This spirit of improvement, under the hitherto benign protection of our government, is already abroad in the land. New York and Pennsylvania have already executed works which rival in splendor and grandeur the boasted monuments of Egypt, Rome or China, and far excel them in usefulness and profit. The states of the south and west too are moving on in the same noble career. And our own Virginia, the Old Dominion, has at last awakened from her inglorious repose, and is pushing forward with vigor her great central improvement, destined soon to pass the Blue Ridge and Alleghany ranges of mountains, and thus to realize the fable of antiquity, which represented the sea-gods as driving their herds to pasture on the mountains.
"Omne cum Proteus pecus egit altos
Visere montes."
One certain effect of our great systems of improvement must be the rearing up of large towns throughout our country. I know full well that great cities are cursed with great vices. The worst specimens of the human character, squalid poverty, gorgeous, thoughtless luxury, misery and anxiety, are all to be found in them. But we find, at the same time, the noblest and most virtuous specimens of our race on the same busy, bustling theatre. Mind is here brought into collision with mind—intellect whets up intellect—the energy of one stimulates the energy of another—and thus we find all the great improvements originate here. It is the cities which constitute the great moving power of society; the country population is much more tardy in its action, and thus becomes the regulator to the machinery. It is the cities which have hurried forward the great revolutions of modern times, "whether for weal or woe." It is the cities which have made the great improvements and inventions in mechanics and the arts. It is the great cities which have pushed every department of literature to the highest pitch of perfection. It is the great cities alone which can build up and sustain hospitals, asylums, dispensaries—which can gather together large and splendid libraries, form literary and philosophical associations, assemble together bands of literati, who stimulate and encourage each other. In fine, it is the large cities alone which can rear up and sustain a mere literary class. When there shall arise in this country, as there surely will, some eight or ten cities of the first magnitude, we shall then find the opprobrium which now attaches to us, of having no national literature, wiped away; and there are no doubt some branches of science which we are destined to carry to a pitch of perfection which can be reached no where else. Where, for example, can the great moral, political, and economical sciences be studied so successfully as here? And this leads me at once to the consideration of the operation of the state or federative system of government, which I regard as the most beautiful feature in our political system, and that which is calculated to produce the most beneficial influence both on the progress of science, and on the development of character.
It has been observed, under all great governments acting over wide spread empires, that both the arts and literature quickly come to a stand, and most generally begin to decline afterwards. In fact, Mr. Hume makes the bold assertion in his Essays, "that when the arts and sciences come to perfection in any state, from that moment they naturally or rather necessarily decline, and seldom or never revive in that nation where they formerly flourished." His remark is certainly much more applicable to large monarchical governments than to such a system as ours. In large countries, with great national governments, there will be quickly formed in literature as perfect a despotism as exists in politics. Some few great geniuses will arise, explore certain departments of literature, earn an imperishable reputation, die, and bequeath to posterity in their writings a model ever after to be imitated, and for that very reason never to be excelled. And thus it is that certain standard authors establish their dominion in the world of letters, and impose a binding law on their successors, who, it has been well said, do nothing more than transpose the incidents, new-name the characters, and paraphrase the sentiments of their great prototypes. It is known that under the Roman emperors, even as late as the time of Justinian, Virgil was called the poet, by way of distinction, throughout the western empire, while Homer received the same appellation in the eastern empire. These two poets were of undisputed authority to all their successors in epic poetry.
We are told that in the vast empire of China, speaking but one language, governed by one law, and consequently moulded into one dull homogeneous character, this literary despotism is still more marked. When the authority of a great teacher, like that of Confucius, is once established, the doctrine of passive obedience to such authority is just as certainly enforced upon succeeding literati as the same doctrine towards the monarch is enforced on the subject. Now all this has a tendency to cramp genius, and paralyze literary effort.
The developing genius of the modern world was arrested in the career of invention at least, and the imagination was tamed down by the servile imitation of the ancients immediately after the revival of letters. And perhaps one of the greatest benefits conferred on learning by the reformation, consisted of the new impulse that was suddenly communicated to the human mind—an impulse that at once broke asunder the bonds which the literature of the ancient world had rivetted—set free the mind after directing it into a new career of inquiry and investigation, unshackled even by the Latin language, which had so long robbed the vernacular tongues of Europe of the honors justly due to them from the literati of the age.5
5 I would not by any means be understood as advancing the opinion that the language and literature of the ancients have been always an impediment to the progress of modern literature. On the contrary, at the revival of letters, the moderns were an almost immeasurable distance in the rear of the ancients. Ancient literature then became a power, by which the moderns were at once elevated to the literary level of antiquity; but when once we had reached that point, all farther exclusive devotion to the learning and the language of antiquity became hurtful to the mind by the trammels which it imposed. The study of the classics will forever be useful and interesting to him who aspires to be a scholar. But it becomes injurious when we make it our exclusive study, and substitute the undefined and loose system of morality—the high sounding and empty philosophy of the ancients, for the purer morals and deeper learning of the moderns.
But not only do great writers in large nations establish their authority over their successors, and thus set bounds to the progress of literature, but they repress the genius of the country by discouraging those first intellectual efforts of young aspirants for fame, which appear insignificant by comparison with established models. Now in literature, as well as in the accumulation of wealth, the proverb is strictly true, that it is the first step which is the most difficult, "c'est le premier pas qui coute." The timid and the modest, (and real genius is always modest,) are frequently deterred from appearing in a particular department of literature, because of the great distance at which their first efforts must fall in the rear of the standard authors who have preceded them. They are overawed and alarmed at the first step which it is necessary to take, and frequently recoil from the task, sinking back into the quiet obscurity of listlessness and mental inactivity—whereas, if a proper encouragement could have been furnished to their incipient labors, it would have cheered and animated them in their literary career, and finally conducted them to proud and exalted rank in the world of letters.
The splendor, profundity, and irresistible fascination of Shakspeare's plays, have perhaps deterred many a genius in England from writing plays. So Corneille and Racine have no doubt produced similar effects in France. Even the great names which I have mentioned, would have been overawed, if in the commencement of their career, they had been obliged to contend with their own more splendid productions. "If Moliere and Corneille," said Hume, "were to bring upon the stage at present their early productions which were formerly so well received, it would discourage the young poets to see the indifference and disdain of the public. The ignorance of the age alone could have given admission to the 'Prince of Tyre;' but it is to that we owe 'The Moor.' Had 'Every Man in his Humor' been rejected, we had never seen 'Volpone.'"