copies from memory rather than as expressions of life, thought, and experience. Numerous productions in verse would have to be neglected, as having no distinctive features. In prose-fiction, the writings of Washington Irving and several other authors would supply few traits of real life and character in the United States. Cooper's fictions, indeed, and a few sketches already noticed under the title of 'Backwoods' Literature,' would afford interesting views of manners in rising settlements; and such stories of domestic life as have been written by Miss Sedgwick, Mrs Kirkland, and other ladies, would certainly be worthy of consideration. But, on the whole, it may be asserted, that to find American traits of character, we must read newspapers and public speeches rather than poems, novels, and essays.

Enough has been said, however, to indicate the difficulty of treating American Literature as a development of national character. It is, indeed, a continuation of our own. Well-educated men in the United States still remain Englishmen in their choice of books. They speak 'the tongue that Milton spoke.' Shakspeare, Milton, Pope, Addison, Goldsmith, Burns, and Scott, with all our other household names, are classical in the United States as in Great Britain.

To conclude the American branch of English Literature has already produced fruit worthy of the parent stem. Its future development, we may hope, will be favourable to the friendly intercourse of two nations separated by an ocean and by differences of political institutions, but united by the sure bond of one language-both enjoying, as their inheritance, the richest literature of modern times.