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

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[275] sequel, explaining that the marriage was on the whole a rather unhappy one, and that luckily the pair had no children. Not that Scott did not appreciate with the keenest zest his own Jeannie Deanses and Dandie Dinmonts, but they must keep their place; it is not human nature they vindicate, but only peasant virtue. Such virtue vanishes from the foreground when the peasant is a possible president; and what takes its place is the study of individual manhood and womanhood.

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The alleged obstacle of science.

3. There remains the fear, even among cultivated lovers of literature, that American intellect is pledged too firmly to science. Literature represents a world outside of science, and one which competes with it, in due modesty, for the rule of the human mind. It is commonly claimed that the balance at present is inclining in favor of science and away from literature. It is, indeed, claimed for science that it is exclusively to rule the world. An accomplished German savant, long resident in this country, Baron Osten Sacken, once remarked that in his opinion poetry was already quite superseded, and music and art must soon follow. Literature, he thought,