Artists Are Always Young.

It Does Not Follow Because Many Books Are Written By Persons Born In America That There Exists An American Literature. Books Which Imitate Or Represent The Thoughts And Life Of Europe Do Not Constitute An American Literature. Before Such Can Exist, An Original Idea Must Animate This Nation And Fresh Currents Of Life Must Call Into Life Fresh Thoughts Along The Shore.

I Now Know All The People Worth Knowing In America, And I Find No Intellect Comparable To My Own.

Most Marvelous And Enviable Is That Fecundity Of Fancy Which Can Adorn Whatever It Touches, Which Can Invest Naked Fact And Dry Reasoning With Unlooked-for Beauty, Make Flowers Bloom Even On The Brow Of The Precipice, And, When Nothing Better Can Be Had, Can Turn The Very Substance Of Rock Itself Into Moss And Lichens. This Faculty Is Uncomparingly The Most Important For The Vivid And Attractive Exhibition Of Truth To The Minds Of Men.

This Is The Method Of Genius, To Ripen Fruit For The Crowd By Those Rays Of Whose Heat They Complain.

The Use Of Criticism, In Periodical Writing, Is To Sift, Not To Stamp A Work.