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Generally speaking, according to population, it would appear that the relative aggregate literary productiveness of the two countries, is not very unequal. The school-master, whom Lord Brougham, a half-century ago started on his travels, is evidently still "abroad" wherever the English language is spoken. If we were to look into these six thousand publications of the year, we would doubtless find them, with allowance for the usual per centage of mediocrity, creditable to the intellectual progress of both nations, while we might be compelled to admit that few really great original works which would long survive, were in the catalogue. The general impression, indeed, made by a survey of the literature of the day is, that there is a falling off in eminent authorship from the first half of the century. If we call the roll of authors of that period in England, who, at the present hour, supply the places of Scott, Byron, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Southey, Moore, Crabbe, Campbell, Lamb, Sydney Smith, Hood, Hallam, Macaulay, and their companions? But one poet now stands prominently forth in England, the accepted of all cultivated English speaking people-Alfred Tennyson; while one novelist, Charles Dickens, maintains the humor, so characteristic a feature of the literary prowess of the last generation. In America, we are relatively rather better off, for our foremost writers came late into the field; and though the literary world mourns Cooper, and Irving, and Halleck, and Prescott, and Hawthorne, yet we have still Bryant, Longfellow, Whittier, Lowell, Holmes, Emerson, Bancroft, Simms, Motley, each in his way, a master in his department. In neither country do we see the indications of much rising greatness; though in both are to be perceived an advancing literary standard. There is an average level with no mountain elevations; but in the upheaval of society the table-land of to-day is higher than the dead-level of the last century. The new mediocrity is a better article than the old, for there is generally more activity in the world; the interests which engage the attention of men are of greater moment; the forces are greater; the strife and competition are stronger; men must know more, and be prepared to think rapidly, to act with quickness and decision. The cultivation of the laboring and less wealthy classes is greatly improved. The number of persons who can neither read nor write, is much smaller. The education of the mass reacts upon the few above them. Every day science is raising the standard of knowledge; and though consummate wisdom may be rare as ever, follies of active growth, it may be observed, are of shorter life. In regard to the higher departments of literature, the present time, concerned almost entirely with the practical and immediate, may be but the necessary period of preparation for another great harvest of the works of genius. The temper of the people is being tried and facts are being accumulated in great wars, in political conflicts, in social organization, in discoveries in nature, in explorations of new lands, in an unprecedented development of the supplies and incentives of civilization. The poet, in nature's own time, will brood upon these and there will spring forth the epic of the new centuries. Nothing in the past has been lost to literature and art, and there is nothing of worth in our present that will not be absorbed and live on the printed page hereafter. As Homer gathered up the early life of Greece,

and Virgil the glowing sovereignties of Rome, Dante the religion of the middle age, Milton, the learning which had preceded him, and Shakespeare swept the whole circle of humanity-so of this present teeming life, costing so much of pain and effort, redeemed by so much that is self-devoted, honorable and useful,

There shall be sung another golden age,

The rise of empire and of arts,
The good and great inspiring epic rage,
The wisest heads and noblest hearts.

The present is emphatically the age of the practical and immediate. Good business qualities are most in request, even in literature, where formerly the remote was pursued by a roundabout path. We see it in the decline of rhetorical eloquence at the bar, the pulpit, and the senate. Fine speaking and fine writing as such are getting to be held more and more in contempt. The lawyer is expected to come at once to the point by the most direct road, and should he scatter flowers of fancy by the way, they are suspected by the intelligent juror as devices to divert his judgment from the true issue. In our American political representative bodies the practice hardly as yet conforms to this standard; but it prevails with men of weight and intelligence, while flowery tropes and impertinent decorations are an infallible mark of the half-educated. It is not the emotions of legislators which are to be excited, but the sober interests of their constituents which are to be maintained and promoted-most of the questions being of direct material welfare. The pulpit offers the last field for eloquence, for its province is emphatically to arouse the sympathies, while it deals with the transcendental and supernatural, and draws man beyond the visible and earthly; but even here its topics are best presented in a simple, easy, natural manner, given less and less to the doctrinal and purely argumentative, but enforcing lessons of practical good, translating life into duty, and leading man to the heavenly by the sacred analogies of earth. So far has the pursuit of the immediate in recent times extended that the Stage, formerly the guide and incentive to the highest literary production, has almost entirely ceased to give birth to a play which outlasts the recitation of the hour-a twelvemonth. The playwright of the day throws off a score of successful dramas, not one of which is transferred from the boards to the shelves of the library.

