QJ 
 
RALPH WALDO EMERSON. 
 
Cbautauqua IReaDins Circle ^Literature 
 
 INITIAL STUDIES 
 
 IN 
 
 AMERICAN LETTERS 
 
 HENRY A. BEERS 
 
 Professor of English Literature in Yale University. Author of " Life of N. 
 
 P. Willis" " The Thankless Muse" "A Suburban Pastoral 
 
 and Other Tales" 
 
 FLOOD AND VINCENT 
 
 MEADVILLE PENNA 
 
 150 FIFTH AVE. NEW YORK 
 
 1895 
 
The required books of the C. L. S. C. are recommended by a 
 Council of six. It must, however, be understood that 
 recommendation does not involve an approval by the 
 Council, or by any member of it, of every principle or 
 doctrine contained in the book recommended. 
 
 Copyright, 1895 
 By FLOOD & VINCENT 
 
 The Chautauqua- Century Press, Meadville, Pa., U. S.A. 
 Electrotyped, Printed, and Bound by Flood & Vincent. 
 
9/3 
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 THIS volume, originally published in 1887 as "An Out 
 line Sketch of American Literature," and reissued under 
 the present title in 1891, with an appendix consisting of 
 selections from representative American writers, is in 
 tended as a companion to the historical sketch of English 
 literature, entitled "From Chaucer to Tennyson," pub 
 lished in 1886 (revised edition 1890), for the Chautauqua 
 Circle. It has now (1895) been a second time revised and 
 supplied with marginal catch -words for convenient refer 
 ence. I have also added a few paragraphs to the final 
 chapter, to bring the subject up to date. In writing it 
 I have followed the same plan, aiming to present the sub 
 ject in a sort of continuous essay rather than in the form of 
 a "primer" or elementary manual. I have not under 
 taken to describe, or even to mention, every American 
 author or book of importance, but only those which 
 seemed to me of most significance. Nevertheless I believe 
 that the sketch contains enough detail to make it of some 
 use as a guide-book to our literature. Though meant to be 
 mainly a history of American belles-lettres, it makes some 
 mention of historical and political writings, but hardly 
 any of philosophical, scientific, and technical works. 
 
 A chronological rather than a topical order has been fol 
 lowed, although the fact that our best literature is of recent 
 growth has made it impossible to adhere as closely, to a 
 chronological plan as in the English sketch. In the read 
 ing courses appended to the different chapters I have 
 named a few of the most important authorities in American 
 
 ill 
 
 952439 
 
iv Preface. 
 
 literary history, such as Duyckinck, Tyler, Stedman, and 
 Richardson. My thanks are due to the authors and pub 
 lishers who have kindly allowed me the use of copyrighted 
 matter for the appendix ; especially to Mr. Park Godwin 
 and Messrs. D. Appleton & Co. for the passages from 
 Bryant ; to Messrs. A. C. Armstrong & Son for the selec 
 tions from Poe ; to the Rev. E. E. Hale and Messrs. 
 Roberts Brothers for the extract from "The Man Without a 
 Country "; to the late Walt Whitman for his two poems ; 
 and to Mr. Clemens and the American Publishing Co. for 
 the passage from u The Jumping Frog." 
 
 HENRY A. BEERS. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER. PAGE. 
 
 I. THE COLONIAL PERIOD, 1607-1765 7 
 
 II. THE REVOLUTIONARY PERIOD, 1765-1815 42 
 
 III. THE ERA OF NATIONAL EXPANSION, 1815-1837. 69 
 
 IV. THE CONCORD WRITERS, 1837-1861 95 
 
 V. THE CAMBRIDGE SCHOLARS, 1837-1861 125 
 
 VI. LITERATURE IN THE CITIES, 1837-1861. 156 
 
 VII. LITERATURE SINCE 1861 189 
 
 APPENDIX 225 
 
LIST OF PORTRAITS. 
 
 RALPH WALDO EMERSON Frontispiece. 
 
 Facing 
 page 
 
 CAPTAIN JOHN SMITH, BENJAMIN FRANKLIN, COT 
 TON MATHER, JONATHAN EDWARDS 7 
 
 ALEXANDER HAMILTON, THOMAS PAINE, THOMAS 
 
 JEFFERSON, CHARLES BROCKDEN BROWN ... 48 
 
 WASHINGTON IRVING, DANIEL WEBSTER, JAMES 
 FENIMORE COOPER, WILLIAM ELLERY CHAN- 
 NING 72 
 
 NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE, THEODORE PARKER, 
 
 HENRY DAVID THOREAU, MARGARET FULLER 104 
 
 HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW, JAMES RUS 
 SELL LOWELL, OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES, 
 JOHN LOTHROP MOTLEY 136 
 
 EDGAR ALLAN POE, JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIEB, 
 WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT, HARRIET BEECHER 
 STOWE 160 
 
 HENRY JAMES, JR., BRET HARTE, WILLIAM DEAN 
 
 HOWELLS, SAMUEL LANGHORNE CLEMENS . . 200 
 
CAPTAIN JOHN SMITH. 
 BENJAMIN FRANKLIN. 
 
 COTTON MATHER. 
 JONATHAN EDWARDS. 
 
INITIAL STUDIES IN AMERICAN 
 LETTERS. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 THE COLONIAL PERIOD 1607-1765. 
 
 THE writings of our colonial era have a much greater Importance of 
 importance as history than as literature. It would be un- J 
 fair to judge of the intellectual vigor of the English colo- 
 nists in America by the books that they wrote ; those 
 " stern men with empires in their brains " had more press 
 ing work to do than the making of books. The first set 
 tlers, indeed, were brought face to face with strange and 
 exciting conditions the sea, the wilderness, the Indians, 
 the flora and fauna of a new world, things which seem 
 stimulating to the imagination, and incidents and experi 
 ences which might have lent themselves easily to poetry 
 or romance. Of all these they wrote back to England re 
 ports which were faithful and sometimes vivid, but which, 
 upon the whole, hardly rise into the region of literature. 
 "New England," said Hawthorne, "was then in a state 
 incomparably more picturesque than at present." But to 
 a contemporary that old New England of the seventeenth 
 century doubtless seemed anything but picturesque ; filled, 
 on the contrary, with grim, hard, work-day realities. The 
 planters both of Virginia and Massachusetts were deci 
 mated by sickness and starvation, constantly threatened 
 by Indian wars, and troubled by quarrels among them 
 selves and fears of disturbance from England. The 
 
 7 
 
Initial Studies in American Letters. 
 
 provincial. 
 
 v\Tangles Jbetw?ee*u the royal governors and the house of 
 f burgesses in tnVcHct Dominion, and the theological squab- 
 ; ^l"fs;iti S"eV;Eriglan9. which fill our colonial records, are 
 petty and wearisoineto read of. At least, they would be 
 so did we not bear in mind to what imperial destinies 
 these conflicts were slowly educating the little communi 
 ties which had hardly yet secured a foothold on the edge of 
 the raw continent. 
 
 Even a century and a half after the Jamestown and 
 colony aiway? Piymouth settlements, when the American plantations had 
 grown strong and flourishing, and commerce was build 
 ing up large towns, and there were wealth and generous 
 living and fine society, the "good old colony days when 
 we lived under the king " had yielded little in the way of 
 literature that is of any permanent interest. There would 
 seem to be something in the relation of a colony to the 
 mother-country which dooms the thought and art of the 
 former to a helpless provincialism. Canada and Australia 
 are great provinces, wealthier and more populous than the 
 thirteen colonies at the time of their separation from Eng 
 land. They have cities whose inhabitants number hun 
 dreds of thousands, well-equipped universities, libraries, 
 cathedrals, costly public buildings, all the outward appli 
 ances of an advanced civilization ; and yet what have 
 Canada and Australia contributed to British literature ? 
 
 American literature had no infancy. That engaging 
 naivete and that heroic rudeness which give a charm to 
 the early popular tales and songs of Europe find, of course, 
 110 counterpart on our soil. Instead of emerging from the 
 twilight of the past, the first American writings were pro 
 duced under the garish noon of a modern and learned 
 age. Decrepitude rather than youthfulness is the mark of 
 a colonial literature. The poets, in particular, instead of 
 finding a challenge to their imagination in the new life 
 
 Canada and 
 Australia. 
 
 Absence of 
 folk-lore in 
 America. 
 
The Colonial Period. 9 
 
 about them, are apt to go on imitating the cast-off literary 
 fashions of the mother-country. America was settled by English writ- 
 Englishmen who were contemporary with the greatest rlr/w^thThT 
 names in English literature. Jamestown was planted in tiements. Set 
 1607, nine years before Shakespeare s death, and the hero 
 of that enterprise, Captain John Smith, may not improba 
 bly have been a personal acquaintance of the great drama 
 tist. " They have acted my fatal tragedies on the stage," 
 wrote Smith. Many circumstances in "The Tempest" 
 were doubtless suggested by the wreck of the Sea Ven 
 ture on " the still vext Bermoothes," as described by 
 William Strachey in his " True Repertory of the Wrack 
 and Redemption of Sir Thomas Gates," written at James 
 town, and published at London in 1610. Shakespeare s 
 contemporary, Michael Dray ton, the poet of the " Polyol- 
 bion," addressed a spirited valedictory ode to the three ton. 
 shiploads of " brave, heroic minds" who sailed from Lon 
 don in 1606 to colonize Virginia, an ode which ended with 
 the prophecy of a future American literature : 
 
 " And as there plenty grows 
 Of laurel everywhere 
 Apollo s sacred tree 
 You it may see 
 A poet s brows 
 To crown, that may sing there." 
 
 Another English poet, Samuel Daniel, the author of the Samuel Dan- 
 " Civil Wars," had also prophesied in a similar strain : 
 
 " And who in time knows whither we may vent 
 The treasure of our tongue to what strange shores . . . 
 
 "What Avorlds in the yet unformed Occident 
 May come refined with accents that are ours?" 
 
 It needed but a slight movement in the balances of fate, 
 and Walter Raleigh might have been reckoned among the 
 poets of America. He was one of the original promoters of 
 the Virginia colony, and he made voyages in person to 
 
10 
 
 Initial Studies in American Letters. 
 
 John Milton. 
 
 Few scholars 
 among the 
 Virginia 
 planters. 
 
 George Percy. 
 
 Newfoundland and Guiana. And more unlikely things 
 have happened than that when John Milton left 
 Cambridge in 1632 he should have been tempted to follow 
 Winthrop and the colonists of Massachusetts Bay, who 
 had sailed two years before. Sir Henry Vane, the younger, 
 who was afterward Milton s friend 
 
 14 Vane, young in years, but in sage counsel old " 
 came over in 1635, and was for a short time governor of 
 Massachusetts. These are idle speculations, and yet, when 
 we reflect that Oliver Cromwell was on the point of em 
 barking for America when he was prevented by the king s 
 officers, we may, for the nonce, " let our frail thoughts 
 dally with false surmise," and fancy by how narrow a 
 chance " Paradise Lost " missed being written in Boston. 
 But, as a rule, the members of the literary guild are not 
 quick to emigrate. They like the feeling of an old and 
 rich civilization about them, a state of society which 
 America has only begun to reach during the present cen 
 tury. 
 
 Virginia and New England, says Lowell, were the "two 
 great distributing centers of the English race." The men 
 who colonized the country between the capes of Vir 
 ginia were not drawn, to any large extent, from the literary 
 or bookish classes in the old country. Many of the first 
 settlers were gentlemen too many, Captain Smith thought, 
 for the good of the plantation. Some among these were 
 men of worth and spirit, u of good means and great parent 
 age." Such was, for example, George Percy, a younger 
 brother of the Earl of Northumberland, who was one of 
 the original adventurers, and the author of "A Discourse 
 of the Plantation of the Southern Colony of Virginia," 
 which contains a graphic narrative of the fever and fam 
 ine summer of 1607 at Jamestown. But many of these 
 gentlemen were idlers, "unruly gallants, packed thither 
 
The Colonial Period. 11 
 
 by their friends to escape ill destinies " ; dissipated younger 
 sons, soldiers of fortune, who came over after the gold 
 which was supposed to abound in the new country, and 
 who spent their time in playing bowls and drinking at the 
 tavern, as soon as there was any tavern. With these was 
 a sprinkling of mechanics and farmers, indented servants, 
 and the offscourings of the London streets, fruit of press- 
 gangs and jail deliveries, sent over to " work in the plan 
 tations." 
 
 Xor were the conditions of life afterward in Virginia 
 very favorable to literary growth. The planters lived iso- Virginia social 
 lated on great estates which had water-fronts on the rivers favoraS^to U " 
 that flow into the Chesapeake. There the tobacco, the llterature - 
 chief staple of the country, was loaded directly upon the 
 trading vessels that tied up to the long, narrow wharves of 
 the plantations. Surrounded by his slaves, and visited 
 occasionally by a distant neighbor, the Virginia country 
 gentleman lived a free and careless life. He was fond of 
 fox-hunting, horse-racing, and cock-fighting. There were no 
 large towns, and the planters met each other mainly on oc 
 casion of a county court or the assembling of the burgesses. 
 The courthouse was the nucleus of social and political life 
 in Virginia, as the town-meeting was in New England. In 
 such a state of society schools were necessarily few, and 
 popular education did not exist. Sir William Berkeley, 
 who was the royal governor of the colony from. 1641 to 
 1677, said in 1670, "I thank God there are no free schools 
 nor printing, arid I hope we shall not have these hundred schools and 
 years." In the matter of printing this pious wish was presses, 
 well-nigh realized. The first press set up in the colony, 
 about 1681, was soon suppressed, and found no successor 
 until the year 1729. From that date until some ten years 
 before the Revolution one printing-press answered the 
 needs of Virginia, and this was under official control. The 
 
Initial Studies in American Letters. 
 
 William and 
 Mary College, 
 
 Harvard Col 
 lege, 1636. 
 Yale College, 
 1701. 
 
 earliest newspaper in the colony was the Virginia Gazette, 
 established in 1736. 
 
 In the absence of schools the higher education naturally 
 languished. Some of the planters were taught at home by 
 tutors, and others went to England and entered the univer 
 sities. But these were few in number, and there was no 
 college in the colony until more than half a century after 
 the foundation of Harvard in the younger province of 
 Massachusetts. The college of William and Mary was 
 established at Williamsburg chiefly by the exertions of the 
 Rev. James Blair, a Scotch divine, who was sent by the 
 Bishop of London as " commissary " to the church in Vir 
 ginia. The college received its charter in 1693, and held its 
 first commencement in 1700. It is perhaps significant of 
 the difference between the Puritans of New England and 
 the so-called "Cavaliers" of Virginia, that while the 
 former founded and supported Harvard College in 1636, 
 and Yale in 1701, of their own motion and at their own 
 expense, William and Mary received its endowment from 
 the crown, being provided for in part by a deed of lands 
 and in part by a tax of a penny a pound on all tobacco ex 
 ported from the colony. In return for this royal grant the 
 college was to present yearly to the king two copies of 
 Latin verse. It is reported of the young Virginian gentle 
 men who resorted to the new college that they brought 
 their plantation manners with them, and were accustomed 
 to " keep race-horses at the college, and bet at the billiard 
 or other gaming-tables." William and Mary College did 
 a good work for the colony, and educated some of the great 
 Virginians of the revolutionary era, but it has never been a 
 large or flourishing institution, and has held no such rela 
 tion to the intellectual development of its section as Har 
 vard and Yale have held in the colonies of Massachusetts 
 and Connecticut. Even after the foundation of the Uni- 
 
The Colonial Period. 13 
 
 versity of Virginia, in which Jefferson took a conspicuous university of 
 
 part, southern youths were commonly sent to the North Raftered 1819. 
 
 for their education, and at the time of the outbreak of the 
 
 Civil War there was a large contingent of southern students 
 
 in several northern colleges, notably in Princeton and 
 
 Yale. 
 
 Naturally, the first books written in America were de 
 scriptions of the country and narratives of the vicissitudes 
 of the infant settlements, which were sent home to be Sn^iStSls 
 printed for the information of the English public and the f voyages, 
 encouragement of further immigration. Among books of 
 this kind produced in Virginia the earliest and most note 
 worthy were the writings of that famous soldier of fortune, 
 Captain John Smith. The first of these was his "True captain John 
 Relation," namely, u of such occurrences and accidents of Smith - 
 note as hath happened in Virginia since the first planting 
 of that colony," printed at London in 1608. Among 
 Smith s other books the most important is perhaps his 
 " General History of Virginia " (London, 1624), a compila 
 tion of various narratives by different hands, but passing 
 under his name. Smith was a man of a restless and daring 
 spirit, full of resource, impatient of contradiction, and of a 
 somewhat vainglorious nature, with an appetite for the 
 marvelous and a disposition to draw the long-bow. He 
 had seen service in many parts of the \vorld, and his won 
 derful adventures lost nothing in the telling. It was 
 alleged against him that the evidence of his prowess rested 
 almost entirely on his own testimony. His truthfulness 
 in essentials has not, perhaps, been successfully im 
 pugned, but his narratives have suffered by the embel 
 lishments with which he has colored them ; and, in partic 
 ular, the charming story of Pocahontas saving his life at 
 the risk of her own the one romance of early Virginian p oc anontas. 
 history has passed into the realm of legend. 
 
14 
 
 Initial Studies in American Letters. 
 
 Sandys 
 "Ovid." 
 
 Bacon s Re 
 bellion, 1676. 
 
 The "Westover 
 
 MSS. 
 
 Captain Smith s writings have small literary value apart 
 from the interest of the events which they describe and the 
 diverting but forcible personality which they unconsciously 
 display. They are the rough-hewn records of a busy man 
 of action, whose sword was mightier than his pen. As 
 Smith returned to England after two years in Virginia, 
 and did not permanently cast in his lot with the settle 
 ment of which he had been for a time the leading spirit, 
 he can hardly be claimed as an American author. No 
 more can Mr. George Sandys, who came to Virginia in the 
 train of Governor Wyat, in 1621, and completed his excel 
 lent metrical translation of Ovid on the banks of the 
 James, in the midst of the Indian massacre of 1622, 
 "limned," as he writes, u by that imperfect light which 
 was snatched from the hours of night and repose, having 
 wars and tumults to bring it to light instead of the muses." 
 Sandys went back to England for good probably as early as 
 1725, and can, therefore, no more be reckoned as the first 
 American poet, on the strength of his paraphrase of the 
 "Metamorphoses," than he can be reckoned the earliest 
 Yankee inventor because he "introduced the first water- 
 mill into America." 
 
 The literature of colonial Virginia, and of the southern 
 colonies which took their point of departure from Virginia, 
 is almost wholly of this historical and descriptive kind. A 
 great part of it is concerned with the internal affairs of the 
 province, such as "Bacon s Rebellion," in 1676, one of the 
 most striking episodes in our ante-revolutionary annals, 
 and of which there exist a number of narratives, some of 
 them anonymous, and only rescued from a manuscript 
 condition a hundred years after the event. Another part is 
 concerned with the explorations of new territory. Such 
 were the " Westover Manuscripts," left by Colonel William 
 Byrd, who was appointed in 1729 one of the commission- 
 
The Colonial Period. 15 
 
 ers to fix the boundary between Virginia and North Caro- colonel Wm. 
 lina, and gave an account of the survey in his " History of Byrd> 
 the Dividing Line," which was printed only in 1841. 
 Colonel Byrd is one of the most brilliant figures of colonial 
 Virginia, and a type of the Old Virginia gentleman. He 
 had been sent to England for his education, where he was 
 admitted to the bar of the Middle Temple, elected a Fellow 
 of the Royal Society, and formed an intimate friendship 
 with Charles Boyle, the Earl of Orrery. He held many 
 offices in the government of the colony, and founded 
 the cities of Richmond and Petersburg. His estates were 
 large, and at Westover where he had one of the finest 
 private libraries in America he exercised a baronial hos 
 pitality, blending the usual profusion of plantation life 
 with the elegance of a traveled scholar and " picked man 
 of countries." Colonel Byrd was rather an amateur in 
 literature. His " History of the Dividing Line " is written 
 with a jocularity which rises occasionally into real humor, 
 and which gives to the painful journey through the wilder 
 ness the air of a holiday expedition. Similar in tone were 
 were his diaries of "A Progress to the Mines " and "A 
 Journey to the Land of Eden " in North Carolina. 
 
 The first formal historian of Virginia was Robert Bev- 
 
 Robert Bever- 
 
 erly. "a native and inhabitant of the place," whose ly s "History 
 
 of Virginia." 
 
 "History of Virginia " was printed at London in 1705. 
 
 Beverly was a rich planter and large slave-owner, who, 
 being in London in 1703, was shown by his bookseller the 
 manuscript of a forthcoming work, Oldmixon s " British 
 Empire in America." Beverly was set upon writing 
 his history by the inaccuracies of this, and likewise 
 because the province "has been so misrepresented to 
 the common people of England as to make them believe 
 that the servants in Virginia are made to draw in cart and 
 plow, and that the country turns all people black "an 
 
16 
 
 Initial Studies in American Letter*. 
 
 Wm. Stith s 
 " Discovery 
 and Settle 
 ment of Vir 
 ginia." 
 
 The church in 
 Virginia. 
 
 Alexander 
 Whitaker. 
 
 impression which lingers still in parts of Europe. The 
 most original portions of the book are those in which the 
 author puts down his personal observations of the plants 
 and animals of the New World ; and particularly the ac 
 count of the Indians, to which his third book is devoted, 
 and which is accompanied by valuable plates. Beverly s 
 knowledge of these matters was evidently at first hand, 
 and his descriptions here are very fresh and interesting. 
 The more strictly historical part of his work is not free 
 from prejudice and inaccuracy. A more critical, detailed, 
 and impartial, but much less readable, work was William 
 Stith s " History of the First Discovery and Settlement of 
 Virginia," 1747, which brought the subject down only to 
 the year 1624. Stith was a clergyman, and at one time a 
 professor in William and Mary College. 
 
 The Virginians were stanch royalists and churchmen. 
 The Church of England was established by law, and non 
 conformity was persecuted in various ways. Three mis 
 sionaries were sent to the colony in 1642 by the Puritans of 
 New England, two from Braintree, Massachusetts, and one 
 from New Haven. They were not suffered to preach, but 
 many resorted to them in private houses, until, being 
 finally driven out by fines and imprisonments, they took 
 refuge in Catholic Maryland. The Virginia clergy were 
 not, as a body, very much of a force in education or litera 
 ture. Many of them, by reason of the scattering and dis 
 persed condition of their parishes, lived as domestic chap 
 lains with the wealthier planters and partook of their illit 
 eracy and their passion for gaming and hunting. Few of 
 them inherited the zeal of Alexander Whitaker, the "Apostle 
 of Virginia," who came over in 1611 to preach to the colo 
 nists and convert the Indians, and who published in further 
 ance of those ends "Good News from Virginia," in 1613, 
 three years before his death by drowning in the James Kiver. 
 
The Colonial Period. 17 
 
 The conditions were much more favorable for the produc- intellectual 
 tion of a literature in New England than in the southern 
 colonies. The free and genial existence of the " Old 
 Dominion" had no counterpart among the settlers of 
 Plymouth and Massachusetts Bay, and the Puritans must 
 have been rather unpleasant people to live with for persons 
 of a different way of thinking. But their intensity of 
 character, their respect for learning, and the heroic mood 
 which sustained them through the hardships and dangers 
 of their great enterprise are amply reflected in their own 
 writings. If these are not so much literature as the raw 
 materials of literature, they have at least been fortunate 
 in finding interpreters among their descendants, and no 
 modern Virginian has done for the memory of the James 
 town planters what Hawthorne, Whittier, Longfellow, 
 and others have done in casting the glamour of poetry and 
 romance over the lives of the founders of New England. 
 
 Cotton Mather, in his "Magnalia," quotes the following 
 passage from one of those election sermons, delivered be 
 fore the General Court of Massachusetts, which formed for 
 many years the great annual intellectual event of the 
 colony : " The question was often put unto our predeces 
 sors, What went ye out into the wilderness to see ? And the 
 answer to it is not only too excellent but too notorious to 
 be dissembled. . . . We came hither because we would 
 have our posterity settled under the pure and full dispensa 
 tions of the Gospel, defended by rulers that should be of 
 ourselves." The New England colonies were, in fact, 
 theocracies. Their leaders were clergymen, or laymen 
 whose zeal for the faith was no whit inferior to that of the 
 ministers themselves. Church and state were one. The 
 freeman s oath was only administered to church members, 
 and there was no place in the social system for unbelievers 
 or dissenters. The Pilgrim fathers regarded their trans- 
 
18 
 
 Initial Studies in American Letters. 
 
 Hugh Peters. 
 
 Nathaniel 
 Ward. 
 
 A learned 
 clergy. 
 
 plantation to the New World as an exile, and nothing is 
 more touching in their written records than the repeated 
 expressions of love and longing toward the old home 
 which they had left, and even toward that Church of 
 England from which they had sorrowfully separated them 
 selves. It was not in any light or adventurous spirit that 
 they faced the perils of the sea and the wilderness. "This 
 howling wilderness," "these ends of the earth," "these 
 goings down of the sun," are some of the epithets which 
 they constantly applied to the land of their exile. Never 
 theless they had come to stay, and, unlike Smith and 
 Percy and Sandys, the early historians and writers of New 
 England cast in their lots permanently with the new 
 settlements. A few, indeed, went back after 1640 Mather 
 says some ten or twelve of the ministers of the first 
 "classis" or immigration were among them when the 
 victory of the Puritanic party in Parliament opened a 
 career for them in England, and made their presence there 
 seem in some cases a duty. The celebrated Hugh Peters, 
 for example, who was afterward Oliver Cromwell s chap 
 lain, and was beheaded after the Restoration, went back in 
 1641, and in 1647 Nathaniel Ward, the minister of Ipswich, 
 Massachusetts, and author of a quaint book against tolera 
 tion, entitled "The Simple Cobbler of Agawam," written 
 in America and published shortly after its author s arrival 
 in England. The civil war, too, put a stop to further emi 
 gration from England until after the Restoration in 1660. 
 
 The mass of the Puritan immigration consisted of men 
 of the middle class, artisans and husbandmen, the most 
 useful members of a new colony. But their leaders were 
 clergymen educated at the universities, and especially at 
 Emmanuel College, Cambridge, the great Puritan college ; 
 their civil magistrates were also in great part gentlemen of 
 education and substance, like the elder Winthrop, who 
 
The Colonial Period. 19 
 
 was learned in law, and Theophilus Eaton, first governor 
 of New Haven, who was a London merchant of good 
 estate. It is computed that there were in New England 
 during the first generation as many university graduates as 
 in any community of equal population in the old country. 
 Almost the first care of the settlers was to establish 
 
 schools. Every town of fifty families was required by law Common 
 
 schools in 
 
 to maintain a common school, and every town of a hun- New England. 
 dred families a grammar or Latin school. In 1636, only 
 sixteen years after the landing of the Pilgrims on Plymouth 
 Rock, Harvard College was founded at Newtown, whose 
 
 Harvard 
 
 name was thereupon changed to Cambridge, the General College, 1636. 
 Court held at Boston on September 8, 1630, having already 
 advanced 400 "by way of essay towards the building of 
 something to begin a college." "An university," says 
 Mather, "which hath been to these plantations, for the 
 good literature there cultivated, sal Gentium, . . . and 
 a river without the streams whereof these regions would 
 have been mere unwatered places for the devil." By 1701 
 
 Harvard had put forth a vigorous offshoot, Yale College, at 
 
 Yale College, 
 New Haven, the settlers of New Haven and Connecticut 1701. 
 
 plantations having increased sufficiently to need a college 
 at their own doors. A printing-press was set up at Cam- 
 
 The first 
 
 bridge in 1639, which was under the oversight of the printing-press, 
 university authorities, and afterward of licensers appointed 
 by the civil power. The press was no more free in Massa 
 chusetts than in Virginia, and that " liberty of unlicensed 
 printing" for which the Puritan Milton had pleaded in his 
 " Areopagitica," in 1644, was unknown in Puritan New 
 England until some twenty years before the outbreak of 
 the Revolutionary War. "The Freeman s Oath" and an 
 almanac were issued from the Cambridge press in 1639, and 
 in 1640 the first English book printed in America, a 
 collection of the psalms in meter, made by various minis- 
 
20 
 
 Initial Studies in American Letters. 
 
 " The Bay 
 Psalm Book. 
 
 John Eliot s 
 Indian Bible. 
 
 Puritan in 
 tolerance. 
 
 ters, and known as "The Bay Psalm Book." The poetry 
 of this version was worse, if possible, than that of Stern- 
 hold and Hopkins s famous rendering ; but it is note 
 worthy that one of the principal translators was that 
 devoted "Apostle to the Indians," the Rev. John Eliot, 
 who, in 1661-63, translated the Bible into the Algonquin 
 tongue. Eliot hoped and toiled a lifetime for the con 
 version of those "salvages," "tawnies," "devil-worship 
 ers," for whom our early writers have usually nothing but 
 bad words. They have been destroyed instead of con 
 verted ; but his (so entitled) "Mamusse Wunneetupana- 
 tamwe Up-Biblum God naneeswe Nukkone Testament kah 
 ivonk Wusku Testament" the first Bible printed in 
 America remains a monument of missionary zeal and a 
 work of great value to students of the Indian languages. 
 
 A modern writer has said that, to one looking back on 
 the history of old New England, it seems as though the 
 sun shone but dimly there, and the landscape was always 
 dark and wintry. Such is the impression which one 
 carries away from the perusal of books like Bradford s 
 and Winthrop s Journals, or Mather s "Wonders of the 
 Invisible World" an impression of gloom, of night 
 and cold, of mysterious fears besieging the infant settle 
 ments scattered in a narrow fringe " between the groaning 
 forest and the shore." The Indian terror hung over New 
 England for more than half a century, or until the issue 
 of King Philip s War, in 1676, relieved the colonists of any 
 danger of a general massacre. Added to this were the 
 perplexities caused by the earnest resolve of the settlers to 
 keep their New England Eden free from the intrusion of 
 the serpent in the shape of heretical sects in religion. The 
 puritanism of Massachusetts was an orthodox and conserv 
 ative puritanism. The later and more grotesque out-crops 
 of the movement in the old England found no toleration 
 
The Colonial Period. 21 
 
 iu the new. But these refugees for conscience sake were 
 compelled in turn to persecute Antinomians, Separatists, 
 Familists, Libertines, Anti-pedobaptists, and later, Quakers, 
 and still later, Enthusiasts, who swarmed into their pre 
 cincts and troubled the churches with " prophesy ings " 
 and novel opinions. Some of these were banished, others 
 were flogged or imprisoned, and a few were put to death. 
 Of the exiles the most noteworthy was Roger Williams, 
 an impetuous, warm-hearted man, who was so far in ad 
 vance of his age as to deny the power of the civil magis 
 trate in cases of conscience, or who, in other words, main- Roger 
 tained the modern doctrine of the separation of church and 
 state. Williams was driven away from the Massachusetts 
 colony where he had been minister of the church at 
 Salem and with a few followers fled into the southern 
 wilderness and settled at Providence. There, and in the 
 neighboring plantation of Rhode Island, for which he ob 
 tained a charter, he established his patriarchal rule and 
 gave freedom of worship to all comers. Williams was a 
 prolific writer on theological subjects, the most important 
 of his writings being, perhaps, his " Bloody Tenent of Per 
 secution," 1644, and a supplement to the same called out by 
 a reply to the former work from the pen of Mr. John Cot 
 ton, minister of the First Church at Boston, entitled " The John Cotton. 
 Bloody Tenent Washed and made White in the Blood of 
 the Lamb." Williams was also a friend to the Indians, 
 whose lands, he thought, should not be taken from them 
 without payment, and he anticipated Eliot by writing, in 
 1643, a "Key into the Language of America." Although 
 at odds with the theology of Massachusetts Bay, Williams 
 remained in correspondence with Wiuthrop and others in 
 Boston, by whom he was highly esteemed. He visited 
 England in 1643 and 1652, and made the acquaintance of 
 John Milton. 
 
Initial Studies in American Letters. 
 
 Besides the threat of an Indian war and their anxious 
 concern for the purity of the gospel in their churches, the 
 superstitions colonists were haunted by superstitious forebodings of the 
 England. darkest kind. It seemed to them that Satan, angered by 
 
 the setting up of the kingdom of the saints in America, had 
 come down in great wrath, and was present among them, 
 sometimes even in visible shape, to terrify and tempt. 
 Special providences and unusual phenomena, like earth 
 quakes, mirages, and the northern lights, are gravely re 
 corded by Winthrop and Mather and others as portents of 
 supernatural persecutions. Thus Mrs. Anne Hutchinson, 
 the celebrated leader of the Familists, having, according to 
 rumor, been delivered of a monstrous birth, the Rev. John 
 Cotton, in open assembly, at Boston, upon a lecture day, 
 "thereupon gathered that it might signify her error in 
 denying inherent righteousness." "There will be an un 
 usual range of the devil among us," wrote Mather, " a 
 little before the second coming of our Lord. The evening 
 wolves will be much abroad when we are near the evening 
 of the world." This belief culminated in the horrible 
 craft delusion, witchcraft delusion at Salem in 1692, that " spectral puppet 
 play," which, beginning with the malicious pranks of a 
 few children who accused certain uncanny old women and 
 other persons of mean condition and suspected lives of 
 having tormented them with magic, gradually drew into 
 its vortex victims of the highest character, and resulted in 
 the judicial murder of over nineteen people. Many of the 
 possessed pretended to have been visited by the apparition 
 of a little black man, who urged them to inscribe their 
 names in a red book which he carried a sort of muster-roll 
 of those who had forsworn God s service for the devil s. 
 Others testified to having been present at meetings of 
 witches in the forest. It is difficult now to read without 
 contempt the "evidence" which grave justices and 
 
The Colonial Period. 23 
 
 learned divines considered sufficient to condemn to death 
 men and women of unblemished lives. It is true that the 
 belief in witchcraft was general at that time all over the 
 civilized world, and that sporadic cases of witch-burnings 
 had occurred in different parts of America and Europe. 
 Sir Thomas Browne, in his " Religio Medici," 1635, affirmed 
 his belief in witches, and pronounced those who doubted of 
 them " a sort of atheist." But the superstition came to a 
 head in the Salem trials and executions, and was the more 
 shocking from the general high level of intelligence in the 
 community in which these were held. It would be well if 
 those who lament the decay of " faith " would remember 
 what things were done in New England in the name of 
 faith less than two hundred years ago. It is not wonder 
 ful that to the Massachusetts Puritans of the seventeenth 
 century, the mysterious forest held no beautiful sugges 
 tions ; to them it was simply a grim and hideous wilder 
 ness, whose dark aisles were the ambush of prowling sav 
 ages and the rendezvous of those other "devil-worshipers " 
 who celebrated there a kind of vulgar Walpurgis night. 
 
 The most important of original sources for the history 
 of the settlement of New England are the Journals of 
 William Bradford, first governor of Plymouth, and John 
 Winthrop, the second governor of Massachusetts, which 
 hold a place corresponding to the writings of Captain 
 John Smith in the Virginia colony, but are much more 
 
 sober and trustworthy. Bradford s "History of Plymouth William 
 
 Bradford s 
 Plantation " covers the period from 1620 to 1646. The man- " History of 
 
 Plymouth." 
 
 uscript was used by later annalists, but remained unpub 
 lished, as a whole, until 1855, having been lost during the 
 War of the Revolution and recovered long afterward in 
 England. Winthrop s Journal, or "History of New Eng- John Win^ 
 land," begun on shipboard in 1630 and extending to 1649, nai. 
 was not published entire until 1826. It is of equal author- 
 
24 Initial Studies in American Letters. 
 
 ity with Bradford s, and perhaps, on the whole, the more 
 important of the two, as the colony of Massachusetts Bay, 
 whose history it narrates, greatly outwent Plymouth in 
 wealth and population, though not in priority of settle 
 ment. The interest of Winthrop s Journal lies in the 
 events that it records rather than in any charm in the his 
 torian s manner of recording them. His style is prag 
 matic, and some of the incidents which he gravely notes 
 are trivial to the modern mind, though instructive as to 
 our forefathers way of thinking. For instance, of the 
 year 1632 : "At Watertown there was (in the view of divers 
 witnesses) a great combat between a mouse and a snake, 
 and after a long fight the mouse prevailed and killed the 
 snake. The pastor of Boston, Mr. Wilson, a very sincere, 
 holy man, hearing of it, gave this interpretation : that the 
 snake was the devil, the mouse was a poor, contemptible 
 people, which God had brought hither, which should over 
 come Satan here and dispossess him of his kingdom." The 
 Used by Haw- reader of Winthrop s Journal comes everywhere upon hints 
 
 thorne, Long 
 fellow, and which the imagination has since shaped into poetry and 
 
 romance. The germs of many of Longfellow s "New 
 England Tragedies," of Hawthorne s " Maypole of Merry- 
 mount," and "Endicott s Red Cross," and of Whittier s 
 " John Underbill " and " The Familists Hymn " are all to 
 be found in some dry, brief entry of the old Puritan diarist. 
 " Robert Cole, having been oft punished for drunkenness, 
 was now ordered to wear a red D about his neck for a 
 year," to wit, the year 1633, and thereby gave occasion to 
 the greatest American romance, "The Scarlet Letter." 
 The famous apparition of the phantom ship in New Haven 
 The phantom harbor, "upon the top of the poop a man standing with 
 one hand akimbo under his left side, and in his right hand 
 a sword stretched out toward the sea," was first chronicled 
 by Winthrop under the year 1648. This meteorological 
 
The Colonial Period. 25 
 
 phenomenon took on the dimensions of a full-grown myth 
 some forty years later, as related, with many embellish 
 ments, by Rev. James Pierpont, of New Haven, in a letter 
 to Cotton Mather. Winthrop put great faith in special 
 providences, and among other instances narrates, not with 
 out a certain grim satisfaction, how "the Mary Rose, a 
 ship of Bristol, of about two hundred tons," lying before 
 Charleston, was blown in pieces with her own powder, 
 being twenty-one barrels, wherein the judgment of God 
 appeared, " for the master and company were many of 
 them profane scoffers at us and at the ordinances of re 
 ligion here." Without any effort at dramatic portraiture 
 or character sketching, Winthrop managed in all sim 
 plicity, and by the plain relation of facts, to leave a clear 
 impression of many prominent figures in the first Massa 
 chusetts immigration. In particular there gradually arises 
 from the entries in his diary a very distinct and diverting 
 outline of Captain John Underbill, celebrated in Whit- Captain John 
 tier s poem. He was one of the few professional soldiers 
 who came over with the Puritan fathers, such as John 
 Mason, the hero of the Pequot War, and Miles Standish, 
 whose " Courtship " Longfellow sang. He had seen service 
 in the Low Countries, and in pleading the privilege of his 
 profession "he insisted much upon the liberty which all 
 states do allow to military officers for free speech, etc., and 
 that himself had spoken sometimes as freely to Count 
 Nassau." Captain Underbill gave the colony no end of 
 trouble, both by his scandalous living and his heresies in 
 religion. Having been seduced into Familistical opinions 
 by Mrs. Anne Hutchinson, who was banished for her be 
 liefs, he was had up before the General Court and ques 
 tioned, among other points, as to his own report of the 
 manner of his conversion. " He had lain under a spirit of 
 bondage and a legal way for years, and could get no assur- 
 
26 Initial Studies in American Letters. 
 
 ance, till, at length, as he was taking a pipe of tobacco, the 
 Spirit set home an absolute promise of free grace with such 
 assurance and joy as he never since doubted of his good 
 estate, neither should he, though he should fall into sin. 
 . . . The Lord s day following he made a speech in the 
 assembly, showing that as the Lord was pleased to convert 
 Paul as he was in persecuting, etc., so he might manifest 
 himself to him as he was taking the moderate use of the 
 creature called tobacco." The gallant captain, being ban 
 ished the colony, betook himself to the falls of the Piscata- 
 quack (Exeter, N. H.), where the Rev. John Wheelwright, 
 another adherent of Mrs. Hutchinson, had gathered a con 
 gregation. Being made governor of this plantation, Un- 
 derhill sent letters to the Massachusetts magistrates, breath 
 ing reproaches and imprecations of vengeance. But mean 
 while it was discovered that he had been living in adul 
 tery at Boston with a young woman whom he had seduced, 
 the wife of a cooper, and the captain was forced to make 
 public confession, which he did with great unction and in 
 a manner highly dramatic. " He came in his worst clothes 
 (being accustomed to take great pride in his bravery and 
 neatness), without a band, in a foul linen cap, and pulled 
 close to his eyes, and standing upon a form, he did, with 
 many deep sighs and abundance of tears, lay open his 
 wicked course." There is a lurking humor in the grave 
 Winthrop s detailed account of Underbill s doings. Win- 
 throp s own personality comes out well in his Journal. 
 
 Winthro s He was a born leader of men > a conditor imperil, just, 
 character. moderate, patient, wise ; and his narrative gives, upon the 
 whole, a favorable impression of the general prudence and 
 fair-mindedness of the Massachusetts settlers in their 
 dealings with one another, with the Indians, and with the 
 neighboring plantations. 
 
 Considering our forefathers errand and calling into this 
 
The Colonial Period. 27 
 
 wilderness, it is not strange that their chief literary staples 
 were sermons and tracts in controversial theology. Multi 
 tudes of these were written and published by the divines Literature of 
 of the first generation, such as John Cotton, Thomas Shep- i a nd colonies 
 ard, John Norton, Peter Bulkley, and Thomas Hooker, the iogfS. the " 
 founder of Hartford, of whom it was finely said that 
 " when he was doing his Master s business he would put a 
 king into his pocket." Nor were their successors in the 
 second or the third generation any less industrious and 
 prolific. They rest from their labors and their works do 
 follow them. Their sermons and theological treatises are 
 not literature : they are for the most part dry, heavy, and 
 dogmatic, but they exhibit great learning, logical acute- 
 ness, and an earnestness which sometimes rises into elo 
 quence. The pulpit ruled New England, and the sermon 
 was the great intellectual engine of the time. The serious Sermons - 
 thinking of the Puritans was given almost exclusively to 
 religion ; the other world was all their art. The daily 
 secular events of life, the aspects of nature, the vicissitude 
 of the seasons, were important enough to find record in 
 print only in so far as they manifested God s dealings with 
 his people. So much was the sermon depended upon to 
 furnish literary food that it was the general custom of 
 serious-minded laymen to take down the words of the dis 
 course in their note-books. Franklin, in his " Autobiog 
 raphy," describes this as the constant habit of his grand 
 father, Peter Folger ; and Mather, in his life of the elder 
 Winthrop, says that " tho he wrote not after the preacher, 
 yet such was his attention and such his retention in hear 
 ing, that he repeated unto his family the sermons which 
 he had heard in the congregation." These discourses were 
 commonly of great length ; twice, or sometimes thrice, the 
 pulpit hour-glass was silently inverted while the orator 
 pursued his theme even unto " fourteen thly." 
 
28 
 
 Initial Studies in American Letters. 
 
 Cotton 
 
 Mather s 
 
 "Magnalia." 
 
 Increase 
 Mather s 
 "Illustrious 
 Providences. 
 
 Style of the 
 " Magnalia." 
 
 The book which best sums up the life and thought of this 
 old New England of the seventeenth century is Cotton 
 Mather s " Magnalia Christi Americana." Mather was by 
 birth a member of that clerical aristocracy which devel 
 oped later into Dr. Holmes s " Brahmin caste of New 
 England." His maternal grandfather was John Cotton. 
 His father was Increase Mather, the most learned divine of 
 his generation in New England, minister of the North 
 Church of Boston, president of Harvard College, and au 
 thor, inter alia, of that characteristically Puritan book, 
 "An Essay for the Recording of Illustrious Providences." 
 Cotton Mather himself was a monster of erudition and a 
 prodigy of diligence. He was graduated from Harvard at 
 fifteen. He ordered his daily life and conversation by a sys 
 tem of minute observances. He was a book-worm, whose 
 life was spent between his library and his pulpit, and his 
 published works number upward of three hundred and 
 eighty. Of these the most important is the " Magnalia," 
 1702, an ecclesiastical history of New England from 1620 to 
 1698, divided into seven parts : I. Antiquities ; II. Lives 
 of the Governors ; III. Lives of Sixty Famous Divines ; 
 IV. A History of Harvard College, with biographies 
 of its eminent graduates ; V. Acts and Monuments of 
 the Faith ; VI. Wonderful Providences ; VII. The Wars 
 of the Lord that is, an account of the Afflictions 
 and Disturbances of the Churches and the Conflicts 
 with the Indians. The plan of the work thus united that 
 of Fuller s "Worthies of England" and "Church His 
 tory" with that of Wood s "Athense Oxonienses " and 
 Fox s "Book of Martyrs." 
 
 Mather s prose was of the kind which the English Com 
 monwealth writers used. He was younger by a generation 
 than Dryden ; but, as literary fashions are slower to change 
 in a colony than in the mother-country, that nimble Eng- 
 
The Colonial Period. 29 
 
 lish which Dryden and the Restoration essayists intro 
 duced had not yet displaced in New England the older 
 manner. Mather wrote in the full and pregnant style of 
 Taylor, Milton, Brown, Fuller, and Burton, a style ponder 
 ous with learning and stiff with allusions, digressions, 
 conceits, anecdotes, and quotations from the Greek and the 
 Latin. A page of the " Magnalia " is almost as richly 
 mottled with italics as one from the "Anatomy of Melan 
 choly," and the quaintness which Mather caught from his 
 favorite Fuller disports itself in textual pun and marginal 
 anagram and the fantastic sub-titles of his books and chap 
 ters. He speaks of Thomas Hooker as having "angled 
 many scores of souls into the kingdom of heaven," ana- 
 grammatizes Mrs. Hutchinson s surname into " the non 
 such " ; and having occasion to speak of Mr. Urian Oakes s 
 election to the presidency of Harvard College, enlarges 
 upon the circumstance as follows : 
 
 " We all know that Britain knew nothing more famous 
 than their ancient sect of DRUIDS ; the philosophers, Urian Oakes. 
 whose order, they say, was instituted by one Samothes, 
 which is in English as much as to say, an heavenly man. 
 The Celtic name, Deru, for an Oak was that from whence 
 they received their denomination ; as at this very day the 
 Welsh call this tree Drew, and this order of men Derwyddon. 
 But there are no small antiquaries who derive this oaken 
 religion and philosophy from the Oaks of Mamre, where the 
 Patriarch Abraham had as well a dwelling as an altar. 
 That Oaken-Plain and the eminent OAK under which 
 Abraham lodged was extant in the days of Constantine, as 
 Isidore, Jerom, and Sozomen have assured us. Yea, there 
 are shrewd probabilities that Noah himself had lived in 
 this very Oak-plain before him ; for this very place was called pedantry. 
 Ogge, which was the name of Noah, so styled from the 
 Oggyan (subcineritiis panibus) sacrifices, which he did use to 
 
Initial Studies in American Letters. 
 
 offer in this renowned Grove. And it was from this ex 
 ample that the ancients, and particularly that the Druids 
 of the nations, chose oaken retirements for their studies. 
 Reader, let us now, upon another account, behold the stu 
 dents of Harvard College, as a rendezvous of happy Druids, 
 under the influences of so rare a president. But, alas ! our 
 joy must be short-lived, for on July 25, 1681, the stroke of a 
 sudden death felled the tree, 
 
 " Qui tantum inter caput extulit omnes 
 Quantum lenta solent inter viberna cypressi. 
 
 Mr. Oakes thus being transplanted into the better world the 
 presidentship was immediately tendered unto Mr. Increase 
 Mather. 11 
 
 This will suffice as an example of the bad taste and labo 
 rious pedantry which disfigured Mather s writing. In its 
 substance the book is a perfect thesaurus ; and inasmuch as 
 nothing is unimportant in the history of the beginnings of 
 such a nation as this is and is destined to be, the " Mag- 
 nalia " will always remain a valuable and interesting work. 
 Cotton Mather, born in 1663, was of the second generation 
 of Americans, his grandfather being of the immigration, 
 The Puritan but his father a native of Dorchester, Mass. A comparison 
 of his writings, and of the writings of his contemporaries, 
 with the works of Bradford, Winthrop, Hooker, and others 
 of the original colonists, shows that the simple and heroic 
 faith of the Pilgrims had hardened into formalism and 
 doctrinal rigidity. The leaders of the Puritan exodus, not 
 withstanding their intolerance of errors in belief, were 
 comparatively broad-minded men. They were sharers in a 
 great national movement, and they came over when their 
 cause was warm with the glow of martyrdom and on the 
 eve of its coming triumph at home. After the Restoration, 
 in 1660, the currents of national feeling no longer circulated 
 so freely through this distant member of the body politic, 
 
The Colonial Period. 31 
 
 and thought in America became more provincial. The 
 English dissenters, though socially at a disadvantage as 
 compared with the Church of England, had the great bene 
 fit of living at the center of national life, and of feeling 
 about them the pressure of vast bodies of people who did 
 not think as they did. In New England, for many gen- isolation of 
 erations, the dominant sect had things all its own way a thought, 
 condition of things which is not healthy for any sect or 
 party. Hence Mather and the divines of his time appear 
 in their writings very much like so many Puritan bishops, 
 jealous of their prerogatives, magnifying their apostolate, 
 and careful to maintain their authority over the laity. 
 
 Mather had an appetite for the marvelous, and took a lead- 
 Mather s 
 ing part in the witchcraft trials, of which he gave an ac- superstition. 
 
 count in his "Wonders of the Invisible World," 1693. To 
 
 the quaint pages of the "Magnalia" our modern authors 
 
 have resorted as to a collection of romances or fairy tales, naiia" used by 
 
 Whittier, for example, took from thence the subject of his Hawthorne. 
 
 poem "The Garrison of Cape Anne"; and Hawthorne 
 
 embodied in "Grandfather s Chair" the most elaborate of 
 
 Mather s biographies. This was the life of Sir William 
 
 Sir William 
 Phipps, who from being a poor shepherd boy in his native Phipps. 
 
 province of Maine, rose to be the royal governor of Massa 
 chusetts, and the story of whose wonderful adventures 
 in raising the freight of a Spanish ship, sunk on a reef 
 near Port de la Plata, reads less like sober fact than like 
 some ancient fable, with talk of the Spanish main, bullion, 
 and plate and jewels, and " pieces of eight." 
 
 Of Mather s generation was Samuel Sewall, chief-justice 
 
 Samuel Sew- 
 of Massachusetts, a singularly gracious and venerable fig- all s Diary. 
 
 ure, who is intimately known through his Diary, kept from 
 1673 to 1729. This has been compared with the more 
 famous Diary of Samuel Pepys, which it resembles in its 
 confidential character and the completeness of its self-reve- 
 
32 
 
 Initial Studies in American Letters. 
 
 Sewall s anti- 
 slavery tract. 
 
 Little general 
 literature 
 among the 
 colonists. 
 
 lation, but to which it is as much inferior in historic inter 
 est as "the petty province here" was inferior in political 
 and social importance to "Britain far away." For the 
 most part it is a chronicle of small beer, the diarist jotting 
 down the minutiae of his domestic life and private affairs, 
 even to the recording of such haps as this : " March 23, I 
 had my hair cut by G. Barret." But it also affords in 
 structive glimpses of public events, such as King Philip s 
 War, the Quaker troubles, the English Revolution of 1688, 
 etc. It bears about the same relation to New England his 
 tory at the close of the seventeenth century as Bradford s 
 and Winthrop s Journals bear to that of the first generation. 
 Sewall was one of the justices who presided at the trial of 
 the Salem witches ; but for the part which he took in 
 that wretched affair he made such atonement as was possi 
 ble, by open confession of his mistake and his remorse in 
 the presence of the church. Sewall was one of the first 
 writers against African slavery, in his brief tract, "The 
 Selling of Joseph," printed at Boston in 1700. His " Phe 
 nomena Qusedam Apocalyptica, " a mystical interpretation 
 of prophecies concerning the New Jerusalem, which he 
 identifies with America, is remembered only because 
 Whittier, in his " Prophecy of Samuel Sewall," has para 
 phrased one poetic passage which shows a loving observa 
 tion of nature very rare in our colonial writers. 
 
 Of poetry, indeed, or, in fact, of pure literature, in the 
 narrower sense that is, of the imaginative representation 
 of life there was little or none in the colonial period. 
 There were no novels, no plays, no satires, and until the 
 example of the "Spectator" had begun to work on this 
 side the water no experiments even at the lighter forms 
 of essay-writing, character sketches, and literary criticism. 
 There was verse of a certain kind, but the most gener 
 ous stretch of the term would hardly allow it to be called 
 
The Colonial Period. 
 
 poetry. Many of the early divines of New England relieved 
 their pens, in the intervals of sermon-writing, of epigrams, 
 elegies, eulogistic verses, and similar grave trifles dis 
 tinguished by the crabbed wit of the so-called " metaphys 
 ical poets," whose manner was in fashion when the Puritans 
 left England ; the manner of Donne and Cowley, and those 
 darlings of the New English muse, the "Emblems" of Elegiac verse 
 Quarles and the "Divine Week" of Du Bartas, as trans- land, 
 lated by Sylvester. The "Magnalia" contains a number 
 of these things in Latin and English, and is itself well bol 
 stered with complimentary introductions in meter by the 
 author s friends. For example : 
 
 COTTONIUS MATHERUS. 
 
 ANAGRAM. 
 
 Tuos Tecum Ornasti. 
 
 " While thus the dead in thy rare pages rise 
 Thine, with thyself thou dost immortalize. 
 To view the odds thy learned lives invite 
 Twixt Eleutherian and Edomite. 
 But all succeeding ages shall despair 
 A fitting monument for thee to rear. 
 Thy own rich pen (peace, silly Momus, peace !) 
 Hath given them a lasting writ of ease." 
 
 The epitaphs and mortuary verses were especially in 
 genious in the matter of puns, anagrams, and similar con 
 ceits. The death of the Rev. Samuel Stone, of Hartford, 
 afforded an opportunity of this sort not to be missed, and 
 his threnodist accordingly celebrated him as a "whet 
 stone," a " loadstone," an " Ebenezer " 
 
 " A stone for kingly David s use so fit 
 As would not fail Goliath s front to hit," etc. 
 
 The most characteristic, popular, and widely circulated 
 
 poem of colonial New England was Michael Wiggles- Michael Wig- 
 
 glesworth s 
 
 worth s "Day of Doom" (1662), a kind of doggerel "In- "Day of 
 
 Doom." 
 
 ferno," which went through nine editions, and " was the 
 
34 
 
 Initial Studies in American Letters. 
 
 Jonathan 
 Edwards. 
 
 "Freedom of 
 the Will." 
 
 solace," says Lowell, " of every fireside, the flicker of the 
 pine-knots by which it was conned perhaps adding a live 
 lier relish to its premonitions of eternal combustion." 
 Wigglesworth had not the technical equipment of a poet. 
 His verse is sing-song, his language rude and monotonous, 
 and the lurid horrors of his material hell are more likely to 
 move mirth than fear in a modem reader. But there are 
 an unmistakable vigor of imagination and a sincerity of 
 belief in his gloomy poem which hold it far above con 
 tempt, and easily account for its universal currency among 
 a people like the Puritans. One stanza has been often 
 quoted for its grim concession to unregenerate infants of 
 u the easiest room in hell " a limbus infantum which even 
 Origen need not have scrupled at. 
 
 The most authoritative expounder of New England Cal 
 vinism was Jonathan Edwards (1703-58), a native of Con 
 necticut and a graduate of Yale, who was minister for 
 more than twenty years over the church in Northampton," 
 Mass., afterward missionary to the Stockbridge Indians, 
 and at the time of his death had just been inaugurated 
 president of Princeton College. By virtue of his " Inquiry 
 into the Freedom of the Will," 1754, Edwards holds rank 
 as the subtlest metaphysician of his age. This treatise 
 was composed to justify, on philosophical grounds, the 
 Calvinistic doctrines of foreordination and election by 
 grace, though its arguments are curiously coincident with 
 those of the scientific necessitarians, whose conclusions are 
 as far asunder from Edwards s " as from the center thrice 
 to the utmost pole." His writings belong to theology 
 rather than to literature, but there is an intensity and a 
 spiritual elevation about them, apart from the profundity 
 and acuteuess of the thought, which lift them here and 
 there into the finer ether of purely emotional or imagina 
 tive art. He dwelt rather upon the terrors than the com- 
 
The Colonial Period. 35 
 
 fort of the word, and his chosen themes were the dogmas 
 of predestination, original sin, total depravity, and eternal 
 punishment. The titles of his sermons are significant : Edwards s 
 "Men Naturally God s Enemies," "Wrath upon the 
 Wicked to the Uttermost," "The Final Judgment," etc. 
 "A natural man," he wrote in the first of these discourses, 
 " has a heart like the heart of a devil. . . . The heart of a 
 natural man is as destitute of love to God as a dead, stiff, 
 cold corpse is of vital heat." Perhaps the most famous of 
 Edwards s sermons was " Sinners in the Hands of an Angry 
 God," preached at Enfield, Conn., July 8, 1741, "at a time 
 of great awakenings," and upon the ominous text, Their 
 foot shall slide in due time. " The God that holds you over 
 the pit of hell," runs an oft-quoted passage from this pow 
 erful denunciation of the wrath to come, " much as one 
 holds a spider or some loathsome insect over, the fire, ab 
 hors you, and is dreadfully provoked. . . . You are ten 
 thousand times more abominable in his eyes than the most 
 hateful venomous serpent is in ours. . . . You hang by 
 a slender thread, with the flames of divine wrath flashing 
 about it. ... If you cry to God to pity you he will be 
 so far from pitying you in your doleful case that he will 
 only tread you under foot. . . . He will crush out your 
 blood and make it fly, and it shall be sprinkled on his gar 
 ments so as to stain all his raiment." But Edwards was a 
 rapt soul, possessed with the love as well as the fear of the 
 God, and there are passages of sweet and exalted feeling 
 in his "Treatise concerning Religious Affections," 1746. 4< Treati s e 
 Such is his portrait of Sarah Pierpont, "a young lady in g^g^* 
 New Haven," who afterward became his wife and who Affections." 
 " will sometimes go about from place to place singing 
 sweetly, and no one knows for what. She loves to be 
 alone, walking in the fields and groves, and seems to have 
 some one invisible always conversing with her." Ed- 
 
Initial Studies in American Letters. 
 
 Edwards s 
 prose com 
 pared with 
 Mather s. 
 
 Benjamin 
 Franklin. 
 
 The primal 
 Yankee. 
 
 wards s printed works number thirty-six titles. A com 
 plete edition of them in ten volumes was published in 1829 
 by his great-grandson, Sereno D wight. The memoranda 
 from Edwards s note-books, quoted by his editor and biog 
 rapher, exhibit a remarkable precocity. Even as a school 
 boy and a college student he had made deep guesses in 
 physics as well as metaphysics, and, as might have been 
 predicted of a youth of his philosophical insight and ideal 
 cast of mind, he had early anticipated Berkeley in denying 
 the existence of matter. In passing from Mather to Ed 
 wards we step from the seventeenth to the eighteenth cen 
 tury. There is the same difference between them in style 
 and turn of thought as between Milton and Locke, or be 
 tween Fuller and Dryden. The learned digressions, the 
 witty conceits, the perpetual interlarding of the text with 
 scraps of Latin, have fallen off, even as the full-bottomed 
 wig and the clerical gown and bands have been laid aside 
 for the undistinguishing dress of the modern minister. 
 In Edwards s English all is simple, precise, direct, and 
 business-like. 
 
 Benjamin Franklin (1706-90), who was strictly contem 
 porary with Edwards, was a contrast to him in every 
 respect. As Edwards represents the spirituality and other 
 worldliness of puritanism, Franklin stands for the worldly 
 and secular side of American character, and he illustrates 
 the development of the New England Englishman into 
 the modern Yankee. Clear rather than subtle, without 
 ideality or romance or fineness of emotion or poetic lift, in 
 tensely practical and utilitarian, broad-minded, inventive, 
 shrewd, versatile, Franklin s sturdy figure became typical 
 of his time and his people. He was the first and the only 
 man of letters in colonial America who acquired a cosmo 
 politan fame and impressed his characteristic Americanism 
 upon the mind of Europe. He was the embodiment of 
 
The Colonial Period. 37 
 
 common sense and of the useful virtues, with the enterprise 
 
 but without the nervousness of his modern compatriots, 
 
 uniting the philosopher s openness of mind to the sagacity 
 
 and quickness of resource of the self-made business man. 
 
 He was representative also of his age, an age of aufklarung, 
 
 eclaircissement, or "clearing up." By the middle of the 
 
 eighteenth century a change had taken place in American Growth of in- 
 
 society. Trade had increased between the different col 
 
 onies ; Boston, New York, and Philadelphia were consid- co?on\es! he 
 
 erable towns ; democratic feeling was spreading ; over forty 
 
 newspapers were published in America at the outbreak of 
 
 the Revolution ; politics claimed more attention than for 
 
 merly, and theology less. With all this intercourse and 
 
 mutual reaction of the various colonies upon one another, theocracy. 
 
 the isolated theocracy of New England naturally relaxed 
 
 somewhat of its grip on the minds of the laity. When 
 
 Franklin was a printer s apprentice in Boston, setting type 
 
 on his brother s New England Courant, the fourth Amer 
 
 ican newspaper, he got hold of an odd volume of the 
 
 "Spectator," and formed his style upon Addison, whose 
 
 manner he afterward imitated in his " Busybody " papers 
 
 in the Philadelphia Weekly Mercury. He also read Locke 
 
 and the English deistical writers, Collins and Shaftesbury, 
 
 and became himself a deist and free-thinker ; and subse 
 
 quently when practicing his trade in London, in 1724-26, 
 
 he made the acquaintance of Dr. Mandeville, author of 
 
 the " Fable of the Bees," at a pale-ale house in Cheapside, 
 
 called "The Horns," where the famous free-thinker pre 
 
 sided over a club of wits and boon companions. Though 
 
 a native of Boston, Franklin is identified with Philadel 
 
 phia, w^hither he arrived in 1723, a runaway prentice boy, 
 
 "whose stock of cash consisted of a Dutch dollar and about 
 
 a shilling in copper." The description in his " Autobiog 
 
 raphy " of his walking up Market Street munching a loaf 
 
38 
 
 Initial Studies in American Letters. 
 
 Franklin s 
 
 practical 
 
 spirit. 
 
 His public 
 services. 
 
 Political and 
 achievements 
 
 of bread, and passing his future wife, standing on her 
 father s doorstep, has become almost as familiar as the an 
 ecdote about Whittington and his cat. 
 
 It was in the practical sphere that Franklin was greatest, 
 as an originator and executor of projects for the general 
 welfare. The list of his public services is almost endless. 
 He organized the Philadelphia fire department and street- 
 cleaning service, and the colonial postal system which 
 grew into the United States Post-office Department. He 
 started the Philadelphia public library, the American Phil 
 osophical Society, the University of Pennsylvania, and the 
 first American magazine, The General Magazine and His 
 torical Chronicle; so that he was almost singly the father 
 of whatever intellectual life the Pennsylvania colony could 
 boast. In 1754, when commissioners from the colonies met 
 at Albany, Franklin proposed a plan, which was adopted, 
 for the union of all the colonies under one government. 
 But all these things, as well as his mission to England 
 in 1757, on behalf of the Pennsylvania Assembly in its dis 
 pute with the proprietaries ; his share in the Declaration of 
 Independence, of which he was one of the signers ; and 
 his residence in France as ambassador of the United Colo- 
 nies> belon S to the political history of the country ; to the 
 ^^ s ^ orv ^ American science belong his celebrated experi 
 ments in electricity ; and his benefits to mankind in both 
 of these departments were aptly summed up in the famous 
 epigram of the French statesman Turgot : 
 
 " Eripuit ccelo fulmen, sceptrumque tyrannis." 
 Franklin s success in Europe was such as no American 
 had yet achieved, as few Americans since him have 
 achieved. Hume and Voltaire were among his acquaint 
 ances and his professed admirers. In France he was fairly 
 idolized, and when he died Mirabeau announced, "The 
 genius which has freed America and poured a flood of light 
 
The Colonial Period. 39 
 
 over Europe has returned to the bosom, of the Divinity." 
 Franklin was a great man, but hardly a great writer, 
 though as a writer, too, he had many admirable and some 
 great qualities. Among these were the crystal clearness 
 and simplicity of his style. His more strictly literary per 
 formances, such as his essays after the " Spectator," hardly 
 rise above mediocrity, and are neither better nor worse than Influence of 
 
 Addison on 
 
 other imitations of Addison. But in some of his lighter Franklin s 
 bagatelles there are a homely wisdom and a charming play 
 fulness which have won them enduring favor. Such are 
 his famous story of the " Whistle," his " Dialogue between 
 Franklin and the Gout," his letters to Madame Helvetius, 
 and his verses entitled "Paper." The greater portion of 
 his writings consists of papers on general politics, com 
 merce, and political economy, contributions to the public Journalistic 
 questions of his day. These are of the nature of journalism 
 rather than of literature, and many of them were published 
 in his newspaper, the Pennsylvania Gazette, the medium 
 through which for many years he most strongly influenced 
 American opinion. The most popular of his writings were 
 his "Autobiography" and "Poor Richard s Almanac." Frank ] in S 
 The former of these was begun in 1771, resumed in. 1788, 
 but never completed. It has remained the most widely 
 current book in our colonial literature. " Poor Richard s 
 Almanac," begun in 1732 and continued for about twenty- 
 five years, had an annual circulation of ten thousand nac -" 
 copies. It was filled with proverbial sayings in prose and 
 verse, inculcating the virtues of industry, honesty, and 
 frugality.* Some of these were original with Franklin, oth 
 ers were selected from the proverbial wisdom of the ages, but 
 a new force was given them by pungent turns of expression. 
 
 *"The Way to Wealth," "Plan for Saving One Hundred Thousand 
 Pounds," " Rules of Health," " Advice to a Young Tradesman," " The 
 Way to Make Money Plenty in Every Man s Pocket," etc. 
 
40 Initial Studies in American Letters. 
 
 Poor Richard s saws were such as these : " Little strokes 
 fell great oaks" ; "Three removes are as bad as a fire" ; 
 "Early to bed and early to rise makes a man healthy, 
 wealthy, and wise"; "Never leave that till to-morrow 
 which you can do to-day" ; "What maintains one vice 
 would bring up two children " ; "It is hard for an empty 
 bag to stand upright." 
 
 Now and then there are truths of a higher kind than 
 these in Franklin, and Sainte-Beuve, the great French 
 critic, quotes, as an example of his occasional finer moods, 
 the saying, " Truth and sincerity have a certain distin- 
 gufehing native luster about them which cannot be coun 
 terfeited ; they are like fire and flame that cannot be 
 painted." But the sage who invented the Franklin stove 
 had no disdain of small utilities ; and in general the last 
 word of his philosophy is well expressed in a passage of 
 Thephiioso- his "Autobiography": "Human felicity is produced not 
 mon sense. so much by great pieces of good fortune, that seldom hap 
 pen, as by little advantages that occur every day : thus, if 
 you teach a poor young man to shave himself and keep 
 his razor in order, you may contribute more to the happi 
 ness of his life than in giving him a thousand guineas." 
 
 1. CAPTAIN JOHN SMITH : "A True Relation of Vir 
 ginia." Deane s edition. Boston : 1866. 
 
 2. COTTON MATHER: "Magnalia Christi Americana." 
 Hartford: 1820. 
 
 3. SAMUEL, SE WALL : "Diary." Massachusetts Historical 
 Collections, fifth series. Vols. V.-VII. Boston : 1878. 
 
 4. JONATHAN EDWARDS: "Eight Sermons on Various 
 Occasions." Vol. VII. of Edwards s Works. Edited by 
 Sereno Dwight. New York : 1829. 
 
 5. BENJAMIN FRANKLIN : "Autobiography." Edited by 
 John Bigelow. Philadelphia : 1869. 
 
The Colonial Period. 41 
 
 6. BENJAMIN FRANKLIN :" Essays and Bagatelles." 
 Vol. II. of Franklin s Works. Edited by Jared Sparks. 
 Boston : 1836. 
 
 7. MOSES COIT TYLER: U A History of American Lit 
 erature," 1607-1765. New York: 1878. 
 
CHAPTER II. 
 THE REVOLUTIONARY PERIOD 1765-1815. 
 
 IT WILL be convenient to treat the fifty years which 
 elapsed between the meeting at New York, in 1765, of a 
 congress of delegates from, nine colonies to protest against 
 the Stamp Act, and the close of the second war with Eng 
 land, in 1815, as, for literary purposes, a single period. 
 This half century was the formative era of the American 
 nation. Historically, it is divisible into the years of revo 
 lution and the years of construction. But the men who 
 led the movement for independence were also, in great 
 part, the same who guided in shaping the constitution of 
 the new republic, and the intellectual impress of the whole 
 period is one and the same. The character of the age was 
 Literature of as distinctly political as that of the colonial era in New 
 
 the revolu 
 tionary period England at least was theological ; and literature must 
 
 litical. still continue to borrow its interest from history. Pure 
 
 literature, or what, for want of a better term, we call 
 belles-lettres, was not born in America until the nineteenth 
 century was well under way. It is true that the Revo 
 lution had its humor, its poetry, and even its fiction ; but 
 these were strictly for the home market. They hardly 
 penetrated the consciousness of Europe at all, and are not 
 to be compared with the contemporary work of English 
 authors like Cowper and Sheridan and Burke. Their im 
 portance for us to-day is rather antiquarian than literary, 
 though the most noteworthy of them will be mentioned 
 in due course in the present chapter. It is also true that 
 
 42 
 
Revolutionary Period. 43 
 
 one or two of Irving s early books fall within the last 
 years of the period now under consideration. But literary 
 epochs overlap one another at the edges, and these writ 
 ings may best be postponed to a subsequent chapter. 
 
