&c., are like seasickness, which never will obtain any
sympathy, if there is a woodpile in the yard, or an unweeded patch in
the garden; not to mention the graver absurdity of a youth of noble
aims, who can find no field for his energies, whilst the colossal
wrongs of the Indian, of the Negro, of the emigrant, remain
unmitigated, and the religious, civil, and judicial forms of the
country are confessedly effete and offensive. We must refer our
clients back to themselves, believing that every man knows in his
heart the cure for the disease he so ostentatiously bewails.
As far as our correspondents have entangled their private
griefs with the cause of American Literature, we counsel them to
disengage themselves as fast as possible. In Cambridge orations, and
elsewhere, there is much inquiry for that great absentee American
Literature. What can have become of it? The least said is best. A
literature is no man's private concern, but a secular and generic
result, and is the affair of a power which works by a prodigality of
life and force very dismaying to behold, -- the race never dying, the
individual never spared, and every trait of beauty purchased by
hecatombs of private tragedy.
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