Yet with all this, the better education of the country is yet going on, with a promise that the new life, at least for the majority, shall be better than the old. The present development of all the means of education in the United States, is a sure indication of the future. It extends to every department from the village school to the University, from the spelling-book to the treatise on philosophy. Money is being generously contributed to the foundation and enlargement of colleges, to the creation of libraries; no village can be said to be properly founded without its lyceum, or institute. In cities, the influences of learning are permeating the mass of the people. The statistics not yet collected of the wealth of private libraries would astonish the careless observer. The taste of the public is improving with its knowledge,

as scholars push their way into more distant and retired provinces of learning. The reception given to Professor Longfellow's recent version of the great poem of Dante-the crowning work of a life-time of poetic culture—is a good omen of the future. Honoring Bryant also, the nation pays its tribute to the highest order of excellence, bestowing its admiration upon genius, which burning only with a vestal light, has been consecrated in pure expression to the beautiful and severe majesty of truth and virtue. American literature has indeed this honor, that its service has been one of purity. Its critics thus far have had little to blush for in writing its history.

Looking abroad, we find the same honors paid to Tennyson, facile princeps, the head of English poets; and it is at once complimentary to him and the English reading public that every scrap which falls from his pen is seized upon with eagerness, and subjected to a species of attention mostly confined to time-honored classic authorship. A notable example of this, in the past year, is the reception of his philosophic poem Lucretius, issued as an article in Macmillan's Magazine, and at once commented upon in papers in the other periodicals and the press, the Times taking the lead in the work of analysis and eulogy. The poem, as a work of art, is indeed worthy of its author. Availing himself of a questionable tradition of the Roman poet's death, resting on unsatisfactory authority, untenable in itself, and derogatory to the poet's character, Tennyson has woven with this assumption the rarest felicities* of thought and of poètical expression—such an infusion of classical conceptions, bound in blank verse of exquisite music, in a whole of linked power and sweetness, unsurpassed in English poetry since the muse of Milton. As with that great master of idyllic and epic song, his learning becomes thoroughly incorporated with his fancy and reflections as he builds the lofty rhyme. Poetry, with Tennyson, is consummate skill, and according to his attempts, hitherto with power proportionate. He need only take more imposing subjects, than any he has ventured upon, save in his noble requiem "In Memoriam," to assume his place with the greater gods of British verse. Secondary and below him are Browning, Arnold, Buchanan, Swinburne, who has hardly sustained the promise of "Atalanta in Calydon," and Morris, the author of "Jason.”

The death of Lord Brougham at Cannes in April, at the venerable age of ninety, marks the close of a memorable period. His name, if not identified with the higher forms of literature, for he was neither a great philosopher, poet or historian, is linked to the mental progress of the age by some of its most enduring landmarks. As one of the founders of the Edinburgh Review at the beginning of the century, as one of the originators of Mechanics Institutes, as the author of the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge and, at the close of his life a participator in the Society for the Promotion of Social Science; by his contributions to biography, his writings on political science, his elaborate speeches in Parliament, his persistent and successful advocacy of legal reform, he rendered practical services to his age and country in labors which did not perish with the day, but are now bearing fruit and will continue to influence the welfare of the future. Such men, impressing the world by their activity, with a semblance of ubiquity, busy

in the diverse forms of literature, in the halls of science, connected with all the intellectual movements of the day, do more than is sometimes conceded to them by their cotemporaries in binding together and bringing out the mental forces of their time. Whether in co-operation or disagreement with others, their influence is great. England, of late, has lost several such men of exuberant vitality-Whewell, Whately, in a restricted degree Wiseman and, though of another nation, Chevalier Bunsen.

