pilots in their pilot-houses, or pass an hour in Wall Street, or the Gold Exchange, I realize (if we must admit such partialisms) that not Nature alone is great in her fields of freedom and the open air, in her storms, the shows of night and day, the mountains, forests, seas—but in the artificial, the work of man, too, is equally great-in this profusion of teeming humanity in these ingenuities, streets, goods, houses, ships-these hurrying, feverish, electric crowds of men, their complicated business genius (not least among the geniuses), and all this mighty, many-threaded wealth and industry concentrated here.

'But sternly discarding, shutting our eyes to the glow and grandeur of the general superficial effect, coming down to what is of the only real importance, personalities, and examining minutely, we question, we ask-Are there, indeed, men here worthy the name? Are there athletes? Are there perfect women to match the generous material luxuriance? Is there a pervading atmosphere of beautiful manners? Are there crops of fine youths, and majestic old persons? Are their arts worthy freedom and a rich people? Is there a great moral and religious civilization-the only justification of a great material one? Confess that to severe eyes, using the moral microscope upon humanity, a sort of dry and flat Sahara appears, these cities, crowded with petty grotesques, malformations, phantoms, playing meaningless antics. Confess that everywhere, in shop, street, church, theatre, bar-room, official chair, are pervading flippancy and vulgarity, low cunning, infidelity-everywhere the youth puny, impudent, foppish, prematurely ripe-everywhere an abnormal libidinousness, unhealthy forms, male, female, painted, padded, dyed, chignon'd, muddy complexions, bad blood, the capacity for good motherhood deceasing or deceased, shallow notions of beauty, with a range of manners, or rather lack of manners (considering the advantages enjoy'd,) probably the meanest to be seen in the world.'

Turning to the literature of America, any breath recuperative of sane and heroic life' to breathe into these lamentable conditions, Whitman nowhere finds. That which he observes to be everywhere lacking is native or original power. Workers in a certain sort of literature he sees in abundance; but 'touched by the national test, or tried by the standards of democratic personality, they wither,' he affirms, to ashes.' 'I have not seen,' he remarks, a single writer, artist, lecturer, or what not, that has confronted the voiceless, but ever erect and active, pervading, underlying will and typic aspiration of the land, in a spirit kindred to itself." And, again, considered with reference to purposes of patriotism, health, and noble personality, religion, and the democratic adjustments, all these swarms of

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poems, literary magazines, dramatic plays, resultant so far from American intellect, and the formation of our best ideas, are useless and a mockery. They strengthen and nourish no one, express nothing characteristic, give decision and purpose to no one, and suffice only the lowest level of vacant minds.' Morally and artistically, he affirms, America has as yet originated nothing. We see the sons and daughters of the New World,' he observes, 'ignorant of its genius, not yet inaugurating the native, the universal, and the near, still importing the distant, the partial, and the dead. We see London, Paris, Italy—not original, superb, as where they belong, but secondhand here, where they do not belong. We see the shreds of Hebrews, Romans, Greeks; but where on her own soil do we see, in any faithful, highest, proud expression, America herself? I sometimes question whether she has a corner in her own house.' The central point of a nation, and that whence it is swayed and sways others, that which consolidates its various parts, shapes its character, and is the source at once of its inspiration. and influence, is, he believes, its national literature, and more especially its archetypal poems, but any such literature or poems America, he maintains, does not possess.

What then is the literature he desires, and to what extent has he realised this desire in his own works? The answer to the first of these questions the foregoing paragraphs have already suggested. Those who wish for a fuller and more explicit answer we must refer to Specimen Days and Collect, and more especially to the Democratic Vistas,' the Prefaces of 1855 and 1876, and to the essay on 'Poetry To-day in America-Shakespere-The Future,' where Whitman has unfolded his ideas at considerable length, and frequently with great eloquence and power. In the space now remaining at our disposal we shall point out one or two of the features of the literature he has produced, premising, however, that many of the questions it suggests we shall be obliged to pass over in silence.

Whitman's principal defect, as a poet, lies, as it seems to us, and as we have already said, in the direction of his artistic power. That which strikes the reader first on opening Leaves of Grass is the singular appearance of its pages. The ordinary