 Among the most characteristic products of the intellect 
 ual stir that preceded and accompanied the revolutionary 
 movement were the speeches of political orators like 
 Samuel Adams, James Otis, and Josiak Quincy, in Mass 
 achusetts, and Patrick Henry in Virginia. Oratory is the Political ora- 
 art of a free people, and as in the forensic assemblies of ry 
 Greece and Rome and in the Parliament of Great Britain, 
 so in the conventions and Congresses of revolutionary 
 America it sprang up and nourished naturally. The age, 
 moreover, was an eloquent, not to say a rhetorical age ; 
 and the influence of Johnson s orotund prose, of the de 
 clamatory "Letters of Junius," and of the speeches of 
 Burke, Fox, Sheridan, and the elder Pitt is perceptible in 
 the debates of our early Congresses. The fame of a great 
 orator, like that of a great actor, is largely traditionary. 
 The spoken word transferred to the printed page loses the 
 glow which resided in the man and the moment. A 
 speech is good if it attains its aim, if it moves the hearers 
 to the end which is sought. But the fact that this end is 
 often temporary and occasional, rather than universal and 
 permanent, explains why so few speeches are really litera 
 ture. If this is true, even where the words of an orator 
 are preserved exactly as they were spoken, it is doubly 
 true when we have only the testimony of contemporaries 
 as to the effect which the oration produced. The fiery 
 utterances of Adams, Otis, and Quincy were either not re 
 ported at all or very imperfectly reported, so that posterity 
 can judge of them, only at second hand. Patrick Henry 
 has fared better, many of his orations being preserved in Henry k 
 substance, if not in the letter, in Wirt s biography. Of these 
 
44 Initial Studies in American Letters. 
 
 the most famous was the defiant speech iu the Convention 
 of Delegates, March 28, 1775, throwing down the gauge of 
 battle to the British ministry. The ringing sentences of 
 this challenge are still declaimed by schoolboys, and many 
 of them remain as familiar as household words. " I have 
 but one lamp by which my feet are guided, and that is the 
 lamp of experience. I know of no way of judging of 
 the future but by the past. . . . Gentlemen may cry 
 
 Speech in the peace, peace, but there is no peace. . . . Is life so dear, 
 Convention of . -,,-,* 
 
 Delegates, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price or 
 
 chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God ! I know 
 not what course others may take, but as for me, give 
 me liberty, or give me death !" The eloquence of Patrick 
 Henry was fervid rather than weighty or rich. But if 
 such specimens of the oratory of the American patriots as 
 have come down to us fail to account for the wonderful 
 impression that their words are said to have produced 
 upon their fellow-countrymen, we should remember that 
 they are at a disadvantage when read instead of heard. 
 The imagination should supply all those accessories which 
 gave them vitality when first pronounced the living pres 
 ence and voice of the speaker ; the listening Senate ; the 
 grave excitement of the hour and of the impending con 
 flict. The wordiness and exaggeration ; the highly latin 
 ized diction ; the rhapsodies about freedom which hun 
 dreds of Fourth-of-July addresses have since turned into 
 platitudes all these coming hot from the lips of men 
 whose actions in the field confirmed the earnestness of 
 their speech were effective in the crisis and for the 
 purpose to which they were addressed. 
 
 The press was an agent in the cause of liberty no less 
 potent than the platform, and patriots such as Adams, Otis, 
 The patriot Quincy, Warren, and Hancock wrote constantly, for r the 
 newspapers, essays and letters on the public questions of the 
 
The Revolutionary Period. 45 
 
 time signed "Vindex," "Hyperion," "Independent," 
 " Brutus," "Cassius," and the like, and couched in language 
 which to the taste of to-day seems rather over-rhetorical. 
 Among the most important of these political essays were 
 the "Circular Letter to each Colonial Legislature," pub 
 lished by Adams and Otis in 1768, Quincy s " Observa- g amue i 
 tions on the Boston Port Bill," 1774, and Otis s "Rights Adams - 
 of the British Colonies," a pamphlet of one hundred and 
 twenty pages, printed in 1764. No collection of Otis s j ames otis. 
 writings has ever been made. The life of Quincy, pub- josiah 
 lished by his son, preserves for posterity his journals and <oiuincy - 
 correspondence, his newspaper essays, and his speeches at 
 the bar, taken from the Massachusetts law reports. 
 
 Among the political literature which is of perennial in 
 terest to the American people are such state documents as 
 the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution of the 
 United States, and the messages, inaugural addresses, and 
 other writings of our early presidents. Thomas Jefferson, Thomas Jeffer- 
 the third president of the United States, and the father of Declaration 
 the Democratic party, was the author of the Declaration of ence! 6J 
 Independence, whose opening sentences have become com 
 monplaces in the memory of all readers. One sentence in 
 particular has been as a shibboleth, or war-cry, or declaration 
 of faith among Democrats of all shades of opinion : " We 
 hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are cre 
 ated equal ; that they are endowed by their Creator with 
 certain inalienable rights ; that among these are life, liberty, 
 and the pursuit of happiness." Not so familiar to modern 
 readers is the following, which an English historian of our 
 literature calls " the most eloquent clause of that great doc 
 ument," and "the most interesting suppressed passage in 
 American literature." Jefferson was a southerner, but 
 even at that early day the South had grown sensitive on 
 the subject of slavery, and Jefferson s arraignment of King 
 
46 
 
 Initial Studies in American Letters. 
 
 The sup 
 pressed 
 passage. 
 
 Early utter 
 ances on the 
 slavery ques 
 tion. 
 
 John Ran 
 dolph of 
 Roanoke. 
 
 George for promoting the "peculiar institution " was left 
 out from the final draft of the Declaration in deference to 
 southern members. 
 
 "He has waged cruel war against human nature itself, 
 violating its most sacred rights of life and liberty, in the 
 persons of a distant people who never offended him, cap 
 tivating and carrying them into slavery in another hemi 
 sphere, or to incur miserable death in their transportation 
 thither. This piratical warfare, the opprobrium of infidel 
 powers, is the warfare of the Christian king of Great 
 Britain. Determined to keep open a market where men 
 should be bought and sold, he has prostituted his negative 
 by suppressing every legislative attempt to restrain this ex- 
 .ecrable commerce. And, that this assemblage of horrors 
 might want no fact of distinguished dye, he is now exciting 
 those very people to rise in arms against us and purchase 
 that liberty of which he deprived them by murdering the 
 people upon whom he obtruded them, and thus paying off 
 former crimes committed against the liberties of one peo 
 ple by crimes which he urges them to commit against the 
 lives of another." 
 
 The tone of apology or defense which Calhoun and other 
 southern statesmen afterward adopted on the subject of 
 slavery was not taken by the men of Jefferson s generation. 
 Another famous Virginian, John Randolph of Roanoke, 
 himself a slave-holder, in his speech on the militia bill in 
 the House of Representatives, December 10, 1811, said : "I 
 speak from facts when I say that the night-bell never tolls 
 for fire in Richmond that the mother does not hug her in 
 fant more closely to her bosom." This was said apropos of 
 the danger of a servile insurrection in the event of a war 
 with England a war which actually broke out in the year 
 following, but was not attended with the slave-rising which 
 Randolph predicted. Randolph was a thoroughgoing 
 
The Revolutionary Period. 47 
 
 "state rights" man, and, though opposed to slavery 011 
 principle, he cried "Hands off!" to any interference by 
 the general government with the domestic institutions of 
 the states. His speeches read better than most of his con 
 temporaries . They are interesting in their exhibit of a 
 bitter and eccentric individuality ; witty, incisive, and ex 
 pressed in a pungent and familiar style which contrasts re 
 freshingly with the diplomatic language and glittering 
 generalities of most congressional oratory, whose verbiage 
 seems to keep its subject always at arm s-length. 
 
 Another noteworthy writing of Jefferson s was his In 
 augural Address of March 4, 1801, with its program of 
 " equal and exact justice to all men, of whatever state or Add 
 persuasion, religious or political ; peace, commerce, and 
 honest friendship with all nations, entangling alliances 
 with none ; the support of the state governments in all 
 their rights ; . . . absolute acquiescence in the decisions 
 of the majority ; . . . the supremacy of the civil over 
 the military authority ; economy in the public expense ; 
 freedom of religion, freedom of the press, and freedom of 
 person under the protection of the habeas corpus, and trial 
 by juries impartially selected." 
 
 During his six years residence in France, as American 
 minister, Jefferson had become indoctrinated with the French 
 principles of French democracy. His main service and that democrac y- 
 of his party the Democratic, or, as it was then called, the 
 Republican party to the young republic was in its insist 
 ence upon toleration of all beliefs, and upon the freedom of 
 the individual from all forms of governmental restraint. 
 Jefferson has some claims to rank as an author in general 
 literature. Educated at William and Mary College in the 
 old Virginia capital, Williamsburg, he became the founder 
 of the University of Virginia, in which he made special TtoUnive 
 provision for the study of Anglo-Saxon, and in which the ginia, 1819. 
 
48 Initial Studies in American Letters. 
 
 liberal scheme of instruction and discipline was conformed, 
 Jefferson s in theory, at least, to the " university idea." His "Notes 
 Virginia." on Virginia " are not without literary quality, and one de 
 scription, in particular, has been often quoted the passage 
 of the Potomac through the Blue Ridge in which is this 
 poetically imaginative touch : " The mountain being cloven 
 asunder, she presents to your eye, through the cleft, a small 
 catch of smooth blue horizon, at an infinite distance in the 
 plain country, inviting you, as it were, from the riot and 
 tumult roaring around, to pass through the breach and par 
 ticipate of the calm below." 
 
 After the conclusion of peace with England, in 1783, 
 political discussion centered about the constitution, which 
 constitution, in 1788 took the place of the looser Articles of Confederation 
 adopted in 1778. The constitution as finally ratified was a 
 compromise between two parties the Federalists, who 
 wanted a strong central government, and the Anti-Feder 
 als (afterward called Republicans, or Democrats), who 
 wished to preserve state sovereignty. The debates on the 
 adoption of the constitution, both in the general conven 
 tion of the states, which met at Philadelphia in 1787, and 
 in the separate state conventions called to ratify its action, 
 form a valuable body of comment and illustration upon the 
 instrument itself. One of the most notable of the speeches in 
 opposition was Patrick Henry s address before the Virginia 
 Convention. " That this is a consolidated government," 
 . he said, " is demonstrably clear ; and the danger of such a 
 government is, to my mind, very striking." The leader of 
 
 Alexander the Federal party was Alexander Hamilton, the ablest con- 
 Hamilton. 
 
 structive intellect among the statesmen of our revolution 
 ary era, of whom Talleyrand said that he " had never 
 known his equal "; whom Guizot classed with "the men 
 who have best known the vital principles and fundamental 
 conditions of a government worthy of its name and mis- 
 
ALEXANDER HAMILTON. 
 THOMAS PAINE. 
 
 THOMAS JEFFERSON. 
 CHARLES BROCKDEN BROWN. 
 
The Revolutionary Period. 49 
 
 sion." Hamilton s speech " On the Expediency of Adopt 
 ing the Federal Constitution," delivered in the Convention 
 of New York, June 24, 1788, was a masterly statement of 
 the necessity and advantages of the Union. But the most 
 complete exposition of the constitutional philosophy of the 
 Federal party was the series of eighty-five papers entitled 
 "The Federalist," printed during the years 1787-88, and ltrr . , 
 
 J_ nG .r Gdcr 
 
 mostly in the Independent Journal of New York, over the alist." 
 signature " Publius." These were the work of Hamilton, 
 of John Jay, afterward chief-justice, and of James Madi 
 son, afterward president of the United States. The " Fed 
 eralist" papers, though written in a somewhat ponderous 
 diction, are among the great landmarks of American his 
 tory, and were in themselves a political education to the 
 generation that read them. Hamilton was a brilliant and 
 versatile figure, a persuasive orator, a forcible writer, and 
 as secretary of the treasury under Washington the fore 
 most of American financiers. He was killed in a duel by 
 Aaron Burr, at Weehawken, in 1804. 
 
 The Federalists were victorious, and under the provisions 
 of the new constitution George Washington was inaugu 
 rated first president of the United States, on March 4, 1789. 
 Washington s writings have been collected by Jared 
 Sparks. They consist of journals, letters, messages, ad 
 dresses, and public documents, for the most part plain 
 and business-like in manner, and without any literary 
 pretensions. The most elaborate and the best known of 
 them is his " Farewell Address," issued upon his retire- Wasllin ton , s 
 ment from the presidency in 1796. In the composition ^dress*" 1 
 of this he was assisted by Madison, Hamilton, and 
 Jay. It is wise in substance and dignified, though some 
 what stilted in expression. The correspondence of John John Adams s 
 Adams, second president of the United States, and his respondence. 
 Diary, kept from 1755-85, should also be mentioned as 
 
50 
 
 Initial Studies in American Letters. 
 
 Federalists 
 and Demo 
 crats. 
 
 Hartford Con 
 vention. 
 
 Fisher Ames. 
 
 important sources for a full knowledge of this period. 
 In the long life-and-death struggle of Great Britain 
 against the French Republic and its successor, Napoleon 
 Bonaparte, the Federalist party in this country naturally 
 sympathized with England, and the Jeffersonian democ 
 racy with France. The Federalists, who distrusted the 
 sweeping abstractions of the French Revolution and clung 
 to the conservative notions of a checked and balanced 
 freedom, inherited from English precedent, were accused of 
 monarchical and aristocratic leanings. On their side they 
 were not slow to accuse their adversaries of French atheism 
 and French Jacobinism. By a singular reversal of the nat 
 ural order of things, the strength of the Federalist party 
 was in New England, which was socially democratic, 
 while the strength of the Jeffersonians was in the South, 
 whose social structure owing to the system of slavery 
 was intensely aristocratic. The War of 1812 with England 
 was so unpopular in New England, by reason of the injury 
 which it threatened to inflict on its commerce, that the 
 Hartford Convention of 1814 was more than suspected of a 
 design to bring about the secession of New England from 
 the Union. A good deal of oratory was called out by the 
 debates on the commercial treaty with Great Britain nego 
 tiated by Jay in 1795, by the Alien and Sedition Law of 
 1798, and by other pieces of Federalist legislation, previous 
 to the downfall of that party and the election of Jefferson 
 to the presidency in 1800. The best of the Federalist ora 
 tors during those years was Fisher Ames, of Massachusetts, 
 and the best of his orations was, perhaps, his speech on 
 the British treaty in the House of Representatives, April 
 18, 1796. The speech was, in great measure, a protest 
 against American chauvinism and the violation of interna 
 tional obligations. u It has been said the world ought to 
 rejoice if Britain was sunk in the sea ; if where there are 
 
The Revolutionary Period. 51 
 
 now men and wealth and laws and liberty there was no 
 more than a sand-bank for sea-monsters to fatten on ; space 
 
 for the storms of the ocean to mingle in conflict. . . . Speech on 
 
 the British 
 What is patriotism ? Is it a narrow affection for the spot treaty, 1796. 
 
 where a man was born? Are the very clods where we 
 tread entitled to this ardent preference because they are 
 greener ? ... I see no exception to the respect that is 
 paid among nations to the law of good faith. . . . It is 
 observed by barbarians a whiff of tobacco smoke or a 
 string of beads gives not merely binding force but sanctity 
 to treaties. Even in Algiers a truce may be bought for 
 money, but, when ratified, even Algiers is too wise or too 
 just to disown and annul its obligation." Ames was a 
 scholar, and his speeches are more finished and thoughtful, 
 more literary, in a way, than those of his contemporaries. 
 His eulogiums on Washington and Hamilton are elaborate 
 tributes, rather excessive, perhaps, in laudation and in 
 classical allusions. In. all the oratory of the revolutionary 
 period there is nothing equal in deep and condensed en 
 ergy of feeling to the single clause in Lincoln s Gettysburg 
 Address, " that we here highly resolve that these dead 
 shall not have died in vain." 
 
 A prominent figure during and after the War of the Rev 
 olution was Thomas Paine, or, as he was somewhat disre- Thomas 
 spectfully called, " Tom Paine." He was a dissenting min- Paine, 
 ister who, conceiving himself ill-treated by the British 
 government, came to Philadelphia in 1774 and threw him 
 self heart and soul into the colonial cause. His pamphlet, 
 "Common Sense," issued in 1776, began with the famous <<Common 
 words, "These are the times that try men s souls." This Sense." 
 was followed by " The Crisis," a series of political essays 
 advocating independence and the establishment of a repub 
 lic, published in periodical form, though at irregular in 
 tervals. Paine s rough and vigorous advocacy was of great 
 
52 
 
 Initial Studies in American Letters. 
 
 " Rights of 
 Man." 
 
 "Age of 
 Reason. 
 
 Paine s deism. 
 
 Free-thinkers 
 among Amer 
 ican patriots. 
 
 service to the American patriots. His writings were pop 
 ular and his arguments were of a kind easiiy understood 
 by plain people, addressing themselves to the common 
 sense, the prejudices and passions of unlettered readers. 
 He afterward went to France and took an active part in 
 the popular movement there, crossing swords with Burke 
 in his " Rights of Man," 1791-92, written in defense of the 
 French Revolution. He was one of the two foreigners 
 who sat in the Convention ; but falling under suspicion 
 during the days of the Terror, he was committed to the 
 prison of the Luxemburg and only released upon the 
 fall of Robespierre, July 27, 1794. While in prison he 
 wrote a portion of his best-known work, " The Age of 
 Reason." This appeared in two parts in 1794 and 1795, 
 the manuscript of the first part having been intrusted to 
 Joel Barlow, the American poet, who happened to be in 
 Paris when Paine was sent to prison. 
 
 "The Age of Reason" damaged Paine s reputation in 
 America, where the name of "Tom Paine" became a 
 stench in the nostrils of the godly, and a synonym for athe 
 ism and blasphemy. His book was denounced from a hun 
 dred pulpits, and copies of it were carefully locked away 
 from the sight of "the young," whose religious beliefs it 
 might undermine. It was, in effect, a crude and popular 
 statement of the deistic argument against Christianity. 
 What the cutting logic and persiflagethe sourire hideux 
 of Voltaire had done in France, Paine, with coarser ma 
 terials, essayed to do for the English-speaking populations. 
 Deism was in the air of the time ; Franklin, Jefferson, 
 Ethan Allen, Joel Barlow , and other prominent Americans 
 were openly or unavowedly deistic. Free thought, some 
 how, went along with democratic opinions, and was a part 
 of the liberal movement of the age. Paine was a man 
 without reverence, imagination, or religious feeling. He 
 
The Revolutionary Period. 53 
 
 was no scholar, and he was not troubled by any perception of 
 the deeper and subtler aspects of the questions which he 
 touched. In his examination of the Old and New Testa- 
 ments he insisted that the Bible was an imposition and a 
 forgery, full of lies, absurdities, and obscenities. Super 
 natural Christianity, with all its mysteries and miracles, 
 was a fraud practiced by priests upon the people, and 
 churches were instruments of oppression in the hands of 
 tyrants. This way of accounting for Christianity would / 
 not now be accepted by even the most " advanced " think 
 ers. The contest between skepticism and revelation has 
 long since shifted to other grounds. Both the philosophy 
 and the temper of " The Age of Reason " belong to the 
 eighteenth century. But Paine s downright pugnacious 
 method of attack was effective with shrewd, half-educated 
 doubters ; and in America well-thumbed copies of his 
 book passed from hand to hand in many a rural tavern 
 or store, where the village atheist wrestled in debate with 
 the deacon or the schoolmaster. Paine rested his argument 
 against Christianity upon the familiar grounds of the in 
 credibility of miracles, the falsity of prophecy, the cruelty 
 or immorality of Moses and David and other Old Testa 
 ment worthies, the disagreement of the evangelists in their 
 gospels, etc. The spirit of his book and his competence as 
 a critic are illustrated by his saying of the New Testa 
 ment : "Any person who could tell a story of an appari 
 tion, or of a man s walking, could have made such books, Paine s 
 for the story is most wretchedly told. The sum total of a 
 parson s learning is a-6, 6, and Az c, hcec, hoc, and this is 
 more than sufficient to have enabled them, had they lived 
 at the time, to have written all the books of the New 
 Testament." 
 
 When we turn from the political and controversial writ 
 ings of the Revolution to such lighter literature as existed, 
 
54 
 
 Initial Studies in American Letters. 
 
 General liter 
 ature of the 
 period unim 
 portant. 
 
 English mod 
 els followed. 
 
 William 
 Livingston. 
 
 John 
 
 Trumbull s 
 
 "McFingal." 
 
 we find little that would deserve mention in a more 
 crowded period. The few things in this kind that have 
 kept afloat on the current of time rari nantes in gurgite 
 vasto attract attention rather by reason of their fewness 
 than of any special excellence that they have. During the 
 eighteenth century American literature continued to ac 
 commodate itself to changes of taste in the old country. 
 The so-called classical or Augustan writers of the reign of 
 Queen Anne replaced other models of style ; " The Spec 
 tator " set the fashion of almost all of our lighter prose, 
 from Franklin s " Busybody " down to the time of Irving, 
 who perpetuated the Addisonian tradition later than any 
 English writer. The influence of Locke, of Dr. Johnson, 
 and of the parliamentary orators has already been men 
 tioned. In poetry the example of Pope was dominant, so 
 that we find, for example, William Livingston, who be 
 came governor of New Jersey and a member of the Conti 
 nental Congress, writing in 1747 a poem on " Philosophic 
 Solitude " which reproduces the tricks of Pope s antitheses 
 and climaxes with the imagery of the " Rape of the Lock," 
 and the didactic morality of the " Imitations from Horace 
 and the " Moral Essays " : 
 
 " Let ardent heroes seek renown in arms, 
 Pant after fame and rush to war s alarms ; 
 To shining palaces let fools resort, 
 And dunces cringe to be esteemed at court. 
 Mine be the pleasure of a rural life, 
 From noise remote and ignorant of strife, 
 Far from the painted belle and white-gloved beau, 
 The lawless masquerade and midnight show ; 
 From ladies, lap-dogs, courtiers, garters, stars, 
 Fops, fiddlers, tyrants, emperors, and czars." 
 
 The most popular poem of the revolutionary period was 
 John Trumbull s "McFingal," published in part at Phila 
 delphia in 1775, and in complete shape at Hartford in 1782. 
 It went through more than thirty editions in America, and 
 
The Revolutionary Period. 55 
 
 was several times reprinted in England. " McFingal " was 
 a satire in four cantos, directed against the American loyal 
 ists, and modeled quite closely upon Butler s mock heroic 
 poem, "Hudibras." As Butler s hero sallies forth to put 
 down May games and bear-baitings, so the Tory McFingal 
 goes out against the liberty poles and bonfires of the patri 
 ots, but is tarred and feathered, and otherwise ill-entreated, 
 and finally takes refuge in the camp of General Gage at 
 Boston. The poem is written with smartness and vivacity, 
 attains often to drollery, and sometimes to genuine humor. 
 It remains one of the best of American political satires, 
 and unquestionably the most successful of the many imi 
 tations of " Hudibras," whose manner it follows so closely 
 that some of its lines, which have passed into currency as 
 
 proverbs, are generally attributed to Butler. For example : nudibrastic 
 
 proverbs in 
 " Xo man e er felt the halter draw " McFingal. 
 
 With good opinion of the law." 
 
 Or this : 
 
 " For any man with half an eye 
 What stands before him may espy ; 
 But optics sharp it needs, I ween, 
 To see what is not to be seen." 
 
 Trumbull s wit did not spare the vulnerable points of his 
 own countrymen, as in his sharp skit at slavery in the 
 couplet about the newly adopted flag of the Confederation : 
 
 " Inscribed with inconsistent types 
 Of liberty and thirteen stripes." 
 
 Trumbull was one of a group of Connecticut literati, who 
 made such noise in their time as "The Hartford Wits." TheHart _ 
 The other members of the group were Lemuel Hopkins, ford Wits." 
 David Humphreys, Joel Barlow, Elihu Smith, Theodore 
 Dwight, and Richard Alsop. Trumbull, Humphreys, and 
 Barlow had formed a friendship and a kind of literary 
 partnership at Yale, where they were contemporaries of 
 each other and of Timothy Dwight. During the war they 
 
56 
 
 Initial Studies in American Letters. 
 
 served in the army in various capacities, and at its close 
 they found themselves again together for a few years at 
 Hartford, where they formed a club that met weekly for 
 social and literary purposes. Their presence lent a sort of 
 eclat to the little provincial capital, and their writings 
 made it for a time an intellectual center quite as important 
 as Boston or Philadelphia or New York. The Hartford 
 Wits were stanch Federalists, and used their pens freely in 
 support of the administrations of Washington and Adams, 
 and in ridicule of Jefferson and the Democrats. In 1786-87 
 Trumbull, Hopkins, Barlow, and Humphreys published 
 in the New Haven Gazette a series of satirical papers entitled 
 
 "The Anarch- " The Anarchiad," suggested by the English " Rolliad," 
 iad." 
 
 and purporting to be extracts from an ancient epic on " the 
 
 Restoration of Chaos and Substantial Night." The papers 
 were an effort to correct, by ridicule, the anarchic condi 
 tion of things which preceded the adoption of the federal 
 constitution in 1789. It was a time of great confusion and 
 . discontent, when, in parts of the country, Democratic 
 mobs were protesting against the vote of five years pay by 
 the Continental Congress to the officers of the American 
 army. " The Anarchiad " was followed by "The Echo" 
 and " The Political Green House," written mostly by Alsop 
 and Theodore Dwight, and similar in character and tend 
 ency to the earlier series. Time has greatly blunted the 
 edge of these satires, but they were influential in their day, 
 and are an important part of the literature of the old Fed 
 eralist party. 
 
 Humphreys became afterward distinguished in the diplo 
 matic service, and was, successively, ambassador to Portu 
 gal and to Spain, whence he introduced into America the 
 breed of merino sheep. He had been on Washington s 
 stan during the war, and was several times an inmate of 
 his house at Mount Vernon, where he produced, in 1785, 
 
 Federalist 
 satires. 
 
 David 
 Humphreys. 
 
The Revolutionary Period. 57 
 
 the best known of his writings, u Mount Vernon," an ode 
 of a rather mild description, which once had admirers. 
 Joel Barlow cuts a larger figure in contemporary letters. Joel Barlow. 
 After leaving Hartford, in 1788, he went to France, where 
 he resided for seventeen years, made a fortune in specula 
 tions, and became imbued with French principles, writing 
 a song in praise of the guillotine, which gave great scandal 
 to his old friends at home. In 1805 he returned to America 
 and built a fine residence near Washington, which he 
 called " Kalorama." Barlow s literary fame, in his own gen 
 eration, rested upon his prodigious epic, u The Columbiad." 
 The first form of this was " The Vision of Columbus," pub 
 lished at Hartford in 1787. This he afterward recast and 
 
 enlarged into " The Columbiad," issued in Philadelphia in 
 
 " The Colum- 
 1807, and dedicated to Eobert Fulton, the inventor of the biad." 
 
 steamboat. This was by far the most sumptuous piece of 
 bookmaking that had then been published in America, and 
 was embellished with plates executed by the best London 
 engravers. 
 
 " The Columbiad " was a grandiose performance, and has 
 been the theme of much ridicule by later writers. Haw 
 thorne suggested its being dramatized and put on to the ac 
 companiment of artillery and thunder and lightning ; and 
 E. P. Whipple declared that "no critic in the last fifty 
 years had read more than a hundred lines of it." In its 
 ambitiousness and its length, it was symptomatic of the 
 spirit of the age, which was patriotically determined to cre 
 ate, by tour de force, a national literature of a size com 
 mensurate with the scale of American nature and the 
 destinies of the republic. As America was bigger than 
 Argos and Troy we ought to have a bigger epic than the 
 "Iliad." Accordingly, Barlow makes Hesper fetch Co 
 lumbus from his prison to a " hill of vision," where he un 
 rolls before his eye a panorama of the history of America, 
 
58 
 
 Initial Studies in American Letters. 
 
 American 
 epic. 
 
 "The Pleiads 
 of Connecti 
 cut." 
 
 Timothy 
 Dwight. 
 
 or, as our bards then preferred to call it, Columbia. He 
 shows him the conquest of Mexico by Cortez ; the rise and 
 fall of the kingdom of the Incas in Peru ; the settlements of 
 the English colonies in North America ; the old French and 
 Indian wars, the Revolution, ending with a prophecy of the 
 future greatness of the new-born nation. The machinery 
 of the "Vision" was borrowed from the eleventh and 
 twelfth books of " Paradise Lost." Barlow s verse was the 
 ten-syllabled rhyming couplet of Pope, and his poetic style 
 was distinguished by the vague, glittering imagery and 
 the false sublimity which marked the epic attempts of the 
 Queen Anne poets. Though Barlow was but a masquer- 
 ader in true heroic he showed himself a true poet in mock 
 heroic. His " Hasty Pudding, " written in Savoy in 1793 
 and dedicated to Mrs. Washington, was thoroughly Amer 
 ican, in subject at least, and its humor, though over-elab 
 orate, is good. One couplet in particular has prevailed 
 against oblivion : 
 
 " E en in thy native regions how I blush 
 To hear the Pennsylvanians call thee Mush . " 
 
 Another Connecticut poet one of the seven who were 
 fondly named u The Pleiads of Connecticut " was Timothy 
 Dwight, whose u Conquest of Canaan," written shortly 
 after his graduation from college, but not published till 
 1785, was, like "The Columbiad," an experiment toward 
 the domestication of the epic muse in America. It was 
 written like Barlow s poem, in rhymed couplets, and the 
 patriotic impulse of the time shows oddly in the introduc 
 tion of our Revolutionary War, by way of episode, among 
 the wars of Israel. " Greenfield Hill," 1794, was an idyllic 
 and moralizing poem, descriptive of a rural parish in Con 
 necticut of which the author was for a time the pastor. It 
 is not quite without merit ; shows plainly the influence of 
 Goldsmith, Thomson, and Seattle, but as a whole is tedious 
 
The Revolutionary Period. 59 
 
 and tame. Byron was amused that there should have been 
 an American poet christened Timothy, and it is to be feared 
 that amusement would have been the chief emotion 
 kindled in the breast of the wicked Voltaire had he ever 
 chanced to see the stern dedication to himself of the same 
 poet s "Triumph of Infidelity," 1788. Much more impor 
 tant than D wight s poetry was his able " Theology Ex- Dwight s 
 plained and Defended," 1794, a restatement, with modifi- and " rrav- 
 cations, of the Calvinism of Jonathan Edwards, which 
 was accepted by the Congregational churches of New 
 England as an authoritative exponent of the orthodoxy of 
 the time. His " Travels in New England and New York," 
 including descriptions of Niagara, the White Mountains, 
 Lake George, the Catskills, and other passages of natural 
 scenery, not so familiar then as now, was published posthu 
 mously in 1821, was praised by Southey, and is still read 
 able. As president of Yale College from 1795 to 1817, 
 Dwight, by his learning and ability, his sympathy with 
 young men, and the force and dignity of his character, ex 
 erted a great influence in the community. 
 The strong political bias of the time drew into its vortex 
 
 most of the miscellaneous literature that was produced. A 
 
 Popular bal- 
 number of ballads, serious and comic, Whig and Tory, lads of the 
 
 J? Revolution- 
 dealing with the battles and other incidents of the long ary War. 
 
 war, enjoyed a wide circulation in the newspapers or were 
 hawked about in printed broadsides. Most of these have 
 no literary merit, and are now mere antiquarian curiosities. 
 A favorite piece on the Tory side was the " Cow Chase," a 
 cleverish parody on u Chevy Chase," written by the gal 
 lant and unfortunate Major Andre", at the expense of 
 
 "Mad" Anthony Wayne. The national song "Yankee 
 
 " Yankee 
 Doodle " was evolved during the Revolution, and, as is the Doodle." 
 
 case with " John Brown s Body " and many other popular 
 melodies, some obscurity hangs about its origin. The air 
 
60 
 
 Initial Studies in American Letters. 
 
 Francis 
 Hopkinson. 
 
 was an old one, and the words of the chorus seem to have 
 been adapted or corrupted from a Dutch song, and applied 
 in derision to the provincials by the soldiers of the British 
 army as early as 1755. Like many another nickname, the 
 term Yankee Doodle was taken up by the nicknamed and 
 proudly made their own. The stanza, 
 
 " Yankee Doodle came to town," etc., 
 
 antedates the war ; but the first complete set of words to 
 the tune was the " Yankee s Return from Camp," which is 
 apparently of the year 1775. The most popular humorous 
 ballad on the Whig side was the "Battle of the Kegs," 
 founded on a laughable incident of the campaign at Phila 
 delphia. This was written by Francis Hopkinson, a Phila- 
 delphian, and one of the signers of the Declaration of 
 Independence. Hopkinson had some title to rank as one 
 of the earliest American humorists. Without the keen 
 wit of "McFingal," some of his "Miscellaneous Essays 
 and Occasional Writings," published in 1792, have more 
 geniality and heartiness than Trumbull s satire. His 
 "Letter on Whitewashing" is a bit of domestic humor 
 that foretokens the Danbury News man ; and his " Modern 
 Learning," 1784, a burlesque on college examinations, in 
 which a salt-box is described from the point of view of 
 metaphysics, logic, natural philosophy, mathematics, anat 
 omy, surgery, and chemistry, long kept its place in school- 
 readers and other collections. His son, Joseph Hopkinson, 
 J9sephHop- wrote the song of "Hail Columbia," which is saved from 
 "Hail Colum- insignificance only by the music to which it was married, 
 
 blR " 
 
 the then popular air of "The President s March." The 
 words were written in 1798, 011 the eve of a threatened war 
 with France, and at a time when party spirit ran high. It 
 was sung nightly by crowds in the streets, and for a whole 
 season by a favorite singer at the theater ; for by this time 
 there were theaters in Philadelphia, in New York, and 
 
 Early Ameri 
 can humor. 
 
The Revolutionary Period. 61 
 
 even in puritanic Boston. Much better than " Hail 
 
 Columbia" was "The Star-Spangled Banner," the words Francis Scott 
 
 Key s " Star- 
 of which were composed by Francis Scott Key, a Mary- spangled 
 
 lander, during the bombardment by the British of Fort 
 McHenry, near Baltimore, in 1812. More pretentious than 
 these was the once celebrated ode of Robert Treat Paine, Robert Treat 
 Jr., "Adams and Liberty," recited at an anniversary of 
 the Massachusetts Charitable Fire Society. The sale of 
 this is said to have netted its author over $750, but it is, 
 notwithstanding, a very wooden performance. Paine was 
 a young Harvard graduate, who had married an actress 
 playing at the Old Federal Street Theater, the first play 
 house opened in Boston, in 1794. His name was originally 
 Thomas, but this was changed for him by the Massachu 
 setts legislature, because he did not wish to be confounded 
 with the author of " The Age of Reason." " Dim are those 
 names erstwhile in battle loud," and many an old revolu 
 tionary worthy who fought for liberty with sword and pen 
 is now utterly forgotten, or remembered only by some 
 phrase which has become a current quotation. Here and 
 there a line has, by accident, survived to do duty as a 
 motto or inscription, while all its context is buried in 
 
 oblivion. Few have read anything more of Jonathan M. Jonathan M. 
 
 Sewall. 
 Sewall s, for example, than the couplet, 
 
 " No pent-up Utica contracts your powers, 
 But the whole boundless continent is yours," 
 
 taken from his " Epilogue to Cato," written in 1778. 
 
 Another revolutionary poet was Philip Freneau u that 
 rascal Freneau," as Washington called him, when annoyed 
 by the attacks upon his administration in Freneau s Na- Philip 
 tional Gazette. He was of Huguenot descent, was a classmate 
 of Madison at Princeton College, was taken prisoner by the 
 British during the war, and when the war was over en 
 gaged iiujournalism as an ardent supporter of Jefferson 
 
62 
 
 Initial Studies in American Letters. 
 
 First real 
 American 
 poet. 
 
 Treatment 
 of Indian 
 themes. 
 
 " The Indian 
 
 Burying- 
 
 Ground." 
 
 and the Democrats. Freneau s patriotic verses and politi 
 cal lampoons are now unreadable ; but he deserves to rank 
 as the first real American poet, by virtue of his "Wild 
 Honeysuckle," "Indian Burying-Ground," "Indian Stu 
 dent," and a few other little pieces, which exhibit a grace 
 and delicacy inherited, perhaps, with his French blood. 
 
 Indeed, to speak strictly, all of the "poets" hitherto 
 mentioned were nothing but rhymers ; but in Freneau we 
 meet with something of beauty and artistic feeling ; some 
 thing which still keeps his verses fresh. In his treatment 
 of Indian themes, in particular, appear for the first time a 
 sense of the picturesque and poetic elements in the char 
 acter and wild life of the red man, and that pensive senti 
 ment which the fading away of the tribes toward the sun 
 set has left in the wake of their retreating footsteps. In 
 this Freneau anticipates Cooper and Longfellow, though 
 his work is slight compared with the " Leatherstocking 
 Tales" or "Hiawatha." At the time when the Revolu 
 tionary War broke out the population of the colonies was 
 over three millions ; Philadelphia had thirty thousand in 
 habitants, and the frontier had retired to a comfortable dis 
 tance from the seaboard. The Indian had already grown 
 legendary to town dwellers, and Freneau fetches his " In 
 dian Student " not from the outskirts of the settlement but 
 from the remote backwoods of the state : 
 
 " From Susquehanna s farthest springs 
 Where savage tribes pursue their game 
 
 (His blanket tied with yellow strings), 
 A shepherd of the forest came." 
 
 Campbell "lifted" in his poem "O Connor s Child" 
 the last line of the following stanza from Freneau s " In 
 dian Burying-Ground " : 
 
 " By midnight moons o er moistening dews, 
 
 In vestments for the chase arrayed, 
 The hunter still the deer pursues 
 The hunter and the deer, a shade." 
 
The Revolutionary Period. 63 
 
 And Walter Scott did Freneau the honor to borrow, in 
 "Marmion," the final line of one of the stanzas of his 
 poem on the battle of Eutaw Springs : 
 
 " They saw their injured country s woe, 
 
 The naming town, the wasted field ; 
 Then rushed to meet the insulting foe ; 
 
 They took the spear, but left the shield." 
 
 Scott inquired of an American gentlemen who visited him 
 the authorship of this poem, which he had by heart, and 
 pronounced it as fine a thing of the kind as there was in 
 the language. 
 
 The American drama and American prose fiction had their 
 beginning during the period now under review. A com- 
 pany of English players came to this country in 1752 and 
 made the tour of many of the principal towns. The first 
 play acted here by professionals on a public stage was 
 the "Merchant of Venice," which was given by the Eng 
 lish company at Williamsburg, Va., in 1752. The first 
 regular theater building was at Annapolis, Md., where in 
 the same year this troupe performed, among other pieces, 
 Farquhar s "Beaux Stratagem." In 1753 a theater was 
 built in New York, and one in 1759 in Philadelphia. The First theaters. 
 Quakers of Philadelphia and the Puritans of Boston were 
 strenuously opposed to the acting of plays, and in the latter 
 city the players were several times arrested during the per 
 formances, under a Massachusetts law forbidding dramatic 
 performances. At Newport, B. I., on the other hand, which 
 was a health resort for planters from the Southern States 
 and the West Indies, and the largest slave-market in the 
 North, the actors were hospitably received. The first play 
 known to have been written by an American was "The 
 Prince of Parthia," 1765, a closet drama, by Thomas God- 
 
 frey, of Philadelphia. The first play by an American of Parthia." 
 writer, acted by professionals in a public theater, was Boy- 
 
64 Initial Studies in American Letters. 
 
 all Tyler s "Contrast," performed in New York in 1786. 
 The former of these was very high tragedy, and the lat 
 ter very low comedy ; and neither of them is otherwise 
 remarkable than as being the first of a long line of indif 
 ferent dramas. There is, in fact, no American dramatic 
 literature worth speaking of; not a single American play 
 of even the second rank, unless we except a few graceful 
 parlor comedies, like Mr. Howell s "Elevator" and 
 
 Royaii Tyler s "Sleeping-Car." Royall Tyler, the author of "The Con- 
 comedies. 
 
 trast," cut quite a figure in his day as a wit and journalist, 
 
 and eventually became chief-justice of Vermont. His 
 comedy, " The Georgia Spec," 1797, had a great run in Bos 
 ton, and his "Algerine Captive," published in the same 
 year, was one of the earliest American novels. It was a 
 rambling tale of adventure, constructed somewhat upon the 
 plan of Smollett s novels and dealing with the piracies 
 which led to the war between the United States and Al 
 giers in 1815. 
 
 Charles Brockden Brown, the first American novelist of 
 Charles Brock- any note, was also the first professional man of letters in 
 
 den Brown, 
 
 the^irst Amer- this country who supported himself entirely by his pen. He 
 was born in Philadelphia in 1771, lived a part of his life in 
 New York and part in his native city, where he started, in 
 1803, The Literary Magazine and American Register. During 
 the years 1798-1801 he published in rapid succession six ro 
 mances, "Wieland," "Ormond," " Arthur Mervyn," "Edgar 
 Huntley," "Clara Howard," and "Jane Talbot." Brown 
 was an invalid and something of a recluse, with a relish for 
 the ghastly in incident and the morbid in character. He was 
 in some points a prophecy of Poe and Hawthorne, though 
 his art was greatly inferior to Poe s, and almost infinitely 
 so to Hawthorne s. His books belong more properly to the 
 contemporary school of fiction in England which preceded 
 the " Waverley Novels "to the class that includes Beck- 
 
The Revolutionary Period. 65 
 
 ford s "Vathek," Godwin s " Caleb Williams " and "St. character of 
 Leon," Mrs. Shelley s " Frankenstein," and such "Gothic " his rom ances. 
 romances as Lewis s " Monk," Walpole s "Castle of 
 Otranto," and Mrs. Radcliffe s "Mysteries of Udolpho." 
 A distinguishing characteristic of this whole school is what 
 we may call the clumsy-horrible. Brown s romances are not 
 wanting in inventive power; in occasional situations that 
 are intensely thrilling, and in subtle analysis of character ; 
 but they are fatally defective in art. The narrative is by 
 turns abrupt and tiresomely prolix, proceeding not so much 
 by dialogue as by elaborate dissection and discussion of 
 motives and states of mind, interspersed with the author s 
 reflections. The wild improbabilities of plot and the un 
 natural and even monstrous developments of character are 
 in startling contrast with the old-fashioned preciseness of 
 the language ; the conversations, when there are any, being 
 conducted in that insipid dialect in which a fine woman 
 was called an " elegant female." The following is a sample 
 description of one of Brown s heroines, and is taken from 
 
 his novel of "Ormond"the leading character in which 
 
 "Ormona. 
 
 a combination of unearthly intellect with fiendish wicked 
 ness is thought to have been suggested by Aaron Burr : 
 " Helena Cleves was endowed with every feminine and fas 
 cinating quality. Her features were modified by the most 
 transient sentiments and were the seat of a softness at all 
 times blushful and bewitching. All those graces of sym 
 metry, smoothness, and luster, which assemble in the im 
 agination of the painter when he calls from the bosom of 
 her natal deep the Paphian divinity, blended their perfec 
 tions in the shade, complexion, and hair of this lady." 
 But, alas ! " Helena s intellectual deficiencies could not be 
 concealed. She was proficient in the elements of no 
 science. The doctrine of lines and surfaces was as dispro 
 portionate with her intellects as with those of the mocking- 
 
Initial Studies in American Letters. 
 
 Tales of 
 morbid 
 psychology. 
 
 bird. She had not reasoned on the principles of human 
 action, nor examined the structure of society. . . . She 
 could not commune in their native dialect with the sages of 
 Rome and Athens. . . . The constitution of nature, 
 the attributes of its Author, the arrangement of the parts 
 of the external universe, and the substance, modes of oper 
 ation, and ultimate destiny of human intelligence were 
 enigmas unsolved and insoluble by her." 
 
 Brown frequently raises a superstructure of mystery on a 
 basis ludicrously weak. Thus the hero of his first novel, 
 Wieiand." " Wieland " (whose father anticipates "Old Krook" in 
 Dickens s " Bleak House," by dying of spontaneous com 
 bustion), is led on by what he mistakes for spiritual voices 
 to kill his wife and children ; and the voices turn out to be 
 produced by the ventriloquism of one Carwin, the villain of 
 the story. Similarly in "Edgar Huntley," the plot turns 
 upon the phenomena of sleep-walking. Brown had the 
 good sense to place the scene of his romances in his own 
 country, and the only passages in them which have now a 
 living interest are his descriptions of wilderness scenery 
 in " Edgar Huntley," and his graphic account in " Arthur 
 Mervyn " of the yellow-fever epidemic in Philadelphia in 
 1793. Shelley was an admirer of Brown, and his experi 
 ments in prose fiction, such as " Zastrozzi " and " St. 
 Irvyue the Rosicrucian," are of the same abnormal and 
 speculative type. 
 
 Another book which falls within this period was the 
 Journal, 1774, of John Woolman, a New Jersey Quaker, 
 which has received the highest praise from Channing, 
 Charles Lamb, and many others. "Get the writings of 
 John Woolman by heart," wrote Lamb, "and love the 
 early Quakers." The charm of this journal resides in its 
 singular sweetness aud innocence of feeling, the "deep 
 inward stillness" peculiar to the people called Quakers. 
 
 John Wool- 
 man s Jour 
 nal. 
 
The Revolutionary Period. 67 
 
 Apart from his constant use of certain phrases peculiar to 
 the Friends, Woolman s English is also remarkably grace 
 ful and pure, the transparent medium of a soul absolutely 
 sincere, and tender and humble in its sincerity. When 
 not working at his trade as a tailor Woolman spent his 
 time in visiting and ministering to the monthly, quarterly, 
 and yearly meetings of Friends, traveling on horseback to 
 their scattered communities in the backwoods of Virginia 
 and North Carolina, and northward along the coast as far 
 
 as Boston and Nantucket. He was under a "concern" Woolman 
 
 , influences 
 
 and a "heavy exercise" touching the keeping of slaves, the Indians 
 
 and by his writing and speaking did much to influence the sSfvery. 
 Quakers against slavery. His love went out, indeed, to all 
 the wretched and oppressed ; to sailors, and to the Indians 
 in particular. One of his most perilous journeys was made 
 to the settlements of Moravian Indians in the wilderness of 
 western Pennsylvania, at Bethlehem, and at Wehaloosing, 
 on the Susquehanna. Some of the scruples which Wool 
 man felt, and the quaint naivete with which he expresses 
 them, may make the modern reader smile, but the smile 
 will be very close to a tear. Thus, when in England 
 where he died in 1772 he would not ride nor send a letter 
 by mail-coach, because the poor postboys were compelled thropy! al 
 to ride long stages in winter nights, and were sometimes 
 frozen to death. " So great is the hurry in the spirit of this 
 world that, in aiming to do business quickly and to gain 
 wealth, the creation at this day doth loudly groan." 
 Again, having reflected that war was caused by luxury in 
 dress, etc., the use of dyed garments grew uneasy to him, 
 and he got and wore a hat of the natural color of the 
 fur. "In attending meetings this singularity was a trial Hisbadhat 
 to me, . . . and some Friends, who knew not from 
 what motives I wore it, grew shy of me. . . . Those 
 who spoke with me I generally informed, in a few words, 
 
Initial Studies in American Lettees. 
 
 that I believed my wearing it was not in my own will." 
 
 1. " Representative American Orations." Edited by Alex 
 ander Johnston. New York : 1884. 
 
 2. "The Federalist," New York-: 1863. 
 
 3. THOMAS JEFFERSON : "Notes on Virginia." Boston: 
 1829. 
 
 4. TIMOTHY DWIGHT : "Travels in New England and 
 New York." New Haven : 1821. 
 
 5. JOHN TRUMBULL : "McFingal." Trumbull s Poetical 
 Works. Hartford : 1820. 
 
 6. JOEL BARLOW : " Hasty Pudding." FRANCIS HOPKIN- 
 SON: "Modern Learning." PHILIP FRENEAU : "Indian 
 Student," "Indian Burying-Ground," "White Honey 
 suckle." Vol. I. of Duyckinck s " Cyclopedia of American. 
 Literature." New York : 1866. 
 
 7. CHARLES BROCKDEN BROWN: "Arthur Mervyn." 
 Boston : 1827. 
 
 8. " The Journal of John Woolmaii." With an Introduc 
 tion by John G. Whittier. Boston : 1871. 
 
 9. CHARLES F. RICHARDSON : " American Literature. " 
 New York : 1887. 
 
 10. JOHN NICHOL : " American Literature." Edinburgh : 
 1882. 
 
CHAPTER III. 
 THE ERA OF NATIONAL EXPANSION 1815-1837. 
 
 THE attempt to preserve a strictly chronological order American lit 
 erature not yet 
 must here be abandoned. About all the American litera- a century old. 
 
 ture in existence that is of any value as literature is the 
 product of the past three quarters of a century, and the 
 men who produced it, though older or younger, were still 
 contemporaries. Irving s Knickerbocker s History of 
 New York," 1809, was published within the recollection of 
 some yet living, and the venerable poet Richard H. Dana 
 Irving s junior by only four years survived to 1879, 
 when the youngest of the generation of writers that now 
 occupy public attention had already won their spurs. Bry 
 ant, whose " Thanatopsis " was printed in 1816, lived down 
 to 1878. He saw the beginnings of our national literature, 
 and he saw almost as much of the latest phase of it as we 
 see to-day in this year 1895. Still, even within the limits 
 of a single lifetime, there have been progress and change. 
 And so, while it will happen that the consideration of 
 writers, a part of whose work falls between the dates at 
 the head of this chapter, may be postponed to subsequent 
 chapters, we may in a general way follow the sequence of 
 time. 
 
 The period between the close of the second war with 
 England, in 1815, and the great financial crash of 1837 has 
 
 been called in language attributed to President Monroe, 
 
 , " The era of 
 "the era of good feeling." It was a time of peace and good feeling." 
 
 prosperity, of rapid growth in population and rapid exten- 
 
70 
 
 Initial Studies in American Letters. 
 
 Settlement of 
 the West. 
 
 Emigration 
 from New 
 England. 
 
 sion of territory. The new nation was entering upon its 
 vast estates and beginning to realize its manifest destiny. 
 The peace with Great Britain, by calling off the Canadian 
 Indians and the other tribes in alliance with England, had 
 opened up the Northwest to settlement. Ohio had been 
 admitted as a state in 1802 ; but at the time of President 
 Monroe s tour, in 1817, Cincinnati had only seven thousand 
 inhabitants, and half of the state was unsettled. The Ohio 
 River flowed for most of its course through an unbroken 
 wilderness. Chicago was merely a fort. Hitherto the emi 
 gration to the West had been sporadic ; now it took on the 
 dimensions of a general and almost a concerted exodus. 
 This movement was stimulated in New England by the 
 cold summer of 1816 and the late spring of 1817, which 
 produced a scarcity of food that amounted in parts of the 
 interior to a veritable famine. All through this period 
 sounded the ax of the pioneer clearing the forest about his 
 log-cabin, and the rumble of the canvas-covered emigrant- 
 wagon over the primitive highways which crossed the 
 Alleghenies or followed the valley of the Mohawk. S. G. 
 Goodrich, known in letters as " Peter Parley," in his 
 Recollections of a Lifetime," 1856, describes the part of 
 the movement which he had witnessed as a boy in Fair- 
 field County, Connecticut: "I remember very well the 
 tide of emigration through Connecticut, on its way to the 
 West, during the summer of 1817. Some persons went in 
 covered wagons frequently a family consisting of father, 
 mother, and nine small children, with one at the breast, 
 some on foot, and some crowded together under the cover, 
 with kettles, gridirons, feather-beds, crockery, and the 
 family Bible, Watts s Psalms and Hymns, and Webster s 
 Spelling-book the lares and penates of the household. 
 Others started in ox-carts, and trudged on at the rate of ten 
 miles a day. . . . Many of these persons were in 
 
The Era of National Expansion. 71 
 
 a state of poverty, and begged their way as they went. 
 
 Some died before they reached the expected Canaan ; many 
 
 perished after their arrival from fatigue and privation ; and 
 
 others from the fever and ague, which was then certain to 
 
 attack the new settlers. It was, I think, in 1818 that I 
 
 published a small tract entitled * Tother Side of Ohio " Tother Side 
 
 that is, the other view, in contrast to the popular notion 
 
 that it was the paradise of the world. It was written by 
 
 Dr. Hand, a talented young physician of Berlin, who had 
 
 made a visit to the West about these days. It consisted 
 
 mainly of vivid but painful pictures of the accidents and 
 
 incidents attending this wholesale migration. The roads 
 
 over the Alleghenies, between Philadelphia and Pittsburg, 
 
 were then rude, steep, and dangerous, and some of the 
 
 more precipitous slopes were consequently strewn with the 
 
 carcasses of wagons, carts, horses, oxen, which had made 
 
 shipwreck in their perilous descents." 
 
 But in spite of the hardships of the settler s life the 
 spirit of that time, as reflected in its writings, was a hopeful 
 and a light-hearted one. 
 
 " Westward the course of empire takes its way," 
 runs the famous line from Berkeley s poem on America. 
 The New Englanders who removed to the Western Reserve 
 went there to better themselves ; and their children found 
 themselves the owners of broad acres of virgin soil in place 
 of the stony hill pastures of Berkshire and Litchfleld. 
 There was an attraction, too, about the wild, free life of the Frontier life, 
 frontiersman, with all its perils and discomforts. The life 
 of Daniel Boone, the pioneer of Kentucky that " dark 
 and bloody ground," is a genuine romance. Hardly less 
 picturesque was the old river life of the Ohio boatmen, 
 before the coming of steam banished their queer craft from 
 the water. Between 1810 and 1840 the center of popula 
 tion in the United States had moved from the Potomac to 
 
72 
 
 Initial Studies in American Letters. 
 
 Increase of 
 population. 
 
 New states. 
 
 Erie Canal. 
 
 1825. 
 
 the neighborhood of Clarksburg, in West Virginia, and the 
 population itself had increased from seven to seventeen 
 millions. The gain was made partly in the East and 
 South, but the general drift was westward. During the 
 years now under review the following new states were ad 
 mitted in the order named : Indiana, Mississippi, Illinois, 
 Alabama, Maine, Missouri, Arkansas, Michigan. Ken 
 tucky and Tennessee had been made states in the last years 
 of the eighteenth century, and Louisiana acquired by 
 purchase from France in 1812. 
 
 The settlers, in their westward march, left large tracts of 
 wilderness behind them. They took up first the rich bot 
 tom-lands along the river courses, the Ohio and Miami arid 
 Licking, and later the valleys of the Mississippi and Miss 
 ouri and the shores of the Great Lakes. But there still re 
 mained backwoods in New York and Pennsylvania, though 
 the cities of New York and Philadelphia had each a popu 
 lation of more than one hundred thousand in 1815. When 
 the Erie Canal was opened, in 1825, it ran through a primi 
 tive forest. N. P. Willis, who went by canal to Buffalo and 
 Niagara in 1827, describes the houses and stores at Roches 
 ter as standing among the burnt stumps left by the first 
 settlers. In the same year that saw the opening of this 
 great waterway, the Indian tribes, numbering now about 
 one hundred and thirty thousand souls, were moved across 
 the Mississippi. Their power had been broken by General 
 Harrison s victory over Tecumseh at the battle of Tippe- 
 canoe, in 1811, and they were in fact mere remnants and 
 fragments of the race which had hung upon the skirts of 
 civilization and disputed the advance of the white man for 
 two centuries. It was not until some years later than this 
 that railroads began to take an important share in opening 
 up new country. 
 
 The restless energy, the love of adventure, the sanguine 
 
WASHINGTON IRVING. 
 
 DANIEI, WEBSTEK. JAMES FENIMORE COOPER. 
 
 WlLJ IAM EL.LERY CHANNING. 
 
The Era of National Expansion. 73 
 
 anticipation which characterized American thought at this 
 time, the picturesque contrasts to be seen in each mushroom 
 town where civilization was encroaching on the raw edge of 
 the wilderness all these found expression, not only in such 
 
 well-known books as Cooper s "Pioneers," 1823, and Irving s westward 
 
 movement i 
 
 "Tour on the Prairies," 1835, but in the minor literature "ThePio- 
 
 nccrs. 
 
 which is read to-day, if at all, not for its own sake, 
 but for the light that it throws on the history of national 
 development : in such books as Paulding s story of " West- ^1*" and" 1 
 
 ward Ho ! " and his poem, " The Backwoodsman," 1818 ; or " T ^e Back 
 woodsman. 
 
 as Timothy Flint s "Recollections," 1826, and his "Geog 
 raphy and History of the Mississippi Valley," 1827. It 
 was not an age of great books, but it was an age of large 
 ideas and expanding prospects. The new consciousness of 
 empire uttered itself hastily, crudely, ran into buncombe, 
 "spread-eagleism," and other noisy forms of patriotic 
 exultation ; but it was thoroughly democratic and Ameri 
 can. Though literature or at least the best literature of 
 the time was not yet emancipated from English models, 
 thought and life, at any rate, were no longer a bondage- 
 no longer provincial. And it is significant that the party 
 in office during these years was the Democratic, the party 
 which had broken most completely with conservative tra 
 ditions. The famous " Monroe doctrine " was a pronuncia- 
 mento of this aggressive democracy, and though the 
 Federalists returned to power for a single term, under John 
 Quincy Adams (1825-29), Andrew Jackson received the 
 largest number of electoral votes, and Adams was only 
 chosen by the House of Representatives in the absence of a 
 majority vote for any one candidate. At the close of his 
 term, "Old Hickory," the hero of the people, the most 
 characteristically democratic of our presidents, and the 
 first backwoodsman who entered the White House, was 
 borne into office on a wave of popular enthusiasm. 
 
74 
 
 Initial Studies in American Letters. 
 
 Real begin 
 nings or 
 American 
 literature. 
 
 We have now arrived at the time when American litera 
 ture, in the higher and stricter sense of the term, really be 
 ts. G. Good- gan to have an existence. S. G. Goodrich, who settled at 
 lections of a Hartford as a bookseller and publisher in 1818, says, in his 
 Recollections": "About this time I began to think of 
 trying to bring out original American works. . . . The 
 general impression was that we had not, and could not 
 have, a literature. It was the precise point at which 
 Sidney Smith had uttered that bitter taunt in the Edin 
 burgh Review, Who reads an American book ? . . It 
 was positively injurious to the commercial credit of a 
 bookseller to undertake American works." Washington 
 Irving (1783-1859) was the first American author whose 
 books, as books, obtained recognition abroad ; whose name 
 was thought Avorthy of mention beside the names of 
 English contemporary authors, like Byron, Scott, and 
 Coleridge. He was also the first American writer whose 
 writings are still read for their own sake. We read 
 Mather s "Magnalia" and Franklin s "Autobiography" 
 and Trumbull s " McFingal " if we read them at all as 
 history, and to learn about the times or the men. But we 
 read " The Sketch Book " and " Knickerbocker s History of 
 New York" and "The Conquest of Granada" for them 
 selves and for the pleasure that they give as pieces of liter 
 ary art. 
 
 We have arrived, too, at a time when we may apply a 
 more cosmopolitan standard to the works of American 
 writers, and may disregard many a minor author whose 
 productions would have cut some figure had they come to 
 light amid the poverty of our colonial age. Hundreds of 
 these forgotten names, with specimens of their unread 
 writings, are consigned to a limbo of immortality in the 
 pages of Duyckinck s " Cyclopedia" and of Griswold s 
 "Poets of America" and "Prose Writers of America." 
 
The Era of National Expansion. 75 
 
 We may select here for special mention, and as most repre 
 sentative of the thought of their time, the names of Irving, 
 Cooper, Webster, and Channing. 
 
 A generation was now coming upon the stage who could 
 recall no other government in this country than the gov- Washington 
 ernment of the United States, and to whom the Revolu- Irving - 
 tionary War was but a tradition. Born in the very year 
 of the peace, it was a part of Irving s mission, by the sym 
 pathetic charm of his writings and by the cordial recog 
 nition which he won in both countries, to allay the 
 soreness which the second war, of 1812-15, had left between 
 England and America. He was well fitted for the task of 
 mediator. Conservative by nature, early drawn to the ven 
 erable worship of the Episcopal Church, retrospective in 
 
 his tastes, with a preference for the past and its historic as- between the 
 
 .-.,., , Old and New 
 
 sociations, which, even in young America, led him to invest Worlds. 
 
 the Hudson and the region about New York with a legend 
 ary interest, he wrote of American themes in an English 
 fashion, and interpreted to an American public the mellow 
 attractiveness that he found in the life and scenery of Old 
 England. He lived in both countries, and loved them 
 both ; and it is hard to say whether Irving is more of an 
 English or of an American writer. His first visit to 
 Europe, in 1804-6, occupied nearly two years. From 1815 
 to 1832 he was abroad continuously, and his " domicile," 
 as the lawyers say, during these seventeen years was really 
 in England, though a portion of his time was spent upon 
 the Continent, and several successive years in Spain, where 
 he engaged upon the " Life of Columbus," " The Conquest 
 of Granada," the "Companions of Columbus," and " The 
 Alhambra," all published between 1828 and 1832. From 
 1842 to 1846 he was again in Spain as American minister at 
 Madrid. 
 Irving was the last and greatest of the Addisonians. His 
 
76 
 
 Initial Studies in American Letters. 
 
 Irving an Ad- 
 disonian. 
 
 " Salma 
 gundi." 
 
 "The Sketch 
 Book." 
 
 The Knicker 
 bocker legend. 
 
 boyish letters, signed "Jonathan Oldstyle," contributed in 
 1802 to his brother s newspaper, the Morning Chronicle, 
 were, like Franklin s " Busybody," close imitations of the 
 " Spectator." To the same family belonged his " Salma 
 gundi " papers, 1807, a series of town satires on New York 
 society, written in conjunction with his brother William 
 and with James K. Paulding. The little tales, essays, and 
 sketches which compose " The Sketch Book " were written 
 in England, and published in America, in periodical num 
 bers, in 1819-20. In this, which is in some respects his best 
 book, he still maintained that attitude of observation and 
 spectatorship taught him by Addison. The volume had a 
 motto taken from Burton : "I have no wife nor children, 
 good or bad, to provide for a mere spectator of other men s 
 fortunes," etc. ; and " The Author s Account of Himself" 
 began in true Addisonian fashion : "I was always fond of 
 visiting new scenes and observing strange characters and 
 manners." 
 
 But though never violently "American," like some later 
 writers who have consciously sought to throw off the tram 
 mels of English tradition, Irving was in a real way orig 
 inal. His most distinct addition to our national literature 
 was in his creation of what has been called " the Knicker 
 bocker legend." He was the first to make use, for literary 
 purposes, of the old Dutch traditions which clustered about 
 the romantic scenery of the Hudson. Colonel T. W. Hig- 
 ginson, in his "History of the United States," tells how 
 " Mrs. Josiah Quincy, sailing up that river in 1786, when 
 Irving was a child three years old, records that the captain 
 of the sloop had a legend, either supernatural or traditional, 
 for every scene, * and not a mountain reared its head un 
 connected with some marvelous story. " The material thus 
 at hand Irving shaped into his "Knickerbocker s History 
 of New York," into the immortal story of " Eip Van 
 
The Era of National Expansion. 
 
 Winkle " and u The Legend of Sleepy Hollow " (both pub- Romance O f 
 lished in " The Sketch Book "), and into later additions to the Hudson - 
 the same realm of fiction, such as " Dolph Heyliger" (in 
 "Bracebridge Hall"), the "Money Diggers, " " Wolfert 
 Webber," and "Kidd the Pirate" (in the "Tales of a 
 Traveler "), and some of the miscellanies from the Knicker 
 bocker Magazine, collected into a volume, in 1855, under the 
 title of " Wolfert s Roost." 
 
 The book which made Irving s reputation was his 
 " Knickerbocker s History of New York," 1809, a burlesque 
 chronicle, making fun of the old Dutch settlers of New 
 Amsterdam, and attributed, by a familiar and now some 
 what threadbare device,* to a little old gentleman named 
 Diedrich Knickerbocker, whose manuscript had come into 
 the editor s hands. The book was gravely dedicated to the 
 New York Historical Society, and it is said to have been 
 quoted, as authentic history, by a certain German scholar 
 named Goeller, in a note on a passage in Thucydides. This 
 story, though well vouched, is hard of belief ; for " Knicker 
 bocker," though excellent fooling, has nothing of the grave 
 irony of Swift in his " Modest Proposal " or of Defoe in his 
 " Short Way with Dissenters." Its mock-heroic intention 
 is as transparent as in Fielding s parodies of Homer, which 
 it somewhat resembles, particularly in the delightfully ab 
 surd description of the mustering of the clans under Peter 
 Stuyvesant and the attack on the Swedish Fort Christina. 
 "Knickerbocker s History of New York" was a real ad 
 dition to the comic literature of the world, a work of genu- masterpiece. 
 ine humor, original and vital. Walter Scott said that it 
 reminded him closely of Swift, and had touches resembling 
 Sterne. It is not necessary to claim for Irving s little mas 
 terpiece a place beside " Gulliver s Travels " and " Tristram 
 
 * Compare Carlyle s Herr Diogenes Teufelsdrockh, in "Sartor 
 Resartus," the author of the famous " Clothes Philosophy." 
 
78 
 
 Initial Studies in American Letters. 
 
 Dutch tra 
 ditions in 
 New York. 
 
 Irving s 
 genius retro 
 spective and 
 undemocratic. 
 
 Shandy." But it was, at least, the first American book in 
 the lighter departments of literature which needed no 
 apology and stood squarely on its own legs. It was writ 
 ten, too, at just the right time. Although New Amsterdam 
 had become New York as early as 1664, the impress of its 
 first settlers, with their quaint conservative ways, was still 
 upon it when Irving was a boy. The descendants of the 
 Dutch families formed a definite element not only in Man 
 hattan, but all up along the kills of the Hudson, at Albany, 
 at Schenectady, in Westchester County, at Hoboken, and 
 Communipaw, localities made familiar to him in many a 
 ramble and excursion. He lived to see the little provincial 
 town of his birth grow into a great metropolis, in which all 
 national characteristics were blended together, and a tide 
 of immigration from Europe and New England flowed 
 over the old landmarks and obliterated them utterly. 
 
 Although Irving was the first to reveal to his countrymen 
 the literary possibilities of their early history it must be 
 acknowledged that with moderate American life he had 
 little sympathy. He hated politics, and in the restless 
 democratic movement of the time, as we have described it, 
 he found no inspiration. This moderate and placid gentle 
 man, with his distrust of all kinds of fanaticism, had no 
 liking for the Puritans or for their descendants, the New 
 England Yankees, if we may judge from his sketch of 
 Ichabod Crane in " The Legend of Sleepy Hollow." His 
 genius was retrospective, and his imagination, like Scott s, 
 was the historic imagination. In crude America his fancy 
 took refuge in the picturesque aspects of the past, in 
 "survivals" like the Knickerbocker Dutch and the Aca 
 dian peasants, whose isolated communities on the lower 
 Mississippi he visited and described. He turned naturally 
 to the ripe civilization of the Old World. He was our first 
 picturesque tourist, the first "American in Europe." He 
 
The Era of National Expansion. 79 
 
 rediscovered England, whose ancient churches, quiet land 
 scapes, memory-haunted cities, Christmas celebrations, and 
 rural festivals had for him an unfailing attraction. With 
 pictures of these, for the most part, he filled the pages of 
 "The Sketch Book" and " Bracebridge Hall," 1822. 
 Delightful as are these English sketches, in which the His love for 
 author conducts his reader to Windsor Castle, or Stratford- 
 on-Avon, or the Boar s Head Tavern, or sits beside him on 
 the box of the old English stage-coach, or shares with him 
 the Yule-tide cheer at the ancient English country-house, 
 their interest has somewhat faded. The pathos of " The 
 Broken Heart " and " The Pride of the Village," the mild 
 satire of "The Art of Book-Making," the rather obvious 
 reflections in " Westminster Abbey " are not exactly to the 
 taste of this generation. They are the literature of leisure 
 and retrospection ; and already Irving s gentle elaboration, 
 the refined and slightly artificial beauty of his style, and The^beauty of 
 his persistently genial and sympathetic attitude have 
 begun to pall upon readers who demand a more nervous 
 and accentuated kind of writing. It is felt that a little 
 roughness, a little harshness, even, would give relief to his 
 pictures of life. There is, for instance, something a little 
 irritating in the old-fashioned courtliness of his manner 
 toward women ; and one reads with a certain impatience 
 smoothly punctuated passages like the following: u As 
 the vine, which has long twined its graceful foliage about the 
 oak, and been lifted by it into sunshine, will, when the 
 hardy plant is rifted by the thunder-bolt, cling round it 
 with its caressing tendrils, and bind up its shattered 
 boughs, so is it beautifully ordered by Providence that 
 woman, who is the mere dependent and ornament of 
 man in his happier hours, should be his stay and solace 
 when smitten with sudden calamity, winding herself into 
 the rugged recesses of his nature, tenderly supporting 
 
80 
 
 Initial Studies in American Letters. 
 
 His limi 
 tations. 
 
 the drooping head and binding up the broken heart." 
 Irving s gifts were sentiment and humor, with an imagi 
 nation sufficiently fertile and an observation sufficiently 
 acute to support those two main qualities, but inadequate 
 to the service of strong passion or subtle thinking, though 
 his pathos, indeed, sometimes reached intensity. His 
 humor was always delicate and kindly ; his sentiment 
 never degenerated into sentimentality. His diction was 
 graceful and elegant too elegant, perhaps ; and, in his 
 modesty, he attributed the success of his books in England 
 to the astonishment of Englishmen that an American 
 could write good English. 
 
 In Spanish history and legend Irving found a still newer 
 irving s Span- and richer field for his fancy to work upon. He had not 
 the analytic and philosophical mind of a great historian, 
 and the merits of his " Conquest of Granada " and " Life 
 of Columbus " are rather belletristisch than scientific. But 
 he brought to these undertakings the same eager love of 
 the romantic past which had determined the character of 
 his writings in America and England, and the result 
 whether we call it history or romance is at all events 
 charming as literature. His " Life of Washington "com 
 pleted in 1859 was his magnum opus, and is accepted as 
 standard authority. " Mahomet and His Successors," 1850, 
 was comparatively a failure. But of all Irving s biogra 
 phies his "Life of Oliver Goldsmith," 1849, was the most 
 spontaneous and perhaps the best. He did not impose it 
 upon himself as a task, but wrote it from a native and 
 loving sympathy with his subject, and it is, therefore, one 
 of the choicest literary memoirs in the language. 
 
 When Irving returned to America, in 1832, he was the re 
 cipient of almost national honors. He had received the 
 medal of the Royal Society of Literature and the degree of 
 D.C.L. from Oxford University, and had made American 
 
 " Life of 
 Washington 
 
 " Life of 
 Goldsmith. 
 
The Era of National Expansion. 81 
 
 literature known and respected abroad. In his modest The first 
 home at Sunnyside, on the banks of the river over which 
 he had been the first to throw the witchery of poetry and 
 romance, he was attended to the last by the admiring 
 affection of his countrymen. He had the love and praises 
 of the foremost English writers of his own generation and 
 the generation which followed of Scott, Byron, Coleridge, 
 Thackeray, and Dickens, some of whom had been among 
 his personal friends. He is not the greatest of American 
 authors, but the influence of his writings is sweet and 
 wholesome, and it is in many ways fortunate that the first 
 American man of letters who made himself heard in Eu 
 rope should have been in all particulars a gentleman. 
 
 Connected with Irving, at least by name and locality, 
 were a number of authors who resided in the city of New 
 York, and who are known as the Knickerbocker writers, 
 perhaps because they were contributors to the Knicker 
 bocker Magazine. One of these was James K. Paulding, a 
 connection of Irving by marriage, and his partner in the 
 " Salmagundi " papers. Paulding became secretary of the j ame s K. 
 navy under Van Buren, and lived down to the year 1860. Pauldin e- 
 He was a voluminous author, but his writings had no 
 power of continuance, and are already obsolete, with the 
 possible exception of his novel, u The Dutchman s Fire 
 side," 1831. 
 
