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The Cambridge History
of

American Literature
Edited by

William Peterfield Trent, M.A., LL.D.

Professor of English Literature in Columbia University

John Erskine, Ph.D.

Professor of English in Columbia University

Stuart P. Sherman, Ph.D.

Professor of English in the University of Illinois

Carl Van Doren, Ph.D.

Literary Editor of "The Nation"

In Four Volumes

• • *

Later National Literature: Part II

New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons

Cambridge, England: University Press

1921
 Copyright, 1921
BY
G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS

/»>

Printed in the United States of America

 PREFACE
the final volumes of The Cambridge History of American
IN Literature will be found several chapters which cover
periods beginning much earlier than the Later National
Period to which the volumes are specifically devoted. They are
placed here partly because it has been found convenient to
hold them till the last, inasmuch as they deal with large groups
of writers not readily classified elsewhere, and also because in
almost every case the bulk of the material discussed in them
was produced after 1850.
The delay in the publication of these volumes has been due,
not only to the unsettled conditions of the time, but equally to
the realization, as the work has advanced, that the number of
pioneer tasks still to be undertaken in the study of American
literature was larger than could be entirely foreseen. We can-
not claim to have accomplished all or nearly all of them. But
it would be equivalent to a failure to acknowledge our ap-
preciation of the aid rendered by our sixty-four contributors,
who have faithfully laboured to bring this history to
a completion, if we did not express a belief that the
work as a whole furnishes a new and important basis for

the understanding of American life and culture.

The Editors.
10 September, 1920.
 ADDITIONS AND CORRECTIONS, VOLUME III

P. 17, 1. 18, for at the Court of King Arthur read in King Arthur's Court.
P. 84, 1. 2, add He died 11 May, 1920.
P. 104, 1. 26, for A Turn of the Screw read The Turn of the Screw.
P. 163, 1. I, for Adirondack read Adirondacks.
P. 164, 1. 4, for as regards of read as regards.
P. 260, 1. 25, for mode or read mode of.
P. 294, 1. 9, for The Songs of Songs read The Song of Songs.
? -P. 345, 1. 13, for because read because of. '

P- 375i !• 26, for spring read summer.

 CONTENTS
BOOK III (Continued)
LATER NATIONAL LITERATURE: PART II

CHAPTER VIII
MARK TWAIN
By Stuart P. Sherman, Ph.D., Professor of English in the
University of IlKnois.
Mark Twain's Place in American Literature. Youth.
Printer and Pilot.
The Par West. Journalist and Lecturer. The Quaker
City Excursion.
Later Life. Artistic Ideals. Travel Books. The Innocents Abroad.
Roughing It. A Tramp Abroad. Life on the Mississippi. Following
the Equator. Fiction. The Gilded Age. The Adventures of Tom >

Sawyer. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. A Connecticut Yankee

in King Arthur's Court. Pudd'nhead Wilson. Personal Recollections
of Joan of Arc. Naturalistic Pessimism. What is Man? The
Mysterious Stranger. . . . . . . i

CHAPTER IX
MINOR HUMORISTS
By George Frisbie Whicker, Ph.D., Associate Pro-
fessor of English in Amherst College.
Humorous Paragraphs and Columns in Newspapers. Comic Journalism.
PwcA. Judge. Life. New Tendencies after the Civil War. Charles
Godfrey Leland. George Ade. Eugene Field. Mr. Dooley.
O. Henry. . . . . . . . . .21
CHAPTER X
LATER POETS
By Norman Foerster, A.M., Professor of English in the
University of North Carolina.
Poets of East and West. New England. Emily Dickinson. Thomas
Bailey Aldrich. Minor Figures. The Middle States. Bayard Taylor.
Richard Henry Stoddard. Edmund Clarence Stedman. Minor
Figures. Richard Watson Gilder. Richard Hovey. The West.
Joaquin Miller. Edward Rowland Sill. Minor Figures. James
Whitcomb Riley. William Vaughn Moody. Contemporary Poetry 31
vi Contents

CHAPTER XI
THE LATER NOVEL: HOWELLS
By Carl Van E)oren, Ph.D., Literary Editor of The
Nation, Associate in English in Columbia University.
The Dime Novel. John Esten Cooke. Theodore Winthrop. Domestic
Sentimentalism. Harriet Beecher Stowe. Uncle Tom's Cabin. Dred.
Her Novels of New England Life. E. P. Roe. Lew Wallace. Edward
Eggleston. William Dean Howells. The Development of His Taste.
Experiments in Fiction. A Chance Acquaintance. A Modern Instance.
The Rise oj Silas Lapham. Turgenev and Tolstoy. A Hazard of New
Fortunes. Altruria. Travels and Memoirs. Later Novels. The
Eighties. Francis Marion Crawford. Characteristics. Ideals.
Range. Reactions from OfiBcial Realism. Rococo Romance. S. Weir
Mitchell. Naturalism. E. W. Howe.
Norris. Jack London. Contemporaries. ....
Stephen Crane. Frank '^
/66

CHAPTER XII
HENRY JAMES
By Joseph Warren ^each, Ph.D., Associate Professor of
English in the University of Minnesota.
TheQuestionof James's Americanism. His Passion for "Europe." Amer-
icans in His Stories.Transcendentalism. Parentage and Education.
Newport, Boston, Cambridge. Residence Abroad. Miscellaneous
Writings. Collected Stories. Earlier Novels. Short Stories. Later
Novels. Peculiarityof the James Method. James and Pater. Amer-
ican Faith and European Culture. g6

CHAPTER XIII
LATER ESSAYISTS
By George S. Hellman, A.M.
Types of American Essayists. Donald Grant MitcheU. Detachment
from Public Afifairs. George William Curtis. Prue and I. Public
Career. Charles Eliot Norton. His Great Influence. Thomas
Wentworth Higginson. Varied Interests. Moncure D. Conway.
Edward Everett Hale. The Man Without a Country. Julia Ward
Howe. Emma Lazarus. Mrs. Stowe. Charles Dudley Warner.
Hamilton Wright Mabie. Edwin Percy Whipple. Edmund Clarence
Stedman. William Winter. Laurence Hutton. Living Essayists. . 109

CHAPTER XIV
TRAVELLERS AND EXPLORERS, 1846-1900

By Frederick S. Dellenbaugh.
Texas. The Santa P6 Trail. By the Missouri to Oregon. Naval Ex-
peditions. Missionaries. Routes from Santa F^ to Los Angeles. The
Oregon Trail. California. Fremont. The Mormons. The Gold-
Seekers. Indians. A
Pacific Railway. Perry's Visit to Japan
Boundary Surveys. Joaquin Miller. Mark Twain. Travellers to
the Orient. The South Seas. The Colorado River. Geological Sur-
 Contents vii

veys. The Bureau of Ethnology. War with the Sioux. Cowboys.

The Isthmus of Panama. Travels in the Older States. Africa. Egypt.
Italy. Spain. Russia. Many Lands. The Philippines. Alaska.
Arctic Exploration. Peary's Discovery of the North Pole. . . 131

CHAPTER XV
LATER HISTORLANS
By John Spencer Bassett, Ph.D., LL.D., Professor of
American History in Smith College.
Changes in Conceptions of History. Underlying Movements. The
Growth of Historical Societies. The American Historical Association.
The American Historical Review. The Collection of Historical Docu-
ments. The Transformation of Historical Instruction in the Uni-
versities. Herbert B. Adams. Minor Historians of the Old School.
John William Draper. Accounts of the Civil War. John G. Nicolay
and John Hay. Ahraham Lincoln, a History. Southern Histories.
—
" The Great Subject " The Age of Discovery and Exploration. Amer-
icana and Collectors. Henry Harrisse. Justin Winsor. Edward Gay-
lord Bourne. Pour Literary Historians. John Poster Kirk. Francis
Parkman. France and England in North America. Edward Eggleston.
'
'
'A History of Life in the United States. 'John Fiske. Historians of
the Latest Period. Henry Charles Lea. Hubert Howe Bancroft.
Alfred Thayer Mahan. Charles Francis Adams. Henry Adams. Mont
Saint Michel and Chartres. The Education of Henry Adams. . . 171

CHAPTER XVI
LATER THEOLOGY
By Ambrose White Vernon, A.M., D.D., Professor of
Biography in Carleton College.
The Decline of Theology. Charles Hodge. Heresy Trials. Charles
Augustus Briggs. Changing Conceptions of the Bible. The Revised
Version. The Higher Criticism. Evolution. Foreign Missions. The

ton Gladden. Phillips Brooks. .......

Study of Comparative Religions. Walter Rauschenbusch. Washing-
201

CHAPTER XVII
LATER PHILOSOPHY
By Morris R. Qohen, Ph.D., Professor of Philosophy in
New York.
the College of the City of
American Life and American Philosophy. The Traditions of American
Philosophy. Large Indebtedness to Great Britain. Other Influences.
Scotch Common-Sense Realism. The Evolutionary Philosophy. Its
Influence on American Theology. John Fiske. His Substitution of
the Evolutionary Myth for the Old Theology. Scientific Thought in
America. Chauncey Wright; His Conception of True Scientific
Method. William T. Harris. His Attack on Agnosticism. Tlie Journal
of Speculative Philosophy. The Improvement of Philosophical Teach-
ing. The Philosophical^eview. Philosophical Professors. Charles S.
Peirce. The Origins of Pragmatism. Josiah Royce. Metaphysical
Idealism. The World and the Individual. William James. His Vivid-
ness and Humanity. Principles of Psychology. Radical Empiricism.
viii Contents

Pluralism.John Dewey. Naturalism. Great Influence. J. Mark

Baldwin. George Santayana.
Pancalism.
Detachment. The New Realism. . ...
The Life of Reason.
• 226.

CHAPTER XVIII
THE DRAMA, 1860-1918

By Montrose J. i^osEs.
The Civil War on Black and Red Americans. Dion Bouci-
the Stage;
cault. John Brougham. General Unconcern with Native Drama.
Edwin Forrest. Charlotte Cushman. Edwin Booth. Lawrence
Barrett. Lester Wallack. W. E. Burton. The Search for Foreign
Plays. Augustin Daly. Critics. Laurence Hutton. Brander
Matthews. William Winter. Bronson Howard. Local Color. Steele
MacKaye. The Theatres of the Eighties in New York. The Star
System. Theatrical Trusts. Charles and Daniel Frohman. David
Belasco. Augustus Thomas. Clyde Fitch. James A. Heme. Wil-
liam Gillette. Charles Klein. Lurid Melodrama. Successful Novels
on the Stage. The Publication of Plays. George Ade. George M.
Cohan. William Vaughn Moody. Later Literary Drama. The Broad-
way School. Tricks and Farces. Independent Theatres. The
New Theatre. Pageants. Secessionist Groups. . . . 266

CHAPTER XIX
LATER MAGAZINES
By William B. Cairns, Ph.D., Associate Professor of
American Literature in the University of Wisconsin.
The Importance of the American Magazine. Advertising. Short Stories.
The North A merican Review. Minor Reviews in New England and New
York. The South. The Older Magazines Continued. The Atlantic
Monthly. Harper's Monthly Magazine. Scribner's Monthly. The
Century Magazine. Scribner's Magazine. Putnam's Monthly Maga-
zine and Its Successors. The Galaxy. The Overland Monthly. The

Magazine. Recent Developments. ....

Ladies' Home Journal. Popular Magazines. Muck-Raking. McClure's
299

CHAPTER XX
NEWSPAPERS SINCE i860

By Frank W. Scott, Ph.D., Assistant Professor of Eng-

lish in the 'Oniversity of Illinois.
The Newspapers of i860. Progress During the Civil War. Correspond-
Censorship. The Influence of the Great Editors. Mechanical
ents.
Improvements. Reconstruction. Charles A. Dana and the New
York Sun. Weekly Papers. The Independent. Harper's Weekly. The
Nation. The Decline of Editorials. The Growth of Advertising. The
Associated Press. Foreign News Service. Sensationalism. Joseph
Pulitzer and the New York World. William Randolph Hearst. The
Sunday Supplement. Recent Tendencies. Economic Bias Among
Newspapers. The New Importance of the Weekly and Monthly
Papers. Collier's Weekly. The New Republic. The Weekly Review.
The Liberator. The Survey. Reedy's Mirror. The Dial. The Bell-
man. Party Organs. Public Activities of Newspapers. The World
War .319
 Contents ix

CHAPTER XXI
POLITICAL WRITING SINCE 1850

^y WiLLLAM Kenneth ]5^oyd, Ph.D., Professor of History

in Trinity College, Durham, North Carolina.
The Change of Temper after 1850. Pro-Slavery Arguments. Thomas R.
Dew. Attacks on Jefferson's Ideas and on Modem Industrial Condi-
tions. States' Rights and Secession. Southern Writers Opposed to
Secession. Francis Lieber. Writers Opposed to Slavery. Hinton Rowan
Helper. Northern Attitudes Toward Slavery. The Fugitive Slave
Law. Uncle Tom's Cabin. The Kansas-Nebraska Act. Charles
Sumner. The Dred Scott Decision. National Theories During the
War. The Organic Theory. Sovereignty in the Nation. Practical
Problems of Nationality. Opposition to the Administration. Re-
construction Theories Presidential, State Suicide, Conquered Province,
:

Forfeited Rights. Confederate Apologists. Personal Memoirs, North

and South. Civil Service Reform. Thomas A. Jenckes. George Wil-
liam Curtis. Tariff Reform. David A. Wells. William G. Sumner.
The Currency. Agrarian Agitation. Bimetallism. The Knights of
Labor. The Trusts. The Disfranchisement of the Negro. New
Doctrines. Henry George. The Income Tax. Edward Bellamy.
Criticism of Governmental Administration. Imperialism and Expan-
sion. The Granger Movement. Populism. Progressivism. 337

CHAPTER XXII
LINCOLN

By Nathaniel Wright Stephenson, Professor of History

in the College of Charleston.

The Mystery of Lincoln's Temperament. His Lack of Precocity. Juve-

nilia. Religion. Pioneer Loneliness. Mystical Faith. First Period
of Maturity. Comic Writings. Spiritual Enthusiasm for the Law.
Literature Applied to Practical Tasks. Second Period of Maturity.
The Great Speeches of 1 858- 1 860. The Eclipse of the Winter of 1 860-
61. The First Inaugural. Lincoln's Final Manner. Possible Influ-
ence of Seward. . 3^7

CHAPTER XXIII
EDUCATION
By Paul Monroe, PhD., LL.D., Professor of the History
of Education in Teachers College, Columbia Uni-
versity.

American Education Primarily Institutional. The Colonies. Virginia.

Pennsylvania. New Netherland and New York. New England.
The Massachusetts Law of 1647. The Apprentice System. Elemen-
tary Schools. Latin Grammar Schools. Ezekiel Cheever. Christo-
pher Dock. The New England Primer. Colonial Colleges. Franklin
on Education. Samuel Johnson. William Smith. The Revolution.
Early National Legislation. The Positions of the Fathers. Thomas
Jefferson. DeWitt CHnton. The Lancastrian System. Pestalozzian
Influences. Textbooks. Noah Webster. Lindley Murray. Jedidiah
Morse. Nicholas Pike. Law Schools. Medical Schools. Private
 Contents

Societies. Educational Periodicals. The American Journal of Educa-

tion. Labour and Education. Practical and Physical Education.
Educational Reports. Horace Mann. Henry Barnard. Technical
Literature of Education. Free Schools. Education for Girls. Emma
Hart Willard. Mary Lyon. State Universities. College Problems.
Great College Presidents. Lyceums. Ralph Waldo Emerson. Im-
aginative Literature Dealing with Education. Henry Wadsworth.
Longfellow. Oliver Wendell Holmes. Locke Amsden. The Hoosier
Schoolmaster. College Secret Societies. Phi Beta Kappa. Memoirs
by Educators. Popular Problems of Education. The Education of
Henry Adams. Books for and about Children. The Literature of the
Immigrant. Important Writers on Educational Topics. William
James. G. Stanley Hall. Edward L. Thomdike. William T. Harris.
John Dewey. Foreign Observers. General Conclusions. . . . 385
 Book III {Continued)

CHAPTER VIII

Mark Twain

SAMUEL LANGHORNE CLEMENS, more widely known

asMark Twain, was of the "bully breed" which Whit-
man had prophesied. Writing outside "the genteel
tradition," he avowedly sought to please the masses, and he
was elected to his high place in American literature by a tre-
mendous popular vote, which was justified even in the opinion
of severe critics by his exhibition of a masterpiece or so not
unworthy of Le Sage or Cervantes. Time will diminish his
bulk as it must that of every author of twenty-five volumes;
but the great public which discovered him still cherishes most
of his books and his works, his character, and his career have
;

now, and will continue to have, in addition to their strictly

which has been
literary significance, a large illustrative value,
happily emphasized by Albert Bigelow Paine's admirable
biography and collection of letters. Mark Twain is one of our
great representative men. He is a fulfilled promise of Ameri-
can life. He proves the virtues of the land and the society in
which he was born and fostered. He incarnates the spirit of
an epoch of American history when the nation, territorially
and spiritually enlarged, entered lustily upon new adventures.
In the retrospect he looms for us with Whitman and Lincoln,
recognizably his countrymen, out of the shadows of the Civil
War, an unmistakable native son of an eager, westward-
—
moving people unconventional, self-reliant, mirthful, profane.
2 Mark Twain
popular, tender-hearted, touched
realistic, cynical, boisterous,

with chivalry, and permeated to the marrow of his bones with

the sentiment of democratic society and with loyalty to Ameri-
can institutions.
By his birth at Florida, Missouri, 30 November, 1835, he
was a Middle-Westerner; but by his inheritance from the rest-
less, sanguine, unprosperous Virginian, his father, who had
drifted with his family and slaves through Kentucky and
Tennessee, he was a bit of a Southerner and still more of a mi-

grant and a seeker of fortune. His boyhood he spent in the

indolent semi-Southern town of Hannibal, Missouri, which, as
he fondly represents it, slept for the most part like a cat in the
sun, but stretched and rubbed its eyes when the Mississippi
steamboats called, teasing his imagination with hints of the
unexplored reaches of the river. When in 1847 his father died
in poverty brightened by visions of wealth from the sale of
his land in Tennessee, the son was glad to drop his lessons and
go to work in the office of the Hannibal Journal. There,
mainly under his visionary brother Orion, he served as printer
and assistant editor for the next six years, and in verse and
satirical skits made the first trials of his humour. In 1853,
having promised his mother with hand on the Testament "not
'

to throw a card or drink a drop of liquor, he set out on an ex-

'

cursion into the world, and worked his way for three or four
years as printer in St. Louis, New York, Philadelphia, Keokuk,
and Cincinnati.
Through the winter of 1856-7 he pleased himself with a
project for making his fortune by collecting cocoa at the head-
waters of the Amazon; and in the spring of 1857 he actually
took passage on the Paul Jones for New Orleans. But falling
into conversation with the pilot, Horace Bixby, he engaged him-
self with characteristic impulsiveness as an apprentice to that
exacting, admired, and, as it then seemed to him, magnificently
salaried king of the river. In return for five hundred dollars
payable out of his first wages Bixby undertook to teach him the
Mississippi from New Orleans to St. Louis so that he should
have it "by heart. " He mastered his twelve hundred miles of
shifting current, and became a licensed pilot. In the process
he acquired without the slightest consciousness of its uses
his richest store of literary material.
 "

Life in the West 3

"In that brief, sharp schooling," he wrote many years later, "I
got personally and familiarly acquainted with all the different types
of human nature that are to be found in
fiction, biography, or his-
tory. When a well-drawn character in fiction or biography,
I find
I generally take a warm personal interest in him, for the reason that
I have known him before —met him on the river.

This chapter of his experience was ended abruptly by the out-

break of the Civil War and the closing of the river. His brief
and inglorious part in the ensuing conflict he has described,
with decorations, in his Private History of a Campaign that
Failed, a little work which indicates that he rushed to the aid
of the Confederacy without much conviction, and that two
weeks later he rushed away with still less regret. Eventually,
it should be remarked, General Grant became his greatest liv-

ing hero, and his attitude towards slavery became as passion-

ately Northern as that of Mrs. Stowe.
Meanwhile he went West. On 26 July, 1861 he was sitting ,

on the mail-bags behind the six galloping horses of the over-

land stage headed for Carson City, Nevada, as assistant to his
brother Orion, who through the good offices of a friend in
Lincoln's cabinet had been appointed Territorial secretary.
On his arrival, finding himself without salary or duties, he
explored the mining camps and caught the prevailing passion
for huge quick wealth. First he bought "wild-cat" stock;
then he located a vast timber claim on Lake Tahoe; then he
tried quartz mining in the silver regions; prospected for gold
in the placer country; and, in daily expectation of striking it
fabulously rich, sank his brother's salary in the most promising
"leads."
That his claims did not "pan out" well is clear from his ac-
cepting in 1862 a position as local reporter for the Virginia City
Enterprise at twenty-five dollars a week, having commended
himself to the editor by a of letters signed "Josh."
series
Thus began his literary In reporting for this paper the
career.
sessions of the Legislature at Carson City he first employed
the signature "Mark Twain," a name previously used by a
pilot-correspondent of the New Orleans Picayune but ultimately
commemorating the leadsman's cry on the Mississippi. His
effervescent spirits, excited by the stirring and heroically con-
4 Mark Twain
community of pioneers, fotind easy outlet in the
vivial life of a
robust humour and slashing satire of frontier journalism. In
1863 Artemus Ward' spent three glorious weeks revelling with
the newspaper men in Virginia City, recognized the talent of
Mark Twain, and encouraged him to send his name eastward
with a contribution to the New York Sunday Mercury. A
duel occasioned by some journalistic vivacities resulted in his
migration in 1864 to San Francisco, where in 1864 and 1865
he wrote for The Morning Call, The Golden Era, and The CaU-
fornian; and fraternized with the brilliant young coterie of
which Bret Harte" was recognized as the most conspicuous light.
In a pocket-hunting excursion in January, 1865, he picked up a
very few nuggets and the nucleus for the story of Jim Smiley
and his Jumping Frog, which appeared in the New York Satur-
day Press in November and swiftly attained wide celebrity.
In the following spring he visited the Sandwich Islands on a
commission from the Sacramento Union, called upon his first
king, explored the crater of Kilauea, struck up a friendship with
the American ministers to China and Japan, and made a great
"scoop" by interviewing a group of shipwrecked sailors in the
hospital at Honolulu. Later he wrote up the story for Harper's
Magazine; his appearance there in 1866 he calls his debut as a
literary person.
Returning to San Francisco, he made his first appearance as
a humorous lecturer in a discourse on the Sandwich Islands,
delivered with his sober, inimitable, irresistible drawl to a
crowded and applausive house on the evening of 2 October,
1866. From this point his main course was determined.
Realizing that he had a substantial literary capital, he set out
to invest it so that it would in every sense of the word yield the
largest returns obtainable. To the enterprise of purveying
literary entertainment he, first in America, applied the wide-
ranging vision and versatile talents of our modem men of
action and captains of industry: collecting his "raw material,"
distributing it around the world from the lecture platform, send-
ing it to the daily press, reworking it into book form, inventing

his own type-setting machinery, and controlling his own print-

ing, pubhshing, and selling agencies. He did not foresee this
all in 1 866 ; but it must have begun to dawn.
' See Book II, Chap. xix. ' See Book III, Chap. vi.
 "

Later Life 5

By repeating his Sandwich Islands lecture widely in Cali-

fornia and Nevada he provided himself with means to travel,
and revisited his home, returning by way of Panama and New
York. In May, 1867, he published his first book, The Cele-
brated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County, and Other Sketches,
and lectured in Cooper Institute. Then on 8 June he sailed on
the Quaker City for a five months' excursion through the
Mediterranean to the Holy Land, first reported in letters to
The Alta-California and the New York Tribune, and immortal-
ized by his book Innocents Abroad. On 2 February, 1870, he
married his most sympathetic reader and severest censor,
Olivia Langdon of Elmira, New York, a sister of one of the
Quaker City pilgrims who had shown him her photograph in the
Bay of Smyrna. After a brief unprofitable attempt to edit a
newspaper in Buffalo, he moved in 1871 to Hartford, Connecti-
cut, and in 1874 built there the home in which he lived for the
next seventeen years.
He formed a close association with his neighbour Charles
Dudley Warner' was taken under the editorial wing of William
;

Dean Howells^and into his intimate friendship; contributed

to The Atlantic Monthly, Harper's Magazine, and The North
American Review; and ultimately made some progress with
such festive New Englanders as O. W. Holmes, ' F. J. Child,
and T. B. Aldrich'; but his head was white before he became as
much of a lion in Boston and New York as he had been in
Carson City and San Francisco. At various times he made
extended sojourns in England, Italy, France, Germany, and
Austria, particularly in his later years in seasons of pecuniary
retrenchment. He reaped a fortune by contracting for the
publication of Grant's Memoirs and his royalties were steadily
large; but bad ventures in his publishing business, his some-
what lavish style of living, and his unperfected type-setting
machine, in which he sank $200,000, pushed him finally into
bankruptcy. He had extended his reputation in 1873 by
lecturing for two months in London he made a big reading tour
;

with G. W. Cable* in 1884-5; and in 18*95, at the age of sixty.

