the Constituent Assembly was commencing its session in Paris, the first President of the republic took his oath.
The original cultivators of our virgin soil not only set out with a complete body of ancestral literature, and examples of the highest cultivation derived from anterior nations, but they diligently improved upon what they had received. It was necessary that the first published documents should partake largely of politics; but the mental strength and elaborate excellence of these resolute endeavors excited the wonder and admiration of the chief veterans of the world. In these writings they saw clearly defined and fully inaugurated the glorious age of universal amelioration. It began in the general revolt of the Dutch in Holland, about 1576, resulting in the Republic of the Seven United Provinces; was continued by the edict of Nantes, in 1589, passed by Henry IV. of France; and, in the old world, culminated, through the agency of the Long Parliament of 1641 and 1642, in the English revolution of 1688. Starting at the goal where all previous eras of reform paused in a grand consummation, the American revolution, which dates from 1775, has moved irresistibly forward with a liberating and ennobling influence often seen and felt beyond its own immediate sphere. The French revolution of 1798, which overturned religious and political feudalism on the continent, and the revolutions of the Spanish American provinces in the year 1810, together with the revolutions of 1830 and 1848, which so materially modified the remains of despotism in France, Germany, Prussia, Italy, and Austria, are but offshoots of this great central tree of freedom whose continually-spreading might and beauty shall ultimately protect and refresh the human race.
The first great contributors to our national literature had the ambition and ability to catch the departed spirit of obsolete forms and embody it in new and nobler shapes. In the place of supersededinstitutions, they substituted such original ones as would mold, vitalize, and impel the existing mass of plastic character, and thus do for the passing and prospective age what the old in their day did for the past. Evil from its nature is akin to death, but all goodness is immortal; and it is the latter which Providence mercifully accumulates along the path of progress, the precious inheritance bequeathed to us by the heroes of humanity, to ameliorate the condition of survivors, and inspire eternal hope. It is fated that freedom can never be asserted without desperate literary strife, nor be fully established until it is cemented in patriotic blood; that it can only be won and perpetuated by those who feel in their own energies the means of asserting it against all odds, and will obtain the invaluable boon at any rate. The emancipation and elevation of the American colonies into a republic was in heroical letters as well as arms the great primary monument of our land. The pages not less than the speeches of great leaders were successive flashes of divine eloquence, such as never before shone over the vanguard of mankind. We can not wonder that comrades in purpose and pursuit gathered in closer admiration, and were thrilled under the power of their lofty genius. They might incur martyrdom, but never sank in despair; nor has a drop of such blood been wasted, since blood ransomed the earth.
The Mayflower brought no pre-eminently distinguished man, but what was better, a written constitution which defined and fortified the united greatness of confederated fellow pioneers. The Pilgrim Fathers, equally exalted by the oneness of their purpose, stood on a sublime level which the cumulative labors of six thousand years had cast up; a social grandeur which was best represented by that cluster of kindred institutions, the family, school, and church, they came thereon to plant. When these elements had been extended westward to the remotest available point, and were liberalized by an expansion over the widest diameter, the freest pen expressed the most perfect equality, indicating a yet loftier terrace which it will probably require a long period fully to reach. At that time a fresh cluster of great men had risen so far in advance of the common mass, that it was only a minority who at first dared to adopt the views of more enlightened minds; and even in the assembly of illustrious prophets themselves, it was only by a majority of one, atfirst, that the Declaration of Independence was carried. But unlike the old barons at Runnymede, our republican champions could all sign their full names to the new Magna Charta, and were ready, at the greatest hazards, to authenticate the birth and prerogatives of Young America. Never was so mighty an instrument executed by so youthful hands. Of the fifty-five signers, eight had passed fifty years, but were under sixty; twenty-two had reached forty; seventeen were thirty, and two were but twenty-seven years old. Had there been fewer young men at that eventful crisis, it is probable that Jefferson's daring patriotism would have been repudiated, and his sagacious purchase of Louisiana, with all the literary and commercial facilities consequent thereupon, together with all the preliminary advancement toward that great centre of national domain, would have been disastrously postponed.
