an art is more lonely in America than even the painter or the sculptor; and he has no Italy for a refuge. His practical life may be developed by the activity around him; his aims may be ennobled by the great ideas of his nation; and so far all is well. It is only his artistic inspiration that lies dormant, and his power of execution that misses its full training. A man of healthy nature can, indeed, find a certain tonic in this cool atmosphere; it is only a question whether more perfect works of art may not one day be produced, amid more genial surroundings. Firm must be the will, patient the heart, passionate the aspiration, to secure the fulfilment of some high and lonely purpose, when revery spreads always its beds of roses on the one side, and practical work summons to its treadmill on the other.
Whatever may have been the case in De Tocqueville’s day,—and his report of us, thirty-five years old, seems to be almost the latest intelligence that has reached Europe, — there is certainly now no danger that public life will not have sufficient attractions for cultivated Americans. There is more danger that it will absorb them too much. Why should we insist, like Nick Bottom the weaver, on playing all the parts? The proper paths of the statesman and the artist may often touch, but will rarely coincide. It is not that politics are so unworthy, but that no one man can do everything. There are a thousand rough-hewn brains which can well perform the plain work which American statesmanship now demands, without calling on the artist to cut blocks with his razor. His shrinking is not cowardice; this relief from glaring publicity is the natural condition under which works of art mature. The crystal forms by its own laws, and the granite by its own. Yet moments constantly occur to the American student, when he has to bind himself to the mast, like Farragut, to resist the dazzling temptations of paths alien to his own. What is art, what is beauty, (he is tempted to say.) beside the magnificent utilities of American life, — the work of distributing over a continent the varied treasures already gained? Why hold against the current, when even one’s prospects of immediate usefulness lie with the current, and even conscience joins, half shrinking, to lure him from his plighted faith? In Europe art is a career, the greatest and most permanent career. History lies around us, a perpetual incentive, since art has everywhere survived all else, and proved itself alone immortal. But here art is still an alien, tolerated, protected, respected even, but without a vote.
What we thus miss in literary culture may be best explained by showing the result of the universal political culture which we possess. It is often noticed that, while the leaders of public affairs in America are usually what are called self-made men, this is not the case with our literary leaders. Among first-class American writers, culture is usually in the second generation; they have usually “tumbled about in a library,” as Holmes says, in childhood; at all events, they are usually college-bred men. It has been remarked, for instance, that our eight foremost historians — assuming that this list comprises Prescott, Motley, Bancroft, Hildreth, Sparks, Ticknor, Palfrey, Parkman — were all college graduates, and indeed graduated at a single college. The choice of names may be open to question, but the general fact is undoubted.
Now if it be true that there are fewer among us who rise from the ranks in literature than in politics, it seems not merely to indicate that literature, as being a finer product than statesmanship, implies more elaborate training; but also that our institutions guarantee such training in the one case, and not in the other. Every American boy imbibes political knowledge through the pores of his skin; every newspaper, every caucus, contributes to his instruction; and he is expected to have mature convictions before he is fourteen. In the height of the last Presidential contest, a little boy was hung out of a school window by his heels,