See Book III, Chap. xm. ' See Book III, Chap. xi.
3 See Book II, Chap. xxni. • See Book III, Chap, xxiii.
s See Book III, Chaps, vi, vii, and x. * See Book III, Chap. vi.
6 Mark Twain
disdaining the advantages of bankruptcy, he set out on a lectur-
ing tour of the world which took on something of the aspect
of a royal progress and ended in the triumphant discharge of all

his obligations. Then he collected another fortune and built

himself his mansion Stormfield in Redding, Connecticut.
In his last years he spent a good deal of time in New York
and Washington, and a variety of causes kept him pretty
steadily in the public eye as a figure of national interest : his
valiant assumption of his debts, his great tour, his growing
habit of commenting on public affairs, the publication of sec-
tions of his autobiography, his domestic bereavements, and the
foreign tributes and honours which gradually assured his some-
what incredulous countrymen that he was a great man of
letters. His first academic recognition had come from Yale
University, which created him Master of Arts in 1888; in
1 90 1 Yale and in 1902 the University of Missouri conferred

upon him the degree of Doctor of Letters; but the crowning

academic glory fell in 1907 when the University of Oxford called
him across the sea and robed him in scarlet and made him
Doctor of Literature, amid, as he noted, "a very satisfactory
hurrah" from the audience. On his return from a trip to the
Bermudas he died 21 April, 19 10.
Mark Twain's literary independence is generally conceded.
Except for a certain flavour of Dickens in The Gilded Age there
is hardly an indication of any important relationship between

him and modern writers. He was a lover of the elemental in

the midst of the refinements of an English and an American
Victorian Age. " I can't stand George Eliot and Hawthorne
and those people," he said. "And as for 'The Bostonians,' I
would rather be damned to John Bunyan's heaven than read
'
that. ' Modern fiction generally impressed him as namby-pam-
by and Jane Austen was his pet abhorrence, but he
artificial.

also detested Scott, primarily for his Toryism, and he poked

fun at. Cooper for his inaccuracies. His taste for books was
eminently masculine. The literary nourishment of his style
he appears to have found chiefly in history, travel, biography,
and such works of imagination as one puts on a " five-foot shelf "
— Shakespeare and the Bible, Suetonius's Lives of The Ccesars,
Malory, Cellini, Don Quixote, Gil Bias, the Memoirs of Casanova,
Lecky 's History of Civilization, and Carlyle's French Revolution.
 Art and Aims 7

In his prose as in the verse of Whitman there is an appear-

ance of free improvisation concealing a more or less novel and
deliberate art. "So far as I know, " wrote W. D. Howells in
1901 " Mr.
, Clemens is the first writer to use in extended writing

the fashion we all use in thinking, and to set down the thing
that comes into his mind without fear or favour of the thing that
went before, or the thing that may be about to follow. " Be-
side this assertion of a spontaneity approaching artlessness let
us put Professor Matthews's caution: "His colloquial ease
should not hide from us his mastery of all the devices of rhet-
oric. " In a letter to Aldrich he acknowledges great indebted-
ness to Bret Harte, "who trimmed and trained and schooled me
patiently until he changed me from an awkward utterer of
coarse grotesquenesses to a writer of paragraphs and chapters
that have found a certain favour in the eyes of even some of the
'
very decentest people in the land. Finally, let the reader who
'

doubts whether he was conscious of his own art read carefully

his little article. How to Tell a Story, beginning " I do not claim
:

that I can tell a story as it ought to be told. I only claim to

know how a story ought to be told, for I have been almost
daily in the company of the most expert story-tellers for many
years. " The art which he had learned of such American mas-
ters of oral rhetoric as Artemus Ward, John Phoenix, ' and J. H.
Riley he tested and developed in print and by word of mouth
with constant reference to its immediate effect upon a large
audience. Those principles the observance of which he found
essential to holding and entertaining his public he adopted and
followed; but literary "laws" which proved irrelevant to his
business as entertainer of the masses he disregarded at pleasure
as negligible or out of place in a democratic Esthetic. Howells
'

calls him
'
the Lincoln of our literature
' and with that hint
'
;

we may add that his power and limitations are alike related to
his magnanimous ambition to beguile all the people all the time.
Let us begin our illustration of his literary character with
a review of his five great books of travel. Against every one
of them the charge might be brought that it is ill-composed:
the chapters follow a certain chronological and geographical
order; but the paragraphs frequently seem to owe their juxta-
position to the most casual association of ideas. This license,
• See Book II, Chap. xix.
 8 Mark Twain
however, is the law and studied practice of his humour. "To
bring incongruities and absurdities together in a wandering and
sometimes purposeless way, and seem innocently unaware that
they are absurdities, is the basis," he declares, "of the Ameri-
can art." He is speaking here specifically of the humorous
story but obviously he applies the same principle to the book
;

of travel, which, ashe conceives it, is a joyous miscellany. It

is a miscellany but with ingredients preconsidered and formu-
lable. He is as inflexible as Aristotle on the importance of
choosing a great subject. He holds with the classicists that
the proper study of mankind is man. He traverses in each
book territory of world-wide interest. He describes what
meets his eye with rapid, vivid, unconventional eloquence.
He sketches the historical background in a highly personal
fashion and gives to his interlarded legends an individual
twist. While he imparts a good quantity of information, useful
and diverting, he keeps the thread of his personal adventures
\ spinning, rhapsodizes for a page, then clowns it for another, or
introduces an elaborate burlesque on the enthusiasm of previous
travellers. prepared concoction.
It is a
The Innocents Abroad justified the formula on which it was
constructed by selling nearly a hundred thousand copies at
three dollars and a half apiece within the first three years.
Its initial success was due partly to its novelty and partly to
the wide interest which the excursion itself had excited. Both
these advantages it has now relinquished, yet, as his biographer
tells us, it remains the most popular of all Mark Twain's travel

books, and still "outsells every other book in its particular

field." Time has not reduced the rich variety of its famous
topics, though time has somewhat altered the nature of cu-
riosity with regard to the conduct of the pilgrims but even
;

though their type of tourist were now quite extinct one might
still gratify the historical sense by acquaintance with a repre-

sentative group of Americans on a tremendous picnic with

spirits high in rebound from the long depression of the Civil
War. One hears in the book the rollicking voice of the ex-
pilot, ex-miner, the joyously insolent Western American, eman-
cipated from all terror of the minor or Sunday-school vices

fortified by
certain tolerant democratic standards of his own,
well acquainted with the great American cities, equipped with
 "Innocents Abroad" 9

ideas of natural beauty and sublimity acquired on the Missis-

sippi, the Great Plains, the Rockies, the Pacific, the Sandwich
Islands, setting out to see with his own unawed eyes how much
truth there is wonders of the "little old world."
in the reported
Mark Twain describes Europe and the East for men, roughly
speaking, like himself. He does not undertake to tell them how
they ought to look at objects of interest, but quite resolutely
how these objects of interest strike a thoroughly honest Western-
American eye. He is obliged to report that the barbers, billiard
tables, and hotel accommodations of Paris are inferior; that the
paintings of the Old Masters are often in a bad state of repair
and, at best, betray to a democrat a nauseous adulation of
princely patrons; that the French grisettes wear mustaches;
that Vesuvius and Lake Como are nothing to Kilauea and Lake
Tahoe; that priest-ridden Italy is a "museum of magnificence
and misery and that under close inspection the glamour of the
'
;
'

Holy Land gives way to vivid impressions of fleas, beggars,

hungry dogs, sandy wastes, and the odours of camels. But this
young traveller with so much of the iconoclastic Don Juan
in him has also a strain of Childe Harold. For him as for
Byron the deepest charm of the old world is the charm of
desolation and decay, felt when the dingy palaces of Venetian
doges or the ruined marbles of Athens are bathed in the moon-
light. And he like Byron gains many an effect of his violent
humour by the abruptness of his transitions from the sublime
to the ridiculous or vice versa. He interprets, for example, with
noble gravity the face of the Sphinx:

After years of waiting, it was before me at last. The great face

was so sad, so earnest, so longing, so patient.There was a dignity
not of earth in its mien, and in its countenance a benignity such as
never anything human wore. It was stone, but it seemed sentient.

If ever image of stone thought, it was thinking. All who . .

know what pathos there is in memories of days that are accomplished

—
and faces that have vanished albeit only a trifling score of years
—
gone by ^will have some appreciation of the pathos that dwells in
those grave eyes that look so steadfastly back upon the things they
— —
knew before History was bom before Tradition had being ^things
that were, and forms that moved, in a vague era which even Poetry
and Romance scarce know of—and passed one by one away and
 —
10 Mark Twain
left the stony dreamer solitary in the midst of a strange new age,
and uncomprehended scenes.

But one turns the page and comes upon the engineer who feeds
his locomotive with mummies, occasionally calling out pet-
tishly, "D —
n these plebeians, they don't burn worth a cent
pass out a king."
In Roughing It (1872) he chose a subject doubtless less
some good people of the Atlantic seaboard than a
interesting to
—
European tour the narrative of his journey across the plains
to Carson City, and his life and adventures in Nevada, Cali-
fornia, and the Sandwich Islands. Various critics, however,
have preferred it to Innocents Abroad as a truer book; and in a
sense the preference is justifiable. As literal history, to be sure,
or as autobiography, it is Mark Twain follows
untrustworthy.
his own advice to Rudyard Kipling: "Young man, first get
your facts; then distort them as you please." He distorts the
facts in Roughing It, and vitalizes them by a poetical enlarge-
ment and interpretation thoroughly characteristic of native
Western humour. In painting frontier manners, no longer an
outsider, as he was in Europe, he abandons the attitude of one
exposing illusions, and seeks to exhibit the West under the
glamour of imagination. His coyote, turning with a smile
upon the pursuing hound and vanishing with a "rushing sound,
and the sudden splitting of a long crack in the atmosphere"
his coyote is a beast of fable; so is his jackrabbit ; so is his bron-
cho so ;
is his Brigham Young. On all his pioneers, his stage-
drivers, his miners, his desperadoes, his boon-companions he
has breathed with a heroizing emotion recollected in literary
tranquillity. In the clear light of the vanished El Dorado of
his youth they and their mountains and forests loom for him
larger than common nature, more passionate, more picturesque.
A Tramp Abroad (1880) sprang from no such fund of de-
lightful experience and mellow
recollection but from an ex-
pedition to Europedeliberately undertaken in order to escape
from the growing harassment of business responsibilities and to
collect material for a book. Before he could work himself into
a satisfactory writing mood he found it necessary to invent a

new humorous attitude and literary character. His new in-

vention has three parts. In the first place, he announces him-
 "A Tramp Abroad" n
selfan enthusiastic and intrepid pedestrian but actually presents
himself as a languid and timorous person travelling luxuriously
with agent and courier by railway, steamboat, carriage, raft,
or by any means to avoid the use of his legs. Secondly, he
professes himself a devoted student of art and decorates his
pages with infantile sketches. Finally, he assumes the air of a
philologist seriously studying the German language. The first
of these devices he handles in many places ingeniously and
pleasantly, presenting an amusing satire on the indolent middle-
aged tourist who climbs his Alps by telescope and gets his
thrills on his hotel veranda out of the books of Edward Whym-
per; but in the elaborate burlesque ascent of the Riffleberg the
humour becomes crudely farcical and tiresome. His drawings
are not very expressive; and from their fewness it may be in-
ferred that he discovered the fact. Some fellow philologists
have found inexhaustible satisfaction in the German legends in
German-English and in the appendices treating of "the awful
German language" and the German newspaper ^possibly also —
in the violent attack on Wagnerian opera. Other favourite
passages of various qualities are those dealing with the grand
a,ffair between M. Gambetta and M. Fourtou, the sunrise on Mt.

Riga, and the 47-mile hunt for a sock in Chapter XIII but the ;

humorous jewel of the collection is "Baker's Bluejay Yarn" in

—
Chapter III a trivial incident touched with imagination and
related in a supremely delicious manner. The serious writing,
as in the description of the Jungfrau and Heidelberg and the
student duels, is so good that one wishes there were more
of it.

For Life on the Mississippi (1883) Mark Twain drew again

from the treasure of Western material which he had amassed
before he became a professional humorist; and that distin-
guished connoisseur, the ex-Emperor William II of Germany,
therein agreeing with the portier of the author's lodging in
Berlin, informed the author that it was his favourite American
book. More strictly speaking, it is the first twenty of the
fifty-five chapters that do for the Mississippi Valley what
Roughing It does for the Far West, namely, invest it with the
charm and imaginative apprehension.
of recollected experience
The latter part of the book, which might have been called "The
Mississippi Revisited, " is the journalistic record of an excursion
12 Mark Twain
made with a stenographer in 1882; it contains interesting auto-
biographical notes, admirable descriptive passages, a remarkable
diatribe on Sir Walter Scott for perpetuating outworn chivalry
in the South, an account of a meeting with G. W. Cable and
Joel Chandler Harris in New Orleans, and miscellaneous yarns
and information but it is of distinctly secondary value. Stead-
;

ily throughout the first twenty chapters the writer is elate with
his youthful memories of the drowsy towns by the river, the
old barbaric raftsmen, the pride and power of the ancient race
of pilots, and the high art and mystery of piloting those in-
finitely various waters in the days before the war. The moon-
light, one of his characters fancies, was brighter before the war;
and he himself, travelled now and acquainted with glory, has
experienced, he believes, nothing so satisfying to his inmost
sense as his life in that epical calhng with its manly rigours, its

robust hilarity, its deep, wholesome, unrefiective happiness.

Thp spirit that, years before, inspired Emerson's blandly ex-
pressed desire to make Concord and Boston Bay as memorable
as the storied places of Europe becomes in these pages clear,
strong, resounding: it is the new national pride declaring the

spiritual independence of America. Not in peevish envy, with

no anxiety about the ultimate answer, out of his knowledge and
the depths of his conviction Mark Twain cries: "What are all
"
the rivers of Damascus to the Father of Waters?
The material for Following the Equator (1897) he collected
under the strain of debt, ill health, and the fatigues of the im-
mense lecture-tour undertaken in 1895. In Australasia, to
which the first half of the book is given, the people impress him
as Englishmen democratized, that is to say, as Americans, and
the cities and towns offer little noteworthy. In order to exhibit
novelties he is obliged to present the history of the early set-
tlers, the aborigines, and the fauna and as he gets up his facts
;

by visits to museums and hasty digestion of Australasian liter-

ature, his treatment strikes one as, for him, noticeably second-
hand and uninspired. He also introduces later a good deal of
"lifted" material of a vivid sort in his account of the Sepoy
—
Mutiny, Suttee, and the Thugs and here we may note his
taste for the collection of atrocious incident. India, however,
for which Kipling had sharpened his appetite, inspired him to
the task of imparting his oppressed sense of her historic and
 : ;

Fiction 13

scenic immensities, stricken with plagues, famines, ferocious

beasts, superstitions, over-population, and swooning heat

a haunting sense of the myriads of human lives that have blossomed,

and withered, and perished here, repeating and repeating and re-
peating, century after century,and age after age, the barren and
meaningless process; sense that gives to this forlorn, un-
it is this

comely land power to speak to the spirit and make friends with it
to speak to it with a voice bitter with satire, but eloquent with
melancholy.

There are satirical and witty disquisitions on imperialistic

morality apropos of Madagascar, the Jameson Raid, Cecil
Rhodes, and the British dealings with the Boers. The bar-
barity of the civilized in contact with the so-called backward
peoples excites his indignation, but history and travel show him
universality and quiet his sensibilities to a state of tolerant
its
contempt for all unregenerate mankind: "Christian govern-
ments are as frank to-day, as open and above-board, in discuss-
ing projects for raiding each other's clothes-lines as ever they
were before the Golden Rule came smiling into this inhospitable
world and couldn't get a night's lodging anywhere."
Mark Twain's fiction, a large and highly diversified section
of his total output, should be regarded as, hardly less than the
travel books, the work of a humorist whose most characteristic
form was a medley in divers keys. His critical champions used
to allege that recognition of his st^Gn^litefaiy talent was de-
fteyed'byhis feputati6n"as^£reator of laughter. At the present
time the danger is perhaps rather that some of his novels and
tales will be unduly disparaged precisely because criticism has
been persuaded to take them too seriously. With an instinct
for an ingenious plot and unquestionable power of characteriza-
tion within certain limits, Mark Twain sometimes lacked the
ability and the patience and even the desire to carry a long piece
of fiction through in the key on which he began. He would begin
a story, for example, on the key of impressive realism, shift to
commonplace melodrama, and end with roaring farce; and this
amounts to saying that he did not himself steadily take his
fiction writing seriously. He sometimes took it very lightly,
like an improvising humorist; and the discords which affect
 ;

14 Mark Twain
the severely critical ear as blemishes probably struck his own
ear as a joke. There is amusement in the most uneven of his
novels if one relaxes to the point of reading it in the mixed
moods in which it was written.
The most uneven of his novels is The Gilded Age, begun in
collaboration with Charles Dudley Warner in February, 1873,
on the spur of a dinner-table challenge, and finished in the
following April. The authors were proud of their performance
and it has admirable points. The title is a masterly epigraph
on the flushed, corrupt period of the Reconstruction. The
stage is set as for the representation of "the great American
novel," with scenes in New York, Philadelphia, Washington, St.
Louis, and villages of New England and Tennessee. The plot
is designed to bring typical Easterners and Westerners into
diverting sentimental, financial, and political relations. There
is a lively play upon a wide range of clearly conceived
satirical
characters and caricatures, exhibiting most of the elementary
passions from love-making and fortune-hunting to bribing Con-
gressmen and murder and the sanguine, speculative Colonel
;

Sellers, said to have been modelled on a relative of Mark Twain's

but certainly also modelled on Orion Clemens and on Mark
Twain himself, is an American rival to Micawber. The book
bristles with interesting intentions and- accomplishments; yet
its total effect is a bewildering dissonance of moods and styles,

which fills one with regret that Mark Twain did not cut loose
from his literary partner and work out by himself the story of
Obedstown, Tennessee, opened by him with a rich reaHstic flow
in the first eleven chapters. With all its demerits on its head,
the novel sold forty thousand copies within a couple of months
after publication, and a play bidlt around the character of
Sellers was immensely successful on the stage. Later, in col-
laboration with Howells, Mark Twain made a second Sellers
play showing the hero aspiring to an English earldom; and this
he worked over into The American Claimant (1891), a gener-
ally farcical romance streaked with admirable realistic passages.
One may mention here also, as springing perhaps from ex-
perience not utterly remote from that of Sellers, Clemens's
exhibition of the effect upon character produced by expectation
of tinearned wealth in two capital short stories : The Man that
Corrupted Hadleyburg (1899) and The $30,000 Bequest (1904).
 "Tom Sawyer" 15

Tom Sawyer, his second extended effort in fiction and his

masterpiece, he began as a play in 1872 and published in
first its

present form in 1876. The long incubation contributed to its

unsurpassed unity of tone. But the decisive fact is that his

irresponsible and frequently extravagant fancy is here held in
check by a serious artistic purpose, namely, to make an essen-
tially faithful representation of the life of a real boy intimately
known to him by memory and by introspection and by those
deductions of the imaginative faculty which start from a solid
basis of actuality. His own boyhood, we may believe, and
that of his companions in Hannibal, lives in this intensely
vital narrative. It is significant of his unwonted austerity in
the composition that he wrote to Howells on its completion:
"It not a boy's book at all. It will only be read by adults.
is

It is only written for adults." He had some justification for

feeling that his newly finished manuscript broke a long taboo.
He had taken a hero who was neither a model of youthful vir-
tues nor a horrible example but was distinguished chiefly by
pluck, imagination, and vanity, and had rnade him leader of
a group of average little Missouri rascals running loose in an
ordinary small river town and displaying, among other sponta-
' '

neous impulses, all the natural cussedness of boyhood. Fur-

' '

thermore he had made a central incident of a rather horrid

murder. Remembering the juvenile fiction of the Sunday-
school library,' he suspected that the story of these fighting,
fibbing, pilfering, smoking, swearing scapegraces was not for
young people. But Howells, after reading about Aunt Polly,
the whitewashing of thefenfle, Tom's schoolboy love, Huckand
the wart-cure, and the pirates' island, ordered the profanity
deleted, and declared it the best boy story ever written and that ;

was near the truth. In the two sequels Tom Sawyer Abroad
(1894) ^^^ Tom Sawyer, Detective (i8g6), the plots are rather
flimsy contrivances of the humorous fancy, but the stories
are partly redeemed by the established reality of the actors
and the raciness of the narrative which comes from the mouth
of Huck Finn.
The Prince and the Pauper (1881), a first venture in histori-
cal romance, was deliberately written for children and tested
in the process of composition on the author's daughters. The
' See Book III, Chap. vii.
i6 Mark Twain
plot, suggested by Charlotte M. Yonge's The Prince and the

Page, fascinating to the youthful imagination; and the no-

is

tion underlying it is to the older reader the most characteristic

element in the book. The exchange of clothes and stations
effectedby Tom Canty and Prince Edward, later Edward VI,
provided for the prince opportunities for feeling the common lot
which the democratic author would gladly have given to all the
monarchs of Europe. Occasionally writing over the heads of
his audience, he utilizes the situation to express his inveterate
sense of the evil of monarchical institutions and in particular
his peculiarly flaming indignation at obsolete English penal
laws. Humorous situations, sometimes tragically himiorous,
are abundant; but neither in the simple and vigorous prose of
the narrative nor in the archaic style of the dialogue does one
find at full strength the idiom and the first-hand observation
for which one values Tom Sawyer. The Prince and the Pauper
is a distinguished book in the class to which Little Lord Fauntle-

roy was added in 1886; but it is overshadowed by Mark Twain's

own work.
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884) overshadows it;
but that is nothing. Huckleberry Finn exceeds even Tom Saw-
yer almost as clearly as Tom Sawyer exceeds The Prince and the
Pauper. Mark Twain had conceived the tale in 1876 as a
sequel to the story of Tom. In the course of its long gestation
he had revisited the Mississippi VaUey and had published his
superb commemoration of his own early life on the river. He
wrote his second masterpiece of Mississippi fiction with a desire
to express what in Tom Sawyer he had hardly attempted, what,
indeed, came slowly into his possession, his sense of the half-
barbaric charm and the romantic possibilities in that grey
wilderness of moving water and the rough men who trafficked
on it. He had given power to the earlier story by the representa-
tion of characters and incidents which are typical of the whole
of American boyhood in rural communities in many parts of the
country. He gave power to Huckleberry Finn by a selection of
unusual characters and extraordinary incidents which are
inseparably related to and illustrative of their special environ-
ment. He shifted heroes, displacing quick-witted, imaginative
Tom by the village drunkard's son, because Huck in his hard,
nonchalant, adventurous adolescence is a more distinctive pro-
 " A Connecticut Yankee
" i7

duct of the frontier. He changed the narrator, letting Huck

tell his own story, in order to invest the entire narrative in its
native garb and colour. Huck perhapsnow and then
exhibits
a little more humour and than a picaro is
feeling for nature
entitled to possess; but in the main his point of view is well
maintained. His strange captivity in his father's cabin, the
great flight down thethe mysteries of fog and night and
river,
current, the colloquy on King SoUermun, the superbly inci-
dental narrative of the Grangerford-Shepherdson feud, the
appealing devotion and affectionateness of Nigger Jim, Huck's
—
case of conscience, all are stamped with the peculiar comment
of Huck's earthy, callous, but not insensitive soul. The stuff
and manner of the tale are unique, and it is as imperishably
substantial as Robinson Crusoe, whether one admire it with
Andrew Lang as "a nearly flawless gem of romance and hu-
mour" or with Professor Matthews as "a marvellously accurate
portrayal of a whole civilization."
A Connecticut Yankee eht-4h^-Gmiri-«f--King-Arihttr-{i88g) isv
a work of humorous invention set in motion by G. W. Cable,
who first brought Malory's Morte d' Arthur to Mark Twain's
attention. For assignable reasons it has not had the universal
admiration enjoyed by Huckleberry Finn; Andrew Lang, for
example, could not bring himself to read it; yet one might
plausibly argue that it represents Mark Twain more completely

than any other single book oh his list, and so may serve as a
touchstone to distinguish those who care for the man from those
who only care for some of his stories. It displays every variety
of his style from the mock-heroic and shirt-sleeve journalese of
the Yankee's famiUar vein to the careful euphonies of his de-
scriptions of English landscape and the Dantean mordancy
of the chapter "In the Queen's Dungeons." It exhibits his
humour in moods from the grimmest to the gayest, mingling
scenes of pathos, terror, and excruciating cruelty with hilarious
comic inventions and adventures, which prove their validity for
the imagination by abiding in the memory the sewing-machine
:

worked by the bowing hermit, the mules blushing at the jokes

of the pilgrims, the expedition with Alisande, the contests with
Merlin, the expedition with King Arthur, Launcelot and the
bicycle squad, and the annihilation of the chivalry of England.
The hero is, despite the title, no mere Yankee but Mark Twain's
VOL. HI 2
 8

1 Mark Twain
"personal representative" —acquainted
with the machine
shops of New Haven but acquainted also with navigation on the
Mississippi and with Western journalism and with the use of
the lariat. The moment that he enters "the holy gloom" of
history he becomes, as Mark Twain became when he went to
Europe, the representative of democratic America, preaching
the gospel of commonsense and practical improvement and
liberty and equality and free thought inherited from Franklin,
Paine, Jefferson, and IngersoU. Those to whom Malory's
romance a sacred book may fairly complain that the ex-
is

hibition of the Arthurian realm is a brutal and libellous travesty,

attributing to the legendary period of Arthur horrors which
belong to medieval Spain and Italy. Mark Twain admits the
charge. He takes his horrors where he finds them. His wide-
sweeping satirical purpose requires a comprehensive display of
human ignorance, folly, and iniquity. He must vent the flame
of indignation which swept through him whenever he fixed his
—
attention on human history indignation against removable
dirt, ignorance, injustice, and cruelty. As a radical American,
he ascribed a great share of these evils to monarchy, aristocracy,
and an established church, and he made his contemporary
references pointed and painful to English sensibilities. A
Connecticut Yankee is his Don Quixote, a sincere book, full of
lifelong convictions earnestly held, a book charged with a rude
iconoclastic humour, intended like the work of Cervantes to
hasten the end of an obsolescent civilization. Whether it will
finally be judged a great book will depend in considerable
measure on factors outside itself, particularly on the prosperity
of western democratic sentiment in the world at large. Since
the War of the German Invasions there has been an increaseof
Quixotism in his sense, and what used to be considered his
unnecessary rage at windmills now looks like prophetic tilting
at giants.
The volume containing Pudd'nhead Wilson and Those
Extraordinary Twins, pubUshed in 1894, o^^e is predisposed to
value because it is another specimen from the Mississippi
'

lead. "
' It adds, however, relatively so little that is distinctive
to the record that oneis tempted to use it as an unsurpassable

illustration ofhaphazard method in composition. The pic-

ture of a two-headed freak had given him the cue for a "howl-
 "Joan of Arc" i9

ing farce.'' When

he began to write, the contemplated short
story swiftly expanded, and there developed unexpectedly un-
der his hand serious characters- and a tragic situation unrelated
to the initiating impulse. After long study he extracted the
"farce" by "Caesarean operation," and appended it with
amusing explanations to the "tragedy" which it had set in
motion. Pudd'nhead Wilson, disfigured by vestiges of the
farce in the incredible Italian twins, is, like The Gilded Age, a
discordant medley with powerful character-drawing in Roxana
and her half-breed son, and with a somewhat feebly indicated
novelty in the philosophical detective Pudd'nhead.
The last certified claimant for a position in the front rank
of the novels is Joan of Arc (1896), a romance containing as its
core the ascertained facts concerning one of the most problem-
atic figures in secular history, and as its important imaginative
expansion Mark Twain's conception of her familiar charm and
his pictures of the battles and scenes of state and trials through
which she passed. As in the somewhat similar case of the
supernatural powers of Jesus, of which he was certainly scepti-
cal, he says nothing to raise a doubt of the Maid's divine assist-
ance; he neither explained nor attempted to explain away
Joan's mystery. Her character, her Voices, and her mission he
presents throughout with an air of absolute reverence and
indeed at times with almost breathless adoration. For the
reader in whom illusion is not destroyed by constant involtm-
tary attention to the line where fact meets fiction the total
impression is doubtless both beautiful and deeply moving. In
the last section, at least, which deals with the trial and martyr-
dom, the most impatient reader of historical romance can
hardly escape the pang of actuality; he is too near the facts.
Recognizing that the book was quite out of his customary
vein, Mark Twain published it first anonymously; yet in 1908
he wrote "I like the Joan of Arc best of all my books and it is
:

the best I
; know it perfectly well. And besides, it furnished me
seven times the pleasure afforded me by any of the others;
12 years of preparation & 2 years of writing. The others
needed no preparation, & got none." This much we must
admit: we are glad to have Joan of Arc on the shelf beside A
Connecticut Yankee to complete our conception of that versa-
tile and representative American whom we call Mark Twain.
20 Mark Twain
Without it, and its little companion-piece, In Defence oj Harriet
Shelley (1894), we should have a harder task to prove, against
those that take him for a hard unsanctified philistine, his invin-
cible chivalry and fineness in relation to womankind, feelings
precious in a free society, and fostered, as we like to think, by
a thoroughly established American tradition.
But if we value a book in proportion to its saturation with
its author's most distinctive qualities and in proportion to its

power, exerted or latent, to affect the general literary current,

we shall hardly rate Joan of Arc among Mark Twain's most
interesting or significant books.In its utterly reverent treat-
ment of the traditional and the supernatural it impresses one
as a counterpoise obviously unequal to the task of making a
balance with the great burden of naturalistic and radically
iconoclastic writing in the other scale.
Mark Twain counts as an influence because he is an innova-
tor. The great notes of his innovation from Innocents Abroad
to A Connecticut Yankee are : first, the disillusioned treatment
of history; second, the fearless exploitation of "the natural
man," or, the next thing to "the free-bom American";
it,

and, lastly, a certain strain of naturalistic pessimism. In the

first class go the foreign-travel books. The Prince and the

Pauper, and A Connecticut Yankee; and the impulse properly

proceeding from them is imaginative satire. In the second
class go Roughing It, Tom Sawyer, Life on the Mississippi,
Huckleberry Finn, Adam's Diary, and Eve's Diary; and from
such work has proceeded an observable imptilse to the cultiva-
tion of the indigenous, the elemental, the primitive, and, per-
haps, the brutal and the For the third class one can
sensual.
glean representative paragraphs only here and there among the
writings published in Mark Twain's lifetime; but the posthu-
mously published philosophical dialogue What is Man? (1905)
and The Mysterious Stranger (191 6), a romance, and some of
the letters are steeped in a naturalistic melancholy and tinged
with a philosophical bitterness of which American literature
before Mark Twain showed hardly a trace. That strain seems
likely to be influential too, and, unfortunately, not always in
connection with the fine bravado of his American faith, which
occasionally required an antidote to its natural insolence.
 CHAPTER IX

Minor Humorists

THE eccentric and racy touch of the Civil War humorists'

vanished early in the seventies, and humour underwent
a period of organization, levelling, and standardization.
Its cruder manifestations disappeared; editors no longer burst
upon their readers with the discovery of unsuspected females
—Ann Tiquity, Ann Gelic, and Ann O'Dyne in Webster's—
Unabridged; parodying became less inevitable; and "reverses"
such as P. T. Bamum's

Lewd did I live & evil I did dwel

lost their fascination for keen minds. The dialect of the immi-
grant replaced the twang of the crossroads. And at the same
time the native flavour and homely philosophy of the older
humour ceased to iUuminate the work of the fun-makers.
The channels of humorous journalism were meanwhile
clearly marked out. Casual newspaper paragraphers hke J. M.
Bailey of The Danbury [Connecticut] News, C. B. Lewis of The
Detroit Free Press, and R. J. Burdette of The Burlington [Iowa]
Hawkeye gave their otherwise obscure journals a nation-wide
prominence, and demonstrated the commercial value of daily
humour. Their books, compiled from newspaper cUppings,
have, however, long been covered by les neiges d'antan. Eugene
Field set the measure of the humorist's output at one column
a day "leaded agate, first line brevier." He aspired also to
produce work of permanent literary quality. His standards in
both respects are kept up at the present time by such expe-
rienced "colyumists" as Bert Leston Taylor ("B. L. T. ") of
» See Book II, Chap. xix.
 :

22 Minor Humorists

The Chicago Tribune and in New York by Franklin P. Adams

("F. P. A.") of The Tribune and Don Marquis of The Even-
ing Sun. The column that soothes tired business men on
train, subway, or trolley has long been supplemented for family,
club, and barber-shop consumption by the humorous weeklies
Puck, founded in 1877; Judge, 1881; and most notably Life,
1883. Taking their cue rather from the best of the college
funny papers, such as The Harvard Lampoon, founded 1876,
than from Punch, these weekly magazines have supplied the
public with its best periodical humour. H. C. Bunner, ' one
time editor of Puck, and John Ames Mitchell and Edward S.
Martin, founders of Life, should be mentioned among the writers
who have given a high tone to comic journalism.
Besides its submission to the great American genius for
commercialization, whatever national quality may be found in
the humour of the last half century consists mainly in a ten-
dency to regard fun-making as an end in itself rather than as an
agent to criticism. Though no longer relying on the mechanical
misspellings of Artemus Ward or Josh Billings, the next crop of
humorists wrought effects in dialect rather than in character
and preferred absurdities of their own invention to incongruities
observed in the social scheme. Irony was alien to their minds,
and satire, when they used it, took for its victims Mormons,
mothers-in-law, undertakers, and other beings whose removal
would in no way imperil the pillars of society. Jesters made it
their function to tickle the sides of a nation content and prosper-
ous, conscious of having made in the Civil War the great sacri-
fice of a generation, and confident after Grant's election that

the fruits of victory would be apportioned among the truly de-

serving. There may be significance in the fact that the two
comic writers who deserted journalism for other professions
became one a popular preacher the other a successful manu-
facturer and conspicuous advocate of high tariff. At any rate,
the words prefixed to one of the most widely circulated humor-
ous books of the time might well have served as a motto for
them all: "Fun is the most conservative element of society,
and it ought to be cherished and encouraged by all lawful

' See also Book II, Chap, xxiii, and Book III, Chap. vi.
' " Max Adeler, " Out of the Hurly-Burly, 1874, p. 6.
 Leland 23

Such being the case, the typical work of such humorists

cannot stand high in comparison with the subtler manifesta-
tions of the Comic Spirit. That, at least, would be the con-
clusion American humour were regarded as a mere stage in an
if

inevitable progress from pioneer jocularity to urbane irony.