But, no! Thanks to an overruling Providence, the seasons, agents, and instrumentalities appropriately appear and ultimately conduce to the one great end, beneficent amelioration perpetually increased. All great minds are thus rendered cotemporaneous, and are naturalized among us in the highest sense. Machiavelli, Montesquieu, and Bacon, Molière, Cervantes, and Shakspeare, touch the springs of emotion and sway mental energies on the banks of the Hudson, the Ohio, or the Missouri, as on the banks of the Guadalquiver, the Seine, or the Avon. National literature is no longer limited to its fatherland, whether a contracted island or fragmentary continent, but spreads in a language more comprehensive than that of ancient Greece or Rome, and exhibits full development on the immensity of an entire hemisphere. Mutual pledges are rapidly increased between all literary producers, and their reciprocal labors promise soon to establish a grand brotherhood cast in the mighty mold of the largest liberty, and combined to realize the divine conception which rose in the majestic mind of Milton, of "that lasting fame and perpetuity of praise which God and good men have consented shall be the reward of those whosepublished laborsadvanced the good of mankind."
The Puritan colonies were from the beginning pre-eminent in the cause of education. In 1636, steps were taken toward the foundation of a college at Newtown, since called Cambridge, in honor of the English university. Two years later, this purpose wasconfirmed by the bequest of John Harvard, who gave the new institution a sum of money and a valuable library. The first printing-press in America was set up in Harvard, in the President's house, in 1639. The literary and moral training of all children and youth was regarded as most important, and Massachusetts, as early as 1647, required by law that every township which had fifty householders should have a school-house and employ a teacher, and such as had one thousand freeholders should have a grammar-school. From that time forward the subject of education has received increasing attention, especially in the new western States. Michigan has a public fund for this purpose which yields $30,000 annually, a sum fully equal to that of the oldest commonwealth; and the like fund in Wisconsin yields more than three times that amount, per annum. The last States that are organized begin with the highest improvements extant in the first, and thus carry forward this supreme agent of civilization in advance of all the rest. Since the opening of the present century, colleges in New England have been increased from seven to fourteen; in the Middle States, from six to twenty-two; in the Southern States, from nine to thirty-seven; and in the Western States, from three to forty-seven.
The first newspaper in this country was the "Boston News-Letter," commenced in 1704; followed by the "Boston Gazette," in 1719, and the "American Weekly Mercury," at Philadelphia, in the same year. The "New York Gazette" first appeared in 1725. A half century later, there were but thirty-seven public journals in all the colonies, and these were regarded favorably by both low and high, with a few exceptions. Governor Berkley, of Virginia, in 1675, said: "I thank God that we have no free schools nor printing-presses, and I hope that we shall not have any for a hundred years; for learning has brought disobedience, and heresy, and sects into the world, and printing has divulged them, and libeled governments. God keep us from both!" Lord Effingham, of the same colony, in 1683, was ordered "to allow no person to use a printing-press on any occasion whatever."
We need not attempt to estimate how immense is the periodical literature of the United States at present, embracing the newspapers, and the monthly and quarterly magazines and reviews. There is no department of art in our country in which greater progresshas been made during the last thirty years than in that of printing; and while the entire number of copies struck off, annually, must be many millions, much the larger proportion is produced for, if not by, the free West.
The first original books in America were written in New England, and there the chief seat of literary influence has heretofore remained. But it is easy to perceive that a great change has already taken place; and yet easier is it to predict that when, instead of aping foreign models, we come to have a literature really national, its perfection, like all its best materials, will be found in the great West. A magnificent field for intellect, in all its inventive and constructive shapes, is manifestly opening in nearer proximity to the Rocky Mountains and the Pacific shore. As material treasures, long buried, are now from that remote quarter sent forth to enrich the world, so will an infinitely more useful superabundance of intellect be poured thence by and by to enlighten and redeem the effete continents beyond.
