"LONGFELLOW, the pet poet of Boston, is a much younger man than either
Bryant or Halleck, and has made his reputation only within the last
twelve years, during which time he has been one of the most noted
lions of American Athens. The city of Boston, as every one knows who
has been there, or who has met with any book or man emanating from
it, claims to be the literary metropolis of the United States, and
assumes the slightly-pretending _soubriquet_ just quoted. The American
Athenians have their thinking and writing done for them by a coterie
whose distinctive characteristics are Socinianism in theology, a
præter-Puritan prudery in ethics, a German tendency in metaphysics,
and throughout all a firm persuasion that Boston is the fountain-head
of art, scholarship, and literature for the western world, and
particularly that New York is a Nazareth in such things, out of which
can come nothing good. For the Bostonians, who certainly cultivate
literature with more general devotion, if not always with more
individual success than the New Yorkers, can never forgive their
commercial neighbors for possessing by birth the two most eminent
prose-writers of the country--Irving and Cooper; and by adoption, two
of the leading poets--Bryant and Halleck. Nor are the good people of
the 'Empire State' slow to resent these exhibitions of small jealousy;
but, on the contrary, as the way of the world is, they are apt to
retort by greater absurdities. So shy are they of appearing to be
guided by the dicta of their eastern friends, that to this day there
is scarcely man or woman on Manhattan Island who will confess a
liking for Tennyson, Mrs. Barrett Browning, or Robert Browning, simply
because these poets were taken up and patronized (metaphorically
speaking, of course,) by the 'Mutual Admiration Society' of Boston.

"The immediate influences of this _camaraderie_ are highly flattering