To Duyckinck's "Cyclopedia of American Literature"--a sort of _Omnium-gatherum_ that reminds one of Jeremiah's figs--we are indebted for the following facts: The whole number of "American authors" whose place of nativity is given, is five hundred and sixty-nine. Of these seventy-nine were foreign born, eighty-seven were natives of the South, and four hundred and three--a vast majority of the whole, first breathed the vital air in the free North. Many of those who were born in the South, received their education in the North, quite a number of whom became permanent residents thereof. Still, for the purposes of this computation, we count them on the side of the South. Yet how significant the comparison which this computation furnishes! Throwing the foreign born (adopted citizens, mostly residents of the North) out of the reckoning, and the record stands,--Northern authors _four hundred and three_; Southern, _eighty-seven_--a difference of three hundred and sixteen in favor of the North! And this, probably, indicates very fairly the relative intellectual activity of the two sections. We accept the facts gleaned from Duyckinck's work as a basis, simply, of our estimate: not as being absolutely accurate in themselves, though they are doubtless reliable in the main, and certainly as fair for the South as they are for the North. We might dissent from the judgment of the compiler in reference to the propriety of applying the term "literature" to much that his compilation contains; but as tastes have proverbially differed from the days of the venerable dame who kissed her cow--not to extend our researches into the condition of things anterior to that interesting event--we will not insist upon _our_ view of the matter, but take it for granted that he has disentombed from forgotten reviews, newspapers, pamphlets, and posters, a fair relative proportion of "authors" for both North and South, for which "American Literature" is unquestionably under infinite obligations to him!