History of American Literature

the middle of the nineteenth century approaches, however, we shall find a remarkable group of writers in Boston and its vicinity. The causes of this wonderful literary awakening a

tion" strictly means "forming again" or "forming in a different way." It is not the province of a history of literature to state whet

ction to salvation depended on God's foreordination. If the man was not elected, he was justly treated, for he merely received his deserts. Even Jo

me insect, over the fire, abhors you, and is dreadfully provoked; his wrath toward you bu

ecurring idea of God. But the fact that even he felt impelled to preach such a sermon shows most emphatically

. William Ellery Channing (1780-1842), pastor of the Federal Street Church in Boston and on

tion or terror, will think that it is not necessary for us to travel to heathe

d College. Unitarianism was embraced by the majority of Congregational churches in Boston, including the First Church, and the Second Church, where the great John Cotton (see p. 14.) and Cotton Mather (p. 46.) had preached the sternest Puritan theology. Nearly all of the prominent writers mentioned in this chapter adopted liberal religious views. The recoil had been violent

tarianism. Perhaps these three lines voice most briefly the centr

and I are

that are st

p Infinite h

narrowness of culture which had starved the emotional and aesthetic nature. Art, music, literature, and the love of beauty in general had seemed reprehensible because it was thought that they took away the attention from a matter of far graver import, the

s were made

s its own exc

elsewhere. Many with an income barely sufficient for comfortable living set aside a fund for purchasing books before anything else. Emerson could even write to Carlyle tha

a foreign bookstore and reading room. Longfellow made many beautiful translations from foreign poetry. In 1840 Emerson said that he had read in the original fifty-five volumes of

d. Her poets and prose writers produced a literature in which beauty, power, and kno

f thought. The English philosopher, Locke, had maintained that intellectual action is limited to the world of the senses. The German metaphysician, Kant, claimed that the soul has ideas which are not due to the

dinary phenomena of life, which are apparent to the senses and which are the only things perceived by the majority of human beings. But behind all these appearances are forces and realities which the senses do not perceive. One with the bodily eye can see the living forms moving around him, b

ond the ran

d the range

to explain existence, to build a foundation of meaning under the passing phenomena of life. To the old Puritan, the unseen was always fraught with deeper meaning than the seen. Sarah Pierrepont and Jon

one, (2) exalted individuality, (3) frowned on imitation and repetition, (4) broke with the past, (5) believed that a new social and spiritual renaissance was necessary and forthcoming, (6) insisted on the importance of culture

les of the transcendental creed was a belief "in inspiration and ecstasy." With this went an overmastering consciousness of newly discovered powe

ief that he was really a part of an in

e. 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 s

er for equal rights for her sex, believed that when it was fashionable for women to bring to the home

brought an inspiring message.

hopes, while the gentle voluble south wind plays with the dry leaves, and the pine trees sigh with their soul

ion: MARGA

ry. He dislikes routine. "Everything," Emerson says, "admonishes us how needlessly long life is," that is, if we walk with heroes and do not repeat. Let a machine add figures while the soul moves on. He

on: AMOS BR

cstasies. AMOS BRONSON ALCOTT (1799-1888), one of the leading transcendental

sunrise fo

of the

ed him to believe that human nature is saturated with divinity. He therefore felt that a misbehaving child in school would be most powerfully affected by seeing the suffering which his wrongdoing brought to others. He accordingly used to shake a good child for the bad deeds of others. Sometimes when the class had offended, he would inflict corporal punishment on himself. His extreme applic

RCHARD HOUSE, HO

scendentalist, nature was a part of divinity. The question was sometimes asked whether nature had any real existence outside of God,

uch of the nature literature of this group shows a belief in the soul's mystic compan

suggestion of an occult relation between man and the vegetable. I

rne ex

put myself into a true relation with Nature, and

hrine and dilates with a sense of her companion

n are not shut against him.... It changes all hours to an eternal morning. It banishes all trivialness. It reinstates me in my dominion, makes me the

lked with the reindeer, the beaver, and the rabbit, as with his brothers. In dealing with nature, Whittier caug

soul in grass

literature has reacted on the ideals of the entire republic. Flowers, trees, birds, domestic animals, and helpless human beings have received

d all the birds

rose, and left

RGARET FULLER'S C

f her, "Such a predetermination to eat this big Universe as her oyster or her egg, and to be absolute empress of all height and glory in it that her heart could conceive, I have not before seen in any human soul." She was determined to do her part in ushering in a new social and spiritua

f the articles were dull, not a few were vague, but many were an inspiration to the age, and their resultant effect is still felt in our life and literature. Much of the minor poetry wa

hed in pure

strongest e

for each li

own parti

tone of dis

way like a

to immo

meet with sentiments as full of meaning to us as to

s not q

usy c

s the

to its

nd an expression fit to

dreamed that l

found that l

rit. In the first volume we may note such

.... And Shakespeare in King John does but recall me to myself in the dress of another age, the sport of new accidents. I, who am Cha

Alcott's famous Orphic Sayings, o

: you may not violate this high trust. Yourself is sacred, profane it not. Forge no chains wherewi

al for January, 1841, suggested a thought that

live merely to get a li

by dru

lume voice the new spiri

t anchor, I n

he glass of in

ife, during a critical period in New England's renaissance. No other periodical d

of about two hundred acres at West Roxbury, nine miles from Boston. This was known as Brook Farm, and it became the home of

on: POOL AT

ul" and they determined to combine manual and mental labor in such a way as to achieve this result. Probably the majority of Americans are in sympathy with such an aim. Many

New York Tribune, and GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS (1824-1892), who became a well-known essayist, magazine editor, and civil service reformer. The original pioneers numbered about twenty; but the membership increased

he Brook Farm group, has recorded many of his e

longing to Miss Margaret Fuller. She is very fractious, I believe, and apt to kick over the milk pail.... April 16. I have milked a cow!!! ... May 3. The whole fraternity eat together, and such a delectable way of lif

day in the summer time, and this toil was so fatiguing that the mind could not work

buried and perish ... in a furrow of the fi

st 12,

e spent five golden months in providing

ber 9,

l one enough, even in gloomy weather.... It would be difficult to conceive beforehand how much can b

r the association was forced for financial reasons to disband. This was probably the most ideal of a series of social settlements, every one of which failed. The problem

