We need not attempt to estimate how immense is the periodical literature of the United States at present, embracing the newspapers, and the monthly and quarterly magazines and reviews. There is no department of art in our country in which greater progress has been made during the last thirty years than in that of printing; and while the entire number of copies struck off, annually, must be many millions, much the larger proportion is produced for, if not by, the free West.
The first original books in America were written in New England, and there the chief seat of literary influence has heretofore remained. But it is easy to perceive that a great change has already taken place; and yet easier is it to predict that when, instead of aping foreign models, we come to have a literature really national, its perfection, like all its best materials, will be found in the great West. A magnificent field for intellect, in all its inventive and constructive shapes, is manifestly opening in nearer proximity to the Rocky Mountains and the Pacific shore. As material treasures, long buried, are now from that remote quarter sent forth to enrich the world, so will an infinitely more useful superabundance of intellect be poured thence by and by to enlighten and redeem the effete continents beyond.
The East has always guarded the literary elements of a productive age, while the appropriate field of their culture was preparing, and then has yielded the contracted measure of seed to be scattered and gathered in harvests of immensely augmented worth. A literature which expresses our native peculiarities, and adequately represents American character and deeds, does not yet exist, and this is as much an occasion for gratitude, as it is easy to be explained. Our primary mission was to realize the idea of a perfect Commonwealth which had stirred the greatest minds of every age from Plato to Roger Williams. All history has been but the record of human strivings after a better, higher, and more perfect social state, the inauguration of the age of reason and righteousness in the true sense of those much abused words. Therefore an original political literature, harmonious with the new position which progressive humanity had assumed away from arbitrary conventionalities, was to be our first success; and, to the wondering admiration of all Europe, that has already been achieved. Starting from great and genuine principles, laid down by Milton, Hampden, and Sidney, our fathers erected a governmental model the most perfect on earth. That, however, was no provincial creation, but the first grand national monument, which fortunately through successive generations, claimed the best energies of all leading minds. Nothing but a direct struggle for freedom of person and thought could emancipate the common intellect from feudal associations, hereditary errors, and crippling conventionalities. That triumph attained, and the prolific descendants of the victors amalgamated in yet more ardent endeavors on a broader and more tranquil arena, its correlative, the creation of a national fabric purely literary, may be confidently anticipated. This, too, will not be an aggregate of ancient provincialisms, but an original homogeneous mass of American, continental mind, enriched from a thousand genuine sources of local sentiments. The newest States are in thought the freest and most original, which will cause the whole country to individualize itself more and more. The gigantic movement of independent intellect toward the West every hour deepens the contrast between itself and the petty insipidities it leaves behind. The East has, indeed, given the key-note to most of our popular thinking, but the West has invariably furnished the chief chorus, and spontaneously extemporized every variation whose brilliant originality has elicited thrilling applause. New England has been most prolific of authors, but the best of them write away from the narrow hearth of their nativity, or on foreign themes. Books are beginning to be imbued with a national spirit, as characteristic as are our institutions; and the world will probably not have to wait long, before the purely literary productions of America will be assigned a place equally exalted with the masterpieces of our political science.
The best histories of European literatures, and the sweetest legendary songs, echoing the reminiscences of the faded past, have been recently produced in Massachusetts. It was appropriate that the most attractive portraiture of Columbus and his Companions should be given to the world from the "Sunny Side" of the Hudson; and the gifted historian of our Republic could hardly write with adequate breadth and force except under the expansive influence of this mighty metropolis. But how will the poet sing, the critic discriminate, and the annalist indite, when centuries shall have developed the resources of a hemisphere, and gathered a galaxy of its brightest luminaries in central skies to pour their combined effulgence from sea to sea and from pole to pole!
