And offered to the Mightiest solemn thanks The A single glance at the literature of different countries will show that their various characteristics are expressed in it. Take any country you choose which can boast of a literature; that literature bears the impress of its national peculiarities. The features of the country, the differences in climate, all have an influence. These cannot be set forth in their strongest light, save by words which have been called into being by those peculiarities. The wild songs of the old Norsemen were the index of the stern and savage regions they inhabited. literature of Italy was like its own mild climate and sunny skies. voluptuous and imaginative literature of the East was soft as its own spicy gales, and enchanting as its own fountains and groves. In later times, where can we find anything that better reflects national characteristics, than the literature of Scotland? From "the cliffs that brow her glens" to the "wee, modest, crimson-tipped" daisy of her hill-sides, all the features of her scenery are drawn in the life-like pictures of Scott and Burns. All, who are acquainted with different languages, unite in saying that this peculiarity of a literature is lost in a great measure by clothing it in another language. No other words but its own will fully express it. Translation robs it of its striking features, its native charms. Had a language grown up with our country, we have reason to believe it would have differed much from the one we now use. It would have adapted itself to our national peculiarities. It would have expressed the emotions, arising from the contemplation of our great works of nature. The language of the Indian affords strong confirmation of the correctness of these views. It was free and unshackled as the air he breathed. His conceptions, and the words in which he clothed them, were bold and lofty as the mountain wilds over which he roamed. Nature had given him a language like itself. Hence those flights of eloquence with which the speeches of their orators abound. He drew his words from the objects which his native forests presented to his eye. The warrior was the young eagle or the panther; the old and warworn chieftain the "blasted pine of the mountain." The dark-eyed maiden of his tribe was "the wild flower of the forest;" the captive daughter of the white man "the pale flower of the plain." When disasters and destruction visited his tribe, his departed friends spoke to him in the language of nature; their "tears came in the rain drops," and their "voices in the wailing winds." There are other reasons why our community of language is unfavorable to us. The existence of such productions as are already found in the English language is a check on our advancement. Macaulay's theory in regard to works of the imagination is often questioned; but all past history shows that the great works of the imagination, the master productions of thought, belong to some peculiar age. What that age is, I do not pretend to say. Why had Greece but one Homer? why had she no authors in the drama, after Euripides and Sophocles? Because none could hope to surpass their productions. Rome, too, had but one Virgil; Tasso and Dante sung in new language; Germany has had none else like Goethe and Schiller-France, like Corneille; the English language has had but one Shakspeare, but one Milton. What the united voice of a nation pronounces perfect, there is little hope for another to surpass. He will attempt to please by imitating that, rather than by new creations. Again, authors in our country are tried by an unfair standard. They are not judged by what ought to be expected from a young country, but by what an old country has already attained. Where a language grows up with a country, every new production in literature is hailed as a joyful harbinger. It is pronounced good, for none better in the language exist before it. With an old language, it is at once compared with the superior ones it already possesses. If weighed in this balance and found wanting, its days are numbered and finished. How many an opening intellect we have reason to believe has been crushed in the bud by this stern test; which, in a new language, would have enriched and adorned it! How many a brilliant genius, not having yet attained the stature required by this Procrustean bed, has had its energies forever destroyed, by being prematurely stretched upon it! Another thing which tends to discourage our authors, is the lack of that pride in our literature which we should take in one peculiar to ourselves. A nation always feels a pride in its own language; it thinks it superior to all others. Whatever attainments are made in it are welcomed before all others. The Latins spoke of the Greek in terms of contempt. The French thought the plays of Racine superior to those of Shakspeare. We can have nothing of this national pride in our language, which stimulates exertion. Now, if a work of our own appears, it is thrown aside by a large portion of the reading public, and that too of the most enlightened class, because superior ones of the same kind already exist. They feel for them none of that affection with which they would cherish them, were they peculiar to ourselves. The attainments already made by authors in this country are no evidence that a community of language is beneficial. Rather do they show the power of our young genius, which has done so much in spite of such great obstacles. We want no surer evidence than this, that our intellectual energies are in no wise inferior to those of England. Held in a state of colonial bondage to her for a century and a half; obliged to adopt her as a standard in our modes of expressing thought; when we threw off her political dominion, we retained her language, we retained her literature. Our tastes, our modes of expressing thought, were English still. With every thing to do which a growing country demands; without the libraries and advantages enjoyed by Englishmen; we have risen to such a height