vice in popularizing historical subjects. Lincoln once said that he had derived from "the Abbotts' books " all the history he knew.

It is interesting to note how the historians relieved the tedium of their weightier studies by excursions into lighter literature. Hildreth gave us a delightful book, Japan, and a novel. Novels beguiled also Prescott and Parkman, the latter adding his intensely interesting story of the days of '49, California and the Oregon Trail. Even the ponderous Bancroft left us a volume of poems, translated from the German.

Scientific Writers.

Even in the earlier part of the Nineteenth century science had contributed not only to the store of human knowledge, but to the "humanities" as well. It is almost invidious to mention a few names to the exclusion of many others equally as high in attainments as well as in the glory they have added to American literature, but a short list must be given.

In medicine, Benjamin Rush (17451813) and Samuel L. Mitchell (17641831)," the New York Oliver Wendell Holmes." In law, James Kent (17631847), whose Commentaries on American Law are recognized the world over as a work of the highest authority, with Henry Wheaton (1785-1848) and Theodore D. Woolsey (1801-1889), scarcely less famous in the department of international law,

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Of lexicographers and philologers America has had no lack. Noah Webster (1758-1843), Joseph E. Worcester (1784-1865), and George P. Marsh (1801-1882) were voluminously productive English scholars; while in Greek language-studies there have been no abler interpreters than E. A. Sophocles (1807-1883) and James Hadley (1821-1872).

Mathematics and astronomy have had their Nathaniel Bowditch (17731838), whose translation of Laplace's Mécanique céleste, with an extensive commentary of his own, excited the admiration of European scholars; and Elias Loomis (1811-1889).

In the science of ethnology, especially as it pertains to the Indians of North America, we have had Benjamin S. Barton (1766-1815) and Henry R. Schoolcraft (1793-1864).

In botany two names stand outthose of John Torrey (1796-1893), with his great Flora of the Northern and Middle States, and Asa Gray (1810-1888), who carried botanizing as far as the Pacific coast even in the early 50's.

It is perhaps in ornithology that American writers have best succeeded in producing a literary style quite as remarkable as their scientific triumphs. This was especially true of Alexander Wilson (1766-1813), the "Father of American Ornithology." A genuine sensation was produced when, from 1830 to 1838, John J. Audubon (1780-1851) published his

five-volumes of plates of Birds of America, to which the text was afterwards added. Thomas M. Brewer (1821-1880), though not SO well known, made himself a worthy member of the triumvirate of American chroniclers of bird-life through his History of North American Birds.

In chemistry is the great name of Benjamin Silliman (1779-1864); in physical geography, that of Arnold H. Guyot (1807-1884); in geology, the twin stars Edward Hitchcock (17931864) and James D. Dana (18131895); and in natural history we have the commanding figure of Louis Agassiz (1807-1873), the great teacher, who had no time to make money," but who found time to write four wonderful volumes of a tenvolume Natural History of the United States.

Journalists.

There never has been a writer of any note in American literature since 1800 who did not contribute to the newspapers or periodicals of his day indeed few who did not begin their literary career through these convenient mediums. So closely are the newspaper and magazine connected with the growth of literature that some attempt must be made to enumerate a few of the publications which, previous to 1865, had the greatest influence on literary history.

Of newspapers in New York, the Evening Post claimed the services of William Cullen Bryant (1794-1878) as early in 1826, and he remained its

editor until his death. In 1841 Horace Greeley (1811-1872) founded the New York Tribune and gathered about him a coterie of writers who afterwards themselves became editors or took a prominent place in literature Henry J. Raymond (18201869), who founded the New York Times in 1851; Charles A. Dana (1819-1897), who went to the New York Sun in 1868; Margaret Fuller (1810-1850) and George William Curtis (1824-1892), who became editors of The Dial and Harper's Weekly and Harper's Magazine, respectively. There were also George Ripley (1802– 1880), who was for many years the leading literary critic of the Tribune, and James Bayard Taylor (18251878), whose interesting letters of travel were long a popular feature of that newspaper.

Periodical literature as we now know it in America dates from the founding of the North America Review in 1815 by Richard Henry Dana (1787-1879) and others. The idea of an American review, however, probably had its inception in The Anthology Magazine, published for several years prior to 1811 by Joseph Emerson, Ralph Waldo's father. The later magazine was built on the lines of the English reviews, and has gone on in its scholarly and dignified way ever since, ponderously revolving through space," as some one has wittily described it. In the early 30's the Evening Mirror and the Knickerbocker gave expression to the mild

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The anti-slavery movement was heralded by Garrison's Liberator, which lived until 1866, when the occasion for its existence had passed. In Philadelphia, about 1840, Godey's Lady's Book and Graham's Magazine made their appearance, Poe's editorship for a time being one of the claims to distinction made by the latter.

Then came the philosophic period in Boston that saw the birth of The Dial, the organ of the Transcendentalists. This is a kind of waymark in the history of American literature, although Emerson protested to its editor, Margaret Fuller, that the magazine must not be "too purely literary." Of Margaret Fuller Ossoli (1810-1850) it may be remarked in passing, that we know more through her biographers - Emerson, James Freeman Clarke and Higginson than by her own books, though she wrote in 1845 Woman in the Nineteenth Century and made some excellent translations from the German. The Dial lived four years and was followed by The Harbinger, a Brook Farm organ, which had a still briefer existence. In 1850 the predecessors

In the South periodical literature "found itself" as early as 1828, with the founding of the Southern Review at Charleston. The Southern Literary Messenger, of which Poe was editor for five years, was a Richmond publication dating from 1835; and the Southern Quarterly Review was launched at Charleston in 1848, William G. Simms (1806-1870) being its editor for several years.