But it is possible that the national preference for unreflective
merriment is not thoughtless and immature, but deliberate,
permanent, and full grown. While Americans can picture
Lincoln deferring discussion of the Emancipation Proclama-
tion to read aloud a chapter from Artemus Ward, the laughter
of sheer full-throated relief may well seem to them more manly
than the comedy that wakens thoughtful laughter. American
humour, then, may claim to be of a different school from the
comedy of the Old World, operating on human nature by
the lenitives and tonics of mirth instead of by the scalpel of
criticism.
One most decided believers in recreative humour was
of the
a man of many
interests whose humorous writing was origi-
nally done merely for his own amusement. Charles Godfrey
Leland (1824- 1903), a native of Philadelphia and a graduate of
Princeton, after three years of student life at Heidelberg and
Munich and three days as captain of a barricade in the Paris
revolution of 1848, found the practice of law in the city of his
birth a listless occupation. Turning journalist, he worked
successively asmanaging editor under P. T. Bamum and R. W.
Griswold. He gave early and able support to Lincoln's ad-
ministration, besides seeing service in an emergency regiment
during the Gettysburg campaign. The later years of his long
life were spent in cultivating a wide circle of friends in America

and Europe, in a disinterested and successful effort to establish

industrial art as a branch of public education, and in the study
of gipsy lore, tinkers' language, Indian legends, Italian witches,
and all things exotic, mysterious, and occult. During this time
he wrote with extreme fluency more than fifty books on the
most varied subjects, not to mention uncounted contributions
to periodicals. He would doubtless have wished to be re-
membered chiefly for his services to education.
His generation, however, persisted in thinking of him ex-
clusively as the author of Hans Breitmann's Ballads, often to
his annoyance identifying him with the hero of his lays. Indis-
24 Minor Humorists

tinguishable Leland and Breitmann are only in certain ballads

describing European cities with quiet sentimental charm. But
the huge, bearded Hans Breitmann who gorges, guzzles, and
scuffles at the famous "barty, " drinks lager from his boots
among the rebel dead, and cynically takes advantage of the
" circumswindles " of American politics, is of course not a pro-
jection of the author's personality but "a German gentleman
who drinks, fights, and plunders." In this conception Leland
discovered a vein of genuine humour, the converse of that in
Innocents A broad. ' Mark Twain's double-edged satire disclosed
the imperviousness of the native American to the finer subtle-
ties and superfluities of European culture. Leland revealed
the demoralization of an over-complex European in the rarefied
social atmosphere of the New World. Released from accus-
tomed exterior control and given nothing for his native ideal-
isms to work on, "der Breitmann solfe de infinide ash von
'
^
eternal shpree. '

As a cavalry commander and "bummer" in the Civil War

this compound of geist and thirst finds his real vocation. Breit-
mann in Maryland, describing, with a ringing "gling, glang,
refrain, the wild ride of German troopers to capture a
! '

gloria '

rebel tavern, catches the fire and swiftness of an echtdeutsch

ballad. A —
more unusual blend of moods satire, sentiment,
—
excitement, pathos may be found in Breitmann's Going to
Church. In later ballads Breitmann enters the Franco-Prus-
sian War, but in proportion as he becomes an Uhlan "mad with
durst for bier and blut" he loses significance as an American
figure. The fun tends to be kept up by mechanical expedients,
as in the ballad of Breitmann in a Balloon.
Decidedly more amusing are the burlesques of Teutonic
legends, such as the celebrated De Maiden mid Nodings on.
These have nothing of the real Breitmann about them but the
German-American dialect. Some clever macaronics in many
tongues further indicate that German-English was not the
only jargon at Leland 's command. Part of his reputation as
being "at the very head of Pidgin English learning and litera-
ture" was earned by his publication of songs and stories in the
China-English dialect, by his discovery of the last refinement
' See Book III, Chap. viii.
' I. e. "Breitmann solves the Infinite as one eternal spree."
 :

Leland 25

in vagabond lore, a tinkers' language called Shelta, and by his

vast collection of curious mixtures of speech from all parts of
the world. Much of his folklore study brought into play his
keen sense of drollery. But in spite of his Egyptian Sketch-
Book, his Brand-New Ballads, and the sly meditations of his
Flaxius, Leland may
be considered a humorist of only
fairly
one character. Hans Breitmann, created by accident to fill a
space in Graham's Magazine in 1856 and revived for the last
time in a prose and verse sketch-book of the Tyrol in 1895, re-
mains the outstanding representative of his genius.
Opportunities for humorous studies of more varied kinds
existed in plenty in Leland' s career, had he cared to make use
of them. One can hardly open his entertaining Memoirs with-
out stumbling upon hints that would have provided twenty
lesser men with sufficient stock in trade. A single incident from
the Gettysburg campaign must suffice for illustration

There came shambling to me an odd figure. There had been

some slight attempt by him to look like a soldier —
^he had a feather

in his hat —
but he carried his rifle as if after deer or racoons, and
as if he were used to it. "Say, Cap!" he exclaimed, "kin you tell
me where a chap could get some ammynition?" "Go to your
quartermaster, " I replied. "Ain't got no quartermaster. " " Well
—
then to your commanding officer to your regiment. " "Ain't got
no commanding officer nowher this side o' God, nor no regiment.
. . I'll fest tell you, Cap, how it is.
. I live in the south line of

New York State, and when I heard that the rebs had got inter
Pennsylvany, forty of us held a meetin' and 'pinted me Cap'n.
So we came down here cross country, and 'rived this a'ternoon, and
findin' fightin' goin' on, went straight for the bush. And gettin'
cover, we shot the darndest sight of rebels you ever did see. And
now all our ammynition is expended, I've come to town for more,
for there's some of 'em still left —
who want killin' badly." ^

Had this unique bushwhacker but grown in Leland's imagi-

nation as did Jost of the Pennsylvania cavalry, the original of
Hans Breitmann in his miHtary phase, we might have pos-
sessed a character more truly American and not less rich in
humorous significance. But Leland was not merely a hu-
morist, and to deplore the loss of what he left undone is at once

' C. G. Leland, Memoirs, vol. I., pp. 51-52-

26 Minor Humorists

to be ungrateful for his many and to

services in other fields
express the highest appreciation of what he contributed to in-
ternational comedy.
Of the deluge of humorists who followed, Charles Heber
Clark ("Max Adeler"), like Leland, became better known in
England than in the United States. Out of the Hurly-Burly
and best book, links together facetious extrava-
(1874), his first
gances in prose and verse on a thread of narrative describing
the perplexities of the suburbanite. Its delightful illustrations
by A. B. Frost contributed almost as much as the text to the
popularity of the book. Clark's travesties of the obituary lyric
have been long remembered. At times rivalling the mock
horrors of the Bab mortuary burlesques go far to
Ballads, bis
justify Augustine BirreU's dictum that the essence of American
himiour consists in speaking lightly of dreadful subjects.
In spite of his pseudonym Clark was not one of the many
dialect writers. The verbal humours of German-American
speech were further exhibited, however, in the Yawcob Strauss
rhymes of Charles Negro dialect and certain
FoUen Adams.
broad aspects of darky pretentiousness were turned to laugh-
able effect by Charles Bertrand Lewis ("M. Quad") in T%e
Lime-Kiln Club (1887) and other sketches. At the close of the
century Bowery slang gained a temporary currency through
the Chimmie Fadden stories of Edward Waterman Townsend,
but Faddenism never seriously disturbed the cult of Mr.
Dooley, whose Irish-American witticisms deserve more ex-
tended mention. A remarkable type of later slang, that in-
vented by an author and yet perfectly intelligible to all alert
Americans, reached its apogee in the work of George Ade,
whose Fables in Slang (1900) have been followed by several
volumes of a similar method.
Humorists who did not rely upon dialect for their main
effect usually began on the humour of a particular locality and
gradually extended their range. Miss Marietta Holley as
"Josiah Allen's Wife" from up-state New York has for more
than forty years appUed shrewd observation and the homeliest
common sense to the popular amusements and fashionable
problems of the day. My Opinions and Betsy Bobbetfs (1873)
and Samantha at Saratoga (1887) established her reputation as
a keen deviser of ludicrous incidents and impossible social blun-
 ' : );

Newspaper Comedians 27

ders. James Montgomery Bailey (' The Danbury News Man "
'

and Robert Jones Burdette ("The Hawkeye Man") attained a

more than local vogue as newspaper comedians, Bailey excelling
in quaintly exaggerated pictures of familiar domestic occur-
rences, Burdette in the unexpected collocation of dissimilar
ideas. Edgar Wilson Nye ("Bill Nye"), once of The Laramie
[Wyoming] Boomerang, was also fond of surprising turns of
phrase, but his most characteristic vein lay in a sort of affected,
zealous idiocy. No better example of his manner is available
than one already selected by a skilled hand

The condition of our navy need not give rise to any serious ap-
prehension. The yard in which it is placed at Brooklyn is en-
closed by a high brick wall affording it ample protection. A man
on board the Atlanta at anchor at Brooklyn is quite as safe as he
would be at home The guns on board the A tlanta are breechloaders
.

this is a great improvement on the old-style gun, because in former

times in case of a naval combat the man who went outside the
ship to load the gun while it was raining frequently contracted
pneimionia.

The lecture platform gave both Nye and Burdette an oppor-

tunity to display at best advantage their comical solemnity,
and much of their notoriety rose from their public appearances.
Nye was fortunate in his collaborators, touring at
especially
one time with Mark Twain and again with James Whitcomb
Riley and Eugene Field.
^

The last named, greatest of newspaper paragraphers and in

his own right something more, qualified as a Middle Westerner
by his birth in St. Louis (1850) and by his New England an-
cestry and bringing up. After three years in three colleges, a
trip toEurope, and an early marriage, he served his apprentice-
ship to joumaUsm on several Missouri papers. From The
Denver [Colorado] Tribune his first humorous skit. The Tribune
Primer (1882), was reprinted. The best years of his life were
spent in Chicago as contributing editor to The Chicago Record.
In his daily column of "Sharps and Flats" appeared his most
characteristic verse, 3 tales, and miscellaneous paragraphs, later
•
Quoted by S. Leacock, American Humour, Nineteenth Century, vol. Ixxvi, p.
453-
' See Book III, Chap. x. ' See Book II, Chap, xxiii.
 a

28 Minor Humorists

collected to form A Little Book of Western Verse (1889), A

Little Book of Profitable Tales (1889), and other volumes. He
was still in the prime of life and at the height of his celebrity as
a household poet, humorist, and lecturer, when he wrote in the
assumed character of a veteran bibliomaniac " I am aweary and :

will rest a little while; lie thou there, dream my pen, for a —
—
pleasant dream calleth me away." few weeks later (4A
November, 1895) death visited the writer as he slept.
Field's best known pieces of verse and prose exploiting
sentimental and pathetic themes, especially Christmas festivi-
ties and the deaths of little children, emerge from a background
of humorous writing illustrated by the rank and file of his con-
tributions to "Sharps and Flats." The waggery of his natural
bent finds unmixed expression in the early and unsuccessful
book. Culture's Garland; Being Memoranda of the Gradual Rise of
Literature, Art, Music and Society in Chicago and other Western
Ganglia (1887), which engagingly blends the atmosphere of
cultivation, so long anticipatedby Chicagoans, with whiffs
from the very real and ever-present stockyards. Only a few
gleams of wit, however, relieve the profitable sentimentality of
the later Tales.
A better balanced expression of his undeniable personal
charm is to be found in A Little Book of Western Verse, virile
and funny in the ballads of the miners' camp on Red Hoss
Mountain; otherwise "Western" only as it exemplifies a readi-
ness to try anything once.' Among many lullabies, Christ-
mas hymns, and lyrics of infant mortality, the playful side of
Field's genius is sufficiently represented by imitations of Old
English ballads, echoes of Horatian themes, a few rollicking
nursery songs, and much personal, political, and literary gossip
cleverly versified. A bit of flippancy like The Peach of
Little
Emerald Hue goes to show that Field's humour could on occa-
sion conquer the sentimental strain in him. But only too often
his children die from the fatal effects of contact with the angels.
In his more ambitious pieces Field not infrequently falls
into an over-refinement and false simplicity of style. When not
too consciously doing his best, however, nothing could seem

' "I want to dip around in all sorts of versification, simply to show people that
determination and perseverance can accomplish much in this direction." S.
Thompson, Eugene Field, vol. ii., p. 120.
 :

Eugene Field 29

more effortless than the easy play of his wit. One thrust at a
gang of politicians junketing at their constituents' expense
deserves to be recalled as a fair example of his skill

Blue Cut, Tenn., May 2, 1885. —The second section of the

train bearing the Illinois Legislature to New Orleans was stopped
near this station by bandits last night. After relieving the bandits
of theirwatches and money, the excursionists proceeded on their
journey with increased enthusiasm.'

Political sarcasms like the foregoing, though frequently

employed, have ordinarily been powerless to influence either
the character of American politics or the fortunes of any par-
ticular politician. On the contrary, they have had, like Ford
jokes, a certain advertising value, being considered less marks
of discontent than the banter of satisfaction with which healthy
Americans accompany their doings. Most unusual, therefore,
is the spectacle of the national frame of mind changed in

consequence of the work of a humorist. Yet that result may

fairly be claimed for the "Dooleys" written by Finley Peter
Dunne during the Spanish-American War. The American
public, conscious of a chivalrous mission in the war, uncertain
of the strength of the adversary, and angry at the bustling in-
competence and greedy profiteering at home, lost its sense of
humour. Its regeneration from the slough of perfervid earnest-
ness was accelerated by the cool remarks of the Irish saloon-
keeper of Archey Road, Chicago. As Mr. Dooley commented
on the great charge of the army mules at Tampa with reflec-
tions on other jackasses, pictured the Cuban towns captured by
war-correspondents and the Spanish fleet sunk by dispatch
boats, celebrated General Miles's uniform and the pugnacity of
"Cousin George Dooley" (Admiral Dewey), the national fever
cooled, and the nation, realizing its superfluous power, burst
into saving laughter.

"We're a gr-reat people," said Mr. Hennessy, earnestly.

"We ar-re," said Mr. Dooley. "We ar-re that. An' th'
best iv it is, we know we ar-re."

Mr. Dooley for some years continued to give his opinions

on the men and affairs of peace with a shrewdness that recalls
•
S. Thompson, Eugene Field, vol. ii., p. 204.
30 Minor Humorists

the pungent insight of Josh Billings and makes him one of the
most quotable writers. Americans of the present generation
are not likely to forget some of his sayings, least of all the re-
mark of Father Kelly:
"Hogan," he says, "I'll go into th' battle with a prayer book in
wan hand an' a soord in th' other," he says; " an' if th' wurruk calls
f'r two hands, 'tis not th' soord I'll dhrop," he says.

When not busied with comments on current events, Mr.

Dooley sometimes had leisure to relate incidents of the Hfe
about him in the gas-house district. As an interpreter of the
city, however, he yields to Sydney Porter ("O. Henry").'
The O. Henry story is the last word in deft manipulation, but as
a humorist Porter is not deeply philosophical. His neat situa-
tions, surprising turns, and verbal cleverness show a refinement
upon the methods but not a new comic
of predecessors, indeed,
attitude. Unsurpassed in daring extravaganza when he can
give himself completely to gaiety, he becomes immediately
sober in the presence of thought or sentiment. In these re-
spects he represents the norm of recent American humour at a
high pitch of technical perfection, and his death in 1910 may
fittingly be taken as the close of the period. Just at present,
judicious Americans are importing their best current humour
from Canada.
' See Book III, Chap. Ti.
 '

CHAPTER X
Later Poets
the expanding, heterogeneous America of the second half
IN of the nineteenth century, poetry lost its clearly defined
tendencies and became various and experimental. It did
not cease to be provincial for although no one region dominated
;

as New England had dominated in the first half of the century,

the provincial accent was as unmistakable, and the purely
national accent as rare, as before. The East, rapidly becoming
the so-called "effete East," produced a poetry to which the
West was West, still the West of "carnivorous
indifferent; the
animals of a superior rank," produced a poetry that the culti-
vated classes of the East regarded as vulgar. In a broad way it
may perhaps be said that the poetry of this period was dedicated
either to beauty or to "life " to a revered past, or to the present
;

and the future to the civilization of Asia and Europe, or to the

;

ideals and manners of America, at least the West of America.

The virtue of the poetry of beauty was its fidelity to a noble
tradition, its repetition, with a difference, of famiUar and justly
approved types of beauty; its defect was mechanical repetition,
petty embeUishment. The virtue of the poetry of "life" was
fidelity to experience, vitahty of utterance; its defect, crudity,

meanness, insensitiveness to fineness of feeling and beauty of

expression. Where the poets are many and all are minor it is
difficult to make a choice, but on the whole it seems that the
outstanding poets of the East were Emily Dickinson, Aldrich,
Bayard Taylor, R. H. Stoddard, Stedman, Gilder, and Hovey;
and of the West, Bret Harte, Joaquin Miller, Sill, Riley, and
Moody.
None of these has gained more with time than has Emily
' For the South, see Book III, Chap. iv.

31
 ,

32 Later Poets

Dickinson. Despite her defective sense of form, which makes

her a better New Englander than Easterner, she has acquired a
permanent following of discriminating readers through her
extraordinary insight into the life of the mind and the soul.
This insight is that of a latter-day Puritan, completely divorced
from the outward stir of life, retiring, by preference, deeper and
deeper within. Bom in 1830 at Amherst, Massachusetts, she
lived there all her and in 1886 died there. The inwardness
life,

and moral ruggedness of Puritanism she inherited mainly

through her father, Edward Dickinson, lawyer and treasurer of
Amherst College, a Puritan of the old type, whose heart, accord-
ing to his daughter, was pure and terrible.
'

'
Her affection for
'
'

him was so largely compounded with awe that in a sense they

' '

were strangers. I have a brother and sister,

' she wrote to her '

poetical preceptor, Thomas Wentworth Higginson'; "my

mother does not care for thought, and father, too busy with his
briefs to notice what we do. He buys me many books, but
begs me not to read them, because he fears they jiggle the mind.
They are religious, except me. Of course, she too was reUgious
'
'

and intensely so, breathing as she did the intoxicating air of

'
Transcendentalism. In person she described herself as ' small,
like the wren; and my hair is bold like the chestnut burr; and
my eyes, like the sherry in the glass that the guest leaves."
"You ask of my companions. Hills, sir, and the sundown, and
'

a dog large as myself. These, and not her family, were actually
'

her companions, together with a few books and her own soul.
She had an alert introspection that brought her more than the
wealth of the Indies. There is no better example of the New
England tendency to moral revery than this last pale Indian-
stmimer flower of Puritanism. She is said literally to have
spent years without passing the doorstep, and many more
years without leaving her father's grounds. After the death
of her parents, not to mention her dog Carlo, she retired
further within herself, till the sounds of the everyday
still

world must have come to her as from a previous state of

existence.
"I find ecstacy in living," she said to Higginson, and spoke
truly, as her poems show. In an unexpected light on orchards,
in a wistful mood of meadow or wood-border held secure for a
See Book III, Chap. xiii.
 3 —
Emily Dickinson 33

moment before it vanished in the few books that she read

;

her Keats, her Shakespeare, her Revelation; in the echoes, ob-

scure in origin, that stirred within her own mind and soul, now a
tenuous melody, now a deep harmony, a haunting question,
or a memorable affirmation —
everjrwhere she displayed some-
;

thing of the mystic's insight and joy. And she expressed her
experience in her poems, forgetting the world altogether, intent
only on the satisfaction of giving her fluid hfe lasting form, her
verse being her journal. Yet the impulse to expression was
probably not strong, because she wrote no poems, save one or
two, as she herself asserts, until the winter 1861-62, when she
was over thirty years old. In the spring of 1862 she wrote a
letter to Higginson beginning, "Are you too deeply occupied to
say if my verse is alive ? The mind is so near itself it cannot see
distinctly, and I have none to ask." Discerning the divine
spark in her shapeless verse, he welcomed her advances, and
became her "preceptor," loyally listened to but, as was in-
evitable, mainly unheeded. Soon perceiving this, Higginson
continued to encourage her, for many years, without trying to
divert her lightning-flashes. In "H. H." Helen Hunt Jack- —
son, ' herself a poetess of some distinction, and her early school-
—
mate at Amherst she had another sympathetic friend, who,
suspecting the extent of her production, asked for the post of
literary executor. At length, in 1890, a volume edited by
Higginson and Mabel Loomis Todd was published, Poems by
Emily Dickinson, arranged under various heads according to
subject. The book succeeded at once, six editions being sold
in the first six months so that a second series, and later a third,
;

seemed to be From the first selection to the third,

justified.
however, there a perceptible declension.
is

The subject division adopted by her editors serves well

enough: Life, Love, Nature, Time and Eternity. A mystical
poetess sequestered in a Berkshire village, she naturally con-
cerned herself with neither past nor present, but with the things
that are timeless. Apparently deriving no inspiration from the
war to which Massachusetts, including her preceptorial colonel,
gave itself so freely, she spent her days in brooding over the
mystery of pain, the true nature of success, the refuge of the
tomb, the witchcraft of the bee's murmur, the election of love,
' See also Book III, Chaps, vi and xi.

VOL. Ill —
 — ;

34 Later Poets

the relation of deed to thought and will. On such subjects she

jotted down hundreds of little poems.
Though she had an Emersonian faith that fame, if it be-
longed to her, could not escape her, she cared nothing at all
about having it; like not a few Transcendentalists, she might
have written on the lintels of her door-post, Whim. That was
her guiding divinity. Whim in a high sense: not unruliness, for
all her impishness, but complete subjection to the inner dictate.
She obeyed it in her mode of life, in her friendships, in her

letters, in her poems. It makes her poetry eminently spontane-

ous —as fresh and artless as experience itself —in spite of the
fact that she was not a spontaneous singer. The ringing bursts
of melody that are characteristic of the bom lyrical poet, such
as Burns, she was incapable of; but she had insight, and intense,
or rather tense, emotion, and expressed herself with an eye
single to the truth. Something she derived from her reading,
no doubt, from Emerson, the Brownings, Sir Thomas Browne
but rarely was poet less indebted. From her silent thought she
derived what is essential in her work, and her whole effort was
to state her findings precisely. She could not deliberately
arrange her thoughts; "when I try to organize," she said, "my
httle force explodes and leaves me bare and charred." If she
revised her work, as she did industriously, it was to render it

not more attractive but truer.

