the morale of Government—of the Philosophies of Rule and Misrule—of the absolute incompatibility of Freedom and Ignorance—Tyranny in the few and Virtue in the many. Let us consider it as something akin to direct evidence that a people is not a mob, nor a mob a people, nor a mob's idol the idol of a people—that in a nation's self is the only security for a nation—and that it is absolutely necessary to model upon the character of the governed, the machinery, whether simple or complex, of the governmental legislation.
an omen of better days for southern literature
[Georgia Scenes, by Judge Augustus Baldwin Longstreet, reviewed in The Southern Literary Messenger, March, 1836. The book has proved a sort of classic of provincial literature. Poe closes his review of about ten pages by saying: "Altogether this very humorous and very clever book forms an era in our reading. It has reached us per mail, and without a cover. We will have it bound forthwith, and give it a niche in our library as a sure omen of better days for the literature of the South."]
This book has reached us anonymously—not to say anomalously—yet it is most heartily welcome. The author, whoever he is, is a clever fellow, imbued with a spirit of the truest humor, and endowed, moreover, with an exquisitely discriminative and penetrating understanding of character in general, and of Southern character in particular. And we do not mean to speak of human character exclusively. To be sure, our Georgian is au fait here too—he is learned in all things appertaining to the biped without feathers. In re-
