The only North American novelist who has gained a European reputation is Fenimore Cooper, and he succeeded in doing so by removing the scene of the events he described from the settled portion of the country to the border land between civilized life and that of the savage, the theatre of the war for the possession of the soil waged against each other, by the native tribes and the Saxon race.
It was in this manner that our young poet Echevarria succeeded in attracting the attention of the literary world of Spain by his poem entitled "The Captive." The subjects of "Dido and Argea" which his predecessors the Varelas had treated with classic art and poetic fire, but without success and ineffectively, because they added nothing to the stock of European ideas, were abandoned by this Argentine bard, who turned his eyes to the desert. In its immeasurable and boundless spaces, in its wastes traversed by wandering savages, in the distant belt of flame which the traveller sees approaching when a fire has broken out upon the plains, he found the inspiration derived by the imagination from the sight of such natural scenery as is solemn, imposing, unusual, and mysterious; and from this the echo of his verses resounded, and was applauded even in the Spanish Peninsula.
A fact which explains many of the social phenomena of nations deserves a passing notice. The natural peculiarities of any region give rise to customs and practices of a corresponding peculiarity, so that where the same circumstances reappear, we find the same means of controlling them invented by different nations.