 A finer spirit than Paulding was Joseph Rodman Drake, Joseph Rod- 
 a young poet of great promise, who died in 1820, at the age man Drake - 
 of twenty-five. Drake s patriotic lyric, " The American 
 Flag," is certainly the most spirited thing of the kind in 
 our poetic literature, and greatly superior to such national 
 anthems as "Hail Columbia" and "The Star-Spangled 
 Banner." His " Culprit Fay," published in 1819, was the 
 best poem that had yet appeared in America, if we except 
 Bryant s " Thanatopsis," which was three years the elder. 
 
82 
 
 Initial Studies in American Letters. 
 
 " The Culprit 
 Fay." 
 
 Fitz-Greene 
 Halleck. 
 
 " The Culprit Fay " was a fairy story, in which, following 
 Irving s lead, Drake undertook to throw the glamour of 
 poetry about the Highlands of the Hudson. Edgar Poe 
 said that the poem was fanciful rather than imaginative ; 
 but it is prettily and even brilliantly fanciful, and has main 
 tained its popularity to the present time. Such verse as 
 the following which seems to show that Drake had been 
 reading Coleridge s u Christabel," published three years 
 before was something new in American poetry : 
 
 " The winds are whist and the owl is still, 
 
 The bat in the shelvy rock is hid, 
 And naught is heard on the lonely hill 
 But the cricket s chirp and the answer shrill 
 
 Of the gauze-winged katydid, 
 And the plaint of the wailing whip-poor-will, 
 
 Who moans unseen, and ceaseless sings 
 Ever a note of wail and woe, 
 
 Till morning spreads her rosy wings, 
 And earth and sky in her glances glow." 
 
 Here we have, at last, the whip-poor-will, an American 
 bird, and not the conventional lark or nightingale, al 
 though the elves of the Old World seem scarcely at home 
 on the banks of the Hudson. Drake s memory has been 
 kept fresh not only by his own poetry, but by the beautiful 
 elegy written by his friend Fitz-Greene Halleck, the first 
 stanza of which is universally known : 
 
 " Green be the turf above thee, 
 
 Friend of my better days ; 
 None knew thee but to love thee, 
 Nor named thee but to praise." 
 
 Halleck was born in Guilford, Connecticut, whither he 
 retired in 1849, and resided there till his death in 1867. But 
 his literary career is identified with New York. He was 
 associated with Drake in writing the "Croaker Papers," 
 a series of humorous and satirical verses contributed in 
 1814 to the Evening Post. These were of a merely local and 
 
The Era of National Expansion. 83 
 
 temporary interest; but Halleck s fine ode, "Marco Boz- 
 zaris " though declaimed until it has become hackneyed 
 gives him a sure title to remembrance ; and his u Alnwick 
 Castle," a monody, half serious and half playful, on the 
 contrast between feudal associations and modern life, has 
 much of that pensive lightness which characterizes Praed s 
 best vers de societe. 
 
 A friend of Drake and Halleck was James Fenimore Jameg Feni 
 Cooper (1789-1851), the first American novelist of distinc- more Cooper. 
 tion, and, if a popularity which has endured for nearly 
 three quarters of a century is any test, still the most suc 
 cessful of all American novelists. Cooper was far more in 
 tensely American than Irving, and his books reached an 
 even wider public. " They are published as soon as he pro 
 duces them," said Morse, the electrician, in 1833, " in 
 thirty-four different places in Europe. They have beenv : p DptllaEity of 
 seen by American travelers in the languages of Turkey hisnovpTs. 
 and Persia, in Constantinople, in Egypt, at Jerusalem, at / 
 Ispahan." Cooper wrote altogether too much ; he pub- / 
 lished, besides his fictions, a " Naval History of the United 
 States," a series of naval biographies, works of travel, and 
 a great deal of controversial matter. He wrote over thirty 
 novels, the greater part of which are little better than trash, 
 and tedious trash at that. This is especially true of his 
 tendenz novels and his novels of society. He was a man of 
 strongly marked individuality, fiery, pugnacious, sensitive 
 to criticism, and abounding in prejudices. He was embit- Hiswarwith 
 tered by the scurrilous attacks made upon him by a portion 
 of the American press, and spent a great deal of time and 
 energy in conducting libel suits against the newspapers. 
 In the same spirit he used fiction as a vehicle for attack 
 upon the abuses and follies of American life. Nearly all of 
 his novels written with this design are worthless. Nor fiction. 
 was Cooper well equipped by nature and temperament for 
 
84 
 
 Initial Studies in American Letters. 
 
 His greatness 
 in tales of ad 
 venture. 
 
 The Spy. 
 
 depicting character and passion in social life. Even in his 
 best romances his heroines and his "leading juveniles " 
 to borrow a term from the amateur stage are insipid and 
 conventional. He was no satirist, and his humor was not 
 of a high order. He was a rapid and uneven writer, and, 
 unlike Irving, he had no style. 
 
 Where Cooper was great was in the story, in the inven 
 tion of incidents and plots, in a power of narrative and de 
 scription in tales of wild adventure which keeps the reader 
 in breathless excitement to the end of the book. He orig 
 inated the novel of the sea and the novel of the wilderness. 
 He created the Indian of literature, and in this, his peculiar 
 field, although he has had countless imitators, he has had 
 no equals. Cooper s experiences had prepared him well for 
 the kingship of this new realm in the world of fiction. 
 His childhood was passed on the borders of Otsego Lake, 
 when central New York was still a wilderness, with bound 
 less forests stretching westward, broken only here and there 
 by the clearings of the pioneers. He was taken from col 
 lege (Yale) when still a lad, and sent to sea in a merchant 
 vessel, before the mast. Afterward he entered the navy 
 and did duty on the high seas and upon Lake Ontario, 
 then surrounded by virgin forests. He married and re 
 signed his commission in 1811, just before the outbreak of 
 the war with England, so that he missed the opportunity 
 of seeing active service in any of those engagements on the 
 ocean and our great lakes which were so glorious to 
 American arms. But he always retained an active interest 
 in naval affairs. 
 
 His first successful novel was " The Spy," 1821, a tale of 
 the Revolutionary War, the scene of which was laid in 
 Westchester County, N. Y., where the author was then re 
 siding. The hero of this story, Harvey Birch, was one of the 
 most skilfully drawn figures on his canvas. In 1823 he pub- 
 
The Era of National Expansion. 85 
 
 lished " The Pioneers," a work somewhat overladen with 
 description, in which he drew for material upon his boyish 
 recollections of frontier life at Cooperstown. This was the 
 first of a series of five romances known as the " Leather- 
 stocking Tales." The others were "The Last of the "Leather- 
 
 stockinff 
 
 Mohicans," 1826 ; " The Prairie," 1827 ; " The Pathfinder," Tales." 
 1840 ; and " The Deerslayer," 1841. The hero of this series, 
 Natty Bumpo, or " Leatherstocking," was Cooper s one 
 great creation in the sphere of character, his most original 
 addition to the literature of the world in the way of a new 
 human type. This backwoods philosopher to the concep 
 tion of whom the historic exploits of Daniel Boone perhaps 
 supplied some hints ; unschooled, but moved by noble im 
 pulses and a natural sense of piety and justice ; passion 
 ately attached to the wilderness, and following its westering 
 edge even unto the prairies this man of the woods was the 
 first real American in fiction. Hardly less individual and 
 vital were the various types of Indian character, in Indians. 
 Chingachgook, Uncas, Hist, and the Huron warriors. In 
 ferior to these, but still vigorously though somewhat 
 roughly drawn, were the waifs and strays of civilization, 
 whom duty, or the hope of gain, or the love of adventure, 
 or the outlawry of crime had driven to the wilderness the 
 solitary trapper, the reckless young frontiersman, the offi 
 cers and men of outpost garrisons. Whether Cooper s In 
 dian was the real being, or an idealized and rather melo 
 dramatic version of the truth, has been a subject of dispute. 
 However this be, he has taken his place in the domain of 
 art, and it is safe to say that his standing there is secure. 
 No boy will ever give him up. 
 
 Equally .good with .the "Leatherstocking" novels, and 
 equally national, were Cooper s tales of the sea, or at least 
 the best two of them" The Pilot," 1823, founded upon the 
 daring exploits of John Paul Jones, and " The Red Rover," 
 
Initial Studies in American Letters. 
 
 Enduring 
 interest of 
 Cooper s 
 stories. 
 
 1828. But here, though Cooper still holds the sea, he has had 
 to admit competitors ; and Britannia, who rules the waves 
 in song, has put in some claim to a share in the domain of 
 nautical fiction in the persons of Mr. W. Clark Russell and 
 Bothers. Though Cooper s novels do not meet the deeper 
 needs of the heart and the imagination, their appeal to the 
 universal love of a story is perennial. We devour them 
 when we are boys, and if we do not often return to them 
 when we are men, that is perhaps only because we have 
 read them before, and " know the ending." They are good 
 ,yarns for the forecastle and the camp-fire ; and the scholar 
 in his study, though he may put " The Deerslayer " or " The 
 Last of the Mohicans " away on the top shelf, will take it 
 down now and again, and sit up half the night over it. 
 
 Before dismissing the belles-lettres writings of this period, 
 mention should be made of a few poems of the fugitive 
 kind which seem to have taken a permanent place in pop 
 ular regard. John Howard Payne, a native of Long Island, 
 a wandering actor and playwright, who died American 
 consul at Tunis in 1852, wrote about 1820 for Covent Gar 
 den Theater an opera, entitled " Clari," the libretto of 
 Home Sweet wnicu included, the now famous song of "Home, Sweet 
 Home." Its literary pretensions were of the humblest 
 kind, but it spoke a true word which touched the Anglo- 
 Saxon heart in its tenderest spot, and, being happily 
 married to a plaintive air, was sold by the hundred thou 
 sand, and is evidently destined to be sung forever. A like 
 success has attended "The Old Oaken Bucket," composed 
 by Samuel Wood worth, a printer and journalist from Massa 
 chusetts, whose other poems, of which two collections were 
 issued in 1818 and 1826, were soon forgotten. Richard 
 Henry Wilde, an Irishman by birth, a gentleman of schol 
 arly tastes and accomplishments, who wrote a great deal on 
 Italian literature, and sat for several terms in Congress as 
 
 Home. 
 
 " The Old 
 
 Oaken 
 
 Bucket." 
 
The Era of National Expansion. 87 
 
 representative of the state of Georgia, was the author of the 
 favorite song, " My Life is Like the Summer Rose." An- other fugitive 
 other southerner, and a member of a distinguished south- poeiry 
 ern family, was Edward Coate Pinkney, who served nine 
 years in the navy, and died in 1828 at the age of twenty- 
 six, having published in 1825 a small volume of lyrical 
 poems which had a fire and a grace uncommon at that 
 time in American verse. One of these, "A Health," be 
 ginning : 
 
 " I fill this cup to one made up of loveliness alone," 
 
 though perhaps somewhat overpraised by Edgar Poe, has 
 rare beauty of thought and expression. 
 
 John Quincy Adams, sixth president of the United 
 States (1825-29), was a man of culture and literary tastes. 
 He published his lectures on rhetoric, delivered during his Adams. r 
 tenure of the Boylston Professorship at Harvard in 1806-9 ; 
 he left a voluminous diary, which has been edited since 
 his death in 1848 ; and among his experiments in poetry is 
 one of considerable merit, entitled "The Wants of Man," 
 an ironical sermon on Goldsmith s text : 
 
 " Man wants but little here below, 
 Nor wants that little long." 
 
 As this poem is a curiously close anticipation of Dr. 
 Holmes s "Contentment," so the very popular ballad, "Old 
 Grimes," written about 1818 by Albert Gorton Greene, an 
 undergraduate of Brown University in Rhode Island, is in 
 some respects an anticipation of Holmes s quaintly pathetic 
 ".Last Leaf." 
 The political literature and public oratory of the United 
 
 States during this period, although not absolutely of less Political 
 
 literature, 
 importance than that which preceded and followed the 
 
 Declaration of Independence and the adoption of the con 
 stitution, demands less relative attention in a history of 
 
88 
 
 Initial Studies in American Letters. 
 
 "State 
 Rights. 
 
 The Liberator 
 and Anti- 
 slavery 
 Society. 
 
 John C. 
 Calhoun. 
 
 Henry Clay. 
 
 literature by reason of the growth of other departments of 
 thought. The age was a political one, but no longer exclu 
 sively political. The debates of the time centered about 
 the question of "State Rights," and the main forum of 
 discussion was the old Senate chamber, then made illus 
 trious by the presence of Clay, Webster, and Calhoun. 
 The slavery question, which had threatened trouble, was 
 put off for a while by the Missouri Compromise of 1820, 
 only to break out more fiercely in the debates on the 
 Wilmot Proviso and the Kansas and Nebraska Bill. 
 Meanwhile the abolition movement had been transferred 
 to the press and the platform. Garrison started his 
 Liberator in 1830, and the Antislavery Society was founded 
 in 1833. The Whig party, which had inherited the consti 
 tutional principles of the old Federal party, advocated 
 internal improvements at national expense and a high 
 protective tariff. The State Rights party, which was 
 strongest at the South, opposed those views, and in 1832 
 South Carolina claimed the right to "nullify" the tariff 
 imposed by the general government. The leader of this 
 party was John Caldwell Calhoun, a South Carolinian, 
 who in his speech in the United States Senate, on 
 February 13, 1832, on Nullification and the Force Bill, set 
 forth most authoritatively the "Carolina doctrine." Cal 
 houn was a great debater, but hardly a great orator. His 
 speeches are the arguments of a lawyer and a strict consti 
 tutionalist, severely logical, and with a sincere conviction 
 in the soundness of his case. Their language is free from 
 bad rhetoric ; the reasoning is cogent, but there is an 
 absence of emotion and imagination ; they contain few 
 quotable things, and no passages of commanding elo 
 quence, such as strew the orations of Webster and Burke. 
 They are not, in short, literature. Again, the speeches of 
 Henry Clay, of Kentucky, the leader of the Whigs, whose 
 
The Era of National Expansion. 
 
 persuasive oratory is a matter of tradition, disappoint in 
 the reading. The fire has gone out of them. 
 
 Not so with Daniel Webster, the greatest of American 
 forensic orators, if, indeed, he be not the greatest of all Daniel Web- 
 orators who have used the English tongue. Webster s 
 speeches are of the kind that have power to move after the 
 voice of the speaker is still. The thought and the passion 
 
 in them lay hold on feelings of patriotism more lasting 
 than the issues of the moment. It is, indeed, true of Web 
 ster s speeches, as of all speeches, that they are known to 
 posterity more by single brilliant passages than as wholes. 
 In oratory the occasion is of the essence of the thing, and 
 
 only those parts of an address which are permanent and His speeches 
 
 of permanent 
 universal in their appeal take their place in literature, literary value. 
 
 But of such detachable passages there are happily many in 
 Webster s orations. One great thought underlay all his 
 public life, the thought of the Union of American nation 
 ality. What in Hamilton had been a principle of political 
 philosophy had become in Webster a passionate conviction. 
 The Union was his idol, and he was intolerant of any 
 faction which threatened it from any quarter, whether the 
 nullifiers of South Carolina or the abolitionists of the 
 North. It is this thought which gives grandeur and ele 
 vation to all his utterances, and especially to the wonderful 
 peroration of his " Reply to Hayne," on Mr. Foot s reso 
 lution touching the sale of the public lands, delivered in 
 the Senate on January 26, 1830, whose closing words, " Lib 
 erty and union, now and forever, one and inseparable," 
 became the rallying cry of a great cause. Similar in senti 
 ment was his famous speech of March 7, 1850, " On the 
 Constitution and the Union," which gave so much offense 
 to the extreme Antislavery party, who held with Garrison 
 that a constitution which protected slavery was "a league 
 with death and a covenant with hell." It is not claiming too 
 
90 
 
 Initial Studies in American Letters. 
 
 Their influ 
 ence in pre 
 serving the 
 Union. 
 
 Webster s 
 personality. 
 
 Character of 
 his eloquence. 
 
 much for Webster to assert that the sentences of these and 
 other speeches, memorized and declaimed by thousands of 
 schoolboys throughout the North, did as much as any 
 single influence to train up a generation in hatred of seces 
 sion, and to send into the fields of the Civil War armies of 
 men animated with the stern resolution to fight until the 
 last drop of blood was shed, rather than allow the Union to 
 be dissolved. 
 
 The figure of this great senator is one of the most impos 
 ing in American annals. The masculine force of his per 
 sonality impressed itself upon men of widely differing 
 natures upon the unworldly Emerson, and upon the cap 
 tious Carlyle, whose respect was not willingly accorded to 
 any contemporary, much less to a representative of Ameri 
 can democracy. Webster s looks and manner were charac 
 teristic. His form was massive, his skull and jaw solid, the 
 under-lip projecting, and the mouth firmly and grimly 
 shut ; his complexion was swarthy, and his black, deep-set 
 eyes, under shaggy brows, glowed with a smoldering fire. 
 He was rather silent in society ; his delivery in debate was 
 grave and weighty, rather than fervid. His oratory was 
 massive, and sometimes even ponderous. It may be ques 
 tioned whether an American orator of to-day, with intel 
 lectual abilities equal to Webster s if such a one there 
 were would permit himself the use of sonorous and elabo 
 rate pictures like the famous period which follows : " On 
 this question of principle, while actual suffering was yet 
 afar off, they raised their flag against a power to which, for 
 purposes of foreign conquest and subjugation, Rome, in the 
 height of her glory, is not to be compared a power which 
 has dotted over the surface of the whole globe with her 
 possessions and military posts, whose morning drum-beat, 
 following the sun and keeping company with the hours, 
 circles the earth with one continuous and unbroken strain 
 
The Era of National Expansion. 91 
 
 of the martial airs of England." The secret of this kind 
 of oratory has been lost. The present generation distrusts 
 rhetorical ornament and likes something swifter, simpler, 
 and more familiar in its speakers. But everything in dec 
 lamation of the sort, depends upon the way in which it is 
 done. Webster did it supremely well ; a smaller man 
 would merely have made buncombe of it. 
 
 Among the legal orators of the time the foremost was 
 Rufus Choate, an eloquent pleader, and, like Webster, a Rufus Choate. 
 United States senator from Massachusetts. Some of his 
 speeches, though excessively rhetorical, have literary qual 
 ity, and are nearly as effective in print as Webster s own. 
 Another Massachusetts orator, Edward Everett, who in his 
 time was successively professor in Harvard College, Uni 
 tarian minister in Boston, editor of the North American 
 Review, member of both houses of Congress, minister to 
 England, governor of his state, and president of Harvard, Everett. 
 was a speaker of great finish and elegance. His addresses 
 were mainly of the memorial and anniversary kind, and 
 were rather lectures and Phi Beta Kappa prolusions than 
 speeches. Everett was an instance of careful culture be 
 stowed on a soil of no very great natural richness. It is 
 doubtful whether his classical orations on Washington, the 
 Republic, Bunker Hill Monument, and kindred themes, 
 have enough of the breath of life in them to preserve them 
 much longer in recollection. 
 
 New England, during these years, did not take that lead 
 ing part in the purely literary development of the country land s literary 
 
 which iib afterward assumed. It had no names to match n 
 against those of Irving and Cooper. Drake and Halleck 
 slender as was their performance in point of quantity 
 were better poets than the Boston bards, Charles Sprague, 
 whose "Shakespeare Ode," delivered at the Boston theater 
 in 1823, was locally famous ; and Richard Henry Dana, 
 
92 Initial Studies in American Letters. 
 
 whose longish narrative poem " The Buccaneer," 1827, once 
 had admirers. But Boston has at 110 time been without a 
 serious intellectual life of its own, nor without a circle of 
 highly educated men of literary pursuits, even in default 
 North Amer- of great geniuses. The North American Review, estab 
 lished in 1815, though it has been wittily described as 
 "ponderously revolving through space" for a few years 
 after its foundation, did not exist in an absolute vacuum, 
 but was scholarly, if somewhat heavy. Webster, to be 
 sure, was a Massachusetts man as were Everett and 
 Choate but his triumphs were won in the wider field of 
 national politics. There was, however, a movement at 
 this time, in the intellectual life of Boston and eastern 
 Massachusetts, which, though not immediately contribu 
 tory to the finer kinds of literature, prepared the way, by 
 its clarifying and stimulating influences, for the eminent 
 writers of the next generation. This was the Unitarian 
 
 The Unitarian revolt against Puritan orthodoxy, in which William Ellery 
 
 secession in ^ 
 
 Massachu- Channmg was the principal leader. In a community so 
 
 intensely theological as New England, it was natural 
 that any new movement in thought should find its point 
 of departure in the churches. Accordingly, the progress 
 ive and democratic spirit of the age, which in other parts 
 of the country took other shapes, assumed in Massachu 
 setts the form of " liberal Christianity." Arminianism, 
 Socinianism, and other phases of anti-Trinitarian doctrine 
 had been latent in some of the Congregational churches of 
 Massachusetts for a number of years. But about 1812 the 
 heresy broke out openly, and within a few years from that 
 date most of the oldest and wealthiest church societies of 
 Boston and its vicinity had gone over to Unitarianism, and 
 Harvard College had been captured, too. In the contro 
 versy that ensued, and which was carried on in numer 
 ous books, pamphlets, sermons, and periodicals, there were 
 
The Era of National Expansion. . 93 
 
 eminent disputants on both sides. So far as this contro 
 versy was concerned with the theological doctrine of the 
 Trinity it has no place in a history of literature. But the 
 issue went far beyond that. Channing asserted the dignity William 
 of human nature against the Calvinistic doctrine of innate charming, 
 depravity, and affirmed the rights of human reason and 
 man s capacity to judge of God. " We must start in re 
 ligion from our own souls," he said. And in his " Moral 
 Argument Against Calvinism," 1820, he wrote : " Nothing Argument 
 is gained to piety by degrading human nature, for in the 
 competency of this nature to know and judge of God all 
 piety has its foundation." In opposition to Edvvards s doc 
 trine of necessity he emphasized the freedom of the will. 
 He maintained that the Calvinistic dogmas of original sin, 
 foreordination, election by grace, and eternal punishment 
 were inconsistent with the divine perfection, and made God 
 a monster. In Channing s view the great sanction of relig 
 ious truth is the moral sanction, is its agreement with the 
 laws of conscience. He was a passionate vindicator of the 
 liberty of the individual, not only as against political oppres 
 sion, but against the tyranny of public opinion over thought 
 and conscience : " We were made for free action. This alone 
 is life, and enters into all that is good and great." This 
 jealous love of freedom inspired all that he did and wrote. 
 It led him to join the Antislavery party. It expressed 
 itself in his elaborate arraignment of Napoleon in the Uni 
 tarian organ, the Christian Examiner, for 1827-28 ; in his 
 "Remarks on Associations," and his paper "On the Char- 
 acter and Writings of John Milton," 1826. This was his 
 most considerable contribution to literary criticism. It 
 took for a text Milton s recently discovered "Treatise on 
 Christian Doctrine" the tendency of which was anti- 
 Trinitarian but it began with a general defense of poetry 
 against " those who are accustomed to speak of poetry as 
 
94 
 
 Initial Studies in American Letters. 
 
 Liberal 
 
 belles-lettres. 
 
 Channing s 
 
 Literature. 
 
 light reading." This would now seem a somewhat super- 
 fluous introduction to an article in any American review. 
 But it shows tlie na ture of the milieu through which the 
 liberal movement in Boston had to make its way. To re 
 assert the dignity and usefulness of the beautiful arts, was, 
 perhaps, the chief service which the Massachusetts Uni 
 tarians rendered to humanism. The traditional prejudice 
 of the Puritans against the ornamental side of life had to 
 be softened before polite literature could find a congenial 
 atmosphere in New England. In Channing s " Remarks on 
 National Literature," reviewing a work published in 1823, 
 ^e agkg the q ues tion, " Do we possess what may be called a 
 national literature?" and answers it, by implication at 
 least, in the negative. That we do now possess a national 
 literature is in great part due to the influence of Channing 
 and his associates, although his own writings, being in the 
 main controversial, and of temporary interest, may not take 
 rank among the permanent treasures of that literature. 
 
 1. WASHINGTON IRVING : " Knickerbocker s History 
 of New York"; "The Sketch Book"; " Bracebridge 
 
 Hall 
 
 Tales of a Traveler 
 
 The Alhambra 
 
 Life 
 
 of Oliver Goldsmith." 
 
 2. JAMES FENIMORE COOPER: "The Spy"; "The 
 Pilot " ; " The Bed Rover " ; " The Leatherstocking Tales." 
 
 3. DANIEL WEBSTER : " Great Speeches and Orations." 
 
 4. WILLIAM ELLERY CHANNING: "The Character 
 and Writings of John Milton " ; " The Life and Character 
 of Napoleon Bonaparte" ; " Slavery." [Vols. I. and II. of 
 the "Works of William E. Channing." Boston : 1841.] 
 
 5. JOSEPH RODMAN DRAKE : " The Culprit Fay " ; " The 
 American Flag." [" Selected Poems." New York : 1835.] 
 
 6. FITZ-GREENE HALLEGK : " Marco Bozzaris "; "Aln- 
 wick Castle"; "On the Death of Drake." ["Poems." 
 New York: 1827.] 
 
CHAPTER IV. 
 THE CONCORD WRITERS 1837-1861. 
 
 THERE has been but one movement in the history of the 
 
 American mind which has given to literature a group of The humani- 
 
 , , f tarian move- 
 
 writers having coherence enough to merit the name or a m ent m New 
 
 school. This was the great humanitarian movement, or 
 series of movements, in New England, which, beginning . 
 in the Unitarianism of Channing, ran through its later 
 phase in transcendentalism, and spent its last strength in 
 the antislavery agitation and the enthusiasms of the Civil 
 War. The second stage of this intellectual and social revolt 
 was transcendentalism, of which Emerson wrote in 1842 : 
 " The history of genius and of religion in these times will 
 be the history of this tendency." It culminated about 
 1840-41 in the establishment of The Dial and the Brook 
 Farm Community, although Emerson had given the signal 
 a few years before in his little volume entitled "Nature," 
 1836, his Phi Beta Kappa address at Harvard on "The 
 American Scholar," 1837, and his address in 1838 before the 
 Divinity School at Cambridge. Ralph Waldo Emerson Ralph Waldo 
 (1803-82) was the prophet of the sect, and Concord was its 
 Mecca ; but the influence of the new ideas was not confined 
 to the little group of professed transcendentalists ; it ex 
 tended to all the young writers within reach, who struck ^ 
 their roots deeper into the soil that it had loosened and 
 freshened. We owe to it, in great measure, not merely Em 
 erson, Alcott, Margaret Fuller, and Thoreau, but Haw 
 thorne, Lowell, Whittier, and Holmes. 
 
 95 
 
96 
 
 Initial Studies in American Letters. 
 
 What is 
 transcenden 
 talism? 
 
 New spirit of 
 inquiry and 
 dissent. 
 
 Novelties 
 of doctrine. 
 
 Iii its strictest sense transcendentalism was a restate 
 ment of the idealistic philosophy, and an application of its 
 beliefs to religion, nature, and life. But in a looser sense, 
 and as including the more outward manifestations which 
 drew popular attention the most strongly, it was the name 
 given to that spirit of dissent and protest, of universal in 
 quiry and experiment, which marked the third and fourth 
 decades of this century in America, and especially in New 
 England. The movement was contemporary with polit 
 ical revolutions in Europe and with the preaching of many 
 novel gospels in religion, in sociology, in science, education, 
 medicine, and hygiene. New sects were formed, like the 
 Swedeiiborgians, Universalists, Spiritualists, Millerites, 
 Second Adventists, Shakers, Mormons, and Come-outers, 
 some of whom believed in trances, miracles, and direct rev 
 elations from the divine Spirit ; others in the quick coming 
 of Christ, as deduced from the opening of the seals and 
 the number of the beasts in the Apocalypse ; and still others 
 in the reorganization of society and of the family on a dif 
 ferent basis. New systems of education were tried, sug 
 gested by the writings of the Swiss reformer, Pestalozzi, 
 and others. The pseudo-sciences of mesmerism and of phre 
 nology, as taught by Gall and Spurzheim, had numerous 
 followers. In medicine, homeopathy, hydropathy, and 
 what Dr. Holmes calls "kindred delusions," made many 
 disciples. Numbers of persons, influenced by the doctrines 
 of Graham and other vegetarians, abjured the use of animal 
 food, as injurious not only to health but to a finer spiritu 
 ality. Not a few refused to vote or pay taxes. The writ 
 ings of Fourier and Saint-Simon were translated, and so 
 cieties were established where cooperation and a community 
 of goods should take the place of selfish competition. 
 
 About the year 1840 there were some thirty of these 
 "phalansteries" in America, many of which had their 
 
The Concord Writers. 
 
 organs in the shape of weekly or monthly journals, which Phalansterles 
 advocated the principle of association. The best known of communities 
 these was probably The Harbinger, the mouthpiece of the 
 famous Brook Farm Community, which was founded at 
 West Roxbury, Mass., in 1841, and lasted till 1847. The Brook Farm, 
 head man of Brook Farm was George Ripley, a Unitarian 
 clergyman, who had resigned his pulpit in Boston to go 
 into the movement, and who after its failure became and 
 remained for many years literary editor of the New York 
 Tribune. Among his associates were Charles A. Dana 
 now the editor of The Sun Margaret Fuller, Nathaniel 
 Hawthorne, and others not unknown to fame. The Har 
 binger, which ran from 1845 to 1849 two years after the 
 break-up of the community, had among its contributors 
 many who were not Brook Farmers, but who sympathized 
 more or less with the experiment. Of the number were 
 Horace Greeley, Dr. F. H. Hedge, who did so much to in 
 troduce American readers to German literature, J. S. 
 Dwight, the musical critic, C. P. Cranch, the poet, and 
 younger men, like G. W. Curtis and T. W. Higginson. A 
 reader of to-day, looking into an odd volume of The Har- The ff ar b in . 
 binger, will find in it some stimulating writing, together ger 
 with a great deal of unintelligible talk about " harmonic 
 unity," " love germination," and other matters now fallen 
 silent. 
 
 The most important literary result of this experiment 
 at u plain living and high thinking," with its queer 
 mixture of culture and agriculture, was Hawthorne s 
 "Blithedale Romance," which has for its background an 
 id ealized picture of the community life ; whose heroine, Hawthorne s 
 Zenobia, has touches of Margaret Fuller, and whose hero, 
 with his hobby of prison reform, was a type of the one- 
 idea d philanthropist that abounded in such an environ 
 ment. Hawthorne s attitude was always in part one of 
 
Initial Studies in American Letters. 
 
 reserve and criticism, an attitude which is apparent in the 
 reminiscences of Brook Farm in his American Note 
 Books," wherein he speaks with a certain resentment of 
 " Miss Fuller s transcendental heifer," which hooked the 
 other cows, and was evidently to Hawthorne s mind not 
 unsymbolic in this respect of Miss Fuller herself. 
 
 It was the day of seers and "Orphic" utterances; the 
 air was full of the enthusiasm of humanity and thick with 
 New England philanthropic projects and plans for the regeneration of the 
 universe. The figure of the wild-eyed, long-haired re 
 former the man with a panacea the " crank " of our later 
 terminology became a familiar one. He abounded at non- 
 resistance conventions and meetings of universal peace 
 societies and of woman s rights associations. The move 
 ment had its grotesque aspects, which Lowell has described 
 in his essay on Thoreau. " Bran had its apostles and the 
 pre-sartorial simplicity of Adam its martyrs, tailored im 
 promptu from the tar-pot. . . . Not a few impecunious 
 zealots abjured the use of money (unless earned by other 
 people), professing to live on the internal revenues of the 
 spirit. . . . Communities were established where every 
 thing was to be common but common sense." 
 
 This ferment has long since subsided, and much of what 
 was then seething has gone off in vapor or other volatile 
 products. But some very solid matters have also been pre 
 cipitated, some crystals of poetry, translucent, symmetrical, 
 enduring. The immediate practical outcome was disap 
 pointing, and the external hfstory of the agitation is a rec 
 ord of failed experiments, spurious sciences, Utopian phi 
 losophies, and sects founded only to dwindle away or to be 
 reabsorbed into some form of orthodoxy. In the eyes of 
 the conservative, or the worldly-minded, or of the plain 
 people who could not understand the enigmatic utterances 
 of the reformers, the dangerous or ludicrous sides of tran- 
 
 Practical out 
 come of the 
 movement 
 unimportant. 
 
The Concord Writers. 99 
 
 scendentalism were naturally uppermost. Nevertheless the 
 movement was but a new avatar of the old Puritan spirit ; 
 its moral earnestness, its spirituality, its tenderness for the Transcenden- 
 
 individual conscience. Puritanism, too, in its day had run opmentof 
 
 Puritanism, 
 into grotesque extremes. Emerson bore about the same 
 
 relation to the absurder outcroppings of transcendentalism 
 that Milton bore to the New Lights, Ranters, Fifth Mon 
 archy Men, etc., of his time. There is in him that ming 
 ling of idealism with an abiding sanity, and even a Yankee Spirituality 
 shrewdness, which characterizes the race. The practical, England 
 inventive, calculating, money-getting side of the Yankee 
 has been made sufficiently obvious. But the deep heart of 
 New England is full of dreams, mysticism, romance : 
 
 "And in the day of sacrifice, 
 
 When heroes piled the pyre, 
 The dismal Massachusetts ice 
 Burned more than others fire." 
 
 The one element which the odd and eccentric develop 
 ments of this movement shared in common with the real Transcenden 
 talism a re- 
 
 philosophy of transcendentalism was the rejection of assertion of 
 
 ^ J J the private 
 
 authority and the appeal to the private consciousness as the conscience. 
 
 sole standard of truth and right. This principle certainly 
 lay in the ethical systems of Kant and Fichte, the great 
 transcendentalists of Germany. It had been strongly 
 asserted by Channing. Nay, it was the starting-point of 
 puritanism itself, which had drawn away from the cere 
 monial religion of the English Church, and by its Congre 
 gational system had made each church society independent 
 in doctrine and worship. And although Puritan ortho 
 doxy in New England had grown rigid and dogmatic it had 
 never used the weapons of obscurantism. By encouraging 
 education to the utmost, it had shown its willingness to 
 submit its beliefs to the fullest discussion and had put into 
 the hands of dissent the means with which to attack them. 
 
100 
 
 Initial Studies in American Letters. 
 
 Progressive 
 Unitarianism. 
 
 Humanistic 
 view of 
 Christianity. 
 
 In its theological aspect transcendentalism was a depart 
 ure from conservative Unitarianism, as that had been from 
 Calvinism. From Edwards to Channing, from Channing 
 to Emerson and Theodore Parker, there was a natural and 
 logical unfolding ; not logical in the sense that Channing 
 accepted Edwards s premises and pushed them out to their 
 conclusions, or that Parker accepted all of Channing s 
 premises, but in the sense that the rigid pushing out of 
 Edwards s premises into their conclusions by himself and 
 his followers had brought about a moral reductio ad 
 absurdum and* a state of opinion against which Channing 
 rebelled; and that Channing, as it seemed to Parker, 
 stopped short in the carrying out of his own principles. 
 Thus the "Channing Unitarians," while denying that 
 Christ was God, had held that he was of divine nature, was 
 the Son of God, and had existed before he came into the 
 world. While rejecting the doctrine of the " vicarious 
 sacrifice " they maintained that Christ was a mediator and 
 intercessor, and that his supernatural nature was testified 
 by miracles. For Parker and Emerson it was easy to take 
 the step to the assertion that Christ was a good and great 
 man, divine only in the sense that God possessed him more 
 fully than any other man known in history ; that it was 
 his preaching and example that brought salvation to men, 
 and not any special mediation or intercession, and that his 
 own words and acts, and not miracles, are the only and the 
 sufficient witness to his mission. In the view of the tran- 
 scendentalists, Christ was as human as Buddha, Socrates, 
 or Confucius, and the Bible was but one among the 
 "Ethnical Scriptures," or sacred writings of the peoples, 
 passages from which were published in the transcendental 
 organ, The Dial. 
 
 As against these new yiews, Channing Unitarianism oc 
 cupied already a conservative position. The Unitarians 
 
The Concord Writers. 101 
 
 as a body had never been very numerous outside of e&$trty , 
 Massachusetts. They had a few churches i/i j New> York;,-, ;>, . 
 and in the larger cities and towns elsewhere, but ihe-seet, J > J > 
 as such, was a local one. Orthodoxy made a sturdy fight 
 against the heresy, under leaders like Leonard Woods and 
 Moses Stewart, of Andover, and Lyman Beecher, of Con 
 necticut. In the neighboring state of Connecticut, for ex 
 ample, there was until lately, for a period of several years, 
 no distinctly Unitarian congregation worshiping in a 
 church edifice of its own. On the other hand, the Unita 
 rians claimed, with justice, that their opinions had, to a 
 great extent, modified the theology of the orthodox 
 
 churches. The writings of Horace Bushnell, of Hartford, Modified 
 
 Calvinism, 
 one of the most eminent Congregational divines, approach 
 
 Uiiitarianism in their interpretation of the doctrine of the 
 atonement ; and the " progressive orthodoxy " of Andover 
 is certainly not the Calvinism of Thomas Hooker or of 
 Jonathan Edwards. But it seemed to the transcendentalists 
 that conservative Unitarianism was too negative and " cul 
 tured," and Margaret Fuller complained of the coldness of 
 the Boston pulpits ; while, contrariwise, the central 
 thought of transcendentalism, that the soul has an imme 
 diate connection with God, was pronounced by Dr. Chan- 
 ning a "crude speculation." This was the thought of 
 Emerson s address in 1838 before the Cambridge Divinity 
 School, and it was at once made the object of attack by 
 conservative Unitarians like Henry Ware and Andrews 
 Norton. The latter, in an address before the same audience, 
 on " The Latest Form of Infidelity," said : "Nothing is 
 
 left that can be called Christianity if its miraculous char- Andrews Nor 
 ton s reply to 
 
 acter be denied. . . There can be no intuition, 110 Emerson s 
 
 "Address be- 
 
 direct perception, of the truth of Christianity." And in a fore the Cam- 
 
 J bridge Divin- 
 
 pamphlet supporting the same side of the question he, ity School." 
 
 .added : " It is not an intelligible error, but a mere absurd- 
 
102 
 
 Initial Studies in American Letters. 
 
 Emerson s 
 withdrawal 
 from the 
 pulpit. 
 
 Theodore 
 Parker. 
 
 German 
 philosophy in 
 New England. 
 
 iiy,; tja> maintain that we are conscious, or have an intuitive 
 knowledge, xif. the being of God, of our own immortality, 
 . i. 1 * */ *>r -o any other fact of religion." Ripley and Par 
 ker replied in Emerson s defense; but Emerson himself 
 would never be drawn into controversy. He said that he 
 could not argue. He announced truths , his method was 
 that of the seer, not of the disputant. 
 
 In 1832 Emerson, who was a Unitarian clergyman and 
 descended from eight generations of clergymen, had re 
 signed the pastorate of the Second Church of Boston be 
 cause he could not conscientiously administer the sacra 
 ment of the communion which he regarded as a mere act 
 of commemoration in the sense in which it was under 
 stood by his parishioners. Thenceforth, though he some 
 times occupied Unitarian pulpits, and was, indeed, all his 
 life a kind of "lay preacher," he never assumed the pas 
 torate of a church. The representative of transcendental 
 ism in the pulpit was Theodore Parker, an eloquent 
 preacher, an eager debater, and a prolific writer on many 
 subjects, whose collected works fill fourteen volumes. 
 Parker was a man of strongly human traits, passionate, 
 independent, intensely religious, but intensely radical, who 
 made for himself a large personal following. The more 
 advanced wing of the Unitarians were called after him, 
 " Parkerites." Many of the Unitarian churches refused to 
 "fellowship " with him ; and the large congregation, or 
 audience, which assembled in Music Hall to hear his ser 
 mons, was stigmatized as a "boisterous assembly" which 
 came to hear Parker preach irreligion. 
 
 It has been said that, on its philosophical side, New Eng 
 land transcendentalism was a restatement of idealism. 
 The impulse came from Germany, from the philosophical 
 writings of Kant, Fichte, Jacobi, and Schelling, and from 
 the works of Coleridge and Carlyle, who had domesticated 
 
The Concord Writers. 103 
 
 German thought in England. In Channing s " Remarks 
 on a National Literature," quoted in our last chapter, the 
 essayist urged that our scholars should study the authors 
 of France and Germany as one means of emancipating 
 American letters from a slavish dependence on British lit 
 erature. And, in fact, German literature began, not long 
 after, to be eagerly studied in New England. Emerson 
 published an American edition of Carlyle s "Miscellanies," 
 including his essays on German writers that had appeared 
 in England between 1822 and 1830. In 1838 Rlpley began George 
 to publish "Specimens of Foreign Standard Literature," "Specimens 
 
 of Foreign 
 
 which extended to fourteen volumes. In his work of standard 
 
 Literature." 
 
 translating and supplying introductions to the matter se 
 lected, he was helped by Margaret Fuller, John S. Dwight, 
 and others who had more or less connection with the tran 
 scendental movement. 
 
 The definition of the new faith given by Emerson in his Transcen( ien- 
 lecture on "The Transcendentalist," 1842, is as follows: 
 " What is popularly called transcendentalism among us is 
 idealism. . . . The idealism of the present day acquired 
 the name of transcendental from the use of that term by 
 Immanuel Kant, who replied to the skeptical philosophy of 
 Locke, which insisted that there was nothing in the intel 
 lect which was not previously in the experience of the 
 senses, by showing that there was a very important class of 
 ideas, or imperative forms, which did not come by experi 
 ence, but through which experience was acquired ; that 
 these were intuitions of the mind itself, and he denom 
 inated them transcendental forms." Idealism denies the 
 independent existence of matter. Transcendentalism 
 claims for the innate ideas of God and the soul a higher 
 assurance of reality than for the knowledge of the outside 
 world derived through the senses. Emerson shares the 
 " noble doubt of idealism." He calls the universe a shade, 
 
104 
 
 Initial Studies in American Letters. 
 
 Emerson 
 an idealist. 
 
 The " O.ver- 
 soul." 
 
 Emerson s 
 " The Tran- 
 scendental- 
 ist." 
 
 a dream, " this great, apparition." " It is a sufficient ac 
 count of that appearance we call the world," he wrote in 
 "Nature," "that God will teach a human mind, and so 
 makes it the receiver of a certain number of congruent 
 sensations which we call sun and moon, man and woman, 
 house and trade. In my utter impotence to test the authen 
 ticity of the report of my senses, to know whether the im 
 pressions on me correspond with outlying objects, what 
 difference does it make whether Orion is up there in heaven 
 or some god paints the image in the firmament of the 
 soul? " On the other hand, our evidence of the existence 
 of God and of our own souls, and our knowledge of right 
 and wrong, are immediate, and are independent of the 
 senses. We are in direct communication with the "Over- 
 soul," the infinite Spirit. "The soul in man is the back 
 ground of our being an immensity not possessed, that 
 cannot be possessed." "From within or from behind, a 
 light shines through us upon things, and makes us aware 
 that we are nothing, but the light is all." Revelation is 
 " an influx of the divine mind into our mind. It is an ebb 
 of the individual rivulet before the flowing surges of the 
 sea of life." In moods of exultation, and especially in the 
 presence of nature, this contact of the individual soul with 
 the absolute is felt. "All mean egotism vanishes. I be 
 come a transparent eyeball ; I am nothing ; I see all ; the 
 currents of the Universal Being circulate through me ; I 
 am part and particle of God." The existence and attri 
 butes of God are not deducible from history or from nat 
 ural theology, but are thus directly given us in conscious 
 ness. In his essay on "The Transcendentalist " Emerson 
 says: "His experience inclines him to behold the pro 
 cession of facts you call the world as flowing perpetually 
 outward from an invisible, unsounded center in himself; 
 center alike of him and of them, and necessitating him to 
 
NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE. 
 THEODORE PARKER. 
 
 H ENRY DAVID THOREAU. 
 MARGARET FULLER. 
 
The Concord Writers. 105 
 
 regard all things as having a subjective or relative exist 
 encerelative to that aforesaid Unknown Center of him. 
 There is no bar or wall in the soul where man, the effect, 
 ceases, and God, the cause, begins. We lie open on one 
 side to the deeps of spiritual nature, to the attributes of 
 God." 
 
 Emerson s point of view, though familiar to students of 
 philosophy, is strange to the popular understanding, and Emergon not 
 
 hence has arisen the complaint of his obscurity. More- a formal 
 
 philosopher. 
 
 over, he apprehended and expressed these ideas as a poet, 
 in figurative and emotional language, and not as a meta 
 physician, in a formulated statement. His own position in 
 relation to systematic philosophers is described in what he 
 says of Plato, in his series of sketches entitled "Repre 
 sentative Men," 1850 : " He has not a system. The dearest 
 disciples and defenders are at fault. He attempted a theory 
 of the universe, and his theory is not complete or self- 
 evident. One man thinks he means this, and another that ; 
 he has said one thing in one place, and the reverse of it in 
 another place." It happens, therefore, that, to many 
 students of more formal philosophies, Emerson s meaning 
 seems elusive, and he appears -to write from temporary 
 moods and to contradict himself. Had he attempted a rea 
 soned exposition of the transcendental philosophy, instead 
 of writing essays and poems, he might have added one more 
 to the number of system-mongers ; but he would not have j^J lnfl " ence 
 taken that significant place which he occupies in the gen 
 eral literature of the time, nor exerted that wide influence 
 upon younger writers which has been one of the stimulat 
 ing forces in American thought. It was because Emerson 
 was a poet that he is our Emerson. And yet it would be 
 impossible to disentangle his peculiar philosophical ideas 
 from the body of his writings and to leave the latter to 
 stand upon their merits as literature merely. He is the 
 
106 
 
 Initial Studies in American Letters. 
 
 Residence at 
 Concord. 
 
 " Emerson, 
 the lecturer." 
 
 "Nature," 
 1836. 
 
 poet of certain high abstractions, and his religion is central 
 to all his work excepting, perhaps, his " English Traits," 
 1856, an acute study of national characteristics ; and a few 
 of his essays and verses, which are independent of any 
 particular philosophical standpoint. 
 
 When Emerson resigned his parish in 1832 he made a 
 short trip to Europe, where he visited Carlyle at Craigen- 
 puttock and Lander at Florence. On his return he retired 
 to the village of Concord, Massachusetts, and settled down 
 among his books and his fields, becoming a sort of u glori 
 fied farmer," but issuing frequently from his retirement to 
 instruct arid delight audiences of thoughtful people at 
 Boston and at other points all through the country. Em 
 erson was the perfection of a lyceum lecturer. His manner 
 was quiet but forcible, his voice of charming quality, and 
 his enunciation clean-cut and refined. The sentence was 
 his unit in composition. His lectures seemed to begin any 
 where and to end anywhere and to resemble strings of ex 
 quisitely polished sayings rather than continuous dis 
 courses. His printed essays, with unimportant exceptions, 
 were first written and delivered as lectures. In 1836 he 
 published his first book, "Nature," which remains the 
 most systematic statement of his philosophy. It opened a 
 fresh spring-head in American thought, and the words of 
 its introduction announced that its author had broken 
 with the past. "Why should not we also enjoy an orig 
 inal relation to the universe ? Why should not we have a 
 poetry and philosophy of insight and not of tradition, 
 and a religion by revelation to us and not the history of 
 theirs?" 
 
 It took eleven years to sell five hundred copies of this 
 little book. But the year following its publication the re 
 markable Phi Beta Kappa address at Cambridge, on " The 
 American Scholar," electrified the little public of the uni- 
 
The Concord Writers. 107 
 
 versity. This is described by Lowell as u an event without <<The Ameri . 
 any former parallel in our literary annals, a scene to be can Scholar. 
 always treasured in the memory for its picturesqueness and 
 its inspiration. What crowded and breathless aisles, what 
 windows clustering with eager heads, what grim silence of 
 foregone dissent!" To Concord came many kindred 
 spirits, drawn by Emerson s magnetic attraction. Thither 
 came, from Connecticut, Amos Bronson Alcott, born a few Amos Bron- 
 years before Emerson, whom he outlived ; a quaint and son Alcott - 
 benignant figure, a visionary and a mystic even among the 
 transcendentalists themselves, and one who lived in un 
 worldly simplicity the life of the soul. Alcott had taught 
 school at Cheshire, Conn., and afterward at Boston on an 
 original plan compelling his scholars, for example, to flog 
 Mm, when they did wrong, instead of taking a flogging 
 themselves. The experiment was successful until his 
 a Conversations on the Gospels," in Boston, and his in 
 sistence upon admitting colored children to his benches, 
 offended conservative opinion and broke up his school. 
 Alcott renounced the eating of animal food in 1835. He 
 believed in the union of thought and manual labor, and 
 supported himself for some years by the work of his hands, 
 gardening, cutting wood, etc. He traveled into the West 
 and elsewhere, holding conversations on philosophy, edu 
 cation, and religion. He set up a little community at the 
 village of Harvard, Massachusetts, which was rather less 
 successful than Brook Farm, and he contributed " Orphic 
 Sayings" to The Dial, which were harder for the exoteric 
 to understand than even Emerson s "Brahma," or "The 
 Over-soul." 
 
 Thither came, also, Sarah Margaret Fuller, the most in- , 
 
 Margaret 
 
 tellectual woman of her time in America, an eager student Fuller, 
 of Greek and German literature and an ardent seeker after 
 the true, the good, and the beautiful. She threw herself 
 
108 
 
 Initial Studies in American Letters. 
 
 "Woman in 
 the Nine 
 teenth Cen 
 tury." 
 
 Nathaniel 
 Hawthorne 
 at Concord. 
 
 into many causes such as temperance and the higher edu 
 cation of women. Her brilliant conversation classes in 
 Boston attracted many "minds" of her own sex. Subse 
 quently, as literary editor of the New York Tribune, she 
 furnished a wider public with reviews and book notices of 
 great ability. She took part in the Brook Farm experi 
 ment, and she edited The Dial for a time, contributing to 
 it the papers afterward expanded into her most consider 
 able book, "Woman in the Nineteenth Century." In 1846 
 she went abroad, and at Home took part in the revolution 
 ary movement of Mazzini, having charge of one of the 
 hospitals during the siege of the city by the French. In 
 1847 she married an impecunious Italian nobleman, the Mar 
 quis Ossoli. In 1850 the ship on which she was returning 
 to America, with her husband and child, was wrecked on 
 Fire Island beach and all three were lost. Margaret Ful 
 ler s collected writings are somewhat disappointing, being 
 mainly of temporary interest. She lives less through her 
 books than through the memoirs of her friends, Emerson, 
 James Freeman Clarke, T. W. Higginson, and others who 
 knew her as a personal influence. Her strenuous and 
 rather overbearing individuality made an impression not 
 altogether agreeable upon many of her contemporaries. 
 Lowell introduced a caricature of her as " Miranda" into 
 his " Fable for Critics," and Hawthorne s caustic sketch of 
 her, preserved in the biography written by his son, has 
 given great offense to her admirers. "Such a determina 
 tion to eat this huge universe !" was Carlyle s character 
 istic comment on her appetite for knowledge and aspira 
 tions after perfection. 
 
 To Concord also came Nathaniel Hawthorne, who took 
 up his residence there first at the " Old Manse," and after 
 ward at "The Wayside." Though naturally an idealist, 
 he said that he came too late to Concord to fall decidedly 
 
The Concord Writers. 109 
 
 under Emerson s influence. Of that he would have stood in 
 little danger even had he come earlier. He appreciated the 
 deep and subtle quality of Emerson s imagination, but his 
 own shy genius always jealously guarded its independence 
 and resented the too close approaches of an alien mind. 
 Among the native disciples of Emerson at Concord the most 
 noteworthy were Henry Thoreau, and his friend and biog 
 rapher, William Ellery Channing, Jr., a nephew of the Wm. Eiiery 
 great Channing. Channing was a contributor to The Dial, 
 and he published a volume of poems which elicited a 
 fiercely contemptuous review from Edgar Poe. Though 
 disfigured by affectation and obscurity, many of Chan- 
 iiing s verses were distinguished by true poetic feeling, and 
 the last line of his little piece, "A Poet s Hope," 
 
 " If my bark sink tis to another sea," 
 
 has taken a permanent place in the literature of tran 
 scendentalism. 
 
 The private organ of the transcendentalists was The Dial, The ixal. 
 a quarterly magazine, published from 1840 to 1844, and 
 edited by Emerson and Margaret Fuller. Among its con 
 tributors, besides those already mentioned, were Ripley, 
 Thoreau, Parker, James Freeman Clarke, Charles A. Dana, 
 John S. Dwight, C. P. Cranch, Charles Emerson, and Wil 
 liam H. Channing, another nephew of Dr. Channing. It 
 contained, along with a good deal of rubbish, some of the 
 best poetry and prose that have been published in America. 
 The most lasting part of its contents was the contributions 
 of Emerson and Thoreau. But even as a whole it was a 
 unique way-mark in the history of our literature. 
 
 From time to time Emerson collected and published his 
 
 Emerson s 
 lectures under various titles. A first series of "Essays" writings. 
 
 came out in 1841, and a second in 1844; the "Conduct of 
 Life," in 1860 ; "Society and Solitude," in 1870 ; " Letters 
 and Social Aims" in 1876, and "The Fortune of the Re- 
 
110 Initial Studies in American Letters. 
 
 public " in 1878. In 1847 he issued a volume of " Poems," 
 and in 1865 "Mayday and Other Poems." These writings, 
 as a whole, were variations on a single theme, expansions 
 and illustrations of the philosophy set forth in "Nature" 
 and his early addresses. They were strikingly original, 
 rich in thought, filled with wisdom, with lofty morality 
 and spiritual religion. Emerson, said Lowell, first " cut 
 the cable that bound us to English thought and gave us a 
 chance at the dangers and glories of blue water." Never 
 theless, as it used to be the fashion to find an English 
 analogue for every American writer, so that Cooper was 
 called the American Scott, and Mrs. Sigourney was de 
 scribed as the Hemans of America, a well-worn critical 
 Emerson and tradition has coupled Emerson with Carlyle. That his 
 mind received a nudge from Carlyle s early essays and from 
 " Sartor Resartus " is beyond a doubt. They were life-long 
 friends and correspondents, and Emerson s " Representa 
 tive Men" is, in some sort, a counterpart of Carlyle s 
 " Hero Worship." But in temper and style the two writ 
 ers were widely different. Carlyle s pessimism and dissat 
 isfaction with the general drift of things gained upon him 
 more and more, while Emerson was a consistent optimist to 
 the end. The last of his writings published during his life 
 time, "The Fortune of the Republic," contrasts strangely in 
 its hopefulness with the desperation of Carlyle s later utter 
 ances. Even in presence of the doubt as to man s personal 
 immortality he takes refuge in a high and stoical faith. " I 
 think all sound minds rest on a certain preliminary con 
 viction, namely, that if it be best that conscious personal 
 life shall continue it will continue, and if not best, then it 
 will not ; and we, if we saw the whole, should of course see 
 that it was better so." It is this conviction that gives to 
 Emerson s writings their serenity and their tonic quality 
 at the same time that it narrows the range of his dealings 
 
The Concord Writers. Ill 
 
 with life. As the idealist declines to cross-examine those Eme rson s 
 facts which he regards as merely phenomenal, and looks opt11 
 upon this outward face of things as upon a mask not worthy 
 to dismay the fixed soul, so the optimist turns away his 
 eyes from the evil which he disposes of as merely nega 
 tive, as the shadow of the good. Hawthorne s interest in 
 the problem of sin finds little place in Emerson s philoso 
 phy. Passion comes not nigh him, and " Faust " disturbs 
 him with its disagreeableness. Pessimism is to him "the 
 only skepticism." 
 
 The greatest literature is that which is most broadly 
 
 Emerson s 
 
 human, or, in other words, that which will square best genius in 
 terpretative. 
 
 with all philosophies. But Emerson s genius was inter 
 pretative rather than constructive. The poet dwells in the 
 cheerful world of phenomena. He is most the poet who 
 realizes most intensely the good and the bad of human 
 life. But idealism makes experience shadowy and subor 
 dinates action to contemplation. To it the cities of men, 
 with their "frivolous populations," 
 
 " are but sailing foam-bells 
 Along thought s causing stream." 
 
 Shakespeare does not forget that the world will one day 
 vanish "like the baseless fabric of a vision," and that we 
 
 ourselves are "such stuff as dreams are made on"; but Not a great 
 
 constructive 
 this is not the mood in which he dwells. Again : while it artist. 
 
 is for the philosopher to reduce variety to unity, it is the 
 poet s task to detect the manifold under uniformity. In 
 the great creative poets, in Shakespeare and Dante and 
 Goethe, how infinite the swarm of persons, the multitude 
 of forms ! But with Emerson the type is important, the 
 common element. " In youth we are mad for persons. 
 But the larger experience of man discovers the identical 
 nature appearing through them all." "The same the 
 same ! " he exclaims in his essay on Plato. " Friend and 
 
112 
 
 Initial Studies in American Letters. 
 
 " English 
 Traits." 
 
 "Representa 
 tive Men." 
 
 Emerson a 
 poet- 
 philosopher. 
 
 His verse. 
 
 foe are of one stuff; the plowman, the plow, and the fur 
 row are of one stuff." And this is the thought in 
 " Brahma " : 
 
 " They reckon ill who leave me out ; 
 
 When me they fly I am the wings ; 
 I am the doubter and the doubt, 
 
 And I the hymn the Brahmin sings." 
 
 It is not easy to fancy a writer who holds this attitude 
 toward "persons" descending to the composition of a 
 novel or a play. Emerson showed, indeed, a fine power of 
 character analysis in his "English Traits" and "Repre 
 sentative Men " and in his memoirs of Thoreau and Mar 
 garet Fuller. There is even a sort of dramatic humor in 
 his portrait of Socrates. But upon the whole he stands 
 midway between constructive artists, whose instinct it is 
 to tell a story or sing a song, and philosophers, like Schell- 
 ing, who give poetic expression to a system of thought. 
 He belongs to the class of minds of which Sir Thomas 
 Browne is the best English example. He set a high value 
 upon Browne, to whose style his own, though far more 
 sententious, bears a resemblance. Browne s saying, for ex 
 ample, "All things are artificial, for nature is the art of 
 God," sounds like Emerson, whose workmanship, for the 
 rest, in his prose essays was exceedingly fine and close. 
 He was not afraid to be homely and racy in expressing 
 thought of the highest spirituality. " Hitch your wagon 
 to a star," is a good instance of his favorite manner. 
 
 Emerson s verse often seems careless in technique. Most 
 of his pieces are scrappy and have the air of runic rimes, 
 or little oracular "voicings" as they say at Concord in 
 rhythmic shape, of single thoughts on " Worship," "Char 
 acter," "Heroism," "Art," "Politics," "Culture," etc. 
 The content is the important thing, and the form is too 
 frequently awkward or bald. Sometimes, indeed, in the 
 
The Concord Writers. 113 
 
 clear-obscure of Emerson s poetry, the deep wisdom of the 
 thought finds its most natural expression in the imagina 
 tive simplicity of the language. But though this artless- 
 ness in him became too frequently in his imitators, like 
 Thoreau and Ellery Channing, an obtruded simplicity, 
 among his own poems are many that leave nothing to be 
 desired in point of wording and of verse. His "Hymn The "Concord 
 Sung at the Completion of the Concord Monument," in y 
 1836, is the perfect model of an occasional poem. Its lines 
 were on everyone s lips at the time of the centennial cele 
 brations in 1876, and the ** shot heard round the world " 
 has hardly echoed farther than the song which chronicled 
 it. Equally current is the stanza from u Voluntaries " : 
 
 " So nigh is grandeur to our dust, 
 
 So near is God to man, 
 When Duty whispers low, * Thou must, 
 
 The youth replies, 4 I can. " 
 
 So, too, the famous lines from " The Problem " : i e S 1 " Pr0l> 
 
 " The hand that rounded Peter s dome, 
 And groined the aisles of Christian Rome, 
 Wrought in a sad sincerity. 
 Himself from God he could not free ; 
 He builded better than he knew ; 
 The conscious stone to beauty grew." 
 
 The most noteworthy of Emerson s pupils was Henry 
 David Thoreau, " the poet naturalist." After his gradu- Thoreau. aV] 
 ation from Harvard College, in 1837, Thoreau engaged in 
 school-teaching and in the manufacture of lead-pencils, but 
 soon gave up all regular business and devoted himself to 
 walking, reading, and the study of nature. He was at one 
 time private tutor in a family on Staten Island, and he 
 supported himself for a season by doing odd jobs in land- 
 surveying for the farmers about Concord. In 1845 he built, 
 
 with his own hands, a small cabin on the banks of Walden 
 
 His Walden 
 Pond, near Concord, and lived there in seclusion for two hermitage. 
 
114 
 
 Initial Studies in American Letters. 
 
 Published 
 writings. 
 
 His closeness 
 to nature. 
 
 His love of 
 the wild. 
 
 years. His expenses during these years were nine cents a 
 day, and he gave an account of his experiment in his most 
 characteristic book, "Walden," published in 1854. His 
 "Week on the Concord and Merrimac Rivers " appeared 
 in 1849. From time to time he went farther afield, and his 
 journeys were reported in "Cape Cod," the "Maine 
 Woods," "Excursions," and "A Yankee in Canada," all 
 of which, as well as a volume of " Letters " and "Early 
 Spring in Massachusetts," have been given to the public 
 since his death, which happened in 1862. No one has lived 
 so close to nature, and written of it so intimately, as 
 Thoreau. His life was a lesson in economy and a sermon 
 on Emerson s text, "Lessen your denominator." He 
 wished to reduce existence to the simplest terms to 
 
 " live all alone 
 Close to the bone, 
 And where life is sweet 
 Constantly eat." 
 
 He had a passion for the wild, and seems- like an Anglo- 
 Saxon reversion to the type of the Red Indian. The most 
 distinctive note in Thoreau is his inhumanity. Emerson 
 spoke of him as a "perfect piece of stoicism." "Man," 
 said Thoreau, " is only the point on which I stand." He 
 strove to realize the objective life of nature nature in its 
 aloofness from man ; to identify himself with the moose 
 and the mountain. He listened, with his ear close to the 
 ground, for the voice of the earth. "What are the trees 
 saying?" he exclaimed. Following upon the trail of the 
 lumberman, he asked the primeval wilderness for its secret, 
 and 
 
 " saw beneath dim aisles in odorous beds, 
 The slight linnsea hang its twin-born heads." 
 
 He tried to interpret the thought of Ktaadn and to fathom 
 the meaning of the billows on the back of Cape Cod, in 
 
The Concord Writers. 115 
 
 their indifference to the shipwrecked bodies that they 
 rolled ashore. " After sitting in my chamber many days, 
 reading the poets, I have been out early on a foggy morn 
 ing and heard the cry of an owl in the neighboring wood 
 as from a nature behind the common, unexplored by sci 
 ence or by literature. None of the feathered race has yet 
 realized my youthful conceptions of the woodland depths. 
 I had seen the red election birds brought from their re 
 cesses on my comrade s string, and fancied that their 
 plumage would assume stranger and more dazzling colors, 
 like the tints of evening, in proportion as I advanced 
 farther into the darkness and solitude of the forest. Still 
 less have I seen such strong and wild tints on any poet s 
 string." 
 
 It was on the mystical side that Thoreau apprehended Tiioreau a 
 transcendentalism. Mysticism has been defined as the S252S1 
 soul s recognition of its identity with nature. This 
 thought lies plainly in Schelling s philosophy, and he 
 illustrated it by his famous figure of the magnet. Mind 
 and nature are one ; they are the positive and negative 
 poles of the magnet. In man, the Absolute that is, God 
 becomes conscious of himself ; makes of himself, as na 
 ture, an object to himself as mind. "The souls of men," 
 said Schelling, "are but the innumerable individual 
 eyes with which our infinite World-Spirit beholds him 
 self." This thought is also clearly present in Emerson s 
 view of nature, and has caused him to be accused of Resemblance 
 pantheism. But if by pantheism is meant the doctrine anc t Thoreau a 
 
 that the underlying principle of the universe is matter 
 or force, none of the transcendentalists was a panthe- 
 ist. In their view nature was divine. Their poetry is 
 always haunted by the sense of a spiritual reality which 
 abides beyond the phenomena. Thus in Emerson s " Two 
 Rivers" : 
 
116 
 
 Initial Studies in American Letters. 
 
 "Two 
 Rivers." 
 
 Thoreau 
 
 spiritualizes 
 
 nature. 
 
 "Thy summer voice, Musketaquit, * 
 
 Repeats the music of the rain, 
 But sweeter rivers pulsing flit 
 
 Through thee as thou through Concord plain. 
 
 " Thou in thy narrow banks art pent : 
 
 The stream I love unbounded goes ; 
 Through flood and sea and firmament, 
 
 Through light, through life, it forward flows. 
 
 " I see the inundation sweet, 
 
 I hear the spending of the stream, 
 Through years, through men, through nature fleet, 
 
 Through passion, thought, through power and dream." 
 
 This mood occurs frequently in Thoreau. The hard 
 world of matter becomes suddenly all fluent and spiritual, 
 and he sees himself in it sees God. "This earth," he 
 cries, "which is spread out like a map around me, is but 
 the lining of my inmost soul exposed." " In me is the 
 sucker that I see " ; and, of Walden Pond, 
 
 I am its stony shore, 
 And the breeze that passes o er." 
 
 " Suddenly old Time winked at me ah, you know me, 
 you rogue and news had come that IT was well. That 
 ancient universe is in such capital health, I think, un 
 doubtedly it will never die. . . . I see, smell, taste, 
 hear, feel that everlasting something to which we are allied, 
 at once our maker, our abode, our destiny, our very selves." 
 It was something ulterior that Thoreau sought in nature. 
 "The other world," he wrote, " is all my art : my pencils 
 will draw no other : my jack-knife will cut nothing else." 
 Thoreau did not scorn, however, like Emerson, to " exam 
 ine too microscopically the universal tablet." He was a 
 close observer and accurate reporter of the ways of birds 
 and plants and the minuter aspects of nature. He has had 
 many followers, who have produced much pleasant litera 
 ture on outdoor life. But in none of them is there that 
 * The Indian name of Concord River. 
 
The Concord Writers. 117 
 
 unique combination of the poet, the naturalist, and the The poet- 
 mystic which gives his page its wild, original flavor. He naturalist -" 
 had the woodcraft of a hunter and the eye of a botanist, 
 but his imagination did not stop short with the fact. The 
 sound of a tree falling in the Maine woods was to him "as 
 though a door had shut somewhere in the damp and shaggy 
 wilderness." He saw small things in cosmic relations. His 
 trip down the tame Concord has for the reader the excite- imaginative 
 ment of a voyage of exploration into far and unknown re- fJmtiTar nt f 
 gions. The river just above Sherman s Bridge, in time of P&enomena. 
 flood " when the wind blows freshly on a raw March day, 
 heaving up the surface into dark and somber billows," was 
 like Lake Huron, "and you may run aground on Cran 
 berry Island," and "get as good a freezing there as any 
 where on the northwest coast." He said that most of the 
 phenomena described in Kane s voyages could be observed 
 in Concord. 
 
 The literature of transcendentalism was like the light of 
 the stars in a winter night, keen and cold and high. It had 
 the pale cast of thought, and was almost too spiritual and 
 remote to "hit the sense of mortal sight." But it was at 
 least indigenous. If not an American literature not na- A genuine 
 tional and not inclusive of all sides of American life it p r e d l S. glan 
 was, at all events, a genuine New England literature and 
 true to the spirit of its section. The tough Puritan stock 
 had at last put forth a blossom which compared with the 
 warm, robust growths of English soil even as the delicate 
 wind flower of the northern spring compares with the cow 
 slips and daisies of old England. 
 
 In 1842 Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-64), the greatest 
 American romancer, came to Concord. He had recently left Hawthorne. 
 Brook Farm, had just been married, and with his bride he 
 settled down in the "Old Manse" for three paradisiacal 
 years. A picture of this protracted honeymoon and this 
 
118 
 
 Initial Studies in American Letters. 
 
 from an Old 
 Manse." 
 
 Hawthorne 
 at Salem. 
 
 sequestered life, as tranquil as the slow stream on whose 
 banks it was passed, is given in the introductory chapter 
 to his " Mosses from an Old Manse," 1846, and in the more 
 personal and confidential records of his "American Note 
 Books," posthumously published. Hawthorne was thirty- 
 eight when he took his place among the Concord literati. 
 His childhood and youth had been spent partly at his 
 birthplace, the old and already somewhat decayed seaport 
 town of Salem, and partly at his grandfather s farm on 
 Sebago Lake, in Maine, then on the edge of the primitive 
 forest. Maine did not become a state, indeed, until 1820, 
 the year before Hawthorne entered Bowdoin College, 
 whence he was graduated in 1825, in the same class with 
 Henry W. Longfellow and one year behind Franklin 
 Pierce, afterward president of the United States. After 
 leaving college Hawthorne buried himself for years in the 
 seclusion of his home at Salem. His mother, who was 
 early widowed, had withdrawn entirely from the world. 
 For months at a time Hawthorne kept his room, seeing no 
 other society than that of his mother and sisters, reading 
 all sorts of books and writing wild tales, most of which he 
 destroyed as soon as he had written them. At twilight he 
 would emerge from the house for a solitary ramble through 
 the streets of the town or along the seaside. 
 
 Old Salem had much that was picturesque in its associ 
 ations. It had been the scene of the witch trials in the 
 seventeenth century, and it abounded in ancient mansions, 
 the homes of retired whalers and India merchants. Haw 
 thorne s father had been a ship captain, and many of his 
 ancestors had followed the sea. One of his forefathers, 
 moreover, had been a certain Judge Hawthorne, who in 
 1691 had sentenced several of the witches to death. The 
 thought of this affected Hawthorne s imagination with a 
 pleasing horror, and he utilized it afterward in his " House 
 
The Concord Writers. 119 
 
 of the Seven Gables." Many of the old Salem houses, too, Houseof 
 had their family histories, with now and then the hint of 
 some obscure crime or dark misfortune which haunted pos 
 terity with its curse till all the stock died out or fell into 
 poverty and evil ways, as in the Pyncheon family of Haw 
 thorne s romance. 
 
 In the preface to " The Marble Faun " Hawthorne wrote : 
 " No author without a trial can conceive of the difficulty 
 of writing a romance about a country where there is no 
 shadow, no antiquity, no mystery, no picturesque and 
 gloomy wrong, nor anything but a commonplace prosper- 
 ity in broad and simple daylight," And yet it may be America. 11 
 doubted whether any environment could have been found 
 more fitted to his peculiar genius than this of his native 
 town, or any preparation better calculated to ripen the 
 faculty that was in him than these long, lonely years of 
 waiting and brooding thought. 
 