Note Books, in Emerson's miscellaneous writings, and in many books and hundreds of articles by less well-known peop

and Lowell, we find that all were men of the highest ideals and character. Not one could be accused of double dealing and intentional misrepresentation, like Alexander Pop

l. Nearly all could trace their descent from the early Puritans. It is not an infusion of new blood that has given America her greatest writers, but an infusion of new ideals. Some of these ideals were illusion

most part he did not aim to produce a literature of pleasure, but of spiritual power, which he knew would incidentally bring pleasure of the high

w England disapproved of slavery at the end of the first half of the nineteenth century. The truth is that many of the most influential people in that section agreed with the South on the question o

e individual to develop free from any trammels. The Dial and Brook Farm were both steps toward fuller individuality and more varied life and both

unded The Liberator, which became the official organ of the New England abolitionists. He influenced the Quaker poet Whittier to devote the best years

an beings. Harriet Beecher, the sister of Henry Ward Beecher, the greatest pulpit orator of anti-slavery days, was born in Litchfield, Connecticut. When she was twenty-one, she went with her father, Lyman Beecher, to Cincinnati. Her

n: HARRIET B

father in the Lane Theological Seminary in Cincinnati. D

of the Fugitive Slave Act, which required the citizens of free states to aid in catching and returning escaped

old, and the others were a constant care. Nevertheless, she persevered with her epoch-making story. One of her friends has given us a picture of the difficulties in

the institution of slavery, which had been merely an abstraction to the North. Of Senator J

k and bundle, with 'Ran away from the subscriber' under it. The magic of the real presence of distress,-the imploring human eye, the frail, trembling human ha

ave mother and her child escaping on the floating ice across

a slave?' s

elonged to a ma

unkind

he was a go

r mistress un

mistress was alw

ditor had a claim which could be discharged only by the sale of the child. "Th

to Senator John Bird that it would be the natural thing for him to defeat his own law, by d

ger than the fugitive slave laws of the United States, how it helped to render of no avail the decrees of the courts, and to usher in a four years' war. We decide that she achieved this result because the pictures, whether representative or not, which she chose to throw on her screen, were such as appealed to the most elemental principles of human nature, such as the mother could not forget when she heard her own children sa

s in his greatest work, Huckleberry Finn (1884), a fugitive slave to arouse our sympathies. The plot of Pudd'nhead Wilson (1894) turns

l. There are faults of plot, style, and characterization. Modern fiction would call for more differentiation in the dialogue of the different characters and for more unity of structure, and yet there are stories with all these technical excellencies which do not live a year. We may say with W. P. Trent, a Virginian by birth, and a critic who has the

d the speeches of EDWARD EVERETT (1794-1865), CHARLES SUMNER (1811-1874), and WENDELL PHILLIPS (1811-1884), all born in Massachusetts, and all graduates of Harvard. But even the best speeches of these men are gradually being forgotten, although a stray sentence or paragraph may still occasionally be heard, such as Wendell

orators. He was born in Salisbury, New Hampshire, and educated at Dartmouth College. It was

's statelies

nd speech

met, at fi

ed and wond

ost noted statesman, and the greatest orator in the cou

ion: DANIE

to use our spoken language effectively. In Webster's youth, a stilted, unnatural style was popular for

the time when the banner of civil war shall be unfurled; when Discord's hydra form shall set

Sunday clothes for church. An Oratorical Dictionary for the use of public speakers, was actually published in the first part of the nineteenth century. This contained a liberal am

to the fleets "of Tyre, of Carthage, of Rome," and to Hannibal's slaughtering the Romans "till the Aufidus ran blood." He painted

efforts and in pricking rhetorical bubbles. Webster says that Mason talked to the jury "in a plain conversational way, in short sentences, and using no word that was not level to the comprehension of the least e

nd the first sound slumbers of the night held him in their soft but strong embrace.... The face of the innocent sleeper is

find the following paragraph, containing two sentences which pre

to the world the charac

ns had done nothing els

to the respe

ions and figures of rh

hearers. In discussing

ina that a state could

ter

oceed to secession, dismemberment, and general revolution, is as if one were

efathers and the comparative greatne

tion, 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, wh

schoolboys had been declaiming the peroration of

ining on the broken and dishonored fragments of a once glorious Union; on States dissevered, disc

into thousands of homes in the North. The hearts of the

now known and honored throughout the earth, still full high advanced, its arms and trophies str

Liberty and Union, now and forever, one and inseparable!" kept sounding like the voice of many thunders in the ear of the young men, until they shouldered their muskets. His Seventh

g as the American retains his present characteristics, we cannot imagine a time when he will forget Patrick Henry's speech in 1775, or Daniel Webster's peroration in his Reply to Hayne, or Abraha

O EMERSON,

on: RALPH W

dfather, was pastor in Concord at the opening of the Revolutionary War and witnessed the fight of Concord Bridge from the window of the Old Manse, that famous house which he had built and which Hawthorne afterwa

ridge that arc

o April's br

e embattled

shot heard rou

r seven years, but even with this help the family was so poor that in cold weather it was noticed that Ralph and his brother went to school on alternate days. The boys divined the reason, and were cruel enough to call out, "Whose turn is it to wear the coat to-day?" But the mother struggled

received a call from Cotton Mather's (p. 46) church and preached there for a short time; but he soon resigned because he could not conscientiously conform to some of the custo

n years old. This meeting was for two reasons a noteworthy event in his life. In the first place, her inspi

lt comman

slip, summe

ntian in

et of blue-

tion: ELL

into rose had seemed to copy her. He married her in 1829 and wrote th

when the gra

tion to stimulating his poetical activity, his wife's help did not end with her death; for she left him a yearly income of twelve hundred dollars, without

eridge, Wordsworth, and Carlyle, whose influence he had already felt. His visit to Carlyle led to a lifelong friends

ion: EMERS

eceived a medal at school for proficiency in geography, he went home and asked his mother if Boston was located in Concord. It was to Concord that Emerson brought his second wife, Lidian Jackson Emerson, whom he married in 1835. In Concord he wrote his most famous Essays, and from there he set out on his various lecturing tours. There he could talk daily to celebrities like Nathaniel Hawthorne, Henry Thoreau, and Bronson Alcott. Louisa May Alcott relates that when eight years old

losing is

rdly man's

ow but sure

r his world

nt, although he voiced his feelings against slavery, even giving antislavery lectures, when he thought the occasion required such action. His gentleness and tende

er. In 1847 he lectured in England and Scotland. He visited Carlyle again, and for four days listened to "the great and constant stream" of his talk. On this second trip abroad, Emerson met men like De Quincey, Macaulay, Thackeray, and Tennyson. E

subject was familiar, said, "We do not go to hear what Emerson says so much as to hear Emerson." Hawthorne wrote, "It was good to meet him in the wood paths or sometimes in our aven

sed with pines." Years before he had said, "I have scarce a daydream on which the breath of the pines has not

epoch-making in two respects: (1) in a new philosophy of nature, not new to the world, but new in the works of our authors and fr

: EMERSON'S G

philosophy that he afterwards elaborated. By "Nature" he sometimes means everything that is not his own soul, but he also uses the word in its common signi

ridiculous. The dawn is my Assyria; the sunset and moonrise my Paphos, and unimaginable realms of faerie; broad noon s

ans how to secure a warranty deed to the beauties of nature, he specially emphasized the moral element in the process. The student who fails to perceive that Emerson is one of the great m

nd the wheat, weeds and plants, blight, rain, insects, sun,-it is a sacred emblem from the

an beings from the tyranny of materialism, to enable them to use matter as a mere symbol in the solution of the soul's problems, and to make the world c

e of opinion and freedom of discussion as in America.... If great writers have not existed in America, the reason is very simply given in the fact that there can be no literary genius without freedom of opinion, and freedom of opinion does not exist in America." Harriet Martineau, an English

not to be a unit;-not to be reckoned one character;-not to yield that peculiar fruit which each man was created to bear; but to be reckoned in the gross, in the hundred, or the thousand, of the party, the section, to which w

own intuitions and to mold the world by his own will. Young Americans especially listened to his

nd Series. Other volumes followed from time to time, such as Miscellanies (1849), Representative Men (1850), English Traits (1856), The Conduct of Life (1860), Society and Solitude (1870). While the Fir

p, Heroism, and the Over-Soul. If we choose to read Self-Reliance, one of his most typical essays, we shall find that the sentences, or the clauses

