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III
The shadow of Europe
when the first ocean steamers crossed the
Atlantic, about 1838,
Willis predicted that they would only make American literature more provincial, by bringing
Europe so much nearer than before.
Yet
Emerson showed that there was an influence at work more potent than steamers, and the colonial spirit in our literature began to diminish from his time.
In the days of those first ocean voyages, the favorite literary journal of cultivated
Americans was the New York Albion, which was conducted expressly for English residents on this continent; and it was considered a piece of American audacity when
Horace Greeley called
Margaret Fuller to New York, that the Tribune might give to our literature an organ of its own. Later, on the establishment of
Putnam's Magazine, in 1853, I remember that one of the most enlightened New York journalists predicted to me the absolute failure of the whole enterprise.
‘Either an ’