Germany, to the non-Teutonic world, is, in poetry, represented by Heine, and, in science, philosophy, philology, and history by a galaxy of innovators ingenious and industrious. America saw Hawthorne, Poe, Lowell, Holmes, Whittier, Ticknor, Prescott, Motley, Longfellow, Bryant, Emerson, in their prime; while England had Carlyle, Tennyson, Newman, Browning, the Brontës, Kingsley, Thackeray, Dickens, and Ruskin, all recognized and flourishing. We look around and see, as Mr. Stevenson says in a letter, that “the suns have set,” while we are scarcely conscious of new dawns. Who can explain, by circumstances of social evolution and historical event, the rising and the setting of such constellations of genius? It is not enough to speak of the democratic demand, naturally indifferent to style, for never was style the object of such anxious research, except in other ages of euphuism. Encouragement is even overabundant; “masterpieces” are announced every week, and forgotten every year. It may be the prejudice of hoary eld, but I must confess that our new literature does not seem to me to show such promise of permanence as the literature of 1830–1860 gave, and, so far, has fulfilled. Has fulfilled in spite of our sneers at the “early Victorian,” which was not socialistic, or evolutionist and Darwin-ridden, and was “respectable,” and did avert its eyes from all that most people in real life don’t care to stare at. This “prudery” was no new thing. The Greeks, in except some late decadents and in the old comedy, have a “prudish” literature. The Latin classics are not in the taste of M. Zola. The age of Chaucer, the age of Elizabeth, were grossly frank, that of the Restoration was frankly lewd, but we have sought out many inventions over which Sedley and Rochester would not have cared to linger. Their grossness was gay; ours is morbidly squalid. Such things are absent from the work of Hawthorne and Holmes, Longfellow, Dickens, Thackeray, and the rest. Such things we now treat of, greatly daring, and somehow our elders appear apt to outlaugh and outlive us as humorists, novelists, and poets. It is strange.