scenes and characters than those of their own immediate neighborhoods.

The statistics of the work of the foremost American writers could easily
be shown to be much more strongly imbued with the specific flavor of their
environment. Benjamin Franklin, though he was an author before the United
States existed, was American to the marrow. The "Leather-Stocking Tales"
of Cooper are the American epic. Irving's "Knickerbocker" and his
"Woolfert's Roost" will long outlast his other productions. Poe's most
popular tale, "The Gold-Bug," is American in its scene, and so is "The
Mystery of Marie Roget," in spite of its French nomenclature; and all that
he wrote is strongly tinged with the native hue of his strange genius.
Longfellow's "Evangeline" and "Hiawatha" and "Miles Standish," and such
poems as "The Skeleton in Armor" and "The Building of the Ship," crowd out
of sight his graceful translations and adaptations. Emerson is the
veritable American eagle of our literature, so that to be Emersonian is to
be American. Whittier and Holmes have never looked beyond their native
boundaries, and Hawthorne has brought the stern gloom of the Puritan
period and the uneasy theorizings of the present day into harmony with the
universal and permanent elements of human nature. There was certainly
nothing European visible in the crude but vigorous stories of Theodore
Winthrop; and Bret Harte, the most brilliant figure among our later men,
is not only American, but Californian,--as is, likewise, the Poet of the
Sierras. It is not necessary to go any further. Mr. Henry James, having
enjoyed early and singular opportunities of studying the effects of the
recent annual influx of Americans, cultured and otherwise, into England
and the Continent, has very sensibly and effectively, and with exquisite
grace of style and pleasantness of thought, made the phenomenon the theme
of a remarkable series of stories. Hereupon the cry of an "International
School" has been raised, and critics profess to be seriously alarmed lest
we should ignore the signal advantages for _mise-en-scene_ presented by