The splendor, profundity, and irresistible fascination of Shakspeare's plays, have perhaps deterred many a genius in England from writing plays. So Corneille and Racine have no doubt produced similar effects in France. Even the great names which I have mentioned, would have been overawed, if in the commencement of their career, they had been obliged to contend with their own more splendid productions. "If Moliere and Corneille," said Hume, "were to bring upon the stage at present their early productions which were formerly so well received, it would discourage the young poets to see the indifference and disdain of the public. The ignorance of the age alone could have given admission to the '_Prince of Tyre_;' but it is to that we owe '_The Moor_.' Had '_Every Man in his Humor_' been rejected, we had never seen '_Volpone_.'" Now there is no system of government which has ever been devised by man, better calculated to remove the withering and blighting influence of great names in literature, and at the same time to insure the full possession of all the great benefits which their labors can confer, than the federal system of republics--a system which, at the same time that it binds the states together in peace and harmony, leaves each one in the possession of a government of its own, with its sovereignty and liberty unimpaired. In such a condition as this, there is a wholesome circulation of literature from one state to another, without establishing, however, any thing like a dictatorship in the republic of letters. A salutary rivalry is generated; and a true and genuine patriotism, I must be allowed to assert, will always lead us to foster and stimulate genius, wherever we may perceive symptoms of its development, throughout the limits of that commonwealth to which we are attached. The soldier in the field may love the marshal, and feel an attachment to the grand army which has been so often led to conquest and glory; but I must confess that I admire more that warm, generous, and sympathetic attachment, which his heart feels for that small division and its officer with which he has been connected--for that little platoon in which his own name has been enrolled, and where his own little share of glory has been won.