THE EVOLUTION OF COLONIES. 587 



to England formed the first English library. So is it long with all 

 new countries. To this day the book circulation of the United States 

 is largely English; in contemporary colonies it is overwhelmingly 

 English, almost wholly Spanish, exclusively French or Dutch. The 

 second stage also repeats the literary history of the mother countries. 

 Colonial literature is a prolongation of the parental literature and is 

 at first commentative and imitative of that. In a school at Canter- 

 bury founded by two foreign monks English written literature took 

 its birth. The literature of mediaeval Europe was a continuation of 

 Roman literature. This stage may last long. Seventy or eighty 

 years after the Declaration of Independence the literature of New 

 England was still English literature of a subtler strain— perhaps lack- 

 ing the strength of the old home-brew, but with a finer flavor. 

 Naturally, in far younger Australia even popular poetry is still imi- 

 tative — the hand is that of Gordon or of Kendall, but the voice is 

 Swinburne's. The beginnings of a truly national literature are 

 humble. They are never scholastic, but always popular. As chap- 

 books, ballads, and songs were the sources of the sesthetic literature 

 of modern Europe, the beginnings of general literature in the United 

 States have been traced to the old almanacs which, besides medical 

 recipes and advice to the farmer, contained some of the best produc- 

 tions of American authors. It is further evidence of the popular 

 origin of native literature that some of its early specimens are works 

 of humor. The most distinctive work of early Canadian and Ameri- 

 can authors is humorous, from Sam Slick to ; but it would be 



rash to say who is the last avatar of the genius of humor. If an alien 

 may say so without offense, Walt Whitman's poems, with their pro- 

 found intuitions and artless metre, seem to be the start of a new 

 sesthetic, and recall ancient Beowulf. Australian literature, after a 

 much shorter apprenticeship, has lately, in both fiction and verse, 

 again of a popular character, made a new departure that is instinct 

 with life and grace and full of promise. 



Literature and art have no independent value, but are merely 

 the phonographic record of mental states, and would practically cease 

 to exist (as they did during the middle ages) if these disappeared. 

 The grand achievement of new, as of old, countries is man-making, 

 and every colony creates a new variety. The chief agent is natural 

 selection, of which the seamy side appears in vicissitudes of fortune. 

 Here again the law prevails. These recapitulate those vicissitudes in 

 early European societies which make picturesque the pages of Greg- 

 ory of Tours. There are the same sudden rises, giddy prosperities, 

 and inevitable falls. In the simple communities of ancient Greece 

 the distance between antecedent and consequent was short, and the 

 course of causation plain. Hence in myth and legend, in early his- 