conviction that envy is ignorance; that imitation is suicide; t

f-trust, new powers will appear; that a man should not postpone his life, but live now; t

whether we shall read Success, or Books, or Civilization, or any one

ur wagon

de to read

ves. ... We cannot bring the heavenly powers to us, but, if we will only choose our jobs in directions in which they travel, they will und

determination to choose his work in the direction in

lled The Conduct of Life. His English Traits records in a vigorous, interesting, common-sense way his impressions from hi

ral peculiarity of the Saxon race,-its commanding sense of right and wrong,-the love and d

y small amount of poetry, but much more than he is popularly supposed to have written. Some of his verse is of a high degree of excellence;

the god o

his wor

at he thought the poet's de

in the breath

in the s

ong reach of t

alogue

poet who

dom word

fated m

ages mu

easant time; for he said there were Muses in the woods to-day and whispers to be heard in the breezes." When Emerson wa

nd stones are

ers, that tremb

their faery

its sorrows. What modern lover of nature has voiced a more heartfelt, unaffected appreci

my

e can heal. A

er grapes, a m

or rock-lovi

y worst

nature poem, Woodnotes

ive person may fin

all thin

at all

is the best day of the year, and possibly even t

of the ch

nius of God

ay alter t

st cann

north, it st

it still

smells like

no thun

should read at least his Woodnotes, The Humble Bee, The Rhod

e Sphinx (1841), and Brahma (1857). The immanence of God in everything,

hat rounded

he aisles of

n a sad s

m God he co

better th

s stone to b

esses one of Emerson

ion pro

irit mus

he Sphinx's thought-

th one of

er of a

ne in B

oubter and

ne underlying force. His own personal philosophy, that which actuated him in dealing with his fellow-me

too short

peep or

or rep

soon be

music, he often wrote halting lines. Sometimes his poetic flight is marked by t

hispers low,

replies,

merson's poetry does not pulsate with warm human feeling, but it "follows the shining trail of the ethereal," the ideal, and the et

ly the ha

blue urn w

en ha

architecture

writing is moral development. He is America's greate

lows eternally thro

ction of the Righ

ptimism for the future, to his conviction

nd his great man is never the one who can merely alter matter, but who can change our state of mind. He believed in reaching truth, guided by intuition. He would not argue to maintain his positions. He said that he did not k

eading of two men, Carlyle and Emerson, had made him what he was. He said to his students: "I never should have gone through Analytical Geometry and Calculus, had it not been for these men. I never should have become a physical investigator, and hence without them I should not have been here to-day. They told me what I ough

vidual development as well a thousand years hence as to-day and be as applicable to the moral improvement of the Chinese as of Americans. If he is not

forward, because there was no connection between the sentences. The same observation could have been made with almost equal truth about Proverbs, some of Bacon's Essays, Polonius's Advice to Laertes, parts of Hamlet's Soliloquy, and, in general, about any condensed sentences that endeavor to c

he sometimes avails himself of the poetic license to be obscure and contradictory and to present philosophy that will not walk on all f

e room, although there may be intervening waste spaces. Critics may say that his poetry lacks deep feeling, that it is mostly int

D THOREAU,

on: HENRY D

im Concord as his birthplace He was a lifelong student of nature, and he loved the district around Concord. As a boy he knew its woods and streams because he had hunted and fished in them. After

HOREAU'S SPY-GLA

e also assisted his father in his business of pencil making, and together they made the best pencils in New England. Whatever he undertook, he did thoroughly. He had no tolerance for the shoddy or for c

the mere drudgery of earning his sustenance. He determined to divest himself of as many of the burdens of civilization as possible, to lead the simple life, and to waste the least possible time in

ITE OF THOREAU'S

ll house that he himself built upon a piece of Emerson's property beside Walden Pond, about a mile south of Concord. Thoreau found that he could earn enough in six weeks to support himself in this simple way for the rest of the year. He thus acquired the l

or did. He disapproved, for example, of slavery, and consequently refused to pay his poll tax to a government that upheld slavery. When he wa

p family affection, stoical in his ability to stand privations, and Puritanic in his conviction about the moral aim of life. His last illness, induced by exposure to cold, confined him for months away from the out of doors that he loved. In 1862, at the age o

spent in a rowboat on the rivers mentioned in the title. The clearness and exactness of the descriptions are remarkable. Whenever he investigated nature, he took faithful notes so that when he came to write a more exten

, Milkania scandens, which filled every crevice in the leafy bank, contrasting

on his hands. This unfortunate venture caused him to say, "I have now a library o

en, New England's Utopia, is the record of Thoreau's experiment in endeavoring to live an ideal life in the forest. This book differs from most of its kind in presenting

ts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die,

ITURE FROM THOREAU'

one's necessary food, even in this latitude; that a man may use as simple a diet as the animals, and yet retain health and strength.... I am convinced both by faith and experience that to maintain on

n I should have been by any epaulet I could have worn." When nature had some special celebration with the trees, such as decking them with snow or ice or the first buds of spring, he frequently tramped eight or ten miles "to keep an appointment with a beech-tree or a yellow-birch, or an old acquaintance among the pines." It is amusing to read how on such a walk he

s of many readers who have not passed the plastic stage. The book develops a love for even commonplace natural objects, and, like poetry, discloses a new

ods (1864), Cape Cod (1865), and A Yankee in Canada (1866) are records of his tramps in

r (1884), Winter (1887), Autumn (1892), and Notes on New England Birds (1910) were not arranged by him in their present form. Editors searched his Journal for entries dealing with the same season or type of life, and put these in the same volume. Sometimes, as, for instance, in Winter, paragraphs separated by an interval of nineteen years in composition become n

road margin of leisure. Intimate companionship with nature brought this secret to him, and he ha

lisping of the chickadee among the evergreens, and the slumber call of the toads. For him the bluebird "carries the sky on its back." The linnets come to him "bearin

ods and the wild flowers, and the woodpecker and the purple finch and the squirrel a

l, particularly of Emerson. Some of Thoreau's philosophy is impractical and too unsocial, but it aims to disc

ors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours.... If you have bu

aracteristics, a dread of repetition. He gives an account of only his first

could not spare any more time for that one. It is remarkable how easily and insensibly we fall into a particular route, and

e says, "Follow your genius closely enough, and it will not fail to show you a fresh prospect every hour." H

ver an instant's truce between virtue and vice. G

dilettante, and he issued his famous warning that no one can "kill time without injuring eternity." His aim in studying nature was not so much scientific discovery as the revelation of nature's joyous moral message to the spiritual life of man. He may have been unable to distinguish betwe

f his senses. If he exaggerated the importance of a certain way of regarding things, he did so only because he thought the exaggeration was necessary to secure attention for that particular truth, which would even then not be apprehended at its full value. His style has a peculiar flavor, difficult to

in unique description of the most varied incidents in the procession of all the seaso

organ, and one or two notes globe themselves and fall in liquid bubbles from his teeming throat. It is as if he touched his harp within a vase of liquid melody, and when he

urnal for June 11, 1840, where he tries to fat

ng through silence and dark, and now what a rich experience is its! What says it of stagnant pools, and reeds, and damp night fogs? It would be worth while to look in the eye which has been open and se

fresh from the soil," adding vigor to his style; his mystic and poetic communion with nature; and the peculiar tran

