What, however, do we more definitely mean by New World literature? Are we not doing well enough here already? Are not the United States this day busily using, working, more printer's type, more presses, than any other country? uttering and absorbing more publications than any other? Do not our publishers fatten quicker and deeper? (helping themselves, under shelter of a delusive and sneaking law, or rather absence of law, to most of their forage, poetical, pictorial, historical, romantic, even comic, without money and without price--and fiercely resisting the timidest proposal to pay for it.) Many will come under this delusion--but my purpose is to dispel it. I say that a nation may hold and circulate rivers and oceans of very readable print, journals, magazines, novels, library-books, "poetry," &c.--such as the States to-day possess and circulate--of unquestionable aid and value--hundreds of new volumes annually composed and brought out here, respectable enough, indeed unsurpass'd in smartness and erudition--with further hundreds, or rather millions, (as by free forage or theft aforemention'd,) also thrown into the market--and yet, all the while, the said nation, land, strictly speaking, may possess no literature at all. Repeating our inquiry, what, then, do we mean by real literature? especially the democratic literature of the future? Hard questions to meet. The clues are inferential, and turn us to the past. At best, we can only offer suggestions, comparisons, circuits.