was reversed-he was the pursuer; they flew with the rapidity of the wind, amid wild laughter, while he belabored all that he could catch with the mutilated and unfortunate fowl. He was the observed of all observers, as he rode gaily about with the blood-stained chicken fastened to his saddle, and worn with as much triumph as ever his ancestors wore a scalp.

It is all over, now, this day of blended color, light, wild scenes, and wilder people. We were so tired with the excitement of such varied, strange, and absorbing pictures that we spoke

The

very little to each other on our way back. The gray, still twilight has come, and our mountain home, after the hot, dusty day, seems more like a beautiful haven of rest than ever. cows are drowsily coming up the hill, while the Indian boy stands, pail in hand, ready to milk them; the swallows are gathered to their nests, the shadows are stealing on the pines. My friend has opened the piano, and is playing softly a vesper hymn; as I listen to it, the vesper star gleams suddenly, white and clear, out of the amethyst-tinted sky.

AGNES M. MANNING.

The question of whether we dwellers on the western side of the Atlantic are ever to possess a distinctly representative literature of our own has so long been a subject of rather fervid popular discussion, that it would seem to have received the most exhaustive and satisfactory treatment from essayists and critics. It will be safe to say that a very large majority of people who think at all on literary matters look forward with quite as much confidence to the coming of the great American novel as astronomy does to the ultimate return of Encke's comet. But although it has become fashionable, in a kind of careless newspaper sense, now and then to mention, with a spirit of comic prophecy, the future appearance of this work, there is also reason to believe that a great American novel by no means completes, for hopeful observers, the Paradise of rosy probabilities. If we are to have such a novel, it also seems to be tacitly understood that we are to have a great national poem likewise, and a great historical work, and, indeed, some notable example of greatness in all literary departments. An extremely wide belief seems now to prevail, among enlightened people, that our country will, at some undetermined day, possess a literature as nobly distinctive, characteristic, and durable as that of England or France.

Mr. Herbert Spencer is responsible for the statement that a very great deal of the best thinking is done in an irregular way; but there would seem slight doubt that—concerning this matter of a coming American literature, properly so called the irregularity of the thought is not redeemed by its soundness. There appears to be a sort of prospective analogy drawn be

tween our general national grandeur and that splendid literary individuality which is now thought an undeveloped power of such massive promise. We talk of our unwritten poems as we might talk of so many iron-clads yet unbuilt, or overland routes yet unaccomplished. We have done so many things on a magnificent scale, here in America-we have brought forth so much that no other country has previously brought forth, we have exhibited peculiar traits that are so emphatically the traits of no other country-that this question of producing, in a | degree precisely similar, a superb race of characteristic authors, almost appears a pleasantly inevitable sequitur. Some Oregonian Dryden, some Californian Byron, and even some Milton of the Pacific Slope, are figures which loom amid the days to be in colors of prophecy that hardly seem indeterminate. It is, indeed, noticeable that the Eastern element usually appears annulled in our visions of a coming literature. It is thought proper to say of not a few authors whose prose and poetry have passed, on both sides of the Atlantic, certain severer critical tests, that, notwithstanding intrinsic worth of the highest order, they fail fittingly to express the spirit of the land which produced them. They do not "smack of the soil." They are not "American," which is admittedly definable as Western, since in the prairies, mountains, and mighty rivers of our West is found that one stupendous feature of geographical immensity, combined with spacious fertility, which forbids comparison between our country and all European civilization. It is certain that the extremists have roundly asserted Mr. Longfellow not to be an American poet, in spite

of “Hiawatha ;" and that they have even said the same of Mr. Lowell, notwithstanding the "Bigelow Papers."

