works have grown to the dignity and size of an octavo volume. We have many writers, who have read, and who have the sense to understand what others have written. But a right perception of the genius of others is not genius: it is a sort of business talent, and will not be wanting where there is much occasion for its exercise. Nobody will pretend, that the Americans are a stupid race; nobody will deny, that we justly boast of many able men, and exceedingly useful publications. But has our country produced one great original work of genius? If we tread the sides of Parnassus, we do not climb its heights: we even creep in our path, by the light that European genius has thrown upon it. Is there one luminary in our firmament that shines with unborrowed rays? Do we reflect, how many constellations blend their beams in the history of Greece, which will appear bright to the end of time, like the path of the zodiack, bespangled with stars.

IF, then, we judge of the genius of our nation by the success with which American authors have displayed it, our country has certainly hitherto no pretensions to literary fame. The world will naturally enough pronounce its opinion, that what we have not performed we are incapable of performing.

IT is not intended to proceed in stripping our country's honours off, till every lover of it shall turn with disgust from the contemplation of its nakedness. Our honours have not faded-they have not been worn. Genius, no doubt, exists in our country, but it exists, like the unbodied soul on the stream of Lethe, unconscious of its powers, till the causes to excite and the occasions to display it shall happen to

concur.

WHAT were those causes, that have for ever consecrated the name of Greece? We are sometimes answered, she owes her fame to the republican liberty of her states. But Homer, and Hesiod, to say nothing of Linus, Orpheus, Musæus, and many others, wrote while kings governed those states. Anacreon and Simonides flourished in the court of Pisistratus, who

had overthrown the democracy of Athens. Nor, we may add in corroboration, did Roman genius flourish, till the republick fell. France and England are monarchies, and they have excelled all modern nations by their works of genius. Hence we have a right to conclude, the form of government has not a decisive, and certainly not an exclusive influence on the literary eminence of a people.

IF climate produces genius, how happens it, that the great men who reflected such honour on their country appeared only in the period of a few hundred years before the death of Alexander? The melons and figs of Greece are still as fine as ever; but where are the Pindars?

In affairs that concern morals, we consider the approbation of a man's own conscience as more precious than all human rewards. But, in the province of the imagination, the applause of others is of all excitements the strongest. This excitement is the cause; excellence, the effect. When every thing concurs, and in Greece every thing did concur, to augment its power, a nation wakes at once from the sleep of ages. It would seem as if some Minerva, some present divinity, inhabited her own temple in Athens, and by flashing light and working miracles had conferred on a single people, and almost on a single age of that people, powers that are denied to other men and other times. The admiration of posterity is excited and overstrained by an effulgence of glory, as much beyond our comprehension as our emulation. The Greeks seem to us a race of giants, Titans, the rivals, yet the favourites of their gods. We think their apprehension was quicker, their native taste more refined, their prose poetry, their poetry musick, their musick enchantment. We imagine they had more expression in their faces, more grace in their movements, more sweetness in the tones of conversation than the moderns. Their fabulous deities are supposed to have left their heaven to breathe the fragrance of their groves, and to enjoy the beauty of their landscapes. The monuments of heroes must have excited to heroism; and the fountains,

which the muses had chosen for their purity, imparted inspiration.

Ir is, indeed, almost impossible to contemplate the bright ages of Greece, without indulging the propensity to enthusiasm.

We are ready to suspect the delusion of our feelings, and to ascribe its fame to accident, or to causes which have spent their force. Genius, we imagine, is for ever condemned to inaction by having exhausted its power, as well as the subjects upon which it has displayed itself. Another Homer or Virgil could only copy the Iliad and Eneid; and can the second poets, from cinders and ashes, light such a fire as still glows in the writings of the first. Genius, it will be said, like a conflagration on the mountains, consumes its fuel in its flame. Not so- -It is a spark of elemental fire that is unquenchable, the contemporary of this creation, and destined with the human soul to survive it. As well might the stars of heaven be said to expend their substance by their lustre. It is to the intellectual world what the electrick fluid is to nature, diffused every where, yet almost every where hidden, capable by its own mysterious laws of action and by the very breath of applause, that like the unseen wind excites it, of producing effects that appear to transcend all power, except that of some supernatural agent riding in the whirlwind. In an hour of calm we suddenly hear its voice, and are moved with the general agitation. It smites, astonishes, and confounds, and seems to kindle half the firmament.

