she a Hallam, we a Sparks; she an Allison, we a Bancroft; she a Macaulay, we a Prescott; and as to her mystical Carlyle, we will pit our Emerson against all the world out of Germany;- and the parallel might be extended through pages. We are proud to compare individual names in the lighter and more ornate branches of literature. Should our belles-lettres writers fail as a body to win the laurel, it will be remembered that in England such pursuits are a profession, while here they are but an occasional relaxation from more prosaic employments. As a specimen of the regular avocations of our poets and essayists, see Bryant editing a daily newspaper, Willis conducting a weekly journal, Halleck posting the ledger of a millionaire, Sprague protesting notes in a Boston bank, Street arranging the volumes of John Doe and Richard Roe in the State library at Albany, and Whipple keeping accounts in a commercial news room. In England, learning and knowledge, like privileges and dignities, are enjoyed by the few, and authors are a distinct "order" of society. In America, education and opportunity, like rain and sunshine, are showered upon the capable and incapable, making the whole people a sort of poets, critics, philosophers and statesmen.

But, if it be doubted whether America has a literature of its own, it will not be disputed that it has a character of its own. If the models of our

poems and novels are of foreign production, our habits of thought and modes of action are of home

growth. We are a skeptical people. We never allow our instructors to beg the question in dispute, and never beg their pardon for disputing their premises or conclusions. Everything comes to us in such "a questionable shape," that we speak to it, though we do not always call it father, or give it any royal name. We are an inquisitorial people. But, we lay systems, not men, upon the rack. The disbeliever in the old formula is not put to the torture, but we compel the formula to endure the test or yield the ghost. We do not throw Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego into the furnace, but dogmas, customs, institutions; and well is it for them if they escape the fire with the loss of their drapery. In the times when learning hid itself in monasteries, and the ability to write one's name was so rare an accomplishment that its possession exempled felons from the halter, the mass of mankind did their thinking by proxy, and were "led by the nose as asses are." This mental feudalism is not wholly exterminated. Fewer traces of it are found in America than in any other country. He who would lead any considerable section of the American mind must not only be a robust and independent thinker, but he must sway men by reason and persuasion, and not hope to compel obedience by vulgar denunciation or the ipse dixit of self-constituted authority. To move the people, he must be of the people and among the people. The recluse, monkish thinker, who burrows out of sight in the cloister of conceit or fancied supe

riority, is as far behind this American age as if he had died before Columbus discovered the new world. We are a utilitarian people. Theories and thoughts which cannot be embodied in something useful, are thrown aside as mere dross. The aerostatic speculator, who tries to dazzle day-dreamers by sunbeams extracted from transcendental cucumbers, is as far from home in this practical republic as if his laboratory were established in one of the mountains of the moon. But, we are no barbarians. We are fond of original speculation. We only require that it shall originate something more substantial than the sublimate of nonsense. We delight in the creations of fancy and imagi nation. We only demand that the ornament shall decorate an entity; that the drapery shall cover a real presence, symmetrical in form, glowing with life, and flushed with beauty. Though prone to war on shows and shams, yet in no country are genius and capacity better appreciated than in ours. With the organ of veneration not marvellously developed, we have little reverence, too little perhaps, for diplomas and degrees, and care not whether our instructor, our leader, be educated in a college, a counting-house, or a farm-yard. We only inquire— and we do inquire-is he educated; is he apt to teach; is he able to lead? Instruction and leadership must adapt themselves to the national characteristics; its habits of thought, its tones of feeling, its modes of action. America is a great lyceum, a grand debating society, a mass convention, sitting

f permanently, and courting the utmost freedom of discussion. The press and the forum, the pen and the stump, rule the republic. Being all of the nobility, all of the blood royal, all heirs to the throne all sovereigns, in no other country can a speech or an essay be heard and read by so many who have a direct influence upon public affairs. Would our scholars instruct and lead the national mind? Let them not strive to become an isolated class, an "order" of society, but fused with the body of the people, giving an impulse to and receiving an impress from the mass around them. And if they would leave an enduring mark upon the rapidly flowing current of national intellect and feeling, they must employ the popular instrumentalities; they must become apt speakers, ready writers, and bold thinkers.

In every enlightened age, eloquence has been a controlling element in human affairs. Eloquence is not a gift, but an art-not an inspiration, but an acquisition-not an intuition, but an attainment. Excellence in this art is attained only by unwearied practice, and the careful study of the best models. The models lie all around us. The rest is within Demosthenes and Cicero will be household words, in all climes, to the end of time. But, the more one studies the masters of Grecian and Roman eloquence, the more readily will he yield to the growing opinion that England, France, and America, during the last sixty or seventy years, have produced a greater number of eloquent ora

us.

tors than flourished in all Grecian and Roman history. As objects increase in size when seen through a mist, so men tower into giants when viewed through the haze of antiquity. Without neglecting the ancient models, let us study those of our own times. From both we may catch some of that inspiration, which bound the audience to the orator, and bade him play upon their emotions as the master touches the keys of his familiar instrument— which subdued them to tears or convulsed them with laughter-which bore them aloft on the wing of imagination, or blanched them with horror while narration threw the colors upon the canvass-which held the judgment and the fancy captive, as reason forged the chain of argument, and poetry studded its links with the gems of illustration-which poured over the subject a flood of rare knowledge, laden with the contributions of all sciences and all ages -which gambolled in playful humor, or opened the sparkling jet deau of wit, or barbed the point of epigram, or sketched the laughing caricature, gliding from grave to gay, from lively to severe, with majesty and grace:+that inspiration which as Paul reasoned of righteousness, temperance, and the judgment, made Felix tremble; as Demosthenes anathematized Macedonia, made the Greeks cry out, “Lead us against Phillip; " at the thrilling tones of Henry, made America ring with the shout, "Give us liberty, or give us death; " when the thunder of Danton shook the dome of the Convention, roused all Paris to demand the head of Louis;