d records, and other appliances of the
historiographer, they have produced some books which are acknowledged
to be well worthy a place among our standard works, and which have
acquired, not merely an English, but a continental reputation. In the
fine arts, notwithstanding obviously still greater impediments--the want
at home, not only of great galleries and collections, but of the
thousand little symbols and associations that help to educate the
artist--the consequent necessity of going abroad to seek all that the
student requires--they have still made laudable progress. The paintings
of Washington Allston are the most noteworthy lions in Boston; the
statues of Powers command admiration even in London. In prose fiction,
the sweet sketches of Irving have acquired a renown second only to that
of the agreeable essayists whom he took for his models, while the Indian
and naval romances of Cooper are purchased at liberal prices by the
chary bibliopoles of England, and introduced to the Parisian public by
the same hand which translated Walter Scott. In poetry alone they are
still palpably inferior: no world-renowned minstrel has yet arisen in
the New Atlantis, and the number of those versifiers who have attained a
decided name and place among the lighter English literature of their
day, or whose claims to the title of poet are acknowledged _in all
sections_ of their own country, is but small.

If we come to inquire into the causes of this deficiency, we are apt at
first to light upon several reasons why it should _not_ exist. In the
first place, there is nothing unpoetical about the country itself, but
every thing highly the reverse. All its antecedents and traditions, its
discovery, its early inhabitants, its first settlement by civilized men,
are eminently romantic. It is not wanting in battle-grounds, or in spots
hallowed by recollections and associations of patriots and sages. The
magnificence of its scenery is well known. The rivers of America are at
the same time the most beautiful and the most majestic in the world: the
sky of America, though dissimilar in hue, may vie in loveliness with the
sky of Italy. No one who has floated down the glorious Hudson (even amid
all the un-ideal associations of a gigantic American steamer), who has
watched the snowy sails--so different from the tarry, smoky canvas of
European craft--that speck that clear water; who has noticed the
faultless azure and snow of the heaven above, suggesting