"A country which has no national literature, or a literature too insignificant to force its way abroad, must always be, to its neighbours, at least in every important spiritual respect, an unknown and misestimated country. Its towns may figure on our maps; its revenues, population, manufactures, political connexions, may be recorded in statistical books: but the character of the people has no symbol and no voice; we cannot know them by speech and discourse, but only by mere sight and outward observation of their manners and procedure. Now, if both sight and speech, if both travellers and native literature, are found but ineffectual in this respect, how incalculably more so the former alone!"

Edinburgh Review.—Vol. xlvi. p. 309.

There is but one method by which most nations can express the general mind: by their literature. Popular books are the ideas of the people put into language by an individual. To a self-governing people there are two methods open: legislation is the expression of the popular mind, as well as literature.

If the national mind of America be judged of by its legislation, it is of a very high order; so much less violence to the first principles of morals is exhibited there than in any other social arrangements that the world has yet seen. If the American nation be judged of by its literature, it may be pronounced to have no mind at all.

The two appearances are, however, reconcilable. The mind of a nation grows, like that of an individual; and its growth follows somewhat the same course. There may be in each a mind, vigorous and full of promise, unerring in the recognition of true principles, but apt to err in the application of them; ardent in admiration of all faithful and beautiful expression of mind by others; but not yet knowing how to utter itself. The youthful philosopher or poet is commonly a metaphysician before he indicates what he is ultimately to become. In the age of vivid consciousness, before he is twenty, the invisible and intangible world of reality opens to him with a distinctness and lustre which make him in after time almost envy himself his youthful years. In this bright spiritual world, much is as indisputably revealed to him as material objects to the bodily eye: principles in full prominence; and a long perspective of certainties melting imperceptibly into probabilities; and lost at last in the haze of possibility, bright with the meridian sun of faith. To him

But of all this he can, for some time, express nothing. He burns with convictions, but can testify them to others only by recognising the expression which others have obtained the power of affording. If he makes the attempt, he is either unintelligible or trite.

This appears to me to be the stage at which the mind of America has arrived. That the legislation of the country is, on the whole, so noble, is owing to the happy circumstance (a natural one in the order of Providence, by which great agents rise up when a great work has to be done) that accomplished individuals were standing ready to help the people to an expression of its first convictions. The earliest convictions of a nation so circumstanced are of their fundamental and common rights: and the expression must be legislation. This has been done so well by the Americans that there is every reason to anticipate that more will follow; since principles are so linked together that it is scarcely possible to grasp one without touching another. Accordingly, though there is no contribution yet to the Philosophy of Mind from America, many thinking men are feeling after its principles amidst the accumulations of the old world: though no light has been given to society from the American press on the principles of politics, Americans may be heard quoting Burke from end to end of the country, infallibly separating the democratic aspirations of his genius from the aristocratic perversions of his temper and education: though America has yet witnessed no creation, either in literature or the arts, and cannot even distinguish a creation from a combination, imitation, or delineation, yet the power of admiration which she shows in hailing that which is far inferior to what she needs,—the vigour with which, after incessant disappointment, she applies herself to the produce of her press, to find the imperishable in what is just as transient as all that has gone before,—is a prophecy that a creator will arise. The faith that America is to have an artist of some order is universal: and such a faith is a sufficient guarantee of the event. Every ephemeron of a tale-writer, a dramatist, novelist, lyrist, and sonnetteer, has been taken by one or another for the man. But he has not come out of his silence yet; and it is likely that it may still be long before he does. Every work of genius is, as has been said, a mystery till it appears. What its principles and elaboration may be, it is for one man only—its author—to conceive: but it is plain what it will not be. It will not be, more or less, a copy of anything now existing. It will not be a mere delineation of what passes before the bodily eye, unillumined and unvivified by the light and movement of principles, of which forms are but the exponents. It will not be an exhibition of the relations which conventionalisms mutually bear, however fine may be the perception, and however clever the presentation may be. Further than this American literature has, as yet, produced nothing.

There is another reason, besides those which have been mentioned, why it would be highly unjust and injurious to conclude that there is nothing more in the nation's heart and brain than has come out before the eye. The American nation is made up of contributions from almost all other civilised nations: and, though the primary truths of God, and the universal characteristics of Man are common to them all, there are infinite diversities to be blended into unity before a national character can arise; before a national mind can be seen to actuate the mass of society. It is probable that the first great work of genius that appears will be the most powerful instrument for effecting this blending and reconciling: but the appearance of such a work is doubtless retarded in proportion to the checks and repression of social sympathy, caused by the diversity of influences under which society proceeds. The tuning for the concert has begun; some captious persons are grumbling at the discord; some inexperienced expectants take a wail here, and a flourish there, to be music: but the hour has not struck. The leader has not yet come to his place, to play the chord which shall bring the choral response that must echo over the world.

