THE predominant fact in the history of the nineteenth century thus far-and there is slight probability of the fact becoming a fiction-is unquestionably the importance and elevation of the mass-the People, by distinction-the tiers-état of France, the Commons of England. This fact is no less encouraging than novel. Before the era of the French Revolution and our own antecedent to it, the People as such, were considered with indifference, if not contempt. They had been regarded much in the same light as the Helots of Sparta, or the servile castes of Russia and Poland. Their rights were never mooted, for they had never been declared; they were supposed to exist only through the sufferance of the superior nobility and the will of the sovereign, and their lot was to toil, to suffer, and to pay taxes. This com prised their history, which might have been written in a very concise epitome. But modern science and modern philosophy and, let us add, the silent influence of the true republican spirit of the Gospel-gave rise to a new state of things. Respect for the claims of human nature in the abstract, and of the individual in the concrete, begat sympathy for the former and reverence for the latter. Man, as such, was admitted by his brother, as a brother, and his name and title allowed to rank higher (as our admirable Channing wrote) than King or President. Humanity, in her naked magnificence, asserted her inherent privileges, which were as openly acknowledged. Rank, riches, and royal power, lost their hold on the popular imagination, and Europe saw, at that late date, the sovereign of an ancient house treated as an usurper and punished more ignominiously than even a usurper merited. Force of character, moral energy, intellectual resources-these became wealth in that trying hour, and the weak, the bigoted and wavering, naturally fell the necessary victims of the conqueror. Yet as evil generally precedes good, so out of this chaos of tumult and crime emerged a benefit, the bow of promise, as from an atmosphere of storms and physical convulsion. This

benefit we have already mentioned, and it is this peculiar feature in the character of the age, the present position and claims of the people, that has given birth to a new and striking application of poetry to life, which may be expressed in the phrase, Poetry for the People.

Poetry always conveys the truest and most striking features in the countenance of the time. The most accurate painters of men cannot fail so to portray their master passions, reacting upon contemporary opinions and current modes of thought and action, but that he must needs also depict the contemporary influences by which these, too, are moulded; and these influences combine what we popularly describe as the Spirit of the Age. The patriarchal period, the splendid hierarchies of the ancient and modern world, chivalry, classic heroism, popular mythology, national traditions, legendary superstitions, the maxims even of the court and the mart, all point to peculiar tendencies in the times wherein they flourished. The present epoch of literature and popular sentiment must have its mouth-piece also, and this it finds in Poetry for the People.

At this phrase, let not your fine scholar nor your fastidious gentleman smile; the people have their political theories and representations; they have their magazines, encyclopedias, lectures and science; they have their theologians and newspapers, and the active brain of the wise legislator. Universal in its native region, Poetry is restricted within the boundaries of no caste or condition of society, but ranges at will through every department of life, and every grade of rank, till (as at present) it finds its sweet home in the breast of the simple-hearted but sincere, the honest though humble, and the true lovers of the divine art, among the popular body. For them, too, the modern historian ransacks the archives of the past to ascertain the startingpoint of modern liberty. For them, he turns over the fascinating pages of cowled friars, or the lively chronicles of the courtly historiographers, illuminated

no less by the pictures of genius than the colors of the artist, to be enabled to put his finger on precedents of priceless value and concessions of royal bounty, or to paint a Saxon freedman, a Norman knight, a German count, a Romish cardinal, a French king, a Spanish emperor; to note the democracy of the Romish Church, the republican character of commercial cities, the origin of parliaments and congresses, and to infer, from historical deductions, the dawnings of an intellectual and a religious revolution long prior to the appearance of Luther.

The writer of prose fiction (the most popular form of contemporary literature) addresses himself to the people. Let him address scholars, like Lamb or Landor, and he is read by few else, even if he possess a degree of mental power that bursts beyond any confined limits of conventionalism or taste. Let him, however, write of the past with reverential retrospection, or of the future with gladness and joyful hope; let him present a faithful mirror of the present time, in his pages, and he is read by all. The substance of his work may happen to be grounded on history or real life, on land or sea, in the walks of busy, or the picturesque variety of common life; impressed with this spirit, it must be popular, for it is, in effect, a history of the people.

Still further to exemplify this universally prevalent popular tendency in all of our literature, at the present day, take the most abstract and (as vulgarly conceived) the least entertaining department of it, speculative philosophy, ethical or metaphysical. Here we find the appetite as keen as in the regions of fiction. Not only in lecture-rooms and in the pulpit, but also in books and even periodicals. Our leading magazines contain essays on these subjects, that would have been seen, in the last age, nowhere but in the volumes of professed writers on philosophy, and those too of the first class. We will not be so invidious as to attempt a comparison in the case of other periodicals, though we might point to papers in this Journal, to which no parallel can be offered in the monthly critical peri

