ill be original rather in spite of democracy than in
consequence of it, and will owe his inspiration quite as much to the
accumulations of the Old World as to the promises of the New. But for a
long while yet the proper conditions will be wanting, not, perhaps, for
the birth of such a man, but for his development and culture. At
present, with the largest reading population in the world, perhaps no
country ever offered less encouragement to the higher forms of art or
the more thorough achievements of scholarship. Even were it not so, it
would be idle to expect us to produce any literature so peculiarly our
own as was the natural growth of ages less communicative, less open to
every breath of foreign influence. Literature tends more and more to
become a vast commonwealth, with no dividing lines of nationality. Any
more Cids, or Songs of Roland, or Nibelungens, or Kalewalas are out of
the question,--nay, anything at all like them; for the necessary
insulation of race, of country, of religion, is impossible, even were it
desirable. Journalism, translation, criticism, and facility of
intercourse tend continually more and more to make the thought and turn
of expression in cultivated men identical all over the world. Whether we
like it or not, the costume of mind and body is gradually becoming of
one cut.

W.D. HOWELLS

VENETIAN LIFE

Those of our readers who watch with any interest the favorable omens of
our literature from time to time, must have had their eyes drawn to
short poems, remarkable for subtilty of sentiment and delicacy of
expression, and bearing the hitherto unfamiliar name of Mr. Howells.
Such verses are not common anywhere; as the work of a young man they are
very uncommon. Youthful poets commonly begin by trying on various
manners before they settle upon any single one that is prominently their
own. But what especially interested us in Mr. Howells was, that his
writings were from the very first not merely tentative and preliminary,
but had somewhat of the conscious security of matured _style_. This is
something which most poets arrive at through much tribulation. It is
something which has nothing to do with the measure of their intellectual
powers or of their moral insight, but is the one quality which
essentially distinguishes the artist from the mere man of genius. Among
the English poets of the last generation, Keats is the only one who
early showed unmistakable signs of it, and developed it mor