Of course, literary excellence is as yet but very imperfectly attained in the West, but all present auspices are clearly indicative of prospective worth. As in volcanic eruptions, the deepest and firmest strata shoot to the apex of the fiery cone, so in self-impelled emigrations the best material goes first and farthest. The greater the remove, the more disenthralled the mind, and the more copious of observation, as well as profounder the depths of reflection, which will have been brought into view by the transit. All past literatures contributed to lay a deep and broad foundation for our own; and every historic incident of public life with us, more than in any other nation, is closely related to the essential nature and social improvement of mankind. Literary excellence has never moved eastward a furlong since thought began. On the contrary, the course of mental exaltation and aggrandizement is in exactly the opposite direction. Every body instinctively says "down East" and "out West," since it is felt to be a universal rule that only in moving in the latter direction is the largest liberty enjoyed. Years ago we defined a westerner as being "a Yankee expanded, a New Englander enlarged;" and it is ultimately from that stock, refined and ennobled, through the inspiration of the majestic West, that our best national literature will originate.
The literal invasion of savage forests, which is indispensable to the expansion of our republican domain, has given a designation to another great element of popular education peculiar to our land. The stump, not less than the steam engine, has become the means of disseminating knowledge, and of breaking down the influence of both local dictation and caucus caballing. It is as true as it may appear strange, that American eloquence has thus become most analogous to Athenian, and the orator is made the successful rival even of the press. Not a little of moral sublimity is presented by a great Presidential canvass, and it is difficult to estimate the amount of valuable information on such occasions diffused. The best talents of the country traverse the whole nation, even the most inaccessible regions, like Peter the Hermit, that they may everywhere arouse the public mind, excite and feed its power of thought. On such occasions the remark of Lord Brougham is always verified, that the speaker who lowers his composition in order to accommodate himself to the habits and tastes of the multitude, will find that he commits a grievous mistake. Our promiscuous assemblies are highly intelligent, and, on account of the interest they take in public affairs, they are the most susceptible of improvement. They most relish the logical statement of profound principles which they are sagacious to comprehend, and zealous to re-discuss. It is in this way that Bunkum speeches sent to millions of readers, and innumerable lectures delivered nightly on all sorts of subjects to throngs in country and town, are made doubly profitable in the habits of reading and reasoning which they elicit and confirm. Nothing in the past will compare with the prodigious excitement which precedes popular elections in America, and the general calm which immediately follows. It is a sublime process of universal education, the best adapted to perfect and perpetuate the free institutions in the bosom of which it had its birth. Having inquired into the origin of representative government, Montesquieu declared that "this noble system was first found in the woods of Germany." It has ever improved in exact proportion as it has removed from its original source, and the masses last gathered to its embrace seem to be most rapidly and thoroughly transformed by its worth. Enlightened and heroical, they repudiate the aristocratic system, according to which a person is born to a position of sovereignty merely because he has been born into a privileged class; and firmly cling to the democratic rule, wherein an individual is born to a position of sovereignty by the simple fact that he is born human. Of all earth's institutions, the American Republic stands supreme, as being the first open university of this doctrine; and we have the best reasons to believe that mankind, without exception, will yet become its happy and honored alumni.
George Berkeley and Roger Williams were both educated at Christ Church College, Oxford. How great is the contrast between the traditional conservatism of mediæval universities as they exist in old England at the present day, and the literary spirit so free and progressive in young America. The greatest boast of the former is that they remain just where Wykeham, Waynfleet, and Wolsey left them, and that they have neither advanced nor changed the system of education since they were founded. We have before alluded to the fact, that it was the zeal of commoners and not the munificence of kings which almost wholly created both universities; and when those great institutions, designed for the general good, were perverted into the hot-beds of regal pride and aristocratic exclusiveness, their chief power was at an end. Oxford and Cambridge were influential on the popular mind only so far as they were the exponents and promoters of its intelligence. Since they have declined further to co-operate in this, they possess little value save as venerable monuments of the past, retreats wherein the great pioneers of the age of Washington were trained. In addition to Berkeley and Williams, they fostered the republican spirit of Milton, the illustrious bard and patriot who chanted the high praises of liberty in his Defenses of the People of England, in his Apology for the Liberty of the Press, and in his Causes of the Reformation in England. How glorious to behold him emerging from "those dark ages wherein the huge overshadowing train of error had almost swept all the stars out of the firmament of the church;" warning his countrymen "that unless their liberty be of a kind such as arms can neither procure nor take away, which alone is the fruit of piety, justice, temperance, and unadulterated virtue; they may only be seen to pass through the fire to perish in the smoke;" pleading for "a book as containing a progeny of life in it, active as that soul whose progeny it is, and preserving as in a vial the purest extraction of the living intellect which bred it;" reminding his countrymen "that they might as well almost kill a man as kill a good book, because who kills a man, kills a reasonable creature, God's image, but who destroys a good book, kills reason itself, kills the image of God as it were in the eye." Of a kindred spirit was Algernon Sidney to whom we owe those great and eloquent Discourses which our fathers studied as the first complete definition and exegesis of the nature and duties of government; so full of brave and noble sentences, forever setting the indignant foot on the divine rights of kings; and asserting that "He that oppugns the public liberty overthrows his own, and is guilty of the most brutish of all follies, while he arrogates to himself that which he denies to all men," and maintaining throughout the essential monarchy of the people. In due time followed the magnificent Burke, amid whose stormy invectives against the excesses of freedom, are many rich and profound truths. Nor less useful to the cause of literary and political progress was his great rival, the critic, jurist, and reformer, Mackintosh, who prophesied the downfall of spiritual power before the close of the nineteenth century, and was always the jealous defender of popular rights.