The East has always guarded the literary elements of a productive age, while the appropriate field of their culture was preparing, and then has yielded the contracted measure of seed to be scattered and gathered in harvests of immensely augmented worth. A literature which expresses our native peculiarities, and adequately represents American character and deeds, does not yet exist, and this is as much an occasion for gratitude, as it is easy to be explained. Our primary mission was to realize the idea of a perfect Commonwealth which had stirred the greatest minds of every age from Plato to Roger Williams. All history has been but the record of human strivings after a better, higher, and more perfect social state, the inauguration of the age of reason and righteousness in the true sense of those much abused words. Therefore an original political literature, harmonious with the new position which progressive humanity had assumed away from arbitrary conventionalities, was to be our first success; and, to the wondering admiration of all Europe, that has already been achieved. Starting from great and genuine principles, laid down by Milton, Hampden, and Sidney, our fathers erected a governmental model the most perfect on earth. That, however, was no provincial creation, but the first grand national monument, which fortunately through successive generations,claimed the best energies of all leading minds. Nothing but a direct struggle for freedom of person and thought could emancipate the common intellect from feudal associations, hereditary errors, and crippling conventionalities. That triumph attained, and the prolific descendants of the victors amalgamated in yet more ardent endeavors on a broader and more tranquil arena, its correlative, the creation of a national fabric purely literary, may be confidently anticipated. This, too, will not be an aggregate of ancient provincialisms, but an original homogeneous mass of American, continental mind, enriched from a thousand genuine sources of local sentiments. The newest States are in thought the freest and most original, which will cause the whole country to individualize itself more and more. The gigantic movement of independent intellect toward the West every hour deepens the contrast between itself and the petty insipidities it leaves behind. The East has, indeed, given the key-note to most of our popular thinking, but the West has invariably furnished the chief chorus, and spontaneously extemporized every variation whose brilliant originality has elicited thrilling applause. New England has been most prolific of authors, but the best of them write away from the narrow hearth of their nativity, or on foreign themes. Books are beginning to be imbued with a national spirit, as characteristic as are our institutions; and the world will probably not have to wait long, before the purely literary productions of America will be assigned a place equally exalted with the masterpieces of our political science.
The best histories of European literatures, and the sweetest legendary songs, echoing the reminiscences of the faded past, have been recently produced in Massachusetts. It was appropriate that the most attractive portraiture of Columbus and his Companions should be given to the world from the "Sunny Side" of the Hudson; and the gifted historian of our Republic could hardly write with adequate breadth and force except under the expansive influence of this mighty metropolis. But how will the poet sing, the critic discriminate, and the annalist indite, when centuries shall have developed the resources of a hemisphere, and gathered a galaxy of its brightest luminaries in central skies to pour their combined effulgence from sea to sea and from pole to pole!
Of course, literary excellence is as yet but very imperfectlyattained in the West, but all present auspices are clearly indicative of prospective worth. As in volcanic eruptions, the deepest and firmest strata shoot to the apex of the fiery cone, so in self-impelled emigrations the best material goes first and farthest. The greater the remove, the more disenthralled the mind, and the more copious of observation, as well as profounder the depths of reflection, which will have been brought into view by the transit. All past literatures contributed to lay a deep and broad foundation for our own; and every historic incident of public life with us, more than in any other nation, is closely related to the essential nature and social improvement of mankind. Literary excellence has never moved eastward a furlong since thought began. On the contrary, the course of mental exaltation and aggrandizement is in exactly the opposite direction. Every body instinctively says "down East" and "out West," since it is felt to be a universal rule that only in moving in the latter direction is the largest liberty enjoyed. Years ago we defined a westerner as being "a Yankee expanded, a New Englander enlarged;" and it is ultimately from that stock, refined and ennobled, through the inspiration of the majestic West, that our best national literature will originate.