 From time to time he contributed a story or a sketch to 
 some periodical, such as S. G. Goodrich s annual, the 
 Token, or the Knickerbocker Magazine. Some of these at 
 tracted the attention of the judicious ; but they were 
 anonymous and signed by various noms de plume, and 
 their author was at this time to use his own words " the 
 obscurest man of letters in America." In 1828 he had is 
 sued anonymously and at his own expense a short romance, 
 entitled " Fanshawe." It had little success, and copies of "Fanshawe. 
 the first edition are now exceedingly rare. In 1837 he pub 
 lished a collection of his magazine pieces under the title, 
 " Twice-Told Tales." The book was generously praised in 
 the North American Review by his former classmate, Long 
 fellow ; and Edgar Poe showed his keen critical perception 
 by predicting that the writer would easily put himself at 
 the head of imaginative literature in America if he would 
 discard allegory, drop short stories, and compose a genu- 
 
120 
 
 Initial Studies in American Letters. 
 
 " Twice-Told 
 Tales." 
 
 iwthorne s 
 uritan 
 inheritance. 
 
 Fondness for 
 allegory. 
 
 ine romance. Poe compared Hawthorne s work with that 
 of the German romancer, Tieck, and it is interesting to find 
 confirmation of this dictum in passages of the "American 
 Note Books," in which Hawthorne speaks of laboring over 
 Tieck with a German dictionary. The " Twice-Told Tales " 
 are the work of a recluse, who makes guesses at life from a 
 knowledge of his own heart, acquired by a habit of intro 
 spection, but who has had little contact with men. Many 
 of them were shadowy, and others were morbid and un 
 wholesome. But their gloom was of an interior kind, never 
 the physically horrible of Poe. It arose from weird psycho 
 logical situations like that of " Ethan Brand " in his search 
 for the unpardonable sin. Hawthorne was true to the in 
 herited instinct of puritanism ; he took the conscience for 
 his theme, and in these early tales he was already absorbed 
 in the problem of evil, the subtle ways in which sin works 
 out its retribution, and the species of fate or necessity that 
 the wrong-doer makes for himself in the inevitable se 
 quences of his crime. 
 
 Hawthorne was strongly drawn toward symbols and 
 types, and never quite followed Poe s advice to abandon 
 allegory. "The Scarlet Letter" and his other romances 
 are not, indeed, strictly allegories, since the characters are 
 men and women and not mere personifications of abstract 
 qualities. Still, they all have a certain allegorical tinge. 
 In "The Marble Faun," for example, Hilda, Kenyon, 
 Miriam, and Donatello have been ingeniously explained as 
 personifications respectively of the conscience, the reason, 
 the imagination, and the senses. Without going so far as 
 this, it is possible to see in these and in Hawthorne s other 
 creations something typical and representative. He uses 
 his characters like algebraic symbols to work out certain 
 problems with ; they are rather more and yet rather less 
 than flesh and blood individuals. The stories in "Twice- 
 
The Concord Writers. 121 
 
 Told Tales " and in the second collection, " Mosses from an 
 Old Manse," 1846, are more openly allegorical than his later 
 work. Thus "The Minister s Black Veil" is a sort of 
 anticipation of Arthur Dimmesdale in " The Scarlet 
 Letter." 
 
 From 1846 to 1849 Hawthorne held the position of sur 
 veyor of the custom-house of Salem. In the preface to 
 1 The Scarlet Letter " he sketched some of the government 
 officials with whom this office had brought him into con 
 tact in a way that gave some offense to the friends of 
 the victims and a great deal of amusement to the public. 
 Hawthorne s humor was quiet and fine, like Irving s, but Humor 
 less genial and with a more satiric edge to it. The book 
 last named was written at Salem and published in 1850, 
 just before its author s removal to Lenox, now a sort of in 
 land Newport, but then an unfashionable resort among the 
 Berkshire Hills. Whatever obscurity may have hung over The "Scarlet 
 Hawthorne hitherto was effectually dissolved by this pow 
 erful tale, which was as vivid in coloring as the implica 
 tion of its title. Hawthorne chose for his background the 
 somber life of the early settlers of New England. He had 
 always been drawn toward this part of American history, 
 and in "Twice-Told Tales" had given some illustrations 
 of it in "Endicott s Bed Cross" and "Legends of the 
 Province House." Against this dark foil moved in strong 
 relief the figures of Hester Prynne, the woman taken in 
 adultery ; her paramour, the Rev. Arthur Dimmesdale ; 
 her husband, old Boger Chillingvvorth ; and her illegiti 
 mate child. In tragic power, in its grasp of the elementary 
 passions of human nature, and in its deep and subtle in 
 sight into the inmost secrets of the heart, this is Haw 
 thorne s greatest book. 
 
 He never crowded his canvas with figures. In " The 
 Blithedale Bomance " and "The Marble Faun" there is 
 
122 
 
 Initial Studies in American Letters. 
 
 " The Blithe- 
 dale Ro 
 mance." 
 
 Consulship at 
 Liverpool. 
 
 " The Marble 
 Faun. 
 
 " Our Old 
 Home." 
 
 the same parti carre, or group of four characters. In " The 
 House of Seven Gables" there are five. The last men 
 tioned of these, published in 1852, was of a more subdued 
 intensity than " The Scarlet Letter," but equally original, 
 and, upon the whole, perhaps equally good. " The Blithe- 
 dale Romance," published in the same year, though not 
 strikingly inferior to the others, adhered more to conven 
 tional patterns in its plot and in the sensational nature 
 of its ending. The suicide of the heroine by drowning, 
 and the terrible scene of the recovery of her body, were 
 suggested to the author by an experience of his own on 
 Concord River, the account of which, in his own words, 
 may be read in Julian Hawthorne s "Nathaniel Haw 
 thorne and His Wife." 
 
 In 1852 Hawthorne returned to Concord and bought the 
 "Wayside" property, which he retained until his death. 
 But in the following year his old college friend Pierce, now 
 become president, appointed him consul to Liverpool, and 
 he went abroad for seven years. The most valuable fruit 
 of his foreign residence was the romance of " The Marble 
 Faun," 1860, the longest of his fictions and the richest in 
 descriptive beauty. The theme of this was the develop 
 ment of the soul through the experience of sin. There is a 
 haunting mystery thrown about the story, like a soft veil 
 of mist, veiling the beginning and the end. There is even 
 a delicate teasing suggestion of the preternatural in Dona- 
 tello, the Faun, a creation as original as Shakespeare s Cal 
 iban or Fouque" s Undine, and yet quite on this side the 
 border-line of the human. "Our Old Home," a book of 
 charming papers on England, was published in 1863. Man 
 ifold experience of life and contact with men, affording 
 scope for his always keen observation, had added range, 
 fullness, warmth to the imaginative subtlety which had 
 manifested itself even in his earliest tales. Two admirable 
 
The Concord Writers. 123 
 
 books for children, "The Wonder Book" and Tangle- 
 wood Tales," in which the classical mythologies were re 
 told, should also be mentioned in the list of Hawthorne s 
 writings, as well as the "American," "English," and 
 " Italian Note Books," the first of which contains the seed- 
 thoughts of some of his finished works, together with hun 
 dreds of hints for plots, episodes, descriptions, etc., which 
 
 he never found time to work out. Hawthorne s style, in 
 
 Hawthorne s 
 his first sketches and stories a little stilted and bookish, English. 
 
 gradually acquired an exquisite perfection, and is as well 
 worth study as that of any prose classic in the English 
 tongue. 
 
 Hawthorne was no transcendentalist. He dwelt much 
 in a world of ideas, and he sometimes doubted whether the 
 tree on the bank or its image in the stream were the more 
 real. But this had little in common with the philosophi 
 cal idealism of his neighbors. He reverenced Emerson, 
 and he held kindly intercourse albeit a silent man and 
 
 easily bored with Thoreau and Ellery Channing, and 
 
 Hawthorne 
 
 even with Margaret Fuller. But his sharp eyes saw what- andthetran- 
 
 scendental- 
 
 ever was whimsical or weak in the apostles of the new i s ts. 
 
 faith. He had little enthusiasm for causes or reforms, and 
 among so many abolitionists he remained a Democrat, and 
 even wrote a campaign life of his friend Pierce. 
 
 The village of Concord has perhaps done more for Ameri 
 can literature than the city of New York. Certainly there 
 are few places where associations, both patriotic and poetic, 
 
 cluster so thickly. At one side of the grounds of the Old 
 
 Service of Con- 
 Manse which has the river at its back runs down a cord to Amer- 
 
 shaded lane to the Concord monument and the figure of 
 the Minute Man and the successor of u the rude bridge that 
 arched the flood." Scarce two miles away, among the 
 woods, is little Walden " God s drop." The men who 
 made Concord famous are asleep in Sleepy Hollow, yet 
 
124 Initial Studies in American Letters. 
 
 still their memory prevails to draw seekers after truth to 
 the Concord Summer School of Philosophy, which met 
 annually, a few years since, to reason high of " God, Free 
 dom, and Immortality," next door to the u Wayside," and 
 under the hill on whose ridge Hawthorne wore a path as 
 he paced up and down beneath the hemlocks. 
 
 1. RALPH WALDO EMERSON: "Nature"; "The 
 American Scholar "; "Literary Ethics"; "The Tran- 
 scendentalist " ; "The Over-soul" ; "Address before the 
 Cambridge Divinity School " ; " English Traits " ; " Rep 
 resentative Men " ; " Poems." 
 
 2. HENRY DAVID THOREAU : "Excursions"; "Wai- 
 den " ; "A Week on the Concord and Merrimac Rivers " ; 
 " Cape Cod " ; " The Maine Woods." 
 
 3. NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE: "Mosses from an Old 
 Manse"; "The Scarlet Letter"; "The House of the 
 Seven Gables" ; " The Blithedale Romance " ; " The Mar 
 ble Faun" ; " Our Old Home." 
 
 4. "Transcendentalism in New England." By O. B. 
 Frothingham. New York : 1875. 
 
CHAPTER V. 
 THE CAMBRIDGE SCHOLARS 1837-1861. 
 
 WITH few exceptions, the men who have made Ameri 
 can literature what it is have been college graduates. And Amer ican 
 yet our colleges have not commonly been, in themselves, 
 literary centers. Most of them have been small and poor, 
 and situated in little towns or provincial cities. Their 
 alumni scatter far and wide immediately after graduation, 
 and even those of them who may feel drawn to a life of 
 scholarship or letters find little to attract them at the home 
 of their alma mater, and seek by preference the larger 
 cities, where periodicals and publishing houses offer some 
 hope of support in a literary career. Even in the older and 
 better equipped universities the faculty is usually a corps of 
 working scholars, each man intent upon his specialty and 
 rather inclined to undervalue merely "literary " perform 
 ance. In many cases the fastidious and hypercritical turn 
 of mind which besets the scholar, the timid conservatism 
 which naturally characterizes an ancient seat of learning, 
 and the spirit of theological conformity which suppresses 
 free discussion, have exerted their benumbing influence 
 upon the originality and creative impulse of their inmates. 
 Hence it happens that, while the contributions of Ameri 
 can college teachers to the exact sciences, to theology and 
 philology, metaphysics, political philosophy, and the se 
 verer branches of learning have been honorable and impor 
 tant, they have as a class made little mark upon the gen 
 eral literature of the country. The professors of literature 
 
 125 
 
126 Initial Studies in American Letters. 
 
 in our colleges are usually persons who have made no addi 
 tions to literature, and the professors of rhetoric seem or 
 dinarily to have been selected to teach students how to 
 write, for the reason that they themselves have never writ 
 ten anything that any one has ever read. 
 
 To these remarks the Harvard College of some fifty years 
 intellectual ago offers some striking exceptions. It was not the large 
 Harvard. and fashionable university that it has lately grown to be, 
 
 with its multiplied elective courses, its numerous faculty, 
 and its somewhat motley collection of undergraduates ; but 
 a small school of the classics and mathematics, with some 
 thing of ethics, natural science, and the modern languages 
 added to its old-fashioned scholastic curriculum, and with 
 a very homogeneous clientele, drawn mainly from the 
 Unitarian families of eastern Massachusetts. Nevertheless 
 a finer intellectual life, in many respects, was lived at old 
 Cambridge within the years covered by this chapter than 
 nowadays at the same place, or at any date in any other 
 American university town. The neighborhood of Boston, 
 where the commercial life has never so entirely overlain 
 the intellectual as in New York and Philadelphia, has been 
 a standing advantage to Harvard College. The recent up 
 heaval in religious thought had secured toleration and made 
 possible that free and even audacious interchange of ideas 
 ary culture. without which a literary atmosphere is impossible. From 
 these, or from whatever causes, it happened that the old 
 Harvard scholarship had an elegant and tasteful side to it, 
 so that the dry erudition of the schools blossomed into a gen 
 erous culture ; and there were men in the professors chairs 
 who were no less efficient as teachers because they were 
 also poets, orators, wits, and men of the world. In the 
 seventeen years from 1821 to 1839 there were graduated 
 from Harvard College, Emerson, Holmes, Sumner, Phil 
 lips, Motley, Thoreau, Lowell, and Edward Everett Hale ; 
 
The Cambridge Scholars. 127 
 
 some of whom took up their residence at Cambridge, others 
 at Boston, and others at Concord, which was quite as much 
 a spiritual suburb of Boston as Cambridge was. In 1836, 
 when Longfellow became professor of modern languages 
 at Harvard, Sumner was lecturing in the Law School. 
 The following year in which Thoreau took his bachelor s Distinguished 
 degree witnessed the delivery of Emerson s Phi Beta 
 Kappa lecture on " The American Scholar," in the college 
 chapel, and Wendell Phillips s speech on " The Murder of 
 Lovejoy," in Faneuil Hall. Lowell, whose description of 
 the impression produced by the former of these famous 
 addresses has been quoted in a previous chapter, was an 
 undergraduate at the time. He took his degree in 1838, 
 and in 1855 succeeded Longfellow in the chair of modern 
 languages. Holmes had been chosen in 1847 professor of 
 anatomy and physiology in the Medical School a position 
 which he held until 1882. The historians, Prescott and 
 Bancroft, had been graduated in 1814 and 1817 respectively. 
 The former s first important publication, "Ferdinand and 
 Isabella," appeared in 1837. Bancroft had been a tutor in 
 the college in 1822-23, and the initial volume of his " His 
 tory of the United States " was issued in 1835. Another of 
 the Massachusetts school of historical writers, Francis 
 Parkman, took his first degree at Harvard in 1844. Cam 
 bridge was still hardly more than a village, a rural out- 
 skirt of Boston, such as Lowell described it in his article, 
 u Cambridge Thirty Years Ago," originally contributed to 
 Putnam s Monthly in 1853, and afterward reprinted in his 
 "Fireside Travels," 1864. The situation of a university " 
 scholar in old Cambridge was thus an almost ideal one. 
 Within easy reach of a great city, with its literary and 
 social clubs, its theaters, lecture courses, public meetings, 
 dinner-parties, etc., he yet lived withdrawn in an academic 
 retirement among elm-shaded avenues and leafy gardens ; 
 
128 
 
 Initial Studies in American Letters. 
 
 " Mutual 
 
 Admiration 
 
 Societies." 
 
 Henry 
 
 Wadsworth 
 
 Longfellow. 
 
 "Voices of the 
 Night," 1839. 
 
 the dome of the Boston State-house looming distantly 
 across the meadows where the Charles laid its " steel-blue 
 sickle" upon the variegated, plush-like ground of the wide 
 marsh. There was thus, at all times during the quarter of 
 a century embraced between 1837 and 1861, a group of 
 brilliant men resident in or about Cambridge and Boston, 
 meeting frequently and intimately, and exerting upon 
 one another a most stimulating influence. Some of the 
 closer circles all concentric to the university of which 
 this group was loosely composed were laughed at by out 
 siders as u Mutual Admiration Societies." Such was, for 
 instance, the " Five of Clubs," whose members were Long 
 fellow, Sunnier, C. C. Felton, professor of Greek at Har 
 vard and afterward president of the college, G. S. Hillard, 
 a graceful lecturer, essayist, and poet, of a somewhat ama 
 teurish kind, and Henry R. Cleveland, of Jamaica Plain, 
 a lover of books and a writer of them. 
 
 Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-82), the most widely 
 read and loved of American poets or, indeed, of all con 
 temporary poets in England and America, though identified 
 with Cambridge for nearly fifty years, was a native of Port 
 land, Maine, and a graduate of Bowdoin College, in the 
 same class with Hawthorne. Since leaving college, in 1825, 
 he had studied and traveled for some years in Europe, and 
 had held the professorship of modern languages at Bowdoin. 
 He had published several text-books, a number of articles 
 on the Romance languages and literatures in the North 
 American Review, a thin volume of metrical translations 
 from the Spanish, a few original poems in various period 
 icals, and the pleasant sketches of European travel entitled 
 " Outre-Mer." But Longfellow s fame began with the ap 
 pearance in 1839 of his " Voices of the Night." Excepting 
 an earlier collection by Bryant this was the first volume of 
 real poetry published in New England, and it had more 
 
The Cambridge Scholars. 129 
 
 warmth and sweetness, a greater richness and variety, than 
 Bryant s work ever possessed. Longfellow s genius was al 
 most feminine in its flexibility and its sympathetic quality. 
 It readily took the color of its surroundings and opened 
 itself eagerly to impressions of the beautiful from every 
 quarter, but especially from books. This first volume con 
 tained a few things written during his student days at 
 Bowdoin, one of which, a blank-verse piece on "Autumn," 
 clearly shows the influence of Bryant s " Thanatopsis." The^oetry 
 Most of these juvenilia had nature for their theme, but 
 they were not so sternly true to the New England land 
 scape as Thoreau or Bryant. The skylark and the ivy ap 
 pear among their scenic properties, and in the best of them, 
 "Woods in Winter," it is the English "hawthorn," and 
 not any American tree, through which the gale is made to 
 blow, just as later Longfellow uses "rooks" instead of 
 crows. The young poet s fancy was instinctively putting 
 out feelers toward the storied lands of the Old World, and 
 in his "Hymn of the Moravian Nuns of Bethlehem" he 
 transformed the rude church of the Moravian sisters to a 
 cathedral with "glimmering tapers," swinging censers, 
 chancel, altar, cowls, and "dim mysterious aisle." After Longfellow a 
 
 romantic and 
 
 his visit to Europe Longfellow returned deeply imbued Europeanized 
 with the spirit of romance. It was his mission to refine 
 our national taste by opening to American readers, in their 
 own vernacular, new springs of beauty in the literatures of 
 foreign tongues. The fact that this mission was interpre 
 tative, rather than creative, hardly detracts from Longfel 
 low s true originality. It merely indicates that his inspira 
 tion came to him in the first instance from other sources 
 than the common life about him. He naturally began as a 
 
 translator, and this first volume contained, among other His trans 
 lations, 
 things, exquisite renderings from the German of Uhland, 
 
 Salis, and Muller, from the Danish, French, Spanish, and 
 
130 
 
 Initial Studies in American Letters. 
 
 Medievalism. 
 
 The poet of 
 sentiment 
 and domestic 
 affection. 
 
 Anglo-Saxon, and a few passages from Dante. Longfellow 
 remained all his life a translator, and in subtler ways than 
 by direct translation he infused the fine essence of Euro 
 pean poetry into his own. He loved 
 
 " Tales that have the rime of age 
 And chronicles of eld." 
 
 The golden light of romance is shed upon his page, and it 
 is his habit to borrow medieval and Catholic imagery from 
 his favorite Middle Ages, even when writing of American 
 subjects. To him the clouds are hooded friars, that " tell 
 their beads in drops of rain " ; the midnight winds blowing 
 through woods and mountain passes are chanting solemn 
 masses for the repose of the dying year, and the strain ends 
 with the prayer 
 
 " Kyrie, eleyson, 
 Christe, eleyson." 
 
 In his journal he wrote characteristically : " The black 
 shadows lie upon the grass like engravings in a book. 
 Autumn has written his rubric on the illuminated leaves, 
 the wind turns them over and chants like a friar." This 
 in Cambridge, of a moonshiny night, on the first day of the 
 American October ! But several of the pieces in " Voices 
 of the Night " sprang more immediately from the poet s 
 own inner experience. The "Hymn to the Night," the 
 " Psalm of Life," " The Reaper and the Flowers," "Foot 
 steps of Angels," "The Light of Stars," and " The Be 
 leaguered City" spoke of love, bereavement, comfort, pa 
 tience, and faith. In these lovely songs, and in many 
 others of the same kind which he afterward wrote, Long 
 fellow touched the hearts of all his countrymen. America 
 is a country of homes, and Longfellow, as the poet of sen 
 timent and of the domestic affections, became and remains 
 far more general in his appeal than such a "cosmic" 
 singer as Whitman, who is still practically unknown to the 
 
The Cambridge Scholars. 131 
 
 " fierce democracy" to which he has addressed himself. 
 It would be hard to overestimate the influence for good 
 exerted by the tender feeling and the pure and sweet moral 
 ity which the hundreds of thousands of copies of Long 
 fellow s writings, that have been circulated among readers 
 of all classes in America and England, have brought with 
 them. 
 
 Three later collections, "Ballads and Other Poems," Longfellow s 
 1842 ; " The Belfry of Bruges," 1846 ; and "The Seaside and PP ularit y- 
 the Fireside," 1850, comprise most of what is noteworthy 
 in Longfellow s minor poetry. The first of these embraced, 
 together with some renderings from the German and the 
 Scandinavian languages, specimens of stronger original 
 work than the author had yet put forth ; namely, the two <tThegkeleton 
 powerful ballads of u The Skeleton in Armor "and "The in Armor." 
 Wreck of the Hesperus." The former of these, written in f The Wreck^ 
 the swift leaping meter of Drayton s " Ode to the Cambro us." 
 Britons on their Harp," was suggested by the digging up of 
 a mail-clad skeleton at Fall River a circumstance which 
 the poet linked with the traditions about the Ro.und Tower 
 at Newport, thus giving to the whole the spirit of a Norse 
 viking song of war and of the sea. "The Wreck of the 
 Hesperus" was occasioned by the news of shipwrecks on 
 the coast near Gloucester, and by the name of a reef " Nor 
 man s Woe" where many of them took place. It was 
 written one night between twelve and three, and cost the 
 poet, he said, "hardly an effort." Indeed, it is the spon 
 taneous ease and grace, the unfailing taste of Longfellow s 
 lines, which are their best technical quality. There is noth 
 ing obscure or esoteric about his poetry. If there is little 
 passion or intellectual depth, there is always genuine poetic 
 feeling, often a very high order of imagination, and almost 
 invariably the choice of the right word. In this volume 
 were also included "The Village Blacksmith" and 
 
132 
 
 Initial Studies in American Letters. 
 
 " The Build 
 ing of the 
 Ship." 
 
 Longfellow s 
 poetry not 
 intellectual. 
 
 " Excelsior." The latter and the "Psalm of Life" have 
 had a " damnable iteration " which causes them to figure as- 
 Longfellow s most popular pieces. They are by no means, 
 however, among his best. They are vigorously expressed 
 commonplaces of that hortatory kind which passes for 
 poetry, but is, in reality, a vague species of preaching. 
 
 In "The Belfry of Bruges" and "The Seaside and the 
 Fireside" the translations were still kept up, and among 
 the original pieces were " The Occupation of Orion," the 
 most imaginative of all Longfellow s poems, "Seaweed," 
 which has very noble stanzas, the favorite "Old Clock on 
 the Stairs," " The Building of the Ship," with its magnifi 
 cent closing apostrophe to the Union, and "The Fire of 
 Driftwood," the subtlest in feeling of anything that the 
 poet ever wrote. With these were verses of a more familiar 
 quality, such as "The Bridge," "Resignation," and "The 
 Day is Done," and many others, all reflecting moods of 
 gentle and pensive sentiment, and drawing from analogies 
 in nature or in legend lessons which, if somewhat obvious, 
 were expressed with perfect art. Like Keats, he appre 
 hended everything on its beautiful side. Longfellow was 
 all poet. Like Ophelia in " Hamlet," 
 
 " Thought and affection, passion, hell itself, 
 [He] turns to favor and to prettiness." 
 
 He cared very little about the intellectual movement of the 
 age. The transcendental ideas of Emerson passed over his- 
 head and left him undisturbed. For politics he had that 
 gentlemanly distaste which the cultivated class in America 
 had already begun to entertain. In 1842 he printed a small 
 volume of "Poems on Slavery," which drew commenda 
 tion from his friend Simmer, but had nothing of the 
 fervor of Whittier s or Lowell s utterances on the same sub 
 ject. 
 
 It is interesting to compare his journals with Haw- 
 
The Cambridge Scholars. 133 
 
 t home s " American Note Books," and to observe in what 
 very different ways the two writers made prey of their 
 daily experiences for literary material. A favorite haunt 
 of Longfellow s was the bridge between Boston and Cam- 
 bridgeport, the same which he put into verse in his poem, 
 " The Bridge." " I always stop on the bridge," he writes His moral 
 in his journal ; " tide waters are beautiful. From the ocean 
 up into the land they go, like messengers, to ask why the 
 tribute has not been paid. The brooks and rivers answer 
 that there has been little harvest of snow and rain this 
 year. Floating seaweed and kelp are carried up into the 
 meadows, as returning sailors bring oranges in bandanna 
 handkerchiefs to friends in the country." And again : 
 " We leaned for a while on the wooden rail and enjoyed the 
 silvery reflection on the sea, making sundry comparisons. 
 Among other thoughts we had this cheering one, that the 
 whole sea was flashing with this heavenly light, though we 
 saw it only in a single track ; the dark waves are the dark 
 providences of God ; luminous, though not to us ; and even 
 to ourselves in another position." "Walk on the bridge, 
 both ends of which are lost in the fog, like human life mid 
 way between two eternities ; beginning and ending in 
 mist." In Hawthorne an allegoric meaning is usually 
 something deeper and subtler than this, and seldom so 
 openly expressed. Many of Longfellow s poems " The 
 Beleaguered City" for example may be definitely divided 
 into two parts ; in the first, a story is told or a natural phe 
 nomenon described ; in the second, the spiritual application 
 of the parable is formally set forth. This method became 
 with him almost a trick of style, and his readers learn to 
 look for the hcec fabula docet at the end as a matter of 
 course. As for the prevailing optimism in Longfellow s Hisoptimlsm 
 view of life of which the above passage is an instance- 
 it seems to be in him an affair of temperament, and not, as 
 
134 Initial Studies in American Letters. 
 
 in Emerson, the result of philosophic insight. Perhaps, 
 however, in the last analysis, optimism and pessimism are 
 subjective the expression of temperament or individual 
 . experience, since the facts of life are the same, whether 
 seen through Schopenhauer s eyes or through Emerson s. 
 If there is any particular in which Longfellow s inspiration 
 
 Sea poems." came to him at first hand and not through books, it is in 
 respect to the aspects of the sea. On this theme no Ameri 
 can poet has written more beautifully and with a keener 
 sympathy than the author of " The Wreck of the Hesperus " 
 and of u Seaweed." 
 In 1847 was published the long poem of " Evangeline." 
 
 "Evange- The story of the Acadian peasant girl who was separated 
 from her lover in the dispersion of her people by the Eng 
 lish troops, and after weary wanderings and a life-long 
 search, found him at last, an old man, dying in a Philadel 
 phia hospital, was told to Longfellow by the Rev. H. L. 
 Conolly, who had previously suggested it to Hawthorne as 
 a subject for a story. Longfellow, characteristically enough, 
 "got up" the local color for his poem from Haliburton s 
 account of the dispersion of the Grand Pre" Acadiaus, from 
 Darby s "Geographical Description of Louisiana" and 
 Watson s "Annals of Philadelphia." He never needed to 
 go much outside his library for literary impulse and mate 
 rial. Whatever may be held as to Longfellow s inventive 
 powers as a creator of characters or an interpreter of Amer 
 ican life, his originality as an artist is manifested by his 
 successful domestication in "Evangeline" of the dactylic 
 hexameter, which no English poet had yet used with ef 
 fect. The English poet, Arthur Hugh Clough, who lived 
 for a time in Cambridge, followed Longfellow s example in 
 
 Its hexameter the use of hexameter in his " Bothie of Tober-na-Vuolich," 
 verse adopted 
 
 by Arthur so that we have now arrived at the time a proud moment 
 H. Clough. 
 
 for American letters when the works of our writers began 
 
The Cambridge Scholars. 135 
 
 to react upon the literature of Europe. But the beauty of 
 the descriptions in "Evangeline" and the pathos somewhat 
 too drawn out of the story made it dear to a multitude of 
 readers who cared nothing about the technical disputes of 
 Poe and other critics as to whether or not Longfellow s 
 lines were sufficiently "spondaic" to represent truthfully 
 the quantitative hexameters of Homer and Vergil. 
 
 In 1855 appeared " Hiawatha," Longfellow s most aborig 
 inal and "American " book. The tripping trochaic meas- "Hiawatha." 
 ure he borrowed from the Finnish epic " Kalevala." The 
 vague, childlike mythology of the Indian tribes, with its 
 anthropomorphic sense of the brotherhood between men, 
 animals, and the forms of inanimate nature, he took from 
 Schoolcraft s "Algic Researches," 1839. He fixed forever, 
 in a skilfully chosen poetic form, the more inward and im 
 aginative part of Indian character, as Cooper had given 
 permanence to its external and active side. Of Longfel 
 low s dramatic experiments, " The Golden Legend," 1851, Legend." 
 alone deserves mention here. This was in his chosen realm ; 
 a tale taken from the ecclesiastical annals of the Middle 
 Ages, precious with martyrs blood and bathed in the rich 
 twilight of the cloister. It contains some of his best work, 
 but its merit is rather poetic than dramatic, although 
 Ruskin praised it for the closeness with which it entered 
 into the temper of the monk. 
 
 Longfellow has pleased the people more than the critics. 
 He gave freely what he had, and the gift was beautiful, and the 
 Those who have looked into his poetry for something else 
 than poetry, or for poetry of some other kind, have not 
 been slow to assert that he was a lady s poet one who sat 
 isfied callow youths and schoolgirls by uttering common 
 places in graceful and musical shape, but who offered no 
 strong meat for men. Miss Fuller called his poetry thin, 
 and the poet himself or, rather, a portrait of the poet which 
 
136 
 
 Initial Studies in American Letters. 
 
 Hyperion. 
 
 Translation 
 of Dante. 
 
 Oliver Wen 
 dell Holmes. 
 
 Unitarian 
 controversy. 
 
 frontispieced an illustrated edition of his works a " dandy 
 Pindar." This is not true of his poetry, or of the best of 
 it. But he had a singing and riot a talking voice, and in 
 his prose one becomes sensible of a certain weakness. 
 "Hyperion," for example, published in 1839, a loitering 
 fiction interspersed with descriptions of European travel, 
 is, upon the whole, a weak book, overflowery in diction 
 and sentimental in tone. 
 
 The crown of Longfellow s achievements as a translator 
 was his great version of Dante s " Divina Conimedia," pub 
 lished between 1867 and 1870. It is a severely literal, al 
 most a line for line, rendering. The meter is preserved, 
 but the rhyme sacrificed. If not the best English poem 
 constructed from Dante, it is at all events the most faith 
 ful and scholarly paraphrase. The sonnets which accom 
 panied it are among Longfellow s best work. He seems 
 to have been raised by daily communion with the great 
 Tuscan into a habit of deeper and more subtle thought 
 than is elsewhere common in his poetry. 
 
 Oliver Wendell Holmes (1809-94) was a native of Cam 
 bridge and a graduate of Harvard in the class of 29 ; a 
 class whose anniversary reunions he has celebrated in 
 something like forty distinct poems and songs. For sheer 
 cleverness and versatility Dr. Holmes was, perhaps, unri 
 valed among American men of letters. He has been poet, 
 wit, humorist, novelist, essayist, and a college lecturer and 
 writer on medical topics. In all of these departments he 
 has produced work which ranks high, if not with the 
 highest. His father, Dr. Abiel Holmes, was a graduate of 
 Yale and an orthodox minister of liberal temper, but the 
 son early threw in his lot with the Unitarians ; and, as 
 was natural to a man of satiric turn and with a very hu 
 man enjoyment of a fight, whose youth was cast in an age 
 of theological controversy, he had his fling at Calvinism, 
 
HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW. 
 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL. 
 
 OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES. 
 JOHN LOTHROP MOTLEY. 
 
The Cambridge Scholars. 137 
 
 and prolonged the slogans of old battles into a later gen 
 eration ; sometimes, perhaps, insisting upon them rather 
 wearisomely and beyond the limits of good taste. He had, 
 even as an undergraduate, a reputation for cleverness at 
 writing comic verses, and many of his good things in this 
 kind, such as "The Dorchester Giant" and "The Height 
 of the Ridiculous," were contributed to the Collegian, a 
 students paper. But he first drew the attention of a wider 
 public by his spirited ballad of " Old Ironsides " " old iron- 
 
 " Ay ! Tear her tattered ensign down ! " 
 composed about 1839, when it was proposed by the govern 
 ment to take to pieces the unseaworthy hulk of the fa 
 mous old man-of-war, Constitution. Holmes s indignant 
 protest which has been a favorite subject for schoolboy 
 declamation had the effect of postponing the vessel s fate 
 for a great many years. From 1830-35 the young poet was 
 pursuing his medical studies in Boston and Paris, contrib 
 uting now and then some verses to the magazines. Of his A medical 
 life as a medical student in Paris there are many pleasant Paris, 
 reminiscences in his "Autocrat" and other writings, as 
 where he tells, for instance, of a dinner-party of Americans 
 in the French capital, where one of the company brought 
 tears of homesickness into the eyes of his sodales by saying 
 that the tinkle of the ice in the champagne glasses re 
 minded him of the cow-bells in the rocky old pastures of 
 New England. In 1836 he printed his first collection of 
 
 poems. The volume contained, among a number of pieces 
 
 Humorous 
 broadly comic, like "The September Gale," "The Music verse. 
 
 Grinders," and "The Ballad of the Oysterman "which 
 at once became widely popular, a few poems of a finer and 
 quieter temper, in which there was a quaint blending of 
 the humorous and the pathetic. Such were "My Aunt" 
 and "The Last Leaf" which Abraham Lincoln found 
 "inexpressibly touching," and which it is difficult to read 
 
138 
 
 Initial Studies in American Letters. 
 
 Occasional 
 poetry. 
 
 Postprandial 
 rhymes. 
 
 without the double tribute of a smile and a tear. The vol 
 ume contained also " Poetry : A Metrical Essay," read be 
 fore the Harvard chapter of the Phi Beta Kappa Society, 
 which was the first of that long line of capital occasional 
 poems which Holmes has been spinning for half a cen 
 tury with no sign of fatigue and with scarcely any falling 
 off in freshness ; poems read or spoken or sung at all man 
 ner of gatherings, public and private, at Harvard com 
 mencements, class days, and other academic anniversaries ; 
 at inaugurations, centennials, dedications of cemeteries, 
 meetings of medical associations, mercantile libraries, 
 Burns clubs, and New England societies ; at rural festivals 
 and city fairs ; openings of theaters, layings of corner 
 stones, birthday celebrations, jubilees, funerals, commem 
 oration services, dinners of welcome or farewell to Dickens, 
 Bryant, Everett, Whittler, Longfellow, Grant, Farragut, 
 the Grand-duke Alexis, the Chinese embassy, and what 
 not. Probably no poet of any age or clime has written so 
 much and so well to order. He has been particularly 
 happy in verses of a convivial kind, toasts for big civic 
 feasts, or postprandial rhymes for the petit comite the 
 snug little dinners of the chosen few ; his 
 
 " The quaint trick to cram the pithy line 
 That cracks so crisply over bubbling wine." 
 
 And though he could write on occasion a " Song for a 
 Temperance Dinner," he has preferred to chant the praise 
 of the punch bowl and to 
 
 " feel the old convivial glow (unaided) o er me stealing, 
 The warm, champagny, old-particular-brandy-punchy feeling." 
 
 It would be impossible to enumerate the many good 
 things of this sort which Holmes has written, full of wit and 
 wisdom, and of humor, lightly dashed with sentiment and 
 sparkling with droll analogies, sudden puns, and unexpected 
 turns of rhyme and phrase. Among the best of them are 
 
The Cambridge Scholars. 139 
 
 "Nux Postccenatica," "A Modest Request," "Ode for a 
 Social Meeting," "The Boys," and "Rip Van Winkle, 
 M.D." Holmes s favorite measure, in his longer poems, is A follower 
 the heroic couplet which Pope s example seems to have 
 consecrated forever to satiric arid didactic verse. He wrote 
 as easily in this meter as if it were prose, and with much 
 of Pope s epigrammatic neatness. He also managed with 
 facility the anapsestics of Moore and the ballad stanza which 
 Hood had made the vehicle for his drolleries. It cannot 
 be expected that verses manufactured to pop with the 
 corks and fizz with the champagne at academic banquets 
 should much outlive the occasion ; or that the habit of 
 producing such verses on demand should foster in the pro 
 ducer that "high seriousness" which Matthew Arnold 
 asserts to be one mark of all great poetry. Holmes s poetry 
 
 is mostly on the colloquial level, excellent society verse, but The poetry of 
 
 , wit and fancy, 
 
 even in its serious moments too smart and too pretty to be 
 
 taken very gravely ; with a certain glitter, knowingness, and 
 flippancy about it, and an absence of that self-forgetfulness 
 and intense absorption in its theme which characterize the 
 work of the higher imagination. This is rather the prod 
 uct of fancy and wit. Wit, indeed, in the old sense of 
 quickness in the perception of analogies, was the staple of 
 his mind. His resources in the way of figure, illustration, 
 allusion, and anecdote were wonderful. Age could not 
 wither him nor custom stale his infinite variety, and there 
 was as much powder in his latest pyrotechnics as in the 
 rockets which he sent up half a century ago. Yet, though 
 the humorist in him rather outweighed the poet, he wrote 
 
 a few things, like The Chambered Nautilus and Home- " Tn e Cfcam- 
 
 bered Nauti- 
 
 sick in Heaven," which are as purely and deeply poetic as ins." 
 "The One-Hoss Shay" and "The Prologue" are funny. 
 Dr. Holmes was not of the stuff of which idealists and en 
 thusiasts are made. As a physician and a student of sci- 
 
140 
 
 Initial /Studies in American Letters. 
 
 ence, the facts of the material universe counted for much 
 with him. His clear, positive, alert intellect was always 
 impatient of mysticism. He had the sharp eye of the 
 satirist and the man of the world for oddities of dress, dia 
 lect, and manners. Naturally the transcendental move 
 ment struck him on its ludicrous side, and in his " After- 
 Satire of tran- Dinner Poem," read at the Phi Beta Kappa dinner at 
 scendental- Cambridge in 1843) he had his laugh at the "Orphic 
 
 7 7 
 
 Holmes s 
 " Life of Em 
 erson." 
 
 His social 
 prejudices. 
 
 odes" and 
 mystery. 
 
 runes" of the bedlamite seer and bard of 
 
 " Who rides a beetle which he calls a sphinx. 
 And O what questions asked in club-foot rhyme 
 Of Earth the tongueless, and the deaf-mute Time ! 
 Here babbling Insight shouts in Nature s ears 
 His last conundrum on the orbs and spheres ; 
 There Self-inspection sucks its little thumb, 
 With Whence am I ? and Wherefore did I come ? " 
 
 Curiously enough, the author of these lines lived to write 
 an appreciative life of the poet who wrote " The Sphinx." 
 There was a good deal of toryism or social conservatism in 
 Holmes. He acknowledged a preference for the man with 
 a pedigree, the man who owned family portraits, had been 
 brought up in familiarity with books, and could pronounce 
 " view " correctly. Readers unhappily not of the " Brah 
 min caste of New England" have sometimes resented as 
 snobbishness Holmes s harping on " family," and his per 
 petual application of certain favorite shibboleths to other 
 people s ways of speech. "The woman who calc lates is 
 lost." 
 
 " Learning condemns beyond the reach of hope 
 The careless lips that speak of soap for soap. . . . 
 Do put your accents in the proper spot : 
 Don t, let me beg you, don t say How ? for * What ? 
 The things named pants in certain documents, 
 A word not made for gentlemen, but * gents. " 
 
 With the rest of "society," he was disposed to ridicule 
 
The Cambridge Scholars. 141 
 
 the abolition movement as a crotchet of the eccentric and 
 the long-haired. But when the Civil War broke out, he 
 lent his pen, his tongue, and his own flesh and blood to the 
 cause of the Union. The individuality of Holmes s writ 
 ings comes in part from their local and provincial bias. The town-poet 
 He has been the laureate of Harvard College and the bard 
 of Boston City, an urban poet, with a cockneyish fondness 
 for old Boston ways and things the Common and the Frog 
 Pond, Faneuil Hall and King s Chapel and the Old South, 
 Bunker Hill, Long Wharf, the Tea Party, and the town- 
 crier. It was Holmes who invented the playful saying 
 that " Boston State-house is the hub of the solar system." 
 In 1857 was started the Atlantic Monthly, a magazine 
 which has published a good share of the best work done by 
 American writers within the past generation. Its immedi 
 ate success was assured by Dr. Holmes s brilliant series of 
 papers, "The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table," 1858, fol- "Autocrat of 
 lowed at once by "The Professor at the Breakfast Table," Table." 
 1859, and later by " The Poet at the Breakfast Table," 1873. 
 " The Autocrat " is its author s masterpiece, and holds the , 
 fine quintessence of his humor, his scholarship, his satire, 
 genial observation, and ripe experience of men and cities. 
 The form is as unique and original as the contents, being 
 something between an essay and a drama ; a succession of 
 monologues or table talks at a typical American boarding- 
 house, with a thread of story running through the whole. 
 The variety of mood and thought is so great that these 
 conversations never tire, and the prose is interspersed with 
 some of the author s choicest verse. " The Professor at the 
 Breakfast Table " followed too closely on the heels of " The 
 Autocrat," and had less freshness. The third number of 
 the series was better, and was pleasantly reminiscent and 
 slightly garrulous, Dr. Holmes being now (1873) sixty-four 
 years old, and entitled to the gossiping privilege of age. 
 
142 
 
 Initial Studies in American Letters. 
 
 Character 
 sketches in 
 the "Break 
 fast Table " 
 series. 
 
 Holmes as a 
 novelist. 
 
 "Elsie 
 Venner." 
 
 "The Guard 
 ian Angel." 
 
 The personnel of the Breakfast Table series, such as the 
 landlady and the landlady s daughter and her son, Benja 
 min Franklin, the schoolmistress, the young man named 
 John, the Divinity Student, the Kohinoor, the Sculpin, the 
 Scarabseus, and the Old Gentleman who sits opposite, are 
 not fully drawn characters, but outlined figures, lightly 
 sketched as is the Autocrat s wont by means of some 
 trick of speech, or dress, or feature ; but they are quite life 
 like enough for their purpose, which is mainly to furnish 
 listeners and foils to the eloquence and wit of the chief 
 talker. 
 
 In 1860 and 1867 Holmes entered the field of fiction with 
 two "medicated novels," "Elsie Venner" and "The 
 Guardian Angel." The first of these was a singular tale, 
 whose heroine united with her very fascinating human at 
 tributes something of the nature of a serpent ; her mother 
 having been bitten by a rattlesnake a few months before 
 the birth of the girl, and kept alive meanwhile by the use 
 of powerful antidotes. The heroine of "The Guardian 
 Angel " inherited lawless instincts from a vein of Indian 
 blood in her ancestry. These two books were studies of 
 certain medico-psychological problems. They preached 
 Dr. Holmes s favorite doctrines of heredity and of the modi 
 fied nature of moral responsibility by reason of transmitted 
 tendencies which limit the freedom of the will. In 
 "Elsie Venner," in particular, the weirdly imaginative 
 and speculative character of the leading motive suggests 
 Hawthorne s method in fiction, but the background and 
 the subsidiary figures have a realism that is in abrupt con 
 trast with this, and gives a kind of doubleness and want of 
 keeping to the whole. The Yankee characters, in particu 
 lar, and the satirical pictures of New England country life 
 are open to the charge of caricature. In "The Guardian 
 Angel" the figure of Byles Gridley, the old scholar, is 
 
The Cambridge Scholars. 143 
 
 drawn with thorough sympathy, and though some of his 
 acts are improbable, he is, on the whole, Holmes s most 
 vital conception in the region of dramatic creation. 
 
 James Russell Lowell (1819-91), the foremost of American 
 critics and one of the foremost of American poets, was, James Bus- 
 like Holmes, a native of Cambridge, and, like Emerson 
 and Holmes, a clergyman s son. In 1855 he succeeded 
 Longfellow as professor of modern languages in Harvard 
 College. Of late years he held important diplomatic posts, 
 like Everett, Irving, Bancroft, Motley, and other Ameri 
 cans distinguished in letters, having been United States 
 minister to Spain, and, under two administrations, to the 
 court of St. James. Lowell was not so spontaneously and 
 exclusively a poet as Longfellow, and his popularity with A less popular 
 the average reader has never been so great. His appeal has Longfellow, 
 been to the few rather than to the many, to an audience of 
 scholars and of the judicious rather than to the " ground 
 lings" of the general public. Nevertheless his verse, 
 though without the evenness, instinctive grace, and un 
 erring good taste of Longfellow s, has more energy and a 
 stronger intellectual fiber, while in prose he is very greatly 
 the superior. His first volume, "A Year s Life," 1841, gave 
 some promise. In 1843 he started a magazine, The Pioneer, 
 which only reached its third number, though it counted 
 among its contributors Hawthorne, Poe, Whittier, and 
 Miss Barrett (afterward Mrs. Browning). A second vol 
 ume of poems, printed in 1844, showed a distinct advance, 
 
 Early verse. 
 in such pieces as "The Shepherd of King Admetus," 
 
 "Rhcecus," a classical myth, told in excellent blank 
 verse, and the same in subject with one of Lander s pol 
 ished intaglios ; and " The Legend of Brittany," a narra 
 tive poem, which had fine passages, but 110 firmness in the 
 management of the story. As yet, it was evident, the 
 young poet had not found his theme. This came with the 
 
144 Initial Studies in American Letters. 
 
 outbreak of the Mexican War, which was unpopular in 
 New England, and which the Free Soil party regarded as 
 a slave-holders war, waged without provocation against a 
 sister republic, and simply for the purpose of extending the 
 area of slavery. 
 In 1846, accordingly, u The Biglow Papers "began to 
 
 " The Biglow appear in the Boston Courier, and were collected and pub- 
 Papers." 
 
 lished in book form in 1848. These were a series of rhymed 
 
 satires upon the government and the war party, written in 
 the Yankee dialect, and supposed to be the work of Hosea 
 Biglow, a homespun genius in a down-east country town, 
 whose letters to the editor were indorsed and accompanied 
 by the comments of the Rev. Homer Wilbur, A.M., pastor 
 of the First Church in Jaalam, and (prospective) member 
 of many learned societies. The first paper was a derisive 
 address to a recruiting sergeant, with a denunciation of the 
 " nigger-drivin states" and the " northern dough-faces " ; 
 a plain hint that the North would do better to secede than 
 to continue doing dirty work for the South ; and an ex 
 pression of those universal peace doctrines which were 
 then in the air, and to which Longfellow gave serious ut 
 terance in his " Occultation of Orion." 
 
 " Ez for war, I call it murder 
 
 There you hev it plain an flat : 
 I don t want to go no furder 
 
 Than my Testyment for that ; 
 God hez said so plump an fairly, 
 
 It s as long as it is broad, 
 An you ve gut to git up airly 
 
 Ef you want to take in God." 
 
 The second number was a versified paraphrase of a letter 
 received from Mr. Birdofredom Sawin, "a yung feller of 
 our town that was cussed fool enuff to goe atrottin inter 
 Miss ChifF arter a drum and fife," and who finds when he 
 gets to Mexico that 
 
The Cambridge Scholars. 145 
 
 "This kind o sogerin aint a mite like our October trainin ." 
 
 Of -the subsequent papers the best was, perhaps, "What 
 Mr. Robinson Thinks," an election ballad which caused 
 universal laughter, and was on everybody s tongue. 
 
 "The Biglow Papers" remain Lowell s most original 
 contribution to American literature. They are, all in all, 
 the best political satires in the language, and unequaled as ^ 
 
 portraitures of the Yankee character, with its cuteness, uticai satire, 
 its homely wit, and its latent poetry. Under the racy 
 humor of the dialect which became in Lowell s hands a 
 medium of literary expression almost as effective as Burns s 
 Ayrshire Scotch burned that moral enthusiasm and that 
 hatred of wrong and deification of duty" Stern daughter 
 of the voice of God "which, in the tough New England 
 stock, stands instead of the passion in the blood of south 
 ern races. Lowell s serious poems on political questions, 
 such as "The Present Crisis," "Ode to Freedom," and 
 " The Capture of Fugitive Slaves," have the old Puritan Antislavery 
 
 fervor, and such lines as FSSSSn*? 
 
 science. 
 
 " They are slaves who dare not be 
 In the right with two or three," 
 
 and the passage beginning 
 
 " Truth forever on the scaffold, Wrong forever on the throne," 
 
 became watchwords in the struggle against slavery and 
 disunion. Some of these were published in his volume of 
 1848 and the collected edition of his poems, in two vol 
 umes, issued in 1850. These also included his most ambi 
 tious narrative poem, "The Vision of Sir Launfal," an 
 allegorical and spiritual treatment of one of the legends of 
 the Holy Grail. Lowell s genius was not epical, but lyric 
 and didactic. The merit of "Sir Launfal" is not in the ,, SirLaunfllL 
 telling of the story, but in the beautiful descriptive epi 
 sodes, one of which, commencing, 
 
146 
 
 Initial Studies in American Letters. 
 
 Lowell s 
 
 character 
 
 sketches. 
 
 " Biglow 
 Papers," sec 
 ond series. 
 
 " And what is so rare as a day in June ? 
 Then if ever come perfect days,-" 
 
 is as current as anything that he has written. It is signifi 
 cant of the lack of a natural impulse toward narrative in 
 vention in Lowell that, unlike Longfellow and Holmes, he 
 never tried his hand at a novel. One of the most impor 
 tant parts of a novelist s equipment he certainly possessed, 
 namely, an insight into character and an ability to delineate 
 it. This gift is seen especially in his sketch of Parson 
 Wilbur, who edited "The Biglow Papers" with a delight 
 fully pedantic introduction, glossary, and notes, in the 
 prose essay " On a Certain Condescension in Foreigners," 
 and in the uncompleted poem, "Fitz Adam s Story." See 
 also the sketch of Captain Underhill in the essay on " New 
 England Two Centuries Ago." 
 
 "The Biglow Papers" when brought out in a volume 
 were prefaced by imaginary notices of the press, including 
 a capital parody of Carlyle, and a reprint from the "Jaalam 
 Independent Blunderbuss" of the first sketch afterward 
 amplified and enriched of that perfect Yankee idyl " The 
 Courtin ". Between 1862 and 1865 a second series of 
 "Biglow Papers" appeared, called out by the events of 
 the Civil War. Some of these, as, for instance, "Jonathan 
 to John," a remonstrance with England for her unfriendly 
 attitude toward the North, were not inferior to anything in 
 the earlier series ; and others were even superior as poems, 
 equal, indeed, in pathos and intensity to anything that 
 Lowell has written in his professedly serious verse. In 
 such passages, the dialect wears rather thin, and there is a 
 certain incongruity between the rustic spelling and the 
 vivid beauty and power and the figurative cast of the 
 phrase in stanzas like the following : 
 
 " Wut s words to them whose faith an truth 
 On war s red techstone rang true metal, 
 
The Cambridge Scholars. 147 
 
 Who ventered life an love an youth 
 
 For the gret prize o death in battle? 
 To him who, deadly hurt, agen 
 
 Flashed on afore the charge s thunder, 
 Tippin with fire the bolt of men 
 
 That rived the rebel line asunder? " 
 
 Charles Sumner, a somewhat heavy person, with little 
 sense of humor, wished that the author of " The Biglow 
 Papers " "could have used good English." In the lines just 
 quoted, indeed, the bad English adds nothing to the effect. 
 In 1848 Lowell wrote "A Fable for Critics," something after A ^atoie for 
 the style of Sir John Suckling s "Session of the Poets"; a Crltics -" 
 piece of rollicking doggerel in which he surveyed the Ameri 
 can Parnassus, scattering about headlong fun, sharp satire, 
 and sound criticism in equal proportion. Never an indus 
 trious workman, like Longfellow, at the poetic craft, but 
 preferring to wait for the mood to seize him, he allowed 
 eighteen years to go by, from 1850 to 1868, before publishing 
 another volume of verse. In the latter year appeared " Un 
 der the Willows," which contains some of his ripest and 
 most perfect work, notably "A Winter Evening Hymn to 
 My Fire," with its noble and touching close suggested by, 
 perhaps, at any rate recalling, the dedication of Goethe s 
 "Faust," 
 
 " Ihr naht euch wieder, schwankende Gestalten," 
 the subtle " Footpath " and " In the Twilight," the lovely 
 little poems "Auf Wiedersehen " and "After the Funeral," 
 and a number of spirited political pieces, such as "Villa 
 Franca" and " The Washers of the Shroud." This volume 
 contained also his "Ode Recited at the Harvard Commem- 4<Harvard 
 oration" in 1865. This, although uneven, is one of the 
 finest occasional poems in the language, and the most 
 important contribution which our Civil War has made 
 to song. It was charged with the grave emotion of one 
 who not only shared the patriotic grief and exultation of 
 
148 Initial Studies in American Letters. 
 
 his alma mater in the sacrifice of her sons, but who felt a 
 more personal sorrow in the loss of kindred of his own, 
 fallen in the front of battle. Particularly noteworthy in 
 this memorial ode are the tribute to Abraham Lincoln, the 
 third strophe, beginning, "Many loved Truth," the ex 
 ordium, "O Beautiful! my Country! ours once more!", and 
 the close of the eighth strophe, where the poet chants of the 
 youthful heroes who 
 
 " come transfigured back, 
 
 Secure from change in their high-hearted ways, 
 Beautiful evermore and with the rays 
 Of morn on their white Shields of Expectation." 
 
 From 1857 to 1862 Lowell edited i\\e Atlantic Monthly, and 
 Lowell s prose, from 1863 to 1872 the North American Review. His prose, 
 beginning with an early volume of " Conversations on Some 
 of the Old Poets," 1844, consisted mainly of critical essays 
 on individual writers, such as Dante, Chaucer, Spenser, 
 Emerson, Shakespeare, Thoreau, Pope, Carlyle, together 
 with papers of a more miscellaneous kind, like "Witch 
 craft," <{ New England Two Centuries Ago," " My Garden 
 Acquaintance," U A Good Word for Winter," "Abraham 
 Lincoln." Two volumes of these were published in 1870 
 and 1876, under the title "Among My Books," and another, 
 " My Study Windows," in 1871. 
 
 As a literary critic Lowell ranks easily among the first, 
 critic. a His scholarship was thorough, his judgment keen, and he 
 
 poured out upon his page an unwithholding wealth of 
 knowledge, humor, wit, and imagination from the fullness 
 of an overflowing mind. His prose has not the chastened 
 correctness and "low tone" of Matthew Arnold s. It is 
 rich, exuberant, and sometimes overfanciful, running away 
 into excesses of allusion or following the lead of a chance 
 pun, so as sometimes to lay itself open to the charge of 
 pedantry and bad taste. Lowell s resources in the way of 
 
The Cambridge Scholars. 149 
 
 illustration and comparison were endless, and the readiness 
 of his wit and his delight in using it put many temptations 
 in his way. Purists in style accordingly take offense at his 
 saying that "Milton is the only man who ever got much 
 poetry out of a cataract, and that was a cataract in his 
 eye" ; or of his speaking of " a gentleman for whom the 
 bottle before him reversed the wonder of the stereoscope 
 and substituted the Gascon v for the 6 in binocular," which 
 is certainly a puzzling and roundabout fashion of telling 
 us that he had drunk so much that he saw double. The 
 critics also find fault with his coining such words as " un- 
 disprivacied," and with his writing such lines as the 
 famous one from "The Cathedral," 1870 
 
 " Spume-sliding down the baffled decuman." 
 
 It must be acknowledged that his earlier style lacked the 
 crowning grace of simplicity, but it is precisely by reason 
 of its allusive quality that scholarly readers take pleasure 
 in it. They like a diction that has stuff in it and is woven 
 thick, and where a thing is said .in such a way as to recall 
 many other things. It should also be added that these 
 faults of taste if faults they are are almost entirely absent 
 from his latest work. The prose of "Democracy and 
 Other Addresses," 1887 (delivered for the most part in 
 England, on various memorial occasions from 1881 to 1885), 
 is admirably pure, dignified, and solid. The like is true 
 of the posthumous volume of "Latest Literary Essays 
 and Addresses," published in 1892. 
 
 Mention should be made, in connection with this Cam 
 bridge circle, of one writer who touched its circumference 
 briefly. This was Sylvester Judd, a graduate of Yale, who 
 entered the Harvard Divinity School in 1837, and in 1840 
 became minister of a Unitarian church in Augusta, Maine. 
 Judd published several books, but the only one of them at 
 
150 
 
 Initial Studies in American Letters. 
 
 Judd s 
 garet." 
 
 Mar- 
 
 History a 
 literary art. 
 
 Wm.Hickling 
 Prescott s 
 histories of 
 Spanish con 
 quest. 
 
 all rememberable was "Margaret," 1845, a novel of which 
 Lowell said, in "A Fable for Critics," that it was " the first 
 Yankee book with the soul of down-east in it." It was 
 very imperfect in point of art, and its second part a rhap 
 sodical description of a sort of Unitarian Utopia is quite 
 unreadable. But in the delineation of the few chief charac 
 ters and of the rude, wild life of an outlying New England 
 township just after the close of the Revolutionary War, as 
 well as in the tragic power of the catastrophe, there was 
 genius of a high order. 
 
 As the country has grown older and more populous, and 
 works in all departments of thought have multiplied, it 
 becomes necessary to draw more strictly the line between 
 the literature of knowledge and the literature of power. 
 Political history, in and of itself, scarcely falls within the 
 limits of this sketch, and yet it cannot be altogether dis 
 missed, for the historian s art, at its highest, demands imagi 
 nation, narrative skill, and a sense of unity and proportion 
 in the selection and arrangement of his facts, all of which 
 are literary qualities. It is significant that many of our 
 best historians have begun authorship in the domain of 
 imaginative literature : Bancroft with an early volume of 
 poems ; Motley with his historical romances, " Merry 
 Mount" and "Morton s Hope"; and Parkman with a 
 novel, " Vassall Morton." The oldest of that modern group 
 of writers that have given America an honorable position 
 in the historical literature of the world was William Hick- 
 ling Prescott (1796-1859). Prescott chose for his theme the 
 history of the Spanish conquests in the New World, a sub 
 ject full of romantic incident and susceptible of that glow 
 ing and perhaps slightly overgorgeous coloring which he 
 laid on with a liberal hand. His completed histories, in 
 their order, are " The Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella," 
 1837; "The Conquest of Mexico," 1843 a topic which 
 
The Cambridge Scholars. 151 
 
 Irving had relinquished to him; and "The Conquest of 
 Peru," 1847. Prescott was fortunate in being born to leisure 
 and fortune, but he had difficulties of another kind to over 
 come. He was nearly blind, and had to teach himself 
 Spanish and look up authorities through the help of others, 
 and to write with a noctograph or by amanuenses. 
 George Bancroft (1800-91) issued the first volume of his George Ban- 
 
 croft s ** United 
 
 great "History of the United States" in 1834, and exactly states." 
 half a century later the final volume of the work, bringing 
 the subject down to 1789. Bancroft had studied at Gofc- 
 tingen, and imbibed from the German historian Heeren the 
 scientific method of historical study. He had access to 
 original sources, in the nature of collections and state 
 papers in the governmental archives of Europe, of which 
 no American had hitherto been able to avail himself. His 
 history in thoroughness of treatment leaves nothing to be 
 desired, and has become the standard authority on the sub 
 ject. As a literary performance merely, it is somewhat 
 wanting in flavor, Bancroft s manner being heavy and stiff 
 when compared with Motley s or Parkman s. The histor 
 ian s services to his country have been publicly recognized 
 by his successive appointments as secretary of the navy, 
 minister to England, and minister to Germany. 
 
 The greatest, on the whole, of American historians was 
 
 John Lothrop 
 John Lothrop Motley (1814-77), who, like Bancroft, was a Motley s 
 
 student at Gottingen and United States minister to England, public," etc. 
 His "Rise of the Dutch Republic," 1856, and "History of 
 the United Netherlands," published in installments from 
 1861 to 1868, equaled Bancroft s work in scientific thorough 
 ness and philosophic grasp, and Prescott s in the picturesque 
 brilliancy of the narrative, while it excelled them both in 
 its masterly analysis of great historic characters, reminding 
 the reader, in this particular, of Macaulay s figure painting. 
 The episodes of the siege of Antwerp and the sack of the 
 
152 
 
 Initial Studies in American Letters. 
 
 Francis 
 Parkman s 
 " France and 
 England in 
 America." 
 
 cathedral, and of the defeat and wreck of the Spanish Ar 
 mada, are as graphic as Prescott s famous description of 
 Cortez s capture of the city of Mexico ; while the elder his 
 torian has nothing to compare with Motley s vivid personal 
 sketches of Queen Elizabeth, Philip the Second, Henry of 
 Navarre, and William the Silent. The " Life of John of 
 Barneveld," 1874, completed this series of studies upon the 
 history of the Netherlands, a theme to which Motley was 
 attracted because the heroic struggle of the Dutch for lib 
 erty offered, in some respects, a parallel to the growth of 
 political independence in Anglo-Saxon communities, and 
 especially in his own America. 
 
 The last of these Massachusetts historical writers whom 
 we shall mention is Francis Parkman (1823-93), whose sub 
 ject has the advantage of being thoroughly American. His 
 "Oregon Trail," 1847, a series of sketches of prairie and 
 Rocky Mountain life, originally contributed to the Knicker 
 bocker Magazine, displays his early interest in the American 
 Indians. In 1851 appeared his first historical work, "The 
 Conspiracy of Pontiac." This has been followed by the 
 series entitled "France and England in North America," 
 the six successive parts of which are as follows : " The Pio 
 neers of France in the New World " ; " The Jesuits in North 
 America ; "La Salle and the Discovery of the Great West ; 
 " The Old Regime in Canada " ; "Count Frontenac and New 
 France" ; and "Montcalm and Wolfe." These narratives 
 have a wonderful vividness and a romantic interest not in 
 ferior to Cooper s novels. Parkman made himself personally 
 familiar with the scenes which he described, and some of 
 the best descriptions of American woods and waters are to 
 be found in his histories. If any fault is to be found with 
 his books, indeed, it is that their picturesqueness and " fine 
 writing " are a little in excess. 
 
 The political literature of the years from 1837 to 1861 
 
The Cambridge Scholars. 153 
 
 hinged upon the aiitislavery struggle. In this " irrepressible 
 conflict " Massachusetts led the van. Garrison had written 
 
 in his Liberator, in 1830 : " I will be as harsh as truth and Antislavery 
 
 , literature ; 
 as uncompromising as justice. I am in earnest ; I will not wm. Lloyd 
 
 equivocate ; I will not excuse ; I will not retreat a single 
 inch ; and I will be heard." But the Garrisonian abolition 
 ists remained for a long time, even in the North, a small 
 and despised faction. It was a great point gained when 
 men of education and social standing, like Wendell Phil- Wendell 
 lips (1811-84) and Charles Sumner (1811-74), joined them- Philllp8 
 selves, to the cause. Both of these were graduates of Har 
 vard and men of scholarly pursuits. They became the 
 representative orators of the antislavery party, Phillips on 
 the platform and Sumner in the Senate. The former first 
 came before the public in his fiery speech, delivered in Fan- 
 euil Hall December 8, 1837, before a meeting called to de 
 nounce the murder of Lovejoy, who had been killed at 
 Alton, 111., while defending his press against a pro-slavery 
 mob. Thenceforth Phillips s voice was never idle in behalf 
 of the slave. His eloquence was impassioned and direct, 
 and his English singularly pure, simple, and nervous. 
 He is perhaps nearer to Demosthenes than any other 
 American orator. He was a most fascinating platform 
 speaker on themes outside of politics, and his lecture on 
 "The Lost Arts" was a favorite with audiences of all 
 sorts. 
 
 Sumner was a man of intellectual tastes, who entered 
 
 Charles 
 politics reluctantly and only in obedience to the resistless Sumner. 
 
 leading of his conscience. He was a student of literature 
 and art ; a connoisseur of engravings, for example, of which 
 he made a valuable collection. He was fond of books, con 
 versation, and foreign travel, and in Europe, while still a 
 young man, had made a remarkable impression in society. 
 But he left all this for public life, and in 1851 was elected as 
 
154 Initial Studies in American Letters. 
 
 Webster s successor to the Senate of the United States. 
 Thereafter he remained the leader of the abolitionists in 
 Congress until slavery was abolished. His influence 
 throughout the North was greatly increased by the brutal 
 attack upon him in the Senate chamber in 1856 by " Bully 
 Brooks " of South Carolina. Sumner s oratory was stately 
 and somewhat labored. While speaking he always seemed, 
 as has been wittily said, to be surveying a " broad land 
 scape of his own convictions. * His most impressive quali 
 ties as a speaker were his intense moral earnestness and his 
 thorough knowledge of his subject. The most telling of 
 Speech on the his parliamentary speeches are perhaps his speech " On the 
 NebraskaBill. Kansas-Nebraska Bill," of February 3, 1854, and " On the 
 Crime against Kansas," May 19 and 20, 1856 ; of his plat 
 form addresses, the oration on "The True Grandeur of 
 Nations." 
 
 1. HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW : " Voices of the 
 Night"; "The Skeleton in Armor"; " The Wreck of the 
 Hesperus"; "The Village Blacksmith"; "The Belfry of 
 Bruges, and Other Poems" (1846); " By the Seaside "; " Hia 
 watha"; " Tales of a Wayside Inn." 
 
 2. OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES. I. Prose : "Autocrat of 
 the Breakfast Table"; "Elsie Vernier." II. Verse: "Old 
 Ironsides"; " The Last Leaf "; "My Aunt"; "The Music- 
 Grinders"; "On Lending a Punch-Bowl"; "Nux Post- 
 ccenatica"; "A Modest Request "; " The Living Temple "; 
 " Meeting of the Alumni of Harvard College "; " Homesick 
 in Heaven"; "Epilogue to the Breakfast Table Series"; 
 "The Boys"; " Dorothy Q."; " The Iron Gate." 
 
 3. JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL. I. Verse : " The Biglow 
 Papers" (two series); "Under the Willows and Other 
 Poems " (1868); " Rhoecus " ; " The Shepherd of King Ad- 
 metus"; "The Vision of Sir Launfal"; "The Present 
 
The Cambridge Scholars. 155 
 
 Crisis"; "The Dandelion "; "The Birch Tree"; "Beaver 
 Brook." II. Prose: "Chaucer"; "Shakespeare Once 
 More"; " Dryden" ; "Emerson, the Lecturer"; " Tho- 
 reau"; "My Garden Acquaintance"; "A Good Word for 
 Winter"; "A Certain Condescension in Foreigners"; 
 " Democracy." 
 
 4. WILLIAM HICKLING PRESCOTT: " The Conquest of 
 Mexico." 
 
 5. JOHN LOTHROP MOTLEY : * The United Netherlands. 
 
 6. FRANCIS PARKMAN: "The Oregon Trail"; "The 
 Jesuits in North America." 
 
 7. "Representative American Orations," volume V. 
 Edited by Alexander Johnston. New York : 1884. 
 
CHAPTER VI. 
 LITERATURE ix THE CITIES 1837-1861. 
 
 LITERATURE as a profession has hardly existed in the 
 Literature as a United States until very recently. Even now the number 
 profession. o f those who support themselves by purely literary work is 
 small, although the growth of the reading public and the 
 establishment of great magazines, such as Harper s, The 
 Century, and The Atlantic, h&ve made a market for intel 
 lectual wares which forty years ago would have seemed a 
 godsend to poorly paid Bohemians like Poe or obscure men 
 of genius like Hawthorne. About 1840, two Philadelphia 
 magazines Godey s Lady s Book and Graham s Monthly 
 began to pay their contributors twelve dollars a page, a price 
 then thought wildly munificent. But the first magazine of 
 the modern type was Harper s Monthly, founded in 1850. 
 Until 1891 American books suffered from the want of an 
 Themaga- international copyright, which flooded the country with 
 zines> cheap reprints and translations of foreign works, with 
 
 which the domestic product was unable to contend on such 
 uneven terms. With the first ocean steamers there started 
 up a class of large-paged weeklies in New York and else 
 where, such as Brother Jonathan, The New World, and The 
 Corsair, which furnished their readers with the freshest 
 writings of Dickens and Bulwer and other British celebrities 
 within a fortnight after their appearance in London. This 
 still further restricted the profits of native authors and 
 nearly drove them from the field of periodical literature. 
 By special arrangement the novels of Thackeray and other 
 English writers were printed in Harper s in installments 
 
 156 
 
Literature in the Cities. 157 
 
 simultaneously with their issue in English periodicals. 
 The Atlantic was the first of our magazines which was Men of letters 
 founded expressly for the encouragement of home talent, m ^ ou rna lsm 
 and which had a purely Yankee flavor. Journalism was 
 the profession which naturally attracted men of letters, as 
 having most in common with their chosen work and as 
 giving them a medium, under their own control, through 
 which they could address the public. A few favored schol 
 ars, like Prescott, were made independent by the possession 
 of private fortunes. Others, like Holmes, Longfellow, and 
 Lowell, gave to literature such leisure as they could get in 
 the intervals of an active profession or of college work. 
 Still others, like Emerson and Thoreau, by living in the 
 country and making their modest competence eked out in 
 Emerson s case by lecturing here and there suffice for their 
 simple needs, secured themselves freedom from the restraints 
 of any regular calling. But, in default of some such pou 
 sto, our men of letters have usually sought the cities and 
 allied themselves with the press. It will be remembered 
 that Lowell started a short-lived magazine on his own ac 
 count, and that he afterward edited The Atlantic and The 
 North American. Also that Bipley and Charles A. Dana 
 betook themselves to journalism after the break-up of the 
 Brook Farm Community. 
 
 In the same way William Cullen Bryant (1794-1878), the Wm Cuneil 
 earliest American poet of importance, whose impulses drew Bryant, 
 him to the solitudes of nature, was compelled to gain a 
 livelihood by conducting a daily newspaper ; or, as he him 
 self puts it, was 
 
 11 Forced to drudge for the dregs of men, 
 And scrawl strange words with the barbarous pen." 
 
 Bryant was born at Cummin gton, Massachusetts. After two 
 years in Williams College he studied law, and practiced for 
 nine years as a country lawyer in Plainfield and Great Bar- 
 
158 
 
 Initial Studies in American Letters. 
 