HAWTHORNE,

on: NATHANI

nty-three from England on the ship Arbella with John Winthrop (p. 30), and finally settled at Salem, Massachusetts. H

HORNES BIRTHPLACE,

n him. ...I, the present writer, as their representative, hereby take shame upon myself for their sakes, and pray that any curse incurred by them-as I have heard, and as the dreary and unprosperous condition of the race, for many a long year back, would argue to exist-may be now and henceforth remo

y-seven years old at this time, and for forty years after this sad event, she usually took her meals in her own room away from her three children. Everybody in that household became accustomed to loneliness. At the age of fourteen, the boy went to live for a

bought with his own money. Bunyan and Spenser probably fostered his love of the allegorical method of presenting truth, a method that is in evidence in the bulk of Hawthorne's work. He even c

s a naval officer, who published in 1893 a delightful volume called Personal Reminiscences of Nathaniel Hawthorne. These friends changed the course of Hawthorn

equently postponing his walks until after dark. He was busy serving his apprenticeship as an author. In 1828 he paid one hundred dollars for the publication of Fanshawe, an unsuccessful short romance. In mortification he burned the unsold copies,

PEABODYS DRAWING F

ration for his fine historical story, The Gentle Boy. Of her he wrote, "She is a flower to be worn in no man's bosom, but was

dream,-till the heart be touched. That touch creates us,-then we beg

abody's creative touch, for

LD MANSE,' HAWTHORNE'

usand dollars which he had saved, thinking that this would prove a home to which he could bring his future wife and combine work and writing in an ideal way. A year's trial of this life convinced him of his mistake. He was then thirty ei

eternity, and we have been living in eternity ever since we came to this old manse. Like Enoch w

orne's pen could not support his family. He found himself in debt before he had finished his fourth year in Concord. Moncure D. Conway, writing Hawthorne's Life in 1890, the year before American authors were protected by international copyright, says, "In no case has literature, pure and simple, ever s

ed and said, "Oh, then you can write your book!" The Scarlet Letter, published in 1850, was the result. The publisher printed five thousand copies, all that he had ever expected to sell, and then ordered the type to be distributed at once. Finding in ten days,

etter, never again to return to it as a place of residence, a

s American home during his remaining years. Here he had a tower room so constructed as to be well-nigh inacces

HAWTHORNE'S PIN

ice in this position, he resigned and traveled in Europe with his family. They lived in Rome sufficiently long for him to absorb the local color for his romance of The Marble Faun. He remained abroad for seven years. The record of h

nces. His health continued to fail, and in May, 1864, Pierce, thinking that a trip might prove beneficial, started with him on a journey to the White Mountains. Hawthorne retired for the night at the hotel in Plymouth, New Hampshire, and the next morning Pie

lusion and re

d hand li

e for Twice-Told Tales (1837) was probably suggested by the line from Shakespeare's King John: "Life is as tedious as a twice-told tale." The second volume, Mosses from an Old Manse (1846), took its name from Hawthorne's first Concord home. His last colle

endow this image with life and give them a little "snow sister." She grows more vigorous with every life-giving breath inhaled from the west wind. She extends her hands to the snow-birds, and they joyously flock to her. The father of these children is a deadly literal man. No tale of fairy, no story of dryad, of Aladdin's lamp, or of winged sandal had ever carried magical meaning to his unimaginative literal mi

e Puritanic idea of the orgies of witches in a forest. If we wish, for instance, to supplement the cold page of history with a tale that breathes the very atmosphere of the Quaker persecution of New England, let us open The Twice-Told Tales and read the story of The Gentle Boy, a Quaker child of six, found sobbing on

lightful bit of mixed description and narration, "a narrative essay" or "a sketch," as some prefer to call it. In this class we may include

y Thoreau. We agree with Hawthorne that a lovelier river "never flowed on earth,-nowhere indeed except to lave the interior regions of a poet's imagination." When

ssed the threshold of the house or trod the thronged pavements of a city, still the lea

ne directness of narration demanded by the modern short story; but the moral truth and beauty of his tales will long prove their elixi

e volumes he has adapted the old classical myths to the tastes of American children. His unusual version of these myths meets two supreme tests. Children like it, and are benefited by it. Many would rejoice to be young enough again to hear for the first time the story of The Golden Touch,-how Midas prized gold abov

THE HOUSE OF TH

oved and understood children and shared their experiences. He was one of those whose sixteenth amendment to the Constitution reads, "The ri

les (1851), with the scene laid in Salem, The Marble Faun (1860), in Rome, and The Blithedale Romance (1852), in an ideal community similar to Brook Farm. The first three

would not be blighted beneath him." She would not be surprised to see him "spread bat's wings and flee away." The penalty paid by Arthur Dimmesdale is to appear to be what he is not, and this is a terrible punishment to his sensitive nature. The slow steps by which his soul is tortured and darkened are followed with wonderful clearness, and the agony of his soul alone with God is presented with an almost Shakespearean pen. Th

S OF ONE CENT SHOP, "HO

he Puritanic temperament and the imaginative genius of the author. Hawthorne is Puritan in the earnestness of his purpose, but he is wholly the artist in carrying out his design. Such a combination of Puritan and artist has given to American literature in The

pathetic than the picture of helplessness presented by these two innocent souls, bearing a burden of crime not their own. The brightness of the story comes through the simple, joyous, home-making nature of Phoebe Pyncheon. She it is who can bring a smile to Clifford's face and can attract custom to Hepzibah's cent shop. Hawthorne never loses sight of his purpose. The curse finds its last victim, and th

on of opinion by the late A. P. Stanley (1815-1881), a well-known author and dean of Westminster Abbey, is worth remembering: "I have read it seven times. I read it when it appeared, as I read everything from that English master. I read it again when I expected to visit Rome, then when on the way to Rome, again while in Rome, afterwards to revive my impressions of Rome. Recently I read it again because I wanted to." In this historic setting, Hawthorne places four characters: Donatello, the faun, Miriam, the b

LDA'S TOWER, VIA

by a great crime. The question is raised, Can the soul be developed and strengthened by sin? The problem is handled with Hawthorne's usual moral earnestness of purpose, and is expressed in his easiest and most flexible style. Nevertheless this work has not the suppressed intensity, completeness of outline, and artistic symmetry p

munity. The idea of the division of labor, the transcendental conversations, and many of the incidents owe their origin to his sojourn at Brook Farm (p. 166). Although The Blithedale Romance does not eq

me as they will, strong traits of their nature have intertwined themselves with mine." He and they had the same favorite subject,-the human soul in its relation to the judgment day. He could no more think of sin unrelated to the penalty, than of a serpent without shape or color. Unlike many modern

evil and by the many mysteries for which human philosophy does not account. For this reason, his works are removed from the commonplace and enveloped in an imaginative atmosphere. He subjects his use of these romanti

veiled in allegory, but even when his stories are sermons in allegory, like The Snow Image, he so invests them with poetic fancy or spiritual beauty as to make them works of art. His extensive use of symbolism and allegory has been severely criticized. It is unfortunate that he did not learn earlier in life what The Scarlet Letter should have taught him, that he did not need to rely on these supports. He becomes one of the great masters when he paints character from the inside with a touch so vivid and compe

sophy, as is shown by his personal isolation and that of his characters. His intense belief in individuality is also a transcendental doctrine. He holds that t

hurried. There was not another nineteenth-century prose master on either side of the Atlantic who could in fewer words or simpler language have secured th

ered up in the homeliest be

city in style, and it makes an impression denied to t

oul, a great moralist, a master of style, Hawthorne is to be class

in a sad

God he coul

RTH LONGFELL

on: HENRY W

mother, like Bryant's, was descended from John and Priscilla Alden of Plymouth. Longfellow, when three years old, began to go to school, a

y life there is due the love of the sea, which colors so

e black wharve

a tides to

sailors with

y and mystery

magic of

ng, "This will support my real existence; literature, my ideal one." Bowdoin College, however, came to the rescue, and offered him the professorship of modern languages on condition that he would go abroad for study. He accepted the offer, and remained abroad three years. His travel sketches on this trip were published in book form in 1835, under the title of Outre-Mer: A Pilgrimage beyond the Sea. This is suggestive of the Sketch Book (p. 119), the earliest book which he remembered reading. After five years' service at Bowdoin, he accepted Harvard's offer of the professorsh

