Why a National Literature Cannot Flourish in the United States of North America

Celui qui n’ a égard en écrivant qu’ au goùt de son siècle, songe plus à sa personne qu’ à ses écrits. Il faut tou- jours tendre à la perfection; et alors cette justice qui nous est quelquefois refusée par nos con- temporains, la postérité sait nous la rendre. La Bruyère.
AMERICAN GENIUSES.
For your welfare, may your country listen to my feeble voice, prosper with your prosperity, and the eagle of liberty spread throughout the world.
Joseph Rocchietti.
New York, the first of 1845.
Many americans, and a few foreigners, think that America is yet too young a country for possessing a National Literature. If they intend to say, that the number of classical writers of America, cannot yet compete with the number of classical writers of any old country, of course, it cannot be otherwise. But, that the living present americans cannot have an equal number of writers, as the living old nations, for no other reason, but because this nation is a new one, is what I deny.
Were America a nation of indians beginning now their civilization, independently of any other already civilized nation, to reproach them because they have not a competent literature as well as the old civilized nations, it would be the same as to reproach the times of Abram, because they were not civilized as the present most civilized nations. Such is not the case with the United States of America. The american soil is new; but, the american people is not younger than the european people. This country is composed of colonies from the old continent, who came here with the very laws, religions, learning, languages, prejudices, arts, and literature of the old continent. The classical writers of their mother countries belong to the american also: and to say that the present living american people cannot have a classical literature as well as the present living writers of their mother country, because it is too young a people, it would be the same as to say, that the language of the United States is not an english language.