ENTERED, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1864, by D. APPLETON AND COMPANY, In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United States for the Southern District of New York. T A THOUGHTFUL survey of our American Poetry not only suggests, at the outset, the very brief period covered by the history of our literature; but, at the same time, it discloses and affirms both the individuality and nationality of our literature :-that, as American thinking and living have very little to do with the Old World, so, our literature, in its development, is not an off-shoot of any European stock, nor an exotic acclimated and wonted to our young life; but is, itself, a logical and legitimate outgrowth of that life, owing little to the Old World and its literature beyond its well-ripened and many-blooded language. Historically, our lineage touches the Mother Country at a time of intellectual degeneracy. |