But thus far it must be allowed that those most clamorous after the American spirit in our literature are the least capable of making their demand assume a simply comprehensible shape. They are, as a rule, admirable at sonorous generalities, but less effective in other methods of self-defense. They are exceedingly fond of talking and writing about breadth, depth, height, and distance; but when asked to express the literary equivalent of these terms, it can not be said that they succeed by any means as well. Now, what has so often been termed "Americanism" is either a clearly attainable end in our literature, or it is not. If attainable at all, it is better to be described than by glowingly vague adjectives of vastness, multitude, and strength. If not attainable, it is something wholly outside the realm of literary art, and therefore, in so far as regards the least practical utility, merely a figure of speech.

That the world has seen much in democracy both saliently novel and profoundly majestic, can not well be denied; that democracy, as an idea, should deeply tinge the thought of many literary generations, and operate with decisive power upon the formation of different though analogous styles, may also be very safely assumed; that its best influences of expansion, elevation, and inspiration should be felt with vigorous effect upon the intellect of any given community whom its watchwords have nerved, and whom its banners have led to battle, is none the less difficult to discredit: but that its latent energies should be able to lay the corner-stone, construct the foundation, and finally complete the edifice of a literature absolutely unique (as, for example, that of Greece or of Germany was absolutely unique), can not be considered by any means a reasonable claim. After all, there is one positive and insurmountable kind of boundary between all literatures, and that is the boundary of language alone. What we call the "genius" of a language is a prodigiously representative affair. It is not only a nation's thought, but it is a nation's way of thinking; it is the temperament, taste, and habit of the people; it is their worst fault no less than their best virtue; it is their deepest hatred and their most fervid preference; it is their power to divert themselves and their susceptibility of being bored; it is even their eating and their drinking. So closely is the slow development of language wedded to that of literature that the two may well be considered inextricable. From wild, uncouth beginnings the gradual phases of differentiation result. As

the people by degrees emerge from barbarism, their rude songs, ballads, legends, eddas, and sagas give place to more deliberated, conscious, and artistic work; and this consideration, however its mention may strike the reader as unpardonable truism, in our age of philological research and analysis, nevertheless appears to have been quite obstinately overlooked by many contemporary observers. It is, perhaps, needless enough, remindingly, to state that our own country differs from all others on the globe in the matter of its civic growth. Indeed, to speak strictly, we must declare ourselves to have existed without having ever had a true national birth. From a collection of colonies, we were rapidly transformed into a powerful nation. We suddenly found ourselves, so to speak, in possession of a brilliant present, and in confident expectation of a splendid future. But we were strangely without a past. We had no national descent. In a governmental sense, there was a vast hiatus between our English-modeled laws and the savage councils of those painted braves who had built their camp-fires where now stood our court-houses; but in a literary sense we were far less aboriginal. We could not write an address without recalling Addison and The Spectator; nor deliver one without suggesting some such model as Burke or Pitt. If our poetry did not reflect the elegant iambics of Pope, it bore pointed resemblance to some English bard of greater or less fame. In our early days we wrote a great deal about freedom, both in prose and verse; and, although very much of what we wrote succeeding generations have been willing to let die, there is no reason to say that these productions were not often thoroughly imbued with the democratic spirit. This statement, however, would doubtless be denied by those critics for whom the democratic spirit has a certain pronounced literary technique of its own; but, as before said, the chief difficulty now seems to consist in defining what is meant by that peculiar combination of matter and manner at present demanded of our future "native" writers, on the part of not a few American critics, and of numerous English ones.

There are no grounds for the most earnest conservative to ignore the fact that Mr. Walt Whitman is widely regarded among Englishmen of thought and culture as the emancipator and regenerator of American letters. It would be possible to find statements from noteworthy sources in which this writer has been spoken of as the pioneer of democratic artwhatever those same words may mean. Whitman has some passionate admirers, and it is safe to state that these will all vehemently

Mr.

