Page images
PDF
EPUB

no one worthy to receive his mantle;* to Stuart and Inman, equal to the first in portraiture; and to Vanderlyn, Leslie,† Sully, Durand, Cole, Wier, Huntington, Leutze, and others, whose places are in the front rank of living painters. With the same feeling we may regard Greenough, whose majestic Washington sits in grand repose before the capitol; Powers, in whom Thorwaldsen saw the restorer of a glory to the marble it had scarcely known since the days of Praxitiles; and Crawford, Clevenger, and others who promise to make our country a resting place for the eyes of future generations as they travel backward toward Rome and Athens.

Having thus as fully as seemed practicable in such narrow limits exhibited our Intellectual Progress and Condition, attempting to show that considering the facts of our political and social history we have already advanced far beyond the boundaries of reasonable anticipation, we pause on the shore of the dim future to catch the sounds of the voices which are to give expression to the mind of the people, and obtain glimpses of the symbols by which will be shadowed forth their spirit. More than any other nation ours has influenced the character of the last and the present age, but our power has been in acts and institutions, of whose teachings we look for impressive confirmations in our works of taste, imagination and reflection.

Doubtless our literature must continue to be influenced in a large degree by the literatures of other countries. The still increasing facilities of communication between all parts of the world, bringing remotest nations into closer proximity than were formerly cities of the same empire; and the extending and deepening power of the press, which in effect is making of one language all peoples, as they were before the confusion on the plains of Shinar, are rapidly subverting the chief national distinctions, and preparing the way perhaps for the realization of Goethe's idea of a Literature of the World.§

as the Laocoon, and the tone is as fine as fine can be.....Oh gracious God! he must have been inspired when he painted this-there are drama, expression, drawing, every thing."

The best composer of modern times and equal to Corregio in finish, when he pleased.—Allston. Lawrence, Shee, Beckford, Allston, against the cant of the sciolists.

* What Washington was as a statesman, Channing as a moralist, that was Allston as an artist.Mrs. Jameson.

†The finest interpreter of the spirit of Shakspeare the world has yet seen.—Mrs. Jameson.

We regard Mr. Greenough's Washington as one of the greatest works of sculpture of modern times.-Edward Everett.

I always consult foreign nations, and advise every one to do the same. National literature will do but little. The epoch of a literature of the world is at hand, and every one ought to labour t hasten it.-Eckermann's Conversations with Goethe.

But the day of such a consummation is still distant. The New Civilization, of which our fathers were the apostles, is first to be universally diffused. All hereditary distinctions of rank, all differences of political privileges, all restraints upon the freedom of private judgment, are to be broken down. We may adopt, we are adopting, many peculiarities, in manners and opinions, from the various older nations from which our country was settled, and with which we have free and intimate intercourse; but the recognition of the freedom and dignity of man is to be the vital principle in our literature-its distinctive and diffusive element.

The growth of American Literature cannot be forced by any hotbed process. Except by the acknowledgment of foreign copyrights,* which indeed is needed as much for the protection of morals as for the protection of letters, little can be done for it by any general legislation. Our authors, if admitted to a fair competition with foreigners, will take care of their own interests. But professed

*For the information of readers unacquainted with the operation of the present system, it may be necessary to state more particularly than has been done in the text, some of the ways in which it tends to weaken the mind and deprave the heart of the nation. Its literature is the richest boon we receive from the Past, and the literature of the Present, if fairly represented in the republications, would, upon the whole, no doubt, have a most salutary influence. But the denial of copyright to foreigners effectually deprives us of most of the really great works with which the presses of Europe are teeming, while it gives us nearly all they produce that is frivolous and vicious. It costs a great deal of money as well as labour to prepare the market for large works; there must be much advertising, a large distribution of copies, elaborate abstracts in reviews and journals, and many other means to create a demand; and the expenses of these means must be added to those of the mechanical manufacture. Yet now, as has been shown by numerous instances, as soon as a house with enterprise and capital has issued a readable impression of a work, and secured for it such a circulation as promises a fair remuneration, some base fellow is sure to bring out on dingy brown paper and small type a deluge of cheap copies, with which he reaps all the advantages of the first publisher's efforts, and leaves him with his stock unsold, and his investment unreturned. It is true that, notwithstanding these dangers, a few of the more indispensable histories and other fruits of true cultivation are reprinted here: but they are generally issued in the most compact and cheap style, sometimes much abridged, and nearly always without those charts and plates which add so much to the value of many foreign editions. A recognition of the foreign author's right of property would at once remedy this part of the evil entirely.

