We have been under
the necessity of telling some unpleasant truths about American
literature from time to time, and it is with hearty pleasure that we are
now able to own that the Britishers have been for the present utterly
and apparently hopelessly beaten by a Yankee in one important department
of poetry. In the United States, social and political evils have a
breadth and tangibility which are not at present to be found in the
condition of any other civilized country. The "peculiar domestic
institution," the fillibustering tendencies of the nation, the
charlatanism which is the price of political power, are butts for the
shafts of the satirist, which European poets may well envy Mr. Lowell.
We do not pretend to affirm that the evils of European society may not
be as great in their own way as those which affect the credit of the
United States, with the exception, of course, of slavery, which makes
American freedom deservedly the laughing-stock of the world; but what we
do say is, that the evils in point have a boldness and simplicity which
our more sophisticated follies have not, and that a hundred years hence
Mr. Lowell's Yankee satires will be perfectly intelligible to every
one.
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