d fireside; and more than this, they foretell that
whatever is noble and attractive in our national character will one day
be associated with the sweet magic of Poetry. Is, then, our land to be
indeed the land of song? Will it one day be rich in romantic
associations? Will poetry, that hallows every scene,--that renders every
spot classical,--and pours out on all things the soul of its enthusiasm,
breathe over it that enchantment, which lives in the isles of Greece,
and is more than life amid the "woods, that wave o'er Delphi's steep"?
Yes!--and palms are to be won by our native writers!--by those that have
been nursed and brought up with us in the civil and religious freedom of
our country. Already has a voice been lifted up in this land,--already a
spirit and a love of literature are springing up in the shadow of our
free political institutions.

But as yet we can boast of nothing farther than a first beginning of a
national literature: a literature associated and linked in with the
grand and beautiful scenery of our country,--with our institutions, our
manners, our customs,--in a word, with all that has helped to form
whatever there is peculiar to us, and to the land in which we live. We
cannot yet throw off our literary allegiance to Old England, we cannot
yet remove from our shelves every book which is not strictly and truly
American. English literature is a great and glorious monument, built up
by the master-spirits of old time, that had no peers, and rising bright
and beautiful until its summit is hid in the mists of antiquity.

Of the many causes which have hitherto retarded the growth of polite
literature in our country, I have not time to say much. The greatest,
which now exists, is doubtless the want of that exclusive attention,
which eminence in any profession so imperiously demands. Ours is an age
and a country of great minds, though perhaps not of great endeavors.
Poetry with us has never yet been anything but a pastime. The fault,
however, is not so much that of our writers as of the prevalent modes of
thinking which characterize our country and our times. We are a plain
people, that have had nothing to do with the mere pleasures and luxuries
of life: and hence there has sprung up within us a quick-sightedness to
the failings of literary men, and an aversion to everything that is not
practical, operative, and thoroughgoing. But if we would ever have a
national literature, our native writers must be patron