Novelists and Short-Story Writers. Fiction, or the delineation of life in story form, is one of the highest provinces of literature. It is that in which many of the greatest literary masters have chosen to express themselves, whether in "the ideal romance, bursting the bonds of space and time, or the simple, unadorned tale of actual sayings and doings." Possibly it is true that there are not SO many commanding names of writers of fiction in American as in English literature we have probably been too busy living life in a period including three wars (one of them the greatest in the world's history) adequately to depict in story form the emotions and springs of action underlying our strenuous existence. But the materials were at hand, and many of the writers of fic

tion, travel and humor who chose to use these materials, have produced immortal books. The "first Brown's Wieland has already been alluded to and the marvelous Irving's Tales of a Traveler soon followed, which, while not a novel, was none the less an artistic "story." His collaborator in the Salmagundi Papers, James K. Paulding (1779K. Paulding (17791860), contributed Westward Ho!, the "whim-whams" of a second series of Salmagundi all his own, and several novels, the best of which, The Dutchman's Fireside, is not yet entirely forgotten. He exhibited something of Irving's glee, but lacked his grace and charm, though an evident imitator even going so far as to emulate. him in writing a Life of Washington. Paulding is probably best known as the originator of "Brother Jonathan." Nor must we forget, as belonging to this period, David Crockett (1786-1836) and his exciting tales of adventure, especially in his autobiography.

novel "Brockden

umes, of which 33 were sea tales and stories of Indian life. His first novel Precaution, a tale of English life, attracted no attention. Cooper had not yet found himself. But The Spy (1821), his first story dealing with native scenes, won instant renown. Others followed in rapid succession The Pioneers (1823), The Pilot (1823), his masterpiece, The Last of the Mohicans (1826), and others in bewildering array down to The Deerslayer (1841) and Afloat and Ashore (1844). Cooper is "America's novelist of action," greater than Irving in vigor and breadth of outlook, with a mind remarkably fertile in planning and elaborating plots of adventure.

Other novelists of the school of Cooper were John P. Kennedy (17951870), who wrote Horse-Shoe Robinson (1835) and other novels of Colonial and Revolutionary times; Robert Montgomery Bird (18031854), whose Nick of the Woods (1837) was one of the most popular novels of his day; Daniel P. Thompson (1795-1868), author of The Green Mountain Boys and other novels dealing with New England pioneer life; and a novel of Charles Fenno Hoffman (1806-1884) should be noticed, Grayslaer (1840), which gives a graphic portrayal of the Mohawk chief, Joseph Brant.

In the South Guy Rivers (1834), by William G. Simms was the first of a series of border romances in which the influence of Cooper was clearly visible. Simms is, next to Poe, the

most representative and most talented among the writers of the South previous to the Civil War. He, too, wrote too much for his own literary reputation 87 volumes dealing with romance, poetry, history, biography, politics, the drama, criticism, etc. His novels, though widely read in their day, especially in the South, were defective in technical construction.

Coming North again, Margaret (1845), a transcendental romance by Sylvester Judd (1813-1853), is crude and uninteresting in style, but won praise from Lowell as being "the first Yankee book with the soul of 'Down East' in it." Lydia Maria Child (1802-1880) had already begun her public career by the publication of two historical novels; and Susan Warner (1819-1885) later (in 1850) gave to the lovers of sentimental fiction perhaps one of the most widely read novels that ever set womankind to weeping the tearful and priggish Wide Wide World.

The fiction of adventure is represented at its best in the novels of Herman Melville (1819-1891), whose brilliant style adorned the narratives of his own experiences on land and sea in Typee (1846), Omoo (1847), and Moby Dick (1851). Previous to this, Richard Henry Dana, Jr. (1815– 1882) became more famous than his poetical father had been, through what Dickens pronounced " about the best sea book in the English tongue -Two Years before the Mast.

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But there are two overshadowing names in the literature of romance that, with Cooper, stand far above the rest Poe and Hawthorne. Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849) secured a competitive prize of $100 for his first romantic tale," Ms. Found in a Bottle," (1833), which with his longest piece of fiction, The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym, and several other stories (some on the order that Jules Verne afterward found so effective) constitute one of the three groups into which his stories may be divided. In the first of these narratives of romantic adventure - his weird imaginative power is often exhibited in vivid pictures which are gruesome and morbid enough, but are realistic, poetical, and interspersed with descriptions of great beauty. The second group comprises the analytical stories, or "tales of ratiocination " (as Poe called them) -"The Gold Bug Bug" (another prize winner and the most popular of all his tales), "The Murders of the Rue Morgue," "The Purloined Letter," and others. The presentation of a mystery is always fascinating, and the dominion over his readers which Poe, a born detective, exercised was nowhere more complete than in these tales. A third group is that having conscience for the theme, as in as in some of Hawthorne's novels, though the conscience analyzed by the latter was spiritual, while Poe invokes the material forces of Nature and superstition, in this suggesting De Quincey.