At the "Southern Convention" held some months since at Savannah, a good deal was said about "Southern literature," and many suggestions made in reference to the best means for its promotion. One speaker thought that "they could get text-books at home without going to either Old England or New England for them." Well--they can try. The effort will not harm them; nor the North either. The orator was confident "that the South had talent enough to do anything that needs to be done, and independence enough to do it." The _talent_ we shall not deny; the _independence_ we are ready to believe in when we see it. When she throws off the incubus of slavery under which she goes staggering like the Sailor of Bagdad under the weight of the Old Man of the Sea, she will prove her independence, and demonstrate her ability "to do anything that needs to be done." Till then she is but a fettered giant, whose vitals are torn by the dogs which her own folly has engendered. Another speaker, on the occasion referred to, half-unconsciously it would seem, threw a gleam of light upon the subject under discussion, which, had not himself and his hearers been bat-blind, would have revealed the clue that conducts from the darkness in which they burrow to the day of redemption for the South. Said he:-- "Northern publishers employ the talent of the South and of the whole country to write for them, and pour out thousands annually for it; but Southern men expect to get talent without paying for it. The _Southern Quarterly Review_ and the _Literary Messenger_ are literally struggling for existence, for want of material aid. * * * It is not the South that builds up Northern literature--_they do it themselves_. There is talent and mind and poetic genius enough in the South to build up a literature of a high order; but Southern publishers cannot get money enough to assist them in their enterprises, and, therefore, the South has no literature.