Ralph Waldo Emerson [pp. 247-255]

Ralph Waldo Emnerson-History.
pendence or independence, joyousness or gloom,
these have certainly much to do with the utteraice of thought in written words. Yet there is
no such intelligible thing as an American climate.
The girdle of seasons, and the panorama of gorgeous, changing cloud and sky, which pass annually over Louisiana and Texas. are as much
the American climate as are the grand artillery
of winter, and the brief, bright summer days,
around the shores of Lake Michigan. The face
of nature looks very differently at Rockfish Gap
on the Blue Ridge of mountains in Virginia, firom
what it does at Franconia in the Notch of the
White Mountains in New Hampshire; and very
differently at either of these places from what it
does in some vast cypress plain in Louisiana,
where the palmetto stands everywhere like giants'
hands struggling up from the earth, and the thickset cane is around you, and the wild birds enliven
the whole air. And yet all who look closely into
the subject tell us that these things have much to
do with literature, and we respectfully suggest that a Northern literature, a Southern
literature, a Western literature, an Atlantic
literature, are much more intelligible expressions than an American literature. The latter expression seems to us totally " void for
indefiniteness," with an exception which will be
presently mentioned. And so it would be any
where in a geographical area as large as ours.
If a man who speaks good sense, speaks of European literature, he means an aggregate mass
of intellectual productions, and certainly he does
not mean any one definite thing. The writings
of Hungarians, and the writings of Irishmen,
would both be European literature; and might
probably at this time, breathe much the same
political spirit, and come from men not dissimilarly situated; yet they would be distinguishable productions. The literature of Russia, and that of Naples, would hardly be found
similar, though both countries are in Europe,
and both peoples are under the heel of despotism. French literature and English literature
are far from being the same article, though nothing but "a narrow frith divides" the two nations.
But the writer in Blackwood seems to think
that Emerson's writings are American in their
spirit, because they breathe the spirit of" a selfconfident democracy"-tusing the words in that
broad sense in which our government is distinguished from the monarchies and despotisms of
Europe, and not in the partisan sense in which
they are employed here. Here we admit that
there may be such a thing on the one hand, as a
republican spirit in literature, antd on the other
admit to be an exceptional case in which the
phrase, "American literature," may have some
definite meaning. In this..case it may mean a
literature breathing the spirit of republican liberty. In this sense the writings of Ralph Waldo
Emerson may be very Amierican. We had not
discovered it. Very probably the writer in Blackwood had. Yet we do not believe that this is
the best meaning, or probably the correct meanilg, to attach to the indefinite phrase. By American literature our countrymen do not probably
mean a literature which shall breathe the spirit
of our government, so much as a literature which
shall hallow the localities of our land, and throw
the charm of genius around the spots where the
ashes of our fathers sleep. A native literature
ought to do for Massachusetts, or for Virginia, or
for Louisiana, what Burns and Walter Scott have
done for Scotland; Miss Edgeworth and Charles
Lever for Ireland; Shakspeare and Wordsworth
for England; that is, cause every one whom its
pages have charmed to desire to see, and incline
to love and gloat over, the localities which
came to the mental vision while the spell of genius was upon it. Writers who would do this
for the American States, hallowing the country
and producing a love of the local soil in the bosomns of the people, and stopping the tide of
restless, roving emigration, ever thirsting for new
scenes, and new lands, and new skies, would do
what is worthy to be done, and what would deserve the name of native literature. Mr. Ralph
Waldo Emerson is an idealist of the most transcendent wing and of the highest cloud. We do
not intend to approach very near to the verge of
the abyss of metaphysics to fetch thence the definition of an idealist. Emerson's panegyrist in
Blackwood, says of him, that he "has denied
the substantial, independent existence of a material wvorld, but he does not deny the existence
of a phenomenal world." He dreameth the
dreanms of Germany. He is the younger brother
of Kant, and Fichte, and Schelling. and Hegel.
They say that the German mind was so repulsed
from outward things, by the civil despotism prevailing around it, that it flew inwards into its
own dark depths, and entered thus upon these
minute self-analyses and self-deifications. But
these are not American dreams. We cannot
expect that a mind thus involved, and believing
that the material world is at best but an appearance, but a drama of successive phenomena,
should encircle American scenery with halos of
lthe enchantment of genius, or do much else to
draw our hearts to the local objects of the land
in which we live. Let the men of Prussia and
of Austria dream thus. But why should an Amer
hand, there may be such a thing as a monarchi- ican? Is not the world ot manly tougnt ann
cal and despotic spirit in literature. This we healthy action open to him? We are not sur
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