god is there sitting in his sphere. The young mortal enters
the hall of the firmament; there is he alone with them alone, they
pouring on him benedictions and gifts, and beckoning him up to
their thrones. On the instant, and incessantly, fall snowstorms of
illusions. He fancies himself in a vast crowd which sways this way
and that, and whose movements and doings he must obey; he fancies
himself poor, orphaned, insignificant. The mad crowd drives hither
and thither, now furiously commanding this thing to be done, now
that. What is he that he should resist their will, and think or act
for himself? Every moment new changes and new showers of deceptions
to baffle and distract him. And when, by and by, for an instant, the
air clears and the cloud lifts a little, there are the gods still
sitting around him on their thrones,--they alone with him alone."

With the war closes the colonial period of our history, and with the end
of the war begins our national life. Before that time it was not
possible for any man to speak for the nation, however much he might long
to, for there was no nation; there were only discordant provinces held
together by the exercise on the part of each of a strong and
conscientious will. It is too much to expect that national character
shall be expressed before it is developed, or that the arts shall
flourish during a period when everybody is preoccupied with the fear of
revolution. The provincial note which runs through all our literature
down to the war resulted in one sense from our dependence upon Europe.
"All American manners, language, and writings," says Emerson, "are
derivative. We do not write from facts, but we wish to state the facts
after the English manner. It is the tax we pay for the splendid
inheritance of English Literature." But in a deeper sense this very
dependence upon Europe was due to our disunion among ourselves. The
equivocal and unhappy self-assertive patriotism to which we were
consigned by fate, and which made us perceive and resent the
condescension of foreigners, was the logical outcome of our political
situation.

The literature of the Northern States before the war, although full of
talent, lacks body, lacks courage. It has not a full national tone. The
South is not in it. New England's share in this literature is so large
that small injustice will be done if we give her credit for all of it.
She was the Academy of the land, and her scholars were