"
_Poetry To-day in America_, &c., first appear'd (under the name of
"_The Poetry of the Future_,") in "The North American Review" for
February, 1881. _A Memorandum at a Venture_, in same periodical, some
time afterward.
Several of the convalescent out-door scenes and literary items,
preceding, originally appear'd in the fortnightly "Critic," of New
York.
DEMOCRATIC VISTAS
As the greatest lessons of Nature through the universe are perhaps the
lessons of variety and freedom, the same present the greatest lessons
also in New World politics and progress. If a man were ask'd, for
instance, the distinctive points contrasting modern European and
American political and other life with the old Asiatic cultus, as
lingering-bequeath'd yet in China and Turkey, he might find the amount
of them in John Stuart Mill's profound essay on Liberty in the future,
where he demands two main constituents, or sub-strata, for a truly
grand nationality--1st, a large variety of character--and 2d, full
play for human nature to expand itself in numberless and even
conflicting directions--(seems to be for general humanity much like
the influences that make up, in their limitless field, that perennial
health-action of the air we call the weather--an infinite number
of currents and forces, and contributions, and temperatures, and
cross-purposes, whose ceaseless play of counterpart upon counterpart
brings constant restoration and vitality.) With this thought--and not
for itself alone, but all it necessitates, and draws after it--let me
begin my speculations.
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