degree to which this Americanism occupies the field is unlooked for, and the great value of the work is, in our judgment, due to its presence.

On examination, reasons will not be found lacking for this peculiarity. The scope of the collection was so comprehensive that it took in, besides literature in the restricted and proper sense, every part of the national life which is expressed by speech, and all notable men. who have figured in the history of the country and left any words of their own behind them. The consequence is that those considerable portions of our national life which found no outlet in liter ature, or only a feeble and intermittent expression, have not gone unrepresented, but stand in their place, under their his torical forms of oratory, sermon, or disquisition. The revolutionary and constitutional periods, the antislavery agitation, the argument of secession, and the events and emotions of the civil war, in all of which a large part of the moral force, the intense patriotism, the intellectual power of the nation was absorbed, contribute speeches and essays and words great because of the occasion that called them forth; and the leaders in these successive struggles, who stamped their words in history rather than in letters, lend fervor of feeling and weight of meaning to fill up the gaps and support the weaker utterances of literature in its poets and other more acknowledged members. The literature of our politics is thus necessarily American, both in its original papers by actors in the scene, and in its narration by later historians and biographers, of whom there has been a swarm. The editors, too, in selecting passages to illustrate the less known authors, seem often to have chosen consciously such as would have a special interest to the reader because of their bearing upon American history, or illustration of American life, habits, and thought. This was a principle of selection most fit in itself and happy in its

results; to it, in connection with the large mass of our politics, oratory, and history, is due the important value of the entire collection as a broad survey of that portion of our written or spoken thought which depended more or less closely upon the always vigorous public life and patriotic feeling of the nation.

The American quality, however, though conspicuously exhibited in these branches of the subject-matter, is not limited to them. In the novels and tales, and in the minor poetry also, there is to be seen a community of intellectual traits and of interest. One is struck especially by the general absence of affectation, by the straightforward and simple expression of what is to be said, by a predominant plainness of speech. It would not be unjust to designate this as a prevailing homeliness, in the sense in which that characteristic belongs to the people. There may be little refinement, an unexacting taste, perhaps little dignity of external style; but there are, on the other hand, genuine if modest feeling, much sympathy with the common life of men, a democratic sentiment, true if low-flying thought, and real if uninspired emotion. The substance is more than the form; the sense exceeds the style. Sincerity, humanity, and reality are pervading elements. These are not the only qualities which are requisite in literature, but it is a good sign to find them widely spread through the books of a nation, as noticeable in one department of mental activity as in another. In the better writers we should find the same traits with something superadded, and in general we do; but in the literary culture of these more famous authors there intrudes an element not native to our soil, an imitation of literary models, a striving after remembered graces of style, mocking-bird cadences, a tradition not yet acclimated and absorbed into our own national life. less relief, therefore, given to our literary men, in consequence of the relatively

The

small space they occupy, is a gain to the general effect, which is much simpler than would otherwise have been the case. The inclusion of anonymous and single poems, and particularly of the popular songs of the war, of negro melodies, and of noted sayings, also tends to make the collection more truly and explicitly a summary and expression of the general tone, habits of thought and feeling, and prevailing interests of the people's mental life.

The temptation is great to make reflections upon the worth of the national qualities thus revealed, the changes from period to period, and the reasons why our general literature has been what it is; but these, for the most part, are obvious enough, and would lead too far if followed too closely. The Library itself is superficially misleading in one respect, and the editors take pains to set the reader right in their preface. The earlier volumes show a preponderance of theology, and in the later theology is a constantly vanishing quantity. So, too, politics occupies a larger space in the middle periods. The common reason for this is the increase of literature proper in the growth of the nation, which has made necessary a certain disregard of the works of the more learned professions, and especially of the clergy. Another reason may be found in the fact that the authors of the later volumes are either in early manhood, or have run but half their course. They are naturally persons who have succeeded in the literature of poetry or story-telling, which belongs to their years; distinction in the learned professions or in public life is the fruit of a riper age. It would be pleasing if some other notable characteristics of the Library as a whole could be explained with as little injury to national pride. The strength of the nation seems to lie, so far as it has gone, in its political life, and the oratory, the political philosophy, and the history which are the gift of that life to literature. Literary produc

tion itself, in the narrow meaning of the fine art of expression, has been a secondary matter; and within these limits, even (not to speak of the epic, which has ever been regarded as the highest form of man's creative power), the drama and criticism have been the weakest in vigor. The former, indeed, may be disregarded, and the latter, though it showed some vitality a generation ago, seems to have died away. The close connection between the feebleness of criticism and the low degree of literary taste cannot escape notice; but the failure of the drama implies more serious defects in the national genius. The decline of oratory may also afford a text to the pessimistic observer, and the rise of the dialect tale and the poetry of the bagatelle, which are the only novel forms we discern at the end, may not console him.

Before drawing to an end, it is our duty to direct attention to the remarkably admirable execution of the work by its editors, the soundness of their judgment in selection, the extraordinary breadth and variety of their acquaintance with forgotten books, and the impartiality and justice of their choice of authors. The labor was arduous, and the multitude of details must have been harassing. It is a proof of thoroughness and painstaking that they find so little to correct at the end of their task. They have left nothing to be desired for the completeness of their work. The last volume contains an excellent index, and short but full biographies of every author represented in the volumes. The portraits are in general very good, and they are numerous. The text has been most carefully compiled. The work as a whole is, we believe, without a parallel among literary compilations. Its usefulness for purposes of reference is very great; but it is meant for entertaining and valuable reading page by page,- for popular reading, not merely for libraries and schools. It fulfills this

said they seemed to enjoy their corn bread and beans.

