Westward empire

by Elias Lyman Magoon

Coincident with the planting of the last English colony in America, Leibnitz came forward at Berlin with his comparative philosophy of language, and was the first successful classifier of the tongues then known. The next step of advancement in this fundamental path of literature was taken in England, in 1751, by John Harris, who, in his "Hermes," laid the foundation of grammatical philosophy on the largest scale. It is a significant fact that the third prominent step in the same direction should be taken by an American, whose great national work on the Indian tribes was, on the 3d of March, 1847, authorized by Congress to be published, by special act. Not to anticipate our review of science in this age, we may simply remark that another national publication, that of Squier on the ancient monuments in the Mississippi valley, has excited the most lively interest throughout the archæological world, and recently won its richest medal. In reference to the above-mentioned work by Doctor Schoolcraft, Doctor Bunsen says: "In 1850, the first volume of that gigantic work appeared, and now a third volume, printed in 1853, has been transmitted to me by the liberality of that government. It may fairly be said that, by this great national and Christian undertaking, which realizes the aspirations of President Jefferson, and carries out to their full extent the labors and efforts of a Secretary of State, the Honorable Albert Gallatin, the government of the United States has done more for the antiquities and language of a foreign race than any European government has hitherto done for the language of their ancestors."

In the mental, not less than in the material world, this one rule universally obtains, that, the higher the nature, and the more important the influence of a given effect, the more deliberate is its march toward perfectibility and development. If our literature is yet as youthful as it has been slow, it has at least furnished abundant indications that a great original career has actually begun, and under auspices which promise the most brilliant success. Both in men and animals a mixture of races differing from each other, but not too far differenced, is a circumstance which tends most to the improvement of the species; and in the history of letters, all that is greatest and best has been accomplished by the most mixed races of mankind. Diversified currents of free thought, as gigantic as the rivers which reflect our central mountains, and irrigate the immensity of their intervales, are pouring from the Atlantic toward the Pacific shores. On their way, they will mingle and blend in an amalgam deeper, broader, and richer than the preceding world ever saw. As of old, the elegance of the Asiatic will be sustained by the vigor of the Dorian, while each lends the other that quality without which neither could well succeed, but by which multifarious co-operation, an aggregate of consummate worth will be attained.

With reference to a worthy national literature, we are drifting in a right direction; and whatever others may fear in consequence of quitting antiquated channels and familiar scenes, we have good reasons for indulging in sanguine hope. All past experience suggests the expansion of our westward chart, and promises the richest discoveries the bolder we venture forth. No nation can be debased through an excess of wealth, luxury, and power, so long as a harmony is maintained between its institutions and the progress of untrammeled opinion. Political life, as well as moral, is but a series of regenerations; and that nation which has longest braved the severest storms, where the winds are comparatively free, has grown stronger in the tumult than in the calm, and now possesses the greatest energy of youth in those who are most rebellious against antique wrongs. We began with this juvenile energy, and are maturing its best strength on the fruits of all anterior struggles. Former heroes, in their blind madness, may have pulled down the temple of ancient civilization on their shoulders, and buried themselves beneath its ruins; but there is a resurrection vouchsafed to all immortal life, and its mightiest manifestations of every type are renewed on our shores. If this continent has longest lain fallow, it is that the resuscitated energies of redeemed humanity may produce their mightiest fruits thereon.

Wonderful works, produced in distant regions and at various times, reduplicate their latent productiveness as they proceed from age to age, creating an interminable progeny of ideas, and attesting the vitality of genius evermore. This is the true transmigrator, traversing all eras, and maintaining a prolific life amid every variety of vicissitude, kindred to the Great Intelligence, by whose mandate respecting human destinies, as in material things, all concomitants may be changed, but nothing of utility is to be destroyed. What would have been the present moral condition of the world if the Hebrew poetry had never been translated; if the revival of the study of the Greek literature had never taken place; if Raphael and Michael Angelo had never been born; if Dantè, Petrarch, Boccacio, Chaucer, Shakspeare, Calderon, Lord Bacon, and Milton had never existed; if no monuments of ancient art had been handed down to us; and if the poetry of the ancient religion had been extinguished with its belief? But by the intervention of these and other like excitements, the human mind has been awakened to the inventions of modern science, and the creation of recent literatures, which transcend in actual worth all the masterpieces of ancient times. Hereby is the continuity of society, its progress and civilization secured. Many a noble head and heart are dust, but every ennobling thought emanating thence, however long ago, is now alive, and will forever be. Each drop blends with that great wave of progress, the movement of the entire ocean of mind, which is commensurate with the magnitude of the mass to be moved. In due time, the final result of almighty love will be joyfully realized. All noble growths are gradual, and that beneficent power which is destined to become superior over every other, moves with a slowness the most sublime in controlling subordinate ministrations to human weal. Divine logic will not be less conclusive on account of the multitude of its cumulative data, or the deliberateness of its deductions therefrom. As Guizot suggests, Providence moves through time as the gods of Homer through space—it takes a step, and ages have rolled away!