 Editor of the 
 Evening Post. 
 
 "Thana top- 
 sis." 
 
 Bryant s 
 limitations. 
 
 rington. Following the line of the Housatonic Valley, the 
 social and theological affiliations of Berkshire have always 
 been closer with Connecticut and New York than with Bos 
 ton and eastern Massachusetts. Accordingly, when in 1825 
 Bryant yielded to the attractions of a literary career, he be 
 took himself to New York City, where, after a brief experi 
 ment in conducting a monthly magazine, the New York 
 Review and Athenceum, he assumed the editorship of the 
 Evening Post, a Democratic and free-trade journal, with 
 which he remained connected till his death. He already 
 had a reputation as a poet when he entered the ranks of 
 metropolitan journalism. In 1816 his " Thanatopsis " had 
 been published in the North American Review, and had at 
 tracted immediate and general admiration. It had been 
 finished, indeed, two years before, when the poet was only 
 in his nineteenth year, and was a wonderful instance of 
 precocity. The thought in this stately hymn was not that 
 of a young man, but of a sage who has reflected long upon 
 the universality, the necessity, and the majesty of death. 
 Bryant s blank verse when at its best, as in " Thanatopsis " 
 and the "Forest Hymn/ is extremely noble. In gravity 
 and dignity it is surpassed by no English blank verse of 
 this century, though in rich and various modulation it falls 
 below Tennyson s "Ulysses" and " Morte d Arthur." It 
 was characteristic of Bryant s limitations that he came thus 
 early into possession of his faculty. His range was always 
 a narrow one, and about his poetry, as a whole, there is a 
 certain coldness, rigidity, and solemnity. His fixed position 
 among American poets is described in his own " Hymn to 
 the North Star": 
 
 " And thou dost see them rise, 
 
 Star of the pole ! and thou dost see them set. 
 Alone, in thy cold skies, 
 
 Thou keep st thy old, unmoving station yet, 
 
Literature in the Cities. 159 
 
 Nor join st the dances of that glittering train, 
 
 Nor dipp st thy virgin orb in the blue western main." 
 
 In 1821 he read "The Ages," a didactic poem, in thirty- 
 five stanzas, before the Phi Beta Kappa Society at Cam 
 bridge, and in the same year brought out his first volume 
 of poems. A second collection appeared in 1832, which was 
 printed in London under the auspices of Washington 
 Irving. Bryant was the first American poet who had much Bryant and 
 of an audience in England, and Wordsworth is said to have Wordsworth, 
 learned " Thanatopsis " by heart. Bryant was, indeed, in 
 a measure, a scholar of Wordsworth s school, and his 
 place among American poets corresponds roughly, though 
 not precisely, to Wordsworth s among English poets. With 
 no humor, with somewhat restricted sympathies, with little 
 flexibility or openness to new impressions, but gifted with 
 a high, austere imagination, Bryant became the meditative 
 poet of nature. His best poems are those in which he 
 draws lessons from nature, or sings of its calming, purify 
 ing, and bracing influences upon the human soul. His of 
 fice, in other words, is the same which Matthew Arnold 
 asserts to be the peculiar office of modern poetry, "the Thepoetof 
 moral interpretation of nature." Poems of this class are nature. 
 " Green River," " To a Waterfowl," " June," " The Death 
 of the Flowers," and " The Evening Wind." The song, 
 " O fairest of the rural maids," which has more fancy than 
 is common in Bryant, and which Poe pronounced his best 
 poem, has an obvious resemblance to Wordsworth s " Three 
 years she grew in sun and shower," and both of these name 
 less pieces might fitly be entitled as Wordsworth s is in 
 Mr. Palgrave s "Golden Treasury " " The Education of 
 Nature." 
 
 Although Bryant s career is identified with New York 
 his poetry is all of New England. His heart was always 
 turning back fondly to the woods and streams of the Berk- 
 
160 
 
 Initial Studies in American Letters. 
 
 The poet of 
 autumn. 
 
 "Death of the 
 Flowers." 
 
 Elegiac verse. 
 
 shire Hills. There was nothing of that urban strain in him 
 which appears in Holmes and Willis. He was, in especial, 
 the poet of autumn, of the American October and the New 
 England Indian Summer, that season of " dropping nuts" 
 and " smoky light," to whose subtle analogy with the de 
 cay of the young by the New England disease, consump 
 tion, he gave such tender expression in " The Death of the 
 Flowers," and amid whose "bright, late quiet" he wished 
 himself to pass away. Bryant is our poet of "the melan 
 choly days," as Lowell is of June. If, by chance, he touches 
 upon June, it is not with the exultant gladness of Lowell 
 in meadows full of bobolinks, and in the summer day 
 that is 
 
 " simply perfect from its own resource, 
 
 As to the bee the new campanula s 
 
 Illuminate seclusion swung in air." 
 
 Rather, the stir of new life in the clod suggests to Bryant 
 by contrast the thought of death ; and there is nowhere in 
 his poetry a passage of deeper feeling than the closing 
 stanzas of "June," in which he speaks of himself by antici 
 pation, as of one 
 
 " Whose part in all the pomp that fills 
 The circuit of the summer hills 
 Is that his grave is green." 
 
 Bryant is, par excellence, the poet of New England wild 
 flowers, the yellow violet, the fringed gentian to each of 
 which he dedicated an entire poem the orchis and the 
 golden-rod, " the aster in the wood and the yellow sun 
 flower by the brook. " With these his name will be asso 
 ciated as Wordsworth s with the daffodil and the lesser 
 celandine, and Emerson s with the rhodora. 
 
 Except when writing of nature he was apt to be common 
 place, and there are not many such energetic lines in his 
 purely reflective verse as these famous ones from "The 
 Battle-Field": 
 
EDGAR ALLAN POE. 
 
 JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER. WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT. 
 
 HARRIET BEECHER STOWE. 
 
Literature in the Cities. 161 
 
 " Truth crushed to earth shall rise again ; 
 
 The eternal years of God are hers ; 
 But Error, wounded, writhes in pain, 
 
 And dies among his worshipers." 
 
 He added but slowly to the number of his poems, publish 
 ing a new collection in 1840, another in 1844, and "Thirty 
 Poems " in 1864. His work at all ages was remarkably even. 
 " Thanatopsis" was as mature as anything that he wrote Evenness of 
 afterward, and among his later pieces " The Planting of the 
 Apple-tree " and " The Flood of Years " were as fresh as 
 anything that he had written in the first flush of youth. 
 Bryant s poetic style was always pure and correct, without 
 any tincture of affectation or extravagance. His prose writ 
 ings are not important, consisting mainly of papers of the 
 " Salmagundi " variety contributed to The Talisman, an an 
 nual published in 1827-30 ; some rather sketchy stories, 
 "Tales of the Glauber Spa," 1832; and impressions of 
 Europe, entitled " Letters of a Traveler," issued in two 
 series, in 1849 and 1858. In 1869 and 1871 appeared his Transition 
 blank-verse translations of the "Iliad" and "Odyssey," a 
 remarkable achievement for a man of his age, and not ex 
 celled, upon the whole, by any recent metrical version of 
 Homer in the English tongue. Bryant s half-century of 
 service as the editor of a daily paper should not be over 
 looked. The Evening Post, under his management, was 
 always honest, gentlemanly, and courageous, and did much 
 to raise the tone of journalism in New York. 
 
 Another Massachusetts poet, who was outside the Boston 
 coterie, like Bryant, and, like him, tried his hand at jour- johnGreen- 
 nalism, was John Greenleaf Whittier (1807-92). He was leaf Whittier - 
 born in a solitary farm-house near Haverhill, in the valley 
 of the Merrimack, and his life was passed mostly at his native 
 place and at the neighboring town of Amesbury . The local 
 color, which is very pronounced in his poetry, is that of the 
 Merrimack from the vicinity of Haverhill to its mouth at 
 
162 
 
 Initial Studies in American Letters. 
 
 A self-edu 
 cated poet. 
 
 Editorial 
 work. 
 
 Newburyport, a region of hillside farms, opening out below 
 into wide marshes " the low, green prairies of the sea" 
 and the beaches of Hampton and Salisbury. The scenery 
 of the Merrimack is familiar to all readers of Whittier : the 
 cotton-spinning towns along its banks, with their factories 
 and dams, the sloping pastures and orchards of the back 
 country, the sands of Plum Island and the level reaches of 
 water meadow between which glide the broad-sailed "gun- 
 dalows" a local corruption of gondola laden with hay. 
 Whittier was a farmer lad, and had only such education as 
 the district school could supply, supplemented by two years 
 at the Haverhill Academy. In his " School Days " he gives 
 a picture of the little old country schoolhouse as it used to 
 be, the only alma mater of so many distinguished Ameri 
 cans, and to which many others who have afterward trod 
 den the pavements of great universities look back so fondly, 
 as to their first wicket gate into the land of knowledge. 
 
 " Still sits the schoolhouse by the road, 
 
 A ragged beggar sunning ; 
 Around it still the sumachs grow 
 
 And blackberry vines are running. 
 
 " Within the master s desk is seen, 
 
 Deep-scarred by raps official ; 
 The warping floor, the battered seats, 
 
 The jack-knife s carved initial." 
 
 A copy of Burns awoke the slumbering instincts in the 
 young poet, and he began to contribute verses to Garrison s 
 Free Press, published in Newburyport, and to the Haverhill 
 Gazette. Then he went to Boston, and became editor for a 
 short time of the Manufacturer. Next he edited the Essex 
 Gazette, at Haverhill, and in 1830 he took charge of George 
 D. Prentice s paper, the New England Weekly Review, at 
 Hartford, Conn. Here he fell in with a young Connecticut 
 poet of much promise, J. G. C. Brainard, editor of the Con 
 necticut Mirror, whose " Remains" Whittier edited in 1832. 
 
Literature in the Cities. 163 
 
 At Hartford, too, he published his first book, a volume of 
 prose and verse, entitled "Legends of New England," 1831, 
 which is not otherwise remarkable than as showing his 
 early interest in Indian colonial traditions especially those 
 which had a touch of the supernatural, a mine which he 
 afterward worked to good purpose in " The Bridal of Pen- 
 nacook," "The Witch s Daughter," and similar poems. 
 Some of the legends testify to Brainard s influence and to 
 the influence of Whittier s temporary residence at Hartford. 
 One of the prose pieces, for example, deals with the famous 
 "Moodus Noises" at Haddam, on the Connecticut Eiver, 
 and one of the poems is the same in subject with Brainard s 
 " Black Fox of Salmon Eiver." After a year and a half at 
 Hartford Whittier returned to Haverhill and to farming. 
 
 The antislavery agitation was now beginning, and into 
 this he threw himself with all the ardor of his nature. He 
 became the poet of the reform, as Garrison was its apostle 
 and Sumner and Phillips its speakers. In 1833 he published 
 "Justice and Expediency," a prose tract against slavery, 
 and in the same year he took part in the formation of the 
 American Antislavery Society at Philadelphia, sitting in 
 the convention as a delegate of the Boston abolitionists. 
 Whittier was a Quaker, and that denomination, influenced 
 by the preaching of John Woolman and others, had long 
 since quietly abolished slavery within its own communion. 
 The Quakers of Philadelphia and elsewhere took an earnest 
 though peaceful part in the Garrisonian movement. But it 
 was a strange irony of fate that had made the fiery-hearted 
 Whittier a Friend. His poems against slavery and disunion 
 have the martial ring of a Tyrtseus or a Korner, added to the 
 stem religious zeal of Crom well s Ironsides. They are like 
 the sound of the trumpet blown before the walls of Jericho, " * 111 
 or the psalms of David denouncing woe upon the enemies 
 of God s chosen people. If there is any purely Puritan 
 
164 
 
 Initial Studies in American Letters. 
 
 " Barbara 
 Frietchie. 
 
 Whittier s 
 hymns. 
 
 Idyllic verse. 
 
 strain in American poetry it is in the war hymns of the 
 Quaker "Hermit of Amesbury." Of these patriotic poems 
 there were three principal collections: "Voices of Free 
 dom," 1849 ; " The Panorama, and Other Poems," 1856 ; and 
 " In War Time," 1863. Whittier s work as the poet of free 
 dom was done when, on hearing the bells ring for the pas 
 sage of the constitutional amendment abolishing slavery, he 
 wrote his splendid "LausDeo," thrilling with the ancient 
 Hebrew spirit : 
 
 " Loud and long 
 Lift the old exulting song, 
 Sing with Miriam by the sea- 
 He has cast the mighty down, 
 
 Horse and rider sink and drown, 
 He hath triumphed gloriously." 
 
 Of his poems distinctly relating to the events of the Civil 
 War, the best, or at all events the most popular, is Barbara 
 Frietchie." " Ichabod," expressing the indignation of the 
 Free Soilers at Daniel Webster s seventh of March speech 
 in defense of the Fugitive Slave Law, is one of Whittier s 
 best political poems, and not altogether unworthy of com 
 parison with Browning s " Lost Leader." The language of 
 Whittier s warlike lyrics is biblical, and many of his purely 
 devotional pieces are religious poetry of a high order and 
 have been included in numerous collections of hymns. Of 
 his songs of faith and doubt, the best are perhaps " Our 
 Master," " Chapel of the Hermits," and " Eternal Good 
 ness "; one stanza from the last of which is familiar i 
 
 " I know not where his islands lift 
 
 Their fronded palms in air, 
 I only know I cannot drift 
 Beyond his love and care." 
 
 But from politics and war Whittier turned gladly to 
 sing the homely life of the New England country-side. His 
 rural ballads and idyls are as genuinely American as any- 
 
Literature in the Cities. 165 
 
 thing that our poets have written, and have been recom 
 mended, as such, to English workingmen by Whittier s co 
 religionist, John Bright. The most popular of these is 
 probably " Maud Muller," whose closing couplet has passed 
 into proverb. " Skipper Ireson s Ride " is also very current. 
 Better than either of them, as poetry, is " Telling the Bees." 
 But Whittier s masterpiece in work of a descriptive and 
 reminiscent kind is "Snow-Bound," 1866, a New England snow- 
 fireside idyl which, in its truthfulness, recalls the " Winter 
 Evening" of Cowper s "Task" and Burns s "Cotter s 
 Saturday Night," but in sweetness and animation is su 
 perior to either of them. Although in some things a Puri 
 tan of the Puritans, Whittier has never forgotten that he is 
 also a Friend, and several of his ballads and songs have been 
 upon the subject of the early Quaker persecutions in Massa 
 chusetts. The most impressive of these is "Cassandra South- 
 wick." The latest of them, " The King s Missive," origi- Quaker 
 nally contributed to the " Memorial History of Boston " in ballads - 
 1880, and reprinted the next year in a volume with other 
 poems, has been the occasion of a rather lively controversy. 
 " The Bridal of Pennacook," 1848, and " The Tent on the 
 Beach," 1867, which contain some of his best work, were 
 series of ballads told by different narrators, after the fashion 
 of Longfellow s " Tales of a Wayside Inn." As an artist in 
 verse, Whittier is strong and fervid, rather than delicate 
 or rich. He uses only a few metrical forms by preference 
 the eight-syllabled rhyming couplet 
 
 " Maud Muller on a summer s day 
 Raked the meadow sweet with hay," 
 
 and the emphatic tramp of this measure becomes very mo 
 notonous, as do some of Whittier s mannerisms, which pro- Whittier s 
 
 firtjistic 
 
 ceed, however, never from affectation, but from a lack of deficiencies, 
 study and variety, and so, no doubt, in part from the want 
 of that academic culture and thorough technical equipment 
 
166 Initial Studies in American Letters. 
 
 which Lowell and Longfellow enjoyed. Though his poems 
 are no tin dialect, like Lowell s "Biglow Papers," he knows 
 how to make an artistic use of homely provincial words, 
 such as " chore," which give his idyls of the hearth and the 
 barnyard a genuine Doric cast. Whittier s prose is inferior 
 to his verse. The fluency which was a besetting sin of his 
 poetry, when released from the fetters of rhyme and meter, 
 ran into wordiness. His prose writings were partly contri- 
 His prose butions to the slavery controversy, partly biographical 
 
 sketches of English and American reformers, and partly 
 studies of the scenery and folk-lore of the Merrimack Val 
 ley. Those of most literary interest were the " Supernatur- 
 alism of New England," 1847, and some of the papers in 
 " Literary Recreations and Miscellanies," 1854. 
 
 While Massachusetts was creating an American literature, 
 other sections of the Union were by no means idle. The 
 West, indeed, was as yet too raw to add anything of im 
 portance to the artistic product of the country. The South 
 was hampered by circumstances which will presently be de 
 scribed. But in and about the seaboard cities of New York, 
 
 Literature in Philadelphia, Baltimore, and Richmond many pens were 
 the cities. 
 
 busy filling the columns of literary weeklies and monthlies ; 
 
 and there was a considerable output, such as it was, of 
 books of poetry, fiction, travel, and miscellaneous light 
 literature. Time has already relegated most of these to the 
 dusty top shelves. To rehearse the names of the numerous 
 contributors to the old Knickerbocker Magazine, to Godey j s 
 and Graham s and the New Mirror, and the Southern Liter 
 ary Messenger, or to run over the list of authorlings and 
 poetasters in Poe s papers on the " Literati of New York," 
 would be very much like reading the inscriptions on the 
 
 The old maga- headstones of an old graveyard. In the columns of these 
 zines. 
 
 prehistoric magazines and in the book notices and reviews 
 
 away back in the thirties and forties, one encounters the 
 
Literature in the Cities. 167 
 
 handiwork and the names of Emerson, Holmes, Longfellow, 
 Hawthorne, and Lowell embodied in this mass of forgotten 
 literature. It would have required a good deal of critical 
 acumen, at the time, to predict that these and a few others 
 would soon be thrown out into bold relief, as the significant 
 and permanent names in the literature of their generation, 
 while Paulding, Hirst, Fay, Dawes, Mrs. Osgood, and scores 
 of others who figured beside them in the fashionable period 
 icals, and filled quite as large a space in the public eye, 
 would sink into oblivion in less than thirty years. Some 
 of these latter were clever enough people ; they entertained Forgotten 
 their contemporary public sufficiently, but their work had 
 no vitality or "power of continuance." The great majority 
 of the writings of any period are necessarily ephemeral, 
 and time by a slow process of natural selection is constantly 
 sifting out the few representative books which shall carry 
 on the memory of the period to posterity. Now and then 
 it may be predicted of some undoubted work of genius, 
 even at the moment that it sees the light, that it is destined 
 to endure. But tastes and fashions change, and few things 
 are better calculated to inspire the literary critic with hu 
 mility than to read the prophecies in old reviews and see 
 how the future, now become the present, has quietly given 
 them the lie. 
 
 From among the professional litterateurs of his day 
 emerges, with ever sharper distinctness as time goes on, the Edgar Allan 
 name of Edgar Allan Poe (1809-49). By the irony of fate 
 Poe was born at Boston, and his first volume, " Tamerlane, 
 and Other Poems," 1827, was printed in that city and bore 
 upon its title-page the words, " By a Bostonian." But his 
 parentage, so far as it was anything, was southern. His 
 father was a Marylander who had gone upon the stage and 
 married an actress, herself the daughter of an actress and a 
 native of England. Left an orphan by the early death of 
 
168 
 
 Initial Studies in American Letters. 
 
 His journal 
 istic experi 
 ments. 
 
 Eccentricities 
 of character. 
 
 both parents, Poe was adopted by a Mr. Allan, a wealthy 
 merchant of Richmond, Va. He was educated partly at an 
 English school, was student for a time in the University of 
 Virginia, and afterward a cadet in the Military Academy at 
 West Point. His youth was wild and irregular : he gam 
 bled and drank ; was proud, bitter, arid perverse ; finally 
 quarreled with his guardian and adopted father by whom 
 he was disowned and then betook himself to the life of a 
 literary hack. His brilliant but underpaid work for various 
 periodicals soon brought him into notice, and he was given 
 the editorship of the Southern Literary Messenger, published 
 at Richmond, and subsequently of the Gentlemen s after 
 ward Graham s Magazine in Philadelphia. These and 
 all other positions Poe forfeited through his dissipated hab 
 its and wayward temper, and finally, in 1844, he drifted to 
 New York, where he found employment on the Evening 
 Mirror and then on the Broadway Journal. He died of de 
 lirium tremens at the Marine Hospital in Baltimore. His 
 life was one of the most wretched in literary history. He 
 was an extreme instance of what used to be called the 
 " eccentricity of genius." He had the irritable vanity 
 which is popularly supposed to accompany the poetic tem 
 perament, and was so insanely egotistic as to imagine that 
 Longfellow and others were constantly plagiarizing from 
 him. The best side of Poe s character came out in his do 
 mestic relations, in which he displayed great tenderness, 
 patience, and fidelity. His instincts were gentlemanly, and 
 his manner and conversation were often winning. In the 
 place of moral feeling he had the artistic conscience. In 
 his critical papers, except where warped by passion or 
 prejudice, he showed neither fear nor favor, denouncing bad 
 work by the most illustrious hands and commending ob 
 scure merit. The " impudent literary cliques " who puffed 
 each other s books ; the feeble chirrupings of the bardlings 
 
Literature in the Cities. 169 
 
 who manufactured verses for the "Annuals"; and the 
 twaddle of the "genial" incapables who praised them in 
 flabby reviews all these Poe exposed with ferocious hon 
 esty. Nor, though his writings are immoral, can they be 
 called in any sense immoral. His poetry is as pure in its 
 unearthliness as Bryant s in its austerity. 
 
 By 1831 Poe had published three thin books of verse, Early verse, 
 none of which had attracted notice, although the latest 
 contained the drafts of a few of his most perfect poems, 
 such as " Israfel," " the Valley of Unrest," " The City in 
 the Sea," and one of the two pieces inscribed " To Helen." 
 It was his habit to touch and retouch his work until it 
 grew under his more practiced hand into a shape that 
 satisfied his fastidious taste. Hence the same poem fre 
 quently reappears in different stages of development in 
 successive editions. Poe was a subtle artist in the realm of the beautiful, 
 the weird and the fantastic. In his intellectual nature 
 there was a strange conjunction ; an imagination as spirit 
 ual as Shelley s, though, unlike Shelley s, haunted perpetu 
 ally with shapes of fear and the imagery of ruin ; with 
 this, an analytic power, a scientific exactness, and a me 
 chanical ingenuity more usual in a chemist or a mathema 
 tician than in a poet. He studied carefully the mechanism 
 of his verse and experimented endlessly with verbal and 
 musical effects, such as repetition and monotone and the 
 selection of words in which the consonants alliterated and 
 the vowels varied. In his "Philosophy of Composition" 
 
 he described how his best-known poem, "The Raven," 
 
 " The Raven." 
 was systematically built up on a preconceived plan, in 
 
 which the number of lines was first determined and the 
 word " nevermore " selected as a starting-point. No one 
 who knows the mood in which poetry is composed will be 
 lieve that this ingenious piece of dissection really describes 
 the way in which " The Raven " was conceived and writ- 
 
170 
 
 Initial Studies in American Letters. 
 
 Poe s genius 
 fheGofd S: 
 Bug " 
 
 Scientific in- 
 
 to Coleridge. 6 
 
 ten, or that any such deliberate and self-conscious process 
 could originate the associations from which a true poem 
 springs. But it flattered Poe s pride of intellect to assert 
 that his cooler reason had control not only over the exe 
 cution of his poetry, but over the very well-head of thought 
 and emotion. 
 
 Some of his most successful stories, like " The Gold 
 Bug," "The Mystery of Marie Roget," "The Purloined 
 Letter," and " The Murders in the Rue Morgue," were ap 
 plications of this analytic faculty to the solution of puz 
 zles, such as the finding of buried treasure or of a lost 
 document, or the ferreting out of a mysterious crime. 
 After the publication of " The Gold Bug " he received from 
 all parts of the country specimens of cipher-writing, which 
 he delighted to work out. Others of his tales were clever 
 pieces of mystification, like "Hans Pfaall," the story of a 
 journey to the moon, or experiments at giving verisimili- 
 tude to wild improbabilities by the skilful introduction of 
 scientific details, as in " The Facts in the Case of M. Valde- 
 mar" and "Von Kempelen s Discovery." In his narra 
 tives of this kind Poe anticipated the detective novels of 
 Gaboriau and Wilkie Collins, the scientific hoaxes of Jules 
 Verne, and, though in a less degree, the artfully worked up 
 likeness to fact in Edward Everett Hale s "Man Without 
 a Country," and similar fictions. While Dickens s "Barnaby 
 Rudge " was publishing in parts Poe showed his skill as a 
 plot-hunter by publishing a paper in Graham s Magazine 
 in which the very tangled intrigue of the novel was cor 
 rectly raveled and the finale predicted in advance. 
 
 In his union of imagination and analytic power Poe re- 
 sembled Coleridge, who, if any one, was his teacher in 
 poetry and criticism. Poe s verse often reminds one of 
 " Christabel " and " The Ancient Mariner," still oftener of 
 " Kubla Khan." Like Coleridge, too, he indulged at times 
 
Literature in the Cities. 171 
 
 in the opium habit. But in Poe the artist predominated 
 over everything else. He began not with sentiment or 
 thought, but with technique, with melody and color, tricks 
 of language, and effects of verse. It is curious to study the 
 growth of his style in his successive volumes of poetry. At 
 first these are metrical experiments and vague images, 
 original, and with a fascinating suggestiveness, but with so Technical de- 
 little meaning that some of his earlier pieces are hardly re- Foe s ve^se. 
 moved from nonsense. Gradually, like distant music draw 
 ing nearer and nearer, his poetry becomes fuller of imagi 
 nation and of an inward significance, without ever losing, 
 however, its mysterious aloofness from the real world of 
 the senses. It was a part of Poe s literary creed formed 
 upon his own practice and his own limitations, but set 
 forth with a great display of a priori reasoning in his essay 
 on "The Poetic Principle" and elsewhere that pleasure, 
 and not instruction or moral exhortation, was the end of 
 poetry ; that beauty, and not truth or goodness, was its 
 means ; and, furthermore, that the pleasure which it gave 
 should be indefinite. About his own poetry there was 
 always this indefiniteness. His imagination dwelt in a 
 strange country of dream a "ghoul-haunted region of 
 Weir," "out of space, out of time" filled with unsub 
 stantial landscapes and peopled by spectral shapes. And 
 yet there is a wonderful, hidden significance in this un 
 canny scenery. The reader feels that the wild, fantasmal 
 imagery is in itself a kind of language, and that it in some 
 way expresses a brooding thought or passion, the terror and 
 despair of a lost soul. Sometimes there is an obvious alle 
 gory, as in " The Haunted Palace," which is the parable of 
 a ruined mind, or in "The Raven," the most popular of all 
 Poe s poems, originally published in the American Whig 
 Revieiv for February, 1845. Sometimes the meaning is 
 more obscure, as in "Ulalume," which, to most people, is 
 
172 
 
 Initial Studies in American Letters. 
 
 His poetry 
 unearthly : 
 
 and morbid. 
 
 Foe and Haw 
 thorne com 
 pared. 
 
 "Tales of the 
 Grotesque and 
 Arabesque." 
 
 quite incomprehensible and yet, to all readers of poetic 
 feeling, is among the most characteristic, and, therefore, 
 the most fascinating of its author s creations. 
 
 Now and then, as in the beautiful ballad "Annabel Lee," 
 and " To One in Paradise," the poet emerges into the light 
 of common human feeling and speaks a more intelligible 
 language. But in general his poetry is not the poetry of 
 the heart, and its passion is not the passion of flesh and 
 blood. In Poe the thought of death is always near, and of 
 the shadowy borderland between death and life. 
 
 " The play is the tragedy Man, 
 
 And its hero the Conqueror Worm." 
 
 The prose tale, " Ligeia," in which these verses are inserted, 
 is one of the most powerful of all Poe s writings, and its 
 theme is the power of the will to overcome death. In that 
 singularly impressive poem, "The Sleeper," the morbid 
 horror which invests the tomb springs from the same source, 
 the materiality of Poe s imagination, which refuses to let 
 the soul go free from the body. 
 
 This quality explains why Poe s " Tales of the Grotesque 
 and Arabesque, 1840, are on a lower plane than Hawthorne s 
 romances, to which a few of them, like " William Wilson " 
 and "The Man of the Crowd," have some resemblance. 
 The former of these, in particular, is in Hawthorne s pecu 
 liar province, the allegory of the conscience. But in gen 
 eral the tragedy in Hawthorne is a spiritual one, while Poe 
 calls in the aid of material forces. The passion of physical 
 fear or of superstitious horror is that which his writings 
 most frequently excite. These tales represent various grades 
 of the frightful and the ghastly, from the mere bugaboo 
 story like "The Black Cat," which makes children afraid 
 to go in the dark, up to the breathless terror of " The Cask 
 of Amontillado " or " The Red Death." Poe s masterpiece 
 in this kind is the fateful tale of " The Fall of the House of 
 
Literature in the Cities. 173 
 
 Usher," with its solemn and magnificent close. His prose, 
 at its best, often recalls, in its richly imaginative cast, the 
 manner of De Quincey in such passages as his " Dream 
 Fugue " or " Our Ladies of Sorrow." In descriptive pieces 
 like "The Domain of Arnheim," and stories of adventure 
 like " The Descent into the Maelstrom," and his long sea- 
 tale, " The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym," 1838, he dis 
 played a realistic inventiveness almost equal to Swift s or 
 De Foe s. He was not without a mocking irony, but he 
 had no constructive humor, and his attempts at the facetious 
 were mostly failures. 
 
 Poe s magical creations were rootless flowers. He took 
 no hold upon the life about him and cared nothing for the NO American- 
 public concerns of his country. His poems and tales might writings. 
 have been written in vacuo for anything American in them. 
 Perhaps for this reason, in part, his fame has been so cosmo 
 politan. In France especially his writings have been favor 
 ites. Charles Baudelaire, the author of the "Fleurs de 
 Mai," translated them into French, and his own impressive 
 but unhealthy poetry shows evidence of Poe s influence. 
 The defect in Poe was in character a defect which will make 
 itself felt in art as in life. If he had had the sweet home 
 feeling of Longfellow or the moral fervor of Whittier he 
 might have been a greater poet than either. 
 
 " If I could dwell 
 Where Israfel 
 
 Hath dwelt, and he where I, 
 He might not sing so wildly well 
 
 A mortal melody, 
 While a bolder note than this might swell 
 
 From my lyre within the sky ! " 
 
 Though Poe was a southerner, if not by birth, at least by 
 race and breeding, there was nothing distinctly southern 
 about his peculiar genius, and in his wandering life he was 
 associated as much with Philadelphia and New York as 
 
174 
 
 Initial Studies in American Letters. 
 
 Social con 
 ditions at the 
 South un 
 favorable to 
 literature. 
 
 Southern 
 
 culture 
 
 provincial. 
 
 with Baltimore and Richmond. The conditions which had 
 made the southern colonies unfruitful in literary and educa 
 tional works before the Revolution continued to act down to 
 the time of the Civil War. Eli Whitney s invention of the 
 cotton-gin in the closing years of the last century gave ex 
 tension to slavery, making it profitable to cultivate the new 
 staple by enormous gangs of field-hands 1 working under the 
 whip of the overseer in large plantations. Slavery became 
 henceforth a business speculation in the states farthest 
 south, and not, as in Old Virginia and Kentucky, a com 
 paratively mild domestic system. The necessity of defend 
 ing its peculiar institution against the attacks of a growing 
 faction in the North compelled the South to throw all its 
 intellectual strength into politics, which, for that matter, is 
 the natural occupation and excitement of a social aristoc 
 racy. Meanwhile immigration sought the free states, and 
 there was no middle class at the South. The " poor whites " 
 were ignorant and degraded. There were people of educa 
 tion in the cities and on some of the plantations, but there 
 was no great educated class from which a literature could 
 proceed. And the culture of the South, such as it was, was 
 becoming old-fashioned and local, as the section was isolated 
 more and more from the rest of the Union and from the en 
 lightened public opinion of Europe by its reactionary preju 
 dices and its sensitiveness on the subject of slavery. 
 Nothing can be imagined more ridiculously provincial than 
 the sophomorical editorials in the southern press just before 
 the outbreak of the war, or than the backward and ill- 
 informed articles which passed for reviews in the poorly 
 supported periodicals of the South. 
 
 In the general dearth of work of high and permanent 
 value, one or two southern authors may be mentioned whose 
 writings have at least done something to illustrate the life 
 and scenery of their section. When in 1833 the Baltimore 
 
Literature in the Cities. 175 
 
 Saturday Visitor offered a prize of a hundred dollars for the 
 best prose tale, one of the committee who awarded the prize 
 to Poe s first story, "The MS. Found in a Bottle," was 
 John P. Kennedy, a Whig gentleman of Baltimore, who JgJy Ken 
 afterward became secretary of the navy in Fillmore s ad 
 ministration. The year before he had published " Swallow 
 Barn," a series of agreeable sketches of country life in Vir 
 ginia. In 1835 and 1838 he published his two novels, 
 "Horse-Shoe Robinson" and "Rob of the Bowl," the for 
 mer a story of the Revolutionary War in South Carolina, 
 the latter an historical tale of colonial Maryland. These 
 had sufficient success to warrant reprinting as late as 1852. 
 But the most popular and voluminous of all southern 
 writers of fiction was William Gilmore Simms, a South 
 
 Carolinian, who died in 1870. He wrote over thirty novels, Wm. Gilmore 
 
 Simms. 
 
 mostly romances of revolutionary history, southern life, 
 and wild adventure, among the best of which were "The 
 Partisan," 1835, and " The Yemassee." Simms was an in 
 ferior Cooper with a difference. His novels are good boys 
 books, but are crude and hasty in composition. He was 
 strongly southern in his sympathies, though his newspaper, 
 the Charleston City Gazette, took part against the nullifiers. 
 His miscellaneous writings include several histories and bi 
 ographies, political tracts, addresses, and critical papers con 
 tributed to southern magazines. He also wrote numerous 
 poems, the most ambitious of which was "Atlantis, a Story 
 of the Sea," 1832. His poems have little value except as 
 here and there illustrating local scenery and manners, as in 
 "Southern Passages and Pictures," 1839. Mr. John Esten Cooke - s 
 Cooke s pleasant but not very strong " Virginia Comedians " 
 was, perhaps, in literary quality the best southern novel 
 produced before the Civil War. 
 
 When Poe came to New York, the most conspicuous liter 
 ary figure of the metropolis, with the possible exception of 
 
176 
 
 Initial Studies in American Letters. 
 
 New York 
 Citv literati. 
 
 N. P. Willis. 
 
 Literature of 
 good society. . 
 
 Bryant and Halleck, was N. P. Willis, one of the editors of 
 the Evening Mirror, upon which journal Poe was for a time 
 engaged. Willis had made a literary reputation, when a 
 student at Yale, by his " Scripture Poems," written in 
 smooth blank verse. Afterward he had edited the American 
 Monthly in his native city of Boston, and more recently he 
 had published "Pencillings by the Way," 1835, a pleasant 
 record of European saunterings ; " Inklings of Adventure," 
 1836, a collection of dashing stories and sketches of Ameri 
 can and foreign life ; and " Letters from Under a Bridge," 
 1839, a series of charming rural letters from his country 
 place at Owego, on the Susquehanna. Willis s work, always 
 graceful and sparkling, sometimes even brilliant, though 
 light in substance and jaunty in style, had quickly raised 
 him to the summit of popularity. During the years from 1835 
 to 1850 he was the most successful American magazinist, and 
 even down to the day of his death, in 1867, he retained his 
 hold upon the attention of the fashionable public by his easy 
 paragraphing and correspondence in the Mirror and its suc 
 cessor, the Home Journal, which catered to the literary wants 
 of the beau monde. Much of Willis s work was ephemeral, 
 though clever of its kind, but a few of his best tales and 
 sketches, such as " F. Smith," " The Ghost Ball at Congress 
 Hall," "Edith Linsey," and "The Lunatic s Skate," to 
 gether with some of the " Letters from Under a Bridge," 
 are worthy of preservation, not only as readable stories, but 
 as society studies of life at American watering-places like 
 Nahant and Saratoga and Ballston Spa half a century ago. 
 A number of his simpler poems, like "Unseen Spirits," 
 " Spring," " To M from Abroad," and " Lines on Leaving 
 Europe," still retain a deserved place in collections and 
 anthologies. 
 
 The senior editor of the Mirror, George P. Morris, was 
 once a very popular song-writer, and his "Woodman, 
 
Literature in the Cities. 177 
 
 Spare that Tree" still survives. Other residents of New Knicker- 
 York City who have written single famous pieces were Writers am 
 Clement C. Moore, a professor in the General Theological 
 Seminary, whose " Visit from St. Nicholas" " T was the 
 Night Before Christmas, " etc. is a favorite ballad in every 
 nursery in the land ; Charles Fenno Hoffman, a novelist of 
 reputation in his time, but now remembered only as the 
 author of the song, u Sparkling and Bright," and the patri 
 otic ballad of " Monterey" ; Robert H. Messinger, a native 
 of Boston, but long resident in New York, where he was a 
 familiar figure in fashionable society, who wrote " Give Me 
 the Old," a fine ode with a choice Horatian flavor ; and 
 William Allen Butler, a lawyer and occasional writer, 
 whose capital satire of "Nothing to Wear " was published 
 anonymously and had a great run. Of younger poets, like 
 Stoddard, Stedman, and Aldrich (who formerly wrote for 
 the Mirror], who are still living and working in the ma 
 turity of their powers, it is not within the limits and 
 design of this sketch to speak. But one of their contem 
 poraries, Bayard Taylor, who died American minister at Taylor! 
 Berlin, in 1878, though a Pennsylvanian by birth and rear 
 ing, may be reckoned among the " literati of New York." 
 A farmer lad from Chester County, who had learned the 
 printer s trade and printed a little volume of his juvenile 
 verses in 1844, he came to New York shortly after with cre 
 dentials from Dr. Griswold, the editor of Graham s; and 
 obtaining encouragement and aid from Willis, Horace 
 Greeley, and others, he set out to make the tour of Europe, 
 walking from town to town in Germany and getting em 
 ployment now and then at his trade to help pay the ex 
 penses of the trip. The story of these " Wanderjahre " he 
 told in his "Views Afoot," 1846. This was the first of 
 eleven books of travel written during the course of his life. 
 He was an inveterate nomad, and his journeyings carried 
 
178 
 
 Initial Studies in American Letters. 
 
 Taylor s 
 versatility. 
 
 His poetry 
 imitative. 
 
 him to the remotest regions to California, India, China, 
 Japan, and the isles of the sea, to Central Africa and the 
 Soudan, Palestine, Egypt, Iceland, and the " by ways of 
 Europe." His headquarters at home were in New York, 
 where he did literary work for the Tribune. He was a 
 rapid and incessant worker, throwing off many volumes 
 of verse and prose, fiction, essays, sketches, translations, 
 and criticisms, mainly contributed in the first instance to 
 the magazines. 
 
 His versatility was very marked, and his poetry ranged 
 from "Rhymes of Travel, " 1848, and "Poems of the 
 Orient," 1854, to idyls and home ballads of Pennsylvania 
 life, like "The Quaker Widow" and "The Old Pennsyl 
 vania Farmer" ; and on the other side to ambitious and 
 somewhat mystical poems, like " The Masque of the Gods," 
 1872 written in four days, and dramatic experiments like 
 "The Prophet," 1874, and " Prince Deukalion," 1878. He 
 was a man of buoyant and eager nature, with a great appe 
 tite for new experience, a remarkable memory, a talent for 
 learning languages, and a too great readiness to take the 
 hue of his favorite books. From his facility, his openness 
 to external impressions of scenery and costume, and his 
 habit of turning these at once into the service of his pen, 
 it results that there is something " newspapery " and super 
 ficial about most of his prose. It is reporter s work, though 
 reporting of a high order. His poetry, too, though full of 
 glow and picturesqueness, is largely imitative, suggesting 
 Tennyson not unfrequently, but more often Shelley. His 
 spirited " Bedouin Song," for example, has an echo of 
 Shelley s " Lines to an Indian Air " : 
 
 " From the desert I come to thee 
 
 On a stallion shod with fire ; 
 And the winds are left behind 
 
 In the speed of my desire. 
 Under thy window I stand, 
 
Literature in the Cities. 179 
 
 And the midnight hears my cry ; 
 I love thee, I love but thee, 
 With a love that shall not die." 
 
 The dangerous quickness with which he caught the manner 
 of other poets made him an admirable parodist and transla 
 tor. His " Echo Club, 1876, contains some of the best trav 
 esties in the tongue, and his great translation of Goethe s Translation 
 "Faust," 1870-71 with its wonderfully close reproduction 
 of the original meters is one of the glories of American 
 literature. All in all, Taylor may unhesitatingly be put 
 first among our poets of the second generation the genera 
 tion succeeding that of Longfellow and Lowell although 
 the lack in him of original genius self-determined to a 
 peculiar sphere, or the want of an inward fixity and con 
 centration to resist the rich tumult of outward impressions, 
 has made him less significant in the history of our literary 
 thought than some other writers less generously endowed. 
 
 Taylor s novels had the qualities of his verse. They were 
 profuse, eloquent, and faulty. " John Godfrey s Fortune," His novels. 
 1864, gave a picture of Bohemian life in New York. " Han 
 nah Thurston," 1863, and "The Story of Kennett," 1866, 
 introduced many incidents and persons from the old Quaker 
 life of rural Pennsylvania, as Taylor remembered it in his 
 boyhood. The former was like Hawthorne s u Blithedale 
 Romance," a satire on fanatics and reformers, and its her 
 oine is a nobly conceived character, though drawn with 
 some exaggeration. "The Story of Kennett," which is 
 largely autobiographic, has a greater freshness and reality 
 than the others, and is full of personal recollections. In 
 these novels, as in his short stories, Taylor s pictorial skill 
 is greater, on the whole, than his power of creating char 
 acters or inventing plots. 
 
 Literature in the West now began to have an existence. Lite rature in 
 Another young poet from Chester County, Pa., namely, tne West - 
 
180 
 
 Initial Studies in American Letters. 
 
 Thos. Buchan 
 an Read. 
 
 The Cary 
 
 sisters. 
 
 Foster s negro 
 melodies. 
 
 Thomas Buchanan Read, went to Cincinnati, and not to- 
 New York, to study sculpture and painting, about 1837, and 
 one of his best-known poems, " Pons Maximus," was writ 
 ten on the occasion of the opening of the suspension bridge 
 across the Ohio. Read came East, to be sure, in 1841, and 
 spent many years in our seaboard cities and in Italy. He 
 was distinctly a minor poet, but some of his Pennsylvania 
 pastorals, like " The Deserted Road," have a natural sweet 
 ness ; and his luxurious "Drifting," which combines the 
 methods of painting and poetry, is justly popular. " Sheri 
 dan s Ride" perhaps his most current piece is a rather 
 forced production, and has been overpraised. The two Ohio 
 sister poets, Alice and Phcebe Cary, were attracted to New 
 York in 1850, as soon as their literary success seemed as 
 sured. They made that city their home for the remainder 
 of their lives. Poe praised Alice Gary s " Pictures of Mem 
 ory," and Phoebe s " Nearer Home " has become a favorite 
 hymn. There is nothing peculiarly western about the verse 
 of the Cary sisters. It is the poetry of sentiment, memory, 
 and domestic affection, entirely feminine, rather tame and 
 diffuse as a whole, but tender and sweet, cherished by many 
 good women and dear to simple hearts. 
 
 A stronger smack of the soil is in the negro melodies like 
 "Uncle Ned," "O Susanna," "Old Folks at Home," " Way 
 Down South," "Nelly was a Lady," "My Old Kentucky 
 Home," etc., which were the work, not of any southern 
 poet, but of Stephen C. Foster, a native of Allegheny, Pa.,, 
 and a resident of Cincinnati and Pittsburg. He composed 
 the words and music of these, and many others of a similar 
 kind, during the years 1847 to 1861. Taken together they 
 form the most original arid vital addition which this country 
 has made to the psalmody of the world, and entitle Foster 
 to the first rank among American song-writers. 
 
 As Foster s plaintive melodies carried the pathos and hu- 
 
Literature in the Cities. 181 
 
 mor of the plantation all over the land, so Mrs. Harriet 
 Beecher Stowe s Uncle Tom s Cabin," 1852, brought home Uncle Tom s 
 to millions of readers the sufferings of the negroes in the 
 " black belt " of the cotton-growing states. This is the most 
 popular novel ever written in America. Hundreds of thou 
 sands of copies were sold in this country and in England, 
 and some forty translations were made into foreign tongues. 
 In its dramatized form it still keeps the stage, and the sta 
 tistics of circulating libraries show that even now it is in 
 greater demand than any other single book. It did more 
 than any other literary agency to rouse the public conscience 
 to a sense of the shame and horror of slavery ; more even 
 than Garrison s Liberator; more than the indignant poems 
 of Whittier and Lowell or the orations of Sumner and Phil 
 lips. It presented the thing concretely and dramatically, 
 and in particular it made the odious Fugitive Slave Law 
 forever impossible to enforce. It was useless for the de 
 fenders of slavery to protest that the picture was exagger- influence of 
 ated, and that planters like Legree were the exception. The 
 system under which such brutalities could happen, and did 
 sometimes happen, was doomed. It is easy now to point 
 out defects of taste and art in this masterpiece, to show that 
 the tone is occasionally melodramatic, that some of the char 
 acters are conventional, and that the literary execution is in 
 parts feeble and in others coarse. In spite of all, it remains 
 true that " Uncle Tom s Cabin " is a great book, the work 
 of genius seizing instinctively upon its opportunity and ut 
 tering the thought of the time with a power that thrilled 
 the heart of the nation and of the world. Mrs. Stowe never 
 repeated her first success. Some of her novels of New Eng 
 land life, such as "The Minister s Wooing," 1859, and 
 "The Pearl of Orr s Island," 1862, have a mild kind of in 
 terest, and contain truthful portraiture of provincial ways 
 and traits; while later fictions of a domestic type, like 
 
182 
 
 Initial Studies in American Letters, 
 
 Connecticut 
 writers. 
 
 Donald G. 
 
 Mitchell. 
 
 Henry Ward 
 Beecher. 
 
 "Pink and White Tyranny " and "My Wife and I," are 
 really beneath criticism. 
 
 There were other Connecticut writers contemporary with 
 Mrs. Stowe : Mrs. L. H. Sigourney, for example, a Hart 
 ford poetess, formerly known as " the Hemans of America," 
 but now quite obsolete ; and J. G. Percival, of New Haven, 
 a shy and eccentric scholar, whose geological work was of 
 value, and whose memory is preserved by one or two of his 
 simpler poems, still in circulation, such as "To Seneca 
 Lake" and "The Coral Grove." Another Hartford poet, 
 Brainard already spoken of as an early friend of Whittier, 
 died young, leaving a few pieces which show that his 
 lyrical gift was spontaneous and genuine, but had received 
 little cultivation. A much younger writer than either of 
 these, Donald G. Mitchell, of New Haven, has a more lasting 
 place in our literature, by virtue of his charmingly written 
 "Eeveries of a Bachelor," 1850, and "Dream Life," 1852, 
 stories which sketch themselves out in a series of remi 
 niscences and lightly connected scenes, and which always 
 appeal freshly to young men because they have that 
 dreamy outlook upon life which is characteristic of youth. 
 But, upon the whole, the most important contribution 
 made by Connecticut in that generation to the literary 
 stock of America was the Beecher family. Lyman Beecher 
 had been an influential preacher and theologian, and a 
 sturdy defender of orthodoxy against Boston Unitarianism. 
 Of his numerous sons and daughters, all more or less noted 
 for intellectual vigor and independence, the most eminent 
 were Mrs. Stowe and Henry Ward Beecher, the great pulpit 
 orator of Brooklyn. Mr. Beecher was too busy a man to 
 give more than his spare moments to general literature. 
 His sermons, lectures, and addresses were reported for the 
 daily papers and printed in part in book form ; but these 
 lose greatly when divorced from the large, warm, and 
 

 Literature in the Cities. 183 
 
 benignant personality of the man. His volumes made up 
 of articles in the Independent and the Ledger, such as 
 "Star Papers," 1855, and "Eyes and Ears," 1862, contain 
 many delightful morceaux upon country life and similar 
 topics, though they are hardly wrought with sufficient . 
 closeness and care to take a permanent place in letters. 
 Like Willis s " Ephemerse," they are excellent literary 
 journalism, but hardly literature. 
 
 We may close our retrospect of American literature before 
 1861 with a brief notice of one of the most striking literary Walt Whit- 
 phenomena of the time the "Leaves of Grass" of Walt 
 Whitman (1819-92), published at Brooklyn in 1855. The 
 author, born at West Hills, Long Island, had been 
 printer, school-teacher, editor, and builder. He had scrib 
 bled a good deal of poetry of the ordinary kind, which at 
 tracted little attention, but finding conventional rhymes 
 and meters too cramping a vehicle for his need of expres 
 sion, he discarded them for a kind of rhythmic chant of 
 which the following is a fair specimen : 
 
 "Press close, bare-bosom d night! Press close, magnetic, 
 
 nourishing night! 
 
 Night of south winds ! night of the few large stars ! 
 Still, nodding night! mad, naked, summer night! " 
 
 The invention was not altogether a new one. The English 
 translation of the psalms of David and of some of the 
 prophets, the " Poems of Ossian," and some of Matthew 
 Arnold s unrhymed pieces, especially "The Strayed Rev 
 eller," have an irregular rhythm of this kind, to say noth 
 ing of the old Anglo-Saxon poems, like "Beowulf," and 
 the Scripture paraphrases attributed to Csedmon. But this 
 species of oratio soluta, carried to the lengths to which 
 Whitman carried it, had an air of novelty which was dis 
 pleasing to some, while to others, weary of familiar meas 
 ures and jingling rhymes, it was refreshing in its boldness 
 
184 
 
 Initial Studies in American Letters. 
 
 Contradictory 
 estimates of 
 Whitman. 
 
 His natural 
 ism. 
 
 " Leaves of 
 Grass." 
 
 and freedom. There is no consenting estimate of this 
 poet. Many think that his so-called poems are not poems 
 at all, but simply a bad variety of prose ; that there is 
 nothing to him beyond a combination of affectation and 
 indecency ; and that the Whitman culte is a passing u fad " 
 of a few literary men, and especially of a number of English 
 critics like Rossetti, Swinburne, and Buchanan, who, being 
 determined to have something unmistakably American 
 that is different from anything else in writings from this 
 side of the water, before they will acknowledge any origi 
 nality in them, have been misled into discovering in Whit 
 man "the poet of democracy." Others maintain that he 
 is the greatest of American poets, or, indeed, of all modern 
 poets ; that he is " cosmic," or universal, and that he has 
 put an end forever to puling rhymes and lines chopped up 
 into metrical feet. 
 
 Whether Whitman s poetry is formally poetry at all or 
 merely the raw material of poetry, the chaotic and amor 
 phous impression which it makes on readers of conservative 
 tastes results from his effort to take up into his verse ele 
 ments which poetry has usually left out the ugly, the 
 earthy, and even the disgusting ; the " underside of things," 
 which he holds not to be prosaic when apprehended with a 
 strong, masculine joy in life and nature seen in all their 
 aspects. The lack of these elements in the conventional 
 poets seems to him and his disciples like leaving out the 
 salt from the ocean, making poetry merely pretty and blink 
 ing whole classes of facts. Hence the naturalism and ani 
 malism of some of the divisions in " Leaves of Grass," par 
 ticularly that entitled "Children of Adam," which gave 
 great offense by its immodesty, or its outspokenness. Whit 
 man holds that nakedness is chaste ; that all the functions 
 of the body in healthy exercise are equally clean ; that all, 
 in fact, are divine, and that matter is as divine as spirit. 
 
Literature in the Cities. 185 
 
 The effort to get everything into his poetry, to speak out his 
 thought just as it comes to him, accounts, too, for his way poetic style. 
 of cataloguing objects without selection. His single ex 
 pressions are often unsurpassed for descriptive beauty and 
 truth. He speaks of "the vitreous pour of the full moon, 
 just tinged with blue," of the "lisp " of the plain, of the 
 prairies, " where herds of buffalo make a crawling spread of 
 the square miles." But if there is any eternal distinction 
 between poetry and prose, the most liberal canons of the 
 poetic art will never agree to accept lines like these : 
 
 "And [I] remember putting plasters on the galls of his neck 
 
 and ankles ; 
 He stayed with me a week before lie was recuperated, and passed 
 
 north." 
 
 Whitman is the spokesman of democracy and of the 
 future ; full of brotherliness and hope, loving the warm, The spokes . 
 gregarious pressure of the crowd and the touch of his com- 
 rade s elbow in the ranks. He liked the people multitudes 
 of people ; the swarm of life beheld from a Broadway omni 
 bus or a Brooklyn ferry-boat. The rowdy and the negro 
 truck-driver were closer to his sympathy than the gentle 
 man and the scholar. "I loaf and invite my soul," he 
 writes ; " I sound my barbaric yawp over the roofs of the 
 world." His poem "Walt Whitman," frankly egotistic, 
 simply describes himself as a typical, average man the 
 same as any other man, and therefore not individual but 
 universal. He has great tenderness and heartiness "the 
 good gray poet"; and during the Civil War he devoted 
 himself unreservedly to the wounded soldiers in the Wash 
 ington hospitals an experience which he has related in 
 "The Dresser" and elsewhere. It is characteristic of his 
 rough and ready comradery to use slang and newspaper 
 English in his poetry, to call himself Walt instead of Wal 
 ter, and to have his picture taken in a slouch hat and with 
 
186 
 
 Initial Studies in American Letters. 
 
 A "cosmic 
 singer. 
 
 Absence of 
 
 dramatic 
 
 elements. 
 
 Whitman not 
 accepted by 
 the people. 
 
 a flannel shirt open at the throat. His decriers allege that 
 he posed for effect ; that he is simply a backward eddy in 
 the tide, and significant only as a temporary reaction against 
 ultra civilization like Thoreau, though in a different way. 
 But with all his shortcomings in art there is a healthy, 
 virile, tumultuous pulse of life in his lyric utterance and a 
 great sweep of imagination in his panoramic view of times 
 and countries. One likes to read him because he feels so 
 good, enjoys so fully the play of his senses, and has such a 
 lusty confidence in his own immortality and in the pros 
 pects of the human race. Stripped of verbiage and repeti 
 tion, his ideas are not many. His indebtedness to Emerson 
 who wrote an introduction to the " Leaves of Grass" is 
 manifest. He sings of man and not men, and the individual 
 differences of character, sentiment, and passion, the dra 
 matic elements of life, find small place in his system. It is 
 too early to say what will be his final position in literary 
 history. But it is noteworthy that the democratic masses 
 have not accepted him yet as their poet. Whittier and 
 Longfellow, the poets of conscience and feeling, are the 
 darlings of the American people. The admiration, and 
 even the knowledge of Whitman, are mostly esoteric, con 
 fined to the literary class. It is also not without signifi 
 cance as to the ultimate reception of his innovations in 
 verse that he has numerous parodists, but no imitators. 
 The tendency among our younger poets is not toward the 
 abandonment of rhyme and meter, but toward the intro 
 duction of new stanza forms and an increasing carefulness 
 and finish in the technique of their art. It is observable, 
 too, that in his most inspired passages Whitman reverts to 
 the old forms of verse ; to blank verse, for example, in the 
 "Man-of-WarBird: 
 
 " Thou who hast slept all night upon the storm, 
 Waking renewed on thy prodigious pinions," etc.; 
 
Literature in the Cities. 187 
 
 and elsewhere not infrequently to dactylic hexameters and 
 pentameters : 
 
 " Earth of shine and dark, mottling the tide of the river ! . . . 
 Far-swooping, elbowed earth ! rich, apple-blossomed earth." 
 
 Indeed, Whitman s most popular poem, "My Captain, 7 
 
 written after the assassination of Abraham Lincoln, differs civiTwar the 
 
 little in form from ordinary verse, as a stanza of it will 
 
 show: 
 
 " My captain does not answer, his lips are pale and still ; 
 My father does not feel my arm, he has no pulse nor will ; 
 The ship is anchored safe and sound, its voyage closed and done ; 
 From fearful trip the victor ship comes in with object won. 
 Exult, O shores, and ring, O bells ! 
 
 But I, with mournful tread, 
 Walk the deck, my captain lies 
 Fallen, cold and dead." 
 
 This is from " Drum Taps," a volume of poems of the Civil 
 War. Whitman also wrote prose having much the same p r0 se writ- 
 quality as his poetry: "Democratic Vistas," "Memoranda mgs * 
 of the Civil War," and, more recently, " Specimen Days." 
 His residence during his last years was at Camden, New 
 Jersey, where a centennial edition of his writings was pub 
 lished in 1876. 
 
 1. WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT: " Thanatopsis " ; "To a 
 Waterfowl"; "Green River"; "Hymn to the North 
 Star"; "A Forest Hymn"; "O Fairest of the Rural 
 Maids" ; "June" ; "The Death of the Flowers" ; "The 
 Evening Wind"; "The Battle-Field"; " The Planting of 
 the Apple-tree" ; " The Flood of Years." 
 
 2. JOHN GBEENLEAF WHITTIEB: "Cassandra South- 
 wick" ; "The New Wife and the Old" ; "The Virginia 
 Slave Mother"; "Randolph of Roanoke"; "Barclay of 
 Ury"; "The Witch of Wenham " ; "Skipper Ireson s 
 Ride"; "Marguerite"; "Maud Muller"; " Telling the 
 
188 Initial Studies in American Letters. 
 
 Bees" ; "My Playmate" ; " Barbara Frietchie " ; " Icha- 
 bod " ; " Laus Deo " ; " Snow-Bound." 
 
 3. EDGAR ALLAN POE : " The Raven " ; " The Bells " ; 
 "Israfel"; "Ulalume"; "To Helen"; "The City in the 
 Sea"; "Annabel Lee"; "To One in Paradise"; "The 
 Sleeper"; "The Valley of Unrest"; "The Fall of the 
 House of Usher " ; " Ligeia " ; " William Wilson " ; " The 
 Cask of Amontillado "; " The Assignation "; " The Masque 
 of the Red Death " ; " Narrative of A. Gordon Pym." 
 
 4. N. P. WILLIS : " Select Prose Writings." New York: 
 1886. 
 
 5. MRS. H. B. STOWE: "Uncle Tom s Cabin" ; " Old- 
 town Folks." 
 
 6. W. G. SIMMS : "The Partisan " ; " The Yemassee." 
 
 7. BAYARD TAYLOR : " A Bacchic Ode"; "Hylas" ; 
 "Kubleh"; "The Soldier and the Pard"; "Sicilian 
 Wine " ; " Taurus " ; " Serapion " ; " The Metempsychosis 
 of the Pine " ; " The Temptation of Hassan Ben Khaled " ; 
 " Bedouin Song " ; " Euphorion " ; " The Quaker Widow " ; 
 "John Reid"; "Lars"; "Views Afoot"; "Byways of 
 Europe " ; " The Story of Kennett " ; " The Echo Club." 
 
 8. WALT WHITMAN : "My Captain " ; " When Lilacs 
 Last in the Dooryard Bloomed " ; " Out of the Cradle End 
 lessly Rocking" ; "Pioneers, O Pioneers" ; "The Mystic 
 Trumpeter " ; "A Woman at Auction " ; "Sea-shore Mem 
 oirs"; "Passage to India"; " Man nahatta"; " The Wound- 
 Dresser " ; " Longings for Home." 
 
 9. "Poets of America." By E. C. Stedman. Boston: 
 1885. 
 
CHAPTER VII. 
 
 LITERATURE SINCE 1861. 
 
 A GENERATION has passed since the outbreak of the Civil 
 War, and although public affairs are still mainly in the 
 hands of men who had reached manhood before the conflict 
 opened, or who were old enough at that time to remember 
 clearly its stirring events, the younger men who are daily 
 coming forward to take their places know it only by tra 
 dition. It makes a definite break in the history of our 
 literature, and a number of new literary schools and tend- Literature of 
 encies have appeared since its close. As to the literature the Clvl1 w<u 
 of the war itself, it was largely the work of writers who had 
 already reached or passed middle age. All of the more im 
 portant authors described in the last three chapters sur 
 vived the Rebellion except Poe, who died in 1849, Prescott, 
 who died in 1859, and Thoreau and Hawthorne, who died 
 in the second and fourth years of the war, respectively. 
 The final and authoritative history of the struggle has not 
 yet been written, and cannot be written for many years to 
 come. Many partial and tentative accounts have, however, 
 appeared, among which may be mentioned, on the northern 
 side, Horace Greeley s "American Conflict, " 1864-66, Vice- 
 president Wilson s "Rise and Fall of the Slave Power in Histories. 
 America," and J. W. Draper s "American Civil War," 
 1868-70 ; on the southern side, Alexander H. Stephen s s 
 11 Confederate States of America," Jefferson Davis s "Rise 
 and Fall of the Confederate States of America," and E. A. 
 Pollard s " Lost Cause." These, with the exception of Dr. 
 Draper s philosophical narrative, have the advantage of be- 
 
190 
 
 Initial Studies in American Letters. 
 
 War lyrics. 
 
 " John 
 
 Brown s 
 
 Body." 
 
 ing the work of actors in the political or military events 
 which they describe, and the disadvantage of being, there 
 fore, partisan in some instances passionately partisan. A 
 storehouse of materials for the coming historian is also at 
 hand in Frank Moore s great collection, "The Rebellion 
 Record" ; in numerous regimental histories of special ar 
 mies, departments, and battles, like W. Swinton s "Army of 
 the Potomac " ; in the autobiographies and recollections of 
 Grant and Sherman and other military leaders ; in the 
 11 war papers," published in the Century Magazine, and re 
 printed in book form, as " Battles and Leaders of the Civil 
 War," 1887-89, and innumerable sketches and reminiscences 
 by officers and privates on both sides. 
 
 The war had its poetry, its humors, and its general litera 
 ture, some of which have been mentioned in connection 
 with Whittier, Lowell, Holmes, Whitman, and others, and 
 some of which remain to be mentioned, as the work of new 
 writers, or of writers who had previously made little mark. 
 There were war songs on both sides, few of which had much 
 literary value excepting, perhaps, James R. Randall s south 
 ern ballad, "Maryland, My Maryland," sung to the old col 
 lege air of " Lauriger Horatius" ; and the grand martial 
 chorus of " John Brown s Body," an old Methodist hymn, 
 to which the northern armies beat time as they went 
 "marching on." Randall s song, though spirited, was 
 marred by its fire-eating absurdities about "vandals" and 
 " minions " and " northern scum," the cheap insults of the 
 southern newspaper press. To furnish the " John Brown " 
 chorus with words worthy of the music, Mrs. Julia Ward 
 Howe wrote her " Battle Hymn of the Republic," a noble 
 poem, but rather too fine and literary for a song, and so 
 never fully accepted by the soldiers. 
 
 Among the many verses which voiced the anguish and 
 the patriotism of that stern time, which told of partings 
 
Literature Since 1861. 191 
 
 and home-comings, of women waiting by desolate hearths, 
 in country homes, for tidings of husbands and sons who 
 had gone to the war ; or which celebrated individual deeds 
 of heroism or sang the thousand private tragedies and 
 heart-breaks of the great conflict, by far the greater num 
 ber were of too humble a grade to survive the feeling of the 
 hour. Among the best or the most popular of them were 
 Kate Putnam Osgood s u Driving Home the Cows," Mrs. 
 Ethel Lynn Beers s " All Quiet Along the Potomac," For- 
 ceythe Willson s " Old Sergeant," and John James Piatt s 
 " Riding to Vote." Of the poets whom the war brought 
 out, or developed, the most noteworthy were Henry Tim- 
 rod, of South Carolina, and Henry Howard Brownell, of 
 Connecticut. During the war Timrod was with the Con 
 federate Army of the West, as correspondent for the Henry Tim- 
 Charleston Mercury, and in 1864 he became assistant editor erate verse, 
 of the South Carolinian, at Columbia. Sherman s " march 
 to the sea" broke up his business, and he returned to 
 Charleston. A complete edition of his poems was pub 
 lished in 1873, six years after his death. The prettiest of 
 all Timrod s poems is " Katie," but more to our present pur 
 pose are " Charleston "written in the time of blockade 
 and " The Unknown Dead," which tells 
 
 " Of nameless graves on battle plains, 
 Wash d by a single winter s rains, 
 Where, some beneath Virginian hills, 
 And some by green Atlantic rills, 
 Some by the waters of the West, 
 A myriad unknown heroes rest." 
 
 When the war was over a poet of New York State, F. M. 
 Finch, sang of these and of other graves in his beautiful BiueandUi 
 Decoration Day lyric, u The Blue and the Gray," which Gray-" 
 spoke the word of reconciliation and consecration for North 
 and South alike. 
 Brownell, whose " Lyrics of a Day " and " War Lyrics " 
 
192 
 
 Initial Studies in American Letters. 
 
 Henry 
 Howard 
 Brownell s 
 Union poetry. 
 
 Theodore 
 Winthrop. 
 
 "Cecil 
 Dreeme." 
 
 were published respectively in 1864 and 1866, was private 
 secretary to Farragut, on whose flag-ship, the Hartford, 
 he was present at several great naval engagements, such as 
 the "Passage of the Forts" below New Orleans, and the 
 action off Mobile, described in his poem " The Bay Fight." 
 With some roughness and unevenness of execution Brown- 
 elFs poetry had a fire which places him next to Whittier as 
 the Korner of the Civil War. In him, especially, as in 
 Whittier, is that Puritan sense of the righteousness of his 
 cause which made the battle for the Union a holy war to 
 the crusaders against slavery : 
 
 " Full red the furnace fires must glow 
 That melt the ore of mortal kind : 
 The mills of God are grinding slow, 
 But ah, how close they grind ! 
 
 " To-day the Dahlgren and the drum 
 
 Are dread apostles of his name ; 
 
 His kingdom here can only come 
 
 By chrism of blood and flame." 
 
 One of the earliest martyrs of the war was Theodore 
 Winthrop, hardly known as a writer until the publication 
 in the Atlantic Monthly of his vivid sketches of u Washing 
 ton as a Camp," describing the march of his regiment, the 
 famous New York Seventh, and its first quarters in the 
 Capitol at Washington. A tragic interest was given to 
 these papers by Winthrop s gallant death in the action of 
 Big Bethel, June 10, 1861. While this was still fresh in 
 public recollection his manuscript novels were published, 
 together with a collection of his stories and sketches re 
 printed from the magazines. His novels, though in parts 
 crude and immature, have a dash and buoyancy an out 
 door air about them which give the reader a winning im 
 pression of Winthrop s personality. The best of them is, 
 perhaps, "Cecil Dreeme," a romance that reminds one a 
 little of Hawthorne, and the scene of which is the New 
 
Literature Since 1861. 193 
 
 York University building on Washington Square, a locality 
 that has been further celebrated in Henry James s novel of 
 "Washington Square." 
 
 Another member of this same Seventh Regiment, Fitz 
 James O Brien, an Irishman by birth, who died at Balti 
 more in 1862 from the effects of a wound received in a cav 
 alry skirmish, had contributed to the magazines a number 
 of poems and of brilliant though fantastic tales, among 
 
 which the "Diamond Lens" and "What Was It?" had Fitz James 
 
 O Brien s 
 something of Edgar A. Poe s quality. Another Irish- stories. 
 
 American, Charles G. Halpine, under the pen-name of 
 "Miles O Reilly," wrote a good many clever ballads of the 
 war, partly serious and partly in comic brogue. Prose 
 writers of note furnished the magazines with narratives of 
 their experience at the seat of war, among papers of which 
 kind may be mentioned Dr. Holmes s " My Search for the 
 Captain," in the Atlantic Monthly, and Col. T. W. Higgin- 
 son s"Army Life in a Black Regiment," collected into a 
 volume in 1870. 
 
 Of the public oratory of the war, the foremost example is 
 the ever memorable address of Abraham Lincoln at the Gettysburg 
 dedication of the National Cemetery at Gettysburg. The 
 war had brought the nation to its intellectual majority. In 
 the stress of that terrible fight there was no room for 
 buncombe and verbiage, such as the newspapers and stump- 
 speakers used to dole out in ante bellum days. Lincoln s 
 speech is short a few grave words which he turned aside 
 for a moment to speak in the midst of his task of saving 
 the country. The speech is simple, naked of figures, every 
 sentence impressed with a sense of responsibility for the 
 work yet to be done and with a stern determination to do 
 it. " In a larger sense," it says, " we cannot dedicate, we 
 cannot consecrate, we cannot hallow this ground. The 
 brave men, living and dead, who struggled here have con- 
 
194 Initial Studies in American Letters. 
 
 secrated it far above our poor power to add or detract. The 
 world will little note nor long remember what we say here, 
 but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us, the 
 living, rather to be dedicated here to the unfinished work 
 which they who fought here have thus far so nobly ad 
 vanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the 
 great task remaining before us ; that from these honored 
 dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which 
 they gave the last full measure of devotion ; that we here 
 highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain ; 
 that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of 
 freedom ; and that government of the people, by the 
 people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth." 
 Here was eloquence of a different sort from the sonorous 
 perorations of Webster or the polished climaxes of Everett. 
 As we read the plain, strong language of this brief classic, 
 with its solemnity, its restraint, its "brave old wisdom of 
 sincerity," we seem to see the president s homely features 
 irradiated with the light of coming martyrdom 
 
 " The kindly- earnest, brave, foreseeing man, 
 
 Sagacious, patient, dreading praise, not blame, 
 New birth of our new soil, the first American." 
 
 Within the past quarter of a century the popular school 
 humor?" 1 of American humor has reached its culmination. Every 
 man of genius who is a humorist at all is so in a way 
 peculiar to himself. There is no lack of individuality in 
 the humor of Irving and Hawthorne and the wit of 
 Holmes and Lowell, but although they are new in subject 
 and application they are not new in kind. Irving, as we 
 have seen, was the literary descendant of Addison. The 
 character sketches in " Bracebridge Hall" are of the same 
 family with Sir Eoger de Coverley and the other figures of 
 the Spectator Club. " Knickerbocker s History of New 
 York," though purely American in its matter, is not dis- 
 
Literature Since 1861. 195 
 
 tinctly American in its method, which is akin to the mock 
 heroic of Fielding and the irony of Swift in " The Voyage 
 to Lilliput." Irving s humor, like that of all the great 
 English humorists, had its root in the perception of char 
 acterof the characteristic traits of men and classes of 
 men, as ground of amusement. It depended for its effect, 
 therefore, upon its truthfulness, its dramatic insight and 
 sympathy, as did the humor of Shakespeare, of Sterne, 
 Lamb, and Thackeray. This perception of the character 
 istic, when pushed to excess, issues in grotesque and carica 
 ture, as in some of Dickens s inferior creations, which are 
 little more than personified single tricks of manner, 
 speech, feature, or dress. Hawthorne s rare humor differed 
 from Irving s in temper but not in substance, and belonged, thome, 
 
 liOlmGS, 8/nCL 
 
 like Irving s, to the English variety. Dr. Holmes s more Lowell essen^ 
 pronouncedly comic verse does not differ specifically from 
 the facetiae of Thomas Hood, but his prominent trait is 
 wit, which is the laughter of the head as humor is of the 
 heart. The same is true, with qualifications, of Lowell, 
 whose " Biglow Papers," though humor of an original sort 
 in their revelation of Yankee character, are essentially 
 satirical. It is the cleverness, the shrewdness of the hits in 
 the " Biglow Papers," their logical, that is, witty character, 
 as distinguished from their drollery, that arrests the atten 
 tion. They are funny, but they are not so funny as they 
 are smart. 
 
