But we
can by no means afford to be oblivious of them.
The same of feudalism, its castles, courts, etiquettes, personalities.
However they, or the spirits of them hovering in the air, might scowl
and glower at such removes as current Kansas or Kentucky life and
forms, the latter may by no means repudiate or leave out the former.
Allowing all the evil that it did, we get, here and today, a balance
of good out of its reminiscence almost beyond price.
Am I content, then, that the general interior chyle of our republic
should be supplied and nourish'd by wholesale from foreign and
antagonistic sources such as these? Let me answer that question
briefly:
Years ago I thought Americans ought to strike out separate, and have
expressions of their own in highest literature. I think so still,
and more decidedly than ever. But those convictions are now strongly
temper'd by some additional points, (perhaps the results of advancing
age, or the reflection of invalidism.) I see that this world of the
West, as part of all, fuses inseparably with the East, and with all,
as time does--the ever new yet old, old human race--"the same
subject continued," as the novels of our grandfathers had it for
chapter-heads. If we are not to hospitably receive and complete the
inaugurations of the old civilizations, and change their small scale
to the largest, broadest scale, what on earth are we for?
The currents of practical business in America, the rude, coarse,
tussling facts of our lives, and all their daily experiences, need
just the precipitation and tincture of this entirely different fancy
world of lulling, contrasting, even feudalistic, anti-republican
poetry and romance.
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