not superficial, modish letters, and he was eager to demonstrate both creatively and critically the possibility of a genuine and unaffected American literature. In the Introduction to the _Pioneer_, for every new journal then had its salutatory,--and the valedictory was likely to follow shortly,--he sets forth this principle of a native literature. After complaining of the derivative character of current criticism and opinions, derived, that is, from the latest English quarterlies and monthlies,--he continues:-- “We are the farthest from wishing to see what many so ardently pray for, namely, a _National_ literature: for the same mighty lyre of the human heart answers the touch of the master in all ages and in every clime, and any literature, as far as it is national, is diseased, inasmuch as it appeals to some climatic peculiarity, rather than to the universal nature. Moreover, everything that tends to encourage the sentiment of caste, to widen the boundary between races, and so to put farther off the hope of one great brotherhood, should be steadily resisted by all good men. But we do long for a _natural_ literature. One green leaf, though of the veriest weed, is worth all the crape and wire flowers of the daintiest Paris milliners. For it is the glory of nature that in her least part she gives us all, and in that simple love-token of hers we may behold the type of all her sublime mysteries; as in the least fragment of the true artist we discern the working of the same forces which culminate gloriously in a Hamlet or a Faust. We would no longer see the spirit of our people held up as a mirror to the Old World; but rather lying like one of our own inland oceans, reflecting not only the mountain and the rock, the forest and the red man, but also the steamboat and the rail car, the cornfield and the factory. Let us learn that romance is not married to the past, that it is not the birthright of ferocious ignorance and chivalric barbarity, but that it ever was and is an inward quality, the darling child of the sweetest refinements and most gracious amenities of peaceful gentleness, and that it can never die till only water runs in these red rivers of the heart, that cunning adept which can make vague cathedrals with blazing oriels and streaming spires out of our square meeting-boxes,-- “‘Whose rafters sprout upon the shady side.’