or, perhaps, even the plague; amounting every where, it would seem, to fully one half. Nor is it owing to such protection as inoculation affords-for that practice has been obsolete among us for the last quarter of a century. But it is clearly attributable, and we do not hesitate to ascribe it to the kindly influence of the Vaccine-the most valuable among the generous benefits conferred upon their fellow men, by the cultivators of the divine art of healing.

We will conclude this essay with the following inferences :Vaccination is entitled-richly entitled-to the approbation and confidence of every civilized community. It should be fostered with unremitted zeal, and disseminated widely throughout the world by private, professional and public care and liberality.. Its universal reception should be enforced and aided by such legislative provisions as may be necessary. Appropriations of money should be set apart for this purpose, and if the physicians in any districts of our country, are negligent or lukewarm in the matter-a rare reproach, by the way, against the least selfish and most beneficent of professions-why should not Vaccine missionaries be sent thither?

Inoculation with Small-pox matter should be promptly abandoned by medical men, and every where denounced in the most unqualified manner. It is injurious to the community as keeping in existence, and spreading abroad on the four winds of heaven, the most destructive and all-pervading of the varied forms of pestilence. It offers, at the same time, less advantage to the individual on whom it exerts its best influences than Vaccine, which is entirely free from every objection.

Inoculation, we have said, should be prohibited by law. Municipal bodies and State legislatures should unite in endeavoring to put an end to the practice, under the severest penalties. In no civilized neighborhood is a man allowed to set fire to his own barn or dwelling house, if by so doing he shall, in any degree, endanger the common safety.

ART. VII.-1. Lectures on American Literature, with remarks on some passages of American History. By SAMUEL L. KNAPP. 8vo. New-York. 1829.

2. Specimens of American Poetry, with Critical and Biographical Notes. By SAMUEL KETTELL. 3 vols. Boston. 1829.

It seems to us very questionable whether Liberty, Knowledge or Taste, is like to gain, by the haste with which a part of us, in this country, seem determined to renounce whatever of noble examples of genius or of patriotism we might gather from the letters or the history of our father-land. In times of national injury, it was unavoidable that we should endeavour, in the eagerness of a momentary hostility, to school ourselves, as far as we might, into an enmity of every thing English. But these temporary resentments vanished, at once, with the necessity that had created them; nor can any thing be worse, as to either sense, or taste, or proper feelings, than to strive, as do many scholars and statesmen, of high national reputation, to erect the altars of knowledge and love of country—of all that can most ennoble and embellish life-out of the wretched and obscure remains of a long abandoned hostility.

The words with which these wise and generous notions are attempted to be reinforced-Independence,'- Free government,' American glory,' and the like-are pregnant, it is true, with much that might entrance the silly, and delude the ignorant: but knowledge, taste, and a more enlightened love of freedom, dissipate, every day, some of these unworthy prejudices; and we are learning, as fast as nations ever do learn, not only that we ourselves are not the first founders of every thing like rational government, but that our own achievments, in that way, were actually preceded by many an older exploit of our British ancestors. We begin to see, too, that, though to contrive a free and just system of government-to found a good constitution-be a matter demanding great wisdom and virtue, it is but the first step towards liberty: that to preserve such a system is as difficult as to invent it; and that it is utterly vain to hope that any excellence of original institutions, can ever maintain a freedom, that shall have no need of perpetual struggles to support it.

No one, we imagine, will be found hardy enough to contend that the sentiments of love of liberty and love of country, are not rendered much more exalted, by the recollections of a na

tional history, abounding in noble contests or sacrifices for freedom and law. To multiply, for the existing generation, such eras through all the past-to enable them to look back through a long series of events, of names, and of monuments, that have marked a national spirit, always full of high and steady devotion to free principles, is unquestionably to impart to institutions founded on liberty, one of their highest motives and surest causes of preservation. Yet those who claim, in this country, to be the exclusive promoters of every thing that nourishes a national spirit, are fain to persuade us to limit our historic attachment to the narrow period of our separate existence as a government. They say that we have no need to enlighten or to exalt our enthusiasm for whatever is admirable in our own constitution, by tracing the assertion and establishment of its great principles back to the venerable original, from which they came -they urge us to forget that we spring from a race, the hardiest and most untameable, yet the most loving of the laws that history can shew, who have as steadily maintained their liberties, from the distant days of John Lackland, as we have yet done during fifty years. They would have us, in a word, cease to look upon Alfred, Wallace, Bruce, Bacon, Hume, and Gibbon, as our countrymen--they would teach us, when something is to be done for freedom or for honour, no more to warm ourselves with the names of the Sydneys, of Raleigh, Hampden, Russell, and Chatham-they would disenchant us of Spenser, Shakspeare, Milton, and Pope; and instruct us to reserve our juster enthusiasm for the peerless wonders, past, present, and to come, of American chivalry, patriotism, and poesy.

