Part 25

The authors of this portion of our literature seem ashamed of America. One day she will take her revenge. They are the parasites of letters, and live on what other men have made classic. They would study the Holy Land, Greece, Etruria, Egypt, Nineveh, spots made famous by great and holy men, and let the native races of America fade out, taking no pains to study the monuments which so swiftly pass away from our own continent. It is curious that most of the accounts of the Indians of North America come from men not natives here, from French and Germans; and characteristic that we should send an expedition to the Dead Sea, while wide tracts of this continent lie all untouched by the white man's foot; and, also, that while we make such generous and noble efforts to christianize and bless the red, yellow, and black heathens at the world's end, we should leave the American Indian and Negro to die in savage darkness, the South making it penal to teach a black man to write or read.

Yet, there is one portion of our permanent literature, if literature it may be called, which is wholly indigenous and original. The lives of the early martyrs and confessors are purely Christian, so are the legends of saints and other pious men: there was nothing like this in the Hebrew or heathen literature; cause and occasion were alike wanting for it. So we have one series of literary productions that could be written by none but Americans, and only here: I mean the Lives of Fugitive Slaves. But as these are not the work of the men of superior culture, they hardly help to pay the scholar's debt. Yet all the original romance of America is in them, not in the white man's novel.

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Next is the Transient Literature, composed chiefly of speeches, orations, state papers, political and other occasional pamphlets, business reports, articles in the journals, and other productions designed to serve some present purpose. These are commonly the work of educated men, though not of such as make literature a profession. Taking this department as a whole, it differs much from the permanent literature; here is freshness of thought and newness of form. If American books are mainly an imitation of old models, it would be difficult to find the prototype of some American speeches. They "would have made Quintilian stare and gasp." Take the State Papers of the American government during the administration of Mr. Polk, the speeches made in Congress at the same time, the State Papers of the several States--you have a much better and more favorable idea of the vigor and originality of the American mind, than you would get from all the bound books printed in that period. The diplomatic writings of American politicians compare favorably with those of any nation in the world. In eloquence no modern nation is before us, perhaps none is our equal. Here you see the inborn strength and manly vigor of the American mind. You meet the same spirit which fells the forest, girdles the land with railroads, annexes Texas and covets Cuba, Nicaragua, all the world. You see that the authors of this literature are workers also. Others have read of wild beasts; here are the men that have seen the wolf.

A portion of this literature represents the past, and has the vices already named. It comes from human history and not human nature; as you read it, you think of the inertia and the cowardliness of mankind; nothing is progressive, nothing noble, generous or just, only respectable. The past is preferred before the present; money is put before men, a vested right before a natural right. Such literature appears in all countries. The ally of despotism, and the foe of mankind, it is yet a legitimate exponent of a large class of men. The leading journals of America, political and commercial, or literary, are poor and feeble; our reviews of books afford matter for grave consideration. You would often suppose them written by the same hand which manufactures the advertisements of the grand caravan, or some patent medicine; or when unfavorable, by some of the men who write defamatory articles on the eve of an election.

But a large part of this transient literature is very different in its character. Its authors have broken with the traditions of the past; they have new ideas, and plans for putting them in execution; they are full of hope; are national to the extreme, bragging and defiant. They put the majority before institutions; the rights of the majority before the privilege of a few; they represent the onward tendency and material prophecy of the nation. The new activity of the American mind here expresses its purpose and its prayer. Here is strength, hope, confidence, even audacity; all is American. But the great idea of the Absolute Right does not appear, all is more national than human; and in what concerns the nation, it is not justice, the point where all interests are balanced, and the welfare of each harmonizes with that of all, which is sought; but the "greatest good of the greatest number;" that is, only a privilege had at the cost of the smaller number. Here is little respect for universal humanity; little for the Eternal Laws of God which override all the traditions and contrivances of men; more reverence for a statute, or constitution, which is indeed the fundamental law of the political State, but is often only an attempt to compromise between the fleeting passions of the day and the Immutable Morality of God. Amid all the public documents of the nation and the several States, in the speeches and writings of favorite men, who represent and so control the public mind, for fifty years, there is little that "stirs the feelings infinite" within you; much to make us more American, not more manly. There is more head than heart; native intellect enough; culture that is competent, but little conscience, or real religion. How many newspapers, how many politicians in the land go at all beyond the whig idea of protecting the property now accumulated, or the democratic idea of ensuring the greatest material good of the greatest number? Where are we to look for the representative of justice, of the unalienable rights of all the people and all the nations? In the triple host of article-makers, speech-makers, lay and clerical, and makers of laws, you find but few who can be trusted to stand up for the unalienable rights of men; who will never write, speak, nor vote in the interests of a party, but always in the interest of mankind, and will represent the justice of God in the forum of the world.

