Various - The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 02, No. 12, October, 1858

The Literature of the New World is also worthy of the New Man. We are quite aware that a large portion of this literature is trash. So was a large part in Shakspeare's, in Cervantes's, in Plato's age and place. But we admit even that the comparison does not hold,—that an especial accusation may be brought against the issues of the press in this country. Wise men should have anticipated this, and, instead of reasoning from the size of our lakes, prairies, and mountains, and demanding epics and philosophies of us before we are fairly out of our primitive woods, the critics should have hastened to say,—A colony must have time to strike root, and to draw up therefrom a new life, before it can arrive at valuable and genuine literary expression. The Life must come before the Thought. Nothing could be more absurd than the expectation that American literature should spring away into the air from the top of European performance. Our first literature was colonial,—that is, imitative, written for the approbation of European critics,—of course, having somewhat the empty correctness of good school-boy composition. Next followed what we may call fire-weed literature,—the first rank, raw product of new lands. Under these two heads a vast number of books must of course be reckoned. But beyond these American literature has already passed, and now can point to books that spring out of the pure genius of the New Man. And having only these in mind, we hesitate not to say that there is now sounding upon these shores a deeper, subtler, and more universal note than is heard in any other land touched by the Atlantic Sea. We have now writings in several departments of literature, and in both prose and verse, which are characterized by a breadth and largeness of suggestion, by a spirituality and a prophetic adherence to the moral sentiment, which justify all that has here been affirmed or reasoned. And our deepest thought finds a popular reception which proves it not foreign or exceptional. Wilkinson's "Human Body," the largest piece of speculative construction which England has produced in two centuries, has not yet, after some eight years, we believe, exhausted its first edition. Emerson's Poems, still less adapted, one would say, than the work just mentioned, to the taste of populaces, had reached its fourth edition in about the same period. Learned works have, of course, a superior reception in the mother-country; works of pure thought in the daughter. Said to us, during the past season, the subtilest thinker of Great Britain,—"I must send to America whatever I wish to put in print, unless I pay for its publication from my own pocket."

And beyond this, there is a hush in the nation's heart, an expectancy, a waiting and longing for some unspoken word, which sometimes seems awful in the bounty of its promise. I know men educated to speak, with the burden of a speaker's vocation on their hearts, but now these many years remaining heroically silent; the fountains of a fresh consciousness sweet within them, but not yet flowing into speech, and they too earnest, too expectant, too sure of the future to say aught beneath the strain. "Why do you not speak?" was inquired of one. "Because I can keep silent," he said, "and the word I am to utter will command me." No man assumes that attitude until he is already a party to the deepest truth, is the silent side of a seer; and in a nation where any numbers are passing this more than Pythagorean lustrum, a speech is surely coming that will no more need to apologize for itself than the speech of the forest or the ocean-shore. The region of the trade-winds is skirted with calm. Sydney Smith said of Macaulay, that his talk, to render it charming, "needed only a few brilliant flashes of silence." We are talkative, but the flashes of silence are not wanting, and there is prophecy in them as well as charm. Said one, of a speaker,—"He was so rarely eloquent, that what he did not say was even better than what he did." And here, not only are some wholly silent, but in our best writings the impressive not-saying lends its higher suggestion than that expressly put forth. What spaces between Emerson's sentences! Each seems to float like a solitary summer-cloud in a whole sky of silence.

Yes, the fact is already indubitable, a rich life, sure in due time of its rich expression, is forming here. As out of the deeps of Destiny, the Man for the Continent, head-craftsman, hand-craftsman, already puts his foot to this shore. All hail, new-comer! Welcome to great tasks, great toils, to mighty disciplines, to victories that shall not be too cheaply purchased, to defeats that shall be better than victories! We give thee joy of new powers, new work, unprecedented futures! We give the world joy of a new and mighty artist to plan, a new strong artisan to quarry and to build in the great architectures of humanity!

Foray, a mass of crags embellished by some greenness, looked up to heaven a hundred miles from shore. It was a fortified position, and a place of banishment. In the course of a long war, waged on sea and land between two great nations, this, "least of all," became a point of some importance to the authority investing it; the fort was well supplied with the machinery of death, and the prison filled with prisoners. But peace had now been of long continuance; and though a nation's banner floated from the tower of the fort, and was seen afar by mariners,—though the cannon occupied their ancient places, ordered for instant use,—though all within the fort was managed and conducted day by day with careful regard to orders,—the operations indicated, in the spirit of their conduct, no fear of warlike surprises. No man gave or obeyed an order as if his life depended on his expedition. Neither was the prison the very place it had been; for, once, every cell had its occupant,—an exile, or a prisoner of war.

The officials of the island led an easy life, therefore. Active was the brain that resisted the influences of so much leisure as most of these people had. But, under provocation even, Nature must be true. So true is she, indeed, that every violation of her dignities illustrates the meaning of that sovereign utterance, VENGEANCE IS MINE. She will not bring a thorn-tree from an acorn. Pray, day and night, and see if she will let you gather figs of thistles. Prayer has its conditions, and faith is not the sum of them.