ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES. THE CIRCUMSTANCES FAVORABLE TO THE PROGRESS OF LITERATURE IN AMERICA.* MR PRESIDENT AND GEntlemen: IN discharging the honorable trust which you have assigned to me on this occasion, I am anxious that the hour which we pass together should be exclusively occupied with those reflections which belong to us as scholars. Our association in this fraternity is academical; we entered it before our Alma Mater dismissed us from her venerable roof; and we have now come together, in the holidays, from every variety of pursuit, and every part of the country, to meet on common ground, as the brethren of one literary household. The duties and cares of life, like the Grecian states, in time of war, have proclaimed to us a short armistice, that we may come up, in peace, to our Olympia. On this occasion, it has seemed proper to me that we should turn our thoughts, not merely to some topic of literary interest, but to one which concerns us as American scholars. I have accordingly selected, as the subject of our inquiry, the circumstances favorable to the progress of literature in the United States of America. In the discussion of this subject, that curiosity, which every scholar naturally feels, in tracing and comparing the character of the higher civilization of different countries, is at once dignified and rendered * An oration, pronounced at Cambridge, before the Society of Phi Beta Kappa, 26th August, 1824. practical by the connection of the inquiry with the condition and prospects of his native land. I am aware that such inquiries are apt to degenerate into fanciful speculations and doubtful refinements. Why Asia has, almost without exception, been the abode of some form of despotism, and Europe more propitious to liberty; — why the civilization of the Egyptians was of a character so mel ancholy and perishable; that of the Greeks so elegant, versa tile, and life-giving; that of the Romans so stern and tardy, till they became the imitators of a people whom they conquered and despised, but never equalled; why tribes of barbarians, from the north and east, not known to differ, essentially, from each other, at the time of their settlement in Europe, should have laid the foundation of national characters so dissimilar as those of the Spaniards, French, Germans, and English; —are questions to which such answers, only, can be given, as will be just and safe, in proportion as they are general and comprehensive. It is difficult, even in the case of the individual man, to point out precisely the causes, under the operation of which, members of the same community, and even of the same family, grow up, with characters the most diverse. It must, of course, be much more difficult to perform the same analysis on a subject so vast as a nation, composed of communities and individuals, greatly differing from each other; all subjected to innumerable external influences; and working out the final result, often in the lapse of ages, not less by mutual counteraction, than coöperation. But as, in the formation of individual character, there are causes of undisputed and powerful operation, so, in national character, there are causes, equally certain, of growth and excellence on the one hand, and of degeneracy and ruin on the other. It belongs to the philosophy of history to investigate these causes; and, if possible, to point out the circumstances, which, as furnishing the motives, and giving the direction, to intellectual effort in different nations, have had a chief agency in making them what they were, or are. Where it is done judiciously, it is in the highest degree curious thus to trace physical or political facts into moral and intellectual conse quences, and great historical results; and to show how climate, geographical position, local relations, institutions, single events, and the influence of individuals, have fixed the characters and decided the destiny of nations. In pursuing such inquiries, we may, for instance, be led to the conclusion, that it is the tendency of a tropical climate to enervate a people, and thus fit them to become the subjects of a despotism, though it may render them also, through the medium of a fervid temperament, formidable instruments of desolating but transitory conquest, under the lead of able and daring chiefs. We may find that a broad river, or a lofty chain of mountains, by stopping the inroads of war, or of immigration, becomes the boundary, not merely of governments, but of languages and literature, of institutions and character. We may sometimes think we can trace extraordinary skill in the liberal arts to the existence of quarries of fine marble. We may see popular eloquence springing out of popular institutions, and, in its turn, greatly instrumental in affecting the fortunes of free states. We may behold the spirit of an individual lawgiver or reformer perpetuated by codes and institutions, for ages. We may trace a peculiar law of progress in colonial settlements, insular states, tribes fortified within Alpine battlements, or scattered over a smiling region of olive gardens and vineyards,—and deduce the political and historical effects of these physical causes. These topics of rational curiosity and liberal speculation, as