This literature, like the other, fails of the high end of writing and of speech: with more vigor, more freedom, more breadth of vision, and an intense nationality, the authors thereof are just as far from representing the higher consciousness of mankind, just as vulgar as the tame and well-licked writers of the permanent literature. Here are the men who have cut their own way through the woods, men with more than the average intelligence, daring and strength, but with less than the average justice which is honesty in the abstract, less than the average honesty which is justice concentrated upon small particulars.

Examine both these portions of American literature, the permanent and the fleeting--you see their educated authors are no higher than the rest of men. They are the slaves of public opinion, as much as the gossip in her little village. It may not be the public opinion of a coterie of crones, but of a great party; that makes little odds, they are worshippers of the same rank, idolaters of the same wealth; the gossiping granny shows her littleness the size of life, while their deformity is magnified by the solar microscope of high office. Many a popular man exhibits his pigmy soul to the multitude of a whole continent, idly mistaking it for greatness. They are swayed by vulgar passions, seek vulgar ends, address vulgar motives, use vulgar means; they may command by their strength, they cannot refine by their beauty or instruct by their guidance, and still less inspire by any eminence of manhood which they were born to or have won. They build on the surface-sand for to-day, not on the rock of ages forever. With so little conscience, they heed not the solemn voice of history, and respect no more the prophetic instincts of mankind.

To most men the approbation of their fellows, is one of the most desirable things. This approbation appears in the various forms of admiration, respect, esteem, confidence, veneration and love. The great man obtains this after a time, and in its highest forms, without seeking it, simply by faithfulness to his nature. He gets it, by rising and doing his work, in the course of nature, as easily and as irresistibly as the sun gathers to the clouds the evaporation of land and sea, and like the sun to shed it down in blessings on mankind. Little men seek this, consciously or not knowing it, by stooping, cringing, flattering the pride, the passion, or the prejudice of others. So they get the approbation of men, but never of Man. Sometimes this is sought for by the attainment of some accidental quality, which low-minded men hold in more honor than the genius of sage or poet, or the brave manhood of some great hero of the soul. In England though money is power, it is patrician birth which is nobility, and valued most; and there, accordingly, birth takes precedence of all, of genius and even of gold. Men seek the companionship or the patronage of titled lords, and social rank depends upon nobility of blood. The few bishops in the upper house do more to give conventional respectability to the clerical profession there, than all the solid intellect of Hooker, Barrow, and of South, the varied and exact learning of philosophic Cudworth, the eloquence and affluent piety of Taylor, and Butler's vast and manly mind. In America social rank depends substantially on wealth, an accident as much as noble birth, but movable. Here gold takes precedence of all,--of genius, and even of noble birth.

"Though your sire Had royal blood within him, and though you Possess the intellect of angels too, 'Tis all in vain;--the world will ne'er inquire On such a score:--Why should it take the pains? 'Tis easier to weigh purses, sure, than brains."

Wealth is sought, not merely as a means of power but of nobility. When obtained, it has the power of nobility: so poor men of superior intellect and education, powerful by nature, not by position, fear to disturb the opinion of wealthy men, to instruct their ignorance or rebuke their sin. Hence the aristocracy of wealth, illiterate and vulgar, goes unrebuked, and debases the natural aristocracy of mind and culture which bows down to it. The artist prostitutes his pencil and his skill, and takes his law of beauty from the fat clown, whose barns and pigs and wife he paints for daily bread. The preacher does the same; and though the stench of the rum-shop infests the pulpit, and death hews down the leaders of his flock, the preacher must cry "Peace, peace," or else be still, for rum is power! But this power of wealth has its antagonistic force--the power of numbers. Much depends on the dollar. Nine tenths of the property is owned by one tenth of all these men--but much also on the votes of the million. The few are strong by money, the many by their votes. Each is worshipped by its votaries, and its approbation sought. He that can get the men controls the money too. So while one portion of educated men bows to the rich, and consecrates their passion and their prejudice, another portion bows, equally prostrate, to the passions of the multitude of men. The many and the rich have each a public opinion of their own, and both are tyrants. Here the tyranny of public opinion is not absolutely greater than in England, Germany or France, but is far greater in comparison with other modes of oppression. It seems inherent in a republic; it is not in a republic of noble men. But here this sirocco blows flat to the ground full many an aspiring blade. Wealth can establish banks, or factories; votes can lift the meanest man into the highest political place, can dignify any passion with the name and force of human law; so it is thought by the worshippers of both, seeking the approbation of the two, that public opinion can make truth of lies, and right even out of foulest wrong. Politicians begin to say, There is no law of God above the ephemeral laws of men.