The visit of Charles Dickens to the United States during the year, though mainly to be regarded as a strictly professional tour, yet for the peculiar character of that journey and a certain representative character of the man, in his eminent position as an author, is well worthy of being chronicled among the literary events of importance-perhaps in both aspects to have its influence for good in the future. Mr. Dickens, induced by the earnest solicitation of friends in this country, who, as the event proved, had not misread the wishes of the people, came to Boston in the autumn of 1867, and in a few months reaped from the reading of portions of his writings in public, a pecuniary harvest which is probably underestimated at one hundred thousand dollars in gold-a sum which invested in United States securities, at their present terms, is sufficient to provide a liberal income for the author and his family into an indefinite future. For this mode of recompensing authorship the fraternity of writers is indebted to the example and success of Mr. Dickens.

The best avenue of the author to fame and fortune will still, we believe, be the easy well tried track of the publisher's counter. It will be the most constant resource, and upon the whole the most satisfactory. Let all other honorable means, however, be tried and if found advantageous, be welcomed. The prosperity of men of letters must inevitably add to the welfare of publishers; and without pursuing this subject into the speculations it invites, it may be remarked that this was pleasantly shown in the course of the recent money making tour of Mr. Dickens, as the publishers with characteristic energy promptly followed in his footsteps with rival editions of his works. The success of this speculation of the trade was certainly complimentary to the fame of the author. If he received little directly from the profits, the book-sellers proved at least his best possible advertisers in keeping alive the attention of the public and forwarding the interests of the reading campaign. If Mr. Dickens had pursued his adventure, traversing the country in its length and breadth, he might to the equal delight of his publishers have added a million to his resources.

In the other aspect of the case, that of an English literary representative, the visit of Mr. Dickens has already proved an agreeable one in its consequences. The British press has chosen to take this view of the reception, and it is every way a worthy one. For a writer of the merit and eminence of Mr. Dickens is a public embassador of no mean order. In him the heart and affections, the sufferings and sympathies of one nation-in which all are akin-speak to the universal brotherhood of man in every other, and especially where the glowing inspiration of genius is expressed in a common

tongue. Let this acceptation be enduring, a spring of courtesies in the future in the comities of two great nations to be bound by the moral and intellectual ties of the proud, sensitive, reflecting, enjoying, religious Saxon races. Nor is this reciprocity a sentiment merely on the part of our foreign brethren. Mr. Dickens in his farewell compliments and assurances of good-will but anticipated the welcome which awaited the first representative of American letters of similar position who should appear in England. Happily for the honor of the country this pilgrim to the British shores has proved to be the poet Longfellow, than whom America could send no worthier son or the genius of the country a fitter minister plenipotentiary. Immediately on his

arrival he was hailed by a delegation of a leading popular literary institution, while the University of Cambridge hastened to confer upon him, in full assembly, her most distinguished Academic honors. Mr. Longfellow will enjoy abroad the rare felicity of being appreciated alike by scholars and the people.

Turning our thoughts homeward from this pleasing prospect of international courtesies, a word is to be said of an institution which is never overlooked in any festive celebration. The Press will always constitute an important province of American letters. It is indeed not generally taken into account in an estimate of literature proper, but it well deserves to be, since by far the largest amount of thinking and writing in the country and much of the best, is in this department. Nor should it be neglected for its incidental ephemeral character. Though necessarily written in and for the hour, many articles of the journals exhibit-with all that should attract at the moment -enduring qualities. There are newspapers habitually distinguished for acuteness of argument, philosophic breadth of treatment, felicity of style and illustration, candor and independence, which if displayed in other forms of literature would secure for the now unknown writers an enviable reputation. The newspaper press of the country has indeed within a few years shown a vast improvement. It is steadily rising in respect and consideration, in power and influence at home and abroad. There are various reasons for this beneficial progress. There is the general one of increased culture and refinement corresponding with the growth and development of the country at large. A popular institution, it rises or falls with the public taste. "The drama's laws," it was said of the stage, "the drama's patrons give." To the players as "the abstracts and brief chroniclers of the time" have succeeded the editors, who inheriting the maxim do not rise much above or fall greatly below the taste of their supporters. Hence the variety of talent, ability and propriety in the several forms of journalism representing different classes of the community. In the larger cities it will receive the fullest development. Here its improvement will be most marked. Its course is inevitably onward. It must every day become a more faithful chronicler of events, a sounder and surer guide in matters of opinion. Allowing much for the immoral exigencies of political party-which are, in a measure, by their very excesses, self-corrective—the newspaper press of the country may be pronounced upon the whole, a judicious and jealous guardian of the

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