On the other hand, there is extraordinary activity in the republication of the light and licentious literature of the time. It is sickening to lean over the counters of the shops where cheap books are sold, and survey the trash with which the criminal folly of the government is deluging the country. Every new issue deepens the wide spread depravity, and extends the demand for its successor. As but little capital is required for the business, and the returns are quick, these leprous spots are constantly springing up in the cities; and to gratify the prurient tastes which they create, the literary sewers of Paris and London are dragged for the filthiest stuff which floats or sinks in their turbid waters. The demoralization increases, and the novels of Paul de Kock, disgusting as they are, in the original, (in which a racy style and sparkling wit render them attractive, despite their moral deformity,) are made worse by the addition of gross obscenity by the translator; and from those of Eugene Sue the reflective portions, which serve to neutralize the effects of the narrative, are left out. All private morals, all domestic peace, fly before this withering curse which the Congress persists in sustaining, by its refusal to recognise the rights of the foreign author. For, if the respectable publishers could be protected in their business, they would furnish good editions of good books, that would give a healthy tone to the common sentiment, and drive this profligate literature into oblivion; if the foreign author were protected in his rights, he would be but a competitor of the native author, and would have an inducement to support those liberal principles of society which are here established, thus strengthening them here, and diffusing them in his own country; and if the American were thus admitted to a competition in his own market with the European, our best intellects would be busy with the instruction of the people, which is now in so large a degree surrendered to the supporters of aristocracies.

Within the last year how many fathers, like one in Richmond, (whose testimony at a recent trial in that city attracted to the subject an indignant but momentary attention,) have pointed to these stolen poisons as the prime cause of the demoralization of their daughters,-how many murders, in all parts of the country, have been traced to the same fruitful source of crime and woe! That the literature of a country sinks with its morals, needs hardly to be suggested.

authors alone are not to create a great National Literature; such a literature is not to be a result of any direct effort for its production. It must be in a large degree but an incidental consequence of energetic and well directed action for the moral and spiritual liberation and elevation of man. To this end, the strong-minded and thoroughly educated, leading the onward march of the race, combating every species of error, in morals and physics, in religion and legislation, and never taking a thought whether they are speaking or writing in an American style, or on an American subject, will strike out such sparks from the intellect as will shine like stars into the farthest future ages.

Leaving literature, then, as an object of special public regard, to take care of itself, we must instruct the mind and improve the heart of the people, must develope the great souls that are every day born into the world. The number of colleges need not be increased. It would be better perhaps if half we have were abandoned, and their resources given to the rest. But we need a great university, into which only learned men can enter, where there can be a more thorough literary and scientific culture, where the genius of the Past can be made more familiar, where the genius of the Present can be strengthened and directed a university that shall have to other schools the relation of a mint to the mines, giving form and authority to the first order of understandings which in them are brought to light. There is no more pernicious error than that the whole people should be instructed alike. There must be a class, the end of whose lives shall be to search after and reveal beauty and truth, a class acting upon the nation, but acted upon both by it and by all nations and all ages. And we need libraries, and learned institutions, and galleries of art. These things are coming rapidly. Their necessity is discerned, and the "voluntary principle" in our free states is doing far more than has been elsewhere effected by coercion, to sustain whatever is really calculated in any way to unfold human nature. Our wise and liberal merchants, manufacturers, farmers, and professional men,—we have no drones,--are beginning to understand that the true doctrine of Progress is comprised in the word Culture. Late events, that have saddened the heart of the intelligent patriot, have brought with them cheering proofs of a conservative element in our society, and the suffering and dishonour which have been caused by the uncultivated and reckless, may be atoned for by the life they will impart to energies that have hitherto been dormant. Literature, the condensed and clearly expressed thought of the country, will keep pace with its civilization; and without any straining after originality, without any tricks of diction, without any aim but to press the truth directly, earnestly and courageously upon the popular heart, under the inspiration of an

enlightened love of country, and the guidance of a high cultivation, our authors will be sufficiently distinctive and national, in both manner and matter.