^ Her poems are remarkable for their condensation, their
vividness of image, their delicate or pungent satire and irony,
their childlike responsiveness to experience, their subtle feeHng
for nature, their startling abruptness in dealing with themes
commonly regarded as trite, their excellence in imaginative
insight and still greater excellence in fancy. Typical is such a
poem as that in which she celebrates the happiness of a little
stone on the road, or that in which she remarks with gleeful
irony upon the dignity that burial has in store for each of us
coach and footmen, bells in the village, "as we ride grand
along." Emily Dickinson takes us to strange places one never ;

knows what is in store. But always she is penetrating and

dainty, both intimate and aloof, challenging lively thought on
our part while remaining, herself, a charmingly elfish mystery.
j..^ Her place in American letters will be inconspicuous but secure.
Also born a New Englander, Thomas Bailey Aldrich re-
 — —
Aldrich 35

mained essentially a New Englander all his days. It is true

that he never sympathized with the occupations of the New
England mind in his time, and that his dedication of his art to
beauty not in the tradition of that "reformatory and didac-
is

tic" section,and that, on the other hand, New York left its
metropolitan imprint on nearly all his work. Yet most of his
career belongs to New England, and he himself liked to say
that if he was not genuine Boston he was at least Boston-
plated nor
;
is it quite fanciful to assert that his somewhat pain-
ful artistic integrity is largely a re-orientation of New England
principleand thoroughness. In him, Puritan morality, after
passing through Hawthorne, half artist and half moralist, be-
comes wholly artistic.
Aldrich's Salem was Portsmouth, New Hampshire, the
"Rivermouth" of The Story of a Bad Boy, sleepy, elm-shaded,
full of traditions, bordered by the ocean, where he spent many

an hour, as he wrote reminiscently, " a little shade wandering

along shore, picking up shells, and dreaming of a big ship to
come and carry him across the blue water." Three years of
his boyhood he lived in New Orleans, imbibing sights and moods
quite other than those of the North Shore boy, travelling, too,
up and down the Mississippi and receiving impressions never
to be forgotten. A professed and hot-headed Southerner, he
returned to Portsmouth to prepare for college, but, on the death
of his father, gave up Harvard and went to New York at the age
of seventeen, where he entered upon a career as counting-room
clerk, contributor to periodicals, and assistant editor of the
Home Journal under N. P. Willis. ' During these early years
he published several volumes of poems. The first. The Bells
(1855), does little more than indicate his juvenile masters
Chatterton, Keats, Tennyson, Longfellow, Poe, Willis, among
whom Tennyson is perhaps the most important in the light of
his later work. The fourth, The Ballad of Babie Bell, and Other
Poems (1859), marks his first success Babie Bell itself he wrote
when but nineteen. Then came the war, and adventurous war
correspondence, but Aldrich was by nature nearly as timeless as
Hawthorne, and in 1862 returned to his versecraft by no means
transformed. Two or three of his poems, including The Shaw
Memorial Ode, show the influence of war idealism, but most of
' See Book II, Chap. iii.
36 Later Poets

his best work apparently owes nothing to the incitements of

those stirring days. To him, indeed, the victory of 1865 meant
not Appomatox but marriage, an excellent editorial position in
Boston, and the publication of his collected poems in the re-
—
nowned Blue and Gold series of Ticknor and Fields an event
in Boston, as Bliss Perry remarks, equivalent to election to the
French Academy.
In New York he had been associated with the foremost
writers of the "school" there —most intimately with Bayard
Taylor, the Stoddards, Stedman, William Winter, and Fitz-
James O'Brien. These and other members of the group agreed
in condemning Boston and respectability in general, and es-
pousing beauty and an enfranchised moral life. Yet their
freedom was one of manners rather than of morals; even the
—
Bohemians headed by the satiric Henry Clapp who fore- —
gathered at Pfaff 's below the pavement at 647 Broadway and
gave free rein to their impulses, seem to have had the usual
impulses of the Hebraizing Anglo-Saxon if not of the Puritan.
Aldrich was not a Bohemian of any type nor was he by tempera-
;

ment a Manhattan journalist, but rather a gently mirthful

New Englander, who felt eminently at home in the company of
Longfellow, Lowell, Holmes, and others whom he met through
Fields, and who preferred the "respectable" social standing of
a knight of the pen in Boston to the incomplete Bohemianism of
New York. For nine years he edited Ticknor and Fields's
Kvery Saturday, while in the next room Fields and WilHam
Dean Howells edited The Atlantic Monthly; then, upon How-
ells's resignation in 1881, he entered upon a nine-years' edi-

torship of the Atlantic. Travel was an item of importance

in these later years. He wandered through Spain, one of his
old castles in the air, and through the rich Orient, where his
poetic fancy was always at ease, and he travelled round the
world twice. Travel, and reading in foreign literature, added
to an attractive cosmopolitanism in his spirit that marks him
off from some of his Boston friends. He retained to the end a
boyishness of disposition that made him personally winning,
together with an intellectual liveliness that earned him a na-
tional reputation as a witand the friendly admiration of no less
a man than Mark Twain. He died in Boston in 1907.
Aldrich 's unfailing good fortune was only a fitting reward
 Aldrich 37

for a single-hearted devotion to art that is too rare in the history

of American literature. His faith as an artist was that, while
many thoughts have perished through inadequate expres-
fine
sion, even a light fancy may be immortal by reason of its "per-
fect wording." There is here a suggestion of embeUishment
that marks the limit of Aldrich's reach. It was well enough for
him to object to "Kiplingese" and to the negligee dialect of
James Whitcomb Riley, but he himself went to the other ex-
treme in his solicitude for beautiful form. Even more than his
master Tennyson, he loved fine form so ardently that he cared
too little whether the embodied thought was equally distin-
guished. That he realized his danger is indicated by his verses
At the Funeral of a Minor Poet. Some thought the poet's
workmanship, he says,

more costly than the thing

Moulded or carved, as in those ornaments
Found at Mycenae;

and yet in defence it may be said that Nature herself works

thus, lavishing endless patience "upon a single leaf of grass or
a thrush's song"; or, as he puts it in one of his prose papers,
" A little thing may be perfect, but perfection is not a little
thing."
Many poems, however, have substance enough
of Aldrich's
to deserve the embalming power of fine form. Their extra-
ordinary neatness, precision, and delicacy, their fascinating
melody, are again and again conjoined with a mood or concep-
tion so subtly true or so vividly felt that we discern in them the
classic imprint. Latakia, On Lynn
Terrace, Resurgam, Sleep,
Frost-Work, Invita Minerva, The Flight of the Goddess, Books and
Seasons, Memory, Enamoured Architect of Airy Rhyme, Palabras
Carinosas, are poems that we may re-read repeatedly with an
ever renewed sense of their beauty. They offer no profound
criticism of life; but much great literature does not. Aldrich's
—
other work his long narrative poems, of which he regarded
Wyndham Towers and Friar Jerome as the best; his Judith of
Bethulia, a dramatic poem and his occasional poems, such as
;

the Ode on the Unveiling of the Shaw Memorial on Boston Com-

—
mon is work in kinds in which other American poets have
done better. But none of them has done better than he in
 '

38 Later Poets

vers de societS, in sonnets, and very short poems generally;

indeed, the quality of Aldrich is the more apparent the shorter
the poem, many of his best poems being quatrains. In Songs
and Sonnets, a selection from his work published in 1906, the
shorter poems have been brought together in a captivating
little volume. Aldrich called Herrick "a great little poet";
he merits the title himself.
In the Transcendental period, it was said that one could not
throw a stone in Boston without hitting a poet; in the latter
half of the century one's chances would have been little better.
Representative, perhaps, of the countless lesser poets of New
England in this period are Thomas William Parsons (1819-
92), a Boston dentist who translated the Inferno admirably in
terza rima and wrote poems of small merit save On a Bust of
Dante, which, through its Dantesque elevation and purity of
form, deserves to rank with the best American lyrics; William
Wetmore Story (1819-95), of Salem, lawyer, later sculptor in
Italy, his adopted home, a poet influenced by Tennyson and
Browning, whose passionate Cleopatra and lofty Praxiteles and
Phryne are among his most successful work; Lucy Larcom
(1826-93), '^ho spent her girlhood in the Lowell cotton mills,
and whose lyrics, too often sentimental, show the influence of
Whittier; Celia Thaxter (1836-94), whose father was lighthouse
keeper on the Isles of Shoals, where the blended beauties and
austerities of sea and rocks evoked many poems of nature in her
sympathetic temperament; and J. G. Holland (1819-81),'' who
lived in Massachusetts till 1870, when he founded Scribner's
Monthly (now The Century Magazine) in New York, a versatile
author whose poems, such as the long Bitter Sweet and Kathrina,
little read nqw, were widely popular in their day.

Of the New York authors, the most prominent in the first

part of the half century was Bayard Taylor. As Aldrich belongs
not only to New York but also to New England, so Taylor
belongs not only to New York but also to Pennsylvania, where
he was bom in Kennett Square in 1825. By that time the State
had lost w:hat literary glories it had ever had, and although a
new brood of native writers had just been bom T. Buchanan —
Read in 1822, Boker' in 1823, Leland" in 1824 New York was —
For Aldrich's prose see Book III, Chap. vi. 'See Book III, Chap. xi.
i See Book II, Chap. 11. 4 See Book III, Chap.
ix.
 ;;

Taylor 39

already obviously destined to be the literary centre of the

future.
Bayard Taylor is fairly representative of his State by virtue
of hisQuaker descent and his mixed English and German blood.
Aside from the abounding life of nature in which he immersed
himself as a boy, he found inhibitions on all sides in his moral
:

and religious life, in his practical life as a farmer's son, and in his
intellectual life as a boy for whose education means were want-
ing. Gifted with the impetus of genius, he broke away from
these hindrances, and embarked upon that varied and adven-
turous career of expansion that marks both his greatness and
his littleness. He read all the books, especially poetry and
travel, he could lay his hands on; he wrote verse from his
seventh year onward; he drew and painted; he dreamed of
—
foreign lands he aspired to the heights envying the bird, the
;

weathercock, the balloonist. He had the expansiveness that

often accompanies vigorous health of mind and body at seven-—
teen was six feet tall and enjoyed a magnetic power that fore-
shadowed his friendships and his personal impressiveness. Two
yearslater, in 1 844, having won theinterest of RufusW. Griswold,
he was enabled to publish his first book, Ximena, in Philadelphia
though in later years, recognizing the emptiness of the fifteen
poems that made up the book, he repented of it.
Already, in a sense, his poetry was subordinate to his travels
Ximena was intended to supply the means necessary for the
voyage abroad that he had long cherished for its own sake and
for its educational value. At a time when American pilgrims
were a curiosity, he wandered through Europe for two years,
virtually without funds, enduring and enjoying every manner of
hardship and adventure. Particularly in Germany, where he
was subsequently to marry and to find the material for his most
ardent literary studies, he felt more at home than in repressive
Kennett. Views Afoot (1846) told the story of these years, and
launched Taylor upon a career of travel and journalistic dis-
tinction that made his fame international. Of all the lands
that he lived in or roamed through, the countries of the Orient

captivated this eager romanticist most completely.

It needed not [says Stedman] Hicks's picture of the bronzed

traveller, in his turban and Asiatic costume, smoking, cross-legged.
 ;

40 Later Poets

upon a roof-top of Damascus, to show us how much of a Syrian he

was. We saw it in the down-drooping eyelids which made his
Tennyson's; in his acquiline nose, with the expressive
profile like
tremor of the nostrils as he spoke; in his thinly tufted chin, his
close-curling hair, his love of spices, music, coffee, colours, and
perfumes.

The author of Poems of the Orient (1854) was indeed a fitting

leader and high priest of the cult of the East that was one
characteristic of the New York school.
After his voyage to Europe, Taylor determined, in
first

1847, to try to make a living as a writer in New York; "this

mighty New York," as he calls it with his appetite for large
!

experience, "here is It was the

the metropolis of a continent "
New York of Bryant, and Willis to which he had come
Halleck,
it was under Willis's wing that he came to know the literary life

of the city. When Greeley, the next year, invited him to a post
on the Tribune, Taylor formed a connection that was to give
him a sense of security for many years. In the newspaper
rooms he now wrote for fifteen hours a day. He also contrived
to see a good deal of R. H. Stoddard, Boker, Read, William
Winter, and later Aldrich, who were to be his closest friends.
He knew the Bohemians well enough not to be one of them;
though he could scarcely avoid having some traits in common
with them, since Bohemianism in one form or another has been
a characteristic of New York literary life from the days of the
Knickerbocker school. When the war came he sold a share of
his Tribune stock so that his brother might enlist in the army;
this he regarded as his "bit." The next year he was in Wash-
ington as war correspondent for the Tribune, but his activity
in that capacity was cut short by a chance, too good to be
sacrificed, to see Russia and Central Asia as Secretary of the
Legation in Russia. His Gettysburg Ode, despite the fact that
his brother died on that field, is distinguished neither in its
poetry nor in its grasp of the significance of the war. Mean- '

while he had built, in his old Pennsylvania haunts, a manorial

house named Cedarcroft, at a cost of $17,000, then a good deal
of money, —
a roomy dwelling with, typically, a tower that
commanded an extended view of the gentle Pennsylvania
countryside. Cedarcroft became a haven of refuge from his
' See also Book III, Chap. ii.
 ;

Taylor 41

arduous travels, where he might write undisturbed, and con-

verse at ease with Boker and Stedman and the rest, and smoke
his narghile, and shock the good people of Kennett through his
Continental Gemuthlichkeit in the use of liquor ; it became also,
'
unfortunately, as Stoddard says, a Napoleonic business for a
'

poet," who, in committing himself to earning a large income,

sometimes $18,000 a year, by writing prose, appreciably in-
jured his poetry.
And poetry was his passion, his he says with
religion, as
proud humility in Porphyrogenitus. In 1874 he told Howells
that he was trying desperately to bury his old reputation as a
'
traveller and writer of travel books several thousand fathoms
'

deep " and to create a new one. His prose he wrote with fatal
facility, performing prodigies of speed, but his poetry he com-
posed with the most painstaking care, spending hours over a
couplet, if necessary, tiU it satisfied him. Like Aldrich, he de-
spised American dialect verse. He venerated the great traditions
of poesy, and never threw off the influence of his best-loved
masters, Tennyson and Shelley. The "Immortal Brother" of
his Ode to Shelley has left traces in most of his poetical work.
But, after all, it is Goethe, rather than Shelley, who is the
index to Taylor's mind. He was so devoted to Goethe, and to
German literature generally, that Whitelaw Reid found it
necessary to say that "those who did not know him, have some-
times described him as more German than American." Some
acquaintance with the German language he picked up at home
far more he gathered in his hibernation in Germany in the first
year of his wanderings abroad in time he spoke it like a native,
;

and composed poems in it, including a Jubel-lied (Berlin, 1870)

celebrating German unity. He enjoyed life in Germany much
as an earlier and greater Pennsylvanian cosmopolite, Franklin,
enjoyed life in London and Paris, but his loyalty to America
was never in question. He came to know the great men of Ger-
many, including Bismarck, who, commenting on a novel by
Taylor, remarked that the villain was allowed to escape too
easily. In 1869 he was made non-resident professor of German
literature at Cornell, where he gave courses of lectures. In
1870 he completed his admirable translation of Faust in the
original metres, which he had projected twenty years before,
and over which he had laboured with something of the devotion
42 Later Poets

of Carlyle. This translation will doubtless come to be regarded

as Bayard Taylor's foremost achievement. It was largely in-
strumental in obtaining for him the appointment, in 1878, as
Minister to Germany, whither he sailed thoroughly worn out
with congratulations and flowers and champagne. Excessively
hard work had taken its revenges, and he was never to enjoy the
great future that the new life in Germany held out to him he —
was never, for one thing, to carry out his fond plan of writing
the biography of Goethe, a task for which he was well fitted.
He died soon after reaching Germany.
His death is the symbol of his life. His whole career, his
poetical achievement most of all, was an approximation to high
distinction that was frustrated through both outer and inner
forces. He was cast in a large, a Goethean mould; he aspired
highly and in many directions, seeking self-realization, but he
— —
lacked outwardly freedom from worldly troubles and in- —
—
wardly Goethe's ideal of Entsagung. His buoyant enthusi-
asm, his capacity for hard work, tended to deploy in the void
because of his lack of concentration and true harmony. He
sought what he liked to call "cosmical experience," but in his
eagerness he lost himself.
The consequences are plainly visible in his poetry. It is the
poetry of a man who has "aspired" rather than "attained."
It is, to begin with, dangerously versatile. Aside from his
varied experiments in prose, Taylor wrote lyrics, pastorals,
idylls, odes,dramatic lyrics, lyrical dramas, translations, poems
in German, poems in every mood and every metre, poems con-
sciously or unconsciously imitative of a host of poets (he had a
remarkable but ill-controlled verbal memory), poems on themes
Oriental, Greek, Norse, American from coast to coast, poems
classical, sentimental, romantic, realistic, poems of love, of
nature, of art. In most of this work he was acceptable to his
age in very little is he acceptable to a later time. His poetry,
;

again, is diffuse, as the poetry of a fifteen-hour-a-day journalist

is likely to be. Despite a certain buoyant resonance, a reso-
nance, however, rarely full enough despite a frequent delicacy
;

of perception and expression; despite a sense of melody that

seldom fails; despite a simplicity of method and phrasing that
—
betokens sincerity; despite all these merits and others, his
poetry attracts mildly because it is diffuse, and it is diffuse,
 '

R. H. Stoddard 43

fundamentally, because it is shallow. In his ode on Goethe,

written three years before Taylor died, conscious of his 'lighter '

muscle" he asks with an undercurrent of sadness:

How charge with music powers so vast and free,

Save one be great as he?

Taylor, with all his aspiration and energy, was ill-educated,

emotionally and intellectually unsymmetrical.
ill-disciplined,
He was too fond of his narghile and of melon-seeds brought all
the way from Nijni-Novgorod. He learned modem Greek
before he learned ancient Greek. His few good poems, such as
the popular Bedouin Song, John Reed, The Quaker Widow, Eu-
phorion, are far too few. He had latent powers, if not supreme
power, but it was misdirected. To his contemporaries, he was
a distinguished poet as well as traveller; to us he is an interest-
ing personahty.
While Shelley was Taylor's poet, Richard Henry Stoddard
found in Keats, as he says in a verse tribute, the Master of his
soul. As a boy, he "lived for Song," and throughout b's life,
in surroundings essentially ah en and "an age too late," he
dedicated himself to poetry with a happiness and dignity, and
with a degree of success in his own day, quite out of proportion
to the merit of his achievement.
A New Englander like Aldrich and Stedman, he was bom in
the same year with Taylor (1825), in Hingham, Massachusetts,
where his ancestors were hardy sailors. In his Recollections he
tells of his grandfather's house by the sea, where his mother
sang melancholy hymns at nightfall, and of the ancient church
and cemetery that gave tone to the family life "dying seemed —
'
to be the most laudable industry of the time. His father being '

lost at sea, the pale widow and her delicate boy removed to
Boston, and later to New York, where she married again.
After a few years of schooling, Richard was set to work, first
as errand-boy, as shop-boy, and as legal cop3nst, spending —
part of his petty earnings in the purchase of the English poets,
— slater as blacksmith and as moulder in an iron foundry. On
the threshold of manhood, he worked in the foundry for three
hard years, with ever one consolation: "the day would end,
night would come, and then I could write poetry." In 1849 he
' For Taylor's travels see Book III, Chap. xv.
 —
44 Later Poets

published his first volume, Footprints, of which he tells us one

copy was sold before the edition was given to the flames. Leav-
ing the foundry, he supported himself, like Aldrich and Taylor,
as a journalist, becoming in time literary editor of the World
and Mail and Express. Meanwhile he had married Elizabeth
Barstow, of Mattapoisett, Massachusetts, "one of those irre-
pressible girls," says her husband, "who are sometimes bom in
staid Puritan families," who later attained some distinction as
' '
novelist and poetess (' ' for she became, ' says Stoddard, ' the best
writer of blank verse of any woman in America"), and had
secured a clerkship in the New York Custom House which he
held till 1870. He lived in New York through many of its
varied decades till 1903, a prominent figure in the literary life,

a close friend of Taylor, Stedman, and the others. In his some-

what austere devotion to beauty he was far removed from the
Bohemians; he states specifically with regard to Pfafl's "I
never went inside the place." His life lacked the advantages
—
and disadvantages of much travel, though, like his friends,
he poetized the magical Orient (in The Book of the East). His
personality was that of a somewhat angular individualist, out-
spoken, vigorous, inflexible in his support of the right. He was
a product of Puritan New England as well as a disciple of
Keats.
New
England didacticism, however, is all but absent from
his poetry. Here and there is a trace, now and then a whole
poem, such as On the Town, a harlot's plea for justice, which
has also, it is true, a modemly realistic aspect; but otherwise
the world of sin that Hawthorne loved to brood over and the
New England poets sought to improve, is far away. He began
his career as a palpable imitator of Keats's sensuousness, magi-
cal epithet, and praise of beauty. His Autumn is little more
than a frank copy of the ode by Keats. Other early poems are
full of echoes of Milton and Wordsworth. Though he soon
passed into his own manner, which was never highly individu-
alized, one can discern his masters everywhere. Some of his
best narrative poetry, such as Leonatus and Imogen, is agree-
ably reminiscent of Keats. His blank verse, as in the tribute
to Bryant, TJie Dead Master, often has power and accomplished
variety, but it is not individual. Indeed, it may not be unfair
to say that Stoddard was mainly a passionate lover of poetry.
 —
Stedman 45

more passionate than the others of the New York group, and
not so mucha natural creator of it. Creation was, to him, an
inevitable accident enjoyment of others' poetry was a leading
;

function of Most of his work is the expression of common-

life.

place sentiment and tame emotion. Its merit is melody and

deftness, in phrasing, in rhjmiing, in imagery. Consequently
work is doubtless that which the pubHc of his day knew
his best
him by, his Ijrrics, as in the pleasant volume Songs of Summer,
diverse snatches of song without attachment to time or place,
also without much meaning or purpose, but so well fashioned
that one can understand why Stoddard was
once a prominent
poet. His Lincoln, an Horation Ode, however, still has power. ^
If Bayard Taylor's handicap was travel, and Stoddard's
uncongenial labour, Stedman's was business. Though bom of
an old New England family in Hartford, Connecticut, and
educated at Yale, he immersed himself so thoroughly in Wall
Street that he belongs to New York. Probably he owed less to
his father, lumber merchant and devout Christian, than to his
mother, Elizabeth Dodge Stedman, a poetess notable chiefly
for her ardent emotional life. Of her son she wrote: "As soon
as he could speak he lisped in rhyme, and as soon as he could
write, which was at the age of six years, he gave shape and
measure to his dreams. He was a sedate and solemn baby."
In coUege, as the youngest in a class of more than one hundred,
he developed his infantile devotion to poetry, winning prizes,
but losing his sedateness and solemnity. According to the
Faculty Records, "Stedman, Soph, was dismissed for having
been present at a 'dance house' near the head of the wharf,"
this being apparently his culminating indiscretion. As soon
as he reahzed his error, he said in appls^ing for his degree years
later, he "resolved to obtain a higher culture"; and, taking
himself in hand, he transformed his raw, strong-willed, high-
spirited youth to an attractive type of energetic, idealistic man-
hood. In 1855 he became a broker in New York. Associating
himself with Greeley's Tribune, he presently found himself the
popular author of three lively, rather journalistic poems
The Diamond Wedding, The Ballad of Lager Bier, and How Old
Brmm Took Harper's Ferry. In i860, the year of his first
volume. Poems, Lyric and Idyllic, he joined the staff of the
' See also Book III, Chap. 11.
46 Later Poets

World. For this newspaper he went to the front, in 1861, as

war correspondent. A man of thirty years when the war was
over, he turned to the life of becoming, six years
Wall Street,
later, an active member of the Stock Exchange. He held his
seat till 1900. "There was no such market for literary wares
at that day as has since arisen, and I needed to be independent
in order to write and study." Perhaps so; it was a bitter
problem to solve; yet there is little question that Stedman's
choice limited his literary achievement in quality as well as
quantity. To be sure, he could not have foreseen the financial
misfortunes that beset his way to independence. At the same
time, he had a talent for business that might better not have
been developed, since it flourished at the expense of a rarer
talent that he possessed for literary criticism and for poetry.
With more knowledge and the discipline of hard thinking, his
literary criticism, at its best in Poets of America (1885), might
have contributed much to a department of our literature that
is all too weak. He had high, if not the highest, seriousness,
without the admixture of sentimentalism that often accom-
panies ideality and range.
His distinction as a literary critic and as an editor of an-
thologies and other works seems to have given rise to an un-
warranted presumption in his favour as a poet. If he had a
voice of his own, he spoke in uncertain tones; in the main his
poetry is an echo of the romantic poets and Tennyson. He
seems to have written frequently in cold blood at least he told
;

Winter that "it was his custom to select with care the particu-
lar form of verse that he designed to use, and sometimes to in-
vent the rhymes and write them at the ends of the lines which
—
they were to terminate, thus making a skeleton of a poem, as
a ground-work on which to bmld." Aside from his war verse'
he wrote poems on New York themes, the best of which is Pan
in Wall Street; on New England life and ideals, including the
charming lines entitled The Doorstep; on The Carib Sea; on
special occasions, including poems on Greeley and several of
the New England poets; and on various other themes, notably
in The Hand of Lincoln and Stanzas for Music. In most of
thiswork — limited in quantity to a single —
volume Stedman's
muse is decorously uplifted rather than elevated of its own
" See Book III, Chap. ii.
 Minor New York Poets 47

nature; it rarely sings freely, and, if it never offends, also never

stirs deeply. At a public meeting in his memory, his friend
William Winter expressed Stedman's literary faith in a compact
phrase when he said: "He steadfastly adhered to the stately,
lovely, ancient traditions of English poetry." Undidactic, de-
voted to the dignity and beauty of letters, he expressed him-
self in the idiom of the tradition of beauty in Hterature, both

classical and modem. His protracted studies in Theocritus and

the other early idyllists were typical of his scholarly love of
literature. He himself is the Pan in Wall Street of one of his few
fascinating poems among the
: bulls and bears he too held

a Pan's-pipe (fashioned
Like those of old),

and upon it he could sing arrestingly if not greatly.'

Though subordinate in genius to the greater New Eng-
landers, —Emerson, Lowell, Whittier, and the rest, —the poets
of the New York made a positive contribution to our
school
literature. Aside from the intrinsic merit of their work, they
are important on account of their influence. Holding that
poetry is amply justified through its beauty and the happiness
produced in us by its beauty, and that the moral element is
ancillary, if not accidental or irrelevant, they prepared the way
for the highly accomplished versecraft that is characteristic of
the decUning years of the century. Whether this highly accom-
plished, often precious, poetry is itself admirable is scarcely
open to question: it is not great, but it provided a disciphne
that American poets had never had and that they needed.
Of the lesser luminaries in New York little need be said.
They include WiUiam Winter (1836-19 17), who early came
from Massachusetts, primarily a dramatic critic ==
but also the
author of verses resembling those of his poet friends: Emma
Lazarus (1849-87), bom in New York of Portuguese Jewish
ancestry, some of whose work is remarkable for its Hebraic
and the Gary sisters, Alice (1820-71) and Phoebe
intensity 3;
(1824-71), who came from Ohio, importing the sentimental
and moraHzing tendency of the age along with a sweetness and
beauty by virtue of which they still have some charm. Two
' For his prose see Book III, Chap. xiii. ^ See Book III, Chap. xiii.

' See Book III, Chap. xiii.

 '

48 Later Poets

Philadelphians already mentioned, George H. Boker (1823-90)

and Thomas B. Read (1822-72), ^ may be named here again on
account of their association with writers of the New York
group. Boker, distinguished as a dramatist, began authorship
with The Lesson of Life, and Other Poems in 1847 and continued
to write verse. Read's first volume appeared in Philadelphia
in the same year. Among his poems are The New Pastoral
(1855), a long dealing with American pioneer life. The
poem
Wagoner of the Alleghanies (1862), a tale of the Revolutionary
War, and many short lyrics, of which the best known is Sheri-
dan's Ride.
Although Richard Watson Gilder (1844-1909) belongs to
the same general group with Taylor, Stoddard, and the other
"squires of poesy, " as they called themselves a trifle ostenta-
tiously, he. is associated with a later and more public-spirited
period of New York culture.
Bom at Bordentown, New Jersey, he was educated at his
father's schools, first at Bordentown, then at Flushing. The
latter school failing, his father re-entered the active ministry
shortly before the Civil War. In the war, the father served as
chaplain till his death in 1864; a son served in a Zouave regi-
ment; and Richard, a boy of nineteen, enlisted in Landis's
Philadelphia Battery when the Confederate invasion threat-
ened eastern Pennsylvania. The war over, Richard Watson
Gilder became a journalist in Newark, soon after in New York,
where, in 1870, he became the assistant editor of the new
periodical known as Scribner's Monthly. When his chief. Dr.

