Seventy-odd years ago the Rev. Sydney Smith wrote in the Edinburg Review as follows: “Literature, the Americans have none—no native literature, we mean. It is all imported. They had a Franklin, indeed, and may afford to live for half a century on his fame. There is, or was, a Mr. Dwight, who wrote some poems, and his baptismal name was Timothy. There is also a small account of Virginia, by Jefferson, an epic by Joel Barlow, and some pieces of pleasantry by Mr. Irving. But why should the Americans write books, when a six weeks’ passage brings them, in their own tongue, our sense, science and genius in bales and hogsheads?” Times have changed since Mr. Smith wrote this somewhat sarcastic summary of our native literature; for, while it is true that we still import British “sense, science, and genius in bales and hogsheads,” it is done now on principles of reciprocity, and we return quite as good and perhaps nearly as much as we receive. Americans do not instance Mr. Dwight, whose “baptismal name was Timothy,” or Mr. Barlow, the author of the epic so sneeringly referred to, as the chiefs of American poesy; yet we need not blush for either of them; for the first was a distinguished scholar the President of Yale College, and the author of the hymn so dear to many pious hearts: “I love thy kingdom, Lord! The house of Thine abode; The church our blest Redeemer saved With His own precious blood.” The other, Mr. Barlow, was a well-known man of letters and politician in his day, author of the “Columbiad,” the epic referred to by Mr. Smith, and minister plenipotentiary of the United States to the coast of France at a critical period of our history. As to the “Columbiad,” it has been pronounced by competent critics to be equal in merit to Addison’s “Campaign,” and surely it is no disgrace to have equalled Addison.