II. 



MAUDSLEY ON HEREDITARY DESCENT. 



PRELUDE ON CURRENT EVENTS. 



There is an Eternal Power that makes for right- 

 eousness ; there is also an Eternal Power, not our- 

 selves, that makes for beauty, and this is the only- 

 unerring critic of poetry. What is to be the future 

 of American literature ? Ask the Supreme Powers, 

 rather than the Boston critics! How long are our 

 best productions to express the heart of the ages? 

 Ask the Court and the Throne, and not New York 

 or Cambridge or Concord ! It is turning out, here in 

 America, that only those who live near the Throne 

 can be enthroned. We reverence permanently only 

 the authors who live near the Court. Probably 

 Thanatopsis is the earliest American poem that will 

 be remembered five hundred years hence ; but that 

 production is not yet seventy years old. This is the 

 seventieth birthday of Whittier, and he is older than 

 American poetical literature. Our New England 

 prose and poetry think much of themselves, and the 

 world thinks much of them ; but what do the Su- 

 preme Powers think of American literature ? Their 

 opinion ought to be ours. 



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