ous,
with a decided turn for mechanical invention. What we are actually
producing, even to-day, in any domain of pure art, is very little; it is
only the broad average intelligence of the masses that does us any
credit. And even this is easily exaggerated. The majority of members of
Congress talk bad grammar; so do the majority of public-school teachers.
I do not mean merely that they speak without elegance, but that in
moments of confidence they say "We was," and "Them things," and "I done
it." With the present predominance of merely scientific studies, and the
increasing distaste for the study of language, I do not see how this is
to diminish. For all that, there are already visible, in the American
temperament, two points of great promise in respect to art in general,
and literary art above all.

First, there is in this temperament a certain pliability and
impressibility, as compared with the rest of the Anglo-Saxon race; it
shows a finer grain and a nicer touch. If this is not yet shown in the
way of literature, it is only because the time has not come. It is
visible everywhere else. The aim which Bonaparte avowed as his highest
ambition for France, to convert all trades into arts, is being rapidly
fulfilled all around us. There is a constant tendency to supersede brute
muscle by the fibres of the brain, and thus to assimilate the rudest
toil to what Bacon calls "sedentary and within-door arts, that require
rather the finger than the arm." It is clear that this same impulse, in
higher and higher applications, must culminate in the artistic creation
of beauty.

And to fortify this fine instinct, we may trust, secondly, in the
profound earnestness which still marks our people. With all this
flexibility, there is yet a solidity of principle beneath, that makes
the subtile American mind as real and controlling as that of the robust
race from which it sprang. Though the present tendency of our art is
towards foreign models, this is but a temporary thing. We must look at
these till we have learned what they can teach, but a race in which the
moral nature is strongest will be its own guide at last.

And it is a comfort thus to end in the faith that, as the foundation of
all true greatness is in the conscience, so we are safe if we can but
carry into science and art the same earnestness of spirit which has
fought through the great civil war and slain slavery. As "the Puritan
has triumphed" in this stern contest, so must