Our people require a thoroughly-diffused
intellectual life, a religious aim, such as no people at large ever
possessed before; else they must sink till they become dregs, rather
than rise to become the cream of creation, which they are too apt to
flatter themselves with the fancy of being already.
The most interesting fiction we have ever read in this coarse, homely,
but genuine class, is one called "Metallek." It may be in circulation
in this city; but we bought it in a country nook, and from a pedlar;
and it seemed to belong to the country. Had we met with it in any
other way, it would probably have been to throw it aside again
directly, for the author does not know how to write English, and the
first chapters give no idea of his power of apprehending the poetry of
life. But happening to read on, we became fixed and charmed, and have
retained from its perusal the sweetest picture of life lived in this
land, ever afforded us, out of the pale of personal observation. That
such things are, private observation has made us sure; but the writers
of books rarely seem to have seen them; rarely to have walked alone in
an untrodden path long enough to hold commune with the spirit of the
scene.
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