There is still another issue on which comparison must be made. The question of nationality will for some time to come be an interesting one in any discussion of American authors. The American character is so relative, that it is only by a long series of contrasts, a careful study of the registering-plate of literature, that we shall come to the point of defining it. American quality in literature is not like Greek, German, French, English quality: those are each unified, and their component elements stoutly enough welded together to make what may be called a positive impression; but _our_ distinctions are relative. The nearest and most important means that we have for measuring them is that of comparison with England; and anything strikingly original in American genius is found to be permanent in proportion as it maintains a certain relation to English literature, not quite easy to define. It is not one of hostility, for the best American minds thus far have had the sincerest kindliness toward the mother country; it involves, however, the claiming of separate standards of judgment. The primary division, both in the case of the New England Pilgrims and in that of our Revolutionary patriots, was based on clearer perceptions of certain truths on the part of the cisatlantic English; and this claiming of separate standards in literature is a continuation of that historic attitude. We are making a perpetual minority report on the rest of the world, sure that in time our voice will be an authoritative one. The attitude being a relative and not very positively predicable one, a singular integrity of judgment is required in sustaining it. Of this Poe exhibits nothing. It was a part of the ingrained rebellion in him, that he revolted against the moneyed mediocracy of this country,--a position in which he deserves much sympathy,--and perhaps this underlies his want of deep literary identification with the national character in general. But more probably his genius was a detonating agent which could have been convulsed into its meet activity anywhere, and had nothing to do with a soil. It is significant that he was taken up by a group of men in Paris, headed by Baudelaire and assisted by Théophile Gautier, as a sort of private demigod of art; and I believe he stands in high esteem with the Rossetti-Morris family of English poets. Irving, on the other hand, comes directly upon the ground of difference between the American and the English genius, but it is with the colors of a neutral. Irving's position was peculiar. He went to Europe young, and ripened his genius under other suns than those that imbrowned the hills of his native Hudson. He had won success enough through "Salmagundi" and "Knickerbocker's History" to give him the importance of an accredited literary ambassador from the Republic, in treating with a foreign audience; and he really did us excellent service abroad. This alone secures him an important place in our literary history. Particularly