E. A. silsbee's remarks. 7 



power. The continent subdues man. Nature is too vast, 

 the temptation too great. Civilization is practical. Xo 

 race ever had such well-being and opportunity. We have a 

 temperament outrunning our genius yet, but it will come. 

 Our heads, our types, prefigure a bigger man than we are, 

 and a more delicate woman. Genius, delicacy, rareness, 

 we shall have them. The world has not labored in vain 

 and travailed for five thousand years to produce us, to 

 have us a failure. Robustness we must get and fibre. 

 My theory is mixture of stock to give it to us ; German 

 mind and Irish temperament, with Anglo-Saxon character 

 as base. 



I say to English people the greatest thing they have 

 done is to produce America, and so it is. If the genius 

 in poetry is not transmitted here, the genius in the sister 

 arts seems likely to come. We shall probably be great in 

 art, — architecture, music, painting, — before we are in 

 poetry or prose. Architecture has the greatest future ; an 

 immense field is here, endless wealth and enterprise, such 

 as created Athens, Rome, Florence, Venice. The religious 

 impulse is wanting which did the greatest things; civil 

 and humane motives may supply its place. There is a 

 religion of humanity, one side of religion, use and be- 

 neficence. 



We can wait for literature. It will be the better for 

 the waiting. The American nature is not knit yet, as 

 Burke remarked a hundred years ago, nor the character 

 formed. We are thinned-out English needing enrich- 

 ment. This is shown in poetry, a sensitive proof; it is 

 not sustained, masculine as the English is, nor is criti- 

 cism. It stumbles and falls away from the points it 

 reaehes. For the fitting America, literature, art, life, we 

 shall have to wait. They could not come now, and better 

 not. We are building slowly, barely laying the founda- 