J. G. Holland, died in 1881, Gilder assumed control of the

Century, as it was now called, giving it unsparingly his best
energy for more than a quarter of a century. Partly through
his own interests, partly through his wife's (Helena de Kay's)
association with fellow painters, he found himself surrounded
by friends of a type very different from those of the Bohe-
—
mians and squires of poesy La Parge, Saint-Gaudens, Stanford
White, Joseph Jefferson, Madame Modjeska, and, in the
summers on Cape Cod, President Cleveland. Again, unlike
the earlier members of the New York group, he became an
ardent and enhghtened humanitarian and publicist, serving
the cause of good government in city and nation. "That I am
' See Book II, Chap. ii. " See Book III, Chap. 11.
 4

Gilder 49

drawn into too many things," he wrote in a letter, "is perhaps

true." He was right; both his health and his work, in various
fields, were impaired. In another letter he refers to his "in-
sufficient but irrepressible verse," which describes it well
enough.
He began verse writing under happy auspices. Milton was
his master at the age of ten or twelve, and his father encouraged
him to write. Years later, he chanced to meet Helena de Kay
at the very time that he came upon Rossetti's translation of the
Vita Nuova; the result of the conjunction was the love sonnets
of The New Day, his first volume, which was published in 1875.
With its slow, heavily-freighted lines, its solemn music and
carefully composed imagery, its intense feeling not fully articu-
late, its occasional vagueness of meaning, it contrasts with the
obvious and more lively American poetry of that day and the
day before. The vagueness of meaning Gilder happily es-
caped in his later work; the other qualities he retained and
improved.
Of virtually all of his poetry, the dominant trait is a brood-
ing intensity, —suggested by the dark, peering eyes of the man
himself, —
expressed in language distilled and richly associative,
"the low, melodious pour of musicked words." He was pas-
sionately responsive to music, to

The deep-souled viola, the 'cello grave.

The many-mooded, singing violin.
The infinite, triumphing, ivoried clavier

—his own poetry has the quality of orchestral instruments,

oftenest the grave 'cello. Many of his poems are concerned with
other arts, especially painting and acting, for art was to this
"stickler for form," as he called himself, a large part of life.
He naturally wrote on Modjeska, Eleonora Duse, A Monument
of Saint-Gaudens, An Hour in a Studio, and
In Praise of Por-
traiture as well as on MacDowell, The Pathetic Symphony, A
Fantasy of Chopin, Paderewski, and Beethoven. He had, too, a
—
love of the Orient, an artist's love as well as a reflective poet's,
— that led him to add In Palestine, and Other Poems (1898) to
New York's considerable body of literature on the East.
Yet art was by no means a tower of ivory to this public man.
VOL. Ill —
50 Later Poets

The youth of the Gettysburg campaign became the laureate of

the Civil War heroes, and the volume of his poems entitled
For the Country (i 897) is as typical as any. It includes Sheridan
and Sherman and the excellent sonnet on The Life-Mask of
Abraham Lincoln. Gilder took his place eagerly in the "wild,
new, teeming world of men" that America meant to him, and
desired a part, as he stated in a poem written abroad, in making
it not only free and strong but also noble and pure —
a land of
justice lifting a light for all the world and leading into the Age of
Peace.
New York fostered if not produced one other important
poet, Richard Hovey, who was bom in 1864, when Gilder was a
young man. Whitman and the Elizabethans, and
Follower of
poet in his own right, Hovey won the enthusiasm of both the
— —
conventional school especially Stedman and the eager mod-
ernists who began to attract attention near the close of the
century. The odd mixture of loyalties in his verse is paralleled
by the curious variety in his life. Bom in Illinois, he lived in
Washington, D. C., graduated from Dartmouth College, New
Hampshire, studied at the General Theological Seminary, New
York, became lay assistant at the Church of St. Mary the
Virgin, accepted literature as his profession, and ended his
brief career as professor of English literature in Barnard College
and lecturer in Columbia University. Several years, also, he
—
lived abroad familiarizing himself, for one thing, with Ver-
laine, Mallarme, and the later symbolists, and becoming one
of the first American disciples and translators of Maeterlinck.
Hovey's early death deprived us of a poet who had not yet
reached the height of his powers. Finer work than he actually
produced lay ahead unrealized, but it was probably not the
unfinished dramatic work which he had come to regard as his
magnum opus, —Launcelot and Guenevere: A Poem in Dramas,
which he began to publish in 1 89 1 This was not to be merely a
.

rehandling of ancient poetic material by an idle singer of an

empty day but a profound treatment of a modem problem in
—
terms of the past the conflict of the individual and society,
and the establishment of a right relation between them. Hovey
planned nine plays, though he completed only four. He ex-
pected to arrange them in three trilogies in the first, Launcelot
:

and Guenevere were to disregard society; in the second they

 Hovey 5i

were to disregard themselves; and in the third their problem

was to be resolved. It was a tremendous theme, worthy of a
poet of an ampler intellectual endowment than Hovey's. How
high a flight he attempted may be seen in Taliesin: A Masque
(1900), the last play that he completed, a poet's poern which to
some readers has been Hovey at his most exalted, while others
have roundly condemned its exuberant fancy, imagination, and
metaphysics. It is, at all events, a remarkable feat in rhythm-
building, astonishing in the easy mastery with which the poet
passes from one movement to another and in the variety of
musical effects. The other plays are clearer and more sub-
stantial; in The Marriage oj Guenevere (1895), for example, the
Queen is revealed with a definiteness unequalled in the Arthur-
ian tradition, though it is by no means certain that the modem
touch is in this respect an unmixed advantage. AU the plays
are deftly and fluently written, but they fail in sustained power.
The note of the improwisatore is never away.
This note is not so fatal in the Ijoic. Hovey's l3aics time
wUl doubtless adjudge his best work. He has little weight,
httle insight of the profounder sort, but he has, on the other
hand, unusual fervor and elan, and much insight of the merely
subtle sort. Sensitive, tinghng with life, he responds to the
world with a gaiety not so much thoughtless as thought-banish-
ing, a gaiety alien to the dominant moods of modem life and
hence always open to the suspicion of affectation. His quality
is very evident in the three series of Songs from Vagabondia

(1893, 1896, 1900) written collaboratively with Bliss Carman.,

They express impetuously, a little artificially at times, the vaga-
bondage of the soul that runs like a gypsy thread through the
romantic literature of the century. The Wander-Lovers, which
sets its pace in the first line, "Down the world with Marna!"
is in its way a nearly perfect thing. In a distinct part of
Hovey's work, his poems of masculine comradeship and college
fraternity, this Bohemian mood is expressed in a reaUy notable
way. Spring, for instance, read at a fratemity convention in
1896, contains, in a charming natural setting, the lines beginning
"Give a rouse, then, in the May-time" which, set to music by
Frederic Field Bullard, are f amihar to college youth from coast
to coast. This kind of thing Hovey could do better than any
other of our poets.
 — .

52 Later Poets

His poems on serious themes lack the delightftd assurance

of The Wander-Lovers and Spring. The Call of the Bugles, one
of his several Spanish War poems, is only intermittently buoy-
ant and martial, is too long, and is scarcely American in its
sentiment
'
'
—
Great is war great and fair " In a rarer mood of
!

Hovey's is Unmanijest Destiny, in which, as in Seaward, his

elegy on the death of Thomas William Parsons, his tone is
impressively reverent and his music richly solemn.
Another Columbia University poet of latter-day New York
was the accompHshed Frank Dempster Sherman (1860-1916),
professor of graphics, an ardent philatelist and collector of
book-plates, author of Madrigals and Catches (1887), Lyrics for
a Lute ( 1 890) Little Folk Lyrics ( 1 892) and Lyrics of Joy ( 1 904)
, ,

The titles indicate of themselves the poetic genres to which he

devoted himself. Whether he dealt with love, or nature, or
books, his lines were short and jocund. His range was narrow,
and quite out of the modem current but his love of music and
;

image were so genuine that his poems reached a cordial if small

audience.
This brings us to the poetry of the West. The poets of the
East are, in one sense, a survival from the past in another sense, ;

a bridge leading from the past into the future. The West, on
the other hand, having the initiative, the irreverence, and the
breezy optimism of a new country, set about creating a litera-
ture fashioned in its own image. If that image was unbeautiful,

it was at least sturdy and forward-looking. At times the West

did not hesitate to use the past, but its own force nearly always
gave the past a new direction. It was this element of novelty
that delighted ordinary readers even in the conservative East
and caused England to find in Western poetry, as it found in
Whitman, the authentic voice of the New World at last be-
ginning to express itself:

Nothing of Europe here

Or, then, of Europe fronting mbrnward still.

For this hasty generalization there is some semblance of justi-

fication, since, after all, as Professor Turner has shown im-
United States save the Atlantic seaboard
pressively, all of the
has at some time been a democratic West in opposition to an
aristocratic East. And yet, if the West was not a fixed region.
 '

Western Dialect Poets 53

it was merely a phase in national development, and the voice

of that phase not the voice of the nation itself.
is

The immigrant character of the Far West is illustrated by-

its chief writers, Harte, Miller, and Sill. Bret Harte, bom in
Albany, never became quite saturated with the spirit of the
West, and spent a little more than half of his total years in the
State of New York and in Great Britain. His poetry is that of
a gifted man of letters who perceived the literary possibilities
of the material lying about him in his impressionable young
manhood in California. The picturesque California of the
early fifties he presented adroitly not only in his short stories
but also in such poems as Plain Language from Truthful James
(generally known as The Heathen Chinee) The Society upon the ,

Stanislaus, Dickens in Camp, and Jim. Some of these poems

were dramatic monologues, commonly in dialect; Harte's
poems in conventional English were less successful, though
some of his Spanish Idyls and Legends depict attractively the
fading glory of Spanish rule in the West. Most of his poems
contain humour and pathos, often blended, as in the short
stories; in most of them the deft technique, especially the sur-
prising turn at the end, adds much to the reader's pleasure.
His range was considerable but his excellence nowhere great
enough to lift him above the minor poets.
Harte's East and West Poems, which came out in 1871,
exploited "the Pike, " a recurrent figure in our literature since
the work of George W. Harris^ and other Southerners. The
Pike County Ballads of John Hay (1838-1905), published in
the same year, reached an extensive audience, English as well as
American to the English reviews, indeed. Hay was likely to be
;

the poet of Jim Bludso and Little Breeches rather than one of
the authors of a monumental life of Lincoln.' Since 1871 dialect
poems portraying humble life in a definite region have contri-
buted a striking localism to our minor poetry.
Possibly the truest representative of the Far West in the
poetry of the nineteenth century is Joaquin Miller (1841-1913).
Like Whitman, whom he resembles in more ways than one,
Miller won a following of all in England, ever watchful for
first

'
For Harte's stories see Book III, Chap. vi.
" See Book II, Chap. xix.
3 See Book III, Chap. xv.
54 Later Poets

signs of the indigenous in American literature and finding them

in Miller's poetry as in his leonine mane, flannel shirt, and high
boots. In 1870-71 the "Oregon Byron," then in London,
achieved a popularity as sudden as that of his master. Songs of
the Sierras, first published many thousand miles from the Sierras
themselves, was widely applauded, and Tennyson, Browning,
Swinburne, and Rossetti received this "typical American"
author as a brother bard. Then America, too, discovered him,
and he was soon known from London to San Francisco. Al-
though his debt to B3nron, Coleridge, and other romanticists is
obvious to any reader, his verse is by no means purely imitative.
If his subject matter had been less novel, it is hard to say what
his poetry would have been certainly we may say that it owes
;

at least as much to its novelty of theme as to its essential quali-

ties. The element of imitation, plain as it is, is superficial; his
poetry may best be regarded, as Miller regarded it himself,
as indirect autobiography, as the extraordinary product of an
extraordinary life.

"My cradle, " he wrote in a lively prose account of his life,

"was a covered wagon, pointed West." In this wagon he was

born, he tells us, as it was crossing the border line of Indiana
and Ohio, in the year 1841, and he was named Cincinnatus
Hiner Miller. His family settled on the Middle Western fron-
tier, where they suffered many hardships without becoming
dispirited. Fascinated, however, by accounts of the Far West,
the family began, in March, 1852, a three-thousand-mile jour-
ney to Oregon, lasting more than seven months, beset by
cholera, tornadoes, and hostile Indians. Thus as a boy of eleven
Joaquin Miller came to know that terrible and alluring westward
journey to the ultimate frontier. After only two years on the
Oregon farm, he began a roving life of adventure that led him
into half a dozen Indian campaigns, and into repeated struggles
with mountain flood and prairie fire, desert thirst and buffalo
stampede, until he understood the life of that region outwardly,
perhaps inwardly too, as nobody else in American literature.
In the course of this life bristUng with action he found time to
write verse constantly, publishing, first. Specimens in 1868; a

year later Joaquin et al, whence his rechristening derisively as

"Joaquin Miller"; and another year later, at his own expense,
in London, Pacific Poems, which had an astonishing reception
 —
Joaquin Miller 55

before being promptly republished as Songs oj the Sierras. Of

the many volumes that followed, none fulfilled the promise that
readers not unnaturally found in the Songs. He wrote dramas,
too, and novels, uniformly without success.
Little as common with the Pre-
Joaquin Miller had in
— "To me
Raphaelites, his view of poetry a poem a picture," is

he stated at a Rossetti dinner—was not uncongenial to them.

One would expect his work to be concerned with action first of
all, but not nearly always the action, even in the osten-
it is :

sibly narrative poems, is subordinate to the description. He

loved the West as he loved nothing else, and his best work is a
pictorial treatment of it: the West from Central America to
Alaska, from the Great Plains to the coast, its grand Sierras,
"white stairs of heaven,
—
'
—
^its canyons, its great rivers, its ocean,
'

—
"the great white, braided, bounding sea, " its chaparral and
manzanita, its buffaloes and noble horses, its stars overhead
"large as lilies." Then the figures that peopled this vast
—
setting gold-miners, Indians, Mexicans, and the romantic
adventurers who are commonly his heroes, restless, rebellious,
and misunderstood. All these Miller had lived among till he
loiew them as well as he, at least, could know anything, and in
his best work they stand forth vividly. His poems of the per-
sonal life are forgotten, but the power of Yosemite lives. One
reads again and again, with renewed pleasure, such poems as
Exodus jor Oregon and Westward Ho!, which picture the heroic
wanderings of the pioneers across the continent, "A mighty
nation moving west," in long wagon trains, with their yoked
steers, shouting drivers, crashing whips, "blunt, untutor'd
men, " and "brave and silent women." This westward move-
ment is the theme of Miller's most impressive poems, from
Columbus who sailed "on and on" (a phrase that recurs re-
peatedly in these poems) to The Last Taschastas, an old chief
who is driven, in an open boat, from the Pacific shore, as the
Indians of the Atlantic coast had been driven westward cen-
turies earlier. More than anyone else, Joaquin Miller is the
poet of our receding frontier.
In narrative poetry he could use to the full his immense
energy, which is his chief excellence. not a man of
He was
ideas; he reflected objectively less perhaps than Byron, and
certainly was less fond of introspection, despite his later years
 '

56 Later Poets

as a sort of hermit on the heights above Oakland, where he

built the cairn upon which his ashes rest. Primarily he was a
man of action in an active society. If there was something of
the theatrical about him, it became so habitual, as C. W.
Stoddard testifies, as to be natural. Compared with Harte at
least, who exploited the West, he is the unfeigned expression of
the West. If he had not much culture, he fortunately did not
pretend to have, but relied upon the force within him. His
"rough, broken gallop," as a London reviewer described his
style, has a charm that draws the reader "on and on, " disre-
garding the defects of his quality —his lack of proportion, his
crudity in music and in taste. In the end, his defects may be
fatal, so far as purely literary values are concerned, but he had
the good fortune to record the Western scene in poetry as no
one else has done, an achievement that will not soon be for-
gotten. He was so Western as almost to be a caricattu-e of his
section, as Emily Dickinson is of New England.
Edward Rowland Sill ( 1841-87) another of the more promi-
,

nent Far Western poets, bom in the same year with Joaquin
Miller, wrote quite apart from the literary movements of both
West and East, though his artistic ideals had some resemblance
to those of the New York school and his temperament was that
of a New Englander. Twenty-two years of his life belong to
California, but he was bom in Connecticut and died in Ohio.
He was descended from old New England families, whose heads
were mainly ministers on his mother's side and physicians on his
father's side. At Yale College he was a "dreamy, impetuous,
sensitive, thoughtful youth" who read widely aside from the
curriculum, who impressed his comrades with his attractive
personality, pure character, and literary talent, and who con-
fronted the world in a spirit of independent inquiry. He must
'
'

translate human experience into his own thought and language. '

He published Dream-Doomed, Music, and other poems in the

college literary magazine, and was the class poet of 1861; his
Commencement Poem, included in his collected verse, was long
regarded at Yale as the best class poem that had been delivered
there. Graduating at twenty, in poor health, he made the trip
to California by way of Cape Horn. For half a dozen years he
engaged in miscellaneous occupations, on a ranch, in a post-
ofifice, eventually becoming much attached to this alien land.
 :

Sill 57

In order to study theology he attended the Divinity School at

Harvard; but he quickly gave over this ambition and entered
upon a still briefer career as journalist in New York. Then
followed his school-teaching years, first in Ohio and afterwards
in California, where he eventually became professor of English
in the State University. This post he held, with distinction as
a teacher, for eight years, resigning in 1882 mainly on account
of the failing health that dogged his steps most of his life. In
Cuyahoga Palls, Ohio, he continued his literary pursuits to his
death at the age of forty-six, in 1887.
The struggle between faith and doubt, forced upon him by
the spirit of the age even before he was a man, survived all the
changing scenes of his life. In another age his Puritan inward-
ness might have made of him a poet of faith, if not a minister
of the Gospel. But he never attained conviction, was always
gently questioning, finding, it seems, a certain twilight gratifi-
cation in his inconclusive brooding. This habit of brooding was
alleviated by a delicate sense of humour, which removed all

suspicion of morbidity, and was intensified by his modesty.

"You should see, " he wrote to a friend, "the equanimity with
—
which I write thing after thing both prose and verse and —
stow them away, never sending them anywhere, or thinking of
printing any book of them, at present, if ever." Most of his
—
published work, indeed, is posthumous to use his word, post-
—
humorous and there is very little of it, only a volume of col-
lected prose and a volume of collected poetry. To the Atlantic
he sent a number of poems, some of which were printed under a
pen-name, and in the "Contributors' Club" his prose enjoyed
complete anonymity.
Among his prose studies is an essay on Principles of Criti-
cism, which contains a statement of the ideal that his own
poetry followed

In the poem, the requirement is that it shall be full of lovely

images, that it shall be in every way musical, that it shall bring

—
about us troops of high and pure associations, the very words so
chosen that they come "trailing clouds of glory" in their suggestive-
ness; and it shall bring us both thought and
in its matter, that
feeling, for whose intermingling the musical form of speech alone is
fitted; and that, coming from a pure and rich nature, it shall leave us
purer and richer than it found us.
 —;

58 Later Poets

It is not too much to say that these are the characteristics

of Sill's poetry at its best. We
are the purer and richer
for reading him; he rouses the dark, disused corners of
life in

our being as many greater poets do not. In The Fool's Prayer

and Opportunity, his two best known poems, he attacks us
rather too directly, in the New England didactic strain. Yet
even here the "moral," though obvious, exists in solution
rather than in a crystallized statement. Nearly always his
instinct was to be suggestive, to reach the reader's emotion by
indirection, by surprise. Always clear, he is also quietly subtle
his meaning steals upon us like the mood of a peaceful evening.
His diction is so simple that an unpracticed reader does not
suspect how delicately the poet has felt the "troops of high and
pure associations" that accompany his plain words. So, too,
his poems are musical, frequently, with a melody that is un-
heard. He was devoted to music all his life, plap'ng a number
of instruments with skill if not virtuosity. He wrote about
music in prose and verse. In nature, sound seemed to attract
him especially, most of all the fitful surf-music of the wind,
which he used in his poems repeatedly. He had, too, a pictorial
sense, which gave him a command of the "lovely images " that
he regarded as essential in verse. Indeed, he had all the quali-
ties needed for the highest excellence in poetry except a vigor-
ous creative imagination. His imagination was perhaps mainly
inarticulate, for though he wrote all his life he seems to have
lacked the intense eagerness or the steady, resolute progress in
creation that we associate with the great artist. His over-
modest mind, moreover, together with his unresolved struggle
of faith and doubt, encouraged his tendency to rest in the un-
—
recorded thought to read widely, to feel and reflect abim-
dantly, rather than to shape his conception in the concrete
poem.
Among his many poems that peer within to the shadowy
mood and the curious speculation, there are also poems, and a
larger number than one would expect, presenting the scene of
that "purer world" of the Far West to which this typical New
England spirit attached itself with few moments of regret,
the soaring pines filled with the sound of chanting winds, the
surf with its "curdling rivulets of green, " the city of San Fran-
cisco across the bay like a sea-dragon crawled upon the shore,
 ;

Middle Western Poets 59

the flowery fields now white, now orange or sea-blue, the great
redwood forest dreaming in silence disturbed only by the sob
of a distant dove, and overhead, by night, the clear stars that
he loved because they made him, as he said, victor over time
and space. In these poems we come to know the Western scene,
not as it appeals to a man of action and large, blunt emotion,
but as it rouses the feeling of a temperament subtly aesthetic
and spiritual.
Harte, Miller, and Sill were bom far from the Pacific coast
region with which they are associated; the case is otherwise
with the leading poets of the Middle West, —the Piatts, Carle-
ton, Riley, and Moody. "The wedded poets," John James
Piatt (1835-19 1 7),bom in Indiana, and Sarah Morgan Piatt
(1836-1912), bom in Kentucky, together produced a large
number of volumes of verse, little of which has survived its age.
They used conventional forms, and wrote with care and skill
today, however, what interest they still have depends on the
themes of their Western poems, such as The Mower in Ohio and
Fires in Illinois. With the Piatts may be named Madison
Cawein (1865-1915), of Kentucky, notable for his delicately
fanciful sense of the camaraderie of nature. Will Carleton
(1845-1912), born in Michigan and brought up on a farm, be-
came a journalist, first in the West and later in the East, and
a popular reader of his own work. In 1873 ^^ pubHshed
Farm Ballads, a group of crudely sentimental pieces directed
at the common heart of humanity; forty thousand copies were
sold within a year and a half. Poems like Out 0} the Old House,
Nancy, and Gone with a Handsomer Man were not too good for
anybody.
Carleton's success foreshadows the still greater success of
another journaHst and pubHc reader of his own verse, the
People's Laureate, James Whitcomb Riley. Of Pennsylvania
' '
' '

Dutch and Irish stock, the latter predominating, he was bora

in 1849 in the country town of Greenfield, Indiana, where his
father had attained a considerable local reputation as a lawyer
and orator. In his boyhood Riley was, as he says, "always
ready to declaim and took natively to anything dramatic or
theatrical." He was fond of poetry before he could read it,
carrying a copy of Quarles's Divine Emblems about with him
for the sake of its "feel." In later years his favourite authors
6o Later Poets

were Bums in poetry and Dickens in prose. With his father he

often went to the courthouse, where, being allowed to mingle
freely with the country people, he came to know the dialect and
the hearts and minds of the people who were in after years to
be the subject of his poems. For a time he devoted himself to
—
music the banjo, the guitar, the violin, the drum.

In a few weeks had beat myself into the more enviable position
I
of snare drummer. Then I wanted to travel with a circus, and
dangle my legs before admiring thousands over the back seat of
a Golden Chariot. In a dearth of comic songs for the banjo and
guitar, I had written two or three myself, and the idea took posses-
sion of me that I might be a clown, introduced as a character-song-
man and the composer of my own ballads.

For a time, too, he was a "house, sign, and ornamental pain-

ter," covering, he tells us, "all the barns and fences in the State
with advertisements." Persuaded by his father, he read law,
only to find hinjself running away with a travelling medicine man,
whose company was composed, he says, of "good straight boys,
jolly chirping vagabonds hke myself. Sometimes I assisted the
musical olio with dialect recitations and character sketches
from the back step of the wagon." This life suited him; "I
laughed all the time."
Returning to Greenfield, he entered journalism, and began
to publish in various papers elsewhere. Lean and uncertain
years followed, till, he was invited to take a place on
in 1877,
The Indianapolis Journal. In this newspaper he printed his
dialect poems by "Benjamin F. Johnson of Boone, " which were
welcomed so warmly that a pamphlet edition was sold locally,
with the title The Old Swimmin' Hole and 'Leven More Poems
(1883). This marks the beginning of his widespread success
as a poet of the people, which led to his success as a public
reader of his own work. Early in his career he had been given
valuable encouragement by the Eastern people's laureate,
Longfellow, and in 1887, when he appeared before a New York
audience, he was introduced as a "true poet " by the author of
The Biglow Papers. By 19 12 schools in many parts of the
country celebrated "Riley Day" by 19 15 he was honoured by
;

official recognition, the Secretary of the Interior suggesting

that one of his poenis be read in each school-house in the land.

 Riley 6i

When he died in the year following, some thirty-five thousand

people are said to have passed his body as it lay in state under
the dome of the Indiana capitol. The impression that Riley
— —
made and still makes on the American public was indeed
extraordinary.
be accounted for, in part, by his personality. His
It is to
sunny, gentle nature won the affection of those who met him,
and he had a group of loyal friends who presented him to the
pubHc in his true character. But in the main his popularity
depends on the excellence and the limits of his achievement.
Essentially sincere, he nevertheless aimed at the pubKc a Httle
too deliberately. " In my readings,
'

he informs us, "I had an

'

opportunity to study and find out for myself what the pubHc
wants, and afterwards I would endeavour to use the knowledge
gained in my writing." The public wants, he concluded,
"simple sentiments that come from the heart" and not in-
tellectual excellence;he must therefore compose poems, he
says expressively, "simply heart high."
This he did. Even his poems in conventional English, of
which he wrote not a few, fail to rise above simple sentiments;
there is scarcely a trace of thought or passion in even so pleas-
antly sentimental a poem as An Old Sweetheart of Mine. Nor,
in all his dialect verse, is there more than a suggestion here and
—
there of the profundity of emotion not to mention profundity
of thought— of the great poets. He wrote of the everyday life
of rustic America, of "home" and "old times, " —
magic words
—
with him, of childhood, of simple well-tried pleasures and
sensibly received pains. He had genuine sympathy for ordi-
nary folk, for animals, for nature. In his presentation of charac-
—
ter, Old John Clevenger, Bee Fessler, Myle Jones's wife, and
—
the rest of his large gallery, he showed an understanding bom
of sympathy and humour; in his pictures of nature, as in When
the Frost is on the Punkin, responsiveness and distinct vision,
though to be sure he fails to go much below the physical, even
' ' '

the air being so appetizin merely. His philosophy "is that

' ' '

of the prudent farmer; it is made up of the most patent truisms,

though some of them are freshly worded. If there is nowhere
the quality of The Biglow Papers, still less of Bums, there is at
least a wholesomeness of mood and mind, uncommon in the
restlessly brooding nineteenth century, that ofifers some justi-
62 Later Poets

fication for Riley's enormous vogue. Though there are capaci-

ties in mind and character that he does not appeal
the American
to, it is undeniable that he appeals urgently to the normal

thoughts and feelings of the divine average.

