England, and continue to do homage to the mother country. Our literature is tame and servile, wanting in freshness, freedom, and originality. We write as Englishmen, not as Americans. We are afraid to think our own thoughts, to speak our own words, or to give utterance to the rich and gushing sentiments of our own hearts. And so must it be so long as we rely on England's literature as exclusively as we have hitherto done. Not indeed so much because that literature is not a good one. English literature, so long as it boasts a Shakspeare and a Milton, cannot suffer in comparison with the literature of any other nation. For ourselves we reverence it, and would on no account speak lightly of it. But it cramps our national genius, and exercises a tyrannical sway over the American mind. We cannot become independent and original, till we have in some degree weakened its empire. This will be best done by the study of the fresher, and in some respects superior literatures of continental Europe. We must bring in France and Germany to combat or neutralize England, so that our national spirit may gain the freedom to

manifest itself.

Moreover, excellent as is the English literature, it is not exactly the literature for young republicans. England is the most aristocratic country in the world. Its literature is, with some noble exceptions, aristocratic. It is deficient in true reverence for man as man, wholly unconscious of the fact that man is everywhere equal to man. It is full of reverence for that mass of incongruities, the British Constitution, which contains more of the character of the institutions of the Middle Age, than any other constitution or form of government to be found in Europe. It bristles from beginning to end with Dukes and Duchesses, Lords and Ladies, and overflows with servility to the great, and with contempt, or what is worse, condescension for the little. The constant and exclusive study of a literature like this cannot fail to be deeply prejudicial to republican simplicity of thought and

taste, to create a sort of disgust for republican manners and institutions, and to make us sigh to reproduce, on American soil, the aristocratic manners and institutions of England. Things seen at a distance are always more enchanting than when seen close by. Did we live in England we should spurn her institutions; but seeing them only at a distance and through the idealizing medium of poetry and works of fiction, they appear unto us beautiful and exceedingly desirable. We think it would be a fine thing to be Dukes and Duchesses, Lords and Ladies, to wear titles, ribbons, stars, and coronets, and to be elevated above the vulgar herd. We grow aweary of our democratic institutions, submit to them with an ill grace, and do what in us lies to hinder their free and beneficial working. It does not occur to us that those of us, who sigh to reproduce English institutions, might, were the thing done, possibly be at the foot instead of the summit of the new social hierarchy; nor do we reflect that a nobility is elevated to its height only by making the immense majority of the people serve as its pedestal. It may be pleasant to be one of the nobility, to stand with one's head far above one's fellows; but it is not very pleasant to be the pedestal on which another stands. We wish no brother man to appear tall because his feet stand on our head; and rather than be obliged to run the risk of having some vain, fat, ignorant, proud, titled mortal stand on our head, we choose to forego the pleasure of standing on another man's head.

The corrupting tendency of English literature in this respect, on our young men and young women too, is easy to be seen, and threatens to be disastrous. Patriotism dies out; love for democracy becomes extinct; and our own government, in proportion to its fidelity to American principles, becomes the object of the severest censure, the most uncompromising hostility, or the most withering ridicule. Our own writers cannot arrest the tendency; because a considerable portion of them, formed by the study of

English literature, are themselves carried away by it; and because the remainder are too few in number, and their voices, though clear and strong, are lost in the universal din of English voices, which we are continually importing. In other words, English works reprinted and circulated here are so much more numerous, and owing to the fact that they can be furnished much cheaper, are so much more extensively circulated than the works of native authors, that they overpower them, and almost wholly counteract their influence.

Now in this situation nothing can be more suitable or more succoring for us, than large importations of French and German literature. France and Germany are monarchical, it is true, but not aristocratic. Monarchy has been, in Europe in general, popular rather than aristocratic in its tendency. The people have in most countries less to dread from the monarch than from the noble. Monarchy raises one man indeed above, far above the people, but in doing this, it lessens or neutralizes to some extent the distinctions which obtain below it. The writings of French or even German scholars breathe altogether more of a democratic spirit than do those of the English. Those of the French are altogether more democratic than the writings of American scholars themselves. Then, again, we have in this country not much to fear from the monarchical tendency. There is nothing monarchical in the genius or temper of the American people. We remember yet the struggles our fathers had with the king, and that we are the descendants of those who dethroned Mary Stuart, and brought Charles Stuart to the scaffold. Then we have no powerful families as yet that could make interest for a throne, no individual influential enough, universally popular enough, or far enough elevated above his brethren, to be thought of in connexion with a crown. We have too long been accustomed to govern ourselves, too large a portion of our citizens have taken a direct share in the affairs of government, and may always

hope to take a direct share in them, to think of abandoning them to any one man. We can arrive at monarchy in this country only through aristocracy. We do not apprehend that this will ever be the case. The aristocratic tendency is the only tendency we have to apprehend serious danger from; but even this tendency will, we trust, be arrested before it shall have done any lasting injury to our institutions. The study of French and German literature will arrest this tendency. It will break the dominion of England; and, without excluding English literature, will furnish us new elements, and a broader and more democratic basis for our own.

We are also anxious that French and German literature should be cultivated among us, because it will correct in some measure the faults of our own democracy. One extreme always begets another. The tendency on the one hand to adore England, and approach English manners and institutions, begets on the other hand a tendency to a rabid radicalism, from which danger may be apprehended, but from which good. is not to be looked for. If the wealthy, the cultivated, and literary, as is and has been too much the case, approach England, the democracy of the country becomes to a great degree deprived of the helps of refinement, cultivation, literature, and the conservative element which always goes with them. True democracy has always a conservative element, and is no less wedded to order than to liberty. It unites the two; and is always normal in its proceedings. It is broad enough to take in all Humanity, and free enough to allow all the elements of human nature to develope themselves fully and harmoniously. Now in English literature this is never the case. The element of order and its adherents are separated from the element of liberty and its adherents. The exclusive study of that literature has to a considerable extent produced the same result here. Hence our democracy becomes in some measure partial, exclusive, and able to enlist on its side only at best a small

majority of the nation. This is a serious evil, and it is that from which we have more to dread than from anything else whatever. Democracy so long as it is broad and comprehensive, so long as it is true to itself, and to all the elements of human nature, is invincible, and able to go forth" conquering and to conquer."

Now in the master-pieces of French and German literature we shall find the two great elements, of which we have spoken, always united and working in harmony. There is nothing rash, nothing violent, destructive. Progress, the perfectibility of man and society is admitted and contended for, at the same time peaceable and orderly means by which to effect it are pointed out. The tree has its natural growth, and by natural growth attains its height. It is not made higher by being plucked up by the roots, and held up by artificial means. Erudition, science, philosophy, religion, art, refinement, are all combined with the spirit of progress, and made subservient to the elevation of the people. The cultivation of French and German literature must have a similar effect here, and this is what we want, and what, if Mr. Ripley's plan succeeds, we shall have.

This too is the country in which the noble ideas of man and society, which French and German scholars strike out in their speculations, are to be first applied to practice, realized in institutions. There the scholar may study; there the philosopher may investigate man; there the politician may explore the city, and ascertain how the state should be organized; and there they all may deposite the result of their speculations, their researches, their inspirations in books; but, alas, in books only; for to them is wanting the theatre on which to act them out, the practical world in which to realize them. They have old institutions to combat; old prejudices to overcome; old castles and old churches to clear away; an old people to reyouth, before they can proceed to embody their ideas, or to reduce them to practice. More than all this, they