The literal invasion of savage forests, which is indispensable to the expansion of our republican domain, has given a designation to another great element of popular education peculiar to our land. The stump, not less than the steam engine, has become the means of disseminating knowledge, and of breaking down the influence of both local dictation and caucus caballing. It is as true as it may appear strange, that American eloquence has thus become most analogous to Athenian, and the orator is made the successful rival even of the press. Not a little of moral sublimity is presented by a great Presidential canvass, and it is difficult to estimate the amount of valuable information on such occasions diffused. The best talents of the country traverse the whole nation, even the most inaccessible regions, like Peter the Hermit, that they may everywhere arouse the public mind, excite and feed its power of thought. On such occasions the remark of Lord Brougham is always verified, that the speaker who lowers his composition in order to accommodate himself to the habits and tastes of the multitude, will find that he commits a grievous mistake. Our promiscuous assembliesare highly intelligent, and, on account of the interest they take in public affairs, they are the most susceptible of improvement. They most relish the logical statement of profound principles which they are sagacious to comprehend, and zealous to re-discuss. It is in this way that Bunkum speeches sent to millions of readers, and innumerable lectures delivered nightly on all sorts of subjects to throngs in country and town, are made doubly profitable in the habits of reading and reasoning which they elicit and confirm. Nothing in the past will compare with the prodigious excitement which precedes popular elections in America, and the general calm which immediately follows. It is a sublime process of universal education, the best adapted to perfect and perpetuate the free institutions in the bosom of which it had its birth. Having inquired into the origin of representative government, Montesquieu declared that "this noble system was first found in the woods of Germany." It has ever improved in exact proportion as it has removed from its original source, and the masses last gathered to its embrace seem to be most rapidly and thoroughly transformed by its worth. Enlightened and heroical, they repudiate the aristocratic system, according to which a person is born to a position of sovereignty merely because he has been born into a privileged class; and firmly cling to the democratic rule, wherein an individual is born to a position of sovereignty by the simple fact that he is born human. Of all earth's institutions, the American Republic stands supreme, as being the first open university of this doctrine; and we have the best reasons to believe that mankind, without exception, will yet become its happy and honored alumni.
George Berkeley and Roger Williams were both educated at Christ Church College, Oxford. How great is the contrast between the traditional conservatism of mediæval universities as they exist in old England at the present day, and the literary spirit so free and progressive in young America. The greatest boast of the former is that they remain just where Wykeham, Waynfleet, and Wolsey left them, and that they have neither advanced nor changed the system of education since they were founded. We have before alluded to the fact, that it was the zeal of commoners and not the munificence of kings which almost wholly created both universities; and when those great institutions, designed for the generalgood, were perverted into the hot-beds of regal pride and aristocratic exclusiveness, their chief power was at an end. Oxford and Cambridge were influential on the popular mind only so far as they were the exponents and promoters of its intelligence. Since they have declined further to co-operate in this, they possess little value save as venerable monuments of the past, retreats wherein the great pioneers of the age of Washington were trained. In addition to Berkeley and Williams, they fostered the republican spirit of Milton, the illustrious bard and patriot who chanted the high praises of liberty in his Defenses of the People of England, in his Apology for the Liberty of the Press, and in his Causes of the Reformation in England. How glorious to behold him emerging from "those dark ages wherein the huge overshadowing train of error had almost swept all the stars out of the firmament of the church;" warning his countrymen "that unless their liberty be of a kind such as arms can neither procure nor take away, which alone is the fruit of piety, justice, temperance, and unadulterated virtue; they may only be seen to pass through the fire to perish in the smoke;" pleading for "a book as containing a progeny of life in it, active as that soul whose progeny it is, and preserving as in a vial the purest extraction of the living intellect which bred it;" reminding his countrymen "that they might as well almost kill a man as kill a good book, because who kills a man, kills a reasonable creature, God's image, but who destroys a good book, kills reason itself, kills the image of God as it were in the eye." Of a kindred spirit was Algernon Sidney to whom we owe those great and eloquent Discourses which our fathers studied as the first complete definition and exegesis of the nature and duties of government; so full of brave and noble sentences, forever setting the indignant foot on the divine rights of kings; and asserting that "He that oppugns the public liberty overthrows his own, and is guilty of the most brutish of all follies, while he arrogates to himself that which he denies to all men," and maintaining throughout the essential monarchy of the people. In due time followed the magnificent Burke, amid whose stormy invectives against the excesses of freedom, are many rich and profound truths. Nor less useful to the cause of literary and political progress was his great rival, the critic, jurist, and reformer, Mackintosh, who prophesied the downfall of spiritualpower before the close of the nineteenth century, and was always the jealous defender of popular rights.