There are few American works of literature which appeal to what is best in men; few that one could wish should go abroad and live. America has grown beyond hope in population, the free and bond, in riches, in land, in public material prosperity, but in a literature that represents the higher elements of manliness far less than wise men thought. They looked for the fresh new child; it is born with wrinkles and dreadfully like his grandmother, only looking older and more effete. Our muse does not come down from an American Parnassus, with a new heaven in her eye, men not daring to look on the face of anointed beauty, coming to tell of noble thought, to kindle godlike feelings with her celestial spark, and stir mankind to noble deeds. She finds Parnassus steep and high and hard to climb; the air austere and cold, the light severe, too stern for her effeminate nerves. So she has a little dwelling in the flat and close-pent town, hard by the public street; breathes its Boeotian breath; walks with the money-lenders at high change; has her account at the bank, her pew in the most fashionable church and least austere; she gets approving nods in the street, flattery in the penny-prints, sweetmeats and sparkling wine in the proper places. What were the inspirations of all God's truth to her? He "taunts the lofty land with little men."

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There still remains the Exceptional Literature; some of it is only fugitive, some meant for permanent duration. Here is a new and different spirit: a respect for human nature above human history, for man above all the accidents of man, for God above all the alleged accidents of God; a veneration for the eternal laws which He only makes and man but finds; a law before all statutes, above all constitutions, and holier than all the writings of human hands. Here you find most fully the sentiments and ideas of America, not such as rule the nation now, but which, unconsciously to the people, have caused the noble deeds of our history, and now prophesy a splendid future for this young giant here. These sentiments and ideas are brought to consciousness in this literature. Here a precedent is not a limitation; a fact of history does not eclipse an idea of nature; an investment is not thought more sacred than a right. Here is more hope than memory; little deference to wealth and rank, but a constant aspiration for truth, justice, love and piety; little fear of the public opinion of the many or the few, rather a scorn thereof, almost a defiance of it. It appears in books, in pamphlets, in journals, and in sermons, sorely scant in quantity as yet. New and fresh, it is often greatly deficient in form; rough, rude and uncouth, it yet has in it a soul that will live. Its authors are often men of a wide and fine culture, though mainly tending to underrate the past achievements of mankind. They have little reverence for great names. They value the Greek and Hebrew mind for no more than it is worth. With them a wrong is no more respected because well descended, and supported by all the riches, all the votes; a right, not less a right because unjustly kept out of its own. These men are American all through; so intensely national, that they do not fear to tell the nation of the wrong it does.

The form of this literature is American. It is indigenous to our soil, and could come up in no other land. It is unlike the classic literature of any other nation. It is American as the Bible is Hebrew, and the Odyssey is Greek. It is wild and fantastic, like all fresh original literature at first. You see in it the image of republican institutions--the free school, free state, free church; it reflects the countenance of free men. So the letters of old France, of modern England, of Italy and Spain reflect the monarchic, oligarchic, and ecclesiastic institutions of those lands. Here appears the civilization of the nineteenth century, the treasures of human toil for many a thousand years. More than that, you see the result of a fresh contact with nature, and original intuitions of divine things. Acknowledging inspiration of old, these writers of the newness believe in it now not less, not miraculous, but normal. Here is humanity that overleaps the bounds of class and of nation, and sees a brother in the beggar, pirate, slave, one family of men variously dressed in cuticles of white or yellow, black or red. Here, too, is a new loveliness, somewhat akin to the savage beauty of our own wild woods, seen in their glorious splendor an hour before autumnal suns go down and leave a trail of glory lingering in the sky. Here, too, is a piety somewhat heedless of scriptures, liturgies, and forms, and creeds; it finds its law written in nature, its glorious everlasting Gospel in the soul of man; careless of circumcision and baptismal rites, it finds the world a temple, and rejoices everywhere to hold communion with the Infinite Father of us all, and keep a sacrament in daily life, conscious of immortality, and feeding continually on angel's bread.

