Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Henry Walcott Boynton, Reader's History of American Literature

---

[268] so may the other have borne upon his brow the trace of Martha Corey's grief.

---

A real obstacle.

No, it does not seem that the obstacle to a new birth of literature and art in America lies in blind adherence to the Puritan tradition, but rather in the timid and faithless spirit that lurks in the circles of culture, and still holds something of literary and academic leadership in the homes of the Puritans. What are the ghosts of a myriad Blue Laws compared with the transplanted cynicism of one Saturday Review? How can any noble literature germinate where young men are constantly told by some of our professors that there is no such thing as originality, and that nothing remains for us in this effete epoch of history but the mere re-combining of thoughts which sprang first from braver brains? It is melancholy to see young men come forth from college walls with less enthusiasm than they carried in; trained in a spirit which is in this respect worse than English toryism, -that it does not even retain a hearty faith in the past. It is better that a man should have eyes in the back of his head than that he should be taught to sneer at even a retrospective