Mr. Griswold has prefaced his book with fifty pages of disquisition on the intellectual history, condition, and prospects of the country. In this he takes a comprehensive view of American literature, and discusses the aids and obstacles to its advancement. Some of the obstacles commonly urged as barriers to its improvement, he considers as aids. These are the form of our government, the nature of our institutions, and the restless and turbulent movements of the democracy. Literature, indeed, has flourished best in those countries where the people have been most alive, and engaged in the tumults which attend life. The fierce democracy of Athens presented no obstacles to the genius of Æschylus, Sophocles, or Plato. The author of the “Divine Comedy” passed his life amid the shock of contending factions. The Reformation gave an impetus to the literature of every country in which it was felt. It would be useless to multiply examples. Another obstacle to intellectual progress is found by some in the absence of a wealthy and privileged class, who have leisure for literary pursuits. Now, without adopting Mr. Griswold’s remark, that “the privileged classes of all nations have been drones,” it is still evident that the greatest works in philosophy, literature, and art, which adorn the world, have not proceeded from them. As far as regards English literature, indeed, authors have been poor men writing for a subsistence. Provision for physical necessities has ever been the strongest spur to intellectual action. But the value of a wealthy class, of persons who have leisure to read if not to write, is, that they are the natural patrons of authors. Hundreds of books are yearly published in England, which could not find sufficient readers here to pay for the paper.