d.

In poetry, aye, in the crowded realms of song, who bears the
sceptre?--who wears the crown? America, England, France and Germany can
boast of bards _by the gross_, and rhyme _by the acre_, but not a single
poet. The _poeta nascitur_ is not here. He may be on his way--and I have
heard that he was--but this generation must pass before he arrives. Is
he in America? If so, which is he? Is it Poe, croaking sorrowfully with
his "Raven," or Willis, cooing sweetly with his "Dove"? Is it Bryant,
with his "Thanatopsis," or Prentice, with his "Dirge to the Dead Year"?
Perhaps it is Holmes, with his "Lyrics," or Longfellow, with his
"Idyls." Alas! is it not self-evident that we have no poet, when it is
utterly impossible to discover any two critics in the land who can find
him?

True, we have lightning-bugs enough, but no star; foot-hills, it may be,
in abundance, but no Mount Shasta, with its base built upon the
everlasting granite, and its brow bathed in the eternal sunlight.

In England, Tennyson, the Laureate, is the spokesman of a clique, the
pet poet of a princely circle, whose rhymes flow with the docility and
harmony of a limpid brook, but never stun like Niagara, nor rise into
sublimity like the storm-swept sea.

Beranger, the greatest poet of France of our era, was a mere
song-writer; and Heine, the pride of young Germany, a mere satirist and
lyrist. Freiligrath can never rank with Goethe or Schiller; and Victor
Hugo never attain the heights trodden by Racine, Corneille, or Boileau.

In oratory, where shall we find the compeer of Chatham or Mirabeau,
Burke or Patrick Henry? I have not forgotten Peel and Gladstone, nor
Lamartine and Count Cavour, nor Sargent S. Prentiss and Daniel Webster.
But Webster himself, by far the greatest intellect of all these, was a
mere debater, and the spokesman of a party. He was an eloquent speaker,
but can never rank as an orator with the rhetoricians of the last
century.

And in philosophy and general learning, where shall we find the equal of
that burly old bully, Dr. Sam Johnson? and yet Johnson, with all his
learning, was a third-rate philosopher.

In truth, the greatest author of our era was a mere essayist. Beyond all
controversy, Thomas Babington Macaulay was the most polished writer of
our times. With an intellect acute, logical and analytic; with an
imagination glowing and rich, but subdued and under perfect control;
with a style so clear and limpid and concise, that it