But the bright prospect of future American literature again opens before us in all its moral grandeur. When time shall have quieted the ruder anxieties of our being, when comfortable independence shall have passed from the few to the many, and the busy exertion of life can take longer rest from its labors, when the dignity of intellect shall outweigh that of wealth, how will the treasures of mind be poured on our land! Future American literature must be very varied, from the great difference of climate and habits in our widely extended country. Stretching its immense length along the great Atlantic, the firm barrier of its waters, it almost connects the frozen pole with the burning Equator. The fervid imaginations of the sunny South will breathe their strains under the shadow of the lime-tree, and amidst the fragrance of the orange-grove, and the scenery and flowers that give emblems to their poetry, will be as strange to the dwellers on the rock-bound coast of the North-Eastern States, as the acacia of Arabia is to the Icelander, but its strange beauty will be dear to them, for it is American still. From the calm, cold North, the calculations of Philosophy and the discoveries of scientific research will continue to issue. The progress already made, forms a bright page in our history, and the last great discovery which has realized the vision of our venerated Franklin, making the lightning of heaven the agent of earth, seems like a stray beam from the science of the skies. By it, knowledge, love, feeling, travel with the unseen speed of “angel’s visits.” The name of Morse will find a high association with that of the “Sage of the Revolution.” For the light yet elegant portions of literature, our country presents a wide field. The history of Poetry in the old world, is mournfully, painfully interesting, from the blind dependence of the immortal Homer, down to the despairing end of the gifted Chatterton. From thence to the present time, how few have been successful, and of that few, how oft have their pages been marked, not, indeed, by the tear of weary anguish and hope deferred, but by a bitterness of sentiment filling the place from whence that tear was obliterated. Alas! how many strings in the harp of Genius have been broken by the force of its own disappointed feelings. Pastoral poetry may well offer its incense at the shrine of our country’s scenery and productions, and breathe its strains in harmony with the happiness of American rural life. Here there need be no servile muse to sing of fruits the parched lip never tasted, nor of groves and streams whose verdure and coolness were felt not in the close atmosphere of garret penury. But from homes rendered happy by industry and content, the poets of our land may breathe their strains. The heart will speak from its own fullness, like the ascending vapor of the cottage chimney, that tells the comfort and warmth of the hearth beneath its roof.