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duced them to their present unenviable situation. In the whole South there is scarcely a publication of any kind devoted to their interests. They are now completely under the domination of the oligarchy, and it is madness to suppose that they will ever be able to rise to a position of true manhood, until after the slave power shall have been utterly overthrown.

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CHAPTER XI.

SOUTHERN LITERATURE.

Ir is with some degree of hesitation that we add a chapter on Southern Literature-not that the theme is inappropriate to this work; still less, that it is an unfruitful one; but our hesitation results from our conscious inability, in the limited time and space at our command, to do the subject justice, Few, except those whose experience has taught them, have any adequate idea of the amount of preparatory labor requisite to the production of a work into which the statistical element largely enters; espe cially is this so, when the statistics desired are not readily accessible through public and official documents. The author who honestly aims at entire accuracy in his statements, may find himself baffled for weeks in his pursuit of a single item of information, not of much importance in itself perhaps, when separately considered, but necessary in its connection with others, to the completion of a harmonious whole. Not unfrequently, during the preparation of the preceding pages, have we been subjected to this delay and annoyance.

The following brief references to the protracted prepar atory labors and inevitable delays to which authors are

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SOUTHERN LITERATURE.

subjected, may interest our readers, and induce them to regard with charity any deficiencies, either in detail or in general arrangement, which, owing to the necessary haste of preparation, these concluding pages of our work may exhibit:

G.smith was engaged nine years in the preparation of-The Traveler and five years in gathering and arrang ing the incidents of his "Deserted Village," and two years their vertication

Banen A. the American Historian, has been more than

y years engaged upon his History of the United States, from his projection of the work to the present date; and that Het ry is not yet completed.

Eith a less eminent historian, from the time he began alle materials for his History of the United States to the date of its completion, devoted no less than wenty-five years to the work.

Wedsen var great lexicographer, gave thirty-five years of his like in bringing his Unabridged Dictionary of the English Language to the degree of accuracy and complete. 28 Ft we now find it.

7 W. Kasen, after ten years' labor in the accuLAINE faterials for a Life of Alexander Hamilton, was compled to relinquish the work on account of impared katt

1- James Banks of Fayetteville, North Carolina, who motor delivered a lecture upon the Life and Character of The McDonald was eighteen years in the collection of Lis materials

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Oulibicheff, a distinguished Russian author, spent twentyfive years in writing the Life of Mozart.

Examples of this kind might be multiplied to an almost indefinite extent. Indeed, almost all the poets, prosewriters, painters, sculptors, composers, and other devotees. of Art, who have won undying fame for themselves, have done so through long years of earnest and almost unremitted toil.

We are quite conscious that the fullness and accuracy of statement which are desirable in this chapter cannot be attained in the brief time allowed us for its completion; but, though much will necessarily be omitted that ought to be said, we shall endeavor to make no statement of facts which are not well authenticated, and no inferences from the same which are not logically true. We can only promise to do the best in our power, with the materials at our command, to exhibit the inevitable influence of slavery upon Southern Literature, and to demonstrate that the accursed institution so cherished by the oligarchy, is no less prejudicial to our advancement in letters, than it is destructive of our material prosperity.

What is the actual condition of Literature at the South? Our question includes more than simple authorship in the various departments of letters, from the compilation of a primary reader to the production of a Scientific or Theological Treatise. We comprehend in it all the activities engaged in the creation, publication, and sale of books and periodicals, from the penny primer to the heavy folio, and from the dingy, coarse-typed weekly paper, to the large, well-filled daily.

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I were just at deny a degree of intellectual activity It has produced a few good authors-a few Convert thors, and a moderately large number of Leer machinists, paragraphists, essayists and critics. 40s the den i nast be conceded that the South has eng na may be called a literature; it is only when i mparison with the North, that we say, Ting expression, "The South has no

This was virtually admitted by more than one Jer lace Sethern Convention" at Savannah. Semina trasie on that occasion: "It is imShad here a literature of her own, stal grapes and her rights a sufficiently far she has not, pow, such a literature. 32 cmresimdcantly than the rounded periods Tins Let sick at facts, then. For antica so the periodical literature we ran these results: By the census of sanfte entire namber of periodicals, By wky, seimonthly, monthly and

Ished in the slave States, including the Dis

we see bandred and twenty-two. Liaise wery circulation of ninety-two myrmised and sixty-seven thousand one hundred 29. The number of periodicals, ass pubished in the non-slaveholding States is fraia was cne thousand eight hundred and ninety-three, with an aggregate yearly circulation of three hundred and thirty-three million three hundred and eightysix thousand and eighty-one. (333,386,081).

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