ABSTRACT
The march of a great people in literature should be majestic and assured as the action of their institutions is calm and secure. The American writer who seems most deeply to have felt the want of, and who has most ably and earnestly, as well as earliest, insisted upon, nationality in our literature, is Mr. Cornelius Mathews. The intellectual servitude produced the same effects upon the writings of this country, which was produced upon the literature of Germany by the despotic influence of the writers of France over those of Germany. A great revolution, however, at length began, which in the course of half a century terminated in bestowing on Germany a literature, perhaps the most characteristic possessed by any European nation. It had the important peculiarity of being the first which had its birth in an enlightened age. The literature of a country should, as from a faithful mirror, reflect the physical, moral and intellectual aspects of the nation.
