The Arkansas banner., 1844-03-27


 This table fails to include the law and medi- cal publications. It fails also to regard the periodical works which form and have al- ways formed-and, we may add, will always form-so large portion of American Litera- ttlre;* but with all these deficiencies, 1t can not fail to be remarked with pride and won der, that the domestic is still far superior to the foreign supply, showing conclusively the fact that the intellectual resources of the na- ton are fully adequate to its wants; and that, with no more encouragement than IS required to put the native on a simple footing of equa- lity, in the market, with the foreign, author, the latter must have been nearly or wholly superseded. Thus we see, that, in almost every department ofletters, the works of origi- nal American production-Educaton, Theol- ogy, History, Biography, Jurisprudence, &c- exceed the reprints of foreign in proportion, n6 less than Three to one; the one exception to the fact, to which we have drawn the at tention of the reader by an asterisk (*)-that of novels and tales, or, as we may say, purely original and inventive Literature-being one to which we may be permitted in this place to devote few moments of consideration. Lest any hastv judgment may conceive the relative deficiency in this class of writings, in the American side of our table, to result from any want of those creative and imaginative resources which are chiefly requisite to the production of all works of fiction,-we may suggest some of the peculiar disadvantages and difficulties under which this particular branch of native authorship exists. This
 *The vast extent of our territory, and the sparse ness of our population, will always tend to the large employment of periodicals, particularly monthly and weekly publications for the diffusion among the more remote settlements of the amount of literary social and political knowledge which they require This condition of the country leads to the pubica- ton of large proportion and greater variety oi these works, than, we suspect, is the case in any country, however extensive, of Europe. Not only do most of the States possess their literary perodi calls, whether quarterly, monthly or weekly, but in some of these States they are numerous, oi all sizes and degrees of power. In addition to these, there are numerous literary newspapers (so called) which furnish that strange melGnge-a sort of mental oa- podrida-with which our English brethren seem to be particularly disqueted. The taste of these pub lications is certainly none of the best-wanting in congruity, and iumbling together, in mass, the most rreconcilable objects of study and reflection But they are addressed to a poor people, who have just sufficient appreciation oi Literature to demand the commodity, and who have not yet reached thai
 
 quality in preference to quantity. In Europe, the same class of persons want bread rather than tera tare; and, ar the fact is not uniavorable to the American Of our periodicals, if they cannot claim to be fully equal to the abest of the foreign, they least make such approach to it as to render some of their articles, Gas We have seen,) acceptable as original, to the pages of London and cotemporaneou reviews. Our monthly periodicals we regard as quite eqnal and, in respects, superior to the average ot British monthlies. That they are more honest as more indpendent of book publishers and politca parties, is beyond either doubt question. Nor dc they emanate from single publishing section, bu appear in almost every quarter of our widely ex tended country "a circumstance which, besides the advantages which it affords Of easy diffusion, tends also to the greater originality and independence O i their tone, modes of thinking and expression. IT addition to these, similarly Scattered over our i'm mense territory, are l6i0 newspapers, daily. tri weekly or weekly, all of which, in greater or les, degree, furnish their readers with a certain amount of original and selected varieties, and are, to cer tain extent, injurious to the regular business of proiessienel literature.