The writers of this new literature are full of faults; yet they are often strong, though more by their direction than by native force of mind; more, by their intuitions of the first good, first perfect and first fair, than through their historical knowledge or dialectic power. Their ship sails swift, not because it is sharper built, or carries broader sails than other craft, but because it steers where the current of the ocean coincides with the current of the sky, and so is borne along by nature's wind and nature's wave. Uninvited, its ideas steal into parlor and pulpit, its kingdom coming within men and without observation. The shoemaker feels it as he toils in his narrow shop; it cheers the maiden weaving in the mill, whose wheels the Merrimac is made to turn; the young man at college bids it welcome to his ingenuous soul. So at the breath of spring new life starts up in every plant; the sloping hills are green with corn, and sunny banks are blue and fragrant with the wealth of violets, which only slept till the enchanter came. The sentiments of this literature burn in the bosom of holy-hearted girls, of matrons and of men. Ever and anon its great ideas are heard even in Congress, and in the speech of old and young, which comes tingling into most unwilling ears.

This literature has a work to do, and is about its work. Let the old man crow loud as he may, the young one will crow another strain, for it is written of God, that our march is continually onward, and age shall advance over age forever and forever.

Already America has a few fair specimens from this new field to show. Is the work History? The author writes from the stand-point of American democracy; I mean philanthropy, the celestial democracy, not the satanic; writes with a sense of justice and in the interest of men; writes to tell a nation's purpose in its deeds, and so reveal the universal law of God, which overrules the affairs of States as of a single man. You wonder that history was not before so writ that its facts told the nation's ideas, and its labors were lessons, and so its hard-won life became philosophy.

Is it poetry the man writes? It is not poetry like the old. The poet has seen nature with his own eyes, heard her with his own mortal, bodily ears, and felt her presence, not vicariously through Milton, Uhland, Ariosto, but personally, her heart against his heart. He sings of what he knows, sees, feels, not merely of what he reads in others' song. Common things are not therefore unclean. In plain New England life he finds his poetry, as magnets iron in the blacksmith's dust, and as the bee finds dew-bright cups of honey in the common woods and common weeds. It is not for him to rave of Parnassus, while he knows it not, for the Soul of Song has a seat upon Monadnock, Wachusett, or Katahdin, quite as high. So Scottish Burns was overtaken by the muse of poetry, who met him on his own bleak hills, and showed him beauty in the daisy and the thistle, and the tiny mouse, till to his eye the hills ran o'er with loveliness, and Caledonia became a classic land.

Is it religion the author treats of? It is not worship by fear, but through absolute faith, a never-ending love; for it is not worship of a howling and imperfect God, grim, jealous and revengeful, loving but a few, and them not well, but of the Infinite Father of all mankind, whose universal providence will sure achieve the highest good of all that are.

These men are few; in no land are they numerous, or were or will be. There were few Hebrew Prophets, but a tribe of priests; there are but few mighty bards that hover o'er the world; but here and there a sage, looking deep and living high, who feels the heart of things, and utters oracles which pass for proverbs, psalms and prayers, and stimulate a world of men. They draw the nations, as conjoining moon and sun draw waters shore-ward from the ocean-springs; and as electrifying heat they elevate the life of men. Under their influence you cannot be as before. They stimulate the sound, and intoxicate the silly, but in the heart of noble youths their idea becomes a fact, and their prayer a daily life.

Scholars of such a stamp are few and rare, not without great faults. For every one of them there will be many imitators, as for each lion a hundred lion-flies, thinking their buzz as valiant as his roar, and wondering the forest does not quake thereat, and while they feed on him fancy they suck the breasts of heaven.

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Such is the Scholars' position in America: such their duty, and such the way in which they pay the debt they owe. Will men of superior culture not all act by scholar-craft and by the Pen? It were a pity if they did. If a man work nobly, the Office is as worthy, and the Purse as blessed in its work. The Pen is power; the Office is power; the Purse is power; and if the purse and office be nobly held, then in a high mode the cultivated man pays for his bringing up, and honors with wide sympathies the mass of men who give him chance to ride and rule. If not; if these be meanly held, for self and not for man, then the scholar is a debtor and a traitor too.