FELLOW'S HOME, CRAI

s summer dress caught fire, and although he struggled heroically to save her, she died the next day, a

om she died; and

martyrdom of

s rep

Longfellow chose Dante, and gave the world t

ds, honored by foreigners, possessed of rare sweetness and lovableness of disposition, he became the most popular literary man in America. H

try felt that he was the

ited States celebrated h

han a month later he died

n cemetery,

: LONGFELLOW

o many of them." Longfellow wrote for "the common human heart." In him the common people found a poet who could gild th

tly in such poems as A Psalm of Life. Its lines are the essence of simplicity, but they have

eal! Life

n

reat men al

have affected the lives of large numbers of people. Those born a generation ago not infrequently say that the

y great men re

tained by s

le their comp

g upward in

tience, resignation, and hopefulness. Repetition makes the majority of things seem

d heart! and

uds is the sun

the common

ife some ra

ust be dark

his last lines with the same simpli

he shadow

rolls in

break eve

eal to our common experiences or aspirations, and that all are expres

ity and the vigor of the old ballad makers. His The Wreck of the Hesperu

e schooner

ed the wi

had taken his

him co

twelve and three in the morning and that the compo

. The Viking hero of the tale, like young Lochinvar, won the hea

f old H

is daught

the minst

r my s

ed and pursued by her father. Those who think that the gentle Longfellow could not

his win

fierce c

some roc

s prey

d the op

to sea

he wild h

the m

llow's Tales of a Wayside Inn (1863), where they will find such

he flights of Whittier and Emerson were comparatively short. It is unusually difficult to write long poems that will be read. In the

itants. Hawthorne heard the story, how the English put Evangeline and her lover on different ships and how she began her long, sad search for him. When Hawthorne and Longfellow were discussing this one da

d. The long, flowing lines seem to be exactly adapted to give the scenes the proper atmosphere and to narrate the heroine's weary search. The poem became immediately popular. It was the first successful long narrative poem to appear in the United States. Whittier had studied the same subject, but had delayed making v

vangeline appears, our

hold, that maiden o

*

t seemed like the ceas

on: LONGFEL

iping looms, the whir of wings in the drowsy air, or seeing the barns bursting with hay, the air filled with a dreamy and mystical light, the forest arr

ation: H

y which he will probably be longest known to posterity. He studied Schoolcraft's Algic Researches and the same author's History, Condition, and Prospects of the Indian Tribes of the United States, and familiar

to hear this Song does n

arts are fre

ith in God

scarlet and sends the snowflakes through the forests. They will be glad to be a child with Hiawatha, to hear again the magical voices of the forest, the whisper of the pines, the lapping of the waters, the hooting of the owl, to learn of e

re you,

h a wife t

yes do not moisten when they hear Hiawatha calling in

children fo

od or we m

ood for M

ying Min

hip with all earth's creatures, the mystery of life and of Minnehaha's departure t

in the same meter as Evangeline, is a

ys, in Plymouth, the

e incarnation of the Puri

ly gazed on

ay mist, the vapory b

hill, and the steel-

in the afternoon sh

al favorite. Longfellow and Bryant were both proud to

eel, and the carded w

r white hands feeding

the treadle she guided

*

girl, in the soli

ouse and the modest

uty, and rich with the

ntradiction between the preaching of the bluff old captain, that you must do a thing yourself if you want it wel

u speak for y

(1868). His idea was to represent the origin, the medieval aspect, and the Puritan conception of Christianity-a task not well suited to Longfellow's genius. The Golden Legend is the most poetic, but The New England T

tury poet, English or American. He is America's best and most widely read story-teller in verse. Success in long narrative poems is rare in any liter

e common people, and of those common objects in nature which in his verses convey a lesson to all. He has proved a moral stim

h sorrow, wr

rt the dew

s the smil

fault. The Sonnets of his later years and an occasional poem, like Morituri Salutamus (1875), s

with his poetry because it does not offer "sufficient obstruction to the stream of thought,"-because it does not make the mind use its full powers in wrestling with the meaning. It is a mistake, however, to underestimate the virtues of clearness and simplicity. Many great men who have

shall be fill

es that inf

heir tents l

lently st

to teach a lesson; but the world must learn, and no o

EAF WHITTIE

ion: JOHN

the hive and tell the bees whenever a member of the family died. It was believed that they would swarm and seek another home if this information was withheld. The poet has made both the bees and the snows of his northern home famous. He was born in 1807 in the same house that his first American ancestor built in

he schools near his home. The family was so poor that he had to work as a cobbler, making slippers at eight cents a pair, in order to atten

read them again and again. Of this experience, he says: "This was about the first poetry I had ever read (with the exception of the Bible, of which I had been a close student) and it had a lasting influence upon me. I began to make rhymes myself and to imagine stories and adventures." The second event was the app

his father's brought him back to the farm. Such occupation taught him how to write prose, of which he had produced enough at the time of his death to fill three good-sized volumes, but his prose did not secure the attention given to his verse. While in Hartford, editing The New England Review, he fell in love with Miss Cornelia Russ, and a few days before he fina

ful and h

s light as

h smiles, and

y many a c

ned and fl

child in e

ul brow and r

ears the sm

g into Summ

of his sect. He may have been thinking of Miss Russ and wondering whether t

enevan's ste

rs to my sp

alesman's s

HITTIER AT THE A

litionists. This step had very nearly the same effect on his fortunes as the public declaration of an adherence to the doctrines of anarchy would to-day have on a man similarly situated. "The best magazines at the North would not open their pages to him. He was even mobbed, and the office of an anti-slavery paper, which he was editing in Philadelphia, was sacked. He wrote man

eather-c

son, in the ba

erly love and t

the tough old

t of pebbles from

hard moral sens

ughout his life. He always preferred to win his cause from an enemy peace

y call of suffering or distress in the South, I have promptly responded to the extent of my ability. I was one of the very first to recognize the ra

a time of comparative calm. He wrote poetry as the spirit moved him. He had grown to be loved everywhere at the North, and his birthday, like Longfellow's, was the occasion for frequent celebrations. For years before the close

s not injure me in the least, at the present time. For twenty years I was shut out from the favor

