oice of a great
poet is heard, we are sure that the customs, the institutions, and the
religions he sings, are near their decline. Thus, Shakspeare, the most
faithful mirror of the middle and feudal ages, came with reform and the
sixteenth century; and Calderon, with the decay of Spanish Catholicism.
That opinions and manners should partake of poesy, it is necessary that
they begin to fade away into the realm of the fabulous past; it is
necessary, in order that the ideal should appear, that these cease to
exist. It was formerly said, and not without reason, "Happy the people
who have no literature!" and in our time we are tempted to say: Happy
the people who have no great poets! it is a proof that they enjoy the
plentitude of life, that they have nothing to regret, that they are
still in all their primal innocency, and the native energy of their
being.

It is curious, also, to observe, how men animated by an heroic faith,
seldom see that that faith and the deeds which it inspires, belong to
the poetic and ideal. The first Puritans, who embarked, without
resources, in a frail vessel, to seek in America the enjoyment of a free
religion, now appear to us truly poetical. Walter Scott has drawn a
thousand original characters of cavaliers and round-heads. Do you know
what was the literature of those men full of the spirit of the Bible? Do
you know what was the character of the first poetic publications in the
United States? We open Mr. Griswold's volume, and the first name is that
of Anne Bradstreet, who proceeded thither with her father, an ardent
nonconformist. Here is the title under which her poems were printed, in
the year 1640, at Boston: "_Several Poems, compiled with great variety
of Wit and Learning, full of delight; wherein especially is contained a
compleat Discourse and Description of the Four Elements, Constitutions,
Ages of Man, and Seasons of the Year, together with an exact Epitome of
the Three First Monarchies, viz. the Assyrian, Persian, and Grecian; and
the beginning of the Roman Commonwealth to the end of their last King;
with divers other Pleasant and Serious Poems: By a Gentlewoman of New
England._" This Mrs. Bradstreet, called by the Americans, at this epoch,
the "tenth muse"--probably a very good Protestant--made invocations to
Phoebus, and imitated ---- Dubartas! Certainly, the emigrant
Americans, who were indeed the most zealous of all Protestants, did not
suspect the mournful poetry which Protestant