Cotemporaneous with these latter heroes in literature, and extending with enhanced splendor of inspiration and effects to our own day, what a magnificent series of mental producers has this republic reared and enjoyed! It is prophetic of a yet loftier and more glorious improvement, that when ennobling truths have once been announced, they can never be thrown back into obscurity or indifference; but must spread through the world, to become a portion of the intellectual atmosphere of nations, and give tone and temper to all rising minds. Great thinkers are chosen to lead the world forward, until, not for possessions but virtues, not for his trappings but for himself, man is respected, and the rights of a common humanity are everywhere enjoyed.
We believe that the destiny of humanity is accomplished, not by revolving in a circle, but by a spiral ascent, and that a free literature is its brightest precursor and accompaniment. Mental liberty must be regarded as an operative cause the most powerful in the redemption of every suffering class. Its champions, though they perish, are the world's martyrs. Hearts everywhere beat quicker when their names are mentioned, the scenes of their heroism are perpetually hallowed, and their memory becomes a universal religion. When the Bastile fell, the source of their beneficent might was remembered by the victors, who sent the huge key to Mount Vernon. We may be assured that when all nations shall have been regenerated through governments which shall exist by and for the people—when liberty shall have so far brought dignity of character and excellence in literature, as to lead the masses to ask. "Where are the powers which wrought this great and glorious change?" Heaven and earth shall reply, "Among those powers—yea, foremost in its energetic and comprehensive efficacy was the inspired pen, not less than the victorious sword, of the American Revolution."
The main stream of the historic nations, with their progressive literature, has always flowed toward the north-west. The original start of this world-wide migration was long anterior to the times when the soil of Europe was trodden by Greeks, Romans, Sclavonians, Germans, or Celts. But however remote was the first impulse, the irresistible spell has only deepened with its advancement, and in our day sends the same Japhetic tribes to settle on western prairies, or explore the regions of gold beyond. Intestine wars, which constituted the chief barrier to general progress, are most commonly excited by difference of races. But under our national banner all active elements, even the most opposite, are gathering and becoming rapidly fused into each other, so as to form one homogeneous and luminous whole. Civilization is contagious, and of all sovereigns Liberty is most pacific toward her admirers. Identity of language is a mighty auxiliary to elevating equality, and the subjugation of this continent to the sway of our native literature will present the most magnificent trophy that ever signalized the triumph of civilization. That this will eventually be accomplished by literary Americans, whose sphere of thought will be as central as it will be both elevated and comprehensive, ought not for a moment to be doubted. Thus far we have produced only a border literature, narrow as the place of its birth, and frigid like the clime. But when an adequate field shall have been cleared near the centre of our domain, wherein intellect may extend an unfettered grasp, and leisure is attained for elaborate composition, remote from foreign models and independent of petty criticism, then the world will see realized a literature commensurate with the vastness of the western republic, and rich enough to endow all her children with more than eastern wealth.