selves. There is such a thing as this allegiance, and the thoughts of great authors may be worn by later ones as modern piety wears and hallows the relics of ancient reli gion. For our own part, we like to trace this communication between the writers of distant times. It is proof of common sympathies; the zeal which reverences may not be very far from the original spirit which creates. But it is quite another matter when the jackdaw struts about in borrowed plumes; when "memory and her syren daughters are invoked in quite another than the Miltonic sense; when affectation and pretence take the place of reverence; and imbecility challenges the seat of power. The evil unrebuked increases with alarming rapidity. When our critics talk of our poets by hundreds, they make it a matter of fashion to set up for a poet, and the regiment of the Muses is speedily filled by a crowd of fops and pretenders without strength or valor. We see delicate and tasteful artists and adapters rather than original authors, and the plaudits of the one transferred to the other; the phenomenon of the disciple above his master; a democratic highway to Parnassus travelled by witlings; Sancho Panza receiving in earnest the honors of governorship.

The want of passion is a defect so prominent, that we must try to account for it still further. Not to repeat the standard criticism, that the bulk of American writing hitherto has been done in New England, and thence received its cold impress from the local character; it is also to be observed, that the majority of our writers, serious and gay, alike, have come out from the profession of the law, a school, undoubtedly, of ingenuity, perspicuity and intellectual force, but not equally a nursery for the imagi nation, or fancy, or sentiment. The temple of Themis is

not built upon Parnassus' Hill, and although we are honestly told by one of the old masters, that there are poets which did never dream upon Parnassus, yet few poets, we suspect, have ever lived who have not seen it at least in visions of the night. The law has given us our great practical statesmen, and fervid orators, and acute critics, and logical heads, and wise moral teachers, and sharp satirists of vice and folly; but it has no fair pictures, or noble forms, or aerial harmonies. It is not the true calling of the poet, though many true poets have been lawyers.

Circumstances have had their effect; the necessity of leaving literary pursuits for more profitable labors,-the love of gain or reputation in some other line, overlaying the natural—weak, since so easily benumbed-impulses of the mind. Characters have changed; the ardent youth has become a cautious man; trade has taken the place of poetry, and a love of art has been supplanted by a total indifference to all early impressions.

How stands the point of productiveness? To confess the truth, the few good, and the very few admirable writers we have, have done comparatively little, from one or all of the causes above enumerated, and have done that at a very early age. This reminds us of as frequent a trait to be met with as any of the rest; the early maturity of our writers, which has as often been followed by as early a decay of power. The vein was shallow and soon worked. Certain sentiments or fancies had early possessed the mind and heart, and demanded immediate utterance. These were produced, and with freshness, vivacity, and genuine force. Afterwards, the author, if modest and a self-student, a man of culture, feels he cannot do better, or, perchance, equal his first effort. He retires from the arena,

and becomes a miniature classic. This is the truth with our best men, but a vast herd continue writing worse and worse, until at last the severest punishment for them would be to read their own works, under which they have buried the little spirit or the small faculty with which they set out. From these hasty remarks one may readily infer the following conclusions: that our writers have been in general men of talent, and rarely men of genius; relying too much upon artificial aids, and by far too little on the everfresh resources of nature. That their greatest intellectual defect, too often with the best, has been want of independence; and the leading moral defect occasionally with others, a want of honesty.

CRITICISM Should flourish in this country, if no other form of prose writing meet with favor, for Americans are confessedly an acute and shrewd race. These faculties applied to the judgment of books and authors, by educated men, ought to be made the most of in the absence of original pow. er and creative genius. Goldsmith has remarked in one of his Essays, that criticism is more highly cultivated in the decline of the higher productions of art and genius; which opinion, with those who consider American to form a supplement of English Literature, itself in their view effete, and in its very weakest phase, should be allowed as an argument in favor of our position. In the judgment of some of the ablest writers, American critics stand in the most favorable attitude for judging English authors, as perfectly free from bias of any kind, not blinded by patriotism or party, beyond the reach of rivalry, and uninfluenced by malevolence or friendship. Many portions of English Literature are to be recriticised, and that from a new point of view, such as is afforded only to American writers. Es pecially the contemporary literature of England can be best estimated here, where distance and difference of govern ment place the American critic in the position which would

naturally be filled by an English writer of the succeeding generation. In this surely we are the posterity of the present race of English authors, and consequently, can judge more dispassionately and clearly than might be expected of contemporaries.

But we do not intend to go further into this question at present. Our object now is, to point out the prevailing. character of our home critics: to depict the general defects of our criticism, rather than to paint the portraits of the few fine critics we have; to show what ought to be avoided more than what we should seek to attain: this is our present endeavor.

What is the character of our criticism? Is it reliable, is it sincere or thoroughly just? We may safely and truly answer, no! It is not reliable because it is not sincere it is unjust because deficient in thoroughness. Morally and intellectually it is unsound. Much of it is paltry and shallow, more is spurious and mercenary. From personal or party reasons, on some private ground of pique or partiality, from prejudice or from prepossession, almost all of our written criticism is either directly hostile or friendly towards and on account of the writer, not his book. It is the man, not the author or his book that conciliates or repels, makes friends or enemies, and keeps them through a literary career. This is manifestly wrong. Criticism absolutely just, we hardly have at all.

Puffing and abuse form the two extremes of criticism; the two strings upon which its professors love to play, and incited to either much more from impulse than any settled design; and so well is this understood, that most newspaper notices have just the influence and tendency of the advertisements for quack medicines, to deceive nobody but