It may be true, that some departments in literature are so filled by the ancients, that there is no room for modern excellence to occupy. Homer wrote soon after the heroick ages, and the fertility of the soil seemed in some measure to arise from its freshness: it had never borne a crop. Another Iliad would not be undertaken by a true genius, nor equally interest this age, if he executed it. But it will not be correct to say, the field is reduced to barrenness from having been over-cropped. Men have still imagination and passions, and

they can be excited. The same causes that made Greece famous, would, if they existed here, quicken the clods of our vallies, and make our Boeotia sprout and blossom like their Attica.

In analyzing genius and considering how it acts, it will be proper to inquire, how it is acted upon. It feels the power it exerts, and its emotions are contagious, because they are fervid and sincere. A single man may sit alone and meditate, till he fancies he is under no influence but that of reason. Even in this opinion, however, he will allow too little for prejudice and imagination; and still more must be allowed when he goes abroad and acts in the world. But masses and societies of men are governed by their passions.

THE passion that acts the strongest, when it acts at all, is fear; for, in its excess, it silences all reasoning and all other passions. But that which acts with the greatest force, because it acts with the greatest constancy, is the desire of consideration. There are very few men who are greatly deceived with respect to their own measure of sense and abilities, or who are much dissatisfied on that account; but we scarcely see any who are quite at case about the estimate that other people make of them. Hence it is, that the great business of mankind is to fortify or create claims to general regard. Wealth procures respect, and more wealth would procure more respect. The man who, like Midas, turns all he touches into gold, who is oppressed and almost buried in its superfluity, who lives to get, instead of getting to live, and at length belongs to his own estate and is its greatest incumbrance, still toils and contrives to accumulate wealth, not because he is deceived in regard to his wants, but because he knows and feels, that one of his wants, which is insatiable, is that respect which follows its possession. After engrossing all that the seas and mountains conceal, he would be still unsatisfied, and with some good reason, for of the treasures of esteem who can ever have enough? Who would mar or renounce one half his reputation in the world?

Ar different times, the opinions of men in the same country will vary with regard to the objects of prime consideration, and in different countries there will ever be a great difference; but that which is the first object of regard will be the chief object of pursuit. Men will be most excited to excel in that department which offers to excellence the highest reward in the respect and admiration of mankind. It was this strongest of all excitements that stimulated the literary ages of Greece.

In the heroick times, it is evident, violence and injustice prevailed. The state of society was far from tranquil or safe. Indeed, the traditional fame of the heroes and demigods is founded on the gratitude that was due for their protection against tyrants and robbers. Thucydides tells us, that companies of travellers were often asked, whether they were thieves. Greece was divided into a great number of states, all turbulent, all martial, always filled with emulation, and often with tumult and blood. The laws of war were far more rigorous than they are at present. Each state, and each citizen in the state, contended for all that is dear to man. If victors, they despoiled their enemies of every thing; the property was booty, and the people were made slaves. Such was the condition of the Helots and Messenians under the yoke of Sparta. There was every thing, then, both of terrour and ignominy to rouse the contending states to make every effort to avoid subjugation.

THE fate of Platæa, a city that was besieged and taken by the Spartans, and whose citizens were massacred in cold blood, affords a terrible illustration of this remark. The celebrated siege of Troy is an instance more generally known, and no less to the purpose. With what ardent love and enthusiasm the Trojans viewed their Hector, and the Greeks their Ajax and Achilles, is scarcely to be conceived. It cannot be doubted, that to excel in arms was the first of all claims to the popular admiration.