of excellence that English authors do not hesitate to purloin our pages, and publish them as their own. The question so tauntingly put forth in one of her Reviews, twenty years ago, "who reads an American book?" is no longer asked. If we are to become her rival; if we are yet to produce works which 226 THIS TO THEE. [March, may stand on the same shelf with Shakspeare and Paradise Lost, then may our gifted poet well say, "Here the free spirit of mankind, at length, Throws its last fetters off; and who shall place * W. A limit to the giant's unchained strength, Or curb his swiftness in the forward race!" THIS TO THEE. A SONG ADDRESSED TO S. H SOME friends we cull like blosoms, But thine shall be the art Thy brow is wreathed with roses, And loveliness reposes On thee its tranquil hues. Across a sunny sea, Thy young heart's jubilee. May sorrow never darkle Like angels, o'er thy head, And virtue's glories over May hope conceive fruition, Yet brighter joys are near thee- And sweeter thoughts shall cheer thee There shines a fairer morning To welcome thee to rest, Farewell, then, and remember!— While there remains one ember THE PERPETUITY OF LITERATURE. The beings of the mind are not of clay; And multiply in us a brighter ray, And more beloved existence.-CHILDE HAROLD. THE author of a recent and very entertaining article in Fraser, has remarked that fragility and decay are characteristic of all human enjoyments, except Religion and Literature. To illustrate this thought in respect to Literature, is the object of the present essay. Religion is left out of view, not because the sentiment is less true in regard to it, but because all are ready to admit the pleasures of Religion to be changeless and lasting as the throne of the Eternal. With one exception, then, in all earthly pleasures are the seeds of decay and death. The field of Literature is perpetually blooming; its flowers are ever bright and fragrant; its fruits forever rich and abundant. In the family circle we take our first draught of happiness. "Home is the resort Of love, of joy, of peace, and plenty, where It is about the domestic hearth that tender ties and associations are formed, which become a part of our existence-and the sweetest part of it. But we have not reveled long in the happy carelessness of childhood, beneath the shadow of parental love, ere stern duty tears us away to live, to labor, and to suffer for ourselves. On each successive visit to the old homestead in after years, we see some vacant seat; we miss some well-remembered countenance; and we become painfully conscious that the pure and unalloyed pleasures of early life are fleeting as time itself. What greater source of enjoyment in this world than the seasons, and yet what so fleeting as they? No sooner does the young and beautiful Spring, in her gentle way, smooth the wrinkles, and drive away the frowns of old Winter, and fill us all with life and energy by her smiles, than the fiery, hot-headed Summer comes along, and Spring flies away. We just learn that Summer has his own peculiar attractions, when Autumn takes his place. Golden-haired Autumn-mild and lovely-rich in gifts-has us fairly in love with her, when she is torn away from us by cold-hearted, unfeeling Winter. Fame is a glorious acquisition, so long as she will stay with us. But she is generally as short-lived as she is noisy. In most cases her trumpet gives a long, loud blast, and then all is silent as the grave. Oftentimes, even when an immortality is to be the prize, the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune' must be borne, counterbalanced only by the cold consolation, that posterity will render justice. The truth is, death never ceases 'going to and fro on the earth, and walking up and down in it.' He is a mighty conqueror, warring against all that is beautiful and all that is good. Age and hardy manhood, beauty and tender infancy, are alike his victims. The firmly planted oak falls before him. The shrub, the leaf, the tiniest flower that blows is not too small nor too feeble to escape his arm. Time follows death; always aiding him; destroying where he has failed. Time drinks rivers dry, gnaws and rubs away at mountains till he pulls them down. But the fabric which Literature has erected, defies the efforts of both. It is now nearly three thousand years since an old man might have been seen wandering from village to village along the shores of Chios, and occasionally extending his journeyings to the neighboring islands and continent. He was a blind old rhapsodist, and gained a scanty pittance of this world's comforts, by singing the rhapsodies he composed as he journeyed. To those who pittied him and stopped to listen, he sang how their fathers, because of injuries one of their princes had received, waged a war with a city that had once existed in the North, and he described the characters, the battles and adventures of the heroes of that war. But were these songs listened to, their subjects wondered at, and then forgotten? Minstrels have been singing for ages, of deeds of daring and of danger by land and sea, yet how few there are whose names and subjects have escaped oblivion! No; the Genius of Literature had owned him, poor and blind as he was, for her first-born son and great high-priest. The flame that gave life and power to his strains was a gift from off her altar. And when she deigns to bestow a gift, whether it be but a spark or a living flame, she will watch it, and fan it, and preserve it forever. Hence, when those rhapsodies had survived the dangers of a four centuries' tradition, she inspires Pisistratus to collect, arrange, and transmit them as a rich legacy to future ages. Hence they became a store-house of facts for the historian, and of rules for the critic. They became the fountain to which the orators of Greece repaired for beauty to adorn and power to strengthen their productions. Hither resorted her poets. All drank freely, and many here gained the inspiration which they never could have drawn from the |