Dickens, 1868.

Visit of Charles Oliver Wendell Holmes wrote in 1851: "I think we have no romancer but yourself, nor have had any for this long time. The Yankee mind has, for the most part, budded and flowered in pots of English earth, but you have fairly raised yours as a seedling in the natural soil." His originality was, no doubt, partly due to the circumstances of his youthful development-the dismal struggle of his dreamy temperament with its practical surroundings in Puritan Salem. That the tendencies of his genius early manifested themselves is shown in a letter written to his mother while a boy, in which he says: "I do not want to be a doctor, and live by men's diseases, nor a minister, to live by their sins, nor a lawyer, and live by their quarrels. So I don't see that there is anything left for me but to be an author. How would you like some day to see a whole shelf full of books written by your son, with 'Hawthorne's Works' printed on their backs?" Hawthorne's first acknowledged publication was "Twice-told Tales," in 1837. The most successful of his subsequent novels were "The Scarlet Letter," "The House of the Seven Gables," and "The Marble Faun." His works are characterized by great power of mental analysis, dramatic feeling, a delicate humor somewhat tinctured with satire, moral sentiment, minute delineation of nature, and an exquisite and simple style. James Russell Lowell has admirably portrayed him in his "Fable for Critics:"

Celebrated American sculptors are Hiram Powers, Henry Kirk Brown, and Harriet Hos

mer.

The prominent American actors of this age are Edwin Forrest, the popular tragedian; Edwin Booth, the finest delineator of Shakespearian characters in this country; Charlotte Cushman, who gained

"There is Hawthorne, with genius so shrinking and rare
That you hardly at first see the strength that is there;
A frame so robust, with a nature so sweet,
So earnest, so graceful, so solid, so fleet,
Is worth a descent from Olympus to meet;
'Tis as if a rough oak that for ages had stood
With his gnarled, bony branches like ribs of the wood,
With a single anemone trembly and rathe.
His strength is so tender, his wildness so meek,
That a suitable parallel sets one to seek.

He's a John Bunyan Fouqué, a Puritan Tieck.

Hawthorne particularly excelled as an analyst of human character; and the influences of his dramatic genius and of the French school of novelists have been the chief external forces in moulding later American fiction. Foremost among the representatives of this fiction, according to W. D. Howells, ranks Henry James, concerning whom he says: "It is the ambition of the younger contributors to write like him; he has his following more distinctly recognizable than that of any other English-writing novelist." The position assumed by James as the exposer of American singularities, oddities, and weaknesses has limited his popularity in his own country: "Daisy Miller," perhaps the best known of his so-called international novels, while being greeted with applause in England, aroused rage and resentment at home. James's most devoted disciple is W. D. Howells (b. 1837), distinguished for his accurate sketches of travel and adroit analysis of American life, particularly in his recent story, "A Modern Instance." Harriet Beecher Stowe (b. 1812) and Dr. J. G. Holland are among the most popular of American novelists. Two other conspicuous writers in this department are General Lew. Wallace, United States Minister to Turkey, whose Jewish romance, "Ben-Hur," raised its author to the first rank of living American novelists, and George W. Cable, the New Orleans novelist, whose Creole romances are distinguished for intense originality of literary style and a vividness of descriptive detail and characterization reminding one of Dickens.

Production of Valuable Historical Works. Bancroft, Prescott, Motley. - The historical masterpiece in American literature is Bancroft's compendious "History of the United States," published during the years 1834-1874. It is the "most successful attempt yet made to reduce the chaotic but rich materials of American history to order, beauty, and moral significance," and treats its subject in the spirit of that philosophical criticism which has reformed the style of modern historical narrative. George Bancroft (b. 1800) has been one of the profoundest

Completion of
Railroad, eigh-

1 Financial panic, 1873.

scholars of the age, pursuing his investigations at home and abroad with indefatigable zeal. William H. Prescott (1796-1859) devoted himself exclusively to Spanish history, producing "The Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella" in 1838, "The Conquest of Mexico" in 1843, "The Conquest of Peru" in 1847, and two volumes of "The History of Philip II.," left incomplete at his death. All of these works were received with enthusiasm at home and abroad; German, French, and Spanish translations of them were speedily made. Madrid elected him a member of Great Chicago her Royal Academy of History; he was chosen a

fire, consuming $192,000,000 worth of property, October 8, 1871.

