...>grassator vocabatur). Hence we were slower to assert ourselves in these finer arts, and when we did, it was with becoming modesty. It was thought daring in Emerson to sing of the bumblebee, or Lowell of the bobolink; as for Whittier, who had never even crossed the Atlantic, how could he sing at all? Especially in the realm of manners this humility has prevailed. During the last French Empire...