"Them two fellows was horse-thieves," said he, "and we're after them. Our camp is up there, and all they told you was a blind. They saw you did n't know who they were. If you had, they'd ha' got the drop on you, sure. They're mighty tough chaps, and there's a reward out of five hundred dollars for their capture." He went on to tell me that they had broken into a bank in Salt Lake City, and there had been a party after them for the last two weeks. The thieves had made their way across country by stealing fresh horses when their own became fagged. He left me to go back to camp.

An hour later three horsemen came in sight over the crest of a bluff, and rode up to the cabin for water. The one in the middle, who was unarmed, was the fellow in hairy shaps I saw yesterday; the other two were heavily armed. I was a little distance away, and before I could come up they were off. They kept dark, John said.

In the afternoon we heard all about it. A cowboy came over from the camp and told us. The party caught up with the fellows about twelve miles below here, this morning: one of them had a fresh horse, and got away; but they had the other, the one with hairy shaps, up at their camp. I'm glad they have him, for he was the worse looking of the two; he had a villainous look. I was struck with that before I knew what he was. They think they'll get the other, for there's a big crowd after him.

Wednesday, July 31. More excitement! About nine o'clock last night, just as we were going to turn in, and had spread the blankets on our pile of bark, we heard the noise of a horse crossing the rocky ford near by. We Emerson were on the jump at once.

and John went into the cabin, and stood in the dark with their guns cocked. I had my pistols. The chief stood up to

do the honors of the camp. The fellow came up coughing painfully. I made him out in the starlight. It was the other rascal, and I whispered this to the chief. Up he came, and asked if we had any pills or physic of any kind. He was dead sick; had been riding all day; could hardly keep on his horse. The chief knew he was shamming, and said we had no medicine; but he gave him the water keg, and the fellow must have drunk a quart. He kept straining at the door of the cabin.

He must have

seen that we knew who he was, for he turned to me pretty soon and asked if I had seen anything of the fellow who was with him yesterday, and asked the chief, with an attempt at carelessness, if there had been many riders about. We kept mum, and soon he rode off across the ford again. We fired three shots as a signal to the cowboys, and turned in.

This morning, early, a party of cowboys rode by with their prisoner, on their way up river. They stopped, and we photographed him, an ugly-looking customer. The rest of the cowboys went down the valley in pursuit of the other chap. They heard our shots last night, and thought at first we had winged him; but as we did n't ride over they knew he must have got away. They seem sure of him.

Thursday, August 1. All the rampage of the last three days is just a bit of fooling. The cowboys thought we were tenderfeet, and so they got up this little farce to amuse themselves and scare us. The pretended horse-thieves were two of their own number, and they have been racing up and down, and telling all these yarns, as a kind of private Wild West show.

ful owner. These were so happy in their way that they caused me to sigh that my young friend was not permitted to write for antiquity. To have laid before the elegant Kikero or the doughty Kæsar these terse, if post-classical, sentences from the memorabilia of Young America's wit and wisdom would have been indeed a compensation to them for the toil they must have endured in getting their redoubtable works ready for parsing.

Frigida dies est quum relinquimur.
Nullæ muscæ super nos.

While I was stealthily jotting down these pleasant trifles, the voice of their author reached me from the playground, where he was giving joyous direction to some exercise of the modern palæstra, "Ignis via! and his comrades accordingly "fired away."

a Critic.

A Critic on Taste and training will make a critic. For taste is nothing but a kind of ear for the echo of passion; a power of hearing faintly where passion has spoken plainly; a kind of sympathetic vibration born in the man, and capable of much improvement under careful cultivation. Take a man endowed with a certain sensibility of this sort, and give him leisure to wander over Europe and sojourn in Italy, and diligence to read all the polite lit erature of ancient and modern times; let him write books and essays till he acquires a fluent style, and you have John Addington Symonds. This class of man will naturally be more at home in literature than he is in any of the other arts, for it is the only art he practices. He will have tried his hand at sonnets, plays, lyrics, and translations, and will really know something about the art of literary composition. He will think, however, that he really knows something about the other arts, painting, sculpture, music, and architecture. He will vibrate sympathetically to these, and write charming books about them; and he will become so sensitive in his

feeling towards them in their differ ent forms and phases that the echo and paraphrase which he gives in his books will be worth reading, and, provided we read them armed with a knowledge that they are mere literary paraphrases, perhaps worth studying.

The essential fault in such a man is that he thinks he understands these kindred arts. He thinks they can be translated into literary form. He conceives of them as something meant to be written about and admired. His attitude towards them is one of patronage and exposition. He explains their beauties, and comments on their growth and development. He is a critic.

Now, a critic is not a man who is overcome with the mystery and power of his subject. He is a man who has a desire to say something about his subject. If it is passion at all that moves him, it is literary passion. If he breaks into a strain of admiration ending with an "O altitudo," and does it well, it is a good piece of writing, it is a fine literary frenzy; but it has no more to do with the statue or the picture that moves him to it than a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.

The literary men of all ages have cultivated themselves in the kindred fine arts, no man more so than Goethe. They have played with the echo that comes to them from painting and sculpture, and said fine things of it. They have been clever over it, and sentimental, and bombastic, and reflective, and ingenious. Goethe said of the Ludovisi Juno that it was like a canto of Homer; somebody else was it Madame de Staël?