I saw the house which Berkeley built in Rhode Island,—built in the particular spot where it is, that he might have to pass, in his rides, over the hill which lies between it and Newport, and feast himself with the tranquil beauty of the sea, the bay and the downs, as they appear from the ridge of the eminence. I saw the pile of rocks, with its ledges and recesses, where he is said to have meditated and composed his "Minute Philosopher." It was at first melancholy to visit these his retreats, and think how empty the land still is of the philosophy he loved. But the more one sees of the people, and the less of their books, the stronger grows the hope of the stranger. One finds the observation of many turned inwards. Fragments of spiritual visions occur to one and another. Though some dogmatise, and others wait for revelation, and none seem to remember the existence of the experimental method, still there is a reaching after the Philosophy of Mind. At Harvard University, the chair of Mental Philosophy has been vacant for above eight years: it having been the custom formerly to indoctrinate the students with a certain number of chapters of Locke; and no man being now found hardy enough to undertake to discharge the duty thus; and the way not being yet clear to any one who would lay open the whole field of this philosophy, and let the students gather what they could out of it. Such impediments do not exist beyond the walls; and many young minds are at work without guidance, to whom guidance, however acceptable, is not necessary. If the lectures which are given to young ladies, who are carefully misinformed from Reid and Stewart,—if the reviews and panegyrics of Dr. Brown, hazarded without the slightest conception of the nature and extent of his meaning, are likely to throw the observer into despair;—if he is amazed to see a coterie disputing upon the ultimate principles perceived by Pure Reason, while he finds within himself no evidence of the existence of this Pure Reason, and believes that if it did universally exist, ultimate principles could admit of no dispute,—he is yet cheered by finding, not only eagerness in the pursuit of the philosophical ideas of others, but traces of some originality of speculation. There is a little book, by a Swedenborgian, called "The Growth of the Mind," which is, I believe unquestionably, an original work. From its originality, and the beauty of some of its images, and yet more of its exhibition of certain relations, it is highly interesting, though it is not found to command that extensive assent, which is the only guarantee of the soundness of works on the Philosophy of Mind. Mankind may demur for ages to the earth being round, and to its moving through space; but where the primary appeal, as in the Philosophy of Mind, must be to consciousness, works which do not command assent to their fundamental positions are failures as philosophy, though they may have inferior merits and attractions.

The best productions of American literature are, in my opinion, the tales and sketches in which the habits and manners of the people of the country are delineated, with exactness, with impartiality of temper, and without much regard to the picturesque. Such are the tales of Judge Hall of Cincinnati. Such are the tales by the author of Swallow Barn; where, however, there is the addition of a good deal of humour, and a subtraction of some of the truth. Miss Sedgwick's tales are of the highest order of the three, from the moral beauty which they breathe. This moral beauty is of a much finer character than the bonhommie which is the charm of Irving's pictures of manners. She sympathises where he good-naturedly observes; she cheerily loves where he gently quizzes. Miss Sedgwick's novels have this moral beauty too; as has everything she touches: but they have great and irretrievable faults as works of art. Tale-writing is her forte: and in this vocation, no one who has observed her striking progression will venture to say what she may not achieve.

Among the host of tales which appear without the names of their authors are three, which strike me as excellent in their several ways: "Allen Prescott," containing the history of a New England boy, drawn to the life, and in a just and amiable spirit: "The New England Housekeeper," in which the mÉnage of a rising young lawyer, with its fresh joys and ludicrous perplexities, is humorously exhibited: and "Memoirs of a New England Village Choir," a sketch of even higher merit.

Irving's writings have had their meed. He has lived in the sunshine of fame for many years, and in the pleasant consciousness that he has been a benefactor to the present generation, by shedding some gentle, benignant, and beguiling influences on many intervals of their rough and busy lives. More than this he has probably not expected; and more than this he does not seem likely to achieve. If any of his works live, it will be his Columbus: and the later of his productions will be the first forgotten.

Cooper's novels have a very puny vitality. Some descriptions of scenery, and some insulated adventures, have great merit: but it is not human life that he presents. His female characters are far from human; and in his selections of the chances of mortal existence, he usually chooses the remotest. He has a vigour of perception and conception, which might have made him, with study and discipline, a great writer. As it is, he is, I believe, regarded as a much-regretted failure.