Cotemporaneous with these latter heroes in literature, and extending with enhanced splendor of inspiration and effects to our own day, what a magnificent series of mental producers has this republic reared and enjoyed! It is prophetic of a yet loftier and more glorious improvement, that when ennobling truths have once been announced, they can never be thrown back into obscurity or indifference; but must spread through the world, to become a portion of the intellectual atmosphere of nations, and give tone and temper to all rising minds. Great thinkers are chosen to lead the world forward, until, not for possessions but virtues, not for his trappings but for himself, man is respected, and the rights of a common humanity are everywhere enjoyed.
We believe that the destiny of humanity is accomplished, not by revolving in a circle, but by a spiral ascent, and that a free literature is its brightest precursor and accompaniment. Mental liberty must be regarded as an operative cause the most powerful in the redemption of every suffering class. Its champions, though they perish, are the world's martyrs. Hearts everywhere beat quicker when their names are mentioned, the scenes of their heroism are perpetually hallowed, and their memory becomes a universal religion. When the Bastile fell, the source of their beneficent might was remembered by the victors, who sent the huge key to Mount Vernon. We may be assured that when all nations shall have been regenerated through governments which shall exist by and for the people—when liberty shall have so far brought dignity of character and excellence in literature, as to lead the masses to ask. "Where are the powers which wrought this great and glorious change?" Heaven and earth shall reply, "Among those powers—yea, foremost in its energetic and comprehensive efficacy was the inspired pen, not less than the victorious sword, of the American Revolution."
The main stream of the historic nations, with their progressive literature, has always flowed toward the north-west. The original start of this world-wide migration was long anterior to the times when the soil of Europe was trodden by Greeks, Romans, Sclavonians, Germans, or Celts. But however remote was the first impulse,the irresistible spell has only deepened with its advancement, and in our day sends the same Japhetic tribes to settle on western prairies, or explore the regions of gold beyond. Intestine wars, which constituted the chief barrier to general progress, are most commonly excited by difference of races. But under our national banner all active elements, even the most opposite, are gathering and becoming rapidly fused into each other, so as to form one homogeneous and luminous whole. Civilization is contagious, and of all sovereigns Liberty is most pacific toward her admirers. Identity of language is a mighty auxiliary to elevating equality, and the subjugation of this continent to the sway of our native literature will present the most magnificent trophy that ever signalized the triumph of civilization. That this will eventually be accomplished by literary Americans, whose sphere of thought will be as central as it will be both elevated and comprehensive, ought not for a moment to be doubted. Thus far we have produced only a border literature, narrow as the place of its birth, and frigid like the clime. But when an adequate field shall have been cleared near the centre of our domain, wherein intellect may extend an unfettered grasp, and leisure is attained for elaborate composition, remote from foreign models and independent of petty criticism, then the world will see realized a literature commensurate with the vastness of the western republic, and rich enough to endow all her children with more than eastern wealth.