This is not true of the last of the greater Western poets who
—
are no longer living William Vaughn Moody. His small, dis-
criminating audience regarded him as a poet of the highest
promise, whose early death was a public loss. Wholly without
the sectional point of view, he was also free from the restric-
tions in vision characteristic of certain decades in American life.
He was neither Middle Western nor late Victorian, but Ameri-
can and modern.
—
Born, like Riley, in Indiana, in 1869, at the beginning of
an era of industrial development and clearer national con-
sciousness, —
the son of a steamboat captain, with English,
French, and German strains in his blood, and educated in a
New England college, Moody naturally attained a larger out-
look on life than most of the poets of the half century. After
graduating from Harvard, he stayed in Cambridge for two
years, and then, in 1895, returned to the Middle West as in-
structor in English in the University of Chicago. Although
conscientious as a teacher, he chafed at the routine, measuring —
time in terms of committee meetings and quantities of 'themes," '

— and at his environment, finding himself, he soon reported,

"fanatically homesick for civilization," though it is doubtful
whether he could have found a congenial post as a teacher
anjrwhere in the "booming" America of his day. Fond of out-
door activity, he found relief in swimming, bicycling, and
walking in this country and abroad, from Arizona to Greece.
He was a vigorously sensuous, full-blooded, ruddy-faced,
youthful poet, intensely curious of experience, ardently de-
voted to "It, " his term for "the sum total of all that is beau-
tiful and worthy of loyalty in the world" —
chief of all, poetry
as an expression of life. The life prove the
decisions of his
sincerity of this devotion. Achieving a sudden success through
his drama The Great Divide, ' he was besieged by publishers who
offered him as much as fifty thousand dollars for the play in the
form of a novel; but he did not believe in "novelization" and
preferred to follow his own artistic bent. So, too, after vir-
' See Book III, Chap, xviii.
 Moody 63

tually severing his connection with the University of Chicago

in 1902, when offered a professorship at full salary if he would
lecture for a single quarter annually, he declined, valuing his
independence so highly that he accepted hardship with it,
rather than a prosperous subjection.
Before his early death in 1910 he had made his way to a
mode of expression quite his own. His imitative and experi-
mental period extended into his manhood years; it took this
florid Westerner, for example, a curiously long time to pass from
the shadow of Rossetti, and his debt to Browning is visible in
some of his best work. Answering a friend's criticism of Wild-
"
ing Flower (later named Heart's Wild Flower), he said Paltry : '

roof is paltry I freely admit; 'wind-control' and 'moonward

melodist' are rococo as hell." The remark has the downright-
ness, with a trace of humour, which is common in his letters,
and which helped him to become more than a moonward
melodist. The same letter contains another sentence that
suggests at once the strength and the weakness of his work.
'
' I think you are not tolerant enough for the instinct for con-
quest in language, the attempt to push out its boundaries, to
win for it continually some new swiftness, some rare compres-
sion, to distill a more opaline drop." This eagerness
from it

Moody's work; but it also

of expression gives vitality to all of
gives it a sense of effort, of straining to obtain an intensity
that must, after all, come inevitably and easily.
In his dramas in blank verse, this characteristic eagerness
dominates not only style but theme. His trilogy of poetic
dramas aims to do no less than to reveal the need of God to
man and of man to God. The Fire-Bringer (1904) is concerned
with the Prometheus legend; The Masque of Judgment (1900)
with the eventual meaning to God of his decree of man's
destruction; and The Death of Eve (1901), unhappily never
completed, was to show the impossibility of separation. The
plan is stupendous; there is perhaps none greater in literature;

but certainly it may be questioned whether the problem is

soluble at and if it is, whether Moody was the poet needed

all,

for so lofty an enterprise. It is true that the fragmentary

member of the trilogy is finely done, in a manner grandly simple

despite the complex and murky emotional states evolved, and
that the conception of Eve as the instrument of reconciUation
64 Later Poets

between man and God is carried out with impressive power.

Still, it cannot be denied that the other dramas are vague and

inchoate, lacking the lucidity and impact of the true classic,

and that, therefore, even if Moody might have improved the
trilogy later, his actual accomplishment is, at best, splendidly
tentative and grandiose.
Possibly the lyrics contained in these dramas are the best
part ofthem and it is in the lyric, unquestionably, that Moody
;

did his most important work. Dainty lyricism was beyond his
sober touch; and the commonplace theme never appealed to
him, any more than the commonplace mode of expression.
Given a substantial conception, however, he could use his in-
power and his large emotional reservoirs in such a
tellectual
manner as to repel the plain man and delight the lover, say, of
Shelley and Browning. Such poems as Gloucester Moors, with
its vivid sense of the earth sailing through space like a gallant
ship with a dubious crew (a conception previously used more
than once by Sill) and The Menagerie, with its
, grimly humor-
ous description of the evolutionary ancestors of "A little man
in trousers, slightly jagged, " are of a kind unmatched in Ameri-
can poetry. They have the sophisticated, questioning spirit of
the new century. Closer to tradition are his patriotic poems,
the Ode in Time of Hesitation, written in 1900 when the relation
of the United States to the former Spanish colonies was in
question, and the lines On a Soldier Fallen in the Philippines,
with its desolating sense of a dishonourable cause. These
poems appeared when the public was warmly debating the
questions they deal with To that fact, and to their beauty and
.

assured tone, is owing the thrill that welcomed them, as if a

new Lowell had come to voice our conscience in memorable
verse. But they form a tiny group and indeed the total bvdk
;

of Moody's lyrics is inconsiderable. What he might have done

had he not been cut off at the height of his powers it is vain
to wonder.
Moody brings us to the new century, in years and in spirit.
In his work is a turbulence unknown in the facile and edif5nng
poetry of our "albuminous" Victorian era, a passionate dis-
content with old forms, old themes, old thoughts. In the
twentieth century our poets have more and more believed
that, if their work was to be vital, they must return to
 s

The New Poetry 65

the laboratory of poetry to study afresh the raw materi-

als and to seek a new formula in accord with the time spirit.
In this effort they have naturally derived more help from
Whitman, a poet in posse, than from anyone else. To him,
and of course to others, they owe their usual form, free verse,
and their point of view, that of an exaggerated individualism,
often combined with humanitarian emotion and an intimate
feeling for nature. But though their intellectual outlook is
still in the main that of Whitman's century, their poetic energy

is so fresh and vital that it may reasonably be expected to

prelude a new vision of life adequate to the new era. From

the point of view of a conventional public, the new poetry has
been bizarre and not always sincere; but the new poets them-
selves— to mention only Edwin Arlington Robinson, Robert
Frost, Vachel Lindsay, Edgar Lee Masters, Carl Sandburg,
and Amy Lowell, of the many poets who may be studied in
—
W. S. Braithwaite's annual anthologies have for the most
part honestly sought to see life more truly than it has been
envisaged by the poets of the past, and to reveal their findings
to other men by means of a form entirely dictated by the sub-
—
stance the very substance externalized. Recent years have
brought forth an extraordinary number of poets, a great mass
of verse, not a few remarkable poems, and the promise of still
higher achievement when the new poetry has found its intel-
lectual and artistic standards through some kind of genuine
discipline.
Vol. Ill —
 CHAPTER XI

The Later Novel: Howells

Cooper was not only

THE romance among most
into disuse
of the school of
writers of capacity at the time
falling

was rapidly descending into the hands

of his death but
of fertile hacks who for fifty years were to hold an immense
audience without more than barely deserving a history. It
was in that very year (1851) that Robert Bonner bought the
New York Ledger and began to make it the congenial home of
a sensationalism which, hitherto most nearly anticipated by
such a romancer as Joseph Holt Ingraham, reached unsurpass-
able dimensions with the prolific Sylvanus Cobb, Jr. From
the Ledger no step in advance had to be taken by the in-
ventors of the "dime novel, " which was started upon its long
careerby the publishing firm of Beadle and Adams of New
York in i860.' Edward S. Ellis's Seth Jones or The Captive
of the Frontier (i860), one of the earliest of the sort, its hero
formerly a scout under Ethan Allen but now adventuring in
Western New York, sold over 600,000 copies in half a dozen
languages. Though no other single dime novel was perhaps
ever so popular, the type prospered, depending almost exclu-
sively upon native authors and native material first the old :

frontier of Cooper and then the trans-Mississippi region, with

its Indians, its Mexicans, its bandits, its troopers, and above

all, its cowboys, among whom "Buffalo Bill" (Col. William

F. Cody) achieved a primacy much like that of Daniel

Boone among the older order of scouts. Cheap, conven-
tional, hasty, —
Albert W. Aiken long averaged one such
novel a week, and Col. Ingram Prentiss produced in all over
' Charles M. Harvey, The Dime Novel in American Life, Atlantic, July,
1907.
66
 ,

John Esten Cooke 67

six hundred, —they were exciting, innocent enough, and scrupu-

lously devoted to the doctrines of poetic justice, but they
lacked all distinction, and Frank Norris could justly grieve

that the epic days of Western settlement found only such

tawdry Homers. In the fourth quarter of the century the
detective story rivalled the frontier tale; after 1900, both,
though reduced to the price of five cents apiece, gave way
before the still more exciting and easily comprehended moving
picture.
One successor of Cooper, however, upheld for a time the
dignity of old-fashioned romance. John Esten Cooke (1830-86)
bom in the Valley of Virginiaand brought up in Richmond,
cherished a passion as intense as Simms's for his native state
and deliberately set out to celebrate its past and its beauty.
Leather Stocking and Silk (1854) and The Last of the Foresters
(1856), both narratives of life in the Valley, recall Cooper by
more than their titles; but in The Youth of Jefferson (1854),
still more in The Virginia Comedians (1854) and its sequel

Henry St. John, Gentleman (1859), Cooke seems as completely

Virginian as Beverley Tucker' before him, though less stately
in his tread. All three of these novels have their scenes laid in
Williamsburg, the old capital of the Dominion they reproduce ;

a society strangely made up of luxury, daintiness, elegance,

penury, ugliness, brutality. At times the dialogue of Cooke's
impetuous cavaliers and merry girls nearly catches the fiavotir of
the Forest of Arden, but there is generally something stilted in
their speech or behaviour that spoils the gay illusion. Never-
theless, The Virginia Comedians may justly be called the best
Virginia novel of the old regime, unless possibly Swallow Barn''
should be excepted, for reality as well as for colour and spirit.
During the Civil War Cooke fought, as captain of cavalry,
under Stuart, and had experiences which he afterwards turned
to use in a series of Confederate romances, most notable of
which is Surry of Eagle's Nest (1866). But in this and in the
related tales Hilt to Hilt (1869) and Mohun (1869), as well as in
numerous later novels, he continued to practice an old manner
which grew steadily more archaic as the realists gained ground.
Towards the end of his life he participated, without changing
his habits, in the revival of the historical romance which began
' See Book II, Chap. vii. ' Ibid.
 —

68 The Later Novel

in the eighties; but his pleasant, plaintive My Lady Poka-

hontas (1885) cannot really compare for charm with his Vir-
ginia A History of the People (1883), a high-minded and
fascinating work. Cooke was the last of Cooper's school; but
he was also the first of those who contributed to the poetic ideal-
ization of the antebellum South which has been one of the most
prominent aspects of American fiction since 1865.
Less close to Cooper was another novelist who fought in the
Civil War, and gave his life in one of the earliest battles, Theo-
dore Winthrop (1828-61). Of a stock as eminent in New Eng-
land and New York as Cooke's in Virginia, Winthrop had
a more cosmopolitan upbringing than Cooke: after Yale he
travelled in Europe, in the American tropics, in California while
the gold fever was still new, and in the North-west. His work
at first found so delayed a favour with publishers that his books
were all posthumous Cecil Dreeme (1861), John Brent (1862),
Edwin Brothertoft (1862), The Canoe and the Saddle (1863)
and Life in the Open Air and Other Papers (1863).' Time
might, it is urged, have made Winthrop the legitimate suc-
cessor of Hawthorne, but in fact he progressed little beyond
the qualities of Brockden Brown, whom he considerably
resembles in his strenuous nativism, his melodramatic plots,
his abnormal characters, his command over the mysterious,
and his breathless style. Of the three novels John Brent is
easily the most interesting by reason of its vigorous narrative
of adventures in the Far West, at that time a region still
barely touched by fiction, and its. magnificent hero, the black
horse Don Fulano. That Winthrop 's real talent looked
forward in this direction rather than backwatd to Hawthorne
appears still more clearly from The Canoe and the Saddle, a
fresh, vivid, amusing, and truthful record of his own journey
across the Cascade Mountains, and an established classic of
the North-west. His death, however, prevented further
achievement, and the Pacific Coast had to wait for Mark
Twain ^ and Bret Harte.'
What chiefly characterized American fiction of the decade
1850-60, leaving out of account romancers like Hawthorne,
" Mr. Waddy's Return, written earliest of all, was first published in 1904,
edited and condensed by Burton Egbert Stevenson.
" See Book III, Chap. vm. 3 See Book III,
Chap. vi.
 Domestic-Sentimental Romances 69

Cooke, and Winthrop, was domestic sentimentalism, which

for a time attained a hearing rare in literary history, and
produced one novel of enormous influence and reputation. In
that decade flowered Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth, Mary
Jane Holmes, and Augusta Jane Evans (Wilson), all more or
less in the Charlotte Temple tradition; Anne and Susan Warner'
and Maria S. Cummins, pious historians of precocious young
girls and
; — —
not so far above them the almost equally tender
and tearful Donald Grant Mitchell ("Ik Marvel")' and
George William Curtis, ^ young men who, however, afterwards
took themselves to sterner tasks. Professor Ingraham gave
up his blood-and- thunder, became a clergyman, and wrote the
long-popular biblical romance The Prince of the House of David
(1855) Indeed, the decade was eminently clerical, and though
.

Mitchell and Curtis might recall Irving and Thackeray re-

spectively, they were less representative than the most effective
writer of the whole movement, who was daughter, sister, wife,
and mother of clergymen.
Harriet Beecher, bom in Litchfield, Connecticut, 14 June,
181 passed her childhood and girlhood, indeed practically
1,

her entire life, in an atmosphere of piety which, much as she

eventually lost of its original Calvinistic rigour, not only indoc-
trinated her with orthodox opinions but furnished her with an
intensely evangelical point of view and a sort of Scriptural
eloquence. Her youth was spent in a more diversified world
than might be thought: from her mother's people, who were
emphatically High Church and, in spite of the Revolution,
some of them still Tory at heart, she learned a faith and ritual
less austere than that of her father, Lyman Beecher''; she had
good teaching at the Litchfield Academy, especially in com-
position; like all her family, she was highly susceptible to
external nature and passionately acquainted with the lovely
Litchfield hills she read very widely, and not only theology, of
;

which she read too much for her happiness, but the accepted
secular authors of the eighteenth century, as well as Bums
and Byron and Scott. At the same time, she justified her
Beecher lineage by her ready adaptation to the actual condi-
tions under which she lived during Lyman Beecher' s pastorates
' See Book III, Chap. vii. ' See Book III, Chap. xiii. ' Ibid.

4 See Book II, Chap. xxii.

70 The Later Novel

in Litchfield and Boston, and during her own career as pupil

and then teacher in the school conducted at Hartford by her
strong but morbid sister Catherine. Although Harriet Beecher
was still a thorough child of New England when she went, in
1832, to live in Cincinnati, to which her father had been called
as president of the Lane Theological Seminary, and although
her earhest sketches and tales, collected in a volume called
The Mayflower (1843), deal largely with memories of her old
home set down with an exile's affection, she grew rapidly in
knowledge and experience. Married in 1836 to Professor
Calvin E. Stowe of the Seminary, mother by 1850 of seven
children, she returned in that year to Brunswick, Maine,
where Professor Stowe had accepted a position in Bowdoin
College. There, deeply stirred by the passing of the Fugitive
Slave Law, she began Uncle Tom's Cabin; or, Life among the
Lowly, which ran as a serial in The National Era of Washington
from June, 1851, to April, 1852, and then, on its appearance
in two volumes in March, 1852, met with a popular reception
never before or since accorded to a novel. Its sales went to the
millions. Over five hundred thousand Englishwomen signed
an address of thanks to the author; Scotland raised a thousand
pounds by a penny offering among its poorest people to help
free the slaves; in France and Germany the book was every-
where read and discussed; while there were Russians who
emancipated their serfs out of the pity which the tale aroused.
In the United States, thanks in part to the stage, which pro- '

duced a version as early as September, 1852, the piece belongs

not only to literature but to folklore.
That Uncle Tom's Cabin stands higher in the history of
reform than in the history of the art of fiction no one needs
to say again. Dickens, Kingsley, and Mrs. Gaskell had
already set the novel to humanitarian tunes, and Mrs. Stowe
did not have to invent a type. She had, however, no particu-
lar foreign master, not even Scott, all of whose historical
romances she had been reading just before she began Uncle
Tom. Instead she adhered to the native tradition, which went
back to the eighteenth century, of sentimental, pious, instruct-
ive narratives written by women chiefly for women. Leave
out the merely domestic elements of the book^slave families
" See above, Vol. I, p. 227.
 "Uncle Tom's Cabin" 7i

broken up by sale, ailing and dying children, negro women at

the mercy of their masters, white households which at the best
are slovenly and extravagant by reason of irresponsible ser-
—
vants and little remains. To understand why the story
touched the world so deeply it is necessary to understand how
tense the struggle over slavery had grown, how thickly charged
was the moral atmosphere awaiting a fatal spark. But the
mere fact of an audience already prepared will not explain
the mystery of a work which shook a powerful institution and
which, for all its defects of taste and style and construction,
still has amazing power. Richard Hildreth's' The Slave; or
Memoirs Archy Moore (1836) and Mrs. M. V. Victor's once
of
popular dime novel Maum Guinea; or, Christmas among the
' '

' '

Slaves (1861) no longer move. They both lack the ringing

voice, the swiftness, the fullness, the humour, the authentic
passion of the greater book.
has often been pointed out that Mrs. Stowe did not
It
mean to be sectional, that she deliberately made her chief
villain a New Englander, and that she expected to be blamed
less by the South than by the North, which she thought
peculiarly guilty because it tolerated slavery without the
excuse either of habit or of interest. Bitterly attacked by
Southerners of all sorts, however, she defended herself with A
Key to Uncle Tom's Cabin; Presenting the Original Facts and
Documents upon which the Story is Founded (1853), and then,
after a triumphant visit to Europe and a removal to Andover,
essayed another novel to illustrate the evil effects of slavery
especially upon the whites. Dred; A Tale of the Great Dismal
Swamp (1856)== has had its critical partisans, but posterity
has not sustained them. Grave faults of construction, slight
knowledge of the scene (North Carolina), a less simple and
compact story than in Uncle Tom's Cabin, and a larger share of
disquisition, —
these weigh the book down, and most readers
carry away only fragmentary memories, of Dred's thunderous
eloquence, of Tom Gordon's shameless abuse of his power as
master, and of Old Tiff's grotesque and beautiful fidelity.
After Dred Mrs. Stowe wrote no more anti-slavery novels,
although during the Civil War she sent to the women of Eng-
' See Book II, Chap. xvil.
2 Also known as Nina Gordon from the English title.
 ;

T2 The Later Novel

land an open letter reminding them that they, so many of whom

now sympathized with the defenders of slavery, had less than
ten years ago hailed Uncle Tom's Cabin as a mighty stroke for
justice and freedom. A considerable part of her later life (she
died I July, 1896) was spent in Florida, where she had taken a
plantation on the St. John's River for the double purpose of
establishing there as a planter one of her sons who had been
wounded at Gettysburg and of assisting the freedmen, about
whom and their relation to the former masters she had more
enlightened views than were then generally current in the North.
Now an international figure, she let her pen respond too facilely
to the many demands made upon it she wrote numerous di-
:

dactic and religious essays and tales, particularly attentive to

the follies of fashionable New York society, in which she had
had little experience she was chosen by Lady Byron to publish
;

the most serious charges ever brought against the poet. In

another department of her work, however, Mrs. Stowe stood
on surer ground, and her novels of New England life particu- —
larly The Minister's Wooing (1859), ^^^ Pearl of Orr's Island
(1862), Oldtown Folks (1869), Poganuc People (1878) cannot —
go unmentioned.
Weak in structure and sentimental she remained. Her
heroines wrestle with problems of conscience happily alien to
allbut a few New England and Noncomformist British bosoms
her bold seducers, like EUery Davenport in Oldtown Folks and
Aaron Burr The Minister's Wooing, are villains to frighten
in
schoolgirls; she writesalways as from the pulpit, or at least the
parsonage. But where no abstract idea governs her she can be
direct, accurate, and convincing. The earlier chapters of The
Pearl of Orr's Island must be counted, as Whittier thought,
among the purest, truest idyls of New England. It is harder
now to agree with Lowell in placing The Minister's Wooing
first among her novels, and yet no other imaginative treatment

so well sets forth the strange, dusky old Puritan world of the
later eighteenth century, when Newport was the centre at
once of Hopkinsian divinity' and the African slave trade.
Mrs. Stowe wisely did not put on the airs of an historical
romancer but wrote like a contemporary of the earlier New-
port with an added flavour from her own youthful recollections.
' See Book II, Chap. xxii.
 — ;

Mrs. Stowe's New England 73

This flavour was indispensable to her. When her memory of

the New England she had known in her girlhood and had
loved so truly that Cotton Mather's MagngJJn, had seemed
"wonderful stories . that made me feel the very ground I
. .

trod on to be consecrated by some special dealing of God's pro-

vidence," —
when this memory worked freely and humorously
upon materials which it was enough merely to remember and
set down, she was at her later best. These conditions she
most fully realized in Poganuc People, crisp, sweet, spare (for
her), never quite sufficiently praised, and in Oldtown Folks,
like the other a series of sketches rather than a novel, but
—
perhaps all the more because of that still outstanding, for
fidelity and point, among the innumerable stories dealing with
New England.
Adaptable to literary as to other circumstances, Mrs.
Stowe had actually in Oldtown Folks fallen in with the
imperious current proceeding from the example of Bret Harte,
whose Luck of Roaring Camp stands at the very headwaters
of American "local colour" fiction and largely gave it its
direction. Elsewhere in this history that movement, so far
as it concerns the short story, its chief form, has been traced';
manners and types
in the novel a similar fondness for local
appeared, but not so prompt a revolution in method, for the
good reason that most writers who followed Bret Harte fol-
lowed him in the dimensions of their work as well as in its sub-
jects, and left the novel standing for a few years a little out
of the central channel of imaginative production. Domestic
sentimentalism, of course, did not noticeably abate, carried
on with large popular success by Josiah Gilbert Holland
(1819-81) of Massachusetts and Edward Payson Roe (1838-
88) of New York until nearly the end of the century, when
others took up the useful burden. Both Holland and Roe
were clergymen, a sign that the old suspicion of the novel was
nearly dead, even among those petty sects and sectarians that
so long feared the effects of it. Holland, whose first novel had
appeared in 1857, was popular moralist and poet^ as well as
novelist and first editor of Scribner's Magazine (founded 1870)
but Roe contented himself with fiction. Chaplain of cavalry
and of one of the Federal hospitals during the Civil War, he
See Book III, Chap. vi. ' See Book III, Chap. x.
74 The Later Novel

latergave up the ministry in the firm conviction that he could

reach thousands with novels and only hundreds with his voice.
His simple formula included: first, some topical material,
historical event, or current issue ; second, characters and inci-
dents selected directly from his personal observation or from
newspapers; third, an abundance of "nature" descriptions
with much praise of the rural virtues; and fourth, plots con-
cerned almost invariably, and not very deviously, with the
simultaneous pursuit of wives, fortunes, and salvation. Bar-
riers Burned Away (1872), The Opening of a Chestnut Burr

(1874), and Without a Home (1881) are said to have been his
most widely read books.
The greatest, however, and practically the ultimate victory
over village opposition to the novel was won by Ben-Hur A
Tale of the Christ (1880), a book of larger pretension and
broader scope than any of Roe's or Holland's modest nar-
ratives, the only American novel, indeed, which can be compared
with Uncle Tom's Cabin as a true folk possession. ' Its author,
Gen. Lew Wallace (1827-1905), an Indiana lawyer, a soldier in
both the Mexican and the Civil War, had already published
The Fair God (1873), an elaborate romance of the conquest of
Mexico. A chance conversation with the notorious popular
skeptic Col. Robert G. IngersoU led Wallace to researches into
the character and doctrines of Jesus which not only convinced
him but bore further fruit in a tale which thousands have read
who have read no other novel except perhaps Uncle Tom's
Cabin and have hardly thought of either as a novel at all, and
through which stiU more thousands know the geography, eth-
nology, and customs of first-century Judaea and Antioch as
through no other source. Without doubt the outstanding
element in the story is the revenge of Ben-Hur upon his false
friend Messala, a revenge which takes the Prince of Jerusalem
through the galleys and the palaestra and which leaves Mes-
sala, afterthe thrilling episode of the chariot race, crippled and
stripped of his fortune. And yet, following even such pagan
deeds, Ben-Hur's discovery that he cannot serve the Messiah
with the sword does not quite seem an anticlimax, though
the conclusion, dealing with the Passion, like the introductory
' An edition numbering a million copies was ordered
by a Chicago mail order
house in 19 13 and promptly distributed.
 "

Edward Eggleston 75

chapters on the meeting of the Magi, falls somewhat below the

level of the revenge theme in energy and simplicity. Compared
with other romances of this sort, however, with William Ware's '
or Ingraham's, for instance, Ben-Hur easily passes them all,
by a vitality which has a touch of genius. It passes, too,
Wallace's third romance, written while he was ambassador to
Turkey, The Prince of India or Why Constantinople Fell (1893),
a long, dull romance with the Wandering Jew as principal figure.
Edward Eggleston (1837-1902), a clergyman like Holland
and Roe, and like General Wallace a native of Indiana, though
nourished in the school which made the domestic-sentimental-
pious romance the dominant type of fiction between 1850 and
1870, must yet be considered the pioneer figure in the new
realism which succeeded it in the eighties. As a Methodist on
the frontier he had been brought up, though of cultivated
Virginia stock, to think novels and all such works of the
imagination evil things, but his diversified experience as an
itinerant preacher, or "circuit rider," and as editor and
journalist, his wholesome
and the studious habit
religion,
which eventually made him a sound historical scholar, took
him out of these narrow channels of opinion. It is highly
significant that whereas Mrs. Stowe or her followers would
have thought of themselves as writing fiction considerably for
the sake of its moral consequences, Eggleston, having read
Taine's Art in the Netherlands,^ undertook to portray the
life of southern Indiana in the faithful, undoctrinaire spirit
of a Dutch
His first novel. The Hoosier Schoolmaster
painter.
(1871), remains hismost famous. Indiana's singularities had
already been exposed by Bayard Rush Hall ("Robert Carl-
ton") in The New Purchase (1855), and there was growing up a
considerable literature ^ reporting

that curious poor-whitey race which is called "tar-heel" in the

northern Carolina, " sand-hiller " in the southern, "corn-cracker"
in Kentucky, "yahoo" in Mississippi, and in California "Pike"
. . the Hoosiers of the dark regions of Indiana and the Egyptians
.

of southern Illinois.

' Published in English at New York in 1871.

