This, then, is an irony of America, that the country which has a natural dislike of the past still dances to the ancient measures, that the country which has invented so much has not invented a new method of expression, that the country which questions all things accepts its literature in simple faith. The advantages of conformity are obvious. Tradition is nine-tenths of all the arts, and the writers of America have escaped the ruin which overtakes the bold adventurer who stakes his all upon first principles. But sometimes we miss the one-tenth that might be added. How much is there in the vast continent which might be translated into words! And how little has achieved a separate, living utterance! Mr Stedman has edited an American Anthology, a stout volume of some eight hundred pages, whose most obvious quality is a certain technical accomplishment. The unnumbered bards of America compose their verses with a diffident neatness, which recalls the Latin style of classical scholars. The workmanship is deft, the inspiration is literary. If many of the authors' names were transposed small injustice would be done them. The most of the work might have been written anywhere and under any conditions. Neither sentiment nor local colour suggests the prairie or the camp. It is the intervention of dialect which alone confers a distinctive character upon American verse. Wisely is Mr Stedman's collection called an Anthology. It has something of the same ingenuity, the same impersonality, which marks the famous Anthology of the Greeks; it illustrates the temper not of a young but of an old people. How shall we surprise in her literature the true spirit of America? Surely not in Walt Whitman, whose work is characteristic not of his country, but of himself, who fondly believed that he would make a loud appeal to the democracy because he stamped upon the laws of verse, and used words which are not to be found in the dictionary. Had the people ever encountered his 'Leaves of Grass,' it would not have understood it. The verse for which the people craves is the ditties of the music-hall. It has no desire to consider its own imperfections with a self-conscious eye. It delights in the splendour of mirrors, in the sparkle of champagne, in the trappings of a sordid and remote romance. The praise of liberty and equality suits the ear not of the democrat, but of the politician and dilettante, and it was to the dilettante and politician that Walt Whitman addressed his exhortations. Even his studied contempt for the literary conventions is insincere, and falls away from Kim when he sees and feels most vividly. He attempted to put into practice Emerson's theory of anarchy. He was at the pains to prove that he was at once a savage and a poet. That he had moments of poetic exaltation is true. The pomp of Brooklyn Ferry lives in his stately verse.