REPLACE IN WHITTIER'S HOM

all of his life was in t

l, until 1836, and then

hplace. He died in 189

ry cem

nterests of the time. One of the strongest of these poems is Ichabod (1850), a bitter arraignment of Daniel Webster, because Whittier thought that the great or

m those

ul has

is lost, wh

an is

try to save the Union and do away with slavery without a conflict, wrote The

o late and s

orning, he

evening twi

ch heavens

power and Jov

*

r us, too s

lonely No

low the marsh

y down thy

the longest are those which spring directly from its soil. His poem entitle

ever learned

d bee's mo

flower's tim

fowl and

nants of

'S BIRTHPLACE IN WINTER

central event, but we soon realize that this storm merely serves to focus intensely the New England life with which he was familiar. The household is shut in from the outside world by the snow, and there is nothing else to distract the attention from the picture of isolated Puritan life. There is not another poet

inters would call "the atmosphere"

m all the wo

lean-winged

let the nor

rage at pan

ed logs bef

ne back with

when a lo

and rafter

up its roa

oat of the ch

e household; the mother, who often left

eking t

ul sense o

shelter, warm

tentment, more

un

nocent

lore of fiel

*

uileless, c

on his nat

orld of sigh

was the par

unt,

in love's u

sist

h nature, f

nd even st

earnest, pr

generous th

h many a li

of self-s

ortraits of the members of that household. This poem has achieved for the New England fi

Memories, My Triumph, Telling the Bees, The Eternal Goodness, and the second part of A Sea Dream. His narrative poems and ballads are second

Whittier was self-educated, and he never traveled far from home. His range is narrower than Longfellow's, who was college bred and broadened by European travel. But if Whittier's poetic range is narrower, if he is the poet of only the common things of life

that I spe

to go a

e brown eyes

ou see, I

*

earn, in life'

who pass

r triumph a

ecause they

eness, and sympathetic heart

y poets, but he learned most from Robert Burns. Whitti

miliar things The r

ially to

his tuneful a

n feelin

lead guilty to all of these indictments. His tendency to moralize is certainly excessive, but critics have too frequently forgotten that this very moralizing draws him closer to the heart

him who

ne through hi

ss, lays hi

o see the b

mournful ma

learned, in h

flesh and s

is ever lo

n never los

ing the windows of the heart open to the day

ELL LOWELL

tion: J.R

f Lowell and the Lowell Institute of Boston received their names from uncles of the author. His mother's name was Spence, and she used to tell her son

miles off

ty fatho

es gude Sir

ts lords at

ion: LOWEL

When a child, he was read to sleep with Spenser's Faerie Queene

ne old historic home called "Elmwood," which was one of the few homes to witness the birth a

is studies and sent to Concord to be coached by a tutor. We know, however, that a part of Lowell's negligence was due to his reading and imitating such poetry as suited his fancy. It was fortunate that he was sent to Concord, for there he had the opportunity of meeting E

t Miss Maria White, a transcendentalist of noble impulses. Before this he had made fun of the abolitionists, but under her influence

for thyself-t

ul whose breath m

manity a me

dreary waste wi

id steps he entered the temple of fame. In December, 1844, the month i

e scaffold, Wrong fo

ys the future, and, b

the shadow, keeping

ad published small volumes of poems in 1840, 1843, and 1847, but in 1848 there appeared three of his

n in 1852, and proved a genial companion. The next year Mrs. Lowell died. When he thought of the inspiration which she had given him and of the thirteen

: MRS. MARIA

, a position which he held, with the exception of two years spent in European travel, until 1877. The duties of his chair called for wide reading and frequent lecturing, and he turned much of his attention toward writing c

1861. All of the second series of the Biglow Papers appeared in this magazin

85. No other American minister has ever proved a greater success in England. He was respected for his literary attainments and for his ability as a speaker. He had the reputation of being one of the very best speakers in th

poetry. The second series of the Biglow Papers was written during the Civil War. His Ode Re

e-blood wrote th

) Under the Old Elm (1875), written in commemoration of Washington's taking command of the Continental forces und

om the excitement of diplomatic and social

eed again an

ce, murmuring,

ops my curious

rlier instinct

ess imperious,

he toil that e

He died in 1891 and was buried in Mount Auburn Cemetery, near his

: LOWELL'S ST

er, To the Dandelion, and The First Snow-Fall are exquisite lyrics of nature and sentiment. Others, like The Present Crisis, have for their text, "Hu

s and The Vision of Sir Launfal. All of these, with the exception of the sec

ate occasion of the first series of these Papers was the outbreak of the Mexican War in 1846. Lowell said in after years, "I believed our war with Mexico to be essentially a war of false pretences, and that it would result in widening the boundaries and so prolonging the life of slavery." The second series of these Papers, dealing with our Civil W

make us Yankees

sunthin' paid

u contrive t

s us thet the

hollerday, e

z though't wu

ophy is in evidence throughout the Papers.

ain all wool o

w, an' will a tw

ly bird lays

cy gives

o be his ow

n amberill,-it don't

e gut to g

nt to tak

Courtin'. It would be difficult to find another poem which gives within the

as jes' th

turs nev

that keep a

in Jen

f Lowell's best nature poet

n' snow on f

ce an' al

lly see a be

ull o' blossoms, l

l. Lowell in a letter to a friend called the poem "a sort of story and more likely to be popular than what I write about ge

so rare as

er, come pe

es the earth if

softly her w

oble lesson of sympa

give, but w

without the g

lf with his alm

hungering nei

cult type of criticism, Lowell was not infallible; but a comparison of his criticisms with the verdicts generally accepted to-day will show his unusual ability in this field. Not a few of these criticisms remain the b

he one of your

trength, and dign

fall short, he i

odest fulness b

your authors shou

there is in sev

ir writings by

t all has less

hose lines which give a r

hose which describe the

rso

all creation is

self-just a lit

ubtful if we could accomplish our purpose more easily than by inducing them to dip into some of these essays. Lowell had tested many of them on his college students, and he had noted what served to kindle interest and to produce results. We may recommend five of his greater literary essays, which would give a vivid idea of the development of English poetry from Chaucer to the death of Pope. These five are: C

reading. It expresses truth in unique and striking ways. Speaking o

he art of transmuting me

as an ostrich egg, would

whether he had st

are, invented almost no

offrey Chaucer, he took

..

r, before setting himself softly down, drives away the cat. We know

o investigate his meaning; for instance, in his statements that in the age of Pope "everybody ceremoniously to

ows that old age had not shattered his faith in ideals. "I believe," he said, "that the real will never find an irremovable basis until it rests on the ideal." Vote

impracticable; only when the possible is made difficult that they fancy the impossible to be easy. F

en verse which shows sympathetic treatmen

wer, that grow's

usty road with

ge of blit

pluck, and full

*

art more

rouder summer-

one not enthusiastic about nature wou

ood with sunsh

into his

us in March

shifting his li

st along the ch

e under the willo

d swallow, skat

New England group is nobility of ideals. His poem entitled For an

, but low ai

st humorist in verse.

ample justification

is acute intellect, became more and more abstract. In Und

shape with uni

t on through vis

warp and woof out of which the best poetry is spun. This criticism explains why repeated readings of some of his poems leave so little impressio

ttercups and

common wi

e clouds drift thr

n long waitin

ay in which they express thought, e.g. "The foolish and the dead alone never change their opinion." A pun, digression, or out-of-the-way allusion may occasionally provoke readers, but onlookers have frequently noticed that few wrinkle their brows while reading his critical essay

the boundary line into genius-land, if he had confined his attention to one department of literature and had been willing to write at less breakneck speed, taking time and thought to prune, revise, and suppress more of his productions. Not a few, however, think that