claim for him a commanding place, not alone as a poet, but as an artist also. They will tell you that he has overcome the bulky difficulty of founding an American literature-that he is the father of American letters. From him, they will say, is to spring our future race of poets, as from Homer sprang Pindar, Æschylus, or Euripides. If he is not painstaking nor polished, neither, they will assert, were the early Greek singers, neither was Chaucer, neither were the remote shapers of German verse. He is, first of all, still further say his admirers, democratic. It is most noticeable, too, that this same "democratic" trait (in some curious way insisted upon as a literary one) is declared to overshadow all others. Intense earnestness, a sort of gigantic philanthropy, a universal sympathy and charity, a vigorous adoration of nature, a vastly positive kind of optimism-these are all recorded as some of Mr. Whitman's most prominent minor attributes: provided it be not affirmed that they are all implied through the one first recorded. However this may be, Mr. Whitman's lovers place him—as they will doubtless admit-in some such exalted and venerable position as that just described. "It is as much to be expected," says a past number of an extremely able English review, "that poems and pictures requiring new names should be found in America as that new living things of any other kind-the hickory and the hemlock, the mocking-bird and the katydid should be found." "Hiawatha,"" it is further asserted, "might have been dreamed in Kensington by a London man of letters who possessed a graceful idealizing turn of imagination, and who had studied, with clear-minded and gracious sympathy, the better side of Indian character and manners."

It is respectfully presumed that the reader is to some extent familiar with Mr. Whitman's writings. If this be the case, he will no doubt admit that an expectation of novelty, in any one beginning their perusal, can scarcely ever fail of being gratified. Assuredly, Leaves of Grass must strike a foreigner as equally new with our hemlocks and mocking-birds. Perhaps it might even strike him with something of the violence of snow when first seen by an Egyptian. But there is one notable difference between the fauna and flora of this country and that special inhabitant of it named Walt Whitman: the hemlocks and mocking-birds are an indigenous natural growth; and it can scarcely be said, on the other hand, of Mr. Whitman's poetry that it is an indigenous literary growth. There even appears something astonishing in the fact of any American mind, equally fortunate as regards the possession of culture and the absence of prejudice, not clearly perceiving the falsity of

Mr. Whitman's position before the community which he is said to represent with such colossal ability. On this gentleman's personal sincerity-on his deep belief in the sacred importance of his utterances-on the perfect good faith with which he offers his voluminous musings to his land and his century-we have no intention of casting the slightest doubt. But, unfortunately, it is possible for a man to attitudinize without knowing it. There are such things as unconscious poseurs. It does not seem at all improbable that Mr. Whitman is one of these. To believe devoutly in ourselves is a different matter from making others believe in us. When certain scriptural - sounding narratives were first published as the translated work of an ancient, half-barbaric poet named Ossian, the element which these writings contained of shadowy sublimity and antique stateliness only increased their interest, while it made the probability of their authenticity still stronger. A savage abandonment to ecstatic or melancholy moods, a blind groping after artistic form, strength but insecurity of touch, and the hundred other indications of poetic force, no less abundant than ill-managed-all seeemed natural enough to the period from which Ossian was said to proceed. But the moment that rumor asserted them to be the genuine work of their supposed discoverer and translator, the pungent atmosphere of anachronism by which they were at once surrounded rendered them almost worthless in popular estimation.

There is a marked similarity between the case of Ossian and that of Mr. Whitman. He addresses an exceedingly cultivated age in the artistic language of barbarism. His philosophy is an eminently modern affair, being a kind of prodigious reverence-doing to all creation—an acceptance of all events, whether evil or good, as the only conceivably proper condition of the universe. "Whatever is, is right" could cover, with its brief phrasing, the substance of many resonant pages from Leaves of Grass. But this philosophy, as before said, has been expressed with what should be called nothing except an intentional defiance of all literary art. It is not fair to declare Mr. Whitman's method one of powerful originality, for that which deliberately places itself outside of all literature can not be judged by literary canons. He rouses, in a perfectly unbiased critic, something of the same amazement as might result from seeing some native of our great West robed in the garb of an ancient British harper, and chanting, with picturesque solemnity, the most eloquent passages of Carlyle and Emerson. It is safe to say that no such artificiality of effect can possibly be produced in letters as that

provement for us, indeed, whose sight is blinded by no ocean fogs, and whose hearing is deafened by no ocean turbulence, the wild grotesqueness, the unbridled extravagance, the deliberated carelessness, and the distressing obscenity of this peculiar writer appear in their proper colors of affectation and masquerade.

