()24 Mrs. Wright's Travels 
It is true that authorship is not yet a 
trade in this country ; perhaps for the 
poor it is a poor trade every where; and 
could men do better, they might sel¬ 
dom take to it as a profession ; but, 
however this may be, yiany causes 
have operated hitherto, and some per¬ 
haps may always continue to operate, 
to prevent American genius from show¬ 
ing itself in works of imagination, or 
of arduous literary labour. As yet, we 
must remember, that the country itself 
is not half a century old. The genera¬ 
tion is barely passed away whose ener¬ 
gies were engrossed by a struggle for 
existence. 
America was not asleep during the 
thirty years that Europe had forgotten 
her : she was actively employed in her 
education ;—in framing and trying sys¬ 
tems of government; in eradicating 
prejudices; in vanquishing internal 
enemies; in replenishing her treasury; 
in liquidating her debts ; in amending 
her laws ; in correcting her policy ; in 
fitting herself to enjoy that liberty 
which she had purchased with her 
blood ; — in founding seminaries of 
learning; in facilitating the spread of 
knowledge;—to say nothing of the re¬ 
vival of commerce; the reclaiming of 
wilderness after wilderness; the faci¬ 
litating of internal navigation ; the 
doubling aud tripling of a population 
trained to exercise the rights of freemen, 
and to respect institutions adopted by the 
voice of their country. Such have been 
the occupations of America She bears 
the works of her genius about her; we 
must not seek them in volumes piled on 
the shelves of a library. All her know¬ 
ledge is put forth in action; lives in 
her institutions, in her laws ; speaks 
in her senate; acts in her cabinet; 
breathes even from the walls of her 
cities, and the sides of her ships. Look 
on all she has done, on that which she 
is ; count the sum of her years ; and 
then pronounce sentence on her genius. 
Her politicians are not ingenious theo¬ 
rists, but practical statesmen ; her sol¬ 
diers have not been conquerors, but 
patriots ; her philosophers are not wise 
reasoners, but wise legislators. Their 
country has been and is their field of 
action; every able head and nervous 
arm is pressed into its service. The 
foreign world hears nothing of ther ex¬ 
ploits, and reads none of their lucubra¬ 
tions ; but their country reaps the fruits 
of their wisdom, and feels the aid of 
their service; and it is in the wealth, 
the strength, the peace, the prosperity, 
in the United States. 
the good government, and the well-ad - 
ministered laws of that country llmt 
we must discover and admire their 
energy and genius. 
In Europe we are apt to estimate the 
general cultivation of a people by the 
greater or less number of their literary 
characters. Even in that hemisphere, 
it is, perhaps, an unfair way of judg¬ 
ing. No one would dispute that France 
is greatly advanced in knowledge since 
the era of the revolution, and yet her 
literary fame from that period has been 
at a stand. The reason is obvious— 
that her genius was called from the 
clo. et into the senate and the field ; her 
historians and poets were suddenly 
changed into soldiers and politicians; 
her peaceful men of letters became ac¬ 
tive citizens, known in their generation, 
by their virtues or their crimes. Instead 
of tragedies, sonnets, and tomes of 
philosophy, they manufactured laws, 
or martialled armies ; opposed tyrants, 
or fell their victims, or played the ty¬ 
rant themselves. 
Barlow, known only in England as 
the author of the Columbiad, was a di¬ 
plomatist and an able political writer. 
The venerable Dwight was here held 
in honour, not as the author of 41 The 
Conquest of Canaan,” but as the patron 
of learning; the assiduous instructor 
of youth, and a popular and energetic 
writer of the day. I could in the same 
way designate many living characters 
whose masterly abilities have been felt 
in the cabinets of Europe, and which 
here are felt in every department of the 
civil government, and in ail the civic 
professions. These men, who, in other 
countries, would have enlarged the field 
of the national literature, here quicken 
the pulse of the national prosperity; 
eloquent in the senate, able in the ca¬ 
binet, they fill the highest offices of the 
republic, and are repaid for their ardu¬ 
ous and unceasing labours, by the 
esteem of their fellow-citizens, and the 
growing strength of their country. 
But while America was thus sought 
by enlightened individuals, the parlia¬ 
mentary speeches and pamphlets of the 
time show how little was known by the 
English community of the character and 
condition of the colonists. Because the 
government had chosen at one time to 
make Virginia a Botany-Bay, an insult 
which tended not a little to prepare her 
for the revolution, the country of Frank¬ 
lin, Washington, Patrick Henry, Jeffer¬ 
son, Schuyler, Gates, Greene, Allen, 
Dickenson, Laurens, Livingston, Hamil¬ 
ton, 