DELL HOLME

n: OLIVER WE

e" (p. 39) His father was a Congregational clergyman, preaching at Cambridge when Oliver was born. The family was in comfortable circumstances, and the boy was reared in a cultured

held his interest through life. For thirty-five years he was professor of anatomy in the Harvard Medical School, where he was the only member of the faculty

s cost as a doctor that the world had made up its mind "that he who writes rhymes must not write prescriptions, and he who makes jests should not escort people to their graves." He later

g prospect, when you'r

year's income is d

ips barefoot that y

is watered that yo

lthough Holmes did not have the platform presence of these two contemporaries, he had the power of reaching his

s thoroughly alert, open-minded, and liberal upon all such questions. On subjects of politics, war, or the abolition of slavery, he was, on the other hand, stro

ion: HOLME

ain he wrote, "my nature is to snatch at all the fruits of knowledge and take a good bite out of the sunny side-after that let in the pigs." Despite these statements, Holmes worked steadily every year at his medical lectures. He was very particular about the exactness and finish of all that he wrote, and he was

attleship, Constitution, which had been ordered destroyed. With the exception of this poem and The Last Leaf, the volume is remarkable for little except

cheeks, like seaweed on a clam,"

is ampler t

is but

As we search the three volumes of his verse, we find few serious poems of a high order. The best, and the one by which he himself wished to be rem

e stately mansi

wift sea

low-vaul

emple, nobler

heaven with a

at lengt

rown shell by life

d. This poem is remarkable for preserving the reader's equilibrium between laugh

touch the m

me is proud

hose that

all their m

sy to forget the song of the spirits who have recently come from earth, of the mother who was torn from her clinging babe, of th

th, our half-wea

memories, and he

ering lips, our

ved, and where

" This humorous poem, first known as The Deacon's Masterpiece, has been a universal favorite. How the Old Hoss Won the Bet tells with rollicking humor what the parson's nag did at a race. The Boys, with its mingled humor and pathos, written for the thirti

d invented a new prose form. His great conversational gift was now crystallized in these breakfast table talks, which the Autocrat all but monopolizes. However, the other characters at the table of this remarkable boarding house in Boston join in often enough to keep up the interest in their opinions, feelings, and relations to each other. Th

E AUTOCRAT OF THE

ee J

hn; known only

never the real one, an

the real John, nor John's John

e Tho

real

s's idea

s ideal

ppropriated the three that remained in the basket, remarking that there was just one apiece for him. I convinced him that his practical inference was hasty an

Teacups, in which he discoursed at the tea table in a similar vein, but not in quite the same fresh, buoyant, humorous way in which the Autocrat talked over his morning coffee. The decline in these books is gradual, a

is so apparent in them. These books also have a moral purpose, each in turn considering the question whether an individual is responsible for his acts. The f

wrote with the sole object of entertaining readers. Lowell also was a humorist, but he employed humor either in the cause of reform, as in The Biglow

n amusing and delightful way. Yet he was too much of a New Englander not to write some things in both poetry and prose with a deeper purpose than mere entertainme

e of Holmes is still narrower, being mainly confined to Boston. He expresses in a humorous way his own

u couldn't pry that out of a Boston man if you had the

ft to conjecture, but is stated in pure, exact English. He not only expresses his ideas perfectly, but he seems to achieve this result without premeditation. This apparent artlessness is a great charm. He has left Ameri

HIST

l poetic touch, and expressed in rare style. Unfortunately the very qualities that render history attractive as literature often tend to raise doubts about the scientific method and accuracy of the historian. For this reason few histories keep for a great length of time a place in literature, unless, like Irving's Knickerbocker's H

successes, and he wrote four histories upon Spanish subjects: a History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella (1837), a History of the Conquest of Mexi

anish conquests in the New World are not absolutely correct in all their descriptions of the Aztecs and Incas before the arrival of the Spaniards. This is due to no carelessness on Prescott's part, but to the highly colored accounts upon which he had to depend for his facts, and to the lack of the archaeological surveys which have since been carried on in Mexico and Peru. These two histories of the daring exploits of a handful of adventurers in hostile lands are

d religious liberty and hatred of oppression led Motley to turn to the sturdy, patriotic Dutch in their successful struggle against the enslaving power of Spain. His his

on: JOHN LO

ed with a mild, cool hand. Philip is shown as a tyrant, but he is impelled to his tyranny by motives of conscience. In Motley's The Rise of the Dutch Republic, this oppressor is an accur

of Orange, the central figure, stands every inch a hero, a leader worthy of his cause and of his people. Motley with an artist's skill shows how this great leader launched Holland on her victorious career. This hi

ed to play at least a historian's part in presenting "the great spectacle which was to prove to Europe that principles and peoples still existed, and that a phlegmati

heeded in Europe. The Life and Death of John of Barneveld, which brings the history of Holland down to about 1623, was planned as an introductio

cate, and yet he does not distort facts. He is just and can be coldly critical, even of his heroes, but he is always on one side, the side of liberty and justice, pleading their cause. His temperament gives warmth, eloquence, and dramatic passion to his style. Individual incidents and characters stand forth sha

ge, he had decided to write a history of the French and Indian War. He was a delicate child, and at the age of eight was sent to live with his grandfather, who owned at Medway, near Boston, a vast tract of woodland. The boy roamed

unted buffalo on the plains, dragged his horse through the canyons to escape hostile Indians, lived in

ies. For years he was forbidden literary work on account of insomnia and intense cerebral pain which threatened insanity, and on account of lameness he was long confined

he had experts copy from original sources. With few exceptions, he visited every spot which he described, and saw the life of nearly every tribe of Indians. His battle with ill hea

ion: FRANC

rd account, which was in 1849 published in book form, under the title of The California and Oregon Trail. This book remains the most trustworthy, as well as the most e

rld to the victory of the English over the French and Indian allies. The title

he experiences of the early French sailors and explorers o

Fathers in their mission of mercy and conversion among the Indians. Fifty pages of the Introduction give an acc

s the story of La Salle's heroic endeavors and sufferi

he internal conflicts and the social devel

ada as a French dependency, and paints in a lively manner Count Frontenac's charact

n the French and English for the possession of the country, and the

nes of the struggle between France and England

of his people and drive out the English. The volume closes with the general smoking of the pipe of peace and the swearing of

the French and English for this great American continent. The trackless forests, the Great Lakes, the untenanted shores of the St. Lawrence and the Mississippi form an impres

sults of economic and religious forces in the strictly modern spirit. At the same time, these histories read like novels of adventure, so vivid and lively is the action. While scholars commend his reliability in dealing with

he presentation of graphic pictures, Parkman has neither the solemn grandeur of Prescott nor the rapid eloquence of Motley, but Parkman has unique merits of his own,-the freshness of the pine woods, the reality and vividness of an eyewitness, an elemental strength inherent in the primitive nature of his novel subject. H