 In all these writers humor was blent with more serious 
 qualities, which gave fineness and literary value to their 
 humorous writings. Their view of life was not exclusively 
 comic. But there has been a class of jesters, of professional 
 humorists, in America, whose product is so indigenous, so 
 different, if not in essence, yet at least in form and expres 
 sion, from any European humor, that it maybe regarded as 
 a unique addition to the comic literature of the world. It 
 
196 
 
 Initial Studies in American Letters. 
 
 The humor of 
 "Artemus 
 Ward "and 
 " Mark 
 Twain " dis 
 tinctively 
 American. 
 
 Humorous 
 
 journalism in 
 America. 
 
 has been accepted as such in England, where Artemus 
 Ward and Mark Twain are familiar to multitudes who ha,ve 
 never read " The One-Hoss Shay" or " The Courtin ." And 
 though it would be ridiculous to maintain that either of 
 these writers takes rank with Lowell and Holmes, or to 
 deny that there is an amount of flatness and coarseness in 
 many of their labored fooleries which puts large portions of 
 their writings below the line where real literature begins, 
 still it will not do to ignore them as mere buffoons, or even 
 to predict that their humors will soon be forgotten. It is 
 true that no literary fashion is more subject to change than 
 the fashion of a jest, and that jokes that make one genera 
 tion laugh seem insipid to the next. But there is something 
 perennial in the fun of Rabelais, whom Bacon called " the 
 great jester of France"; and though the puns of Shakes 
 peare s clowns are detestable, the clowns themselves have 
 not lost their power to amuse. 
 
 The Americans are not a gay people, but they are fond of 
 a joke. Lincoln s "little stories" were characteristically 
 western, and it is doubtful whether he was more endeared 
 to the masses by his solid virtues than by the humorous 
 perception which made him one of them. The humor of 
 which we are speaking now is a strictly popular and 
 national possession. Though America has never, or not 
 until lately, had a comic paper ranking with Punch or 
 Charivari or the Fliegende Blatter, every newspaper has 
 had its funny column. Our humorists have been graduated 
 from the journalist s desk and sometimes from the printing- 
 press, and now and then a local or country newspaper has 
 risen into sudden prosperity from the possession of a new 
 humorist, as in the case of G. D. Prentice s Courier- Journal, 
 or more recently of the Cleveland Plaindealer, the Danbury 
 News, the Burlington Hawkeye, the Arkansaw Traveller, 
 the Texas Siftings, and numerous others. Nowadays there 
 
Literature Since 1861. 197 
 
 are even syndicates of humorists, who cooperate to supply 
 fun for certain groups of periodicals. Of course, the great 
 majority of these manufacturers of jests for newspapers and 
 comic almanacs are doomed to swift oblivion. But it is not 
 so certain that the best of the class, like Clemens and 
 Browne, will not long continue to be read as illustrative of 
 one side of the American mind, or that their best things 
 
 will not survive as long as the mots of Sydney Smith, Early Ameri- 
 
 . can humorists: 
 which are still as current as ever. One of the earliest of " Major Jack 
 
 them was Seba Smith, who, under the name of "Major 
 Jack Downing," did his best to make Jackson s administra- phoenix 
 tion ridiculous. B. P. Shillaber s "Mrs. Partington " a 
 sort of American Mrs. Malaprop enjoyed great vogue 
 before the war. Of a somewhat higher kind were the 
 "Phcenixiana," 1855, and "Squibob Papers," 1856, of Lieu 
 tenant George H. Derby, "John Phoenix," one of the pio 
 neers of literature on the Pacific coast at the time of the 
 California gold fever of 49. Derby s proposal for " A New 
 System of English Grammar," his satirical account of the 
 topographical survey of the two miles of road between San 
 Francisco and the Mission Dolores, and his picture gallery 
 made out of the conventional houses, steamboats, rail-cars, 
 runaway negroes, and other designs which used to figure in 
 the advertising columns of the newspapers, were all very 
 ingenious and clever. 
 
 But all these pale before Artemus Ward "Artemus the 
 delicious," as Charles Reade called him who first secured 
 for this peculiarly American type of humor a hearing and Ward." 
 reception abroad. Ever since the invention of Hosea Big- 
 low, an imaginary personage of some sort, under cover of 
 whom the author might conceal his own identity, has 
 seemed a necessity to our humorists. Artemus Ward was a 
 traveling showman who went about the country exhibiting 
 a collection of wax "figgers" and whose experiences and 
 
198 
 
 Initial Studies in American Letters. 
 
 " Lecture 
 on the 
 Mormons. 
 
 Artemus in 
 England. 
 
 reflections were reported in grammar and spelling of a most 
 ingeniously eccentric kind. His inventor was Charles F. 
 Browne, originally of Maine, a printer by trade and after 
 ward a newspaper writer and editor at Boston, Toledo, and 
 Cleveland, where his comicalities in the Plaindealer first 
 began to attract notice. In 1860 he came to New York and 
 joined the staff of Vanity Fair, a comic weekly of much 
 brightness, which ran a short career and perished for want 
 of capital. When Browne began to appear as a public lec 
 turer, people who had formed an idea of him from his im 
 personation of the shrewd and vulgar old showman, were 
 surprised to find him a gentlemanly-looking young man, 
 who came upon the platform in correct evening dress, and 
 " spoke his piece " in a quiet and somewhat mournful man 
 ner, stopping in apparent surprise when any one in the au 
 dience laughed at any uncommonly outrageous absurdity. 
 In London, where he delivered his " Lecture on the Mor 
 mons," in 1866, the gravity of his bearing at first imposed 
 upon his hearers, who had come to the hall in search of in 
 structive information and were disappointed at the inade 
 quate nature of the panorama which Browne had had made 
 to illustrate his lecture. Occasionally some hitch would oc 
 cur in the machinery of this, and the lecturer would leave 
 the rostrum for a few moments to " work the moon " that 
 shone upon the Great Salt Lake, apologizing on his return 
 on the ground that he was "a man short " and offering " to 
 pay a good salary to any respectable boy of good parentage 
 and education who is a good moonist." When it gradually 
 dawned upon the British intellect that these and similar 
 devices of the lecturer such as the soft music which he had 
 the pianist play at pathetic passages nay, that the pano 
 rama and even the lecture itself were of a humorous inten 
 tion, the joke began to take, and Artemus s success in Eng 
 land became assured. He was employed as one of the ed- 
 
Literature Since 1861. 199 
 
 itors of Punch, but died at Southampton in the year follow 
 ing. 
 
 Some of Artemus Ward s effects were produced by cacog- 
 raphy or bad spelling, but there was genius in the wildly 
 erratic way in which he handled even this rather low order 
 of humor. It is a curious commentary on the wretchedness 
 of our English orthography that the phonetic spelling of a 
 word, as for example, wuz for was, should be in itself an oc 
 casion of mirth. Other verbal effects of a different kind 
 were among his devices, as in the passage where the seven 
 teen widows of a deceased Mormon offered themselves to 
 Artemus. 
 
 "And I said, * Why is this thus ? What is the reason of 
 this thusness ? They hove a sigh seventeen sighs of dif 
 ferent size. They said : 
 
 " O, soon thou will be gonested away I whimsies 
 
 "I told them that when I got ready to leave a place I 
 weutested. 
 
 " They said, Doth not like us ? 
 
 "I said, I doth I doth. 
 
 " I also said, * I hope your intentions are honorable, as I 
 am a lone child, my parents being far far away. 
 
 " Then they said, Wilt not marry us ? 
 
 " I said, * O no, it cannot was. 
 
 " When they cried, O cruel man ! this is too much ! O, 
 too much! I told them that it was on account of the much 
 ness that I declined." 
 
 It is hard to define the difference between the humor of 
 one writer and another, or of one nation and another. It 
 can be felt and can be illustrated by quoting examples, but 
 scarcely described in general terms. It has been said of 
 that class of American humorists of which Artemus Ward humor, 
 is a representative that their peculiarity consists in extrav 
 agance, surprise, audacity, and irreverence. But all these 
 
200 Initial Studies in American Letters. 
 
 qualities have characterized other schools of humor. There 
 is the same element of surprise in De Quincey s anti-climax, 
 "Many a man has dated his ruin from some murder or 
 other which, perhaps, at the time he thought little of," as 
 in Artemus s truism that " a comic paper ought to publish 
 a joke now and then." The violation of logic which makes 
 us laugh at an Irish bull is likewise the source of the humor 
 in Artemus s saying of Jeff Davis, that "it would have 
 been better than ten dollars in his pocket if he had never 
 been born" ; or in his advice, "Always live within your 
 income, even if you have to borrow money to do so" ; or, 
 again, in his announcement that " Mr. Ward will pay no 
 debts of his own contracting." A kind of ludicrous con 
 fusion, caused by an unusual collocation of words, is also 
 one of his favorite tricks, as when he says of Brigham 
 Young, "He s the most married man I ever saw in my 
 life " ; or when, having been drafted at several hundred dif 
 ferent places where he had been exhibiting his wax figures, 
 he says that if he went on he should soon become a regiment, 
 and adds, " I never knew that there was so many of me." 
 With this a whimsical understatement and an affectation 
 of simplicity, as where he expresses his willingness to sac 
 rifice " even his wife s relations " on the altar of patriotism ; 
 or where, in delightful unconsciousness of his own sins 
 against orthography, he pronounces that " Chaucer was a 
 great poet but he couldn t spell," or where he says of the 
 feast of raw dog, tendered him by the Indian chief, Wocky- 
 bocky, "It don t agree with me. I prefer simpler food." 
 On the whole, it may be said of original humor of this kind, 
 as of other forms of originality in literature, that the ele 
 ments of it are old, but their combinations are novel. 
 
 Other humorists, like Henry W. Shaw ("Josh Billings") 
 and David R Locke ("Petroleum V. Nasby"), have used 
 bad spelling as a part of their machinery ; while Robert H. 
 
HENRY JAMES, JR. 
 
 BKET HARTE. WILLIAM DEAN HOWELLS. 
 
 SAMUEL LANGHORNE CLEMENS. 
 
Literature Since 1861. 201 
 
 Newell ("Orpheus C. Kerr"), Samuel L. Clemens (" Mark 
 Twain "), and more recently " Bill Nye," though belonging 
 to the same school of low or broad comedy, have discarded 
 cacography. Of these the most eminent, by all odds, is 
 Mark Twain, who has probably made more people laugh "Mark 
 than any other living writer. A Missourian by birth (1835), 
 he served the usual apprenticeship at type-setting and edit 
 ing country newspapers ; spent seven years as a pilot on a 
 Mississippi steamboat, and seven years more mining and 
 journalizing in Nevada, where he conducted the Virginia 
 City Enterprise : finally drifting to San Francisco, and was 
 associated with Bret Harte on the Californian, and in 1867 
 published his first book, " The Jumping Frog." This was 
 succeeded by the "Innocents Abroad," 1869; " Roughing 
 It," 1872 ; "A Tramp Abroad," 1880 ; and by others not so 
 good. 
 
 Mark Twain s drolleries have frequently the same air of 
 innocence and surprise as Artemus Ward s, and there is a 
 like suddenness in his turns of expression, as where he 
 speaks of " the calm confidence of a Christian with four 
 aces." If he did not originate, he at any rate employed 
 very effectively that now familiar device of the newspaper 
 "funny man" of putting a painful situation euphemisti 
 cally, as when he says of a man who was hanged that he 
 "received injuries which terminated in his death." He 
 uses to the full extent the American humorist s favorite re 
 sources of exaggeration and irreverence. An instance of 
 the former quality may be seen in his famous description 
 of a dog chasing a coyote, in " Roughing It," or in his in 
 terview with the lightning-rod agent in "Mark Twain s 
 Sketches," 1875. He is a shrewd observer, and his humor A satirist, 
 has a more satirical side than Artemus Ward s, sometimes 
 passing into downright denunciation. He delights partic 
 ularly in ridiculing sentimental humbug and moralizing 
 
202 
 
 Initial Studies in American Letters. 
 
 " Innocents 
 Abroad." 
 
 Irreverent 
 democracy. 
 
 cant. He runs atilt, as has been said, at " copy-book texts," 
 at the temperance reformer, the tract distributer, the Good 
 Boy of Sunday-school literature, and the women who send 
 bouquets and sympathetic letters to interesting criminals. 
 He gives a ludicrous turn to famous historical anecdotes, 
 such as the story of George Washington and his little 
 hatchet ; burlesques the time-honored adventure, in nautical 
 romances, of the starving crew casting lots in the long-boat, 
 and spoils the dignity of antiquity by modern trivialities, 
 saying of a discontented sailor on Columbus s ship, "He 
 wanted fresh shad." The fun of " Innocents Abroad " con 
 sists in this irreverent application of modern, common 
 sense, utilitarian, democratic standards to the memorable 
 places and historical associations of Europe. Tried by this 
 test the Old Masters in the picture galleries become laugh 
 able, Abelard was a precious scoundrel, and the raptures of 
 the guide-books are parodied without mercy. The tourist 
 weeps at the grave of Adam. At Genoa he drives the 
 cicerone to despair by pretending never to have heard of 
 Christopher Columbus, and inquiring innocently, "Is he 
 dead?" It is Europe vulgarized and stripped of its il 
 lusions Europe seen by a western newspaper reporter 
 without any "historic imagination." 
 
 The method of this whole class of humorists is the oppo 
 site of Addison s or Irving s or Thackeray s. It does not 
 amuse by the perception of the characteristic. It is not 
 founded upon truth, but upon incongruity, distortion, un 
 expectedness. Everything in life is reversed, as in opera 
 bouffe, and turned topsy-turvy, so that paradox takes the 
 place of the natural order of things. Nevertheless they have 
 supplied a wholesome criticism upon sentimental excesses, 
 and the world is in their debt for many a hearty laugh. 
 
 In the Atlantic Monthly for December, 1863, appeared a 
 tale entitled " The Man Without a Country," which made 
 
Literature Since 1861. 203 
 
 a great sensation, and did much to strengthen patriotic The Man 
 feeling in one of the darkest hours of the nation s history, couiitryi" 
 It was the story of one Philip Nolan, an army officer, 
 whose head had been turned by Aaron Burr, and who, 
 having been censured by a court-martial for some minor 
 offense, exclaimed petulantly, upon mention being made of 
 the United States government : " Damn the United States ! 
 I wish that I might never hear the United States men 
 tioned again." Thereupon he was sentenced to have his 
 wish, and was kept all his life aboard the vessels of the 
 navy, being sent off on long voyages and transferred from 
 ship to ship, with orders to those in charge that his country 
 and its concerns should never be spoken of in his presence. 
 Such an air of reality was given to the narrative by inci 
 dental references to actual persons and occurrences that 
 many believed it true, and some were found who re 
 membered Philip Nolan, but had heard different versions 
 of his career. The author of this clever hoax if hoax it 
 may be called was Edward Everett Hale, a Unitarian 
 clergyman of Boston, who published a collection of stories Evereffflale. 
 in 1868, under the fantastic title, "If, Yes, and Perhaps," 
 indicating thereby that some of the tales were possible, 
 some of them probable, and others might even be regarded 
 as essentially true. A similar collection, " His Level Best, 
 and Other Stories," was published in 1873, and in the 
 interval three volumes of a somewhat different kind, the 
 " Ingham Papers " and u Sybaris and Other Homes," both 
 in 1869, and " Ten Times One Is Ten," in 1871. The author 
 shelters himself behind the imaginary figure of Captain 
 Frederic Ingham, pastor of the Sandemanian church at 
 Xaguadavick, and the same characters have a way of re 
 appearing in his successive volumes as old friends of the 
 reader, which is pleasant at first, but in the end a little 
 tiresome. 
 
204 Initial Studies in American Letters. 
 
 Verisimili * s one ^ ^ e mos t original and ingenious of 
 
 tude of his American story-writers. The old device of making- wildly 
 most improb- J 
 
 able tales. improbable inventions appear like fact by a realistic treat 
 
 ment of details a device employed by Swift and Edgar 
 Poe, and more lately by Jules Verne became quite fresh 
 and novel in his hands, and was managed with a humor 
 
 all his own. Some of his best stories are : " My Double and 
 " My Double." 
 
 How He Undid Me," describing how a busy clergyman 
 
 found an Irishman who looked so much like himself that 
 he trained him to pass as his duplicate, and sent him to do 
 duty in his stead at public meetings, dinners, etc., thereby 
 escaping bores and getting time for real work ; " The Brick 
 Moon," a story of a projectile built and launched into 
 space, to revolve in a fixed meridian about the earth and 
 serve mariners as a mark of longitude ; "The Bag Man and 
 Rag Woman," a tale of an impoverished couple who made 
 a competence by saving the pamphlets, advertisements, 
 wedding-cards, etc., that came to them through the mail, 
 and developing a paper business on that basis; and "The 
 Skeleton in the Closet," which shows how the fate of the 
 Southern Confederacy was involved in the adventures of a 
 certain hoop-skirt, "built in the eclipse and rigged with 
 curses dark." Mr. Hale s historical scholarship and his 
 habit of detail have aided him in the art of giving vraisem- 
 Aphiianthro- blance to absurdities. He is known in philanthropy as 
 well as in letters, and his tales have a cheerful, busy, prac 
 tical way with them in consonance with his motto, " Look 
 up and not down, look forward and not back, look out and 
 not in, and lend a hand." 
 
 It is too soon to sum up the literary history of the last 
 quarter of a century. The writers who have given it shape 
 are still writing, and their work is therefore incomplete. 
 But on the slightest review of it two facts become manifest : 
 first, that New England has lost its long monopoly ; and, 
 
Literature Since 1861. 205 
 
 secondly, that a marked feature of the period is the growth 
 of realistic fiction. The electric tension of the atmosphere New England 
 for thirty years preceding the Civil War, the storm and ary monopoly, 
 stress of great public contests, and the intellectual stir pro 
 duced by transcendentalism seem to have been more favor 
 able to poetry and literary idealism than present conditions 
 are. At all events, there are no new poets who rank with 
 Whittier, Longfellow, Lowell, and others of the elder gen- 
 oration, although George H. Boker, in Philadelphia, B. H. 
 Stoddard and E. C. Stedman, in New York, and T. B. Al- 
 drich, first in New York and afterward in Boston, have 
 written creditable verse ; not to speak of younger writers, 
 whose work, however, for the most part, has been more 
 distinguished by delicacy of execution than by native im 
 pulse. Mention has been made of the establishment of 
 Harper s Monthly Magazine, which, under the conduct of 
 its accomplished editors, has provided the public with an 
 abundance of good reading. The old Putnam s Monthly, 
 which ran from 1853 to 1858, and had a strong corps of 
 contributors, was revived in 1868, and continued by 
 that name till 1870, when it was succeeded by Scribner s 
 Monthly, under the editorship of Dr. J. G. Holland, and 
 this in 1881 by The Century, an efficient rival of Harper s 
 in circulation, in literary excellence, and in the beauty of 
 its wood-engravings, the American school of which art 
 these two great periodicals have done much to develop and 
 encourage. Another New York monthly, The Galaxy, ran 
 from 1866 to 1878, and was edited by Richard Grant White. 
 Within the last few years a new Scribner s Magazine has 
 also taken the field. The Atlantic, in Boston, and Lippin- 
 cottfs, in Philadelphia, are no unworthy competitors with 
 these for public favor. 
 
 During the forties began a new era of national expansion, 
 somewhat resembling that described in a former chapter, 
 
206 
 
 Initial Studies in American Letters. 
 
 National 
 expansion. 
 
 The Pacific 
 coast. 
 
 Novel social 
 conditions. 
 
 and, like that, bearing fruit eventually in literature. The 
 admission of Florida as a state in 1845, and the annexation 
 of Texas in the same year, were followed by the cession of 
 California in 1848, and its admission as a state in 1850. In 
 1849 came the great rush to the California gold-fields. San 
 Francisco, at first a mere collection of tents and board shan 
 ties, with a few adobe huts, grew with incredible rapidity 
 into a great city the wicked and wonderful city apostro 
 phized by Bret Harte in his poem, "San Francisco ": 
 
 "Serene, indifferent of fate, 
 Thou sittest at the Western Gate ; 
 Upon thy heights so lately won 
 Still slant the banners of the sun. . . . 
 I know thy cunning and thy greed, 
 Thy hard, high lust and wilful deed." 
 
 The adventurers of all lands and races who flocked to the 
 Pacific coast found there a motley state of society between 
 civilization and savagery. There were the relics of the old 
 Mexican occupation, the Spanish missions, with their Chris 
 tianized Indians ; the wild tribes of the plains Apaches, 
 Utes, and Navajoes ; the Chinese coolies and washermen 
 all elements strange to the Atlantic seaboard and the states 
 of the interior. The gold-hunters crossed, in stages or cara 
 vans, enormous prairies, alkaline deserts dotted with sage 
 brush and seamed by deep canons, and passes through 
 gigantic mountain ranges. On the coast itself nature was 
 unfamiliar : the climate was subtropical ; fruits and vegeta 
 bles grew to a mammoth size, corresponding to the enor 
 mous redwoods in the Mariposa groves and the prodigious 
 scale of the scenery in the valley of the Yosemite and the 
 snowcapped peaks of the sierras. At first there were few 
 women, and the men led a wild, lawless existence in the 
 mining camps. Hard upon the heels of the prospector fol 
 lowed the dram-shop^ the gambling-hell, and the dance- 
 hall. Every man carried his "Colt," and looked out for 
 
Literature Since 1861. 207 
 
 his own life and his " claim." Crime went unpunished or 
 was taken in hand, when it got too rampant, by vigilance 
 committees. In the diggings shaggy frontiersmen and 
 " Pikes " from Missouri mingled with the scum of eastern 
 cities and with broken-down business men and young col 
 lege graduates seeking their fortune. Surveyors and geolo 
 gists came of necessity ; speculators in mining stock and 
 city lots set up their offices in the town ; later came a 
 sprinkling of school-teachers and ministers. Fortunes were 
 made in one day and lost the next at poker or loo. To-day Dramatic 
 the lucky miner who had struck a good " lead " was drink 
 ing champagne out of pails and treating the town ; to-mor 
 row he was " busted," and shouldered the pick for a new 
 onslaught upon his luck. This strange, reckless life was 
 not without fascination, and highly picturesque and dra 
 matic elements were present in it. It was, as Bret Harte 
 says, " an era replete with a certain heroic Greek poetry," 
 and sooner or later it was sure to find its poet. 
 
 During the war California remained loyal to the Union, 
 but was too far from the seat of conflict to experience 
 any serious disturbance, and went on independently de 
 veloping its own resources and becoming daily more civil 
 ized. By 1868 San Francisco had a literary magazine, The 
 Overland Monthly, which ran until 1875, and was revived in The overland 
 1883. It had a decided local flavor, and the vignette on its Monthl v- 
 title-page was a happily chosen emblem, representing a 
 grizzly bear crossing a railway track. In an early number 
 of the Overland was a story entitled " The Luck of Roaring 
 Camp," by Francis Bret Harte, a native of Albany, N. Y. B ret Harte. 
 (1835), who had come to California at the age of seventeen, 
 in time to catch the unique aspects of the life of the forty- 
 niners, before their vagabond communities had settled down 
 into the law-abiding society of the present day. His first 
 contribution was followed by other stories and sketches of a 
 
208 
 
 Initial Studies in American Letters. 
 
 His California 
 
 Romantic 
 character 
 istics. 
 
 Harte s skill 
 in narration. 
 
 kind, such as " The Outcasts of Poker Flat," "Mig- 
 gles," and " Tennessee s Partner "; and by verses, serious 
 and humorous, of which last, " Plain Language from Truth 
 ful James," better known as u The Heathen Chinee," made 
 an immediate hit, and carried its author s name into every 
 corner of the English-speaking world. In 1871 he published 
 a collection of his tales, another of his poems, and a volume 
 of very clever parodies, "Condensed Novels," which rank 
 with Thackeray s " Novels by Eminent Hands." 
 
 Bret Harte s California stories were vivid, highly colored 
 pictures of life in the mining camps and raw towns of the 
 Pacific coast. The pathetic and the grotesque went hand in 
 hand in them, and the author aimed to show how even in 
 the desperate characters gathered together there the for 
 tune-hunters, gamblers, thieves, murderers, drunkards, and 
 prostitutes the latent nobility of human nature asserted 
 itself in acts of heroism, magnanimity, self-sacrifice, and 
 touching fidelity. The same men who cheated at cards and 
 shot each other down with tipsy curses were capable on 
 occasion of the most romantic generosity and the most deli 
 cate chivalry. Critics were not wanting who held that, in 
 the matter of dialect and manners and other details, the 
 narrator was not true to the facts. This was a comparatively 
 unimportant charge ; but a more serious question was the 
 doubt whether his characters were essentially true to human 
 nature ; whether the wild soil of revenge and greed and 
 dissolute living ever yields such flowers of devotion as blos 
 som in " Tennessee s Partner "and " The Outcasts of Poker 
 Flat." However this may be, there is no question as to 
 Harte s power as a narrator. His short stories are skilfully 
 constructed and effectively told. They never drag, and are 
 never overladen with description, reflection, or other lum 
 ber. 
 
 In his poems in dialect we find the same variety of types 
 
Literature Since 1861. 209 
 
 and nationalities characteristic of the Pacific coast : the little 
 
 Mexican maiden, Pachita, in the old mission garden ; the 
 
 wicked Bill Nye, who tries to cheat the Heathen Chinee at 
 
 euchre and to rob Injin Dick of his winning lottery ticket ; Dialect poetry. 
 
 the geological society on the Stanislaw who settle their 
 
 scientific debates with chunks of old red sandstone and the 
 
 skulls of mammoths ; the unlucky Mr. Dow, who finally 
 
 strikes gold while digging a well, and builds a house with 
 
 a "coopilow"; and Flynn, of Virginia, who saves his 
 
 " pard s " life at the sacrifice of his own, by holding up the 
 
 timbers in the caving tunnel. These poems are mostly in 
 
 monologue, like Browning s dramatic lyrics, exclamatory 
 
 and abrupt in style, and with a good deal of indicated action, 
 
 as in "Jim," where a miner comes into a bar-room, looking 
 
 for his old chum, learns that he is dead, and is just turning 
 
 away to hide his emotion when he recognizes Jim in his 
 
 informant. 
 
 " Well, thar Good-bye- 
 No more, sir I 
 
 Eh? 
 
 What s that you say ? Dramatic 
 
 Why, dern it !-sho !- monologues. 
 
 No? Yes! By Jo! 
 
 Sold! 
 
 Sold ! Why, you limb ! 
 You ornery, 
 
 Denied old 
 Long-legged Jim ! " 
 
 Bret Harte had many imitators, and not only did our 
 newspaper poetry for a number of years abound in the prop 
 erties of Californian life, such as gulches, placers, divides, 
 etc., but writers farther east applied his method to other 
 conditions. Of these by far the most successful was John 
 Hay, a native of Indiana and private secretary to President 
 Lincoln, whose "Little Breeches," "Jim Bludso," and 
 "Mystery of Gilgal" have rivaled Bret Harte s own verses 
 
210 
 
 Initial Studies in American Letters. 
 
 Life in the 
 Southwest. 
 
 Other dialect 
 writers. 
 
 James Whit- 
 comb Riley. 
 
 in popularity. In the last named piece the reader is given 
 to feel that there is something rather cheerful and humorous 
 in a bar-room fight which results in " the gals that winter, 
 as a rule," going "alone to singing-school." In the two 
 former we have heroes of the Bret Harte type, the same 
 combination of superficial wickedness with inherent loyalty 
 and tenderness. The profane farmer of the Southwest, who 
 "doesn t pan out on the prophets," and who had taught 
 his little son " to chaw terbacker, just to keep his milk teeth 
 white," but who believes in God and the angels ever since 
 the miraculous recovery of the same little son when lost on 
 the prairie in a blizzard ; and the unsaintly and bigamistic 
 captain of the Prairie JSelle, who died like a hero, hold 
 ing the nozzle of his burning boat against the bank 
 
 " Till the last galoot s ashore." 
 
 The manners and dialect of other classes and sections of 
 the country have received abundant illustration of late 
 years. Edward Eggleston s " Hoosier Schoolmaster," 1871, 
 and his other novels are pictures of rural life in the early 
 days of Indiana. " Western Windows," a volume of poems 
 by John James Piatt, also a native of Indiana, had an un 
 mistakable local coloring. 
 
 Another Indiana poet, James Whitcomb Riley, has re 
 cently attained the rank of a really national poet. His 
 books sell by the hundred thousand, and his popularity 
 equals, if it does not exceed, that of the favorite Longfellow. 
 The contents of his first volume of poems in the Hoosier 
 dialect, "The Old Swimmin Hole and Leveii More 
 Poems," 1883, had originally appeared in the Indianapolis 
 Journal, and purported to be the contributions of Benj. F. 
 Johnson, a simple-hearted old Boone County farmer. This 
 quaint and friendly figure had an individuality as taking 
 as that of those other literary myths, Diedrich Knicker- 
 
Literature Since 1861. 211 
 
 bocker, Hosea Biglow, and Artemus Ward, without the 
 touch of caricature which made them all slightly unreal. 
 "Here s three oil s are sophisticated: thou art the thing 
 itself." The creator of Hosea Biglow lived to extend a 
 warm welcome to his youngest successor in the art of 
 homely idyllic verse ; and the venerable Dr. Holmes was 
 more interested in these Hoosier ballads than in any other 
 recent phenomenon in American literature. 
 
 Such poems as " Griggsby s Station," " The Airly Days," 
 and "When the Frost is on the Punkin," with their abso- Hoosier 
 lute sincerity and their mixture of tenderness and humor, 
 went straight to the heart of the people. They appealed to 
 country neighbors, and to all who had ever been country 
 boys and played hookey to go swimming, or fishing, or bird- 
 nesting, or stealing watermelons, or simply lying on the 
 orchard grass. There is an artless, catching sing-song in 
 Riley s meters which makes them a kind of glorified 
 Mother Goose Melodies. Pieces like "Little Orphant 
 Annie " and " The Raggedy Man " are as singable as Foster s 
 plantation songs and as poetic, in their interpretation of the 
 childish mind, as Stevenson s "A Child s Garden of Verses." 
 This union of lyric imagination with the lilt of the familiar 
 nursery rhyme may be illustrated from a single stanza. 
 
 "" An little Orphant Annie says, when the blaze is blue, 
 An the lampwick sputters, an the wind goes woo-oo ! 
 An you hear the crickets quit, an the moon is gray, 
 An the lightnin -bugs in dew is all squenched away, 
 You better mind yer parents, an yer teachers fond and dear, 
 An churish them at loves you, an dry the orphant s tear, 
 An he p the pore an needy ones at clusters all about, 
 Er the gobble-uns 11 git you 
 
 Ef you 
 
 Don t 
 
 Watch 
 
 Out!" 
 
 Riley s first volume has been followed by many others : 
 
212 
 
 Initial Studies in American Letters. 
 
 Sidney 
 Lanier. 
 
 " Uncle 
 Remus. 
 
 "Neighborly Poems, " Afterwhiles," "Pipes O Pan," 
 "Rhymes of Childhood," etc. In 1892 a selection of his- 
 poems was published in England with the title " Old- 
 Fashioned Roses." Although his pieces in dialect have 
 winning peculiarities, all their own, many of his verses in 
 classical English, such as " The South Wind and the Sun 1r 
 and " Afterwhiles," show that his poetry is not dependent 
 upon dialect for its highest effects. 
 
 Charles G. Leland, of Philadelphia, in his Hans Breit- 
 mann ballads, in dialect, gave a humorous presentation of 
 the German- American element in the cities. By the death, 
 in 1881, of Sidney Lanier, a Georgian by birth, the South 
 lost a poet of rare promise, whose original genius was some 
 what hampered by his hesitation between two arts of ex 
 pression, music and verse, and by his effort to coordinate 
 them. His "Science of English Verse," 1880, was a most 
 suggestive, though hardly convincing, statement of that 
 theory of their relation which he was working out in his 
 practice. Some of his pieces, like "The Mocking Bird" 
 and the " Song of the Chattahoochie," are the most charac 
 teristically southern poetry that has been written in 
 America. Joel Chandler Harris s " Uncle Remus " stories, 
 in negro dialect, are transcripts from the folk-lore of the- 
 plantation, while his collection of stories, "At Teague 
 Poteet s," together with Miss Murfree s " In the Tennessee 
 Mountains" and her other books, have made the northern 
 public familiar with the wild life of the "moonshiners," 
 who distil illicit whisky in the mountains of Georgia, 
 North Carolina, and Tennessee. These tales are not only 
 exciting in incident, but strong and fresh in their delinea 
 tions of character. Their descriptions of mountain scenery 
 are also impressive, though, in the case of the last-named 
 writer, frequently too prolonged. 
 
 George W. Cable s sketches of French Creole life in New 
 
Literature Since 1861. 213 
 
 Orleans attracted attention by their freshness and quaintness Cable . s stories 
 when published in the magazines and reissued in book form of Creolellfe - 
 as "Old Creole Days," in 1879. His first regular novel, 
 "The Grandissimes," 1880, was likewise a story of Creole 
 life. It had the same winning qualities as his short stories 
 and sketches, but was an advance upon them in dramatic 
 force, especially in the intensely tragic and powerfully told 
 episode of " Bras Coupe"." Mr. Cable has continued his 
 studies of Louisiana types and ways in his later books, but 
 " The Grandissimes " still remains his masterpiece. All in 
 all, he is, thus far, the most important literary figure of the 
 New South, and the justness and delicacy of his representa 
 tions of life speak volumes for the sobering and refining 
 agency of the Civil War in the states whose " cause " was 
 "lost," but whose true interests gained even more by the 
 loss than did the interests of the victorious North. 
 
 The four writers last mentioned have all come to the front 
 within the past fifteen years, and, in accordance with the 
 plan of this sketch, receive here a mere passing notice. It 
 remains to close our review of the literary history of the 
 period since the war with a somewhat more extended ac 
 count of the two favorite novelists whose work has done 
 more than anything else to shape the movement of recent 
 fiction. These are Henry James, Jr., and William Dean 
 Howells. Their writings, though dissimilar in some re 
 spects, are alike in this, that they are analytic in method 
 and realistic in spirit. Cooper was a romancer pure and Realistic 
 simple ; he wrote the romance of adventure and of external flction - 
 incident. Hawthorne went much deeper, and with a finer 
 spiritual insight dealt with the real passions of the heart 
 and with men s inner experiences. This he did with truth 
 and power ; but, although himself a keen observer of what 
 ever passed before his eyes, he was not careful to secure a 
 photographic fidelity to the surface facts of speech, dress, 
 
214 
 
 Initial Studies in American Letters. 
 
 The novel of 
 manners. 
 
 Absence of 
 plot. 
 
 and manners. Thus the talk of his characters is book-talk, 
 and not the actual language of the parlor or the street, with 
 its slang, its colloquial ease and the intonations and shad- 
 ings of phrase and pronunciation which mark different 
 sections of the country and different grades of society. His 
 attempts at dialect, for example, were of the slenderest kind. 
 His art is ideal, and his romances certainly do not rank as 
 novels of real life. But with the growth of a richer and 
 more complicated society in America, fiction has grown 
 more social and more minute in its observation. 
 
 It would not be fair to classify the novels of James and 
 Howells as the fiction of manners merely ; they are also the 
 fiction of character, but they aim to describe people not 
 only as they are, in their inmost natures, but also as they 
 look and talk and dress. They try to express character 
 through manners, which is the way in which it is most 
 often expressed in the daily existence of a conventional so 
 ciety. It is a principle of realism not to select exceptional 
 persons or occurrences, but to take average men and women 
 and their average experiences. The realists protest that the 
 moving incident is not their trade, and that the stories have 
 all been told. They want no plot and no hero. They will 
 tell no rounded tale with a denouement, in which all the 
 parts are distributed, as in the fifth act of an old-fashioned 
 comedy ; but they will take a transcript from life and end 
 when they get through, without informing the reader what 
 becomes of the characters. And they will try to interest 
 this reader in "poor real life" with its "foolish face." 
 Their acknowledged masters are Balzac, George Eliot, Tur- 
 ge"nieff, and Anthony Trollope, and they regard novels as 
 studies in sociology, honest reports of the writers impres 
 sions, which may not be without a certain scientific value 
 even. 
 
 Mr. James s peculiar province is the international novel, 
 
Literature Since 1861. 215 
 
 a field which he created for himself, but which he has occu- Henry James, 
 pied in company with Howells, Mrs. Burnett, and many Jr> 
 others. The novelist received most of his schooling in 
 Europe, and has lived much abroad, with the result that he 
 has become half denationalized and has engrafted a cosmo 
 politan indifference upon his Yankee inheritance. This, 
 indeed, has constituted his opportunity. A close observer 
 and a conscientious student of the literary art, he has added 
 to his intellectual equipment the advantage of a curious 
 doubleness in his point of view. He looks at America with 
 the eyes of a foreigner and at Europe with the eyes of an 
 American. He has so far thrown himself out of relation An inter . 
 with American life that he describes a Boston horse-car or 
 a New York hotel table with a sort of amused wonder. His 
 starting-point was in criticism, and he has always main 
 tained the critical attitude. He took up story-writing in 
 order to help himself, by practical experiment, in his chosen 
 art of literary criticism, and his volume on "French Poets 
 and Novelists," 1878, is by no means the least valuable of his 
 books. His short stories in the magazines were collected in- 
 to a volume in 1875, with the title, "A Passionate Pilgrim, 
 and Other Stories. " One or two of these, as " The Last of 
 theValerii" and " The Madonna of the Future," suggest 
 Hawthorne, a very unsympathetic study of whom James 
 afterward contributed to the "English Men of Letters" 
 series. But in the name-story of the collection he was al 
 ready in the line of his future development. This is the 
 story of a middle-aged invalid American who comes to Eng 
 land in search of health, and finds, too late, in the mellow 
 atmosphere of the mother-country, the repose and the con 
 genial surroundings which he has all his life been longing "A Passionate 
 for in his raw America. The pathos of his self-analysis and 
 his confession of failure is subtly imagined. The impres 
 sions which he and his far-away English kinsfolk make on 
 
216 
 
 Initial Studies in American Letters. 
 
 Delicate art. 
 
 Analytic 
 method. 
 
 "Daisy 
 Miller." 
 
 one another, their mutual attraction and repulsion, are de 
 scribed with that delicate perception of national differences 
 which makes the humor and sometimes the tragedy of 
 James s later books, like " The American," "Daisy Mil 
 ler," "The Europeans," and "An International Episode." 
 His first novel was "Roderick Hudson," 1876, not the 
 most characteristic of his fictions, but perhaps the most 
 powerful in its grasp of elementary passion. The analytic 
 method and the critical attitude have their dangers in im 
 aginative literature. In proportion as this writer s faculty 
 of minute observation and his realistic objectivity have in 
 creased upon him, the uncomfortable coldness which is felt 
 in his youthful work has become actually disagreeable, and 
 his art growing constantly finer and surer in matters of 
 detail has seemed to dwell more and more in the region of 
 mere manners and less in the higher realm of character and 
 passion. In most of his writings the heart, somehow, is 
 left out. We have seen that Irving, from his knowledge of 
 England and America, and his long residence in both coun 
 tries, became the mediator between the two great branches 
 of the Anglo-Saxon race. This he did by the power of his 
 sympathy with each. Henry James has likewise inter 
 preted the two nations to one another in a subtler but less 
 genial fashion than Irving, and not through sympathy, but 
 through contrast, by bringing into relief the opposing ideals 
 of life and society which have developed under different in 
 stitutions. In his novel, "The American," 1877, he has 
 shown the actual misery which may result from the clash 
 ing of opposed social systems. In such clever sketches as 
 "Daisy Miller," 1879, " The Pension Beaurepas," and "A 
 Bundle of Letters," he has exhibited types of the American 
 girl, the American business man, the aesthetic feebling from 
 Boston, and the Europeanized or would-be denationalized 
 American campaigners in the Old World, and has set forth 
 
Literature Since 1861. 217 
 
 the ludicrous incongruities, perplexities, and misunder 
 standings which result from contradictory standards of con- contradictory 
 ventional morality and behavior. In "The Europeans," social ideals * 
 1879, "Lady Barbarina," and "An International Episode," 
 1888, he has reversed the process, bringing Old World stand 
 ards to the test of American ideas by transferring his dram 
 atis personce to republican soil. The last named of these il 
 lustrates how slender a plot realism requires for its purposes. 
 It is nothing more than the history of an English girl of 
 good family who marries an American gentleman and un 
 dertakes to live in America, but finds herself so uncomfort 
 able in strange social conditions that she returns to Eng 
 land for life, while, contrariwise, the heroine s sister is so 
 taken with the freedom of these very conditions that she 
 elopes with another American and " goes West." James is 
 a keen observer of the physiognomy of cities as well as of 
 men, and his "Portraits of Places," 1884, is among the 
 most delightful contributions to the literature of foreign 
 travel. 
 
 Mr. Howells s writings are not without "international " 
 touches. In "A Foregone Conclusion" and "The Lady of William Dean 
 the Aroostook," and others of his novels, the contrasted Howells - 
 points of view in American and European life are intro 
 duced, and especially those variations in feeling, custom, 
 and dialect, which make the modern Englishman and 
 the modern American such objects of curiosity to each 
 other, and which have been dwelt upon of late even unto 
 satiety. But in general he finds his subjects at home, and 
 if he does not know his own countrymen and country 
 women more intimately than Mr. James, at least he loves 
 them better. There is a warmer sentiment in his fictions, 
 
 too ; his men are better fellows and his women are more 
 
 A novelist of 
 lovable. Howells was born in Ohio. His early life was American life. 
 
 that of a western country editor. In 1860 he published, 
 
218 
 
 Initial Studies in American Letters. 
 
 "A Chance Ac- 
 
 jointly with his friend Piatt, a book of verse " Poems of 
 Two Friends." In 1861 he was sent as consul to Venice, 
 and the literary results of his sojourn there appeared in his 
 sketches, "Venetian Life," 1865, and "Italian Journeys," 
 1867. In 1871 he became editor of the Atlantic Monthly, 
 and in the same year published his " Suburban Sketches." 
 Early sketches All of these early volumes showed a quick eye for the pic 
 turesque, an unusual power of description, and humor of 
 the most delicate quality ; but as yet there was little ap 
 proach to narrative. "Their Wedding Journey" was a 
 revelation to the public of the interest that may lie in an 
 ordinary bridal trip across the state of New York, when a 
 close and sympathetic observation is brought to bear upon 
 the characteristics of American life as it appears at railway 
 stations and hotels, on steamboats and in the streets of very 
 commonplace towns. "A Chance Acquaintance," 1873, was 
 Ho wells s first novel, though even yet the story was set 
 against a background of travel-pictures. A holiday trip 
 on the St. Lawrence and the Saguenay, with descriptions 
 of Quebec and the Falls of Montmorenci, rather predomi 
 nated over the narrative. Thus, gradually and by a natural 
 process, complete characters and realistic novels, such as 
 "A Modern Instance," 1882, and "Indian Summer," 
 evolved themselves from truthful sketches of places and 
 persons seen by the way. 
 
 The incompatibility existing between European and 
 American views of life, which makes the comedy or the 
 tragedy of Henry James s international fictions, is replaced 
 in Howells s .novels by the repulsion between differing 
 social grades in the same country. The adjustment of these 
 subtle distinctions forms a part of the problem of life in all 
 com pii ca t e d societies. Thus in "A Chance Acquaintance " 
 the heroine is a bright and pretty western girl, who be 
 comes engaged during a pleasure tour to an irreproachable 
 
 The adjust- 
 
 ttheme. 
 
Literature Since 1861. 219 
 
 but offensively priggish young gentleman from Boston, and 
 the engagement is broken by her in consequence of an un 
 intended slight the betrayal on the hero s part of a shade 
 of mortification when he and his betrothed are suddenly 
 brought into the presence of some fashionable ladies belong- The Rise of 
 ing to his own monde. The little comedy, "Out of the ham. ^ ap " 
 Question," deals with this same adjustment of social 
 scales ; and in many of Howells s other novels, such as 
 " Silas Lapham " and a The Lady of the Aroostook," one 
 of the main motives may be described to be the contact of 
 the man who eats with his fork with the man who eats 
 with his knife, and the shock thereby ensuing. In Indian 
 Summer" the complications arise from the difference in 
 age between the hero and heroine, and not from a differ 
 ence in station or social antecedents. In all of these fic 
 tions the misunderstandings come from an incompatibility 
 of manners rather than of character, and, if anything 
 were to be objected to the probability of the story, it is that Sottve? 6 " f 
 the climax hinges on delicacies and subtleties which, in 
 real life, when there is opportunity for explanations, are 
 readily brushed aside. But in "A Modern Instance" 
 Howells touched the deeper springs of action. In this, his instance." 
 strongest work, the catastrophe is brought about, as in 
 George Eliot s great novels, by the reaction of characters 
 upon one another, and the story is realistic in a higher 
 sense than any mere study of manners can be. 
 
 His nearest approach to romance is in " The Undiscovered 
 Country," 1880, which deals with the Spiritualists and the 
 Shakers, and in its study of problems that hover on the 
 borders of the supernatural, in its out-of-the-way personages 
 and adventures, and in a certain ideal poetic flavor about the 
 whole book, has a strong resemblance to Hawthorne, es 
 pecially to Hawthorne in "The Blithedale Romance," 
 where he comes closer to common ground with other ro- 
 
Initial Studies in American Letters. 
 
 "TheUndis- mancers. It is interesting to compare " The Undiscovered 
 t?y?nd C "The Country" with Henry James s " Bostonians," the latest 
 ?ompared. S " and one of the cleverest of his fictions, which is likewise a 
 study of the clairvoyants, mediums, woman s rights advo 
 cates, and all varieties of cranks, reformers, and patrons of 
 "causes," for whom Boston has long been notorious. A 
 most unlovely race of people they become under the cold 
 scrutiny of Mr. James s cosmopolitan eyes, which see more 
 clearly the charlatanism, narrow-mindedness, mistaken 
 fanaticism, morbid self-consciousness, disagreeable nervous 
 intensity, and vulgar or ridiculous outside peculiarities of 
 the humanitarians, than the nobility and moral enthusiasm 
 which underlie the surface. 
 
 Howe! Is is almost the only successful American dramatist 
 wnose pl avs are a l so literature. His field is parlor comedy. 
 His little farces, "The Elevator," "The Register," "The 
 Parlor-Car," have a lightness and grace, with an exqui 
 sitely absurd situation, which remind us more of the 
 "Comedies et Proverbes " of Alfred de Musset, or the many 
 agreeable dialogues and monologues of the French domestic 
 stage, than of any work of English or American hands. His 
 softly ironical yet affectionate treatment of feminine ways 
 is especially admirable. In his numerous types of sweetly 
 illogical, inconsistent, and inconsequent womanhood he has 
 perpetuated with a nicer art than Dickens what Thackeray 
 calls " that great discovery," Mrs. Nickleby. 
 
 1. THEODORE WINTHBOP : "Life in the Open Air"; 
 " Cecil Dreeme." 
 
 2. THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON : " Life in a Black 
 Regiment." 
 
 3. " Poetry of the Civil War." Edited by Richard Grant 
 White. New York : 1866. 
 
 4. CHARLES FARRAR BROWNE : " Artemus Ward His 
 
Literature Since 1861. 221 
 
 Book " ; u Lecture on the Mormons " ; " Artemus Ward in 
 London." 
 
 5. SAMUEL LANGHORNE CLEMENS : " The Jumping 
 Frog " ; " Roughing It" ; " The Mississippi Pilot." 
 
 6. CHARLES GODFREY LELAND : " Hans Breitmann s 
 Ballads." 
 
 7. EDWARD EVERETT HALE : "If, Yes, and Perhaps " ; 
 " His Level Best, and Other Stories." 
 
 8. FRANCIS BRET HARTE : " Outcasts of Poker Flat, and 
 Other Stories"; "Condensed Novels"; "Poems in Dia 
 lect." 
 
 9. SIDNEY LANIER : " Nirvana " ; " Resurrection "; "The 
 Harlequin of Dreams" ; "Song of the Chattahoochie " ; 
 "The Mocking Bird"; " The Stirrup-Cup "; "Tampa 
 Robins"; "The Bee"; "The Revenge of Hamish " ; 
 " The Ship of Earth " ; " The Marshes of Glynn " ; " Sun 
 rise." 
 
 10. HENRY JAMES, JR. : "A Passionate Pilgrim " ; " Rod 
 erick Hudson " ; " Daisy Miller " ; " Pension Beaurepas " ; 
 "A Bundle of Letters "; "An International Episode"; 
 "The Bostonians " ; " Portraits of Places." 
 
 11. WILLIAM DEAN HOWELLS : " Their Wedding Jour 
 ney " ; " Suburban Sketches " ; " A Chance Acquaintance "; 
 " A Foregone Conclusion " ; " The Undiscovered Country"; 
 "A Modern Instance." 
 
 12. GEORGE W. CABLE : " Old Creole Days " ; " Madame 
 Delphine " ; " The Grandissimes." 
 
 13. JOEL CHANDLER HARRIS : " Uncle Remus " ; " Min- 
 go, and Other Sketches." 
 
 14. CHARLES EGBERT CRADDOCK (Miss MURFREE) : "In 
 the Tennessee Mountains." 
 
 15. JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY : " Neighborly Poems " ; 
 "Afterwhiles " ; " Rhymes of Childhood." 
 
APPENDIX. 
 
APPENDIX. 
 
 COTTON MATHER. 
 
 CAPTAIN PHIPS AND THE SPANISH WRECK. 
 [From " Magnalia Christ! Americana."] 
 
 CAPTAIN PHIPS, arriving with a ship and a tender at Port de 
 la Plata, made a stout canoe of a stately cotton-tree, so large 
 as to carry eight or ten oars, for the making of which periaga 
 (as they call it) he did, with the same industry that he did 
 everything else, employ his own hand and adze, and endure no 
 little hardship, lying abroad in the woods many nights to 
 gether. This periaga with the tender, being anchored at a 
 place convenient, the periaga kept busking to and again,* but 
 could only discover a reef of rising shoals thereabouts, called 
 " The Boilers," which, rising to be within two or three feet of the 
 surface of the sea, were yet so steep that a ship striking on them 
 would immediately sink down, who could say how many 
 fathom, into the ocean. Here they could get no other pay for 
 their long peeping among the Boilers, but only such as caused 
 them to think upon returning to their captain with the bad 
 news of their total disappointment. Nevertheless, as they were 
 upon their return, one of the men, looking over the side of the 
 periaga into the calm water, he spied a sea-feather growing, as 
 he judged, out of a rock ; whereupon he bade one of their In 
 dians to dive and fetch this feather, that they might, however, 
 carry home something with them, and make at least as fair a 
 triumph as Caligula s.f The diver, bringing up the feather, 
 brought therewithal a surprising story, that he perceived a 
 number of great guns in the watery world where he had found 
 his feather ; the reportj of which great guns exceedingly as 
 tonished the whole company, and at once turned their despond 
 encies for their ill success into assurances that they had now 
 
 * Passing to and fro. 
 
 t The Roman emperor who invaded Britain unsuccessfully and made 
 his legionaries gather sea-shells to bring back with them as evidences 
 of victory. 
 
 I One of Mather s puns. 
 
 225 
 
U26 Initial Studies in American Letters. 
 
 lit upon the true spot of ground which they had been looking 
 for ; and they were further confirmed in these assurances when, 
 upon further diving, the Indian fetched up a sow, as they 
 styled it, or a lump of silver worth perhaps two or three hun 
 dred pounds. Upon this they prudently buoyed the place that 
 they might readily find it again ; and they went back unto their 
 captain, whom for some while they distressed with nothing but 
 such bad news as they formerly thought they must have car 
 ried him. Nevertheless, they so slipped in the sow of silver 
 on one side under the table, where they were now sitting with 
 the captain, and hearing him express his resolutions to wait still 
 patiently upon the providence of God under these disappoint 
 ments, that when he should look on one side he might see that 
 odd thing before him. At last he saw it. Seeing it he cried out 
 with some agony, " Why, what is this ? Whence comes this? " 
 And then, with changed countenances, they told him how and 
 where they got it. " Then," said he, " thanks be to God ! We 
 are made " ; and so away they went, all hands to work ; wherein 
 they had this one further piece of remarkable prosperity, that 
 whereas if they had first fallen upon that part of the Spanish 
 wreck where the pieces of eight* had been stowed in bags 
 among the ballast they had seen a more laborious and less en 
 riching time of it ; now, most happily, they first fell upon that 
 room in the wreck where the bullion had been stored up ; and 
 they so prospered in this new fishery that in a little while they 
 had, without the loss of any man s life, brought up thirty-two 
 tuns of silver ; for it was now come to measuring of silver by 
 tuns. Besides which, one Adderly, of Providence, who had 
 formerly been very helpful to Captain Phips in the search of 
 this wreck, did, upon former agreement, meet him now with a 
 little vessel here ; and he, with his few hands, took up about six 
 tuns of silver ; whereof, nevertheless, he made so little use that 
 in a year or two he died at Bermudas, and, as I have heard, he 
 ran distracted some while before he died. 
 
 Thus did there once again come into the light of the sun a 
 treasure which had been half an hundred years groaning under 
 the waters ; and in this time there was grown upon the plate a 
 crust-like limestone, to the thickness of several inches ; which 
 crust being broken open by iron contrived for that purpose, 
 they knocked out whole bushels of rusty pieces of eight which 
 were grown thereinto. Besides that incredible treasure of 
 plate in various forms thus fetched up from seven or eight 
 
 * Spanish piasters, formerly divided into eight reals. The piaster = 
 an American dollar. 
 
Jonathan Edwards. 227 
 
 fathom under water, there were vast riches of gold, and pearls, 
 and jewels, which they also lit upon ; and indeed, for a more 
 comprehensive invoice, I must but summarily say, "All that a 
 Spanish frigate uses to be enriched withal." 
 
 JONATHAN EDWARDS. 
 
 THE BEAUTY OF HOLINESS. 
 [From the author s Personal Narrative.] 
 
 HOLINESS, as I then wrote down some of my contemplations 
 on it, appeared to me to be of a sweet, pleasant, charming, se 
 rene, calm nature; which brought an inexpressible purity, 
 brightness, peacefulness, and ravishment to the soul. In other 
 words, that it made the soul like a field or garden of God, with 
 all manner of pleasant flowers ; enjoying a sweet calm and the 
 gently vivifying beams of the sun. The soul of a true Christian, 
 as I then wrote my meditations, appeared like such a little white 
 flower as we see in the spring of the year ; low and humble on 
 the ground, opening its bosom to receive the pleasant beams of 
 the sun s glory ; rejoicing, as it were, in a calm rapture ; diffus 
 ing around a sweet fragrancy ; standing peacefully and lovingly 
 in the midst of other flowers round about ; all in like manner 
 opening their bosoms to drink in the light of the sun. There 
 was no part of creature-holiness that I had so great a sense of 
 its loveliness as humility, brokenness of heart, and poverty of 
 spirit ; and there was nothing that I so earnestly longed for. 
 My heart panted after this to lie low before God, as in the 
 dust ; that I might be nothing, and that God might be all ; that 
 I might become as a little child. 
 
 THE WRATH OF GOD. 
 [From " Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God."] 
 
 UNCONVERTED men walk over the pit of hell on a rotten 
 covering, and there are innumerable places in this covering so 
 weak that they will not bear their weight, and these places are 
 not seen. The arrows of death fly unseen at noonday; the 
 sharpest sight cannot discern them. God has so many different, 
 unsearchable ways of taking wicked men out of the world and 
 sending them to hell that there is nothing to make it appear that 
 God had need to be at the expense of a miracle, or go out of the 
 ordinary course of his providence, to destroy any wicked man 
 at any moment. . . . Your wickedness makes you as it were 
 heavy as lead and to tend downward with great weight and 
 
228 Initial Studies in American Letters. 
 
 pressure toward hell ; and, if God should let you go, you would 
 immediately sink and swiftly descend and plunge into the bot 
 tomless gulf, and your healthy constitution, and your own care 
 and prudence, and best contrivance, and all your righteousness, 
 would have no more influence to uphold you and keep you out 
 of hell than a spider s web world have to stop a falling rock. 
 . . . There are the black clouds of God s wrath now hanging di 
 rectly over your heads, full of the dreadful storm and big with 
 thunder ; and were it not for the restraining hand of God it 
 would immediately burst forth upon you. The sovereign pleas 
 ure of God, for the present, stays his rough wind ; otherwise it 
 would come with fury, and your destruction would come like a. 
 whirlwind, and you would be like the chaff of the summer 
 threshing-floor. The wrath of God is like great waters that are- 
 dammed for the present ; they increase more and more, and rise^ 
 higher and higher, till an outlet is given ; and the longer the^ 
 stream is stopped, the more rapid and mighty is its course when 
 once it is let loose. . . . 
 
 Thus it will be with you that are in an unconverted state, if 
 you continue in it ; the infinite might and majesty and terrible- 
 ness of the omnipotent God shall be magnified upon you in the 
 ineffable strength of your torments ; you shall be tormented in 
 the presence of the holy angels and in the presence of the Lamb ; 
 and, when you shall be in this state of suffering, the glorious in 
 habitants of heaven shall go forth and look on the awful specta 
 cle, that they may see what the wrath and fierceness of the- 
 Almighty is ; and when they have seen it they will fall down 
 and adore that great power and majesty. " And it shall come to- 
 pass, that from one moon to another, and from one Sabbath to 
 another, shall all flesh come to worship before me, saith the> 
 Lord. And they shall go forth and look upon the carcasses of 
 the men that have transgressed against me ; for their worm- 
 shall not die, neither shall their fire be quenched, and they shall 
 be an abhorring unto all flesh." 
 
 It is everlasting wrath. It would be dreadful to suffer this, 
 fierceness and wrath of Almighty God one moment ; but you. 
 must suffer it to all eternity ; there will be no end to this exqui 
 site, horrible misery ; when you look forward you shall see a 
 long forever, a boundless duration, before you, which will swal 
 low up your thoughts and amaze your soul ; and you will abso 
 lutely despair of ever having any deliverance, any end, any 
 mitigation, any rest at all ; you will know certainly that you 
 must wear out long ages, millions of millions of ages, in wrest 
 ling and conflicting with this almighty merciless vengeance ; 
 and then, when you have so done, when so many ages have- 
 
.Benjamin Franklin. 229 
 
 actually been spent by you in this manner, you will know that 
 all is but a point to what remains. So that your punishment 
 will indeed be infinite. . . . If we knew that there was one per 
 son, and but one, in the whole congregation, that was to be the 
 subject of this misery, what an awful thing it would be to think 
 of! If we knew who it was, what an awful sight would it be to 
 see such a person ! How might all the rest of the congregation 
 lift up a lamentable and bitter cry over him ! But alas ! Instead 
 of one, how many is it likely will remember this discourse in 
 hell ! And it would be a wonder if some that are now present 
 .should not be in hell in a very short time, before this year is out. 
 And it would be no "wonder if some persons, that now sit here 
 in some seats of this meeting-house in health, and quiet, and 
 secure, should be there before to-morrow morning. 
 
 BENJAMIN FRANKLIN. 
 
 FRANKLIN S ARRIVAL AT PHILADELPHIA. 
 [From " The Life of Benjamin Franklin, Written by Himself."] 
 
 I WAS in my working dress, my best clothes being to come 
 round by sea. I was dirty from my journey ; my pockets were 
 stuffed out with shirts and stockings, and I knew no soul nor 
 where to look for lodging. I was fatigued with traveling, row 
 ing, and want of rest ; I was very hungry ; and my whole stock 
 of cash consisted of a Dutch dollar and about a shilling in cop 
 per. The latter I gave the people of the boat for my passage, 
 who at first refused it, on account of my rowing ; but I insisted 
 on their taking it, a man being sometimes more generous when 
 he has but a little money than when he has plenty, perhaps 
 through fear of being thought to have but little. 
 
 Then I walked up the street, gazing about, till near the mar 
 ket-house I met a boy with bread. I had made many a meal on 
 bread, and, inquiring where he got it, I went immediately to 
 the baker s he directed me to, in Second Street, and asked for 
 biscuit, intending such as we had in Boston ; but they, it seems, 
 were not made in Philadelphia. Then I asked for a three-penny 
 loaf, and was told they had none such. So, not considering or 
 knowing the difference of money, and the greater cheapness, 
 nor the names of his bread, I had him give me three-penny 
 worth of any sort. He gave me, accordingly, three great puffy 
 rolls. I was surprised at the quantity, but took it, and, having 
 no room in my pockets, walked off with a roll under each arm, 
 and eating the other. Thus I went up Market Street as far as 
 Fourth Street, passing by the door of Mr. Read, my future wife s 
 
230 Initial Studies in American Letters. 
 
 father, when she, standing at the door, saw me, and thought I 
 made, as I certainly did, a most awkward, ridiculous appear 
 ance. Then I turned and went down Chestnut Street and part 
 of Walnut Street, eating my roll all the way and, coming round, 
 found myself again at Market Street wharf, near the boat I came 
 in, to which I went for a draught of the river water ; and, be 
 ing filled with one of my rolls, gave the other two to a woman 
 and her child that came down the river in the boat with us, and 
 were waiting to go farther. 
 
 Thus refreshed, I walked again up the street, which by this 
 time had many clean-dressed people in it, who were all walking 
 the same way. I joined them, and thereby was led into the 
 great meeting-house of the Quakers near the market. I sat 
 down among them, and, after looking round awhile and hear 
 ing nothing said, being very drowsy through labor and want of 
 rest the preceding night, I fell fast asleep, and continued so till 
 the meeting broke up, when one was kind enough to rouse me. 
 This was, therefore, the first house I was in, or slept in, in Phila 
 delphia. 
 
 Walking down again toward the river, and looking in the 
 faces of the people, I met a young Quaker man whose counte 
 nance I liked, and, accosting him, requested he would tell me 
 where a stranger could get lodging. We were near the sign of 
 the Three Mariners. * * Here, says he, " is one place that enter 
 tains strangers, but it is not a reputable house ; if thee wilt walk 
 with me, I ll show thee a better." He brought me to the 
 Crooked Billet in Water Street. Here I got a dinner. 
 
 PAYING TOO DEAR FOB THE WHISTLE. 
 [From Correspondence with Madame Britton.] 
 
 I AM charmed with your description of Paradise, and with 
 your plan of living there ; and I approve much of your conclus 
 ion, that, in the meantime, we should draw all the good we can 
 from this world. In my opinion we might all draw more good 
 from it than we do, and suffer less evil, if we would take care 
 not to give too much for whistles, for to me it seems that most of 
 the unhappy people we meet with are become so by neglect of 
 that caution. 
 
 You ask what I mean ? You love stories, and will excuse my 
 telling one of myself. 
 
 When I was a child of seven years old my friends, on a holi 
 day, filled my pocket with coppers. I went directly to a shop 
 where they sold toys for children, and, being charmed with the 
 sound of a whistle, that I met by the way in the hands of another 
 
Philip Freneau. 231 
 
 boy, I voluntarily offered and gave all my money for one. I 
 then came home, and went whistling all over the house, much 
 pleased with my whistle, but disturbing all the family. My 
 brothers and sisters and cousins, understanding the bargain I 
 had made, told me I had given four times as much for it as it 
 was worth ; put me in mind what good things I might have 
 bought with the rest of the money, and laughed at me so much 
 for my folly that I cried with vexation ; and the reflection gave 
 rno more chagrin than the whistle gave me pleasure. 
 
 This, however, was afterwards of use to me, the impression 
 continuing on my mind ; so that often when I was tempted to 
 buy some unnecessary thing, I said to myself, Don t give too 
 much for the whistle ; and I saved my money. 
 
 As I grew up, came into the world, and observed the actions 
 of men, I thought I met with many, very many, who gave too 
 much for the whistle. 
 
 When I saw one too ambitious of court favor, sacrificing his 
 time in attendance on levees, his repose, his liberty, his virtue, 
 and perhaps his friends to attain it, I have said to myself, This 
 man gives too much for his whistle. 
 
 When I saw another fond of popularity, constantly employ 
 ing himself in political bustles, neglecting his own affairs, and 
 ruining them by that neglect, He pays, indeed, said I, too much 
 for his whistle. . . c 
 
 If I see one fond of appearance or fine clothes, fine houses, 
 fine furniture, fine equipages, all above his fortune, for which 
 he contracts debts and ends his career in a prison, Alas f say I, 
 he has paid dear, very dear, for his whistle. . . . 
 
 In short, I conceive that a great part of the miseries of man 
 kind are brought upon them by the false estimates they have 
 made of the value of things and by their giving too much for 
 their whistles. 
 
 Yet I ought to have charity for these unhappy people, when I 
 consider that with all this wisdom of which I am boasting, 
 there are certain things in the world so tempting, for example, 
 the apples of King John, which happily are not to be bought; 
 for if they were put to sale by auction I might very easily be 
 led to ruin myself in the purchase, and find that I had once 
 more given too much for the whistle. 
 
 PHILIP FRENEAU. 
 THE INDIAN BURYING-GROUND. 
 
 IN SPITE of all the learned have said, 
 I still my old opinion keep : 
 
232 Initial Studies in American Letters. 
 
 The posture that we give the dead 
 Points out the soul s eternal sleep. 
 
 Not so the ancients of these lands : 
 The Indian, when from life released, 
 
 Again is seated with his friends, 
 And shares again the joyous feast. 
 
 His imaged birds and painted bowl 
 And venison, for a journey dressed, 
 
 Bespeak the nature of the soul, 
 Activity that knows no rest. 
 
 His bow for action ready bent, 
 And arrows with a head of stone, 
 
 Can only mean that life is spent, 
 And not the finer essence gone. 
 
 Thou, stranger, that shalt come this way, 
 No fraud upon the dead commit 
 
 Observe the swelling turf and say, 
 They do not lie, but here they sit. 
 
 Here still a lofty rock remains, 
 On which the curious eye may trace 
 
 (Now wasted half by wearing rains) 
 The fancies of a ruder race. 
 
 Here still an aged elm aspires, 
 Beneath whose far-projecting shade 
 
 (And which the shepherd still admires) 
 The children of the forest played. 
 
 There oft a restless Indian queen 
 (Pale Sheba with her braided hair) 
 
 And many a barbarous form is seen 
 To chide the man that lingers there. 
 
 By midnight moons, o er moistening dews, 
 In vestments for the chase arrayed, 
 
 The hunter still the deer pursues, 
 The hunter and the deer a shade ! 
 
 And long shall timorous Fancy see 
 The painted chief and pointed spear, 
 
 And Reason s self shall bow the knee 
 To shadows and delusions here. 
 
Daniel Webster. 233 
 
 DANIEL WEBSTER. 
 
 THE UNION. 
 
 [From the " Reply to Hayne, January 25, 1830.] 
 
 I PROFESS, sir, in my career hitherto, to have kept steadily in 
 view the prosperity and honor of the whole country, and the 
 preservation of our Federal Union. It is to that Union we owe 
 our safety at home and our consideration and dignity abroad. It 
 is to that Union that we are chiefly indebted for whatever makes 
 us most proud of our country. That Union we reached only 
 by the discipline of our virtues in the severe school of adversity. 
 It had its origin in the necessities of disordered finance, pros 
 trate commerce, and ruined credit. Under its benign influences 
 these great interests immediately awoke as from the dead and 
 sprang forth with newness of life. Every year of its duration 
 has teemed with fresh proofs of its utility and its blessings ; and 
 although our territory has stretched out wider and wider and 
 our population spread farther and farther, they have not out 
 run its protection or its benefits. It has been to us all a copious 
 fountain of national, social, and personal happiness. 
 
 I have not allowed myself, sir, to look beyond the Union to 
 see what might lie hidden in the dark recess behind. I have 
 not coolly weighed the chances of preserving liberty when the 
 bonds that unite us together shall be broken asunder. I have 
 not accustomed myself to hang over the precipice of disunion to 
 see whether with my short sight I can fathom the depth of the 
 abyss below ; nor could I regard him as a safe counselor in the 
 affairs of this government whose thoughts should be mainly 
 bent on considering not how the Union may be best preserved, 
 but how tolerable might be the condition of the people when it 
 should be broken up and destroyed. While the Union lasts we 
 have high, exciting, gratifying prospects spread out before us, 
 for us and our children. Beyond that I seek not to penetrate the 
 veil. God grant that in my day at least that curtain may not 
 rise ! God grant that on my vision never may be opened what 
 lies beyond ! When my eyes shall be turned to behold for the 
 last time the sun in heaven, may I not see him shining on the 
 broken and dishonored fragments of a once glorious Union ; on 
 states dissevered, discordant, belligerent ; on a land rent with 
 civil feuds, or drenched, it may be, in fraternal blood ! Let their 
 last feeble and lingering glance rather behold the gorgeous ensign 
 of the republic, now known and honored throughout the earth, 
 still full high advanced, its arms and trophies streaming in their 
 original luster, not a stripe erased or polluted, not a single star 
 obscured, bearing for its motto no such miserable interrogatory 
 
234 Initial Studies in American Letters. 
 
 as " What is all this worth ? " nor those other words of delusion 
 and folly, "Liberty first and Union afterwards" ; but every 
 where, spread all over in characters of living light, blazing on 
 all its ample folds as they float over the sea and over the land, 
 and in every wind under the whole heavens, that other senti 
 ment dear to every true American heart Liberty and Union, 
 now and forever, one and inseparable ! 
 
 SOUTH CAROLINA AND MASSACHUSETTS. 
 [From the same.] 
 
 When I shall be found, sir, in my place here in the Senate, or 
 elsewhere, to sneer at public merit because it happens to spring 
 up beyond the little limits of my own state or neighborhood ; 
 when I refuse, for any such cause, or for any cause, the homage 
 due to American talent, to elevated patriotism, to sincere de 
 votion to liberty and the country ; or, if I see an uncommon en 
 dowment of Heaven, if I see extraordinary capacity and virtue, 
 in any son of the South ; and if, moved by local prejudices or 
 gangrened by state jealousy, I get up here to abate the tithe of a 
 hair from his just character and just fame, may my tongue 
 cleave to the roof of my mouth ! 
 
