Page:The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 19.djvu/46

36 gagement on the ground that he had no time to make money.

Such a community is at least building the nursery whence artists may be born. All that institutions can do is to saturate the mass with culture, and give a career to genius when it comes. Great men are rarely isolated mountain peaks; they are the summits of ranges. The thought of a century seems to posterity to have been intrusted to very few minds, but those minds have always been fed by a myriad minds unseen. Why ask whether there was one Homer or a hundred? The hundred contributed their lives, their hopes, their passions, their despairs, to enrich the one. Genius is lonely without the surrounding presence of a people to inspire it. How sad seems the intellectual isolation of Voltaire with his “Le peuple n’est rien.” To have loved America is a liberal education. Let the student think with reverence of the value of this great race to him, and of his possible worth to it, though his very name be forgotten. Every act of his may be a solid contribution towards a nation’s training.

But as the value of a nation to the human race does not depend upon its wealth or numbers, so it does not depend even upon the distribution of elementary knowledge, but upon the highwater mark of its highest mind. Before the permanent tribunal, copyists and popularizers count for nothing, and even the statistics of common schools are of secondary value. So long as the sources of art and science are still Transatlantic, we are still a province, not a nation. For those are the highest pursuits of man,— higher than trades or professions, higher than statesmanship, far higher than war. jean Paul said: “ Schiller and Herder were both destined for physicians, but Providence said, No, there are deeper wounds than those of the body, — and so they both became authors.” “After all,” said Rufus Choate, at the zenith of his professional success, “a book is the only immortality.”

It is observable that in English books and magazines everything seems written for some limited circle, — tales for those who can speak French, essays for those who can understand a Latin quotation. But every American writer must address himself to a vast audience, possessing the greatest quickness and common-sense, with but little culture ; and he must command their attention as he may. This has some admirable results : one must put some life into what he writes, or his thirty million auditors will go to sleep ; he must write clearly, or they will cease to follow him; must keep clear of pedantry and unknown tongues, or they will turn to some one who can address them in English. On the other hand, these same conditions tempt one to accept a low standard of execution, to substitute artifice for art, and to disregard the more permanent verdict of more select tribunals. The richest thought and the finest literary handling which America has yet produced — as of Emerson, Hawthorne, and Thoreau — reached at first but a small audience, and are but very gradually attaining a wider hold. Rénan has said that every man’s work is superficial, until he has learned to content himself with the approbation of a few. This is only one half the truth ; but it is the half which Americans find hardest to remember.

But American literature, though its full harvest be postponed for another hundred years, is sure to come to ripeness at last. Our national development in this direction, though slow, is perfectly healthy. There are many influences to retard, but none to distort Even if the more ideal aims of the artist are treated with indifference, it is a frank indifference ; there is no contempt, no jealousy, no call for petty manoeuvres. No man is asked to flatter this vast audience ; no man can succeed by flattering ; it simply reserves its attention, and lets one obtain its ear if he can. When won, it is worth the winning, — generous in its confidence, noble in its rewards. There is abun