ized. Whatever
there may be in letters, over which time shall have no power, must be
"born of great endeavors," and those endeavors are the offspring of
liberal patronage. Putting off, then, what Shakespeare calls "the visage
of the times,"--we must become hearty well-wishers to our native
authors:--and with them there must be a deep and thorough conviction of
the glory of their calling,--an utter abandonment of everything
else,--and a noble self-devotion to the cause of literature. We have
indeed much to hope from these things;--for our hearts are already
growing warm towards literary adventurers, and a generous spirit has
gone abroad in our land, which shall liberalize and enlighten.

In the vanity of scholarship, England has reproached us that we have no
finished scholars. But there is reason for believing that men of mere
learning--men of sober research and studied correctness--do not give to
a nation its great name. Our very poverty in this respect will have a
tendency to give a national character to our literature. Our writers
will not be constantly toiling and panting after classical allusions to
the Vale of Tempe and the Etrurian river, nor to the Roman fountains
shall--

"The emulous nations of the West repair
To kindle their quenched urns, and drink fresh spirit there."

We are thus thrown upon ourselves: and thus shall our native hills
become renowned in song, like those of Greece and Italy. Every rock
shall become a chronicle of storied allusions; and the tomb of the
Indian prophet be as hallowed as the sepulchres of ancient kings, or the
damp vault and perpetual lamp of the Saracen monarch.

Having briefly mentioned one circumstance which is retarding us in the
way of our literary prosperity, I shall now mention one from which we
may hope a happy and glorious issue: It is the influence of natural
scenery in forming the poetical character. Genius, to be sure, must be
born with a man; and it is its high prerogative to be free, limitless,
irrepressible. Yet how is it moulded by the plastic hand of Nature! how
are its attributes shaped and modulated, when a genius like Canova's
failed in the bust of the Corsican, and amid the splendor of the French
metropolis languished for the sunny skies and vine-clad hills of Italy?
Men may talk of sitting down in the calm and quiet of their libraries,
and of forgetting, in the eloquent companionship of books, all the vain
cares that beset them in the crowded thoroug