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patriotic ambition so decidedly strong among the highly cultivated representatives of English civilized life has too often deprived them of that degree of good will and impartiality which certainly is due to the serions exertions of a young and rising nation. And how could justice and objective judgment be expected from Europeans who stand even at a greater distance from America, if the Britons themselves disturbed at the very source the stream of knowledge that flowed onwards to us?

For a long time England looked down with haughty contempt and sneering upon the servile Transatlantic imitators. But was it not unjust and contrary to all experience in history to expect the undisturbed development of a vigorous and independent literature from a young people that had just seperated from the old stock, to form a new commonwealth, struggling all the while with all its powers against natural difficulties and human adversaries? In consequence of this uncertainty and want of consolidation the inhabitants of the American colonies were compelled to be satisfied chiefly with the patterns and master-pieces given by the mother-country, which they occasionelly, awkwardly and uncritically enough, tried to imitate. Thus it happened that the only part of literature deserving any particular mention were during many years the luxuriantly rising theological controversies, which certainly were anything but edifying to the European reader. And how was it possible, for instance, that a national epic should appear at a time when the spirit of the nation had scarcely been awakened and when there existed no political concentration? How was it possible, for the same reason, that a national drama should be formed? And what impediments stood in the way of lyrical poetry, when the difficulties of providing for the necessities of life absorbed nearly all the faculties of the inhabitants! All this, however, was soon materially altered and not very long after the war of Independence a rapid and unexpected progress, both mental and material, ensued, which stands alone in the history of Mankind and was followed by an adequate advance in literature.

It is now an acknowledged fact that America surpasses the majority of European countries in the spread of free education and that a real taste for reading, especially of periodicals of all kinds and of scientific works is much more widely diffused than in the old World. Besides a great number of flourishing schools, universities have sprung up, the excellence of one of which, Harvard College, is acknowledged throughout Europe, and there is now hardly one part of the literary horizon without some shining meteor.

It is not our task to treat here either of the past periods of American literature or of its present literary activity in general, and therefore, before speaking of the German influence on American poetry we briefly say that Edwards, the theologian, Benjamin Franklin, Dr. Channing, Emerson, the critic, Washington Irving, Cooper, Prescott and Bancroft, the historians, and Bryant and Longfellow among the poets, are such literary geniuses as would rank with our noblest minds of Europe. We now proceed to our real theme.

The literature of America has imbibed as well as the English very much of the German element, and that partly through the mediumship of the mother-country, partly through the thousands of Germans themselves that have spread throughaut the wide dominions of the United States. It is true that the German influence, in spite of the immense tide of emigration has not been able as yet to obtain any political importance compared with the more powerful Anglo-Saxon party, but here as everywhere else it seems the vocation of the German to work silently, and without openly interfering with the course of the affairs of the World and to find a successful mission.

Among the American poets we find one, who owes to the genius of our nation such exquisite