our country? It is not the East, with her hills and her valleys, with her
countless sails and the rocky ramparts of her shores. It is not the North,
with her thousand villages, and her harvest-home, with her frontiers of the
lake and the ocean. It is not the West, with her forrest-sea and her
inland-isles, with her luxuriant expanses, clothed in the verdant corn,
with her beautiful Ohio and her majestic Missouri. Nor is it yet the South,
opulent in the mimic snow of the cotton, in the rich plantations of the
rustling cane, and in the golden robes of the rice-field. What are these
but the sister families of one greater, better, holier family,--our
country?

I come not here to speak the dialect, or to give the counsels of the
patriot-statesman. But I come, a patriot scholar, to vindicate the rights
and to plead for the interests of American Literature. And be assured, that
we cannot, as patriot-scholars, think too highly of that country, or
sacrifice too much for her. And let us never forget, let us rather remember
with a religious awe,--that the union of these States is indispensable to
our literature, as it is to our national independence and civil
liberties,--to our prosperity, happiness, and improvement.

If, indeed, we desire to behold a literature like that which has sculptured
with so much energy of expression, which has painted so faithfully and
vividly, the crimes, the vices, the follies of ancient and modern
Europe;--if we desire that our land should furnish for the orator and the
novelist, for the painter and the poet, age after age, the wild and
romantic scenery of war; the glittering march of armies, and the revelry of
the camp; the shrieks and blasphemies, and all the horrors of the
battle-field; the desolation of the harvest, and the burning cottage; the
storm, the sack, and the ruin of cities;--if we desire to unchain the
furious passions of jealousy and selfishness, of hatred, revenge, and