'
See Book II, Chap. vil.
3 See The Discovery of Pike County in F. L. Pattee's American Literature since
1870 (1915)-
4 Roxy, Chap. xxvi.
76 The Later Novel

All Eggleston's essential novels are concerned with this phase

of American whatever the scene: Indiana in The Hoosier
life,

Schoolmaster, The End of the World (1872), and Roxy (1878);

Ohio in The Circuit Rider (1874) Illinois in The Graysons (1887);
;

Minnesota in The Mystery of Metropolisville (1873). Light is

thrown upon his aims in fiction by the fact that he subsequently-
aspired to write "A History of Life in the United States,"
which he carried through two erudite, humane, and graceful
volumes.' His Hoosier novels, simple in plot, clear-cut in
characterization, concise and lucid in language, unwaveringly
accurate in their setting, manners, and dialect, are indispens-
able documents, even finished chapters, for his uncompleted
masterpiece. The Schoolmaster, as first in the field and
fresh and pointed, still remains most famous; but Roxy is
perhaps most interesting of them aU, and The Circuit Rider
the most informing. The Graysons deserves credit for the
reserve with which it admits the youthful Lincoln into its
narrative, uses him at a crucial moment, and then lets him
withdraw without one hint of his future greatness. If the
morals of these tales seem a little easy to read, they neverthe-
less lack all that is sentimental, strained, or perfervid. With-
out Mrs. Stowe's rush of narrative, neither has Eggleston her
verbosity. Even where, in his fidelity to violent frontier
conditions, his incidents seem melodramatic, the handling is
sure and direct, for the reason, as he says of The Circuit Rider,
that whatever is incredible in the story is true. No novelist
is more candid, few more convincing. With greater range
and fire he might have been an international figure as well as
the earliest American realist whose work is stiU remembered.^
It was perhaps a certain bareness in Middle Western life,
lacking both the longer memories of the Atlantic States and
the splendid golden expectations of California, that thus
early established in the upper Mississippi valley the realistic
tradition which descends unbroken through the work of Eggles-
ton, E. W. Howe, Hamlin Garland, and Edgar Lee Masters.
' See Book II, Chap. xv.
' Mention should be made here ofCol. John W. De Forest (1826-1906), who
has not deserved that his novels should be forgotten as they have been, even Miss
Ravenel's Conversionfrom Secession to Loyalty (1867), which survives only in the
thoroughly merited praise of W. D. Howells {My Literary Passions, 1895, P- 233),
but which still seems strong and natural.
 Howells's Training n
From the Middle West, too, came the principal exponent of
native realism, in himself almost an entire literary movement,
almost an academy.) William Dean Howells was bom at
Martin's Perry, Ohio, i March, 1837, the grandson of a Welsh
Quaker and the son of a country printer and editor. Like his
friend Mark Twain he saw little of schools and nothing of
colleges, and like him he got his systematic literary training
from enforced duties as a printer and joumaUst. But, unlike
Mark Twain, he fell as naturally into the best classical tradi-
tions as Goldsmith or Irving, who, with Cervantes, earliest
delighted him. In My Literary Passions Howells has deli-
cately recorded the development of his taste. At first he
desired to write verse, and devoted months to imitating Pope
in a youthful fanaticism for regularity and exactness. From
this worship he turned, at about sixteen, to Shakespeare,
particularly to the histories; then to Chaucer, admired for his
sense of earth in human life; and to Dickens, whose magic,
Howells saw, was rough. Macaulay taught him to like criti-
cism and furnished him an early model of prose style. Thack-
eray, Longfellow, Tennyson followed in due course. Having
taught himself some Latin and Greek and more French and
Spanish, Howells took up German and came under the spell
of Heine, who dominated him longer than any other author
and who showed him once for all that the dialect and subjects
of literature should be the dialect and facts of life.
Poems in the manner of Heine won Howells a place in the
Atlantic, then the very zenith of his aspiration, and in i860 he
undertook the reverent pilgrimage to New England which he
recounts with such winning grace in Literary Friends and
Acquaintance. Already a journalist of promise, and some-
thing of a poet, he made friends wherever he went and was
reconfirmed in his literary ambitions. At the outbreak of the
Civil War appointed United States consul at Venice, married at
Paris in 1862 to Miss Elinor G. Mead of Vermont, he spent four
years of almost undisturbed leisure in studying Italian litera-
ture, notably Dante, as the great authoritative voice of an age,
and Goldoni, whom Howells called "the first of the realists."
In Italy, though he wrote poetry for the most part, he formed
the habit of close, sympathetic, humorous observation and dis-
covered the ripe, easy style which made him, beginning with
78 The Later Novel

Venetian Life (1866) and Italian Journeys (1867), one of the

happiest of our Uterary travellers. From such work he moved,
by the avenue of journalism, only gradually to fiction. On his
return to the United States in 1865 he became, first, editorial
contributor to The Nation for a few months, and then assistant
editor and editor of the Atlantic until 1 881.
Theliterary notices which he wrote for the Atlantic during
these years of preparation would show, had he written nothing
else, how strong and steady was his drift toward his mature

creed. Not alone by deliberate thought nor even by the

stimulus of polemic was he carried forward, but rather by
a natural process of growth which, more than an artistic
matter, included his entire philosophy. From his childhood
—
he had been intensely humane sensitive and charitable. This
humaneness now revealed itself as a passionate love for the
truth of human life and a suspicion, a quiet scorn, of those
romantic dreams and superstitious exaggerations by which less
contented lovers of life try to enrich it or to escape it. "Ah!
poor Real Life," he wrote in his first novel, "can I make
others share the delight I find in thy foolish and insipid face?"
Perhaps Their Wedding Journey (1871) ought hardly to be
called a novel, but it is a valuable Howells document in its
zeal for common actuality and in its method, so nearly that of
his travel books. A Chance Acquaintance (1873), more strictly
a novel, for the first time showed that Howells could not only
report customs and sketch characters felicitously but could
also organize a plot with delicate skill. A young Bostonian,
passionately in love with an intelligent but unsophisticated
inland girl, who returns his love, is so little able to overcome
his ingrained provincial snobbishness that he steadily con-
descends to her until in the end he suddenly sees, as she sees,
that he has played an ignoble and vulgar part which con-
vincingly separates them. Nothing could be more subtle
than the turn by which their relative positions are reversed.
The style of A Chance Acquaintance, while not more graceful
than that of Howells's earlier books, is more assured and crisp.
The central idea is clearly conceived and the outlines sharp
without being in any way cruel or cynical. The descriptions
are exquisite, the dialogue both natural and revealing, and
over and through all is a lambent mirth, an undeceived
 "A Modern Instance"

kindliness of wisdom, which was to remain his essential

quality.
In 1869 he had published a metrical novel, No Love Lost,
and in 1871 a volume of Suburban Sketches; he continued to
write criticism and later began to write farces; but an increas-
ing share of his energy now went to novels. The study of the
conflict between different manners or grades of sophistication,
taken up at about the same time by Henry James, ' concerned
Howells largely, and appears in A Foregone Conclusion (1875),
The Lady of the Aroostook (1879), and A Fearful Responsibility
(1881). Writing of spiritualism and Shakerism in An Undis-
covered Country (1880), he made clear his suspicion of those
types of otherworldliness. Afid in ij 82;_with the pubUcation
of A Modern Instance, Ho wells ass umed his propCTrank as the
chief native American realist.^
"The book to all that had gone before
superiority of this
can be said to Ue in its firmer grasp of it's materials,
less justly
for Howells from the first was extraordinarily sure of grasp,
than in its larger control of larger materials. It has a richer
timbre, a graver, deeper tone. Marcia Gaylord, the most
passionate of all his heroines, is of all of them the most clearly
yet lovingly conceived and elaborated. In the career of her
husband, Bartley J. Hubbard, Howells accomplishes the dif-
ficult feat of tracing a metamorphosis, the increase of sel-
fishness and vanity, fed in this case by Marcia's very devotion,
into monstrous growths of evil without a redeeming tincture
even of boldness —mere contemptibility. The process seems
as simple as arithmetic, but, like all genuin'e^rowth, it actually
resi&t& -analysis. The winter scenes of the earlier chapters,
faithful and vivid beyond any prose which had yet been written
about New England, drawn with an eye intensely on the fact,
have still the larger bearings of a criticism of American village
life in general. The subsequent adventures of the Hubbards in
Boston, though so intensely local in setting and incident, are
applicable everywhere. Squire Gaylord 's arraignment of his
son-in-law in the Indiana courtroom vibrates with a passion
seldom met in Howells and Bartley 's virtual
; offer of his former
wife to his former friend belongs with the unforgettable, unfor-
givable basenesses in fiction. After these episodes, however, it
' See Book III, Chap. xii.
8o The Later Novel

must be owned that an anticlimax follows in Halleck's discovery

that his New England conscience will now forever hold him
from Marcia because he had loved her before she was free.
Between i88l, when Howells resigned from the Atlantic,
and 1886, when he began to write for Harper's, he had some
years of leisure, particularly signalized by the publication in
1884 of the novel which brought him to the height of his
reputation as well as of his art. The theme of The Rise of Silas
Lapham is the universal one, very dear in a republic, of the
rising fortunes of a man who haS no aid but virtue and capacity.
Lapham, a country-bred, "self-made" Vermonter, appears
when he has already achieved wealth, and finds himself drawn,
involuntarily enough, into the more difficult task of adjusting
himself and his family to the manners of fastidious Boston.
A writer primarily satirical might have been contented to
make game of the situation. Howells, keenly as he sets forth
the conflict of standards, goes beyond satire to a depth of
meaning which comes only from a profound understanding of
the part which artificial distinctions play in human life and
a mellow pity that such little things can have such large con-
sequences of pain and error. | The conflict, however, while
constantly pervasive in the book, does not usurp the action;
the Lapham family has serious concerns that might arise in
any social stratum. Most
intense and dramatic of these is the
fact that the suitor of one daughter is believed by the whole
family to be in love with the other until the very moment of his
declaration. The distress into which they are thrown is
presented with a degree of comprehension rare in any novel,
and here matched with a common sense which rises to some-
—
thing half -inspired in Lapham's perception reduced to words,
—
however, by a friendly clergyman that in such a case super-
fluous self-sacrifice would be morbid and that, since none is
guilty, one had better suffer than three. A certain rightness
and soundness of feeling, indeed, govern the entire narrative.
As it proceeds, as Lapham falls into heavy business vicissitudes
and finally to comparative poverty again, and yet all the time
rises in spiritual worth, the record steadily grows in that dignity
and significance which, according to Howells 's creed, is founded
only on absolute truth.
Silas Lapham marked the culmination of Howells's art,
 6 '

Hpwells and Tolstoy 8i

approached the next year in the exquisite interlude Indian

Summer, gayly, lightly, sweetly, pungently narrating the loves
of a man of forty, and not quite approached in The Minister's
Charge (1887), which shows a homespun poet moving in the
direction of comfortable prose. But Howells had not yet
shaped his final philosophy, which grew up within him after he
had left Boston for New York in 1886 and had established his
connection with Harper's Magazine. Again, as from the Atlantic
literary notices, light falls upon his growth from the monthly
'-
articles which he wrote for r' The Editor's Study" between
1886 and 1 89 1.' Chiefly discussions of current books, con-
cerned with poetry, history, biography nearly as much as
with fiction.^ these essays remarkably encouraged the growth i

of realism in Americaj) and most eloquently commended to

native readers such Latin realists as Valera, Valdes, Galdos, and
Verga, and the great Russians Turgenev, Dostoevsky, and
Tolstoy. It will not do to say that these foreign realists moulded
Howells, for his development, whatever his readiness to assimi-
late, was always from within outward, but it helps to distinguish
between the Howells who lived before 1886 and the one who
lived after that date, to say that the earlier man had one of his
supreme literary passions for the art of Turgenev, and that the
later Howells, knowing Tolstoy, had become impatient of even
the most secret artifice. For Tolstoy was Howells' s great
passion. "As much as one merely human being can help
another I believe;" said Howells, "that he has helped me; he
has not influenced me in sesthetics only, but in ethics, too, so
that I can never again see life in the way I saw it before I knew
him." Tolstoy's novels seemed to Howells as perfect as his
doctrine. "To my thinking they transcend in truth, which is
the highest beauty, all other works of fiction that have been
written. . .[He] has a method which not only seems without
.

'
artifice, but is so.
This was some ten years after Howells had first read
Tolstoy, ten years during which, in spite of Tolstoy's example,
he had not at all reverted to the preacher but had published
many merry and had begun to be sunnily reminiscent
farces
in A Boy'sTown (1890). But though too much himself to be
converted from his artistic practice, Howells had broadened
his field and deepened his inquiries. A Hazard of New Fortunes
Vol. Ill—
82 The Later Novel

(1889), in which Basil and Isabel March, the bridal couple of

Their Wedding Journey, now grown middle aged, give up
Boston, as HoweUs had himself recently done, for a future in
New York, is not content to point out merely the unfamiliar
fashions of life which they meet but is fuU of conscience regard-
ing certain evils of the modem social order. Or rather, How-
eUs had turned from the clash of those lighter manners which
belong to Comedy and had set himself to discuss the deeper
manners of the race which belong to morals and religion. He
wrote at a moment of hope:

We had passed through a period of strong emotioning in the

humaner economics, if I may phrase it so; the rich
direction of the
seemed not so much to despise the poor, the poor did not so hope-
lessly repine. The solution of the riddle of the painful earth through
the dreams of Henry George, through the dreams of Edward
Bellamy, through the dreams of all the generous visionaries of the
past, seemed not impossibly far off.'

In this mood Howells's theme compelled him so much that

the story moved forward almost without his conscious agency,
"though," he carefully insists, "I should not like to intimate
anything mystical in the fact." A Hazard of New Fortunes
outdoes all Howells's novels in the conduct of different groups
of characters, in the superb naturalness with which now one
and now another rises to the surface of the narrative and then
retreats without a trace of management. New Englanders,
New Yorkers, Southerners, Westerners, aU appear in their
true native colours, as do the most diverse ranks of society, and
many professions, in their proper dress and gesture. The
episode of the street-car strike, brought in near the end,
dramatizes the struggle which has been heretofore in the novel
rather a shadow than a fact, but HoweUs, artist first then
partisan, employs
almost wholly as a sort of focal point to
it

which the attention of aU his characters is drawn, with the

result that, having already revealed themselves generally,
they are more particularly revealed in their varying degrees
of sympathy for the great injustice out of which class
war arises. In this manner, without extravagant emphasis,
" Preface dated July, 1909.
 Howells's Later Writings 83

Howells judges a generation at the same time that he portrays

it in the best of all novels of New York.

Howells's Tolstoyanism appears still more frankly in his

two Utopian tales, A Traveller from Altruria (1894) and
Through the Eye of the Needle (1907), in which he compares
America with the lovely land of Altruria, where aU work is
honourable and servants are unknown, where capital and
interest are only memories, where equality is complete, and
men and women, in the midst of beauty, lead lives that are
just, temperate, and kind. The stem tones of Tolstoy How-
ells never learned, or at least never used, for he could not lose

his habitual kindness, even when he spoke most firmly. It

was kindness, not timidity, however, for though he held steadily
to his art he did not keep silence before even the most pop-
ular injustices. He plead for the Chicago "anarchists " and he
condemned the annexation of the Philippines in clear, strong
tones no good cause lacked the support of his voice. He was
;

extraordinarily fecund. After 1892 he succeeded George

William Curtis in "The Easy Chair" of Harper's and wrote
monthly articles which, less exclusively literary than the
"Editor's Study" pieces, carried on the same tradition. His
most significant critical writings, chiefly concerned with the
art he himself practiced, are found in Criticism and Fiction
(1891), Heroines of Fiction (1901), and Literature and Life
(1902). Reminiscences and travels assume a still larger
place in his later work. After A Boy's Town came My
Literary Passions (1895), ^^^ then Literary Friends and Ac-
quaintance (1900), of accounts of the classic age of Boston
and Cambridge easily the best. He revisited Europe and
left records in London Films (1905), Certain Delightful Eng-
lish Towns (1906), Roman Holidays (1908), Seven English
Cities (1909), Familiar Spanish Travels (1913), in which he
occasionally drew his matter out thin but in which he was
never for a page dull, or untruthful, or sour, after the an-
cient habit of travellers. My Mark Twain (1910) is incom-
parably the finest of all the interpretations of Howells's great
friend, while Years of My Youth (1916), written when the
author was nearly eighty, is the work of a master whom age
had made wise and left strong. In 1909 he was chosen presi-
dent of the American Academy, and six years later he received
84 The Later Novel

the National Institute's gold medal "for distinguished work

in fiction." //e 4ie.A /I fliay, /^io-
The Institute rightly judged that, important as Howells is

and memoir-writer, he must be considered first of all a

as critic
novelist. His later books of fiction make up a long list. That
he could produce such an array of fiction is sign enough that he
had not been overpowered by humanitarianism a better sign ;

is the fact that these later novels are even kinder, gayer,
mellower than the early ones. In them his investigation moves
over a wide area, which includes the solid realism of The Land-
lord at Lion's Head (1897) and The Kentons (1902) the sombre ;

study of a crime in The Quality of Mercy (1892); the keen

statement of problems m. An Imperative Duty (1892) and The
Son of Royal Langbrith (1904); happier topics as in Miss
Bellard's Inspiration (1905) and, very notably, subtle explor-
;

ations of what is or what seems to be the supersensual world in

The Shadow of a Dream (1890), Questionable Shapes (igo;^) —
short stories, Between the Dark and the Daylight (1907) short —
stories, and The Leatherwood God (1916), which last, the study
of a frontier impostor who proclaims himself a god, best hints
at Howells's views of the relation between the real world which
he had so long explored and so lovingly portrayed and those
vast spaces which appear to be beyond it for the futile tempting
of religionists and romanticists.
Holding so firmly to his religion of reality, and with his
'

varied powers, it is not perhaps to be wondered at that Howells

produced in his fourscore books the most considerable tran-
script of American life yet made by one man/^ Nor, of course,
should it be wondered at, that in spite of his doctrine of imper-
sonality the world of America as he has set it down is full of
his benignance and noble health, never illicit or savage and
but rarely sordid. His natural gentleness and reserve, even
more than the decorous traditions of the seventies and
eighties, kept him from the violent frankness of, say, Zola,
whose books Howells thought "indecent through the facts
that they nakedly represent." (What Howells invariably
practiced was a kind of Selective realism,) choosing his ma-
terial as a sage chooses his words, decently. Most of his
storiesend "happily, " that is, in congenial marriages with good
expectations. He did not mind employing one favoured situ-
 —;

Howells's Place and Rank 85

ation —
in which a humorous husband and a serious wife find
themselves responsible for a young girl during her courtship
so often as to suggest a personal experience. Not without some
complaint, he nevertheless not too rebelliously accepted the
modem novelist's fate of writing largely for
women, a sex
which in Howells's
world appears as often shallow and change-
ful and almost always quite unreasonable. Thus limited as to
subjects by his temper and his times, he was likewise limited
as to treatment. On every ground he preferred to make
relatively little of impassioned or tragic moments, believing
that the true bulk of life is to be represented by its conimon-
' '
places. It will not do, he wrote, speaking of the ducal palace
' '

'
at Weimar, to lift either houses or men far out of the average
'

they become spectacles, ceremonies they cease to have charm, ;

to have character, which belong to the levels of life, where alone

there are ease and comfort, and human nature may be itself, with
all the little delightful differences repressed in those who repre-
sent and typify. "'
(The pendulum had swung far since the
days when Cooper and Hawthorne repined over the democratic
barrenness of American manners !) No one has written more
engaging commonplaces than Howells, though perhaps some-
thing like the century which has elapsed since the death of Jane
—
Austen Howells's ideal among English novelists will have —
to pass before the historian can be sure that work artistically
flawless may be kept alive, lacking malice or intensity, by ease
and grace and charm, by kind wisdom and thoughtful mirth.
Hawthorne and Mrs. Stowe, romance and sentiment, had
divided first honours in American fiction during the twenty
years 1 850-1 870; the seventies belonged primarily to the short
story of the school of Bret Harte. The novel of that decade,
thus a little neglected, profited in at least one respect it ceased :

to be the form of fiction on which all beginners tried their pens

and passed rather into the hands of men whose eyes looked a
little beyond easy conquests and an immediate market. This
fact,with the rapid growth of the artistic conscience in the cos-
mopolitanizing years which followed the Civil War, serves to
explain in part the remarkable florescence, the little renaissance
of fiction in the eighties. ^ The short story may specially

Their Silver Wedding Journey (1899), chap. Ix.

" A Renaissance in the Eighties, Nation, 12 October, 1918.
 .

86 The Later Novel

claim Bret Harte, Aldrich, Stockton, Bunner, Rose Terry-

Cooke, Sarah Ome Jewett, Mary E. Wilkins Freeman, Cable,
Constance FenimoreWoolson, Charles Egbert Craddock, John-
ston, Page, and Joel Chandler Harris, = though they all wrote
' —
—
novels of merit, because their talents were for pungency, fancy,
brevity. But to the novel of the decade three of the five major
American novelists, Mark Twain, Howells, Henry James, con-
tributed their greatest triumphs; then appeared Ben-Hur, for
a good while rivalled in popularity by Judge Albion Wine-
gar Tourgee's A Fool's Errand (1879), a fiery document upon
Reconstruction in the South; and there were such diverse
pieces as Edward Bellamy's much-read Utopian romance
Looking Backward (1888), dainty exotics like Blanche Willis
Howard's Guenn A Wave on the Breton Coast (1884) and
Arthur Sherburne Hardy's Passe Rose (1889), E. W. Howe's
grim The Story of a Country Town (1883), Helen Hunt Jackson's
Ramona (1884), passionately pleading the cause of the Indians
of California, Miss Woolson's East Angels (1886), just less than
a classic, Henry Adams's,^ Democracy (1880) and John Hay's"
The Bread-Winners (1884), excursions into fiction of two men
whose largest gifts lay elsewhere, the earlier army novels of
General Charles King, and the earlier detective stories of
Anna Katharine Green (Rohlfs). As a rule these novels seem
more deftly built than the novels of the sixties or seventies,
more sophisticated. People talked somewhat less than for-
merly about "The Great American Novel, " that strange eido-
lon so clearly descended from the large aspirations of men like
Timothy Dwight and Joel Barlow ^ but by 1850 thought of less
as an epic which should enshrine the national past than as a
great prose performance reflecting the national present
In the eighties began the career of that later American
writer who gave to the novel his most complete allegiance,
undeterred by the vogue of briefer narratives or other forms
of literature. Francis Marion Crawford, son of the sculptor
Thomas Crawford and nephew of Julia Ward Howe, was born
at Bagni di Lucca, Tuscany, in 1854. He prepared for college
at St. Paul's School, New Hampshire, and entered Harvard,

' For these writers see Book III, Chap. vi. ' See Book III, Chap. v.
3 See Book III, Chap. xv. -i
See Book III, Chaps, x and xv.
5 See Book I, Chap. ix.
 F. Marion Crawford 87

but soon left it to study in Europe, successively at Cambridge,

Heidelberg, and Rome. Having become interested in Sanscrit,
and having lost his expectations of a fortune, he went to India
and there edited The Indian Herald at Allahabad. In 1881
he returned to America, spent another year upon Sanscrit
with Professor Lanman of Harvard, and wrote his first novel,
Mr. Isaacs (1882), on the advice of an uncle who had been
struck by Crawford's oral account of the central personage.
The success of the experiment was so prompt and complete
that author recognized his vocation once for all, much as
its

does George Wood in The Three Fates (1892), a novel admitted

to be partly autobiographical. Crawford went to Italy in
1883, and thereafter spent most of his life at Sorrento. He
still travelled, grew wealthy from the sale of his novels, became

a Roman Catholic, and died in 1909.

Except that toward the end of his life he partly turned
—
from fiction to sober and not remarkably spirited history, —
Crawford can hardly be said to have changed his methods
from his earliest novel to his latest. Improvisation was his
knack and forte; he wrote much and speedily. His settings
he took down, for the most part, from personal observation
in the many localities he knew at first hand; his characters,
too, are frequently studies from actual persons. In his plots,
commonly held his peculiar merit, Crawford cannot be called
distinctly original he employs much of the paraphernalia of
:

—
melodrama ^lost or hidden wills, forgeries, great persons in
disguise, sudden legacies, physical violence; moreover, it is
almost a formula with him to carry a story by natural motives
until about the last third, when melodrama enters to perplex
the narrative and to arouse due suspense until the triumph-
ant and satisfying denouement. And yet so fresh, strong,
and veracious is the movement that it nearly obscures these
conventional elements. Movement, indeed, not plot in the
stricter sense, is Crawford's chief excellence. He could not tell
a story badly, but flowed on without breaking or faltering,

managing his material and disposing his characters and scenes

without apparent effort, in a style always clear and bright.
This lightness of movement is accompanied, perhaps accounted
for, by an absence of profound ideas or of any of that rich colour
of life which comes only —
as in Scott, Balzac, Tolstoy when —
 —
88 The Later Novel

fiction is deeply based in a native soil. As to his ideas,Craw-

ford appears to have had few that were unusual, and at least he
suspected such ideas as the substance of .fiction, about the aims
and uses of which he is very explicit in The Novel: What It Is
(1893). Novelists he called "pubUc amusers, " who must
always write largely about love and in Anglo-Saxon countries
must write under the eyes of the ubiquitous young girl. They
might therefore as well be reconciled to the exigencies of their
business. For his own part he thought problem novels odious,
cared nothing for dialect or local colotu", believed it a mistake to
make a novel too minute a picture of one generation lest another
should think it "old-fashioned," and preferred to regard the
—
novel as a sort of "pocket theatre" with ideals, it should be
added, much like those of the British and American stage from
1870 to 1890.
Thus far Crawford was carried by his cosmopolitan training
and ideals he believed that human beings are much the same
:

everywhere and can be made intelligible everywhere if reported

lucidly and discreetly. Reading his books is like conversing
with a remarkably humane, sharp-eyed traveller who appears
— —
at least at first to have seen every nook and comer of the
world. Zoroaster (1885), Khaled (1891), and Via Crucis (1898)
have their scenes laid in Asia; Paul Patoff (1887), in Con-
stantinople; The Witch of Prague (1891), in Bohemia; Dr.
Claudius (1883), Greifenstein (1889), and A Cigarette-Maker's
Romance (1890), in Germany; In the Palace of the King (1900),
in Spain; A Tale of a Lonely Parish (1886) and Fair Margaret
(1905), in England; An American Politician (1885), The Three
Fates (1892), Marion Darche (1893), Katharine Lauderdale
(1894), a^nd The Ralstons (1895), in America; and, most import-
ant group of all, the Italian tales, of which A Roman Singer
(1884), Marzio's Crucifix (1887), The Children of the King
(1892), and Pietro Gh sleri (1893) are but little less interesting
than the famous Roman series, Saracinesca (1887), Sant'
Ilario (1889), Don Orsino (1892), and Corleone (1896). The
Saracinesca cycle most of all promises to survive, partly because
as a cycle it is imposing but even more particularly because
here Crawford's merits appear to best advantage. After all,
though he considered himself an American, and though he
knew many parts of the globe, he knew the inner circles of
 —
The Later Historical Romance 89

Rome better than any other section of society, and really

minute knowledge came, as it did not always in his stories of
America, for instance, and almost never did in his historical
tales, to the aid of his invariable qualities of movement and

lucidity and large general knowledge of life. If in this admir-

able cycle, which is to Crawford's total work much what
the Leather-Stocking cycle is to Cooper's, Crawford actually
achieved less than Cooper, it is to some extent for the reason
that some cosmopolitanism finds it even harder than does some
provincialism to impart to fiction true depth and body that;

reality, like charity, often begins at home.