History ever tends to authenticate the fact that there is a general civilization of the whole human race, and a destiny to be accomplished through a prescribed course, in which each nation transmits to its successors the wealth of every superseded age, thus contributing to an aggregated store which is to be perpetually augmented for the common good. This is the noblest as well as most interesting view to be taken of progressive humanity, as it comprehends every other, and furnishes the only true interpretation. In regard to depth of feeling and diversity of ideas, modern literature is infinitely more profound and affluent than that of the ancients. It may not be more perfect in form, but it greatly excels in practicalness, and moral worth. It is in this variety of elements, and the sublime identity of purpose manifested in their constant struggle, that the essential superiority of our civilization consists. The proof of this has been presented in all the vast assemblage of facts which human annals have preserved. These connect causes with their effects, thus constituting events which, when they are once consummated, form the immortal portion of history, and are to be studied as the soul of the past, the groundwork of present improvement, and a secure guaranty of still greater excellence in the future. A yearning after generalization, as the basis of improved literary and spiritual progress, is the noblest and most powerful of all our intellectual desires; and it is a very great privilege to be born in an age and country where this aspiration may with the most rational zeal be indulged.

Literature is not only associated legitimately with all that is great and dignified in the manifestations of human power, but, in our age, it also assumes the most solemn if not the most sublime of characters. Some are bold to teach, like Fichte, that there is a Divine Idea pervading the visible universe, which visible universe is but its symbol and personification, animated by the principle of vitality. To discern and grasp this, to live wholly in it, is the privilege and vocation of virtue, knowledge, freedom; and the end, therefore, of all intellectual efforts in every age. Literary men are the interpreters of this latent enigma, a perpetual priesthood, standing forth, generation after generation, as the dispensers and living types of God's everlasting wisdom, commissioned to make it manifest, to reveal and embody it by successive fragments in their works. Each age, by its inherent tendencies, is different from every other age, and demands a different manifestation of the eternal purpose. Hence every laborer in the vineyard of letters must be thoroughly imbued with the spirit of his age if he would be permanently useful; while he who is not thus inspired, soon becomes a mere groper in the dark, both benighted and impotent. This view explains the true civilizing principle of literature, and expands it so as to embrace all things human and divine. It is not only the expression of society, but also its very life and soul, and may either be a powerful instrument for creation and regeneration, or a fatal one for destruction. There is a reciprocal influence between an age and the books it engenders, as there is between the lettered spirit and its living use. The heroic grandeur of Greece inspired Homer; but it was from Homer that its civilization sprang. The first epic then garnered into itself all antecedent history, and opened a channel wherein succeeding generations might inherit all that bygone efforts and innovations had produced. Great and revered models of subsequent nations have since been grafted upon the original stock of literary worth, from which must surely result both prose and poetical monuments of a comprehensive unity and force commensurate with the age reserved for their transcendent excellence.

As we best prepare a people for a high Christianity by beginning to preach to it at once, so we can not otherwise fit nations to enjoy liberty than by directly inculcating among them its worth, through the medium of a free literature; and it is certain that of all nations belonging to the progressive family, Americans are best prepared for this mission, since they have most desired and insisted upon it since the birth of the republic. As the Greeks were more fitted for the fine arts than the Romans, and the latter were mightier in arms than the Mediævals whom Providence sent forth as the missionaries of a renewed advancement, when the restoration of learning prepared the way for still greater achievements, so is it the manifest destiny of the age of Washington to diffuse in wider and deeper profusion the most humanizing blessings, and thus to conduct instrumentally to that perfection of civilization for which earth and man were designed.

CHAPTER II.

ART.

In considering the condition and prospects of art in the present age, let us, as heretofore, glance at the several departments of architecture, sculpture, and painting, consecutively, according to their natural order and relative merits.