 Sir, let me recur to pleasing recollections ; let me indulge in 
 refreshing remembrances of the past ; let me remind you that, 
 in early times, no states cherished greater harmony, both of 
 principle and feeling, than Massachusetts and South Carolina. 
 Would to God that harmony might again return ! Shoulder to 
 shoulder they went through the Revolution, hand in hand they 
 stood round the administration of Washington, and felt his own 
 great arm lean on them for support. Unkind feeling, if it exist, 
 alienation, and distrust are the growth, unnatural to such soils, of 
 false principles since sown. They are weeds, the seeds of which 
 that same great arm never scattered. 
 
 Mr. President, I shall enter upon no encomium of Massachu 
 setts ; she needs none. There she is. Behold her and judge for 
 yourselves. There is her history ; the world knows it by heart. 
 The past, at least, is secure. There is Boston and Concord, and 
 Lexington, and Bunker Hill ; and there they will remain for 
 ever. The bones of her sons, falling in the great struggle for in 
 dependence, now lie mingled with the soil of every state from 
 New England to Georgia, and there they will lie forever. And, 
 sir, where American liberty raised its first voice, and where its 
 youth was nurtured and sustained, there it still lives, in the 
 strength of its manhood, and full of its original spirit. If dis 
 cord and disunion shall wound it, if party strife and blind am- 
 
Washington Irving. 235 
 
 bition shall hawk at and tear it, if folly and madness, if uneasi 
 ness under salutary and necessary restraint shall succeed in 
 separating it from that Union by which alone its existence is 
 made sure, it will stand, in the end, by the side of that cradle in 
 which its infancy was rocked ; it will stretch forth its arm with 
 whatever of vigor it may still retain, over the friends who gather 
 round it ; and it will fall at last, if fall it must, amidst the pro- 
 foundest monuments of its own glory, and on the very spot of 
 its origin. 
 
 WASHINGTON IRVING. 
 
 THE STORM SHIP. 
 [From "Bracebridge Hall."] 
 
 IN THE golden age of the province of the New Netherlands, 
 when under the sway of Wouter Van Twiller, otherwise called 
 the Doubter, the people of the Manhattoes were alarmed one 
 sultry afternoon, just about the time of the summer solstice, by 
 a tremendous storm of thunder and lightning. The ram fell in 
 such torrents as absolutely to spatter up and smoke along the 
 ground. It seemed as if the thunder rattled and rolled over the 
 very roofs of the houses ; the lightning was seen to play about 
 the Church of St. Nicholas, and to strive three times in vain to 
 strike its weather-cock. Garrett Van Home s new chimney 
 was split almost from top to bottom ; and Boffne Mildeberger 
 Avas struck speechless from his bald-faced mare just as he was 
 riding into town. . . . At length the storm abated ; the thunder 
 sank into a growl, and the setting sun, breaking from under the 
 fringed borders of the clouds, made the broad bosom of the bay 
 to gleam like a sea of molten gold. 
 
 The word was given from the fort that a ship was standing up 
 the bay. . . . She was a stout, round, Dutch-built vessel, with 
 high bow and poop, and bearing Dutch colors. The evening sun 
 gilded her bellying canvas as she came riding over the long 
 waving billows. The sentinel who had given notice of her ap 
 proach declared that he first got sight of her when she was in 
 the center of the bay ; and that she broke suddenly on his sight 
 just as if she had come out of the bosom of the black thunder 
 clouds. . . . The ship was now repeatedly hailed, but made no 
 reply, and, passing by the fort, stood on up the Hudson. A gun 
 was brought to bear on her, and, with some difficulty, loaded 
 and fired by Hans Van Pelt, the garrison not being expert in ar 
 tillery. The shot seemed absolutely to pass through the ship, 
 and to skip along the water on the other side ; but no notice was 
 
236 Initial Studies in American Letters. 
 
 taken of it ! What was strange, she had all her sails set, and 
 sailed right against wind and tide, which were both down the 
 river. . . . Thus she kept on, away up the river, lessening and 
 lessening in the evening sunshine, until she faded from sight 
 like a little white cloud melting away in the summer sky. . . . 
 
 Messengers were dispatched to various places on the river, but 
 they returned without any tidings the ship had made no port. 
 Day after day, week after week elapsed, but she never returned 
 down the Hudson. As, however, the council seemed solicitous 
 for intelligence they had it in abundance. The captains of the 
 sloops seldom arrived without bringing some report of having 
 seen the strange ship at different parts of the river sometimes 
 near the Palisades, sometimes off Croton Point, and sometimes in 
 the Highlands. But she never was reported as having been seen 
 above the Highlands. The crews of the sloops,it is true, generally 
 differed among themselves in their accounts of these apparitions ; 
 but that may have arisen from the uncertain situations in which 
 they saw her. Sometimes it was by the flashes of the thunder 
 storm lighting up a pitchy night, and giving glimpses of her 
 careering across Tappan Zee or the wide waste of Haverstraw 
 Bay. At one moment she would appear close upon them, as if 
 likely to run them down, and would throw them into great 
 bustle and alarm ; but the next flash would show her far off, 
 always sailing against the wind. Sometimes, in quiet moon 
 light nights, she would be seen under some high bluff of the 
 Highlands, all in deep shadow, excepting her topsails glittering 
 in the moonbeams ; by the time, however, that the voyagers 
 reached the place no ship was to be seen ; and when they had 
 passed on for some distance and looked back, behold ! there she 
 was again with her topsails in the moonshine ! Her appearance 
 was always just after or just in the midst of unruly weather ; 
 and she was known among the skippers and voyagers of the 
 Hudson by the name of " The Storm Ship." 
 
 These reports perplexed the governor and his council more 
 than ever ; and it would be useless to repeat the conjectures and 
 opinions uttered on the subject. Some quoted cases in point of 
 ships seen off the coast of New England navigated by witches 
 and goblins. Old Hans Yan Pelt, who had been more than 
 once to the Dutch colony at the Cape of Good Hope, insisted 
 that this must be the Flying Dutchman which had so long 
 haunted Table Bay, but being unable to make port had now 
 sought another harbor. Others suggested that if it really was a 
 supernatural apparition, as there was every natural reason to 
 believe, it might be Hendrik Hudson and his crew of the Half- 
 Moon, who, it was well known, had once run aground in the 
 
Washington Irving. 237 
 
 upper part of the river in seeking a northwest passage to China. 
 This opinion had very little weight with the governor, but it 
 passed current out of doors ; for indeed it had always been re 
 ported that Hendrik Hudson and his crew haunted the Kaats- 
 kill Mountains ; and it appeared very reasonable to suppose that 
 his ship might infest the river where the enterprise was baffled, 
 or that it might bear the shadowy crew to their periodical revels 
 in the mountain. . . . 
 
 People who live along the river insist that they sometimes see 
 her in summer moonlight, and that in a deep still midnight they 
 have heard the chant of her crew, as if heaving the lead ; but 
 sights and sounds are so deceptive along the mountainous 
 shores, and about the wide bays and long reaches of this great 
 river, that I confess I have very strong doubts upon the subject. 
 It is certain, nevertheless, that strange things have been seen in 
 these Highlands in storms, which are considered as connected 
 with the old story of the ship. The captains of the river crafD 
 talk of a little bulbous-bottomed Dutch goblin, in trunk hose 
 and sugar-loafed hat, with a speaking-trumpet in his hand, 
 which, they say, keeps about the Dunderberg. They declare 
 that they have heard him, in stormy weather, in the midst of 
 the turmoil, giving orders in Low Dutch for the piping up of a 
 fresh gust of wind or the rattling off of another thunder-clap ; 
 that sometimes he has been seen surrounded by a crew of little 
 imps in broad breeches and short doublets, tumbling head-over- 
 heels in the rack and mist, and playing a thousand gambols in 
 the air, or buzzing like a swarm of flies about Anthony s Nose ; 
 and that, at such times, the hurry-scurry of the storm was al 
 ways greatest. One time a sloop, in passing by the Dunderberg, 
 was overtaken by a thunder-gust that came scouring around 
 the mountain, and seemed to burst just over the vessel. Though 
 tight and well ballasted she labored dreadfully, and the water 
 came over the gunwale. All the crew were amazed when it 
 was discovered that there was a little white sugar-loaf hat on the 
 mast-head, known at once to be the hat of the Herr of the Dun 
 derberg. Nobody, however, dared to climb to the mast-head 
 and get rid of this terrible hat. The sloop continued laboring 
 and rocking, as if she would have rolled her mast overboard, 
 and seemed in continual danger either of upsetting or of run 
 ning on shore. In this way she drove quite through the High 
 lands, until she had passed PollopoPs Island, where, it is said, 
 the jurisdiction of the Dunderberg potentate ceases. No sooner 
 had she passed this bourn than the little hat spun up into the air 
 like a top, whirled up all the clouds into a Vortex, and hurried 
 them back to the summit of the Dunderberg, while the sloop 
 
238 Initial Studies in American Letters. 
 
 righted herself and sailed on as quietly as if in a mill-pond. 
 Nothing saved her from utter wreck but the fortunate circum 
 stance of having a horse-shoe nailed against the mast a wise 
 precaution against evil spirits, since adopted by all the Dutch 
 captains that navigate this haunted river. 
 
 JAMES FENIMORE COOPER. 
 
 THE RENDEZVOUS. 
 [From " The Deerslayer."] 
 
 IN THE position in which the ark had now got, the castle was 
 concealed from view by the projection of a point, as, indeed, 
 was the northern extremity of the lake itself. A respectable 
 mountain, forest-clad, and rounded like all the rest, limited the 
 view in that direction, stretching immediately across the whole 
 of the fair scene, ~ :f5 with the exception of a deep bay that passed 
 its western end, lengthening the basin for more than a mile. The 
 manner in which the water flowed out of the lake, beneath the 
 leafy arches of the trees that lined the sides of the stream, has 
 already been mentioned, and it has also been said that the rock, 
 which was a favorite place of rendezvous throughout all that re 
 gion, and where Deerslayer now expected to meet his friend, 
 stood near this outlet and no great distance from the shore. It 
 was a large isolated stone that rested on the bottom of the lake, 
 apparently left there when the waters tore away the earth from 
 around it, in forcing for themselves a passage down the river, 
 and which had obtained its shape from the action of the ele 
 ments during the slow progress of centuries. The height of this 
 rock could scarcely equal six feet, and, as has been said, its shape 
 was not unlike that which is usually given to bee-hives or to a 
 hay-cock. The latter, indeed, gives the best idea, not only of 
 its form, but of its dimensions. It stood, and still stands, for 
 we are writing of real scenes, within fifty feet of the bank, and 
 in water that was only two feet in depth, though there were 
 seasons in which its rounded apex, if such a term can properly 
 be used, was covered by the lake. Many of the trees stretched 
 so far forward as almost to blend the rock with the shore, when 
 seen from a little distance ; and one tall pine in particular over 
 hung it in a way to form a noble and appropriate canopy to a 
 seat that had held many a forest chieftain, during the long suc 
 cession of ages in which America and all it contained existed 
 apart in mysterious solitude, a world by itself, equally without 
 
 * Otsego Lake. 
 
James Fenimore Cooper. 239 
 
 a familiar history and without an origin that the annals of man 
 can catch. 
 
 When distant some two or three hundred feet from the shore 
 Deerslayer took in his sail, and he dropped his grapnel as soon 
 as he found the ark had drifted in a line that was directly to 
 windward of the rock. The motion of the scow was then 
 checked, when it was brought head to wind by the action of the 
 breeze. As soon as this was done Deerslayer "paid out line, * 
 and suffered the vessel to " set down " upon the rock as fast as 
 the light air would force it to leeward. Floating entirely on the 
 surface, this was soon effected, and the young man checked the 
 drift when he was told that the stern of the scow was within 
 fifteen or eighteen feet of the desired spot. 
 
 In executing this maneuver, Deerslayer had proceeded 
 promptly; for while he did not in the least doubt that he was both 
 watched and followed by the foe, he believed he had distracted 
 their movements by the apparent uncertainty of his own, and he 
 knew they could have no means of ascertaining that the rock 
 was his aim, unless, indeed, one of the prisoners had betrayed 
 him a chance so improbable in itself as to give him no concern. 
 Notwithstanding the celerity and decision of his movements, 
 he did not, however, venture so near the shore without taking 
 due precautions to effect a retreat in the event of its becoming 
 necessary. He held the line in his hand, and Judith was 
 stationed at a loop on the side of the cabin next the shore, 
 where she could watch the beach and the rocks and give timely 
 notice of the approach of either friend or foe. Hetty was also 
 placed on watch, but it was to keep the trees overhead in view, 
 lest some enemy might ascend one, and, by completely com 
 manding the interior of the scow, render the defense of the hut 
 or cabin useless. 
 
 The sun had disappeared from the lake and valley when Deer- 
 slayer checked the ark in the manner mentioned. Still it 
 wanted a few minutes to the true sunset, and he knew Indian 
 punctuality too well to anticipate any unmanly haste in his 
 friend. The great question was, whether, surrounded by ene 
 mies as he was known to be, he had escaped their toils. The 
 occurrences of the last twenty-four hours must be a secret to 
 him, and, like himself, Chingachgook was yet young on a war 
 path. It was true he came prepared to encounter the party that 
 withheld his promised bride, but he had no means of ascertain 
 ing the extent of the danger he ran or the precise positions occu 
 pied by either friends or foes. In a word, the trained sagacity 
 and untiring caution of an Indian were all he had to rely on 
 amid the critical risks he unavoidably ran. 
 
240 Initial Studies in American Letters. 
 
 "Is the rock empty, Judith?" inquired Deerslayer as soon 
 as he had checked the drift of the ark, deeming it imprudent 
 to venture unnecessarily near. " Is anything to be seen of the 
 Delaware chief?" 
 
 "Nothing, Deerslayer. Neither rock, shore, tree, nor lake 
 seems to have ever held a human form." 
 
 "Keep close, Judith keep close, Hetty a rifle has a prying 
 eye, a nimble foot, and a desperate, fatal tongue. Keep close, 
 then, but keep up active looks, and be on the alart. T would 
 grieve me to the heart did any -harm befall either of you." 
 
 "And you, Deerslayer ! " exclaimed Judith, turning her hand 
 some face from the loop, to bestow a gracious and grateful look 
 on the young man; "do 2/ow keep close and have a proper 
 care that the savages do not catch a glimpse of you ! A bullet 
 might be as fatal to you as to one of us, and the blow that you 
 felt would be felt by all." 
 
 " No fear of me, Judith no fear of me, my good gal. Do not 
 look this-a-way, although you look so pleasant and comely, but 
 keep your eyes on the rock and the shore and the" 
 
 Deerslayer was interrupted by a slight exclamation from the 
 girl, who, in obedience to his hurried gestures, as much as in 
 obedience to his words, had immediately bent her looks again 
 in the opposite direction. 
 
 What is t ? what is t, Judith ? " he hastily demanded. Is 
 anything to be seen ? " 
 
 " There is a man on the rock ! an Indian warrior in his paint, 
 and armed ! " 
 
 "Where does he wear his hawk s feather?" eagerly added 
 Deerslayer, relaxing his hold of the line, in readiness to drift 
 nearer to the place of rendezvous. " Is it fast to the warlock, or 
 does he carry it above the left ear ? " 
 
 " Tis as you say, above the left ear ; he smiles, too, and mut 
 ters the word * Mohican. " 
 
 " God be praised, tis the Sarpent at last ! " exclaimed the 
 young man, suffering the line to slip through his hands until, 
 hearing a light bound in the other end of the craft, he instantly 
 checked the rope and began to haul it in again under the 
 assurance that his object was effected. 
 
 At that moment the door of the cabin was opened hastily, and 
 a warrior darting through the little room stood at Deerslayer s 
 side, simply uttering the exclamation " Hugh ! " At the next 
 instant Judith and Hetty shrieked, and the air was filled with 
 the yell of twenty savages, who came leaping through the 
 branches down the bank, some actually falling headlong into 
 the water in their haste. 
 
William Cullen Bryant. 241 
 
 "Pull, Deerslayer," cried Judith, hastily barring the door, 
 in order to prevent an inroad by the passage through which the 
 Delaware had just entered ; " pull for life and death the lake 
 is full of savages wading after us ! " 
 
 The young men for Chingachgook immediately came to his 
 friend s assistance needed no second bidding, but they applied 
 themselves to their task in a way that showed how urgent they 
 deemed the occasion. The great difficulty was in suddenly 
 overcoming the vis inertice of so large a mass ; for, once in 
 motion, it was easy to cause the scow to skim the water with all 
 the necessary speed. 
 
 * Pull, Deerslayer, for heaven s sake ! " cried Judith, again at 
 the loop. " These wretches rush into the water like hounds 
 following their prey ! Ah ! The scow moves ! And now the 
 water deepens to the armpits of the .foremost ; still they rush 
 forward and will seize the ark ! " 
 
 A slight scream and then a joyous laugh followed from the 
 girl ; the first produced by a desperate effort of their pursuers, 
 and the last by its failure ; the scow, which had now got fairly 
 in motion, gliding ahead into deep water with a velocity that 
 set the designs of their enemies at naught. As the twx> men 
 were prevented by the position of the cabin from seeing what 
 passed astern, they were compelled to inquire of the girls inta 
 the state of the chase. 
 
 " What now, Judith ? what next ? Do the Mingoes still fol 
 low, or are we quit of em for the present ?" demanded Deer- 
 slayer when he felt the rope yielding, as if the scow was going 
 fast ahead, and heard the scream and the laugh of the girl 
 almost in the same breath. 
 
 " They have vanished ! one, the last, is just burying himself 
 in the bushes of the bank there ! he has disappeared in the 
 shadows of the trees ! You have got your friend, and we are 
 all safe ! " 
 
 WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT. 
 
 To A WATERFOWL. 
 
 WHITHER, midst falling dew, 
 
 While glow the heavens with the last steps of day, 
 Far, through their rosy depths, dost thou pursue 
 
 Thy solitary way ? 
 
 Vainly the fowler s eye 
 
 Might mark thy distant flight to do thee wrong, 
 As, darkly seen against the crimson sky, 
 
 Thy figure floats along. 
 
242 Initial Studies in American Letters. 
 
 Seek st thou the plashy brink 
 Of weedy lake, or marge of river wide, 
 
 Or where the rocking billows rise and sink 
 On the chafed ocean-side ? 
 
 There is a power whose care 
 
 Teaches thy way along that pathless coast 
 The desert and illimitable air 
 
 Lone wandering, but not lost. 
 
 All day thy wings have fanned, 
 
 At that far height, the cold, thin atmosphere, 
 Yet stoop not, weary, to the welcome land, 
 
 Though the dark night is near. 
 
 And soon that toil shall end ; 
 
 Soon shalt thou find a summer home, and rest, 
 And scream among thy fellows ; reeds shall bend, 
 
 Soon, o er thy sheltered nest. 
 
 Thou rt gone, the abyss of heaven 
 i Hath swallowed up thy form ; yet, on my heart 
 Deeply hath sunk the lesson thou hast given, 
 And shall not soon depart : 
 
 He who, from zone to zone, 
 
 Guides through the boundless sky thy certain flight, 
 In the long way that I must tread alone, 
 
 Will lead my steps aright. 
 
 THE DEATH OF THE FLOWERS. 
 
 THE melancholy days are come, 
 
 The saddest of the year, 
 Of wailing winds and naked \voods, 
 
 And meadows brown and sere. 
 Heaped in the hollows of the grove, 
 
 The autumn leaves lie dead ; 
 They rustle to the eddying gust, 
 
 And to the rabbit s tread ; 
 The robin and the wren are flown, 
 
 And from the shrubs the jay, 
 And from the wood-top calls the crow 
 
 Through all the gloomy day. 
 
 Where are the flowers, the fair young flowers, 
 That lately sprang and stood 
 
William Cullen Bryant. 243 
 
 In brighter light and softer airs, 
 
 A beauteous sisterhood ? 
 Alas ! they all are in their graves ; 
 
 The gentle race of flowers 
 Are lying in their lowly beds 
 
 With the fair and good of ours. 
 The rain is falling where they lie, 
 
 But the cold November rain 
 Calls not from out the gloomy earth 
 
 The lovely ones again. 
 
 The wind-flower and the violet, 
 
 They perished long ago, 
 And the brier- rose and the orchis died 
 
 Amid the summer glow ; 
 But on the hill the golden-rod, 
 
 And the aster in the wood, 
 And the yellow sunflower by the brook 
 
 In autumn beauty stood, 
 Till fell the frost from the clear cold heaven, 
 
 As falls the plague on men, 
 And the brightness of their smile was gone 
 
 From upland, glade, and glen. 
 
 And now when comes the calm, mild day, 
 
 As still such days will come, 
 To call the squirrel and the bee 
 
 From out their winter home ; 
 When the sound of dropping nuts is heard, 
 
 Though all the trees are still, 
 And twinkle in the smoky light 
 
 The waters of the rill ; 
 The south wind searches for the flowers 
 
 Whose fragrance late he bore, 
 And sighs to find them in the wood 
 
 And by the stream no more. 
 
 And then I think of one who in 
 
 Her youthful beauty died, 
 The fair meek blossom that grew up 
 
 And faded by my side. 
 In the cold, moist earth we laid her, 
 
 When the forest cast the leaf, 
 And we wept that one so lovely 
 
 Should have a life so brief; 
 Yet not unmeet it was that one, 
 
244 Initial Studies in American Letters. 
 
 Like that young friend of ours, 
 So gentle and so beautiful, 
 Should perish with the flowers. 
 
 THE UNIVERSAL. TOMB. 
 [From " Thanatopsis."] 
 
 YET not to thine eternal resting-place 
 
 Shalt thou retire alone nor could st thou wish 
 
 Couch more magnificent. Thou shalt lie down 
 
 With patriarchs of the infant world with kings, 
 
 The powerful of the earth the wise, the good, 
 
 Fair forms, and hoary seers of ages past, 
 
 All in one mighty sepulcher. The hills, 
 
 Rock-ribb d and ancient as the sun ; the vales 
 
 Stretching in pensive quietness between ; 
 
 The venerable woods ; rivers that move 
 
 In majesty, and the complaining brooks 
 
 That make the meadows green ; and, poured round all, 
 
 Old Ocean s gray and melancholy waste 
 
 Are but the solemn decorations all 
 
 Of the great tomb of man ! The golden sun, 
 
 The planets, all the infinite host of heaven, 
 
 Are shining on the sad abodes of death, 
 
 Through the still lapse of ages. All that tread 
 
 The globe are but a handful to the tribes 
 
 That slumber in its bosom. Take the wings 
 
 Of morning, traverse Barca s desert sands, 
 
 Or lose thyself in the continuous woods 
 
 Where rolls the Oregon, and hears no sound 
 
 Save his own dashings yet, the dead are there J 
 
 And millions in those solitudes, since first 
 
 The flight of years began, have laid them down 
 
 In their last sleep the dead reign there alone ! 
 
 So live, that when thy summons comes to join 
 The innumerable caravan which moves 
 To that mysterious realm, where each shall take 
 His chamber in the silent halls of death, 
 Thou go not like the quarry-slave at night, 
 Scourged to his dungeon, but, sustained and soothed 
 By an unfaltering trust, approach thy grave 
 Like one who wraps the drapery of his couch 
 About him, and lies down to pleasant dreams. 
 
Ralph Waldo Emerson. 245 
 
 RALPH WALDO EMERSON. 
 
 NATURE S MINISTRY OF BEAUTY. 
 [From " Nature."] 
 
 To SPEAK truly, few adult persons can see nature. Most per 
 sons do not see the sun. At least they have a very superficial 
 seeing. The sun illuminates only tb e eye of the man, but shines 
 into the eye and the heart of the child. The lover of nature is 
 he whose inward and outward senses are still truly adjusted to 
 each other ; who has retained the spirit of infancy even into the 
 era of manhood. His intercourse with heaven and earth be 
 comes part of his daily food. In the presence of nature a wild 
 delight runs through the man, in spite of real sorrows. Nature 
 says, He is my creature, and mauger all his impertinent griefs, 
 he shall be glad with me. Not the sun or the summer alone, 
 but every hour and season yields its tribute of delight ; for every 
 hour and change corresponds to and authorizes a different state 
 of the mind, from breathless noon to grimmest midnight. Na 
 ture is a setting that fits equally well a comic or a mourning 
 piece. In good health, the air is a cordial of incredible virtue. 
 Crossing a bare common, in snow puddles, at twilight, under a 
 clouded sky, without having in my thoughts any occurrence of 
 special good fortune, I have enjoyed a perfect exhilaration. I 
 am glad to the brink of fear. In the "woods, too, a man casts off 
 his years, as the snake his slough, and at what period soever of 
 life is always a child. In the woods is perpetual youth. With 
 in these plantations of God a decorum and sanctity reigns, a per 
 ennial festival is dressed, and the guest sees not how he should 
 tire of them in a thousand years. In the woods we return to 
 reason and faith. There I feel that nothing can befall me in life 
 no disgrace, no calamity (leaving me my eyes), which nature 
 cannot repair. Standing on the bare ground my head bathed 
 by the blithe air, and uplifted into infinite space all mean ego 
 tism vanishes, I become a transparent eyeball ; I am nothing ; I 
 see all ; the currents of the Universal Being circulate through 
 me ; I am part or particle of God. The name of the nearest 
 friend sounds there foreign and accidental ; to be brothers, to be 
 acquaintances master or servant, is then a trifle and a disturb 
 ance. I am the lover of uncontained and immortal beauty. In 
 the wilderness I find something more dear and connate than in 
 streets or villages. In the tranquil landscape, and especially in 
 the distant line of the horizon, man beholds somewhat as beauti 
 ful as his own nature. 
 
 The greatest delight which the fields and woods minister is 
 the suggestion of an occult relation between man and the vege- 
 
246 Initial Studies in American Letters. 
 
 table. I am not alone and unacknowledged. They nod to me, 
 and I to them. The waving of the boughs in the storm is new 
 to me and old. It takes me by surprise, and yet is not un 
 known. . . . 
 
 I see the spectacle of morning from the hilltop over against 
 my house, from daybreak to sunrise, with emotions which an 
 angel might share. The long slender bars of cloud float like 
 fishes in the sea of crimson light. From the earth, as a shore, 
 I look out into that silent sea. I seem to partake its rapid trans 
 formations : the active enchantment reaches my dust, and I 
 dilate and conspire with the morning wind. How does Nature 
 deify us with a few and cheap elements ! Give me health and a 
 day, and I will make the pomp of emperors ridiculous. The 
 dawn is my Assyria ; the sunset and moonrise my Paphos, and 
 unimaginable realms of faerie ; broad noon shall be my England 
 of the senses and the understanding ; the night shall be my 
 Germany of mystic philosophy and dreams. 
 
 Not less excellent, except for our less susceptibility in the 
 afternoon, was the charm, last evening, of a January sunset. 
 The western clouds divided and subdivided themselves into 
 pink flakes modulated with tints of unspeakable softness ; and 
 the air had so much life and sweetness that it was a pain to come 
 within doors. What was it that Nature would say ? Was there 
 no meaning in the live repose of the valley behind the mill, and 
 which Homer or Shakespeare could not re-form for me in words ? 
 The leafless trees become spires of flame in the sunset, with the 
 blue east for their background, and the stars of the dead calices 
 of flowers, and every withered stem and stubble rimed with 
 frost, contribute something to the mute music. 
 
 IDEALISM. 
 [From the same.] 
 
 To THE senses and the unrenewed understanding belongs a 
 sort of instinctive belief in the absolute existence of nature. In 
 their view man and nature are indissolubly joined. Things are 
 ultimates, and they never look beyond their sphere. The pres 
 ence of Reason mars this faith. . . . Nature is made to conspire 
 with spirit to emancipate us. Certain mechanical changes, a 
 small alteration in our local position, apprise us of a dualism. 
 We are strangely affected by seeing the shore from a moving 
 ship, from a balloon, or through the tints of an unusual sky. 
 The least change in our point of view gives the whole world a 
 pictorial air. A man who seldom rides needs only to get into a 
 coach and traverse his own town, to turn the street into a puppet- 
 
Ralph Waldo Emerson. 247 
 
 show. The men, the women talking, running, bartering, 
 fighting the earnest mechanic, the lounger, the beggar, the 
 boys, the dogs, are unrealized at once, or at least wholly detached 
 from all relation to the observer, and seen as apparent, not sub 
 stantial, beings. What new thoughts are suggested by seeing a 
 face of country quite familiar, in the rapid movement of the 
 rail way car ! Nay, the most wonted objects (make a very slight 
 change in the point of vision) please us most. In a camera ob- 
 scura the butcher s cart and the figure of one of our own fam 
 ily amuse us. So a portrait of a well-known face gratifies us. 
 Turn the eyes upside down, by looking at the landscape through 
 your legs, and how agreeable is the picture, though you have 
 seen it any time these twenty years ! 
 
 In these cases, by mechanical means, is suggested the differ 
 ence between the observer and the spectacle, between the man 
 and nature. Hence arises a pleasure mixed with awe ; I may 
 say, a low degree of the sublime is felt from the fact, probably, 
 that man is hereby apprised, that whilst the world is a spectacle, 
 something in himself is stable. 
 
 THE RHODORA.* 
 
 IN MAY, when sea-winds pierced our solitudes, 
 I found the fresh Rhodora in the woods, 
 Spreading its leafless blooms in a damp nook, 
 To please the desert and the sluggish brook 
 The purple petals, fallen in the pool, 
 Made the black water with their beauty gay ; 
 Here might the red-bird come his plumes to cool, 
 And court the flower that cheapens his array. 
 Rhodora ! if the sages ask thee why 
 This charm is wasted on the earth and sky, 
 Tell them, dear, that if eyes were made for seeing, 
 Then Beauty is its own excuse for being : 
 Why thou wert there, O rival of the rose, 
 I never thought to ask, I never knew : 
 But, in my simple ignorance, suppose 
 The self-same power that brought me there brought you. 
 
 HYMN. 
 
 [Sung at the completion of the Concord Monument, April 19, 1836.] 
 BY THE rude bridge that arched the flood, 
 
 Their flag to April s breeze unfurled, 
 Here once the embattled farmers stood, 
 
 And fired the shot heard round the world. 
 
 *On being asked, "Whence is the flower? 
 
248 Initial Studies in American Letters. 
 
 The foe long since in silence slept ; 
 
 Alike the conqueror silent sleeps ; 
 And time the ruined bridge has swept 
 
 Down the dark stream which seaward creeps. 
 
 On this green bank, by this soft stream, 
 
 We set to-day a votive stone ; 
 That memory may their deed redeem, 
 
 When, like our sires, our sons are gone. 
 
 Spirit, that made those heroes dare 
 To die, and leave their children free, 
 
 Bid time and nature gently spare 
 The shaft we raise to them and thee. 
 
 NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE. 
 
 THE HAUNTED MIND. 
 
 WHAT a singular moment is the first one, when you have hard 
 ly begun to recollect yourself, after starting from midnight slum 
 ber ! By unclosing your eyes so suddenly you seem to have 
 surprised the personages of your dream in full convocation 
 round your bed and catch one broad glance at them before they 
 can flit into obscurity. Or, to vary the metaphor, you find 
 yourself, for a single instant, wide awake in that realm of illu 
 sions whither sleep has been the passport, and behold its ghost 
 ly inhabitants and wondrous scenery with a perception of their 
 strangeness such as you never attain while the dream is undis 
 turbed. The distant sound of a church clock is borne faintly on 
 the wind. You question with yourself, half seriously, whether 
 it has stolen to your waking ear from some gray tower that 
 stood within the precincts of your dream. While yet in sus 
 pense, another clock flings its heavy clang over the slumbering 
 town with so full and distinct a sound, and such a long murmur 
 in the neighboring air, that you are certain it must proceed from 
 the steeple at the nearest corner. You count the strokes one- 
 two, and there they cease, with a booming sound, like the 
 gathering of a third stroke within the bell. 
 
 If you could choose an hour of wakefulness out of the whole 
 night it would be this. Since your sober bed-time, at eleven, 
 you have had rest enough to take off the pressure of yesterday s 
 fatigue ; while before you till the sun comes from " far Cathay " 
 to brighten your window there is almost the space of a sum 
 mer night ; one hour to be spent in thought, with the mind s 
 eye half shut, and two in pleasant dreams, and two in that 
 
Nathaniel Hawthorne. 249 
 
 strangest of enjoyments, the forgetfulness alike of joy and woe. 
 The moment of rising belongs to another period of time, and 
 appears so distant that the plunge out of a warm bed into the 
 frosty air cannot yet be anticipated with dismay. Yesterday 
 has already vanished among the shadows of the past ; to-mor 
 row has not yet emerged from the future. You have found an 
 intermediate space, where the business of life does not intrude, 
 where the passing moment lingers and becomes truly the pres 
 ent ; a spot where Father Time, when he thinks nobody is 
 watching him, sits down by the wayside to take breath. O 
 that he would fall asleep and let mortals live on without grow 
 ing older ! 
 
 Hitherto you have lain perfectly still, because the slightest 
 motion would dissipate the fragments of your slumber. Now, 
 being irrevocably awake, you peep through the half-drawn win 
 dow-curtain and observe that the glass is ornamented with 
 fanciful devices in frost work, and that each pane presents some 
 thing like a frozen dream. There will be time enough to trace 
 out the analogy while waiting the summons to breakfast. Seen 
 through the clear portion of the glass, where the silvery moun 
 tain peaks of the frost scenery do not ascend, the most conspicu 
 ous object is the steeple, the white spire of which directs you to 
 the wintry luster of the firmament. You may almost dis 
 tinguish the figures on the clock that has just tolled the hour. 
 Such a frosty sky, and the snow-covered roofs, and the long 
 vista of the frozen street, all white, and the distant water hard 
 ened into rock, might make you shiver, even under four blan 
 kets and a woolen comforter. Yet look at that one glorious 
 star ! Its beams are distinguishable from all the rest, and actu 
 ally cast the shadow of the casement on the bed with a radiance 
 of deeper hue than moonlight, though not so accurate an out 
 line. 
 
 You sink down and muffle your head in the clothes, shiver 
 ing all the while, but less from bodily chill than the bare idea 
 of a polar atmosphere. It is too cold even for the thoughts to 
 venture abroad. You speculate on the luxury of wearing out a 
 whole existence in bed, like an oyster in its shell, content with 
 the sluggish ecstasy of inaction, and drowsily conscious of noth 
 ing but delicious warmth, such as you now feel again. Ah ! 
 that idea has brought a hideous one in its train. You think how 
 the dead are lying in their cold shrouds and narrow coffins 
 through the drear winter of the grave, and cannot persuade your 
 fancy that they neither shrink nor shiver when the snow is drift 
 ing over their little hillocks and the bitter blast howls against 
 the door of the tomb. That gloomy thought will collect a gloomy 
 
250 Initial Studies in American Letters. 
 
 multitude and throw its complexion over your wakeful hour. 
 
 In the depths of every heart there is a tomb and a dungeon, 
 though the lights, the music, and revelry above may cause us to 
 forget their existence, and the buried ones or prisoners whom 
 they hide. But sometimes, and oftenest at midnight, these dark 
 receptacles are flung wide open. In an hour like this, when the 
 mind has a passive sensibility, but no active strength ; when the 
 imagination is a mirror, imparting vividness to all ideas with 
 out the power of selecting or controlling them, then pray that 
 your griefs may slumber and the brotherhood of remorse not 
 break their chain. It is too late ! A funeral train comes gliding 
 by your bed, in which Passion and Feeling assume bodily shape 
 and things of the mind become dim specters to the eye. There 
 is your earliest Sorrow, a pale young mourner, wearing a sis 
 ter s likeness to first love, sadly beautiful, with a hallowed 
 sweetness in her melancholy features and grace in the flow of 
 her sable robe. Next appears a shade of ruined loveliness, with 
 dust among her golden hair and her bright garments all faded 
 and defaced, stealing from your glance with drooping head, as 
 fearful of reproach ; she was your fondest Hope, but a delusive 
 one ; so call her Disappointment now. A sterner form succeeds, 
 with a brow of wrinkles, a look and gesture of iron authority ; 
 there is no name for him unless it be Fatality, an emblem of the 
 evil influence that rules your fortunes ; a demon to whom you 
 subjected yourself by some error at the outset of life, and were 
 bound his slave forever, by once obeying him. See! those 
 fiendish lineaments graven on the darkness, the writhed lip of 
 scorn, the mockery of that living eye, the pointed finger, touch 
 ing the sore place in your heart ! Do you remember any act of 
 enormous folly, at which you would blush, even in the remotest 
 cavern of the earth ? Then recognize your Shame. 
 
 Pass, wretched band ! Well for the wakeful one if, riotously 
 miserable, a fiercer tribe do not surround him, the devils of a 
 guilty heart, that holds its hell within itself. What if Remorse 
 should assume the features of an injured friend? What if the 
 fiend should come in woman s garments, with a pale beauty 
 amid sin and desolation, and lie down by your side? What if 
 he should stand at your bed s foot, in the likeness of a corpse, 
 with a bloody stain upon the shroud ? Sufficient without such 
 guilt is this nightmare of the soul ; this heavy, heavy sinking of 
 the spirits ; this wintry gloom about the heart ; this indistinct 
 horror of the mind, blending itself with the darkness of the 
 chamber. . . . Now comes the peal of the distant clock, with 
 fainter and fainter strokes as you plunge farther into the wilder 
 ness of sleep. It is the knell of the temporary death. Your 
 
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. 251 
 
 spirit has departed, and strays like a free citizen, among the 
 people of a shadowy world, beholding strange sights, yet with 
 out wonder or dismay. So calm, perhaps, will be the final 
 change ; so undisturbed, as if among familiar things, the en 
 trance of the soul to its eternal home ! 
 
 HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW. 
 THE BELEAGUERED CITY. 
 
 I HAVE read, in some old marvelous tale, 
 Some legend strange and vague, 
 
 That a midnight host of specters pale 
 Beleaguered the walls of Prague. 
 
 Beside the Moldau s rushing stream, 
 
 With the wan moon overhead, 
 There stood, as in an awful dream, 
 
 The army of the dead. 
 
 White as a sea-fog, landward bound, 
 
 The spectral camp was seen, 
 And, with a sorrowful deep sound, 
 
 The river flowed between. 
 
 No other voice nor sound was there, 
 
 No drum, nor sentry s pace ; 
 The mist-like banners clasped the air, 
 
 As clouds with clouds embrace. 
 
 But when the old cathedral bell 
 Proclaimed the morning prayer, 
 
 The white pavilions rose and fell 
 On the alarmed air. 
 
 Down the broad valley fast and far 
 
 The troubled army fled ; 
 Up rose the glorious morning star, 
 
 The ghastly host was dead. 
 
 I have read in the marvelous heart of man, 
 That strange and mystic scroll, 
 
 That an army of phantoms vast and wan 
 Beleaguer the human soul. 
 
 Encamped beside Life s rushing stream, 
 
 In Fancy s misty light, 
 Gigantic shapes and shadows gleam 
 
 Portentous through the night. 
 
2o2 Initial Studies in American Letters. 
 
 Upon its midnight battle-ground 
 
 The spectral camp is seen, 
 And, with a sorrowful deep sound, 
 
 Flows the River of Life between. 
 
 No other voice nor sound is there, 
 
 In the army of the grave ; 
 No other challenge breaks the air, 
 
 But the rushing of life s wave. 
 
 And when the solemn and deep church-bell 
 
 Entreats the soul to pray, 
 The midnight phantoms feel the spell, 
 
 The shadows sweep away. 
 
 Down the broad Vale of Tears afar 
 
 The spectral camp is fled ; 
 Faith shineth as a morning star, 
 
 Our ghastly fears are dead. 
 
 THE OCCULTATION OF ORION. 
 
 I SAW, as in a dream sublime, 
 The balance in the hand of Time. 
 O er East and West its beam impended ; 
 And day, with all its hours of light, 
 Was slowly sinking out of sight, 
 While, opposite, the scale of night 
 Silently with the stars ascended. 
 
 Like the astrologers of eld, 
 
 In that bright vision I beheld 
 
 Greater and deeper mysteries. 
 
 I saw, with its celestial keys, 
 
 Its chords of air, its frets of fire, 
 
 The Samian s great ^Eolian lyre, 
 
 Rising through all its sevenfold bars, 
 
 From earth unto the fixed stars. 
 
 And through the dewy atmosphere, 
 
 Not only could I see, but hear, 
 
 Its wondrous and harmonious strings, 
 
 In sweet vibration, sphere by sphere, 
 
 From Dian s circle, light and near, 
 
 Onward to vaster and wider rings, 
 
 Where, chanting through his beard of snows, 
 
 Majestic, mournful Saturn goes, 
 
 And down the sunless realms of space 
 
 Reverberates the thunder of his bass. 
 
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. 253 
 
 Beneath the sky s triumphal arch 
 This music sounded like a march, 
 And with its chorus seemed to be 
 Preluding some great tragedy. 
 Sirius was rising in the east ; 
 And, slow ascending one by one, 
 The kindling constellations shone. 
 Begirt with many a blazing star, 
 Stood the great giant, Algebar, 
 Orion, hunter of the beast ! 
 His sword hung gleaming by his side, 
 And, on his arm, the lion s hide 
 Scattered across the midnight air 
 The golden radiance of its hair. 
 
 The moon was pallid, but not faint ; 
 And beautiful as some fair saint, 
 Serenely moving on her way 
 In hours of trial and dismay, 
 As if she heard the voice of God, 
 Unharmed with naked feet she trod 
 Upon the hot and burning stars, 
 As on the glowing coals and bars 
 That were to prove her strength, and try 
 Her holiness and her purity. 
 
 Thus moving on, with silent pace, 
 
 And triumph in her sweet, pale face, 
 
 She reached the station of Orion. 
 
 Aghast he stood in strange alarm ! 
 
 And suddenly from his outstretched arm 
 
 Down fell the red skin of the lion 
 
 Into the river at his feet. 
 
 His mighty club no longer beat 
 
 The forehead of the bull ; but he 
 
 Reeled as of yore beside the sea, 
 
 When, blinded by CEnopion, 
 
 He sought the blacksmith at his forge, 
 
 And, climbing up the mountain gorge, 
 
 Fixed his blank eyes upon the sun. 
 
 Then through the silence overhead, 
 An angel with a trumpet said , 
 " Forevermore, forevermore, 
 The reign of violence is o er." 
 And, like an instrument that flings 
 
254 Initial Studies in American Letters. 
 
 Its music on another s strings, 
 
 The trumpet of the angel cast 
 
 Upon the heavenly lyre its blast, 
 
 And on from sphere to sphere the words 
 
 Reechoed down the burning chords 
 
 " Forevermore, forevermore, 
 
 The reign of violence is o er !" 
 
 DANTE. 
 
 TUSCAN, that wanderest through the realms of gloom, 
 With thoughtful pace, and sad, majestic eyes, 
 Stern thoughts and awful from thy soul arise, 
 Like Farinata from his fiery tomb. 
 Thy sacred song is like the trump of doom ; 
 Yet in thy heart what human sympathies ; 
 What soft compassion glows, as in the skies 
 The tender stars their clouded lamps relume ! 
 Methinks I see thee stand, with pallid cheeks, 
 
 By Fra Hilario in his diocese, 
 As up the convent walls, in golden streaks, 
 
 The ascending sunbeams mark the day s decrease ; 
 And, as he asks what there the stranger seeks, 
 Thy voice along the cloister whispers, " Peace ! " 
 
 JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER. 
 RANDOLPH OF ROANOKE. 
 
 O MOTHER EARTH ! upon thy lap 
 
 Thy weary ones receiving, 
 And o er them, silent as a dream, 
 
 Thy grassy mantle weaving, 
 Fold softly in thy long embrace 
 
 That heart so worn and broken, 
 And cool its pulse of fire beneath 
 
 Thy shadows old and oaken. 
 
 Shut out from him the bitter word 
 
 And serpent hiss of scorning ; 
 Nor let the storms of yesterday 
 
 Disturb his quiet morning. 
 Breathe over him forgetfulness 
 
 Of all save deeds of kindness, 
 And, save to smiles of grateful eyes, 
 
 Press down his lids in blindness. 
 
John Oreenleaf Whittier. 255 
 
 There, where with living ear and eye, 
 
 He heard Potomac s flowing, 
 And, through his tall ancestral trees, 
 
 Saw autumn s sunset glowing, 
 He sleeps still looking to the west, 
 
 Beneath the dark wood shadow, 
 As if he still would see the sun 
 
 Sink down on wave and meadow. 
 
 Bard, Sage, and Tribune ! in himself 
 
 All moods of mind contrasting 
 The tenderest wail of human woe, 
 
 The scorn like lightning blasting ; 
 The pathos which from rival eyes 
 
 Unwilling tears could summon, 
 The stinging taunt, the fiery burst 
 
 Of hatred scarcely human ! 
 
 Mirth, sparkling like a diamond shower, 
 
 From lips of life-long sadness ; 
 Clear picturings of majestic thought 
 
 Upon a ground of madness ; 
 And over all Romance and Song 
 
 A classic beauty throwing, 
 And laureled Clio at his side 
 
 Her storied pages showing. 
 
 All parties feared him : each in turn 
 
 Beheld its schemes disjointed, 
 As right or left his fatal glance 
 
 And spectral finger pointed. 
 Sworn foe of cant, he smote it down 
 
 With trenchant wit unsparing, 
 And, mocking, rent with ruthless hand 
 
 The robe Pretense was wearing. 
 
 Too honest or too proud to feign 
 
 A love he never cherished, 
 Beyond Virginia s border line 
 
 His patriotism perished. 
 While others hailed in distant skies 
 
 Our eagle s dusky pinion, 
 He only saw the mountain bird 
 
 Stoop o er his Old Dominion. 
 
 Still through each change of fortune strange, 
 Racked nerve, and brain all burning, 
 
256 Initial Studies in American Letters. 
 
 His loving faith in mother-land 
 Knew never shade of turning ; 
 
 By Britain s lakes, by Neva s wave, 
 Whatever sky was o er him, 
 
 He heard her rivers rushing sound, 
 Her blue peaks rose before him. 
 
 He held his slaves, yet made withal 
 
 No false and vain pretenses, 
 Nor paid a lying priest to seek 
 
 For scriptural defenses. 
 His harshest words of proud rebuke, 
 
 His bitterest taunt and scorning, 
 Fell fire-like on the northern brow 
 
 That bent to him in fawning. 
 
 He held his slaves, yet kept the while 
 
 His reverence for the Human ; 
 In the dark vassals of his will 
 
 He saw but man and woman. 
 No hunter of God s outraged poor 
 
 His Roanoke valley entered ; 
 No trader in the souls of men 
 
 Across his threshold ventured. 
 
 And when the old and wearied man 
 
 Lay down for his last sleeping, 
 And at his side, a slave no more, 
 
 His brother-man stood weeping, 
 His latest thought, his latest breath, 
 
 To freedom s duty giving, 
 With failing tongue and trembling hand 
 
 The dying blest the living. 
 
 O ! never bore his ancient state 
 
 A truer son or braver ; 
 None trampling with a calmer scorn 
 
 On foreign hate or favor. 
 He knew her faults, yet never stooped 
 
 His proud and manly feeling 
 To poor excuses of the wrong 
 
 Or meanness of concealing. 
 
 But none beheld with clearer eye, 
 The plague-spot o er her spreading, 
 
 None heard more sure the steps of Doom 
 Along her future treading. 
 
Oliver Wendell Holmes. 257 
 
 For her as for himself he spake, 
 
 When, his gaunt frame up-bracing, 
 He traced with dying hand " REMORSE I" 
 
 And perished in the tracing. 
 
 As from the grave where Henry sleeps, 
 
 From Vernon s weeping willow, 
 And from the grassy pall which hides 
 
 The Sage of Monticello, 
 So from the leaf-strewn burial-stone 
 
 Of Randolph s lowly dwelling, 
 Virginia ! o er thy land of slaves 
 
 A warning voice is swelling. 
 
 And hark ! from thy deserted fields 
 
 Are sadder warnings spoken, 
 From quenched hearths, where thy exiled sons 
 
 Their household gods have broken. 
 The curse is on thee wolves for men, 
 
 And briers for corn-sheaves giving ! 
 O ! more than all thy dead renown 
 
 Were now one hero living. 
 
 OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES. 
 OLD IRONSIDES. 
 
 AY, TEAR her tattered ensign down ! 
 
 Long has it waved on high, 
 And many an eye has danced to see 
 
 That banner in the sky ; 
 Beneath it rung the battle shout, 
 
 And burst the cannon s roar ; 
 The meteor of the ocean air 
 
 Shall sweep the clouds no more. 
 
 Her deck, once red with heroes blood, 
 
 Where knelt the vanquished foe, 
 When winds were hurrying o er the flood, 
 
 And waves were white below, 
 No more shall feel the victor s tread, 
 
 Or know the conquered knee ; 
 The harpies of the shore shall pluck 
 
 The eagle of the sea. 
 
 O, better that her shattered hulk 
 Should sink beneath the wave : 
 
258 Initial Studies in American Letters. 
 
 Her thunders shook the mighty deep, 
 And there should be her grave ; 
 
 Nail to the mast her holy flag, 
 Set every threadbare sail, 
 
 And give her to the god of storms, 
 The lightning and the gale ! 
 
 THE LAST LEAF. 
 
 I SAW him once before, 
 As he passed by the door, 
 
 And again 
 
 The pavement stones resound, 
 As he totters o er the ground 
 
 With his cane. 
 
 They say that in his prime, 
 Ere the pruning-knife of time 
 
 Cut him down, 
 Not a better man was found 
 By the crier on his round 
 Through the town. 
 
 But now he walks the streets, 
 And he looks at all he meets 
 
 Sad and wan, 
 
 And he shakes his feeble head, 
 That it seems as if he said, 
 
 " They are gone." 
 
 The mossy marbles rest 
 
 On the lips that he has pressed 
 
 In their bloom, 
 
 And the names he loved to hear 
 Have been carved for many a year 
 
 On the tomb. 
 
 My grandmamma has said 
 Poor old lady, she is dead 
 
 Long ago 
 
 That he had a Roman nose, 
 And his cheek was like a rose 
 
 In the snow. 
 
 But now his nose is thin, 
 And it rests upon his chin 
 Like a staff, 
 
Oliver Wendell Holmes. 259 
 
 And a crook is in his back, 
 And a melancholy crack 
 In his laugh. 
 
 I know it is a sin 
 For me to sit and grin 
 
 At him here ; 
 
 But the old three-cornered hat, 
 And the breeches, and all that, 
 
 Are so queer ! 
 
 And if I should live to be 
 The last leaf upon the tree 
 
 In the spring, 
 
 Let them smile, as I do now, 
 At the old forsaken bough 
 
 Where I cling. 
 
 MY AUNT. 
 
 MY AUNT ! my dear, unmarried aunt ! 
 
 Long years have o er her flown ; 
 Yet still she strains the aching clasp 
 
 That binds her virgin zone ; 
 I know it hurts her, though she looks 
 
 As cheerful as she can ; 
 Her waist is ampler than her life, 
 
 For life is but a span. 
 
 My aunt ! my poor, deluded aunt ! 
 
 Her hair is almost gray ; 
 Why will she train that winter curl 
 
 In such a spring-like way ? 
 How can she lay her glasses down, 
 
 And say she reads as well, 
 When, through a double convex lens, 
 
 She just makes out to spell ? 
 
 Her father grandpapa ! forgive 
 
 This erring lip its smiles 
 Vowed she should make the finest girl 
 
 Within a hundred miles ; 
 He sent her to a stylish school ; 
 
 Twas in her thirteenth June ; 
 And with her, as the rules required, 
 
 " Two towels and a spoon." 
 
260 Initial Studies in American Letters. 
 
 They braced my aunt against a board, 
 
 To make her straight and tall ; 
 They laced her up, they starved her down, 
 
 To make her light and small ; 
 They pinched her feet, they singed her hair, 
 
 They screwed it up with pins ; 
 O, never mortal suffered more 
 
 In penance for her sins. 
 
 So when my precious aunt was done, 
 
 My grandsire brought her back 
 (By daylight, lest some rabid youth 
 
 Might follow on the track) ; 
 "Ah ! " said my grandsire, as he shook 
 
 Some powder in his pan, 
 " What could this lovely creature do 
 
 Against a desperate man? " 
 
 Alas ! nor chariot, nor barouche, 
 
 Nor bandit cavalcade, 
 Tore from the trembling father s arms 
 
 His all-accomplished maid. 
 For her how happy had it been ! 
 
 And heaven had spared to me 
 To see one sad ungathered rose 
 
 On my ancestral tree. 
 
 EDGAR ALLAN POE. 
 
 To HELEN. 
 
 HELEN, thy beauty is to me 
 Like those Nicean barks of yore, 
 
 That gently, o er a perfumed sea, 
 The weary, wayworn wanderer bore 
 To his own native shore. 
 
 On desperate seas long wont to roam, 
 Thy hyacinth hair, thy classic face, 
 
 Thy Naiad airs have brought me home 
 To the glory that was Greece 
 
 And the grandeur that was Rome. 
 
 Lo ! in yon brilliant window-niche 
 How statue-like I see thee stand, 
 The agate lamp within thy hand ! 
 
 Ah ! Psyche, from the regions which 
 Are Holy Land ! 
 
Edgar Allan Poe. 261 
 
 To ONE IN PARADISE. 
 
 THOU wast that all to me, love, 
 
 For which my soul did pine : 
 A green isle in the sea, love, 
 
 A fountain and a shrine 
 All wreathed with fairy fruits and flowers, 
 
 And all the flowers were mine. 
 
 Ah, drearn too bright to last ! 
 
 Ah, starry hope ! that did st arise 
 But to be overcast ! 
 
 A voice from out the future cries 
 On ! on ! But o er the past 
 
 (Dim gulf!) my spirit hovering lies, 
 Mute, motionless, aghast ! 
 
 For, alas ! alas ! with me 
 
 The light of life is o er. 
 
 44 No more no more no more" 
 (Such language holds the solemn sea 
 
 To the sands upon the shore) 
 Shall bloom the thunder-blasted tree, 
 
 Or the stricken eagle soar ! 
 
 And all my days are trances, 
 
 And all my nightly dreams 
 Are where thy dark eye glances 
 
 And where thy footstep gleams, 
 In what ethereal dances, 
 
 By what eternal streams ! 
 
 FROM "THE FALL OF THE HOUSE OF USHER." 
 AT THE termination of this sentence I started, and for a mo 
 ment paused ; for it appeared to me (although I at once concluded 
 that my excited fancy had deceived me) it appeared to me that, 
 from some very remote portion of the mansion there came, in 
 distinctly, to my ears what might have been, in its exact 
 similarity of character, the echo (but a stifled and dull one 
 certainly) of the very cracking and ripping sound which Sir 
 Launcelot had so particularly described. It was, beyond doubt, 
 the coincidence alone which had arrested my attention; for 
 amid the rattling of the sashes of the casements, and the ordi 
 nary commingled noises of the still-increasing storm, the sound, 
 in itself, had nothing, surely, which should have interested or 
 disturbed me. I continued the story. 
 
262 Initial Studies in American Letters. 
 
 Here again I paused abruptly, and now with a feeling of wild 
 amazement for there could be no doubt whatever that, in thi* 
 instance, I did actually hear (although from what direction it 
 proceeded I found it impossible to say) a low and apparently 
 distant, but harsh, protracted, and most unusual screaming or 
 grating sound, the exact counterpart of what my fancy had al 
 ready conjured up for the dragon s unnatural shriek, as described 
 by the romancer. Oppressed, as I certainly was, upon the oc 
 currence of this second and most extraordinary coincidence, by 
 a thousand conflicting sensations, in which wonder and extreme 
 terror were predominant, I still retained sufficient presence of 
 mind to avoid exciting, by any observation, the sensitive ner 
 vousness of my companion. I was by no means certain that he 
 had noticed the sounds in question ; although, assuredly, a 
 strange alteration had, during the last few minutes, taken place 
 in his demeanor. From a position fronting my own he had 
 gradually brought round his chair so as to sit with his face to 
 the door of the chamber, and thus I could but partially perceive 
 his features, although I saw that his lips trembled as if he were 
 murmuring inaudibly. His head had dropped upon his breast ; 
 yet I knew that he was not asleep, from the wide and rigid open 
 ing of the eye as I caught a glance of it in profile. The motion 
 of his body, too, was at variance with this idea; for he rocked 
 from side to side with a gentle yet constant and uniform sway. 
 Having rapidly taken notice of all this I resumed the narrative 
 of Sir Launcelot. 
 
 No sooner had these syllables passed my lips than as if a 
 shield of brass had indeed, at the moment, fallen heavily upon 
 a floor of silver I became aware of a distinct, hollow, metallic, 
 and clangorous, yet apparently muffled, reverberation. Com 
 pletely unnerved, I leaped to my feet ; but the measured, rock 
 ing movement of Usher was undisturbed. I rushed to the chair 
 in which he sat. His eyes were bent fixedly before him, and 
 throughout his whole countenance there reigned a stony rigidity. 
 But as I placed my hand upon his shoulder there came a strong 
 shudder over his whole person ; a sickly smile quivered about 
 his lips ; and I saw that he spoke in a low, hurried, and gibber 
 ing manner, as if unconscious of my presence. Bending closely 
 over him, I at length drank in the hideous import of his 
 words. 
 
 " Not hear it? Yes, I hear it, and have heard it. Long long 
 long many minutes, many hours, many days have I heard it 
 yet I dared not O, pity me, miserable wretch that I am ! I 
 dared not I dared not speak ! We have put her living in the 
 
Edgar Allan Poe. 263 
 
 tomb ! Said I not that my senses were acute ? I now tell you 
 that I heard her first feeble movements in the hollow coffin,, I 
 heard them many, many days ago yet I dared not I dared not 
 speak! And now to-night Ethelred ha ! ha! the breaking 
 of the hermit s door, and the death-cry of the dragon, and the 
 clangor of the shield ! say, rather, the rending of her coffin, and 
 the grating of the iron hinges of her prison, and her struggles 
 within the coppered .archway of the vault! O, whither shall I 
 fly ? Will she not be here anon ? Is she not hurrying to up 
 braid me for my haste? Have I not heard her footstep on the 
 stair? Do I not distinguish that heavy and horrible beating of 
 her heart? Madman \ "here he sprang furiously to his feet 
 and shrieked out his syllables, as if in the effort he were giving 
 up his soul" Madman ! I tell you that she now stands without 
 the door/" 
 
 As if in the superhuman energy of his utterance there had 
 been found the potency of a spell, the huge antique panels to 
 which the speaker pointed threw slowly back, upon the instant, 
 their ponderous and ebony jaws. It was the work of the rush 
 ing gust ; but then without those doors there did stand the lofty 
 and enshrouded figure of the Lady Madeline of Usher. There 
 was blood upon her white robes, and the evidence of some bitter 
 struggle upon every portion of her emaciated frame. For a mo 
 ment she remained trembling and reeling to and fro npon the 
 threshold then, with a low, moaning cry, fell heavily inward 
 upon the person of her brother, and, in her violent and now 
 final death-agonies, bore him to the floor a corpse and a victim 
 to the terrors he had anticipated. 
 
 From that chamber and from that mansion I fled aghast. The 
 storm was still abroad in all its wrath as I found myself crossing 
 the old causeway. Suddenly there shot along the path a wild 
 light, and I turned to see whence a gleam so unusual could have 
 issued, for the vast house and its shadows were alone behind 
 me. The radiance was that of the full, setting, and blood-red 
 moon, which now shone vividly through that once barely dis 
 cernible fissure of which I have before spoken as extending 
 from the roof of the building, in a zigzag direction, to the base. 
 While I gazed this fissure rapidly widened ; there came a fierce 
 breath of the whirlwind the entire orb of the satellite burst at 
 once upon my sight my brain reeled as I saw the mighty walls 
 rushing asunder there was a long, tumultuous, shouting sound 
 like the voice of a thousand waters and the deep and dark tarn 
 at my feet closed sullenly and silently over the fragments of the 
 House of Usher. 
 
264 Initial Studies in American Letters. 
 
 NATHANIEL PARKER WILLIS. 
 UNSEEN SPIRITS. 
 
 THE shadows lay along Broadway, 
 
 Twas near the twilight tide 
 And slowly there a lady fair 
 
 Was walking in her pride. 
 Alone walked she ; but, viewlessly, 
 
 Walked spirits at her side. 
 
 Peace charmed the street beneath her feet, 
 
 And Honor charmed the air ; 
 And all astir looked kind on her, 
 
 And called her good as fair 
 For all God ever gave to her 
 
 She kept with chary care. 
 
 She kept with care her beauties rare 
 
 From lovers warm and true ; 
 For her heart was cold to all but gold, 
 
 And the rich came not to woo ; 
 But honored well are charms to sell, 
 
 If priests the selling do. 
 
 Now walking there was one more fair 
 
 A slight girl, lily -pale ; 
 And she had unseen company 
 
 To make the spirit quail 
 Twixt Want and Scorn she walked forlorn, 
 
 And nothing could avail. 
 
 No mercy now can clear her brow 
 
 For this world s peace to pray ; 
 For, as love s wild prayer dissolved in air, 
 
 Her woman s heart gave way ! 
 But the sin forgiven by Christ in heaven 
 
 By man is cursed alway. 
 
 NAHANT. 
 
 HEBE we are, then, in the "Swallow s Cave." The floor de 
 scends by a gentle declivity to the sea, and from the long dark 
 cleft stretching outward you look forth upon the Atlantic the 
 shore of Ireland the first terra firma in the path of your eye. 
 Here is a dark pool, left by the retreating tide for a refrigerator ; 
 and with the champagne in the midst we will recline about it 
 like the soft Asiatics of whom we learned pleasure in the East, 
 and drink to the small-featured and purple-lipped " Mignons " 
 
Nathaniel Parker Willis. 265 
 
 of Syria those fine-limbed and fiery slaves adorable as peris, 
 and by turns languishing and stormy, whom you buy for a 
 pinch of piastres (say 5 5s.) in sunny Damascus. Your drowsy 
 Circassian, faint and dreamy, or your crockery Georgian fit 
 dolls for the sensual Turk is, to him who would buy soul, dear 
 at a penny the hecatomb. 
 
 We recline, as it were, in an ebon pyramid with a hundred 
 feet of floor and sixty of wall, and the fourth side open to the 
 sky. The light comes in mellow and dim, and the sharp edges 
 of the rocky portal seem let into the pearly heaven. The tide is 
 at half-ebb, and the advancing and retreating waves, which at 
 first just lifted the fringe of crimson dulse at the lip of the cav 
 ern, now dash their spray-pearls on the rock below, the " tenth " 
 surge alone rallying as if in scorn of its retreating fellow, and, 
 like the chieftain of Culloden Moor, rushing back singly to the 
 contest. And now that the waters reach the entrance no more, 
 come forward and look on the sea ! The swell lifts ! Would 
 you not think the bases of the earth rising beneath it ? It falls ! 
 Would you not think the foundation of the deep had given 
 way ? A plain, broad enough for the navies of the world to ride 
 at large, heaves up evenly arid steadily as if it would lie against 
 the sky, rests a moment spell-bound in its place, and falls again 
 as far the respiration of a sleeping child not more regular 
 and full of slumber. It is only on the shore that it chafes. 
 Blessed emblem ! it is at peace with itself! The rocks war with 
 a nature so unlike their own, and the hoarse din of their border 
 onsets resounds through the caverns they have rent open ; but 
 beyond, in the calm bosom of the ocean, what heavenly dignity ! 
 what godlike unconsciousness of alarm! I did not think 
 we should stumble on such a moral in the cave ! 
 
 By the deeper bass of its hoarse organ the sea is now playing 
 upon its lowest stops, and the tide is down. Hear how it rushes 
 in beneath the rocks, broken and stilled in its tortuous way, till 
 it ends with a washing and dull hiss among the sea- weed, and, 
 like a myriad of small tinkling bells, the dripping from the 
 crags is audible. There is fine music in the sea ! 
 
 And now the beach is bare. The cave begins to cool and 
 darken, and the first gold tint of sunset is stealing into the sky, 
 and the sea looks of a changing opal, green, purple, and white, 
 as if its floor were paved with pearl, and the changing light 
 struck up through the waters. And there heaves a ship into the 
 horizon like a white- winged bird, lying with dark breast on the 
 waves, abandoned of the sea-breeze within sight of port, and re 
 pelled even by the spicy breath that comes with a welcome off 
 the shore. She comes from " Merry England." She is freighted 
 
266 Initial Studies in American Letters. 
 
 with more than merchandise. The home-sick exile will gaze on 
 her snowy sail as she sets in with the morning breeze, and bless 
 it, for the wind that first filled it on its way swept through the 
 green valley of his home! What links of human affection 
 brings she over the sea ! How much comes in her that is not in 
 her " bill of lading," yet worth to the heart that is waiting for it 
 a thousand times the purchase of her whole venture ! 
 
 Mais montons nous ! I hear the small hoofs of Thalaba ; my 
 stanhope waits ; we will leave this half bottle of champagne, 
 that "remainder biscuit," and the echoes of our philosophy to 
 the Naiads who have lent us their drawing-room. Undine, or 
 Egeria ! Lurly, or Arethusa ! whatever thou art called, nymph 
 of this shadowy cave, adieu ! 
 
 Slowly, Thalaba ! Tread gingerly down this rocky descent ! 
 So ! Here we are on the floor of the vasty deep ! What a 
 glorious race-course ! The polished and printless sand spreads 
 away before you as far as the eye can see, the surf comes in be 
 low breast-high ere it breaks and the white fringe of the sliding 
 wave shoots up the beach, but leaves room for the marching of 
 a Persian phalanx on the sands it has deserted. O, how noise 
 lessly runs the wheel, and how dreamily we glide along, feeling 
 our motion but in the resistance of the wind and in the trout- 
 like pull of the ribands by the excited animal before us. Mark 
 the color of the sand ! White at high-water mark, and thence 
 deepening to a silvery gray as the water has evaporated less, a 
 slab of Egyptian granite in the obelisk of St. Peter s not more 
 polished and unimpressible. Shell or rock, weed or quicksand, 
 there is none ; and, mar or deface its bright surface as you will, 
 it is ever beaten down anew, and washed even of the dust of 
 the foot of man by the returning sea. You may write upon 
 its fine-grained face with a crow-quill you may course over 
 its dazzling expanse with a troop of chariots. 
 
 Most wondrous and beautiful of all, within twenty yards of 
 the surf, or for an hour after the tide has left the sand, it holds 
 the water without losing its firmness, and is like a gay mirror, 
 bright as the bosom of the sea. (By your leave, Thalaba !) And 
 now lean over the dasher and see those small fetlocks striking 
 up from beneath the flying mane, the thoroughbred action, the 
 small and expressive head, as perfect in the reflection as in the 
 reality ; like Wordsworth s swan, he 
 
 " Trots double, horse and shadow." 
 
 You would swear you were skimming the surface of the sea ; 
 and the delusion is more complete as the white foam of the 
 "tenth wave" skims in beneath wheel and hoof, and you urge 
 
Henry David Thoreau. 267 
 
 on with the treacherous element gliding away visibly beneath 
 you. 
 
 HENRY DAVID THOREAU. 
 
 THE WINTER WOODS. 
 [From " Excursions."] 
 
 THERE is a slumbering subterranean fire in nature which 
 never goes out, and which no cold can chill. It finally melts 
 the great snow, and in January or July is only buried under a 
 thicker or thinner covering. In the coldest day it flows some 
 where, and the snow melts around every tree. This field of 
 winter rye which sprouted late in the fall and now speedily dis 
 solves the snow is where the fire is very thinly covered. We 
 feel warmed by it. In the winter warmth stands for all virtue, 
 and we resort in thought to a trickling rill, with its bare stones 
 shining in the sun, and to warm springs in the woods, with as 
 much eagerness as rabbits and robins. The steam which rises 
 from swamps and pools is as dear and domestic as that of our 
 own kettle. What fire could ever equal the sunshine of a 
 winter s day, when the meadow-mice come out by the wall- 
 sides, and the chickadee lisps in the defiles of the wood? The 
 warmth comes directly from the sun, and is not radiated from 
 the earth as in summer ; and when we feel his beams on our 
 backs as we are treading some snowy dell we are grateful as for 
 a special kindness, and bless the sun which has followed us 
 into that by-place. 
 
 This subterranean fire has its altar in each man s breast, for in 
 the coldest day, and on the bleakest hill, the traveler cherishes a 
 warmer fire within the folds of his cloak than is kindled on any 
 hearth. A healthy man, indeed, is the complement of the sea 
 sons, and in winter summer is in his heart. There is the South. 
 Thither have all birds and insects migrated, and around the 
 warm springs in his breast are gathered the robin and the 
 lark. 
 
 At length, having reached the edge of the woods and shut out 
 the gadding town, we enter within their covert as we go under 
 the roof of a cottage, and cross its threshold, all ceiled and 
 banked up with snow. They are glad and warm still, and as 
 genial and cheery in winter as in summer. As we stand in the 
 midst of the pines, in the flickering and checkered light which 
 straggles but little way into their maze, we wonder if the towns 
 have ever heard their simple story. It seems to us that no 
 traveler has ever explored them, and notwithstanding the won- 
 
268 Initial Studies in American Letters. 
 
 ders which science is elsewhere revealing every day, who would 
 not like to hear their annals? Our humble villages in the plain 
 are their contribution. We borrow from the forest the boards 
 which shelter and the sticks which warm us. How important 
 is their evergreen to the winter, that portion of the summer 
 which does not fade, the permanent year, the unwithered grass. 
 Thus simply and with little expense of altitude is the surface 
 of the earth diversified. What would human life be without 
 forests, those natural cities? From the tops of mountains they 
 appear like smooth-shaven lawns ; yet whither shall we walk 
 but in this taller grass? 
 
 In this glade covered with bushes of a year s growth see how 
 the silvery dust lies on every seared leaf and twig, deposited in 
 such infinite and luxurious forms as by their very variety atone 
 for the absence of color. Observe the tiny tracks of mice 
 around every stem and the triangular tracks of the rabbit. A 
 pure elastic heaven hangs over all, as if the impurities of the 
 summer sky, refined and shrunk by the chaste winter s cold, 
 had been winnowed by the heavens upon the earth. 
 
 Nature confounds her summer distinctions at this season. 
 The heavens seem to be nearer the earth. The elements are less 
 reserved and distinct. Water turns to ice ; rain to snow. The 
 day is but a Scandinavian night. The winter is an arctic 
 summer. 
 
 How much more living is the life that is in nature, the furred 
 life which still survives the stinging nights, and, from amidst 
 fields and woods covered with frost and snow, sees the sun 
 rise! 
 
