In literary criticism must be named George William Curtis, as well as Stedman and Winter, already named among the poets.
History is perhaps, of all the branches of American literature, that which has found its highest expression. Washington Irving, with his History of Columbus; Prescott, with the History of Ferdinand and Isabella, the History of the Conquest of Mexico and Peru, and the History of Philip II.; Bancroft, with a History of the American Revolution; Hildreth, Sparks, and others, have produced a national history from the discovery of their country down to our own days.
It seems curious that the vast and grandiose regions they inhabit should not have inspired the Americans with taste and talent for descriptions of Nature. Fenimore Cooper is the only great scene painter produced by the immensities of the great Western Continent.
Humorists swarm in the United States. Artemus Ward and Mark Twain are two pseudonyms justly famous at home and abroad. There is a third on the road that leads to similar celebrity. Bill Nye has the same droll way as Mark Twain of droning out irresistible comicalities with that solemn sang froid which is not met with outside the frontiers of Yankeeland. When he mounts the platform, the audience prepares to be dislocated with laughter.
Although the names of Charles A. Dana, Whitelaw Reid, Park Godwin, and many others, are well known to the reading public of America, it is in the large Reviews, and not in the newspapers, that really literary articles are to be found.
Children—if there are any children in America—are not forgotten by literature. It is safe to affirm that there is no country where children are so well written for, by authors who have the secret of instructing them while they charm and amuse them. Love and sympathy for children must be a spontaneous outgrowth of the gay and tender American character. Mrs. Hodgson Burnett, the late Louisa Alcott, Mrs. Lippincott (better known as Grace Greenwood), and Fanny Fern, will for ages to come fascinate the whole of the English-speaking juvenile world.
In these rapid outlines, I must have omitted many names. I hope I have mentioned enough to show a guarantee of a brilliant literary future for the country.
A nation so intelligent, so energetic, so prominent in the world of action, could not possibly be sterile in the domain of thought.