The only authors whom I acknowledge as American are the journalists.

They indeed are not great writers, but they speak the language of their countrymen, and make themselves heard by them.

Other authors are aliens; they are to the Americans what the imitators of the Greeks and Romans were to us at the revival of learning--an object of curiosity, not of general sympathy.

They amuse the mind, but they do not act upon the manners of the people.
I have already said that this state of things is very far from originating in democracy alone, and that the causes of it must be sought for in several peculiar circumstances independent of the democratic principle.

If the Americans, retaining the same laws and social condition, had had a different origin, and had been transported into another country, I do not question that they would have had a literature.