 " The foodless wilds 
 Pour forth their brown inhabitants." 
 
 The gray squirrel and rabbit are brisk and playful in the re 
 mote glens, even on the morning of the cold Friday. Here is 
 our Lapland and Labrador ; and for our Esquimaux and Knis- 
 tenaux, Dog-ribbed Indians, Novazemblaites, and Spitzbergen- 
 ers, are there not the ice-cutter and wood-chopper, the fox, 
 musk-rat, and mink ? 
 
 Still, in the midst of the arctic day we may trace the summer 
 to its retreats and sympathize with some contemporary life. 
 Stretched over the brooks, in the midst of the frost-bound 
 meadows, we may observe the submarine cottages of the cad- 
 dice-worms, the larvse of the Plicipennes. Their small cylin 
 drical cases built around themselves, composed of flags, sticks, 
 grass, and withered leaves, shells and pebbles, in form and color 
 like the wrecks which strew the bottom, now drifting along 
 
Henry David Thoreau. 269 
 
 over the pebbly bottom, now whirling in tiny eddies and dash 
 ing down steep falls, or sweeping rapidly along with the cur 
 rent, or else swaying to and fro at the end of some grass-blade 
 or root. Anon they will leave their sunken habitations, and, 
 crawling up the stems of plants or to the surface like gnats, as 
 perfect insects henceforth, flutter over the surface of the water 
 or sacrifice their short lives in the flame of our candle at 
 evening. Down yonder little glen the shrubs are drooping 
 under their burden, and the red alder-berries contrast with the 
 white ground. Here are the marks of a myriad feet which have 
 already been abroad. The sun rises as proudly over such a 
 glen as over the valley of the Seine or Tiber, and it seems the 
 residence of a pure and self-subsistent valor such as they never 
 witnessed, which never knew defeat or fear. Here reign the 
 simplicity and purity of a primitive age and a health and hope 
 far remote from towns and cities. Standing quite alone, far in 
 the forest, while the wind is shaking down snow from the trees, 
 and leaving the only human tracks behind us, we find our re 
 flections of a richer variety than the life of cities. The chicka 
 dee and nut-hatch are more inspiring society than statesmen 
 and philosophers, and we shall return to these last as to more 
 vulgar companions. In this lonely glen, with the brook drain 
 ing the slopes, its creased ice and crystals of all hues, where 
 the spruces and hemlocks stand up on either side, and the rush 
 and sere wild oats in the rivulet itself, our lives are more serene 
 and worthy to contemplate. 
 
 As the day advances, the heat of the sun is reflected by the 
 hillsides, and we hear a faint but sweet music where flows the 
 rill released from its fetters, and the icicles are melting on the 
 trees, and the nut-hatch and partridge are heard and seen. The 
 south wind melts the snow at noon, and the bare ground appears 
 with its withered grass and leaves, and we are invigorated by 
 the perfume which exhales from it as by the scent of strong 
 meats. 
 
 Let us go into this deserted woodman s hut and see how he 
 has passed the long winter nights and the short and stormy days. 
 For here man has lived under this south hillside, and it seems a 
 civilized and public spot. We have such associations as when 
 the traveler stands by the ruins of Palmyra or Hecatompolis. 
 Singing birds and flowers perchance have begun to appear here, 
 for flowers as well as weeds follow in the footsteps of man. 
 These hemlocks whispered over his head, these hickory logs 
 were his fuel, and these pitch-pine roots kindled his fire ; yon 
 der fuming rill in the hollow, whose thin and airy vapor still 
 ascends as busily as ever, though he is far off now, was his well. 
 
270 Initial Studies in American Letters. 
 
 These hemlock boughs, and the straw upon this raised plat 
 form, were his bed, and this broken dish held his drink. But 
 he has not been here this season, for the phoebes built their nest 
 upon this shelf last summer. I find some embers left, as if he 
 had but just gone out, where he baked his pot of beans ; and 
 while at evening he smoked his pipe, whose stemless bowl lies 
 in the ashes, chatted with his only companion, if perchance he 
 had any, about the depth of the snow on the morrow, already 
 falling fast and thick without, or disputed whether the last 
 sound was the screech of an owl or the creak of a bough, or im 
 agination only ; and through this broad chimney- throat, in 
 the late winter evening, ere he stretched himself upon the 
 straw, he looked up to learn the progress of the storm, and, 
 seeing the bright stars of Cassiopeia s chair shining brightly 
 down upon him, fell contentedly asleep. 
 
 See how many traces from which we may learn the chopper s 
 history. From this stump we may guess the sharpness of his 
 ax, and from the slope of the stroke, on which side he stood, 
 and whether he cut down the tree without going around it ex 
 changing hands ; and from the flexure of the splinters, we may 
 know which way it fell. This one chip contains inscribed on it 
 the whole history of the wood-chopper and of the world. On 
 this scrap of paper, which held his sugar or salt, perchance, or 
 was the wadding of his gun, sitting on a log in the forest, with 
 what interest we read the tattle of cities, of those larger huts, 
 empty and to let, like this, in High Streets and Broadways. 
 
 WALT WHITMAN. 
 
 THE MIRACLES or NATURE. 
 [From "Leaves of Grass."] 
 
 To ME every hour of the light and dark is a miracle, 
 
 Every inch of space is a miracle, 
 
 Every square yard of the surface of the earth is spread with the 
 
 same. 
 Every cubic foot of the interior swarms with the same. 
 
 To me the sea is a continual miracle, 
 
 The fishes that swim the rocks the motion of the waves the 
 
 ships with men in them, 
 What stranger miracles are there ? 
 
Walt Whitman. 271 
 
 I was thinking the day most splendid, till I saw what the not- 
 day exhibited ; 
 
 I was thinking this globe enough, till there tumbled upon me 
 myriads of other globes : 
 
 O, how plainly I see now that this life cannot exhibit all to me 
 as the day cannot ; 
 
 O, I see that I am to wait for what will be exhibited by death. 
 
 O Death ! 
 
 O, the beautiful touch of Death, soothing and benumbing a few 
 moments, for reasons. 
 
 The earth never tires, 
 
 The earth is rude, silent, incomprehensible at first- 
 Nature is rude and incomprehensible at first ; 
 Be not discouraged keep on there are divine things, well en 
 veloped ; 
 
 I swear to you there are divine things more beautiful than words 
 can telL 
 
 O CAPTAIN ! MY CAPTAIN ! 
 
 O CAPTAIN ! my captain ! our fearful trip is done ; 
 The ship has weathered every rack, the prize we sought is won ; 
 The port is near, the bells I hear, the people all exulting, 
 While follow eyes the steady keel, the vessel grim and daring : 
 But O heart ! heart ! heart ! 
 Leave you not the little spot 
 Where on the deck my captain lies, 
 Fallen, cold and dead. 
 
 O captain ! my captain ! rise up and hear the bells ; 
 
 Rise up for you the flag is flung for you the bugle trills ; 
 
 For you bouquets and ribboned wreaths for you the shores a- 
 
 crowding ; 
 
 For you they call, the swaying mass, their eager faces turning ; 
 O captain ! dear father ! 
 This arm I push beneath you ; 
 It is some dream that on the deck 
 You ve fallen, cold and dead. 
 
 My captain does not answer, his lips are pale and still ; 
 My father does not feel my arm, he has no pulse nor will ; 
 But the ship, the ship is anchored safe, its voyage closed and 
 done ; 
 
272 Initial Studies in American Letters. 
 
 From fearful trip the victor ship comes in with object won 
 Exult, O snores, and ring, O bells ! 
 But I, with silent tread, 
 Walk the spot my captain lies, 
 Fallen, cold and dead. 
 
 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL. 
 THE COURTIN . 
 
 ZEKLE crep up, quite unbeknown, 
 An peeked in thru the winder, 
 
 An there sot Huldy all alone, 
 Ith no one nigh to hender. 
 
 Agin the chimbly crooknecks hung, 
 
 An in amongst em rusted 
 The ole queen s arm thet Gran ther Young 
 
 Fetched back from Concord busted. 
 
 The wa nut logs shot sparkles out 
 Toward the pootiest, bless her ! 
 
 An leetle fires danced all about 
 The chiny on the dresser. 
 
 The very room, coz she wuz in, 
 Looked warm from floor to ceilin , 
 
 An she looked full ez rosy agin 
 Ez th apples she wuz peelin . 
 
 She heerd a foot an knowed it, tu, 
 
 A-raspin on the scraper ; 
 All ways to once her feelin s flew 
 
 Like sparks in burnt-up paper. 
 
 He kin o 1 itered on the mat, 
 
 Some doubtfle o the seekle ; 
 His heart kep goin pittypat, 
 
 But hern went pity Zekle. 
 
 THE Pious EDITOR S CREED. 
 [From "Biglow Papers."] 
 
 I DU believe in Freedom s cause, 
 
 Ez fur away as Paris is ; 
 I love to see her stick her claws 
 
 In them infarnal Pharisees ; 
 
James Russell Lowell. 273 
 
 It s wal enough agin a king 
 
 To dror resolves an triggers 
 Butlibbaty s a kind o thing 
 
 Thet don t agree with niggers. 
 
 I du believe the people want 
 
 A tax on teas an coffees, 
 Thet nothin ain t extravygunt, 
 
 Pervidin I m in office ; 
 Fer I hev loved my country sence 
 
 My eye-teeth filled their sockets, 
 An Uncle Sam I reverence 
 
 Partic larly his pockets. 
 
 I du believe in any plan 
 
 O levyin the taxes, 
 Ez long ez, like a lumberman, 
 
 I git jest wut I axes : 
 I go free-trade thru thick an thin, 
 
 Because it kind o rouses 
 The folks to vote an keeps us in 
 
 Our quiet custom-houses. 
 
 I du believe with all my soul 
 
 In the gret press s freedom, 
 To pint the people to the goal 
 
 An in the traces lead em ; 
 Palsied the arm thet forges jokes 
 
 At my fat contracts squintin , 
 An withered be the nose that pokes 
 
 Inter the gov ment printin ! 
 
 I du believe thet I should give 
 
 Wut s his n unto Csesar, 
 Fer it s by him I move an live, 
 
 Frum him my bread and cheese air ; 
 I du believe thet all o me 
 
 Doth bear his souperscription, 
 Will, conscience, honor, honesty, 
 
 An things o thet description. 
 
 I du believe in prayer an praise 
 
 To him thet hez the grantin 
 O jobs, in everythin that pays, 
 
 But most of all in CANTIN ; 
 This doth my cup with marcies fill, 
 
 This lays all thought o sin to rest, 
 
274 Initial Studies in American Letters. 
 
 I don t believe in princerple, 
 But, O, I du in interest. 
 
 I du believe in bein this 
 
 Or thet, ez it may happen 
 One way or t other hendiest is 
 
 To ketch the people nappin ; 
 It ain t by princerples nor men 
 
 My preudent course is steadied, 
 I scent wich pays the best, an then 
 
 Go into it baldheaded. 
 
 I du believe that holdin slaves 
 
 Comes nat ral tu a presidunt, 
 Let lone the rowdedow it saves 
 
 To hev a wal-broke precedunt ; 
 Fer any office, small or gret, 
 
 I couldn t ax with no face, 
 Without I d ben, thru dry an wet, 
 
 Th unrizzest kind o doughface. 
 
 I du believe wutever trash 
 
 11 keep the people in blindness, 
 Thet we the Mexicuns can thrash 
 
 Bight inter brotherly kindness ; 
 Thet bombshells, grape, an powder n ball 
 
 Air good- will s strongest magnets ; 
 Thet peace, to make it stick at all, 
 
 Must be druv in with bagnets. 
 
 In short, I firmly du believe 
 
 In humbug generally, 
 Fer it s a thing that I perceive 
 
 To hev a solid vally ; 
 This heth my faithful shepherd ben, 
 
 In pasturs sweet heth led me, 
 An this 11 keep the people green 
 
 To feed ez they hev fed me. 
 
 EDWARD EVERETT HALE. 
 [From " The Man Without a Country."*] 
 
 THE rule adopted on board the ships on which I have met 
 "the man without a country" was, I think, transmitted from 
 the beginning. No mess liked to have him permanently, be- 
 
 * See page 202. 
 
Edward Everett Hale. 
 
 cause his presence cut off all talk of home or of the prospect of 
 return, of politics or letters, of peace or of war cut off more 
 than half the talk men liked to have at sea. But it was always 
 thought too hard that he should never meet the rest of us except 
 to touch hats, and we finally sank into one system. He was not 
 permitted to talk with the men unless an officer was by. With 
 officers he had unrestrained intercourse, as far as he and they 
 chose. But he grew shy, though he had favorites ; I was one. 
 Then the captain always asked him to dinner on Monday. 
 .Every mess in succession took up the invitation in its turn. 
 According to the size of the ship, you had him at your mess 
 more or less often at dinner. His breakfast he ate in his own 
 .state-room he always had a state-room which was where a 
 sentinel or somebody on the watch could see the door. And 
 whatever else he ate or drank, he ate or drank alone. Some 
 times, when the marines or sailors had any special jollification, 
 they were permitted to invite "Plain-Buttons," as they called 
 him. Then Nolan was sent with some officer, and the men 
 were forbidden to speak of home while he was there. I believe 
 the theory was that the sight of his punishment did them good. 
 They called him "Plain-Buttons" because, while he always 
 chose to wear a regulation army uniform, he was not permitted 
 to wear the army button, for the reason that it bore either the 
 initials or the insignia of the country he had disowned. 
 
 I remember soon after I joined the navy I was on shore with 
 some of the older officers from our ship and from the Brandy- 
 wine, which we had met at Alexandria. We had leave to make 
 a party and go up to Cairo and the Pyramids. As we jogged 
 along (you went on donkeys then), some of the gentlemen (we 
 boys called them "Dons," but the phrase was long since 
 changed) fell to talking about Nolan, and some one told the sys 
 tem which was adopted from the first about his books and other 
 reading. As he was almost never permitted to go on shore, even 
 though the vessel lay in port for months, his time at the best 
 hung heavy ; and everybody was permitted to lend him books, 
 if they were not published in America, and made no allusion to 
 it. These were common enough in the old days, when people in 
 the other hemisphere talked of the United States as little as we 
 do of Paraguay. He had almost all the foreign papers that came 
 into the ship, sooner or later ; only somebody must go over 
 them first, and cut out any advertisement or stray paragraph 
 that alluded to America. This was a little cruel sometimes, 
 when the back of what was cut might be as innocent as Hesiod. 
 Right in the midst of one of Napoleon s battles, or one of Can 
 ning s speeches, poor Nolan would find a great hole, because on 
 
276 Initial Studies in American Letters. 
 
 the back of the page of that paper there had been an advertise 
 ment of a packet for New York, or a scrap from the president s 
 message. I say this was the first time I ever heard of this plan, 
 which afterward I had enough and more than enough to do 
 with. I remember it, because poor Phillips, who was of the 
 party, as soon as the allusion to reading was made, told a story 
 of something which happened at the Cape of Good Hope on 
 Nolan s first voyage ; and it is the only thing I ever knew of 
 that voyage. They had touched at the Cape, and had done the 
 civil thing with the English admiral and the fleet, and then, 
 leaving for a long cruise up the Indian Ocean, Phillips had bor 
 rowed a lot of English books from an officer, which, in those 
 days, as indeed in these, was quite a windfall. Among them, as 
 the devil would order, was " The Lay of the Last Minstrel," 
 which they had all of them heard of, but which most of them 
 had never seen. I think it could not have been published long. 
 Well, nobody thought there could be any risk of anything- 
 national in that, though Phillips swore old Shaw had cut out 
 " The Tempest" from Shakespeare before he let Nolan have it, 
 because he said " the Bermudas ought to be ours, and, by Jove, 
 should be one da: ." So Nolan was permitted to join the circle 
 one afternoon when a lot of them sat 011 deck smoking and read 
 ing aloud. People do not do such things so often now j but 
 when I was young we got rid of a great deal of time so. Well, 
 so it happened that in his turn Nolan took the book and read to- 
 the others ; and he read very well, as I know. Nobody in the 
 circle knew a line of the poem, only it was all magic and border 
 chivalry, and was ten thousand years ago. Poor Nolan read 
 steadily through the fifth canto, stopped a minute and drank 
 something, and then began without a thought of what was 
 coming : 
 
 " Breathes there the man, with soul so dead, 
 Who never to himself hath said" 
 
 It seemed impossible to us that anybody ever heard this for the 
 first time ; but all these fellows did then, and poor Nolan him 
 self went on, still unconsciously or mechanically : 
 
 " This is my own, my native land ! " 
 
 Then they all saw something was to pay ; but he expected to get 
 through, I suppose, turned a little pale, but plunged on : 
 
 " Whose heart hath ne er within him burned, 
 As home his footsteps he hath turned 
 
 From wandering on a foreign strand? 
 If such there breathe, go, mark him well." 
 
Fitz-Greene Halleck. 277 
 
 By this time the men were all beside themselves, wishing there 
 was any way to make him turn over two pages ; but he had not 
 quite presence of mind for that ; he gagged a little, colored crim 
 son, and staggered on : 
 
 " For him no minstrel raptures swell ; 
 High though his titles, proud his name, 
 Boundless his wealth as wish can claim, 
 Despite these titles, power, and pelf, 
 The wretch, concentered all in self," 
 
 and here the poor fellow choked, could not go on, but started up, 
 swung the book into the sea, vanished into his state-room. "And 
 by Jove," said Phillips, "we did not see him for two months 
 again. And I had to make up some beggarly story to that Eng 
 lish surgeon why I did not return his Walter Scott to him." 
 
 FITZ-GREENE HALLECK. 
 [From " Marco Bozzaris."] 
 
 COME to the bridal-chamber, Death ! 
 
 Come to the mother s when she feels 
 For the first time her first-born s breath ; 
 
 Come .when the blessed seals 
 That close the pestilence are broke, 
 And crowded cities wail its stroke ; 
 Come in consumption s ghastly form, 
 The earthquake shock, the ocean storm ; 
 Come when the heart beats high and warm, 
 
 With banquet song, and dance, and wine 
 And thou art terrible the tear, 
 The groan, the knell, the pall, the bier, 
 And all we know, or dream, or fear 
 
 Of agony, are thine. 
 
 But to the hero, when his sword 
 
 Has won the battle for the free, 
 Thy voice sounds like a prophet s word ; 
 And in its hollow tones are heard 
 
 The thanks of millions yet to be. 
 Come, when his task of fame is wrought 
 Come, with her laurel-leaf, blood-bought 
 
 Come in her crowning hour and then 
 Thy sunken eye s unearthly light 
 To him is welcome as the sight 
 
 Of sky and stars to prisoned men ; 
 
278 Initial Studies in American Letters. 
 
 Tby grasp is welcome as the hand 
 Of brother in a foreign land ; 
 Thy summons welcome as the cry 
 That told the Indian isles were nigh 
 
 To the world-seeking Genoese, 
 When the land-wind from woods of palm, 
 And orange-groves, and fields of balm, 
 
 Blew o er the Haytian seas. 
 
 Bozzaris ! with the storied brave 
 
 Greece nurtured in her glory s time, 
 Rest thee ; there is no prouder grave, 
 
 Even in her own proud clime. 
 She wore no funeral weeds for thee, 
 
 Nor bade the dark hearse wave its plume, 
 Like torn branch from death s leafless tree 
 In sorrow s pomp and pageantry, 
 
 The heartless luxury of the tomb. 
 But she remembers thee as one 
 Long loved, and for a season gone ; 
 For thee her poet s lyre is wreathed, 
 Her marble wrought, her music breathed ; 
 For thee she rings the birthday bells ; 
 Of thee her babes first lisping tells ; * 
 For thine her evening prayer is said, 
 At palace couch and cottage bed ; 
 Her soldier, closing with the foe, 
 Gives for thy sake a deadlier blow ; 
 His plighted maiden, when she fears 
 For him, the joy of her young years, 
 Thinks of thy fate and checks her tears. 
 
 And she, the mother of thy boys, 
 Though in her eye and faded cheek 
 Is read the grief she will not speak, 
 
 The memory of her buried joys, 
 And even she who gave thee birth, 
 Will by their pilgrim-circled hearth 
 
 Talk of thy doom without a sigh : 
 For thou art freedom s now and fame s, 
 One of the few, the immortal names, 
 That were not born to die. 
 
 ON THE DEATH OF JOSEPH RODMAN DRAKE. 
 
 GREEN be the turf above thee, 
 Friend of my better days ! 
 
Charles Farrar Browne. 279 
 
 None knew thee but to love thee, 
 Nor named thee but to praise. 
 
 Tears fell, when thou wert dying, 
 
 From eyes unused to weep, 
 And long where thou art lying 
 
 Will tears the cold turf steep. 
 
 When hearts, whose truth was proven 
 
 Like thine $ are laid in earth, 
 There should a wreath be woven 
 
 To tell the world their worth ; 
 
 And I, who woke each morrow 
 
 To clasp thy hand in mine, 
 Who shared thy joy and sorrow, 
 
 Whose weal and woe were thine 
 
 It should be mine to braid it 
 
 Around thy faded brow ; 
 But I ve in vain essayed it, 
 
 And feel I cannot now. 
 
 While memory bids me weep thee, 
 
 Nor thoughts nor words are free, 
 The grief is fixed too deeply 
 
 That mourns a man like thee. 
 
 CHARLES FARRAR BROWNE. 
 [From " Lecture on the Mormons."] 
 
 BROTHER KIMBALL is a gay and festive cuss, of some seventy 
 summers, or some er s there about. He has one thousand head 
 of cattle and a hundred head of wives. He says they are awful 
 eaters. 
 
 Mr. Kimball had a son, a lovely young man, who was married 
 to ten interesting wives. But one day while he was absent from 
 home these ten wives went out walking with a handsome young 
 man, which so enraged Mr. Kimball s son which made Mr. 
 Kimball s son so jealous that he shot himself with a horse- 
 pistol. 
 
 The doctor who attended him a very scientific man in 
 formed me that the bullet entered the parallelogram of his dia 
 phragmatic thorax, superinducing hemorrhage in the outer 
 cuticle of his basilicon thaumaturgist. It killed him. I should 
 have thought it would. 
 
 (Soft Music.) 
 
280 Initial Studies in American Letters. 
 
 I hope this sad end will be a warning to all young wives who 
 go out walking with handsome young men. Mr. Kimball s 
 son is now no more. He sleeps beneath the cypress, the myrtle, 
 and the willow. The music is a dirge by the eminent pianist 
 for Mr. Kimball s son. He died by request. 
 
 I regret to say that efforts were made to make a Mormon of 
 me while I was in Utah. 
 
 It was leap-year when I was there, and seventeen young wid 
 ows, the wives of a deceased Mormon, offered me their hearts 
 and hands. I called on them one day, and, taking their soft 
 white hands in mine, which made eighteen hands altogether, I 
 found them in tears, and I said, "Why is this thus? What is 
 the reason of this thusness? " 
 
 They hove a sigh seventeen sighs of different size. They 
 said: 
 
 " O, soon thou wilt be gonested away ! " 
 
 I told them that when I got ready to leave a place I wentested. 
 
 They said, " Doth not like us? " 
 
 I said, " I doth I doth." 
 
 I also said, " I hope your intentions are honorable, as I am a 
 lone child, my parents being far far away." 
 
 Then they said, " Wilt not marry us? " 
 
 I said, " O, no, it cannot was ! " 
 
 Again they asked me to marry them, and again I declined, 
 when they cried, 
 
 " O, cruel man ! this is too much ! O, too much ! " 
 
 I told them that it was on account of the muchness that I de 
 clined. . . . 
 
 (Pointing to Panorama.) 
 
 A more cheerful view of the desert. 
 
 The wild snow-storms have left us and we have thrown our 
 wolf-skin overcoats aside. Certain tribes of far-western Indians 
 bury their distinguished dead by placing them high in air and 
 covering them with valuable furs. That is a very fair repre 
 sentation of those mid-air tombs. Those animals are horses. I 
 know they are, because my artist says so. I had the picture two 
 years before I discovered the fact. The artist came to me about 
 six months ago and said, " It is useless to disguise it from you 
 any longer, they are horses." 
 
 It was while crossing this desert that I was surrounded by a 
 band of Ute Indians. They were splendidly mounted. They 
 were dressed in beaver-skins, and they were armed with rifles, 
 knives, and pistols. 
 
 What could I do? What could a poor old orphan do ? I m a 
 brave man. The day before the battle of Bull s Bun I stood in 
 
Samuel Langhorne Clemens. 281 
 
 the highway while the bullets those dreadful messengers of 
 death were passing all around me thickly in wagons on their 
 way to the battle-field. But there were too many of these In 
 juns. There were forty of them, and only one of me, and so I 
 said : 
 
 "Great chief, I surrender." 
 
 His name was Wocky-bocky. He dismounted and approached 
 me. I saw his tomahawk glisten in the morning sunlight. Fire 
 was in his eye. Wocky-bocky came very close 
 
 (Pointing to Panorama.) 
 
 to me and seized me by the hair of my head. He mingled his 
 swarthy fingers with my golden tresses, and he rubbed his 
 dreadful tomahawk across my lily-white face. He said : 
 
 " Torsha arrah darrah mishky bookshean ! " 
 
 I told him he was right. 
 
 Wocky-bocky again rubbed his tomahawk across my face, and 
 said: 
 
 "Wink-ho-loo-boo ! " 
 
 Says I, " Mr. Wocky-bocky," says I, " Wocky, I have thought 
 so for years, and so s all our family." 
 
 He told me I must go to the tent of the Strong Heart and eat 
 raw dog. It don t agree with me. I prefer simple food. I pre 
 fer pork-pie, because then I know what I m eating. But as raw 
 dog was all they proposed to give to me I had to eat it or starve. 
 So at the expiration of two days I seized a tin plate and went to 
 the chief s daughter, and I said to her in a silvery voice in a 
 kind of German-silvery voice I said : 
 
 " Sweet child of the forest, the pale-face wants his dog." 
 
 There was nothing but his paws. I had paused too long 
 which reminds me that time passes a way which time has. I 
 was told in my youth to seize opportunity. I once tried to seize 
 one. He was rich ; he had diamonds on. As I seized him he 
 knocked me down. Since then I have learned that he who 
 seizes opportunity sees the penitentiary. 
 
 SAMUEL LANGHORNE CLEMENS. 
 THE JUMPING FROG OF CALAVERAS COUNTY. 
 
 " WELL, there was a feller here once by the name of Jim 
 Smiley in the winter of 49, or may be it was the spring of 50 
 I don t recollect exactly, somehow, though what makes me 
 think it was one or the other is because I remember the big 
 flume warn t finished when he first come to the camp. But any 
 way, he was the curiousest man about, always betting on any- 
 
282 Initial Studies in American Letters. 
 
 thing that turned up you ever see, if he could get anybody to 
 bet on the other side ; and if he couldn t he d change sides. Any 
 way that suited the other side would suit him any way just so s 
 he got a bet he was satisfied. But still he was lucky, uncom 
 mon lucky ; he most always came out winner. He was always 
 ready and laying for a chance. There couldn t be no solit ry 
 thing mentioned but that feller d offer to bet on it and take any 
 side you please, as I was just telling you. If there was a horse 
 race you d find him flush or you d find him busted at the end of 
 it. If there was a dog-fight, he d bet on it ; if there was a cat- 
 fight, he d bet on it ; if there was a chicken-fight, he d bet on it. 
 Why, if there was two birds setting on a fence, he would bet you 
 which one would fly first. Or if there was a camp-meeting, he 
 would be there reg lar to bet on Parson Walker, which he 
 judged to be the best exhorter about here, and so he was, too, 
 and a good man. If he even see a straddle-bug start to go any 
 wheres he would bet you how long it would take him to get to 
 to wherever he was going to ; and if you took him up he would 
 follow that straddle-bug to Mexico but what he would find out 
 where he was bound for and how long he was on the road. Lots 
 of the boys here has seen that Smiley, and can tell you about 
 him. Why, it never made no difference to him, he d bet any 
 thing the dangdest feller. Parson Walker s wife laid very sick 
 once for a good while, and it seemed as if they warn t going to 
 save her ; but one morning he come in and Smiley up and asked 
 him how she was, and he said she was consid able betterthank 
 the Lord for his inf nit mercy! and coming on so smart that, 
 with the blessing of Providence, she d get well yet ; and Smiley, 
 before he thought, says, Well, I ll resk two -and-a- half she 
 don t, anyway. 
 
 "Well, this yer Smiley had rat-terriers, and chicken-cocks, 
 and tom-cats, and all them kind of things till you couldn t rest, 
 and you couldn t fetch nothing for him to bet on but he d match 
 you. He ketched a frog one day and took him home, and said 
 he cal lated to educate him ; and so he never done nothing for 
 three months but set in his backyard and learn that frog to 
 jump. And you bet you he did learn him, too. He d give him a 
 little punch behind, and the next minute you d see that frog 
 whirling in the air like a doughnut see him turn one summer 
 set, or may be a couple, if he got a good start, and come down 
 flat-footed and all right, like a cat. He got him up so in the 
 matter of ketching flies, and kep him in practice so constant, 
 that he d nail a fly every time as fur as he could see him. 
 
Samuel Langhorne Clemens. 283 
 
 Smiley said all a frog wanted was education and he could do 
 most anything, and I believe him. Why, I ve seen him set 
 Dan l Webster down here on this floor Dan l Webster was the 
 name of the frog and sing out, Flies, Dan l, flies ! and 
 quicker n you could wink he d spring straight up and snake a 
 fly off n the counter there and flop down on the floor agin as 
 solid as a gob of mud, and fall to scratching the side of his 
 head with his hind foot as indifferent as if he hadn t no idea 
 he d been doin any more n any frog might do. You never see 
 a frog so modest and straightfor ard as he was, for all he was so 
 gifted. And when it come to fair and square jumping on a 
 dead level, he could get over more ground at one straddle than 
 any animal of his breed you ever see. Jumping on a dead 
 level was his strong suit, you understand ; and when it come to 
 that, Smiley would ante up money on him as long as he had a 
 red. Smiley was monstrous proud of his frog, and well he 
 might be, for fellers that had traveled and been everywheres all 
 said he laid over any frog that ever they see. 
 
 " Well, Smiley kep the beast in a little lattice-box, and he 
 used to fetch him down town sometimes and lay for a bet. One 
 day a feller a stranger in the camp he was come acrost him 
 with his box and says : 
 
 " 4 What might it be that you ve got in the box ? 
 
 "And Smiley says, sorter indifferent like, It might be a 
 parrot, or it might be a canary, may be, but it ain t it s only 
 just a frog. 
 
 "And the feller took it, and looked at it careful, arid turned it 
 round this way and that, and says, H m so tis. Well, what s 
 Aegood for? 
 
 " Well, Smiley says, easy and careless, he s good enough 
 for one thing, I should judge he can outjump any frog in 
 Calaveras County.* 
 
 " The feller took the box again and took another long, partic 
 ular look and give it back to Smiley, and says, very deliberate : 
 Well, he says, * I don t see no pints about that frog that s any 
 better n any other frog. 
 
 " May be you don t, Smiley says. May be you understand 
 frogs, and may be you don t understand em; may be you ve 
 had experience, and may be you ain t only a amature, as it 
 were. Anyways, I ve got my opinion, and I ll resk forty dol 
 lars that he can outjump any frog in Calaveras County. 
 
 "And the feller studied a minute, and then says, kinder sad 
 like, 
 
 " Well, I m only a stranger here, and I ain t got no frog ; but 
 if I had a frog I d bet you ! 
 
284 Initial Studies in American Letters. 
 
 "And then Smiley says, That s all right that s all right ; if 
 you ll hold my box a minute I ll go and get you a frog. And 
 so the feller took the box, and put up his forty dollars along 
 with Smiley s, and set down to wait. 
 
 " So he set there a good while, thinking and thinking to his- 
 self, and then he got the frog out and pried his mouth open, and 
 took a teaspoon and filled him full of quail-shotfilled him 
 pretty near up to his chin and set him on the floor. Smiley, 
 he went to the swamp and slopped around in the mud for a long 
 time, and finally he ketched a frog, and fetched him in, and 
 give him to this feller, and says, Now, if you re ready, set him 
 alongside of Dan l, with his forepaws just even with Dan l, and 
 I ll give the word. Then he says, * One two three git ! and 
 him and the feller touched up the frogs from behind, and the 
 new frog hopped off lively, but Dan l give a heave, and hysted 
 up his shoulders so like a Frenchman, but it warn t no use- 
 he couldn t budge; he was planted as solid as a church, and 
 wouldn t no more stir than if he was anchored out. Smiley 
 was a good deal surprised, and he was disgusted, too, but he 
 didn t have no idea what the matter was, of course. 
 
 "The feller took the money and started away; but when he 
 was going out at the door he sorter jerked his thumb over his 
 shoulder so at Dan l, and says again, very deliberate, Well, 
 he says, I don t see no pints about that frog that s any better n 
 any other frog. 
 
 " Smiley, he stood scratching his head and looking down at 
 Dan l a longtime, and at last he says, I do wonder what in the 
 nation that frog throwed off for. I wonder if there ain t some 
 thing the matter with him he pears to look mighty baggy, 
 somehow. And he ketched Dan l by the nap of the neck, and 
 hefted him, and says, * Why, blame my cats if he don t weigh 
 five pound ! and turned him upside down, and he belched out 
 a double handful of shot. And then he see how it was, and he 
 was the maddest man. He set the frog down and took out after 
 the feller, but he never ketched him." 
 
INDEX. 
 
 Abraham Lincoln, 148. 
 
 Adams and Liberty, 61. 
 
 Adams, John, 49. 
 
 Adams, J. Q,., 73, 87. 
 
 Adams, Samuel, 43, 44. 
 
 After-Dinner Poem, 140. 
 
 After the Funeral, 147. 
 
 Afterwhiles, 212. 
 
 Age of Reason, The, 52, 53, 61. 
 
 Ages, The, 159. 
 
 Airly Days, The, 211. 
 
 Alcott, A. B., 95, 107. 
 
 Aldrich, T. B., 177, 205. 
 
 Algerine Captive, 64. 
 
 Algic Researches, 135. 
 
 Alhambra, The, 75. 
 
 All Quiet Along the Potomac, 191. 
 
 Alnwick Castle, 83. 
 
 Alsop. Richard, 55, 56. 
 
 American, The. 216. 
 
 American Civil War, The* 189. 
 
 American Conflict, The, 189. 
 
 American Flag, The, 81. 
 
 American Note Books, 98, 118, 120, 
 
 123, 133. 
 
 American Scholar, The, 95, 106, 127. 
 Ames, Fisher, 50, 51. 
 Among My Books, 148. 
 Annabel Lee, 172. 
 Anarchiad, The, 56. 
 Army Life in a Black Regiment, 
 
 Army of the Potomac, The, 190. 
 
 Art of Book-Making, The, 79. 
 
 " Artemus Ward," 197-200, 201, 211. 
 
 Arthur Mervyn, 64, 66. 
 
 At Teague Poteet s, 212. 
 
 Atlantic Monthly, The, 141, 148, 156, 
 
 157,192,193,202,205,218. 
 Atlantis, 175. 
 Auf Wiedersehen^ 147. 
 Autobiography, Franklin s, 27, 37, 
 
 39, 40, 74. 
 Autocrat of the Breakfast Table, 
 
 The, 137, 141, 142. 
 Autumn, 129. 
 Backwoodsman, The, 73. 
 Ballad of the Oysterman, 137. 
 Ballads and Other Poems, 131. 
 Bancroft, George, 127, 143, 150, 151. 
 Barbara Frietchle, 164. 
 Barlow, Joel, 52, 55-58. 
 Battle Hymn of the Republic, 190. 
 Battle of the Kegs, 60. 
 
 Ba.ttle-Field, The, 160. 
 
 Battles and Leaders of the Civil 
 
 War. 190. 
 
 Bay Fight, The, 192. 
 Bay Psalm Book, The, 20. 
 Bedouin Song. 178. 
 Beecher, H. W., 182, 183. 
 Beecher, Lyman, 101, 182. 
 Beers, Mrs. E. L., 191. 
 Beleaguered City, The, 130, 133. 
 Belfry of Bruges, The, 131, 132. 
 Beverly .Robert, 15. 
 Biglow Papers, The, 144-147, 166, 195. 
 " Bill Nye," 201, 209. 
 Black Cat, The, 172. 
 Black Fox of Salmon River, The, 
 
 163. 
 
 Blair, James, 12. 
 Blithedale Romance, The, 97, 121, 
 
 179, 219. 
 Bloody Tenent of Persecution, The, 
 
 Blue and the Gray, The, 191. 
 
 Boker, G. H., 205. 
 
 Bostonians, The, 220. 
 
 Boys, The, 139. 
 
 Bracebridge Hall, 77, 79, 194. 
 
 Bradford s Journal, 20, 23, 24, 30, 32. 
 
 Brahma, 107, 112. 
 
 Brainard, J. G. C., 162, 163, 182. 
 
 Brick Moon, The, 204. 
 
 Bridal of Pennacook, The, 163, 165. 
 
 Bridge, The, 132. 
 
 Broken Heart, The, 79. 
 
 Brown, C. B., 64-66. 
 
 Browne, C. F. (See "Artemus 
 
 Ward.") 
 
 Brownell, H. H., 191, 192. 
 Bryant, W. C., 69, 81, 128, 129, 138, 
 
 157-161,169,176. 
 Buccaneer, The, 92. 
 Building of the Ship, The, 132. 
 Bundle of Letters, A, 216. 
 Burnett. Mrs. F. H., 215. 
 Bushnell, Horace, 101. 
 Busybody, The, 37, 54, 76. 
 Butler. W. A., 177. 
 Byrd, Wm., 14, 15. 
 Cable, G. W., 212. 213. 
 Calhoun, J. C., 46,.88. 
 Cambridge Thirty Years Ago, 127. 
 Cape Cod, 114. 
 
 Capture of Fugitive Slaves, 145. 
 Cary, Alice, 180. 
 
 285 
 
286 
 
 Index. 
 
 Gary, Phoebe, 180. 
 
 Cask of Amontillado, The, 172. 
 
 Cassandra Southwick, 165. 
 
 Cathedral, The, 149. 
 
 Cecil Dreeme, 192. 
 
 Century Magazine, The, 156, 190, 
 
 205. 
 
 Chambered Nautilus, The, 139. 
 Chance Acquaintance, A, 218. 
 Channing, W. E., 75, 92-94, 100-103, 
 
 109. 
 
 Channing, W. E., Jr., 109, 113, 123. 
 Channing, W. H., 109. 
 Chapel of the Hermits, The, 164. 
 Character of Milton, The, 93. 
 Charleston, 191. 
 Children of Adam, 184. 
 Choate, Rufus, 91, 92. 
 Christian Examiner, The, 93. 
 Circular Letters, by Otis and 
 
 Quincy, 45. 
 
 City in the Sea, The, 169. 
 Clara Howard, 64. 
 Clari, 86. 
 
 Clarke, J. F., 108, 109. 
 Clay, Henry, 88. 
 Clemens, S. L. (See "Mark 
 
 Twain.") 
 
 Columbiad, The, 57, 58. 
 Common Sense, 51. 
 Companions of Columbus, 75. 
 Condensed Novels, 208. 
 Conduct of Life, The, 109. 
 Confederate States of America, The, 
 
 189. 
 
 Conquest of Canaan, 58. 
 Conquest of Granada, 74, 75, 80. 
 Conquest of Mexico, 150. 
 Conquest of Peru, 151. 
 Conspiracy of Pontiac, The, 152. 
 Constitution and the Union, The, 
 
 89. 
 Constitution of the United States, 
 
 The, 45, 48, 87. 
 Contentment, 87. 
 Contrast, The, 64. 
 
 Conversations on the Gospels, 107. 
 Conversations on Some of the Old 
 
 Poets, 148. 
 Cooke, J. E., 175. 
 Cooper, J. F., 62, 73, 75, 83-86, 91, 110, 
 
 135, 152, 175, 213. 
 Coral Grove, The, 182. 
 Cotton John, 21, 22, 27, 28. 
 Count Frontenac and New France, 
 
 152. 
 
 Courtin , The, 146, 196. 
 Courtship of Miles Standish, The, 
 
 25. 
 
 Cow Chase, The, 59. 
 Cranch, C. P., 97. 109. 
 Crime against Kansas, The, 154. 
 Crisis, The, 51. 
 Croaker Papers, The, 82. 
 Culprit Fay, The, 81, 82. 
 Curtis, G. W., 97. 
 Daisy Miller, 216. 
 Dana, C. A., 97, 109, 157. 
 
 Dana, R. H., 69, 91. 
 
 Danbury News Man, 60. 196. 
 
 Dante, Longfellow s, 136. 
 
 Davis, Jefferson, 189. 
 
 Day is Done, The, 132. 
 
 Day of Doom, The, 33. 
 
 Death of the Flowers, The, 159, 160. 
 
 Declaration of Independence, The, 
 45, 46, 60, 87. 
 
 Deerslayer, The, 85, 86. 
 
 Democracy and Other Addresses, 
 149. 
 
 Democratic Vistas, 187. 
 
 Derby, G. H., 197. 
 
 Descent into the Maelstrom, 173. 
 
 Deserted Road, The, 180. 
 
 Dial, The, 100, 107, 108, 109. 
 
 Dialogue between Franklin and 
 the Gout, 39. 
 
 Diamond Lens, The, 193. 
 
 Discourse of the Plantation of 
 Virginia, A, 10. 
 
 Dolph Heyliger. 77. 
 
 Domain of Arnheim, The, 173. 
 
 Dorchester Giant, The, 137. 
 
 Drake, J. R., 81-82, 83, 91. 
 
 Draper J. W., 189. 
 
 Dream Life, 182. 
 
 Drifting, 180. 
 
 Driving Home the Cows, 191. 
 
 Drum Taps, 187. 
 
 Dutchman s Fireside, The, 81. 
 
 Dwight, J. S., 97, 103, 109. 
 
 Dwight, Theodore, 55, 56. 
 
 Dwight, Timothy, 55, 58-59. 
 
 Early Spring in Massachusetts, 114. 
 
 Echo, The, 56. 
 
 Echo Club, The, 179. 
 
 Edgar Huntley, 64, 66. 
 
 Edith Linsey, 176. 
 
 Edwards, Jonathan, 34-36, 59, 93, 
 100, 101. 
 
 Eggleston.Edward, 210. 
 
 Elevator. The, 64, 220. 
 
 Eliot, John, 20, 21. 
 
 Elsie Venner, 142. 
 
 Emerson, Charles, 109. 
 
 Emerson, R. W., 90, 95, 99, 100, 101, 
 102-107, 108, 109-113, 114, 115, 116, 
 123, 126, 127, 134, 143, 157, 160, 167, 
 186. 
 
 Endicott s Red Cross, 24, 121. 
 
 English Note Books, 123. 
 
 English Traits, 106, 112. 
 
 Ephemerae, 183. 
 
 Epilogue to Cato, 61. 
 
 Eternal Goodness, 164. 
 
 Ethan Brand, 120. 
 
 Europeans, The, 216, 217. 
 
 Evangeline, 134, 135. 
 
 Evening Wind, The, 159. 
 
 Everett, Edward, 91, 92, 138, 143, 194. 
 
 Excelsior, 132. 
 
 Excursions, 114. 
 
 Expediency of the Federal Consti 
 tution, 49. 
 
 Eyes and Ears, 183. 
 
 F. Smith, 176. 
 
Index. 
 
 287 
 
 Fable for Critics, A, 108, 147, 150. 
 Facts in the Case of M. Vaidemar, 
 
 The, 170. 
 Fall of the House of Usher, The, 
 
 172. 
 
 Familists Hymn, The, 24. 
 Fanshawe, 119. 
 Farewell Address, Washington s, 
 
 49. 
 
 Faust, Taylor s, 179. 
 Federalist. The, 49. 
 Ferdinand and Isabella, 127, 150. 
 Final Judgment, The, 35. 
 Finch, F. M., 191. 
 Fire of Driftwood, The, 132. 
 Fireside Travels, 127. 
 Fitz Adam s Story, 146. 
 Flint, Timothy, 73. 
 Flood of Years, The, 161. 
 Footpath, The, 147. 
 Footsteps of Angels, 130. 
 Foregone Conclusion, A, 217. 
 Forest Hymn, 158. 
 Fortune of the Republic, 109, 110. 
 Foster, S. C., 180, 211. 
 France and England in North 
 
 America, 152. 
 Franklin, Benjamin, 27, 36-40, 52, 
 
 54, 74, 76. 
 
 Freedom of the Will, 34. 
 French Poets and Novelists, 215. 
 Freneau, Philip, 61-63. 
 Fuller, Margaret, 95, 97, 98, 101, 103, 
 
 107-108, 109, 112, 123, 135. 
 Galaxy Magazine, The, 197. 
 Garrison, W. L., 88, 89, 153, 162, 163, 
 
 181. 
 Garrison of Cape Anne, The, 31. 
 
 Geography of the Mississippi Val 
 ley, 73. 
 
 Georgia Spec, The, 64. 
 
 Ghost Ball at Congress Hall, The, 
 176. 
 
 Give Me the Old. 177. 
 
 Godey s Lady s Book, 156, 166. 
 
 Godfrey, Thomas, 63. 
 
 Gold Bug, The. 170. 
 
 Golden Legend, The, 135. 
 
 Good News from Virginia, 16. 
 
 Good Word for Winter, 148. 
 
 Goodrich, 8. G., 70, 74, 119. 
 
 Graham s Magazine, 156, 166, 168 
 170, 177. 
 
 Grandfather s Chair. 31. 
 
 Grandissimes, The, 213. 
 
 Greeley, Horace, 97, 177, 189. 
 
 Green River, 159. 
 
 Greene, A. G., 87. 
 
 Greenfield Hill, 58. 
 
 Griggsby s Station, 211. 
 
 Guardian Angel. The, 142. 
 
 Hail Columbia, 60, 61, 81. 
 
 Hale, E. E., 126, 170, 203-204. 
 
 Halleck, F. G., 82-83, 91, 176. 
 
 Halpine, C. G., 193. 
 
 Hamilton, Alexander, 48, 49, 51, 89 
 
 Hannah Thurston, 179. 
 
 Hans Breitmann Ballads, 212. 
 
 inds, 
 
 Hans Pfaall, 170. 
 larbinger. The. 97. 
 Harper s Monthly Magazine, 156, 
 
 205. 
 
 Harris, J. C., 212. 
 Harte, F. B., 201, 206-209, 210. 
 Hasty Pudding, 58. 
 Haunted Palace, The, 171. 
 Hawthorne, Julian, 122. 
 Hawthorne, Nathaniel, 7, 17, 24, 31, 
 57, 64, 95, 97, 98, 108, 111, 117-124, 128, 
 133, 142, 143, 156, 167, 172, 179, 18" 
 192, 194, 195, 213, 215, 219. 
 Hay, John, 209, 210. 
 Health, A, 87. 
 Heathen Chinee, The, 208. 
 Hedge, F. H., 97. 
 
 Height of the Ridiculous, The, 137. 
 Henry, Patrick, 43, 44, 48. 
 Hiawatha, 62, 135. 
 Higginson, T. W., 76, 97, 108, 195. 
 His Level Best, 203. 
 History of New England, Win- 
 
 throp s, 23-26. 
 History of Plymouth Plantation, 
 
 Bradford s, 23, 24. 
 History of the Dividing Line, 15. 
 History of the United Netherlanc 
 
 151. 
 
 History of the United States, Ban 
 croft s, 127, 151 ; Higginson s, 76. 
 History of Virginia, Beverly s, 15 ; 
 
 Smith s, 13 Stith s, 16. 
 Hoffman, C. F., 177. 
 Holland, J. G., 205. 
 Holmes, O. W., 28, 87, 95, 96, 126, 127, 
 136,143, 146, 157, 160, 167, 190, 193, 
 194, 195, 196, 211. 
 Home, Sweet Home, 86. 
 Homesick in Heaven. 139. 
 Hooker, Thomas, 27, 29, 30, 101. 
 Hoosier Schoolmaster, The, 210. 
 Hopkins, Lemuel, 55, 56. 
 Hop&inson, Francis, 60. 
 Hopkinson, Joseph, 60. 
 Horse-Shoe Robinson, 175. 
 House of the Seven Gables, The, 
 
 118, 122. 
 
 Howe, Mrs. J. W., 190. 
 Howells, W. D., 64, 213-215, 217-220. 
 Humphreys, David, 55, 56. 
 Hymn at the Completion of Con 
 cord Monument, 113. 
 Hymn of the Moravian Nuns, 129. 
 Hymn to the Night, 130. 
 Hymn to the North Star, 1-58. 
 Hyperion, 136. 
 Ichabod, 164. 
 If, Yes, and Perhaps, 203. 
 Iliad, Bryant s, 161. 
 Illustrious Providences, 28. 
 In the Tennessee Mountains, 212. 
 In the Twilight, 147. 
 In War Time, 164. 
 Independent, The, 183. 
 Indian Bible, Eliot s, 20. 
 Indian Burying-Ground, The, 62. 
 Indian Student, The, 62. 
 
288 
 
 Index. 
 
 Indian Summer, 218, 219. 
 Ingham Papers, 203. 
 Inklings of Adventure, 176. 
 Innocents Abroad, 201, 202. 
 International Episode, 216, 217. 
 Irving, Washington, 43, 54, 69, 73, 
 
 74-81, 82, 83, 84, 91, l2l, 143, 151, 159, 
 
 194. 195, 202, 216. 
 Israfel, 169. 
 Italian Journeys. 218. 
 Italian Note Books, 123. 
 James, Henry, 193, 213, 214-217. 
 Jane Talbot, 64. 
 Jay, John, 49. 
 Jefferson, Thomas, 13, 45-48, 50, 52, 
 
 61. 
 
 Jesuits in North America, The, 152. 
 Jim, 209. 
 Jim Bludso, 209. 
 John Brown s Body, 59, 190. 
 John Godfrey s Fortune, 179. 
 " John Phoanix," 197. 
 John Underbill, 24. 
 Jonathan to John, 146. 
 "Josh Billings, "200. 
 Journey to the Land of Eden, A, 15. 
 Judd, Sylvester, 149. 
 Jumping Frog, The, 201. 
 June, 159, 160. 
 
 Justice and Expediency, 163. 
 Kansas and Nebraska Bill, The, 
 
 154. 
 
 Katie, 191. 
 Kennedy, J. P., 175. 
 Key into the Language of America, 
 
 Key, F. S., 61. 
 
 Kidd, the Pirate, 77. 
 
 King s Missive, The, 165. 
 
 Knickerbocker Magazine, The, 77, 
 81, 119, 152, 166. 
 
 Knickerbocker s History of New 
 York, 69, 74. 76, 77, 194. 
 
 Lady Barbarina, 217. 
 
 Lady of the Aroostook, The, 217, 
 219. 
 
 Lanier, Sidney, 212. 
 
 La Salle and the Discovery of the 
 Great West, 152. 
 
 Last Leaf, The, 87, 137. 
 
 Last of the Mohicans, The, 85, 86. 
 
 Last of the Valerii, The, 215. 
 
 Latest Form of Infidelity, The, 101. 
 
 Latest Literary Essays and Ad 
 dresses, 149. 
 
 Laus Deo, 164. 
 
 Leatherstocking Tales, 62, 85. 
 
 Leaves of Grass, 183, 184, 186. 
 
 Lecture on the Mormons, 198-199. 
 
 Legend of Brittany, 143. 
 
 Legend of Sleepy Hollow, 77, 78. 
 
 Legends of New England, 163. 
 
 Legends of the Province House, 121. 
 
 Leland, C. G., 212. 
 
 Letter on Whitewashing, 60. 
 
 Letters and Social Aims, 109. 
 
 Letters from Under a Bridge, 176. 
 
 Letters of a Traveler, 161. 
 
 Liberator, The, 88, 153, 181. 
 
 Life of Columbus, Irving s, 75 80 
 
 Life of Goldsmith, 80. 
 
 Life of John of Barneveld, 152. 
 
 Life of Washington, Irving s, 80 
 
 Ligeia, 172. 
 
 Light of Stars, The, 130. 
 
 Lincoln, Abraham, 51, 137, 187, 193, 
 
 19b. 
 
 Lines on Leaving Europe, 176. 
 Lippincott s Magazine, 205. 
 Literary Recreations, 166. 
 Literati of New York, 166. 
 Little Breeches, 209. 
 Little Orphant Annie, 211. 
 Livingston, William, 54. 
 Locke, David R 200. 
 Longfellow, H. W., 17, 24, 25, 62, 118, 
 
 119, 127, 128-136, 138, 143, 144, 146, 
 
 157, 165, 166, 173, 179, 186, 205, 210. 
 Lost Arts, The, 153. 
 Lost Cause, The, 189. 
 Lowell, J. R., 10, 34, 95, 98, 107, 108, 
 
 110, 126, 127, 132, 143-147, 150, 157 
 
 160, 166, 167, 179, 181, 190, 194, 195, 
 
 196, 205, 210. 
 
 Luck of Roaring Camp, The, 206. 
 Lunatic s Skate, The, 176. 
 Lyrics of a Day, 191. 
 Madison, James, 49, 61. 
 ! Madonna of the Future, The, 215. 
 Magnalia Christi Americana, 17, 28- 
 
 30, 33, 74. 
 
 Mahomet and His Successors, 80. 
 Maine Woods, The, 114. 
 " Major Jack Downing," 197. 
 Man of the Crowd.The, 172. 
 Man-of-War Bird, The, 186. 
 Man Without a Country, The, 170, 
 
 Marble Faun, The, 119, 120, 121, 122. 
 Marco Bozzaris, 83. 
 Margaret, 150. 
 
 " Mark Twain," 196, 197, 201, 202. 
 Maryland, My Maryland, 190. 
 Masque of the Gods, The, 178. 
 Masque of the Red Death, The, 172. 
 Mather, Cotton, 17, 18, 19, 20, 22, 25, 
 
 27, 28-31, 36, 74l 
 Mather, Increase, 28, 30. 
 Maud Muller, 165. 
 Mayday, 110. 
 
 Maypole of Merrymount, The, 24. 
 McFingal, 54, 55. 60, 74. 
 Memoranda of the Civil War, 187. 
 Memorial History of Boston, 165. 
 Men Naturally God s Enemies, 35. 
 Merry Mount, 150. 
 Messenger, R. H., 177. 
 Miggles, 2^8. 
 " Miles O Reilly," 193. 
 Minister s Black Veil. The, 121. 
 Minister s Wooing, The, 181. 
 Mitchell, D. G., 182. 
 Mocking Bird, The. 212. 
 Modern Instance, A, 218, 219. 
 Modern Learning, 60. 
 Modest Request, A, 139. 
 
Index. 
 
 289 
 
 Money Diggers, The, 77. 
 
 Montcalm and Wolfe, 152. 
 
 Monterey, 177. 
 
 Moore, C. C., 177. 
 
 Moore, Frank, 190. 
 
 Moral Argument against Calvin 
 ism, The. 93. 
 
 Morris, G. P., 176. 
 
 Morton s Hope, 150. 
 
 Mosses from an Old Manse, 118, 121. 
 
 Motley, J. L., 126, 143, 150, 151-152. 
 
 Mount Vernon, 57. 
 
 "Mrs. Partington," 197. 
 
 MS. Found in a Bottle, 175. 
 
 Murder of Lovejoy, The, 127. 
 
 Murders in the Rue Morgue, The, 
 170. 
 
 Murfree, Mary N.. 212. 
 
 Music-Grinders, The, 137. 
 
 My Aunt, 137. 
 
 My Captain, 187. 
 
 My Double and How He Undid 
 Me. 204. 
 
 My Garden Acquaintance, 148. 
 
 My Life is Like the Summer Rose, 
 87. 
 
 My Old Kentucky Home, 180. 
 
 Mv Search for the Captain, 193. 
 
 My Study Windows, 148. 
 
 My Wife and 1, 182. 
 
 Mystery of Gilgal, The, 209. 
 
 Mystery of Marie Roget, The, 170. 
 
 Narrative of A. Gordon Pym, The, 
 
 Nathaniel Hawthorne and His 
 
 Wife, 122. 
 
 Nature. 95, 104, 106, 110. 
 Naval History of the United States, 
 
 83. 
 
 Nearer Home, 180. 
 Negro Melodies, 180. 
 Neighborly Poems, 212. 
 Nelly was a Lady, 180. 
 New England Tragedies, 24. 
 New England Two Centuries Ago, 
 
 146, 148. 
 New System of English Grammar, 
 
 A, 197. 
 
 New York Evening Post, 158, 161. 
 New York Tribune, The, 97, 178. 
 Newell, R. H., 201. 
 North American, The, 157. 
 North American Review, The, 91, 
 
 92, 119, 128, 148, 158. 
 Norton, Andrews, 101. 
 Notes on Virginia, 48. 
 Nothing to Wear, 177. 
 Nux Postcoenatica, 139. 
 O Susanna, 180. 
 O Brien, F. J., 193. 
 Observations on the Boston Port 
 
 Bill, 45. 
 
 Occultation of Orion, The, 132, 144. 
 Ode at the Harvard Commemora 
 tion, 147. 
 
 Ode for a Social Meeting, 139. 
 Ode to Freedom, 145. 
 Odyssey, Bryant s, 161. 
 
 Old Clock on the Stairs, The, 132. 
 
 Old Creole Days, 213. 
 
 Old-Fashioned Roses, 212. 
 
 Old Folks at Home, 180. 
 
 Old Grimes, 87. 
 
 Old Ironsides, 137. 
 
 Old Oaken Bucket, The, 86. 
 
 Old Pennsylvania Farmer, 178. 
 
 Old R6gime in Canada, The, 152. 
 
 Old Sergeant, The, 191. 
 
 Old Swimmin Hole and Leven 
 
 More Poems, The, 210. 
 On a Certain Condescension in 
 
 Foreigners, 146. 
 One-Hoss Shay. The, 139, 196. 
 Oregon Trail. The, 152. 
 Ormond, 64, 65. 
 " Orpheus C. Kerr." 201. 
 Orphic Sayings, 107. 
 " ?ood, Mrs. K. P., 167, 191. 
 
 is, James, 43, 44, 45. 
 Our Master, 164. 
 Our Old Home, 122. 
 Out of the Question, 219. 
 Outcasts of Poker Flat, The, 208. 
 Outre-Mer. 128. 
 Overland Monthly, The, 207. 
 Over-soul, The, 107. 
 Paine, R. T., 61. 
 Paine, Tom, 51-53. 
 Panorama, The, 164. 
 Paper, 39. 
 
 Parker, Theodore, 100, 102, 109. 
 Parkman, Francis, 127, 150, 151, 152. 
 Parlor Car, The, 220. 
 Partisan, The, 175. 
 Passionate Pilgrim, A, 215. 
 Pathfinder. The, 85. 
 Paulding, J. K., 73, 76, 81, 167. 
 Payne, J. H., 86. 
 Pearl of Orr s Island. The, 181. 
 Pencillings by the Way, 176. 
 Pension Beaurepas, The, 216. 
 Percival, J. G., 182. 
 Percy, George, 10, 18. 
 " Peter Parley." 70. 
 "Petroleum V. Nasby," 200. 
 Phenomena Qusedam Apocalyp- 
 
 tica, 32. 
 Phillips, Wendell, 126, 127, 153, 163, 
 
 181. 
 
 Philosophic Solitude, 54. 
 Philosophy of Composition, 169. 
 Phoenixiana, 197. 
 Piatt, J. J., 191, 210, 218. 
 Pictures of Memory, 180. 
 Pilot, The. 85. 
 Pink and White Tyranny, 182. 
 
 Pinkney, E. C., 87. 
 Pioneer, The, 143. 
 
 Pioneers, The, 73, 85. 
 
 Pioneers of France in the New 
 
 World, 152. 
 Pipes O Pan, 212. 
 Plain Language from Truthful 
 
 James, 208. 
 Planting of the Apple-tree, The, 
 
 161. 
 
290 
 
 Index. 
 
 Plato, Emerson on. 111. 
 
 Poe, E. A., 64. 82. 87, 109, 119, 120, 
 
 135, 143, 156, 159, 167-173, 175, 180, 
 
 189, 193, 204. 
 
 Poems of the Orient, 178. 
 Poems of Two Friends, 218. 
 Poems on Slavery, 132. 
 Poet at the Breakfast Table, The, 
 
 141. 
 
 Poetic Principle, The, 171. 
 Poetry : A Metrical Essay, 138. 
 Poet s Hope, A, 109. 
 Political Green House, The, 56. 
 Pollard, E. A., 189. 
 Pons Maximus, 180. 
 Poor Richard s Almanac, 39, 40. 
 Portraits of Places, 217. 
 Prairie, The, 85. 
 Prentice, G. D., 162, 196. 
 Prescott, W. H., 127, 150, 151, 152, 
 
 157, 189. 
 
 Present Crisis, The, 145. 
 Pride of the Village, The, 79. 
 Prince Deukalion, 178. 
 Prince of Parthia, The, 63. 
 Problem, The, 113. 
 Professor at the Breakfast Table, 
 
 The, 141. 
 
 Progress to the Mines, A, 15. 
 Prologue, The, 139. 
 Prophecy of Samuel Sewall, 32. 
 Prophet, The, 178. 
 Psalm of Life, The, 130, 132. 
 Purloined Letter, The, 170. 
 Putnam s Monthly, 127, 205. 
 Quaker Widow, The, 178. 
 Quincy, Josiah, 43-45. 
 Rag Man and Rag Woman, The, 204. 
 Raggedy Man, The, 211. 
 Randall, J. R., 190. 
 Randolph, John, 46. 
 Raven, The, 169, 171. 
 Reed, T. B.. 180. 
 
 Reaper and the Flowers, The, 130. 
 Rebellion Record, The, 190. 
 Recollections of a Lifetime, 70, 74. 
 Red Rover, The, 85. 
 Register, The, 220. 
 Remarks on Associations, 93. 
 Remarks on National Literature, 
 
 94, 103. 
 
 Reply to Hayne, Webster s, 89. 
 Representative Men, 105, 110, 112. 
 Resignation, 132. 
 Reveries of a Bachelor, 182. 
 Rhcecus, 143. 
 
 Rhymes of Childhood, 212. 
 Rhymes of Travel, 178. 
 Riding to Vote, 191. 
 Rights of the British Colonies, 45. 
 Riley, J. W., 210-212. 
 Ripley, George, 97, 102, 103, 109, 157. 
 Rip Van Winkle, 76. 
 Rip Van Winkle, M.D., 139. 
 Rise and Fall of the Confederate 
 
 States, 189. 
 Rise and Fall of the Slave Power, 
 
 189. 
 
 Rise of the Dutch Republic, 151. 
 
 Rob of the Bowl, 175. 
 
 Roderick Hudson, 216. 
 
 Roughing It, 201. 
 
 Salmagundi, 76, 81, 161. 
 
 Sandys, George, 14, 18. 
 
 San Francisco, 206. 
 
 Scarlet Letter, The, 24, 120, 121, 122. 
 
 School Days, 162. 
 
 Schoolcraft, H. R., 135. 
 
 Science of English Verse, 212. 
 
 Scribner s Monthly, 205. 
 
 Scripture Poems, 176. 
 
 Seaside and Fireside, 131, 132. 
 
 Seaweed, 132, 134. 
 
 Selling of Joseph, The, 32. 
 
 September Gale, The, 137. 
 
 Sewall, J. M., 61. 
 
 Sewall, Samuel, 31-32. 
 
 Shakespeare Ode, 91. 
 
 Shaw, H. W., 200. 
 
 Shepherd of King Admetus, The, 
 
 143. 
 
 Sheridan s Ride, 180. 
 Shillaber, B. P., 197. 
 Sigourney, Mrs. L. H., 110, 182. 
 Silas Lapham, 219. 
 Simms, W. G., 175. 
 Simple Cobbler of Agawam, The, 
 
 18. 
 Sinners in the Hands of an Angry 
 
 God, 35. 
 
 Skeleton in Armor, The, 131. 
 Skeleton in the Closet, The, 204. 
 Sketch Book, The, 74, 76, 77, 79. 
 Skipper Ireson s Ride, 165. 
 Sleeper, The, 172. 
 Sleeping-Car, The, 64. 
 Smith, Elihu, 55. 
 Smith, John, 9, 10. 13, 14, 18, 23. 
 Smith, Seba. 197. 
 Snow- Bound, 165. 
 Society and Solitude, 109. 
 Song for a Temperance Dinner, 138. 
 Song of the Chattahoochie, 212. 
 South Wind and the Sun, The,212. 
 Southern Literary Messenger, The, 
 
 166, 168. 
 Southern Passages and Pictures, 
 
 175. 
 
 Sparkling and Bright, 177. 
 Specimen Days, 187. 
 Specimens of Foreign Standard 
 
 Literature, 103. 
 Sphinx, The, 140. 
 Sprague, Charles, 91. 
 Spring, 176. 
 Spy, The, 84. 
 Squibob Papers, 197. 
 Star Papers, 183. 
 
 Star-Spangled Banner, The, 61, 81. 
 Stedman, E. C., 177, 205. 
 Stephens, A. H., 189. 
 Stith, William, 16. 
 Stoddard, R. H., 177, 205. 
 Story of Kennett, The, 179. 
 Stowe, Mrs. H. B., 181, 182. 
 Strachey, William, 9. 
 
Index. 
 
 291 
 
 Stuart, Moses, 101. 
 
 Suburban Sketches, 218. 
 
 Sumner, Charles, 126, 127, 128, 132, 
 
 147, 153, 154, 163, 181. 
 Supernaturalism in New England, 
 
 166. 
 
 Swallow Barn, 175. 
 Swinton, W., 190. 
 Sybaris and Other Homes, 203. 
 Tales of a Traveler, 77. 
 Tales of a Wayside Inn, 165. 
 Tales of the Glauber Spa, 161. 
 Tales of the Grotesque and Ara 
 besque, 172. 
 Tamerlane, 167. 
 Tanglewood Tales, 123. 
 Taylor, Bayard, 177-179. 
 Telling the Bees. 165. 
 Ten Times One is Ten, 203. 
 Tennessee s Partner, 208. 
 Tent on the Beach, The, 165. 
 Thanatopsis, 69, 81, 129, 158, 159, 161. 
 Their Wedding Journey, 218. 
 Theology, Dwight s, 59. 
 Thirty Poems, 161. 
 Thoreau, H. D., 95, 98, 109, 112, 113- 
 
 117, 123, 126, 127, 129, 157, 186, 189. 
 Timrod, Henry, 191. 
 To a Waterfowl, 159. 
 To Helen, 169. 
 
 To M from Abroad, 176. 
 
 To One in Paradise, 172. 
 To Seneca Lake. 182. 
 Tour on the Prairies, A, 73. 
 Tramp Abroad, A, 201. 
 Transcendentalist, The, 103, 104. 
 Travels, Dwight s, 59. 
 Treatise concerning Religious Af 
 fections, 35. 
 
 Triumph of Infidelity, 59. 
 True Grandeur of Nations, The, 154. 
 True Relation, Smith s, 13. 
 True Repertory of the Wrack of 
 
 Sir Thomas Gates, 9. 
 Trumbull, John, 54, 55, 56, 74. 
 
 Twice-Told Tales, 119, 120, 121. 
 
 Two Rivers, 115. 
 
 Tyler, Royall, 64. 
 
 Ulalume, 171. 
 
 Uncle Ned, 180. 
 
 Uncle Remus. 212. 
 
 Uncle Tom s Cabin, 181. 
 
 Under the Willows, 147. 
 
 Undiscovered Country, The, 219,220, 
 
 Unknown Dead, The, 191. 
 
 Unseen Spirits, 176. 
 
 Valley of Unrest, The, 169. 
 
 Vanity Fair, 198. 
 
 Vassall Morton, 150. 
 
 Venetian Life. 218. 
 
 Views Afoot, 177. 
 
 Villa Franca, 147. 
 
 Village Blacksmith, The, 131. 
 
 Virginia Comedians, The, 175. 
 
 Vision of Columbus, The, 57, 58. 
 
 Vision of Sir Launfal, The, 145. 
 
 Visit from St. Nicholas, A, 177. 
 
 Voices of Freedom, 164. 
 
 Voices of the Night, 128, 130. 
 Voluntaries, 113. 
 Von Kempelen s Discovery, 170. 
 Walden, 114. 
 Wants of Man, The, 87. 
 War Lyrics, 191. 
 Ward, Nathaniel, 18. 
 Ware, Henry, 101. 
 Washers of the Shroud, The, 147. 
 Washington, George, 49, 51. 
 Washington as a Camp, 192. 
 Washington Square, 193. 
 Way Down South, 180. 
 Webster, Daniel, 75, 88, 89-91,92, 154, 
 
 164, 194. 
 
 Webster s Spelling-book, 70. 
 Week on the Concord and Merri- 
 
 mac Rivers, A, 114. 
 Western Windows, 210. 
 Westminster Abbey, 79. 
 Westover MSS., The, 14. 
 Westward Ho ! 73. 
 What Mr. Robinson Thinks, 145. 
 What Was It ? 193. 
 When the Frost is on the Punkm, 
 
 211. 
 
 Whistle, The, 39. 
 Whitaker, Alexander, 16. 
 White, R. G.j 205. 
 Whitman, Walt, 130, 183-187, 190. 
 Whittier, J. G., 17. 24, 25, 31, 32, 95, 
 
 132, 138, 143, 161-166, 173, 181, 182, 186, 
 
 190, 192, 205. 
 Wieland, 64, 66. 
 Wigglesworth, Michael, 33. 
 Wild Honeysuckle, The, 62. 
 Wilde, R. H., 86. 
 William Wilson, 172. 
 Williams, Roger. 21. 
 Willis, N. P., 72, i60, 176, 177, 183. 
 Willson, Forceythe, 191. 
 Wilson, Henry, 189. 
 Winter Evening Hymn to My Fire, 
 
 Wiiithrop, John, 10, 21, 22, 23-26, 27, 
 30,32. 
 
 Winthrop, Theodore, 192. 
 
 Witchcraft, 148. 
 
 Witch s Daughter, The, 163. 
 
 Wolfert s Roost, 77. 
 
 Wolfert Webber, 77. 
 
 Woman in the Nineteenth Cen 
 tury, 108. 
 
 Wonder Book, The, 123. 
 
 Wonders of the Invisible World, 
 20,31. 
 
 Woods, Leonard, 101. 
 
 Woods in Winter, 129. 
 
 Woodman, Spare that Tree, 176. 
 
 Woodworth, Samuel, 86. 
 
 Woolman s Journal, 66-68, 163. 
 
 Wound-Dresser, The, 185. 
 
 Wrath Upon the Wicked, 35. 
 
 Wreck of the Hesperus, The, 131, 134. 
 
 Yankee Doodle, 59-60. 
 , Yankee in Canada, A, 114. 
 ! Year s Life, A, 143. 
 i Yemassee, The, 175. 
 
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