Coincident with the planting of the last English colony in America, Leibnitz came forward at Berlin with his comparative philosophy of language, and was the first successful classifier of the tongues then known. The next step of advancement in this fundamental path of literature was taken in England, in 1751, by John Harris, who, in his "Hermes," laid the foundation of grammatical philosophy on the largest scale. It is a significant fact that the third prominent step in the same direction should be taken by an American, whose great national work on the Indian tribes was, on the 3d of March, 1847, authorized by Congress to be published, by special act. Not to anticipate our review of science in this age, we may simply remark that another national publication, that of Squier on the ancient monuments in the Mississippi valley, has excited the most lively interest throughout the archæological world,and recently won its richest medal. In reference to the above-mentioned work by Doctor Schoolcraft, Doctor Bunsen says: "In 1850, the first volume of that gigantic work appeared, and now a third volume, printed in 1853, has been transmitted to me by the liberality of that government. It may fairly be said that, by this great national and Christian undertaking, which realizes the aspirations of President Jefferson, and carries out to their full extent the labors and efforts of a Secretary of State, the Honorable Albert Gallatin, the government of the United States has done more for the antiquities and language of a foreign race than any European government has hitherto done for the language of their ancestors."
In the mental, not less than in the material world, this one rule universally obtains, that, the higher the nature, and the more important the influence of a given effect, the more deliberate is its march toward perfectibility and development. If our literature is yet as youthful as it has been slow, it has at least furnished abundant indications that a great original career has actually begun, and under auspices which promise the most brilliant success. Both in men and animals a mixture of races differing from each other, but not too far differenced, is a circumstance which tends most to the improvement of the species; and in the history of letters, all that is greatest and best has been accomplished by the most mixed races of mankind. Diversified currents of free thought, as gigantic as the rivers which reflect our central mountains, and irrigate the immensity of their intervales, are pouring from the Atlantic toward the Pacific shores. On their way, they will mingle and blend in an amalgam deeper, broader, and richer than the preceding world ever saw. As of old, the elegance of the Asiatic will be sustained by the vigor of the Dorian, while each lends the other that quality without which neither could well succeed, but by which multifarious co-operation, an aggregate of consummate worth will be attained.
With reference to a worthy national literature, we are drifting in a right direction; and whatever others may fear in consequence of quitting antiquated channels and familiar scenes, we have good reasons for indulging in sanguine hope. All past experience suggests the expansion of our westward chart, and promises the richest discoveries the bolder we venture forth. No nation can be debasedthrough an excess of wealth, luxury, and power, so long as a harmony is maintained between its institutions and the progress of untrammeled opinion. Political life, as well as moral, is but a series of regenerations; and that nation which has longest braved the severest storms, where the winds are comparatively free, has grown stronger in the tumult than in the calm, and now possesses the greatest energy of youth in those who are most rebellious against antique wrongs. We began with this juvenile energy, and are maturing its best strength on the fruits of all anterior struggles. Former heroes, in their blind madness, may have pulled down the temple of ancient civilization on their shoulders, and buried themselves beneath its ruins; but there is a resurrection vouchsafed to all immortal life, and its mightiest manifestations of every type are renewed on our shores. If this continent has longest lain fallow, it is that the resuscitated energies of redeemed humanity may produce their mightiest fruits thereon.
Wonderful works, produced in distant regions and at various times, reduplicate their latent productiveness as they proceed from age to age, creating an interminable progeny of ideas, and attesting the vitality of genius evermore. This is the true transmigrator, traversing all eras, and maintaining a prolific life amid every variety of vicissitude, kindred to the Great Intelligence, by whose mandate respecting human destinies, as in material things, all concomitants may be changed, but nothing of utility is to be destroyed. What would have been the present moral condition of the world if the Hebrew poetry had never been translated; if the revival of the study of the Greek literature had never taken place; if Raphael and Michael Angelo had never been born; if Dantè, Petrarch, Boccacio, Chaucer, Shakspeare, Calderon, Lord Bacon, and Milton had never existed; if no monuments of ancient art had been handed down to us; and if the poetry of the ancient religion had been extinguished with its belief? But by the intervention of these and other like excitements, the human mind has been awakened to the inventions of modern science, and the creation of recent literatures, which transcend in actual worth all the masterpieces of ancient times. Hereby is the continuity of society, its progress and civilization secured. Many a noble head and heart are dust, but every ennobling thought emanating thence, however long ago, is nowalive, and will forever be. Each drop blends with that great wave of progress, the movement of the entire ocean of mind, which is commensurate with the magnitude of the mass to be moved. In due time, the final result of almighty love will be joyfully realized. All noble growths are gradual, and that beneficent power which is destined to become superior over every other, moves with a slowness the most sublime in controlling subordinate ministrations to human weal. Divine logic will not be less conclusive on account of the multitude of its cumulative data, or the deliberateness of its deductions therefrom. As Guizot suggests, Providence moves through time as the gods of Homer through space—it takes a step, and ages have rolled away!