To urge us thus to renounce an intellectual inheritance, as rich and fair as it has ever been the fortune of any modern nation to possess, seems to us the most singularly bold effort to advance the kingdom of Dullness that the world has ever yet beheld, and we feel ourselves called upon, in a matter involving so high a literary right, to vindicate our non-participation in this, as in various other Americanisms, of which we, in the South, desire as little to share the honour, as we do the profit.

We do therefore, in the name of the good people of the planting States, utterly disclaim the having even the humble part, which is assigned us, in a separate school of writers, dignified with the title of American.' It is certainly well, that the very ingenious devisers of all these schemes, should turn to its utmost account a national vanity, that has, it must be confessed, in the rapidity of its growth, even outVOL. VII.NO. 14.

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stripped the other wonders of our Herculean precocity. Let them, by all means, give the converts of their system,' intellectual wares just equal to the rest of their handiwork. They will, at least, be abundantly good for their own homeconsumption. But let them not think to impose them, under whatsoever high-sounding names, upon any land lying beyond their own Cimmerian confines-upon any realm which the black wings of their system do not utterly overshadow.

The general feeling of aversion to authorship, in the South, may be said to prevail, for the greater part, precisely in proportion to good education and cultivated taste. Not that we are less passionately impelled than others, to whatever of honourable distinction the pursuit of letters might yield. Indeed as the more vehement and passionate temperament, which our climate engenders, is singularly favourable to popular eloquence, so the more aristocratic forms in which society exists amongst us are certainly more propitious to refinement of taste and to the polite studies, than any thing which is to be found elsewhere on our continent. Yet, we cannot avoid recognizing the great disadvantages of our situation, with respect to these things, in comparison with the people of those older countries, where art has so long fixed her residence. And since our peculiar institutions offer us, in politics and eloquence, the noble scope for distinction and usefulness, which literature alone affords in other countries, the scholars of the South certainly do well to dedicate themselves to the active powers, rather than to those meditative faculties, which an imperfect education does not yet allow them to cultivate with equal advantage.

We have thus indicated the general judgment, among the educated classes, upon which this apparent disregard of literary pursuits is founded. We cannot dismiss the subject, however, without attempting a more distinct developement of the causes which refuse, and shall long continue to refuse us a separate and national literature.

The first of these unquestionably is, that we have no need of a separate literature. Whatever be the wonders that Cotton Mather and his heroical successors have effected, we not only think that the English literature is good enough for us at present, but that it may actually continue good enough for perhaps a century to come. We have certainly produced bards and philosophers many a one-but neither Miltons, Shakspeares, nor Bacons as yet.

A second cause, perhaps not altogether unworthy to be taken into the account, is, that even if we did need a separate liter

ature, we have nothing wherewithal to make it. It would certainly be demanding infinitely too much, to claim that these alchemical politicians should feel the force of an argument so humble. Yet, to our seeming, the grand resource which they delight to employ-their new creative principle, Exclusion, is even more sovereign in intellectual than in physical matters, to impoverish a nation. Monopolies may, at some cost or other, be made to give us silks and broadcloths; but at what price can they furnish poets and philosophers?

In truth, these people seem to persuade themselves-nay, to expect to persuade others-that there is some strange virtue in the mere forms of a popular government, that must, of necessity, at once exalt the happy nation that receives themthough sunk, till then, in the saddest and most uncouth ignorance-into very Romans, as to public virtue-into very Athenians for elegance.

If mere freedom be the "raison suffisante" of an accomplished literature, how happens it that Athens, neither the freest nor the quietest of the Grecian republics, rose to an excellence so much ampler than all the others, that the fame of Grecian arts may be said to be almost hers alone? Were not the ancient Scythians and Germans-were not the modern Tartars and North-American Indians, as free as possible? Among the Italian States of the middle ages, were none free except Florence? And have the long-maintained liberties of Switzerland, placed, as she is, in the midst of the most cultivated States, led her to any thing like literary glory? On the other hand, were the times of the Ptolemies, of Augustus, of Haroun al Raschid, of the Moorish glory in Spain, of the Troubadours, of the Trouveres, of the Minnesingers, of the Crusaders, times of flourishing freedom? Or was France more free under Louis XIV, Spain under Charles V, England under Elizabeth, than at periods less remarkable for literary invention? We think not: nay, more-we believe that the historical proofs are very far from shewing that letters flourish rather in republics than in monarchies. Freedom and letters, in a word, are themselves, originally, effects, not causes. Once produced by those things which excite them, they become causes, in their turn; and give birth, when joined to other favouring circumstances, to a more humane freedom and a nobler literature.

Liberty-that is to say, freedom founded on law-will generally be found to have sprung from military glory; and the enthusiasm of national success is the equally sure source of letters. If such successes be not those of a people so utterly barbarous and enslaved that its chief alone derives from them