The
country is justly proud of him, as one whose name is a household word
in many lands,--who has done more, perhaps, than any other of her
living writers, with the exception of Washington Irving, to obtain for
a still youthful literature the regard and attention of the world,--who
has helped to accomplish the prediction of Horace Walpole, that there
would one day be "a Thucydides at Boston and a Xenophon at New York"; a
prediction which seemed so fanciful, at the time it was made, (less
than two years before the declaration of Independence,) that the
prophet was fain to link its fulfilment with the contemporaneous visit
of a South American traveller to the deserted ruins of London.[4] His
writings have won favor with hosts of readers, and they have received
the homage of learned and profound inquirers, like Humboldt and Guizot.
They have merits that are recognizable at a glance, and they have also
merits that will bear the closest examination. They occupy a field in
which they have no compeers. They are the products of a fertile soil
and of laborious cultivation. The mere literary critic, accustomed to
dwell with even more attention on the form than on the substance of a
work, commends above all the admirable skill shown in the selection and
grouping of the incidents, the facile hand with which an obscure and
entangled theme is divested of its embarrassments, the frequent
brilliancy and picturesqueness of the narrative, the judicious mixture
of anecdote and reflection, and the harmony and clearness of the style.
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