idiculous; and all the rich and varied
eloquence of Italy, from Dante to Monti, is about as much known
to them, as the Welsh effusions of Urien and Modred, to us.

Rousseau, Voltaire, Diderot, &c., were read by the old
federalists, but now they seem known more as naughty words, than
as great names. I am much mistaken if a hundred untravelled
Americans could be found, who have read Boileau or Le Fontaine.
Still fewer are acquainted with that delightful host of French
female writers, whose memoirs and letters sparkle in every page
with unequalled felicity of style. The literature of Spain and
Portugal is no better known, and as for "the wits of Queen Anne's
day," they are laid _en masse_ upon a shelf, in some score of
very old-fashioned houses, together with Sherlock and Taylor, as
much too antiquated to suit the immensely rapid progress of mind
which distinguishes America.

The most perfect examples of English writing, either of our own,
or of any former day, have assuredly not been produced by the
imitation of any particular style; but the Fairy Queen would
hardly have been written, if the Orlando had not; nor would
Milton have been the perfect poet he was, had Virgil and Tasso
been unknown to him. It is not that the scholar mimics in
writing the phrases he has read, but that he can neither think,
feel, nor express himself as he might have done, had his mental
companionship been of a lower order.

They are great novel readers, but the market is chiefly furnished
by England. They have, however, a few very good native novels.
Mr. Flint's Francis Berrian is delightful. There is a vigor and
freshness in his writing that is exactly in accordance with what
one looks for, in the literature of a new country; and yet,
strange to say, it is exactly what is most wanting in that of
America. It appeared to me that the style of their imaginative
compositions was almost always affected, and inflated. Even in
treating their great national subject of romance, the Indians,
they are seldom either powerful or original. A few well known
general features, moral and physical, are presented over and over
again in all their Indian stories, till in reading them you lose
all sense of individual character. Mr. Flint's History of the
Mississippi Valley is a work of great interest, and information,
and will, I hope, in time find its way to England, where I think
it is much more likely to be appreciated than in America.

Dr. Channing