The Americans have a poet. Bryant has not done anything like what he can and will do: but he has done some things that will live. Those of his poems which are the best known, or the most quoted, are smooth, sweet, faithful descriptions of nature, such as his own imagination delights in. I shall always remember the voice and manner with which he took up a casual remark of mine, about sights to be seen in the pine-barrens. When the visitors had all departed, his question "And what of the pine-barrens?" revealed the spirit of the poet. Of his poems of this class, "The Evening Wind" is to me the most delicious. But others,—"The Past," and "Thanatopsis"—indicate another kind, and a higher degree of power. If he would live for his gifts, if his future years could be devoted to "clear poetical activity," "looking up," like the true artist, "to his dignity and his calling," that dignity and that calling may prove to be as lofty as they no doubt appeared in the reveries of his boyhood; and he may be listened to as lovingly over the expanse of future time, as he already is over that of the ocean.

The Americans have also a historian of promise. Mr. Bancroft's History of the United States is little more than begun: but the beginning is characterised by an impartial and benevolent spirit, and by the indications which it affords of the author's fidelity to democratic principles; the two primary requisites in a historian of the republic. The carrying on the work to a completion will be a task of great toil and anxiety: but it will be a most important benefit to society at large, if it fulfils its promise.

The periodical literature of the United States is of a very low order. I know of no review where anything like impartial, enlightened criticism is to be found. The North American Review had once some reputation in England; but it has sunk at home and abroad, less from want of talent than of principle. If it has any principle whatever at present, it seems to be to praise every book it mentions, and to fall in as dexterously as possible with popular prejudice. The American Quarterly, published at Philadelphia, is uninteresting from the triteness of its morals, and a general dearth of thought, amidst a good deal of cleverness. The Southern Review, published at Charleston,—sometime ago discontinued, but I believe lately renewed,—is the best specimen of periodical literature that the country has afforded. After the large deductions rendered necessary by the faults of southern temper, this Review maintains its place above the rest; a rank which is, I believe, undisputed.

I met with one gem in American literature, where I should have least expected it:—in the Knickerbocker; a New York Monthly Magazine. Last spring, a set of papers began to appear, called "Letters from Palmyra,"[28] six numbers of which had been issued when I left the country. I have been hitherto unable to obtain the rest: but if they answer to the early portions, there can be no doubt of their being shortly in everybody's hands, in both countries. These letters remain in my mind, after repeated readings, as a fragment of lofty and tender beauty. Zenobia, Longinus, and a long perspective of characters, live and move in natural majesty; and the beauties of description and sentiment appear to me as remarkable as the strong conception of character, and of the age. If this anonymous fragment be not the work of a true artist,—if the work, when entire, do not prove to be of a far higher order than anything which has issued from the American press,—its early admirers will feel yet more surprise than regret.

It is continually said, on both sides of the water, and with much truth, that the bad state of the laws of literary property is answerable for some of the depression of American literature. It is true that the imperfection of these laws inflicts various discouragements on American writers, while it is disgracefully injurious to foreign authors. It is true that American booksellers will not remunerate native authors while they can purloin the works of British writers: and that the American public has a strong disposition to listen to the utterance of the English in preference to the prophets of their own country. It is true that in America, where every man must work for his living, it is a discouragement to the pursuit of literature that a living cannot, except in a few rare cases, be got by it. But all this is no solution of the fact of the non-existence of literature in America: which fact is indeed no mystery. The present state of the law, by which the works of English authors are pirated, undefended against mutilation, and made to drive native works out of the market, is so conspicuously bad, that there is every prospect of a speedy alteration: but there is nothing in the abuse which can silence genius, if genius is wanting to speak. It ought by this time to be understood that there is no power on earth which can repress mental force of the highest kinds; which can stifle the utterance of a thoroughly-moved spirit: certainly no power which is held by piratical booksellers under defective laws. Such discouragement is unjust and harsh; but it cannot be fatal. If a native genius, of a far higher order than any English, had been existing in America for the last ten years, he would have made himself heard ere this, and won his way into the general mind and heart through a host of bookselling harpies, and a chaos of lawlessness: he would have done this, even if it had been necessary to give his dinner for paper, and sell his bed to pay the printer;—expedients which it is scarcely conceivable that any author in that thriving land should be driven to. The absence of protection to foreign literary property is injurious enough, without its being made answerable for the deficiency of literary achievement. The causes lie deeper, and will not have ceased to operate till long after the law shall have been made just in this particular.

Some idea of the literary taste of the country may be arrived at through a mention of what appeared to me to be the comparative popularity of living or recent British authors.

