After the Americans had won their security and their daily bread in the wild country, they had still to make a State, to develop a social order, to provide themselves with schools and churches, to do all kinds of things which demand time, and toil, and the sweat of the brow. It was a busy world. There was more work to be done than there were workmen to do it. Industry claimed every talent almost as soon as it got into breeches. A Franklin, who might have written essays or philosophical treatises in the manner of Diderot, must run a printing-press, invent stoves, pave streets, conduct a postal service, raise money for the War of Independence. A Freneau, who might have written lyrics in the manner of André Chénier, must become a soldier, a sea-captain, an editor, a farmer. Even those talents which were drawn to the intellectual side of life were absorbed in the efforts which belong to the current discussions of affairs, the daily debate of the world, rather than to literature. They disputed, they argued, they exhorted, with a direct aim at practical results in morals and conduct. They became preachers, orators, politicians, pamphleteers. They wrote a good deal; but their writing has the effect of reported speech addressed to an audience. The mass of sermons, and political papers, and long letters on timely topics, which America produced in her first two hundred years is considerable. It contains much more vitality than the imitative essays, poems, and romances of the same period. John Dickinson's "Letters from a Pennsylvania Farmer," the sermons of President Witherspoon of Princeton, the papers of Madison, Hamilton, and Jay in the _Federalist_, are not bad reading, even to-day. They are virile and significant. They show that the Americans knew how to use the English language in its eighteenth-century form. But they were produced to serve a practical purpose. Therefore they lack the final touch of that art whose primary aim is the pleasure of self-expression in forms as permanent and as perfect as may be found. II. The second question which I shall try to answer is this: Why is not the literature of America, not only in the beginning but also in its later development, more distinctly American? The answer is simple: _It is distinctly American_. But unfortunately the critics who are calling so persistently and looking so eagerly for "Americanism" in literature, do not recognize it when they see it. They are looking for something strange, eccentric, radical, and rude. When a real American like Franklin, or Irving, or Emerson, or Longfellow, or Lanier, or Howells appears, these critics will not believe that he is the genuine article. They expect something in the style of "Buffalo Bill." They imagine the Spirit of America always in a red shirt, striped trousers, and rawhide boots.