They killed Poe. They created Bryant.

Since the close of our most blessed war, we have been left to face the
problems of democracy, unhampered by the terrible complications of
sectional strife. It has happened, however, that some of the tendencies
of our commercial civilization go toward strengthening and riveting upon
us the very traits encouraged by provincial disunion. Wendell Phillips,
with a cool grasp of understanding for which he is not generally given
credit, states the case as follows:--

"The general judgment is that the freest possible government
produces the freest possible men and women, the most individual, the
least servile to the judgment of others. But a moment's reflection
will show any man that this is an unreasonable expectation, and
that, on the contrary, entire equality and freedom in political
forms almost invariably tend to make the individual subside into the
mass and lose his identity in the general whole. Suppose we stood in
England to-night. There is the nobility, and here is the church.
There is the trading class, and here is the literary. A broad gulf
separates the four; and provided a member of either can conciliate
his own section, he can afford in a very large measure to despise
the opinions of the other three. He has to some extent a refuge and
a breakwater against the tyranny of what we call public opinion. But
in a country like ours, of absolute democratic equality, public
opinion is not only omnipotent, it is omnipresent. There is no
refuge from its tyranny, there is no hiding from its reach; and the
result is that if you take the old Greek lantern and go about to
seek among a hundred, you will find not one single American who has
not, or who does not fancy at least that he has, something to gain
or lose in his ambition, his social life, or his business, from the