it, and I think it worthy of his memory; especially"—here he hesitated again.
"Go on," said the other, smiling as if he knew what stuck in Martin's throat.
"Especially," pursued Martin, "as I can already understand that it may have required great courage even in his lime to write freely on any question which was not a party one in this very free country."
"Some courage, no doubt," returned his new friend. "Do you think it would require any to do so, now?"
"Indeed I think it would; and not a little," said Martin.
"You are right. So very right, that I believe no satirist could breathe this air. If another Juvenal or Swift could rise up among us to-morrow, he would be hunted down. If you have any knowledge of our literature, and can give me the name of any man, American born and bred, who has anatomised our follies as a people, and not as this or that party; and has escaped the foulest and most brutal slander, the most inveterate hatred and intolerant pursuit; it will be a strange name in my ears, believe me. In some cases I could name to you, where a native writer has ventured on the most harmless and good-humoured illustrations of our vices or defects, it has been found necessary to announce, that in a second edition the passage has been expunged, or altered, or explained away, or patched into praise,"
"And how has this been brought about?" asked Martin, in dismay.
"Think of what you have seen and heard to-day, beginning with the colonel," said his friend, "and ask yourself. How they came about is another question. Heaven forbid that they should be samples of the intelligence and virtue of America, but they come uppermost; and in great numbers too; and too often represent it. Will you walk?"
There was a cordial candour in his manner, and an engaging confidence that it would not be abused; a manly bearing on his own part, and a simple reliance on the manly faith of a stranger; which Martin had never seen before. He linked his arm readily in that of the American gentleman, and they walked out together.
It was perhaps to men like this, his new companion, that a traveller of honoured name, who trod those shores now nearly forty years ago, and woke upon that soil, as many have done since, to blots and stains upon its high pretensions, which in the brightness of his distant dreams were lost to view; appealed in these words—
Oh but for such, Columbia's days were done;
Rank without ripeness, quickened without sun,
Crude at the surface, rotten at the core,
Her fruits would fall before her Spring were o'er!
