ABSTRACT
National literature seems to be the product, the legitimate product, of a national language. Literary peculiarities and even literary originality being, the one little more than peculiarities of language, the other the result of that uncontrolled exercise of mind, which a slavery to a common tongue almost necessarily prevents. It will be easy to show the importance of a peculiar language, to the rise and progress of literature in a country. In the first place, every nation has a strong attachment to its language. This enters into the sum total of its patriotism. In science, and more especially in the fine arts, America has done its part for the world. It might not find time in its greater operations of thought to preserve the perfection of its language, and it would dread the contamination of an ill-educated and strictly economical association. Such minds were phenomena in the American colonies, and the possibility of this occurrence was never admitted.
