nthly_, 1857.

We are eminently a people of action; we are fond of shows,
processions, and organized spectacles; we are so much more imitative
than our British cousins, that, without limiting its appeals to the
mimetic files of fashion, the ungentlemanly theory of a Simian descent
for man might find support in the features of our general life. To
complete the large compound of qualities that are required, in order
that an emulous people give birth to a drama, one is yet wanting; but
that one is not merely the most important of all, but is the one which
lifts the others into dramatic importance. Are we poetical? Ask any
number of continental Europeans, whether the English are a poetical
people. A loud, unanimous, derisive _no_ would be the answer. And
yet, there is Shakespeare! and around him, back to Chaucer and forward
to Tennyson, a band of such poets, that this prosaic nation has the
richest poetic literature in Christendom. Especially in this matter
are appearances delusive, and hasty inferences liable to be illogical.
From the prosers that one hears in pulpits, legislatures,
lecture-rooms, at morning calls and well-appointed dinner-tables in
Anglo-America, let no man infer against our poetic endowment.
Shakespeare, and Milton, and Burns, and Wordsworth, are of our stock;
and what we have already done in poetry and the plastic arts, while
yet, as a nation, hardly out of swaddling-clothes, is an earnest of a
creative future. We are to have a national literature and a national
drama. What is a national drama? Premising that as little in their
depth as in their length will our remarks be commensurate with the
dimensions of this great theme, we would say a few words.

A literature is the expression of what is warmest and deepest in the
heart of a people. Good books are the crystallization of thoughts and
feelings. To have a literature--that is, a body of enduring
books--implies vigor and depth. Such books are the measure of the
mental vitality in a people. Those peoples that have the best books
will be found to be at the top of the scale of humanity; those that
have none, at the bottom. Good books, once brought forth,
exhale ever after both fragrance and nourishment. They educate while
they delight many generations.

Good books are the best thoughts of the best men. They issue out of
deep hearts and strong heads; and where there are deep hearts and
strong heads such books are sure to come to life. The mind, like th