before him. As all the citizens who compose a democratic
community are nearly equal and alike, the poet cannot dwell upon any one
of them; but the nation itself invites the exercise of his powers. The
general similitude of individuals, which renders any one of them taken
separately an improper subject of poetry, allows poets to include them
all in the same imagery, and to take a general survey of the people
itself. Democractic nations have a clearer perception than any others of
their own aspect; and an aspect so imposing is admirably fitted to the
delineation of the ideal.

I readily admit that the Americans have no poets; I cannot allow that
they have no poetic ideas. In Europe people talk a great deal of the
wilds of America, but the Americans themselves never think about them:
they are insensible to the wonders of inanimate nature, and they may be
said not to perceive the mighty forests which surround them till they
fall beneath the hatchet. Their eyes are fixed upon another sight: the
American people views its own march across these wilds--drying swamps,
turning the course of rivers, peopling solitudes, and subduing nature.
This magnificent image of themselves does not meet the gaze of the
Americans at intervals only; it may be said to haunt every one of them
in his least as well as in his most important actions, and to be always
flitting before his mind. Nothing conceivable is so petty, so insipid,
so crowded with paltry interests, in one word so anti-poetic, as the
life of a man in the United States. But amongst the thoughts which it
suggests there is always one which is full of poetry, and that is the
hidden nerve which gives vigor to the frame.

In aristocratic ages each people, as well as each individual, is prone
to stand separate and aloof from all others. In democratic ages, the
extreme fluctuations of men and the impatience of their desires keep
them perpetually on the move; so that the inhabitants of different
countries intermingle, see, listen to, and borrow from each other's
stores. It is not only then the members of the same community who grow
more alike; communities are themselves assimilated to one another,
and the whole assemblage presents to the eye of the spectator one vast
democracy, each citizen of which is a people. This displays the aspect
of mankind for the first time in the broadest light. All that belongs
to the existence of the human race taken as a whole, to its vicissitudes
and to its f