Nay more, much as every right mind abhors and detests such things, I
would sooner behold our literature holding in one hand the murderous
Bowie knife, and in the other the pistol of the duellist, than to see
her laden with the foul secrets of a London hell, or the gaming-houses
of Paris. * * * If we must meet with vice in our literature, let it be
the growth of our own soil; for I think our own rascality has yet the
healthier aspect."
"Third. A new era in the fine arts, from which future ages shall derive
their models and their inspirations, as we do from Greece and Italy. *
* * So far as scenery is concerned in the moulding of character, we may
safely expect that a country where vastness and beauty are so
wonderfully blended will stamp upon the national soul its own magestic
and glorious image. It must be so. The mind will expand itself to the
measure of things about it. Deep in the wide American soul there shall
be Lake Superiors, inland oceans of thought; and the streams of her
eloquence shall be like the sweep of the Mississippi in his strength.
The rugged strength of the New England hills, the luxuriance of the
sunny South, the measureless expanse of the prairie, the broad flow of
our rivers, the dashing of our cataracts, the huge battlements of the
everlasting mountains,--these are _American_.
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