History ever tends to authenticate the fact that there is a general civilization of the whole human race, and a destiny to be accomplished through a prescribed course, in which each nation transmits to its successors the wealth of every superseded age, thus contributing to an aggregated store which is to be perpetually augmented for the common good. This is the noblest as well as most interesting view to be taken of progressive humanity, as it comprehends every other, and furnishes the only true interpretation. In regard to depth of feeling and diversity of ideas, modern literature is infinitely more profound and affluent than that of the ancients. It may not be more perfect in form, but it greatly excels in practicalness, and moral worth. It is in this variety of elements, and the sublime identity of purpose manifested in their constant struggle, that the essential superiority of our civilization consists. The proof of this has been presented in all the vast assemblage of facts which human annals have preserved. These connect causes with their effects, thus constituting events which, when they are once consummated, form the immortal portion of history, and are to be studied as the soul of the past, the groundwork of present improvement, and a secure guaranty of still greater excellence in the future. A yearning after generalization, as the basis of improved literary and spiritual progress, is the noblest and most powerful of all our intellectual desires; and it is a very great privilege to be born in an age and country where this aspiration may with the most rational zeal be indulged.
Literature is not only associated legitimately with all that isgreat and dignified in the manifestations of human power, but, in our age, it also assumes the most solemn if not the most sublime of characters. Some are bold to teach, like Fichte, that there is a Divine Idea pervading the visible universe, which visible universe is but its symbol and personification, animated by the principle of vitality. To discern and grasp this, to live wholly in it, is the privilege and vocation of virtue, knowledge, freedom; and the end, therefore, of all intellectual efforts in every age. Literary men are the interpreters of this latent enigma, a perpetual priesthood, standing forth, generation after generation, as the dispensers and living types of God's everlasting wisdom, commissioned to make it manifest, to reveal and embody it by successive fragments in their works. Each age, by its inherent tendencies, is different from every other age, and demands a different manifestation of the eternal purpose. Hence every laborer in the vineyard of letters must be thoroughly imbued with the spirit of his age if he would be permanently useful; while he who is not thus inspired, soon becomes a mere groper in the dark, both benighted and impotent. This view explains the true civilizing principle of literature, and expands it so as to embrace all things human and divine. It is not only the expression of society, but also its very life and soul, and may either be a powerful instrument for creation and regeneration, or a fatal one for destruction. There is a reciprocal influence between an age and the books it engenders, as there is between the lettered spirit and its living use. The heroic grandeur of Greece inspired Homer; but it was from Homer that its civilization sprang. The first epic then garnered into itself all antecedent history, and opened a channel wherein succeeding generations might inherit all that bygone efforts and innovations had produced. Great and revered models of subsequent nations have since been grafted upon the original stock of literary worth, from which must surely result both prose and poetical monuments of a comprehensive unity and force commensurate with the age reserved for their transcendent excellence.
As we best prepare a people for a high Christianity by beginning to preach to it at once, so we can not otherwise fit nations to enjoy liberty than by directly inculcating among them its worth, through the medium of a free literature; and it is certain that ofall nations belonging to the progressive family, Americans are best prepared for this mission, since they have most desired and insisted upon it since the birth of the republic. As the Greeks were more fitted for the fine arts than the Romans, and the latter were mightier in arms than the Mediævals whom Providence sent forth as the missionaries of a renewed advancement, when the restoration of learning prepared the way for still greater achievements, so is it the manifest destiny of the age of Washington to diffuse in wider and deeper profusion the most humanizing blessings, and thus to conduct instrumentally to that perfection of civilization for which earth and man were designed.