present in the depths of the soul, even when we refuse to follow the
higher vocation to which he would persuade and solicit us--even were we
carried away by the violence of mundane passions to commit, like Don
Luis, almost all the capital sins in a single day--elevates the soul,
purifies the other emotions, sustains human dignity, and lends poetry,
nobility, and holiness to the commonest state, condition, and manner of
life.

Such is, in my opinion, the novel you are now about to present to the
American public; for I repeat that I have not the right to make the
presentation.

Perhaps, independent of its transcendentalism, my novel may serve to
interest and amuse your public for a couple of hours, and may obtain
some favor with it; for it is a public that reads a great deal, that is
indulgent, and that differs from the English public--which is eminently
exclusive in its tastes--by its generous and cosmopolitan spirit.

I have always regarded as a delusion of national vanity the belief that
there is, or the hope that there ever will be, anything that, with
legitimate and candid independence, may be called American literature.
Greece diffused herself throughout the world in nourishing colonies,
and, after the conquests of Alexander, founded powerful states in Egypt,
in Syria, and even in Bactriana, among peoples who, unlike the American
Indians, possessed a high civilization of their own. But,
notwithstanding this dispersion, and this political severance from the
mother-country, the literature of Syracuse, of Antioch, and of
Alexandria was as much Greek literature as was the literature of Athens.
In my opinion, then, and for the same reason, the literature of New York
and Boston will continue to be as much English literature as the
literature of London and Edinburgh; the literature of Mexico and Buenos
Ayres will continue to be as much Spanish literature as the literature
of Madrid; the literature of Rio Janeiro will be as much Portuguese
literature as the literature of Lisbon. Political union may be severed,
but, between peoples of the same tongue and the same race, the ties of
spiritual fraternity are indissoluble, so long as their common
civilization lasts. There are immortal kings or emperors who reign and
rule in America by true divine right, and against whom no Washington or
Bolivar shall prevail--no Franklin succeed in plucking from them their
scepter. These tyrants are called Miguel de Cervantes, William
Shake