There is an absurd notion abroad that we are to create an entirely new literature. Some critics in England, expect us, who write the same language, profess the same religion, and have in our intellectual firmament the same Bacon, Sidney and Locke, the same Spenser, Shakspeare and Milton, to differ more from themselves than they differ from the Greeks and the Romans, or from any of the moderns. This would be harmless, but that many persons in this country, whose thinking is done abroad, are constantly echoing it, and wasting their little productive energy in efforts to comply with the demand. But there never was and never can be an exclusively national literature. All nations are indebted to each other and to preceding ages for the means of advancement; and our own, which from our various origin may be said to be at the confluence of the rivers of time which have swept through every country, can with less justice than any other be looked to for mere novelties in art and fancy. The question between us and other nations is not who shall most completely discard the Past, but who shall make best use of it. The Past belongs not to one people, but to those who best understand it. It cannot be studied too deeply, for unless men know what has been accomplished, they will exhaust themselves in unfolding enigmas that have been solved, or in pursuing ignes fatui that have already disappointed a thousand expectations. The Reformation. had an extraordinary influence upon the literatures of the world, and some such influence has been exerted by our Revolution and the establishment of our institutions. The intellectual energy of America has been felt far more in Europe, than its own, for the period of our national existence, has been felt here; and with all the enslaving deference to foreign authority and all the imitation of foreign models of which we have had to complain in our inferior authors, there has been no want of the truest nationality in our Franklin, Webster, Channing, Cooper, Prescott, Bancroft, Bryant, Whittier, and others, in almost every department, who have written with an integrity of understanding and feeling.

It has been objected to our society that it is too practical. It has been supposed that this national characteristic forbids the expectation of great achievements in the highest domains of art. But the question Cui bono? should always be entertained. Utility is in every thing the truest of principles, though more intelligence and liberality than belong to a low state of civilization are necessary to its just appreciation and application. Whatever contributes to the growth and satisfaction of the mind, whatever has in it any absolute beauty, is

beginning to be regarded as not less useful than that which ministers to our physical necessities. All works, even of imagination, must have in them something of genuineness and earnestness. Poets, and novelists, and essayists, when they write, must look not only into their minds but into their hearts. To persons of the sensibility and refinement which are inseparable from high cultivation, all truth is of a practical value, and in the most aerial creations it will be demanded by the first order of critics.

The old sources of intellectual excitement seem to be wellnigh exhausted. Love will still be sung, but in no sweeter strains than those of Petrarch, or Tasso; Courage, such as is celebrated by the old poets and romancers, is happily in disrepute; Religion, as it has commonly appeared in the more elegant forms of literature, has not been of a sort that ennobles man or pleases God; and Ambition, for the most part, has been of a more grovelling kind than may be looked for under the new forms of society. Christian virtue is no longer the observance of senseless pagan forms that have been baptized, but "the love of truth, for its own beauty and sweetness ;" and the desire of man is not so much to win titles and power, as the consciousness or the reputation of doing something that shall entitle him to the general respect and gratitude. The materials among us for the externals of literature have been referred to. The elements of its vitality and power, which are most clearly apprehended in this century, though in their nature universal, for many reasons are likely to be most active with us. "Peace on earth and good will to man," is here to be the principle of life and progress, in Letters, as in Religion and Politics.

Considering the present condition of society; that new inventions are constantly releasing immense numbers from a portion of the toil required for the satisfaction of physical necessities, and giving to all more opportunity for intellectual pursuits; that steam and electricity are making of the world a common neighbourhood, knitting its remotest parts together by interchange of fabrics and thoughts; that the press, in the United States alone, scatters every hour more than the contents of the Alexandrian Library, and is increasing in refinement and energy with the expansion of its issues; and that associations for moral and intellectual improvement were never more numerous or efficient,--we cannot doubt that the Progress of Civilization in the coming age will be rapid and universal. This country, which is the centre of the new order of things, is destined to be the scene of the greatest conflicts of opinion. Much as has been done here in literature and art, much as we have surpassed all reasonable expectation in the works of our philosophers, orators, historians and poets, while clearing away the primeval forests, organizing society, and establishing the institutions of

« EelmineJätka »