forms of versification Whitman has discarded, and adopted in their stead one which reminds us of Ossian, the writings of the Hebrew prophets, and the Vedas. By his thorough-paced admirers this is claimed as a sign of originality and strength. In our opinion it is a sign of weakness. A really great poet, one, that is, who is thoroughly perfect in all the branches of his art, is a master of expression. Whitman confessedly is not. After many trials he was forced, he tells us, to give up the attempt to express himself in the forms employed by the great poets of the principal literary nations, and to use the mode he has here adopted. There is running through his works, as Mr. Rossetti has very truly remarked, 'a very powerful and majestic rythmical sense,' and some of his poems are distinguished by a rythmical movement and a sustained melody which are admirable, as for example-' Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking,' 'O Captain, my Captain,' 'When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloomed.' These, however, are exceptions. Generally speaking, Whitman's lines are deficient in melody. Music of a certain kind they certainly have; but they want the measured cadence, the flowing melody, that exquisite rythmical charm which makes the words of the great poets take hold of the mind and live in the memory as the sweetest strain of a noble song. Nor can it be said that by adopting this peculiar mode of versification Whitman has secured any advantages superior to those afforded by the ordinary forms. That he has obtained a greater freedom may probably be admitted; but it is questionable whether it is not at the expense of effectiveness. To take but a single illustration. The thought of the following is admirable:

'There was a child went forth every day :

And the first object he look'd upon, that object he became ;
And that object became part of him for the day, or a certain part

of the day,

Or for many years, or stretching cycles of years.

The horizon's edge, the flying sea-crow, the fragrance of salt-marsh and shore-mud;

These became part of that child who went forth every day, and who now goes, and will always go forth every day.'

But compare with it Wordsworth's treatment of the same

theme:

'The stars of midnight shall be dear

To her and she shall lean her ear

In many a secret place,

Where rivulets dance their wayward round,

And beauty born of murmuring sound

Shall pass into her face. '

Whatever may be said in favour of Whitman's treatment, the advantages, so far as general effectiveness is concerned, are plainly with Wordsworth. The last two lines, besides having a fulness and suggestiveness about them quite equal to all that Whitman has said, or has attempted to say, have a music and a charm of expression on which the ear delights to dwell. Whitman's neglect of the art of expression is calculated, we think, to tell greatly against him. That he is capable of great things in this way we do not doubt. The poems referred to above, and others we could name, are a proof of the consummate work he might have done, had he been less impatient of restraint and more devoted to the perfecting of his skill in what is in reality one of the main sources of the poet's power. It must not be supposed, however, that Whitman is indifferent to the charms of art, or that, in his revolt against conventionalism, he has no rules or principles of his own. To those who imagine so we commend the perusal of what follows from the Preface of 1855:

'The art of art, the glory of expression and the sunshine of the light of letters, is simplicity. Nothing is better than simplicity-nothing can make up for excess, or for the lack of definiteness. To carry on the heave of impulse and pierce intellectual depths and give all subjects their articulations, are powers neither common nor very uncommon. But to speak in literature with the perfect rectitude and insousciance of the movements of animals, and the unimpeachableness of the sentiment of trees in the woods and grass by the road-side, is the flawless triumph of art. If you have look'd on him who has achiev'd it you have look'd on one of the masters of the artists of all nations and times. You shall not contemplate the flight of the grey gull over the bay, or the mettlesome action of the blood-horse, or the tall leaning of some flowers on their stalk, or the appearance of the

sun journeying through heaven, or the appearance of the moon afterward, with any more satisfaction than you shall contemplate him. The great poet has less a marked style, and is more the channel of thoughts and things without increase or diminution, and is the free channel of himself. He swears to his art, I will not be meddlesome, I will not have in my writing any elegance, or effect, or originality, to hang in the way between me and the rest like curtains. I will have nothing hang in the way, not the richest curtains. What I tell I tell for precisely for what it is. Let who may exalt or startle or fascinate or soothe, I will have purposes as health or heat or snow has, and be as regardless of observation. What I experience or portray shall go from my composition without a shred of my composition. You shall stand by my side and look in the mirror with me.'

In 'Children of Adam,' Whitman has sinned, we think, against good taste, common sense, and, in fact, as one of his critics has pointed out, against one of his own canons. True, he has probably violated no moral law, and has simply spoken of what nature permits. It is true also that according to Schiller, whatever nature permits, is permitted also to art. Still, there are some things on which men have agreed to be silent, and though we are by no means disposed to regard conventionality as the standard of morals, we cannot avoid the conviction that by speaking of the sexual relations in the way in which he has, Whitman has violated a natural instinct of the human mind. That he is an immoral writer, as some of his critics have maintained, we do not believe. His fault is one of manner rather than of spirit, and has its origin in an error of judgment rather than in a wrong bias of the mind. His deepest spirit and highest aim are, it seems to us, religious; and nothing, we imagine, but a strong sense of duty could have made him withstand so patiently and persistently the fierce storm of invective and abuse which some of his poems have aroused against him.

Whitman's faults, however, are greatly outweighed by his merits. First we may notice that in spirit he is intensely American. In the poets of other lands he is evidently well read; yet, he is an imitator of none. His manner, style, and spirit are entirely his own. Previous to him the poetry of America was, as has been justly observed, merely the