that is great and glorious, has done incalculable mischief, not only in leveling weak minds to one mean standard, but in chilling the fervid aspirations of loftier ones, repressing wholesome enthusiasm, and even frittering away manly independence and force of character—while we duly appreciate this malign influence, and shall be on the watch to guard against it,—we do not mean the less on that account to spare the lash of satire where its discipline is required. Like all people, however sensible, our ingenious countrymen have yet their follies and extravagances. And you must know, immortal sir, that, promising as matters were in your day, the moment your influence over them was withdrawn, they relapsed into a worse condition than formerly. In manners, for instance, it is still the prevailing weakness to adopt the absurdities of others, instead, if such things must be had, of originating them for ourselves. In literature, young, fresh, and unhacknied as we are, we are already, by some strange fatuity, grievously given to twaddle; and—where one has a right to look for that wildness and exuberance, that almost savageness of invention, which so much in the German literature requires training and repression, while it betrays all the richness and vigour of a new mental soil—we find, to the neglect of our own few original models, a dotard fondness, a sickly longing for all the absurd trash of driveling sentimentality and pseudo-fashion, with which the shelves of our circulating libraries are filled from the London press. The taste, thus engendered, acts and re-acts in a thousand ways, till our writings and our approval of writings are both second-hand. We imitate the most flimsy productions which appear abroad, and then approve of these imitations as 'American,' while critics, afraid to be accused of a want of patriotism, sanction where they despise, and approve when they ought to condemn. But the mischief extends still further. Where originality is not required, every one may become a writer. The names of people, clever enough in their way, but by no means more deserving of distinction than hundreds of others equally accomplished, are trumpeted abroad with those of which the country has most reason to be proud, and our national standard of merit is brought into disgrace by having these raw conscripts reviewed side by side with the few tried warriors, who alone we are willing should challenge European criticism, as the champions of our new literature. Now, sir, dangerous as the attempt may be, and difficult as its execution necessarily is, we design in in this publication to assume