TERATURE O

tly the prose style of numberless writers in the second half of the nineteenth century; JOHN RUSKIN (1819-1900), the apostle of the beautiful and of more ideal social relations; MATTHEW ARNOLD (1822-1888), the great analytical critic; CHARLES DICKENS (1812-1870), whose novels of the lower class of English life are remarkable for vigor, optimism, humor, the power to caricature, and to charm the masses; WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY (1811-1863), whose novel

nd ROBERT BROWNING (1812-1889). Browning's greatest poetry aims to sho

thee 'mid

ic circu

: Rabbi B

merican poets of this

on Browning's Men a

ing. It seemed to me like a galvanic battery in full play-its spasmodic utterances

seem to have suggested Lowell's Vision of Sir Launfal (1848). The New England poets in general looked back to Burns, Wordsworth, Keats, and o

HISTORIC

il the end of the Civil War in 1865, slavery was the irrepressible issue of the republic. The Fugitive Slave Law, which was passed in 1850 to secure the return of slaves from any part of the United States, was very unpopular at the North and did much to hasten the war, as did also the decision of the United States Supreme Court in the Dred Scott case (1857), affirming that slaves were property

ver have been possible without the war. More than one million human beings perished in the strife. Many of these were from the more cultured and intellectual classes on both sides. Centuries will not repair that waste of creative ability in either section. France, after the lapse of more than two hundred years, is still suffering from the loss of her Huguenots. It is impossible to comp

delion; and Holmes, his complaint that his humor was diminishing his practice. By the time that Longfellow had finished The Courtship of Miles Standish, and Holmes The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table, messages had been cabled across the Atlantic. A comparison with an event of the preceding period will show the importance of this method of communication. The treaty of peace to end the last war with Engla

more than two thirds as large as the United States comprised in 1783. The improvement and extension of education, the interest in social reform, the beginning of the decline of th

combined population of Great Britain and Ireland was then only twenty-nine millions. Before Holmes passed away in 1894 the population of 1860 had doubled.

MM

h century group of New

rne, who were often call

Daniel Webster, Longf

torians, Prescott,

the Elizabethan age,-a "re-formation" of religious opinion and a renaissance, seen in a broa

nclusion which was not based on the world of sense. They were intense idealists and individualists, who despised imitation and repetition, who were full of the ecstasy of discoveries in a glorious

s shown in Webster's orations, Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin, the poetry of

th the best produced in America. Thoreau, the poet-naturalist, shows how to find enchantment in the world of nature. Nathaniel Hawthorne, one of the great romance writers of the world, has given the Puritan almost a

in need of poetry. His Snow-Bound makes us feel the moral greatness of simple New England life. The versatile Lowell has written exquisite nature poetry in his lyrics and Vision of Sir Launfal and The Biglow Papers. He has produced America's best humorous verse in The Biglow Papers and A Fable for Critics. He is a great critic, and his prose criticism in Among My Books and the related volumes is stimulating and interesting. His political prose

the struggles of the Dutch Republic to keep religious and civil liberty from disappearing from this earth; Parkman, of the contest of t

al quality, its gospel of self-reliance, its high ideals,

S FOR FUR

TOR

history consult the his

n literature in the aut

nd of literary movements

during th

d in the general works listed on p. 61, or

TE

RAL

rdson, Wendell, and Trent (p. 61)

American

s The Poets and

erican Liter

Poets of

History of A

he New Eng

erican Novelists. (M

ose Masters. (Especial

iends and Acquaintanc

lm

IAL

ranscendentalis

in Literature. (T

s Broo

and Letters of Har

Daniel

s Ralph Wa

Ralph Wal

fe of Ralph

Ralph Wald

of Ralph Waldo

on's Emerso

the Lecturer, i

ks with Ralph

Henry Davi

of Henry D

oreau, The Po

u, His Home, Fr

well's Thoreau,

Studies, Chap. 1.

s Nathanie

mes's Ha

e of Nathani

Nathaniel

s Nathaniel Hawth

Lathrop's A Stu

Recollections of N

Lathrop's Memor

ne's Hawthorne

and Appreciati

tory in English, Ch

worth Longfellow with Extracts from hi

enry Wadswort

enry Wadswort

e of Henry Wads

John Greenle

John Greenle

hn Greenle

etters of John Green

s Whitti

Russell Lowell,

sell Lowell. (Be

ussell Lowell, A

ussell Lowell

s Letters, edited by

tters of Oliver Wen

American

of William Hi

liam Hickli

iam Hicklin

Lothrop Motl

espondence of Joh

s Francis

Life of Fran

TED RE

dings may be found. Those who prefer to use books of selections will find that Page's The Chief American Poets, 713 pp., contains nearly all of the poems recommended

is very rare and difficult to obtain outside of a large library. George Willis Cooke has collected in one volume under the title, The Poets of Transcend

Reply to Hayne is given in Johnston's American Orations, Vol. I., 248-302. There are excellent selections from Webster in C

Idealism, and the "literary declaration of independence" in his lecture, The American Scholar. Fro

and All, The Humble-Bee, Woodnotes, The Snow-Storm. For a poetical e

terature Series). From the volume called Excursions, read the essay Wild Apples. Many will be interested to read here an

As a specimen of his New England historical tales, read one or more of the following: The Gentle Boy, The Maypole of Merry Mount, Lady Eleanore's Mantle, or even the fantastic Young Goodman Brown, whic

mature age, but The House of the

n Touch (Wonder Book) at least should

oem is Hiawatha, and its stronge

ng and drea

pictures of the early days of the first Pilgrim settlement. His best ballads are The Wreck of the Hesperus, The Skeleton in Armor, Paul Revere's Ride, and The Birds of Killingworth. For speci

asion, My Playmate, Telling the Bees, The Barefoot Boy, In School Days, My Triumph, An Autograph, and

shorter lyrical poems

To the Dandelion, The P

ial, For an Autograph, P

From The Biglow Papers,

rst Series), The Cou

hin' in the Pastoral

or Critics, read the li

vi

their best. The student who wishes shorter selections may choose those paragraphs which please

sterman, The Boys, The Last Leaf, and The Chambered Nautilus. From The Autocrat of the Brea

escott, Motley, and Parkman may be

S AND SU

anner The Snow-Storm (Emerson), the first sixty-five lines of Snow-Bound (Whittier), and The First Snow-Fall (Lowell). To which of these three simple lyrics of nature would you award the palm: To the Fringed Gentian (Bryant), The Rhodora (Emerson), To the Dandelion

hese two short poems d

Ballad of the Oysterm

poems: A Psalm of Lif

Autograph (Whittier),

lme

ve poems show: My Lost Youth (Longfellow), Memories (Whittier)? For a more complete a

th the meek

orbs a sh

eginning with the lines where he

the tangled

yes full of

d Oliver Wendell Holmes cried over one of them. The student who reads these carefully is enti

ballads: The Skeleton

Wreck of the Hesperus,

ssandra Southwick

ight. In Whittier's poem, what group of lines descriptive of (

ider the best? What might be omitt

h incidents or pictures of the life of t

d One-Hoss Shay? Do we to-day read them chiefly for this purpos

owledge of psychological values? What were the ch

ristics? Why does he retain his p

says select thoughts which justify Tyndall's (p. 192) statement about Emers

reter? What was his mission? What passages in Walden please you most?

at qualities give special charm to sketches like The Old Manse and the Introduction to The Scarlet Letter? What is the underlying motive to be worked out in The House of the Seven Ga

of thought do you find to challenge your attenti

he Breakfast Table, the humor, sprightliness, and variety of the tho

e power to develop interest, and (d) of the style, shown in the selections which you have chosen fro