Great fire in Boston, loss $70,000,000, 1872.

member of the French Institute; and he was received with distinguished honors during his visit to Europe in 1850. Dutch history was the field in which John Lothrop Motley (1814-1877) pursued his labors. His three works - "The Rise of the Dutch Republic" (1856), "History of the United Netherlands" (1861), and "John of Barneveld: a Biography" (1873)-achieved a grand success; the two former being translated into German, Dutch, and French, while in England their sale was enormous. The lesser American historians-Richard Hildreth (1807-1865), Francis Parkman (b. 1823), John G. Palfrey (b. 1796), Alexander H. Stephens (b. 1812), and Benson J. Lossing (b. 1813) -have treated of matters relating to their own country. Two able productions, belonging rather to the department of literature than history, may be here noted-"The History of Spanish Literature," by George Ticknor (1791-1871), and "Origin and History of the English Language," by George P. Marsh (b. 1801).

Transcendental Movement. Ralph Waldo Emerson [see "Age of Revolution:" Germany-Philosophical Revolution].-German influence, while extending it

self over Europe in the early part of the present fessor Tyndall. century, was also transported across the Atlantic.

Visit of

He lectures in Boston, Philadelphia, New York, etc., 1872, 1873.

The wonderful discoveries of German scientists, the speculations of German philosophers, and the classical elegance of German writers fascinated even disThe number of newspapers

in the United States, accord

made in

seven thou

tant Americans. Germany became a kind of resort for intellectual aspirants, and the American custom of supplementing domestic university careers with study in that country may be said to have originated with Everett, Bancroft, Motley, and Longfellow. Acquaintance with German thought and literature was afforded by the translations of Bancroft, George Ripley, Charles T. Brooks, Longfellow, and others, by new editions of the English works of Coleridge and Carlyle, and by critical discussions of German works and philosophy furnished by such writers as Theodore Parker, Margaret Fuller, Frothingham, and Nor-ing to an esti ton. Educators looked to Germany for better modes 1877, was about of instruction. To his great public school at North- sand. ampton, Massachusetts, Bancroft attracted a staff of eminent professors from Germany; and the educational reformer, Horace Mann, in 1843 made a tour through the German schools and universities. The result of this German influence was to awaken and stimulate American thought, particularly in New England, where a philosophical movement arose similar to that which had previously taken place in Great Britain under Coleridge and Wordsworth. It was mainly confined to a group of thinkers in and about Boston, who discarded the old materialistic views of religion and life which had descended from Locke for German idealism. The movement assumed a definite form in 1836, when these philosophic inquirers formed themselves into a society which became known as the Transcendental Club. Margaret Fuller, George Ripley, Bronson Alcott, James Freeman Clarke, and Theodore Parker were among its members; but its chief was Ralph Waldo Emerson (1821-1882), who in 1837 delivered before the Beta Kappa Society at Harvard an address which Alcott pronounced "the first adequate statement of the new views that really attracted general attention." Emerson had already acquired considerable reputation as a Unitarian preacher and a lecturer, but his peculiar views with regard to forms of

Great celebration of the Centennial

Anniversary of

American Independence by

an Internation

al Exhibition

held at Philadelphia from

May to to No1876.

Attempted assassination of President Garfield, 1881.

The Federal Republic of the United States extends over 3,621,844 sq. miles. Its total population is a little

worship led soon after to his abandonment of the clerical profession-retiring to Concord, the future centre of American philosophy. His literary career began in 1836 with the publication of a small philosophical work, "Nature." Besides many lectures, and contributions to periodicals, Emerson produced, during the succeeding quarter of a century, "The Method of Nature," "Man the Reformer," two series of "Essays," a "Memoir of Margaret Fuller" (in connection with Mr. W. H. Channing), "English Traits," and "The Conduct of Life." All these works are characterized by bold speculation, by a certain quaintness of diction and subtilty of phrase which have led to his being charged with imitating the literary style of Goethe, Walter Savage Landor, Coleridge, and especially Carlyle, as shown in the once frequently applied epithet, "Yankee pocket edition of Carlyle." As a philosopher Emerson has formulated no system. What he has done is to enunciate certain ideas respecting God, the human soul, and the universe of matter, which have been expounded by Mr. G. W. Cooke in the last eight chapters of his work on Emerson. He places Emerson in the line of mystics-including Plotinus, Eckhart, Boehme, and Schelling-his views agreeing more nearly with Schelling than with any modern philosopher. He places him as a religious thinker -for his pantheistic conception of God and his disbelief in historic religion in the line with Lessing, Herder, Goethe, Novalis, Coleridge, Wordsworth, and Carlyle. Emerson was the American analogue of

more than fifty Carlyle, and, like him, a disciple of Goethe. His

millions.

influence has not been confined to the realms of thought. "As Lessing raised his voice against imitation of the French, and called for a genuine German literature founded on national sentiment," says Mr. Cooke, "so has Emerson protested against foreign models and in favor of an American literature. His influence has been as healthful and powerful as was Lessing's, creating in this way, as Lessing did,