I heard no name so often as Mrs. Hannah More's. She is much better known in the country than Shakspeare. This is, of course, an indication of the religious taste of the people; and the fact bears only a remote relation to literature. Scott is idolised; and so is Miss Edgeworth; but I think no one is so much read as Mr. Bulwer. I question whether it is possible to pass half a day in general society without hearing him mentioned. He is not worshipped with the dumb self-surrendering reverence with which Miss Edgeworth is regarded: but his books are in every house; his occasional democratic aspirations are in every one's mouth; and the morality of his books is a constant theme of discussion, from among the most sensitive of the clergy down to the "thinking, thoughtless school-boy" and his chum. The next name is, decidedly, Mrs. Jameson's. She is altogether a favourite; and her "Characteristics of Women" is the book which has made her so. At a considerable distance follows Mrs. Hemans. Byron is scarcely heard of. Wordsworth lies at the heart of the people. His name may not be so often spoken as some others; but I have little doubt that his influence is as powerful as that of any whom I have mentioned. It is less diffused, but stronger. His works are not to be had at every store; but within people's houses they lie under the pillow, or open on the work-box, or they peep out of the coat-pocket: they are marked, re-marked, and worn. Coleridge is the delight of a few. So is Lamb; regarded, however, with a more tender love. I heard Mr. Hallam's name seldom, but always in a tone of extraordinary respect, and from those whose respect is most valuable.

No living writer, however, exercises so enviable a sway, as far as it goes, as Mr. Carlyle. It is remarkable that an influence like his should have been gained through scattered articles of review and speculation, spread over a number of years and a variety of periodicals. The Americans have his "Life of Schiller;" but it was not that. His articles in the Edinburgh Review met the wants of several of the best minds in the society of New England; minds weary of cant, and mechanical morals, and seeking something truer to rest upon. The discipleship immediately instituted is honourable to both. Mr. Carlyle's remarkable work, "Sartor Resartus," issued piecemeal through Fraser's Magazine, has been republished in America, and is exerting an influence proportioned to the genuineness of the admiration it has excited. Perhaps this is the first instance of the Americans having taken to their hearts an English work which came to them anonymously, unsanctioned by any recommendation, and even absolutely neglected at home. The book is acting upon them with wonderful force. It has regenerated the preaching of more than one of the clergy; and, I have reason to believe, the minds and lives of several of the laity. It came as a benefactor to meet a pressing want; how pressing, the benefited testify by the fervour of their gratitude.

I know of no method by which the Americans could be assisted to utter what they may have in them so good as one which has been proposed, but which is not yet, I believe, in course of trial. It has been proposed that a publication should be established, open to the perfectly full and free discussion of every side of every question, within a certain department of inquiry;—Social Morals, for instance. There are difficulties at present in the way of presenting the whole of any subject to the public mind; difficulties arising from the unprincipled partiality of the common run of newspapers, the cautious policy of reviewers, the fear of opinion entertained by individual writers, and the impediments thrown in the way of free publication by the state of the laws relating to literary property. A publication devoted to the object of presenting, without fear or favour, all that can be said on any subject, without any restriction, except in the use of personalities towards opponents, would be the best possible remedy, under the circumstances, for the inconveniences complained of; the finest stimulus to the ascertainment of truth; the best education in the art of free and distinct utterance. A publication like this, under the editorship of such a man as Dr. Follen, a man full of learning, philosophy, and that devout love of truth which is a guarantee of impartiality, would be a high honour to the country, and a good lesson to some older societies, from which the fear of free discussion has not yet vanished. An editor worthy of the work would decline the responsibility of suppressing any views, coming within the range of subjects embraced. He would merely weed out personalities; cherish the spirit of justice and charity; and for the sake of these, strengthen the weaker side, where he saw that it was inadequately defended. It may be said that editors who would thus discharge their function are rare. They are so: but there is Dr. Follen; a living reply to the objection.

I have not the apprehension which some entertain that such a publication would be feared and rejected by the public. At first, it would excite some surprise and perplexity; one-sidedness being so generally the characteristic of periodicals in America, that it would take some time to convey the idea of a consistent opposite practice. But the American public has given no evidence of a dislike to be made acquainted with truth; but quite the contrary. My own conviction is, that before two years from its commencement, such a work would be in the houses of all the honest thinkers and most principled doers in the country; and that eloquent voices would, by its means, make themselves heard from many a remote dwelling-place; using with delight their means of utterance; and proving that the dearth of American literature is not owing to vacuity of thought or deadness of feeling. At any rate, such an experiment would ascertain whether the want is of means of utterance, or of something to utter.