odicals of the last century. An inquisitive tone of critical speculation is to be seen in the most ephemeral productions of the day, and we need no other test of the growing intelligence of the people than the character of newspaper literature, the excellence of which must continue to advance in proportion to the demand for it.-But it is in poetry especially that we must look for the purest expression of the popular feeling. It is in poetry that (anti-poetical as we are thought to be) the national spirit is most faithfully evolved. Poetry, forsaking the knight in his bower, the baron in his castle, has taken up her abode, "for better for worse," with the artificer and the husbandman, not restricting herself, to be sure, to such society, but including them in her wide province, and watching over them with affectionate care. The poor man, upright, sincere, earnest, with deep enthusiasm and vigorous self-reliance, he is the hero of our time. The old fashioned heroes of war and slaughter, one foot on land and one on sea, we are apt to consider with pity for their Quixotism and contempt for their absurd pretensions, at the same time that we are captivated by their brilliant accomplishments, and charmed by their humanity and knightly grace. The struggle of life, the war with circumstances, that is the great battle to be fought, and one in which different qualities are required from those that bear away the palm in the warfare of blood and the contest for dominion and power. For hypocritical professions of gallantry, the modern poet sings the real happiness of domestic love. The wife has supplanted the mistress, as a social tie; and marriage has put an end to the frivolities of idle gallantry, in the so called age of chivalry. We say so called, because we conceive true chivalry repudiates most of the current vices which were cloaked beneath the broad mantle of its name; and because we apprehend a true and accomplished knight to be the ideal of glorious manhood, and far beyond what that character was supposed to represent in the persons of the Templar and the knights of the Hospital. Tournaments

are long gone by, the duel is fast becoming extinct, and the contest of rivalry is, now-a-days, limited to a contest of worth and spirit, not a trial of martial skill or physical prowess. A single illustration will express our meaning, and distinctly mark the characteristics of the past and the present; then they had the trial by battle, now we have the trial by jury.

The necessity and dignity of labor, of endurance; the native nobility of an honest and a brave heart; the futility of all conventional distinctions of rank and wealth, when opposed to the innate claims of genius and virtue; the brotherhood and equality of men,-not necessarily a social uniformity, independent of character and education, but the equality of civil rights and political advantages, for even actual blood-brethren are not necessarily equals, in aught beside the accident of their birth; the cultivation of manly liberality, of charity, in all its forms; of generosity, in not trenching upon the exactions of intelligent prudence and clear justice; an honorable poverty and a contented spirit, the richest of gifts-these are the favorite topics of the Poet of the People. To attain this title, the poet must be master of his age, its wants and privileges, the traits of his countrymen and the general aspect of society. Possessed of this knowledge, with a full heart, a firm hand, the "vision and the faculty divine," the rich resources of his art, and the aims and aspirations of humanity for his theme, what lessons can the poet not read the world-in what stirring tones will he not plead for his fellow men! How indignantly may he not repel the scorn cast upon them, how vehemently upbraid their oppressors, how manfully exhort and how wisely persuade! Of all men he is their dearest friend and strongest champion. No statesman, no patron, no general can effect a tithe of what he may accomplish; for give a man heart and true counsel and warm sympathy, and you give him what kings have never been able to purchase or capitalists to monopolize.

The great Poet of the People, the world-renowned bard, the Homer of the mass, has not yet appeared, but we have some deserving approaches to that model. He who might, if he chose, have gained that name, Wordsworth, has preferred to rest content

with the applause of sages and scholars, adopting the worldly schemes of churchmen and the defenders of the sacred right of kings. Two countries have produced great poets, truly Poets for the People, of their own soil, but whose peculiar dialects confine their generous sentiments almost entirely within their own boundaries-Burns and Schiller. The former, both in point of date and degree of genius, and the employment of it for the great end we are speaking of, has the best right to be placed at the head of a list of Poets for the People. Himself a peasant, sympathizing strongly with the (so called) inferior class of his countrymen; with the genius, besides, of a great and true poet, (not always convertible terms), and with the faithful heart of a noble human being; his mission it was to sing the native worth of man and the patent of nobility, to be derived solely from inherent virtue and a bounteous Providence.

Patriotism, Love, and Humanity, were the three darling graces of the poetic creed of Robert Burns, and the greatest of these was and is, humanity. His classic stanzas are engraven on the hearts of all, and a discussion of the admirable poetry he has left behind him, and the hardly less admirable character of their author, bating venial defects neither original nor voluntary, is, at present, quite unnecessary.

Schiller was more of the scholar and philosopher, and less of the man and the patriot, than Burns; but his appeals are as sincere, if not so direct, and where they are less passionate, they come recommended by the force of a strong intellect and the weight of an uncorruptible character. With less fire, he has more solemn earnestness; and he compensates for the defects of wit and humor, by a manly sensibility and a deep enthusiasm, that mark the great poet of the Germans.

It was during the present century, however, that the claims of the people, and the demands for a new species of poetry, expressly designed to represent their condition and utter their aspirations, and at the same time to encourage and sustain their endeavors, have become established. In France and Germany there are poets now penning stanzas, addressed to the national heart of both countries, and that take their rise from the same source. But it