It is not intended in the present article to quote largely from the pages of Mr. Whitman, by that easy and somewhat cheap means of selection from his coarsest and most ill-advised passages strengthening a critical argument which can dispense with all such assistance. More just would it be to the author under discussion, if certain detached lines were quoted which possess unquestionable beauty and strong poetic spirit. These lines, which occasionally occur in passages of some length, often increase the effect of intense self-consciousness and meditated acting of a part, which has been so widely the verdict pronounced upon Mr. Whitman by his own countrymen. Such lines as

article on Mr. Whitman, that “if he had written in England in the period of Queen Anne, if he had written in France in the period of the grand monarque, he must have either acknowledged the supremacy of authority in literature, and submitted to it, or, on the other hand, revolted against it. As it is, he is remote from authority," proceeds this reviewer, "and neither submits nor revolts." But the question promptly presents itself, at this point, of whether anything can be considered of the slightest literary value which "neither submits nor revolts" against authority of some sort. For to do neither of these two things undoubtedly is to place one's self outside the arena, and yet wish to be counted in the fight. It is taking a royal road to success with a vengeance; it is laying out a kind of inadmissible by-path toward respectful consideration across regions where "no thoroughfare" puts up an irrefragable veto. Victor Hugo and the so-called Romantic School of France were tremendous originals in their way; they broke through an immense barricade of

ive to my caresses,

Head high in the forehead, wide between the ears, Limbs glossy and supple, tail dusting the ground, Eyes full of sparkling wickedness-ears finely cut, flexibly moving,"

are, beyond doubt, descriptively powerful. The man who wrote them possesses a plainly seen sense of artistic possibilities, however he may have assumed to possess no such sense in numberless other lines. Again, when we read of how

here while they revolted there, and vice versa. Such revolt and such submission constitute the substance of all possible progress and retrogression in literature.

With regard to either of these results, it would seem as if their means of accomplishment were in no manner deeply hidden. The vices and sins which tend toward weakening a literature are better known to-day, perhaps, than ever before; and it may also be said that the virtues most desirable in stimulating any improvement within the same field have never been more

or of

"The dusky green of the rye as it ripples and shades in the breeze,"

we clearly recognize that Mr. Whitman knows the difference between true poetry and turgid dithyramb-a knowledge which is somehow fatal to any preservation of our respect for the authenticity of his "barbaric yawp." His pic turesque or poetical intervals meet his prevailing rudeness and commonness with an oddly insincere clash. It is somehow as if a terrifying maniac should be suddenly discovered to labor under an ordinary fit of nervous hysteria. His glimpses of perfect sanity are sometimes Mr. Whitman's most unfortunate point. To Englishmen, all this sort of thing is extremely real "Americanism," perhaps, but to Americans it is very strongly like rank affectation. The Westminster Review for July, 1871, says, in an

democracy will have no more able lyrical representatives than the ethereally passionate odes of Shelley, and the throbbingly beautiful poetry of Mr. Swinburne's Songs before Sunrise; but even should a still lordlier development occur within this same direction, it is not difficult to perceive the general features of the change. Increased lyrical largeness will not show itself in the mere material redundancy which escapes all ordering rule. There will be added majesty of rhythm, not disdain of all rhythm whatever. New resources of sonorous magnificence in verse will slowly present themselves. Phrases of richer liberality will be discovered. splendor and clamor of our bordering seas will find fresh appliances of portrayal, no less than the superb calmness of our sierras, the limitless levels of our sky-touched prairies, the circuitous and radiant breadths of our rivers, the noble expanses of our mighty lakes. The "Americanism" in our unborn literature may be very grand sort of liberty, but there is doubt that it

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