I have already intimated, acquire practical importance, when the land in which we ourselves live is the subject of investigation. When we turn the inquiry to our own country; when we survey its natural features, search its history, and examine its institutions, to see what are the circumstances which are to excite and guide the popular mind; it then becomes an inquiry of the highest interest, and worthy the attention of every patriotic scholar. We then dwell, not on a distant, uncertain, perhaps fabulous, past, but on an impending future, teeming with individual and public fortune; a future, toward which we are daily and rapidly swept forward, and with which we stand in the dearest connection that can bind the generations of men together; a future, which our own characters, actions, and principles, may influence, for good or evil, for lasting glory or shame. We then strive, as far as our poor philosophy can do it, to read the country's reverend auspices; to cast its great horoscope in the national sky, where some stars are waning, and some have set. We endeavor to ascertain whether the soil, which we love as that where our fathers are laid, and we shall presently be laid with them, is likely to be trod, in times to come, by an enlightened, virtuous, and free people. zen. 1. The first circumstance, of which I shall speak, as influencing the progress of letters by furnishing the motives to intellectual effort among us, is the new form of political society established in the United States; viz., a confederacy of republics, in which, however, within the limits of the Constitution, the central government acts upon the individual citiIt is not my purpose to detain you with so trite a topic as the praises of free political institutions; but to ask your attention to the natural operation of a system like ours on the literary character of a people. I call this a new form of political society. The ancient Grecian republics, indeed, were free enough, within the walls of the single cities, of which many of them were wholly or chiefly composed; while, toward the confederate or tributary states, their governments generally assumed the form of a despotism, more capricious, and not less arbitrary, than that of a single tyrant. Rome was never the abode of well-regulated republican liberty. The remark just made of the Grecian republics, in reference to allied states, applies to the Roman, for the greater portion of its history; while, within the walls of the city, the commonwealth fluctuated between the evils of an oppressive aristocracy and a factious populace. Since the downfall of Rome, the rudiments of a representative legislature are to be found in the estates of some of the governments of continental Europe, and far more distinctly and effectually developed in the British Parliament; but a uniform and complete representative system, organized by a written constitution of government, and unaccompanied by a powerful hereditary element, is original in this country. Here, for the first time, the whole direction and influence of affairs, and all the great organic functions of the body politic, are subjected, directly or indirectly, the executive and legislative functions directly, to free popular choice. Whatsoever quickening influence resides in public honors and trusts, and in the cheerful consciousness of individual participation in the most momentous political rights, is here, for the first time, exerted, directly, on the largest mass of men, with the smallest possible deductions ; and as a despotism, like that of Turkey or Persia, is, by all admission, the form of government least favorable to the intellectual progress of a people, it would seem equally certain, that the farther you recede from such a despotism, in the establishment of a system of popular and constitutional liberty, the greater the assurance that the universal mind of the country will be powerfully and genially excited. I am aware that it is a common notion, that, under an elective government, of very limited powers, like that of the United States, we lose that powerful spring of action which exists in the patronage of strong hereditary governments, and must proceed from the crown. I believe it is a prevalent opinion, abroad, among those who entertain the most friendly sentiments toward the American system, that we must consent to dispense with something of the favorable influence of princely and royal patronage on letters and the arts, and find our consolation in the political benefits of a republican government. It may be doubted, however, whether this view be not entirely fallacious. For, in the first place, it is by no means true that a popular government will be destitute either of the means or the disposition to exercise a liberal patronage. No government, as a government, ever did more for the fine arts than that of Athens. In the next place, it is to be considered, in this connection, that the evils of centralization are as evident, in reference to the encouragement of the general mind of the people, as they are in regard to a contented acquiescence in political administration. Whatever is gained, for those who enjoy it, by concentrating a powerful patronage. in the capital, and in the central administration, is lost in the |