With the help of a hearty good will, even we may yet
tumble them down.
So firm, through a long endurance, has been the hold taken upon
the popular mind (at least so far as we may consider the popular
mind reflected in ephemeral letters) by the laudatory system which
we have deprecated, that what is, in its own essence, a vice, has
become endowed with the appearance, and met with the reception of a
virtue. Antiquity, as usual, has lent a certain degree of speciousness
even to the absurd. So continuously have we puffed, that we have, at
length, come to think puffing the duty, and plain speaking the
dereliction. What we began in gross error, we persist in through
habit. Having adopted, in the earlier days of our literature, the
untenable idea that this literature, as a whole, could be advanced
by an indiscriminate approbation bestowed on its every effort-
having adopted this idea, we say, without attention to the obvious
fact that praise of all was bitter although negative censure to the
few alone deserving, and that the only result of the system, in the
fostering way, would be the fostering of folly- we now continue our
vile practice through the supineness of custom, even while, in our
national self-conceit, we repudiate that necessity for patronage and
protection in which originated our conduct. In a word, the press
throughout the country has not been ashamed to make head against the
very few bold attempts at independence which have from time to time
been made in the face of the reigning order of things.
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