In the eighties realism was the dominant creed in fiction,
which in practice followed its creed somewhat closely, with
exceptions, of course, among the purely popular novelists
like Roe and General Wallace. The same decade, however,
saw the beginnings of two movements which became marked
in the nineties, both of them natural outcomes of the official
realism of Howells and James. One led, by reaction, to the
rococo type of historical romance which flourished enormously
at the end of the century; and the other to the harsher natural-
ism which shook off the decorums of the first realists, contended
with the historical romancers, first succumbed to them, and
then succeeded them in power and favour. The historical
tendency, less than the naturalistic a matter of doctrine,
came at first from the South and West: from writers who
painted the amiable colours of antebellum plantation life
Cable, Page, Joel Chandler Harris; or from California, from
writers who tried to catch the charm of old Spanish days
Bret Harte and Helen Hunt Jackson or from the Mississippi
;

Valley, from writers who, thanks to Parkman, had discovered

the richness —
and variety of the French regime there Con-
stance Fenimore Woolson and Mary Hartwell Catherwood.
Of all these Mrs. Jackson wrote perhaps the best single romance
in Ramona (1884), a story aimed to carry forward an indict-
ment, already begun in the same author's A Century of Dishonor
(1881), against the treatment of the Indians by their white
conquerors. Ramona, however, and her Temecula husband
Alessandro have so little Indian blood that their wrongs seem
less those of Indians than the wrongs which all the older
Californians, Indian or Spanish, suffered from the predacious
 :

90 The Later Novel

vanguard of the Anglo-Saxon conquest. And the romance

dominates the problem. For Mrs. Jackson, Spanish California
had been a paradise of patriarchal estates set in fertile valleys,
steeped in drowsy antiquity, and cherished by fine unworldly
priests. Her tragic story derives much of its impressiveness
from the pomp of its setting, the strength of its contrasts, its
passionate colour and poetry. Mrs. Catherwood wrote graceful
and engaging but not quite permanent tales, from The Romance
of Bollard (1889) to Lazarre (1901), which added a definite little
—
province to our historical fiction the French in the interior
of the continent.
But the later historical romance is best studied in the work
of Dr. Silas Weir Mitchell (1829-1913) of Pennsylvania, who,
on the advice of Oliver Wendell Holmes, early set aside his
literary ambitions until he should have established himself
in a profession, became one of the most eminent of medical
specialists, particularly in nervous diseases, and only after he
was fifty gave much time to verse or fiction, which, indeed,
he continued to produce with no diminution of power until
the very year of his death. His special knowledge enabled
him to write authoritatively of difficult and wayward states
of body and mind; as in The Case of George Dedlow (1880),
so circumstantial in its impossibilities, Roland Blake (1886),
which George Meredith greatly admired. The Autobiography
of a Quack (1900), concerning the dishonourable fringes of
the medical profession, and Constance Trescott (1905), con-
sidered by Dr. Mitchell his best-constructed novel and
certainly his most thorough-going study of a pathological
mood. His psychological stories, however, had on the whole
neither the appeal nor the merit of his historical romances,
which began with Hephzibah Guinness (1880) and extended to
Westways ( 1 9 1 3). Westways is a large and truthful chronicle of
the effects of the Civil War in Pennsylvania, but Mitchell's
best work belongs to the Revolutionary and Washington cycle
Hugh Wynne Free Quaker Sometimes Brevet Lieutenant-Colonel
on the Staff of his Excellency General Washington (1896), The
Youth of Washington Told in the Form of an Autobiography
(1904), and The Red City A Novel of the Second Administration
of President Washington (1908). Dr. Mitchell's own favourite
among his books, The Adventures of Frangois, Foundling, Thief,
 ,

S. Weir Mitchell 91

Juggler, and Fencing-Master during the French Revolution

(1898)
stands as close to the American stories as did Paris to the city
of Franklin in the later eighteenth century. Revolutionary
these narratives are only by virtue of the time in which they
take place, for their sympathies are ahnost wholly with the
aristocrats in France, with the respectable and Federalist
classes in America. Philadelphia, generally the centre of the
action, appears under a softer, mellower light than has been
thrown by our romancers upon any other Revolutionary city,
and Washington, though drawn, like Philadelphia, as much to
the life as Dr. Mitchell could draw him, is a demigod still.
By the time The Red City appeared its type was losing
vogue, but Hugh Wynne and The Adventures of Frangois came
on the high tide of the remarkable outburst of historical ro-
mance just preceding the Spanish War. The best books of the
sortneedbut to be named: MarkTwam's Personal Recollections
of Joan of Arc (1896), Frederic Jesup Stimson's King Noanett
(1896), James Lane Allen's The Choir Invisible (1897), Charles
Major's When Knighthood Was in Flower (1898), Mary John-
ston's Prisoners of Hope (1898) and To Have and To Hold
(1899), Paul Leicester Ford's Janice Meredith (1899), Win-
ston Churchill's Richard Carvel (1899) and The Crisis (1901),
Booth Tarkington's Monsieur Beaucaire (1900), Maurice
Thompson's Alice of Old Vincennes (1900), Henry Har-
land's The Cardinal's Snuff-Box (1901). In part they were
an American version of the movement led in England by
Robert Louis Stevenson, Rider Haggard, Conan Doyle, and
Anthony Hope; the "Ruritanian" romance, for instance, of
Anthony Hope was so popular as to be delightfully parodied in
George Ade's The Slim Princess (1907); all these tales were
courtly, high-sounding, decorative, and poetical. But their
—
enormous popularity some of them sold half a million copies
in the two or three years of their brief heyday —
points to some
native condition. In the history of the American imagination
they must be thought of as marking that moment at which, in
the excitement which accompanied the Spanish War, the nation
suddenly rediscovered a longer and more picturesque past than
it had been popularly aware of since the Civil War. The
episode was brief, and most of the books now seem gilt where
some of them once looked like gold, but it was a vivid moment
92 The Later Novel

in the national consciousness, and if it founded no new legends

it deepened o d ones.
Romance did not have the field entirely during these
years, for there was also a strong naturalistic trend, which
dated from the eighties, when Henry James had seemed too
foreign and Howells too hopeful. In 1883 Edgar Watson
Howe, of Kansas, had published The Story of a Country Town,
a book almost painfully overlooked and yet worthy to be
mentioned with Wuthering Heights or Moby Dick for power
and terror. Unlike those two it lacks locality, as if the bare,
sunburned Kansas plain had no real depth, no mystery in itself,
and could find no native motif but the smoldering discontent
of that inarticulate frontier. Sternest, grimmest of American
novels, it moves with the cold tread and the hard diction of a
saga. No shallow mind could have conceived the blind, black,
impossible passion of Joe Erring or have conducted it to the
purgation and tranquillity which succeeds the catastrophe.
Plainly, the author had deliberately hardened his heart against
the too facile views of contemporary novelists. It is this
stiffening of the conscience which goes with all the later
naturalistic writers in America; they are polemic haters of
the national optimism. Howe's early experiment was fol-
lowed, not imitated, by a brilliant group of writers tmdoubt-
edly nearer to Zola than to Howells: Hamlin Garland,' best
in short stories, who stressed the sordid facts of Middle Western
farm life and who spoke for the group in his volume of essays
Crumbling Idols (1894); Henry Blake Fuller, who wrote The
Chevalier of Pensieri-Vani (1890) under the segis of Charles
Eliot Norton and then the realistic novel of Chicago, The Cliff-
Dwellers (1893); Harold Frederic, who after his lucid and
accurate romance of the Mohawk, In the Valley (1890),
followed Ambrose Bierce" with energetic Civil War stories
and later made a sensation with The Damnation of Theron Ware
(1896) and The Market-Place (1899) and the notable pair who
)

promised much but died young, Stephen Crane (1871-1900)

and Frank Norris (1870-1902).
Crane was a genius who intensely admired Tolstoy and
somewhat febrilely aimed at absolute truthfulness in his
faction. Maggie A Girl of the Streets (1896), written when he
I
See Book III, Chap. vi. a
Jbid.
 Stephen Crane; Frank Norris 93

was but twenty-one, gave a horrible picture of a degenerate

Irish family in New York and the tragedy of its eldest daugh-
ter; its violent plain speaking seemed very new when it ap-
peared. Crane's great success, however, attended The Red
Badge of Courage An Episode of the American Civil War
(1895), a reconstruction, by a man who at the time of writing
knew war only from books, of the mental states of a recruit
when first under fire. A greater war has made the theme
widely familiar, but Crane's performance stiU seems more
than an amazingly clever tour de force; it is a real feat of the
imagination. Norris had larger aims than Crane and on the
whole achieved more, though no one of his books excels
the Red Badge. He was one of the least sectional of American
novelists, with a vision of his native land which attached
him to the movement, then under discussion, to "continent-
alize" American literature by breaking up the parochial habits
of the local colour school. He had a certain epic disposition,
tended to vast plans, and conceived trilogies. His "Epic of
the Wheat"— The Octopus (1901), The Pit (1903), and The
—
Wolf (never written) he thought of as the history of the
cosmic spirit of wheat moving from the place of its production
in California to the place of its consumption in Europe. An-
other trilogy to which he meant to give years of work would
have centred about the battle of Gettysburg, one part for each
day, and would have sought to present what Norris considered
the American spirit as his Epic of the Wheat presented an
impersonal force of nature. Such conceptions explain his
grandiose manner and the passion of his naturalism, which he
was even willing to call romanticism provided he could mean by
it the search for truths deeper than the surface truths of ortho-

dox realism. He had a strong vein of mysticism he habitually

;

occupied himself with "elemental" emotions. His heroes

are nearly all violent men, wilful, passionate, combative;
his heroines — —
thick-haired, large-armed women are endowed
with a rich and deep, if slow, vitality. Love in Norris's world
is the mating of vikings and valkyries. Love, however, is not
his sole concern. The Pacific and California novels, Moran of
the Lady Letty (1898), Blix (1899), McTeague (1899), A Man's
Woman (1900), as well as The Octopus, are full of ardently
detailed actualities; The Pit is a valuable representation of
94 The Later Novel

a "comer" on the Chicago Board of Trade. In all these

his eagerness to be truthful gave Norris a large energy, par-
ticularly in scenes of action, but his speed and vividness are
not matched by his body and meaning.
Much the same thing may be said of Jack London (1876-
191 6), one or two of whose novels will likely outlast his short
stories, ' important as they were in his best days, and dose kin

as his stories and novels are in subjects, style, and temper.

Norris 's "elemental" in London became "abysmal" passions.
He carried the cult of "red-blood" to its logical, if not ridicu-
lous, extreme. And yet he has a sort of Wild-Irish power that
will not go unnoted. John Barleycorn (1913) is an amazingly
candid confession of London's own struggles with alcohol.
Martin Eden (1909), also autobiographical, though assumed
names appear in it, recounts the terrific labours by which in
three years London made himself from a common sailor into a
popular author. The Sea-Wolf (1904) reveals at its fullest his
appetite for cold ferocity in its record of the words and deeds
of Wolf Larsen, a Nietzschean, Herculean, Satanic ship captain,
whose incredible strength terminates credibly in sudden par-
alysis and impotence. Most popular of all, and best equipped
for survival, is The Call of the Wild (1903), the story of a dog
stolen from civilization to draw a sledge in Alaska, eventually
to escape from human control and go back to the wild as leader
of a pack of wolves. As in most animal tales, the narrative is
sentimentalized, but there runs through it, along with its
deadly perils and adventures, an effective sensitiveness to the
Alaskan wastes, a robust, moving, genuine current of poetry.
A real, however narrow, gulf separates London from such
coUeagued naturalists as Richard Harding Davis, better in
short stories^ than in novels, and often romantic, or even from
David Graham Phillips (1867-1911), whose bitter war upon
society and "Society" culminated in the two volumes of .SM^aw
Lenox (191 7), the only extended portrait of an American cour-
tesan No one of them all had quite London's boyish energy,
quite his romantic audacity in naturalism. And the tendency
of fiction is just at present away from the world of "elemental"
excitement to more civil phases of life, a newer form of realism
having succeeded alike the episode of naturalism and the
' See Book III, Chap. vi. ' Ibid.
 Contemporary Tendencies 95

antithetical episode of historical romance. At the same time

there are stiU novels of many types domestic and sentimental
:

romances; tales of wild adventure; stories written to exploit

a single character in the tradition of F. Hopkinson Smith's'
Colonel Carter of Cartersville (1891), Edward Noyes Westcott's
David Harum (1898), and Owen Wister's The Virginian
(1905)1 a few records of exotic life at the ends of the earth;
narratives, nicely skirting salaciousness, of "fast" New York;
affectionate, idealized portrayals, as in thework of James
Lane Allen for Kentucky, of particular states or neighbour-
hoods. But no tendency quite so clearly prevails as romance
in the thirties, sentimentalism in the fifties, realism in the
eighties, or naturalism at the turn of the century.
See Book III, Chap. vi.
 CHAPTER XII

Henry James

HENRY JAMES was bom an American and died

Englishman. He might never have formally
an
trans-
ferred his allegiance had it not been for the War and
our long delay in espousing the AlUed cause. He became a Brit-
ish subject in July, 191 5. The transfer had, however, been
virtually made many decades earUer. Of thfe two ruHng pas-
sions of James, one was surely his passion for "Europe." Of
this infatuation the reader will find the most explicit record
in his fragmentary book of reminiscences, The Middle Years
(191 7), record and whimsical apology which may well serve
the needs of other Americans pleading indulgence for the same
oflEence. James loved Europe, as do aU "passionate pilgrims,"
for the thick-crowding literary and historical associations
which made it seem more alive than the more bustling scene
this side the water. Going to breakfast in London was an
—
adventure, being not, as at Harvard, merely one of the inci-
dents of boarding, but a social function, calling up "the ghosts
of Byron and Sheridan and Scott and Moore and Lockhart
and Rogers and tutti quanti." In America, James had never
so taken breakfast except once with a Boston lady frankly
reminiscent of London, and once with Howells fresh from his
Venetian post, and so "all in the Venetian manner." Every-
body in Victorian London had, as he calls it, references that —
is, associations, appeal to the historic imagination; and, as he

humorously confesses, "a reference was then, to my mind,

whether in a person or an object, the most becoming ornament
possible." It was "with bated breath" that he approached
the paintings of Titian in the old National Gallery; and when,
in the presence of the Bacchus and Ariadne, he became aware,
96
 His Love for Art 97

at the same moment, of the auburn head and eager talk of

Swinburne, his cup for that day ran over. With the best of
introductions to the Rome of Story, the London of Lord
Houghton, the highest ambition of James was to estabUsh
"connections" of his own with a world in which everything
so bristled with connections; and it is he who lets us know
with what joy he found himself, on the occasion of his first
visit to George Eliot, running for the doctor in her service,
since thereby "a relation had been dramatically determined."
But it is only in the light of his other ruling passion that
we can rightly understand the force of his passion for Europe.
Even more rooted was his love for art, the d^Eft^figlm atton.
All his pilgriming in London and elsewhere was by way "of
collecting a fund of material to draw upon as soon as ever one
'
'

should seriously get to work." And is it surprising that he

should have been impressed with the greater eligibility of the
foreign material that his impressions of New York and Boston
;

seemed to him "negative" or "thin" or "fiat" beside the cor-

responding impressions of London? The old world was one
which had been lived in and had taken on the expressive char-
acter of places long associated with human use. It was not
simply the individual object of observation, but the "cross-ref-
erences"; or, again, the association of one object with another
and with the past, making up altogether a "composition."
Whatever person or setting caught his attention, it was always
because it "would fall into a picture or a scene." Of the
heroine of The American, a young French woman of rank, the
hero observed that she was "a kind of historical formation."
And along with his material, James found abroad a favourable
air in which to do his work. There he found those stimulating
contacts, there he could observe from within those movements
in the world of art, which were of such prime importance for his
own development. Lambert Strether, in The Ambassadors, 1

represents the deprivations of a man of letters, strikingly]

suggestive in many ways of James himself, condemned to labour i

in the provincialdarkness of "WooUett, Massachusetts."

In all this our American author seems identified with \

anything but the American scene and the case is not altered
;

when we consider his stories on the side of form. His form is;
not American, nor his preoccupation with form. It is as(
VOL. Ill 7
 ' :

98 Henry James

strictly international as that of Poe. James was a profound

admirer of Hawthorne; but so was he an admirer of Balzac
and of George Sand, and it is probably to later models than
any of these that he owes whatever is most characteristic in
his technique. There is at any rate nothing here drawn from
American sources rather than from European nothing which ;

we can claim as our production.

Yet we have reasons for our claim upon him. This very
passion for Europe, as he has exhibited and in so
it in himself
many of his creatures, this European "adventure" of Lam-
bert Strether and Isabel Archer (of The Portrait of a Lady) —
what more purely American product can be conceived ? Even
to the conscientiousness with which young James did his
London sightseeing, mindful of his own feeble health, which
threatened to cut it short, and above all mindful "that what
he was doing, could he but put it through, would be inti-
mately good for him
! '

Altogether his theme turned out to be quite as much

^merican character as European setting. We must not
forget how predominantly his novels, and how frequently
his short stories," have for their subject Americans, Americans —
abroad, or even Americans at home seen in the light of foreign
observation. In this connection the novels in particular
may be divided into three groups, falling chronologically
into three periods. In the first period, extending from Roderick
Hudson to The Bostonians, 1875 to 1885, the leading characters
are invariably Americans, though the scene is half the time
abroad. In the second period, from The Princess Casamassima
to The Sacred Fount, 1885 to 1901, the novels confine them-
selves rather strictly to English society. In the third period,
from The Wings of the Dove to the novels unfinished at the
left
author's death, 1902 to 1917, James returned to his engross-
ing, and by far his most theme of Americans in
interesting,
Paris or Venice or London. Not a very original contribution to
literature is —
the American scene itself the New York of
Washington Square (1881), the Boston of The Europeans (1878)
and The Bostonians; and none of these novels was included by
James in the New York Edition. His American settings are
but palely conceived; and his figures do not find here the
proper background to bring them out and set off their special
 Americans Abroad 99

character. But the crusading Americans —variegated types,

comic and romantic —with the foreign settings which they
in
so perfectly find themselves, these make up a local province as
distinct in colour and feature as those of
Cable ' and Bret Harte, ^
— a province quite as American, in its way, and for the artist
quite as much of a trouvaille, or lucky strike.
These Americans abroad fall naturally into two classes.
The first are treated in the mildly comic vein, as examples
of American crudeness or simplicity. Such are the unhappy
—
Ruck family of The Pension Beaurepas, poor Mr. Ruck who
had come abroad in hopes of regaining health and escaping
financial worries, and his ladies whose interest in the old world
is confined to the shops where money can be spent. Perhaps
we might refer to this class Christopher Newman, the self-
possessed and efficient American business man, hero of The
American (1877); though in his case the comedy of character
is by no means broad, and is strictly subordinate to the larger

comedy of social contrast. In general, these people are treated

not unkindly; and there is the one famous instance of Daisy
Miller, in which the fresh little American girl is so tenderly
—
handled as to set tears flowing a most unusual proceeding
with James. Generally the Americans emerge from the inter-
national comedy with the reader's esteem for sterling virtues not
always exhibited by the more sophisticated Europeans. In
the later group of stories in particular, the American character,
presented with no hint of comic bias, actually shines with the
lustre of a superior spiritual fineness. This is what Rebecca
West has in mind in her somewhat impatient reference to
James's characters as American old maids, or words to that
effect.
And here we have the very heart of his Americanism, if we
may make bold to call it that. There is something in James's
estimate of spiritual values so fine, so immaterial, so indifferent
to success or happiness or whatever merely .practical issues,
as to suggest nothing so much as the transcendentalism of
Emerson, the otherworldliness of Hawthorne. There is here a
psychology not of Scott" or Thackeray, not even of George
Eliot, still less of any conceivable Continental novelist; and
one can hardly refer it to any but a New England origin.
. ' See Book III, Chap. vi. 'lUd.
100 Henry James

William James, the novelist's grandfather, was an Irishman

settled in Albany. He was described in a New York news-
paper of 1832 as "the Albany business man " and he laboured ;

so well at business that he left several millions to be divided

amoiig twelve heirs. Otherwise the relatives of the novelist
were quite innocent of practical affairs. His father, Henry
James,' was a philosopher-clergyman, a friend of Emerson's,
who carried with him everywhere the entire works of Sweden-
borg. Henry James, Jr., was bom 15 April, 1843, in New
York; but he went to Europe as a babe in arms. Two years
later, still in long clothes and waggling his feet, he noted from
the carriage window "a stately square surrounded with high-
roofed houses and having in the centre a taU and glorious
column" —the reader will recognize the Place Vend6me.
From the earliest times, in New York and Albany, all his
conceptions of culture had a transatlantic origin. The
caricatures of Gavami, Nash's lithographs of The Mansions 0/
England, the novels of Dickens read aloud in the family circle,

—these fed his imagination. He and his brothers went regu-

larly to a New York bookseller for a boys' magazine published
in London. Even their sense of a "political order" was
derived from Leech's drawings in Punch. Their education
—
was amazingly various and spasmodic, better adapted, one
might suppose, to the formation of novelists than of philo-
sophers. Dozens of private schools and tutors succeeded one
another in bewildering rapidity in New York, not to speak of
later instruction in Bonn and Geneva, in Paris and London.
All this while the main occupation of the future novelist
was the contemplative observation of character. The world of
Albany and New York was a world not of vulgar persons but
of artistic "values." Everyone was interesting as a "type":
type of "personal France" or of French "adventuress" (refer-
ring to early governesses), type of orphan cousins, type of wild
young man. Cousin Henry was a kind of Mr. Dick, cousin
Helen a kind of Miss Trotwood. James's account in A Small
Boy and Others shows him in those early days a mere vessel of
impressions suitable to the uses of art. All this was fostered
by the kind of discipline, or no discipline,maintained by their
metaphysical father. For religion, the boys went to all the
' See also Book III, Chap. xvii.
 Early Training loi

churches, and, we gather, in much the spirit in which they

approached any other aesthetic experience. As for liveHhood,
was always inclined to discourage any
or occupation, the father
immediate decision upon that point, lest a young man might
prematurely limit the development of his inner life. We are
reminded how small a place is taken in the stories of James by
what men do to earn a living. In America, it seemed, there
—
were apart from the unique case of Daniel Webster but two —
possible destinies for a young man. Either he went into
business or he went to the dogs. But the immediate family and
connections of James were always aspiring to that more liberal
foreign order in which was offered the third alternative of a
—
person neither busy nor tipsy, a cultivated person of leisure.
In i860 the family went to Hve in Newport, so that the
older brother might work in the studio of WiUiam Morris
Hunt; and Henry, who had earlier haunted the galleries of
Paris with his brother, welcomed this occasion to frequent a
place devoted to the making of pictures. In 1862, William
being at Lawrence Scientific School, Henry entered the Har-
vard Law School; still noting, in boarding-house or lecture-
room, personalities, chiaroscuro, mise en seine, more than the
precedents of law. The Civil War was the one distinctly
American fact which seems to have penetrated the conscious-
ness of Henry James. While he was prevented by lameness
from going to war himself, it was brought home to him, for
one thing, by the participation of two of his brothers. But
the war, like everything else, was followed by him, however
breathlessly, as a spectacle rich in artistic values. In 1864
the family were living in Boston, and from 1866 they were
definitely settled in Cambridge, William entering the Harvard
Medical School in that year; and in these days the young
author was forming excitingly important literary connections.
One friendship dating from this time was that with E. L. God-
kin, editor of the newly founded Nation. ' But most important
no doubt was that with the Nortons of Shady HiU, who later
introduced him to London society.
In 1870 died the person to whom James refers with the
greatest personal affection, his cousin Mary Temple, the model
for Milly Theale in The Wings of the Dove, as he tells us, and
' See Book III, Chap. xx.
102 Henry James

also —as we guess— ^for The Portrait of a Lady

Isabel Archer of
and more than one other of his loveliest American women.
Of her death he says "we felt it together as the end of our
youth." So far he brings the family record in his Notes of a
Son and Brother (1914). Meanwhile in 1869 occurred the
visit to London recorded in The Middle Years. To 1872
belongs a perhaps equally memorable visit to Italy. And
from that time forward until his death, 28 February, 1916,
he lived abroad; during the first years largely in Italy and
France ("inimitable France" and "incomparable Italy"), and
then, from about the year 1880, in the England of his adop-
tion, — making his bachelor home in London or in the old
Cinque Port of Rye. But he continued almost to the end to
publish his novels and tales in the great American magazines,
so that his first appeal was generally to the public here.
Evidences of the honour in which he was held in England
were the Order of Merit conferred upon him at New Year's,
1 9 16; and his portrait by Sargent, undertaken on the occasion

of his seventieth birthday, at the invitation of some two hun-

dred and fifty English friends. At the outbreak of the War,
none was more enthusiastic for the cause of the Allies, which
was associated with everything he held most precious. His
feeling for England at this time, on looking out across the
channel from his Sussex home, is described in what is perhaps
his latest piece of writing. Within the Rim, published in the
Fortnightly Review in August, 1917. It has been said that his
mortal illness was provoked by the vigour with which he took
up the work of relief for suffering Belgiimi and France.

James began an anonymous contribu-

his literary career as
tor of reviews to The North American Review and The Nation;
and such reviews and literary news-letters he continued to
write for many years. Only a small part of his critical writing
has appeared in book form; and it still remains for the curious
to trace the development of his literary theory from the
beginning. His books of fiction were frequently supplemented,
too, with books of impressions, in which he might commune
at length with the spirit of places, —
English, French, American,
Italian. He also wrote many plays, a few of which made
brief appearances on the London stage. But they were
 —
His First Period 103

"talky " and un theatrical and he succeeded neither in purging

;

the theatre of the commerciaHsm he deprecated nor even in

taking the pubHc fancy himself. His first attempts at fiction
were printed in The Atlantic Monthly and The Galaxy; but he
hardly emerges as an author of account before the appearance
of The Passionate Pilgrim in 1871. His first important novel
was Roderick Hudson, published in The Atlantic in 1875. His
first and only approach to popularity, whether in long or short

story, was made by Daisy Miller in 1878. The New York

Edition of his novels and tales, published during the years
1907 to 1909, is of the greatest interest because of the extended
discussion of his own work and the account of his imaginative
processes found in the Prefaces. It is, however, very far from
being a complete collection even of his works of fiction. It is
simply the choice made by James at that late date, and accord-
ing to his taste as it had then developed, of such of his stories
as he wished to be known by. It remains to be seen how far
posterity will submit to his judgment in the matter.
The threefold grouping of his novels already suggested was
in connection with the treatment of American themes. In
reference to form and method a more illuminating division
would be one of two periods: first, Roderick Hudson to The
Tragic Muse, 1 875-1 890; and second. The Spoils of Poynton to
The Sense of the Past, 1896-1917.
In the novels of the first group, he includes, in general,
more material than in the later ones, more incident, a greater
number of characters, a more extended period of time; and he
treats his material in the larger, more open, more lively manner
of the main English tradition. He also chooses, in the earlier
period, what may be considered more ambitious themes in
the matter of psychology. In Roderick Hudson, for example,
he undertakes to trace the degeneration of a man of genius, a
young American sculptor, when given the freedom of the
artistic life in Rome. —
This evolutionary or revolutionary
process of character, suggestive of George Eliot, is a "larger
order than he would ever have taken on in the later period. In
'

The Tragic Muse he reverts to the theme of the artistic tempera-

—
ment this time in disagreement with the world of affairs;
and he develops it by means of two great interrelated stories,
one dealing with an actress, one with a painter. In the later
 ;

104 Henry James

years he would not have undertaken thus to tell two stories at

the same time; and perhaps the artistic temperament itself
would have seemed to him too ambitious a theme. In the
earlier period, again, we find him sometimes treating subjects
touching on political or the more practical social problems,
though indeed his interest was never primarily in the problems.
The Bostonians is a somewhat satirical study, at one and the
same time, of the Boston character and of feminism while in ;

The Princess Casamassima the leading persons are revolution-

ary socialists, and political murder lurks in the background.
Probably the best, as well as the best liked, of the earlier
novels is The Portrait of a Lady (1881), which records at
length the European initiation of a generous-souled American
girl.

In the course of six years between the first and second

periods no novel of James was published; but during that

interim came the culmination of his long activity as a short-
story writer. It was his tendency always to subordinate incident
to character, to subordinate character as such to situation —or
the relations among the characters and in situation or charac-
;

ter, to prefer something rather out of the ordinary, some aspect

or type not too obviously interesting but calling for insight and
subtlety in the interpretation. Good examples, in the short
story, of this predilection are The Pupil, The Real Thing, and
The Altar of the Dead, all appearing in the early nineties; and
a little later. The Beldonald Holbein and J[ Turn of the Screw,
most haunting of ghost stories. In The Beldonald Holbein
the beautiful great lady has chosen for her companion a
supposedly unattractive middle-aged American woman, who
will admirably serve as a foil to her beauty. But certain
painters of her acquaintance having discovered that the foil is
herself remarkably "beautiful" —
that is, distinguished, signi-
ficant of feature, a subject worthy of Holbein —
it becomes
necessary to send her back home and get another companion
with less character engraved upon her countenance. How one
of the artists gets his revenge by painting Lady Beldonald
splendour of her mediocrity is not the point of interest
in all the
the point of interest is the fine discrimination shown by artist
— —
and author, and reader in evidence of their superior good
taste.
 His Masters in Art 105

Each tale ofJames is thus an "initiation" into some social

or artistic or spiritual value not obvious to the vulgar. And
each tale is a quiet picture, a social study, rather than the
smart anecdote prescribed by our doctors of the "short-
story." James is not rigorous in his limitation of the short
story to the magazine length; so that his tales are as likely to
take the form of the more leisurely nouvelle as of the brief and
sketchy conte. And so it was not surprising to find a tale
intended originally for a magazine short story enlarging itself
by insensible degrees into what is practically a novel. Such
was the case with The Spoils of Poynton, one of his finest stories,
which has the length of a novel, together with the restricted
subject-matter, the continuity, and economy of the short
story.
But these traits, had already grown to be James's
it is clear,

ideals for a narrative of whatever length. They were the

ideals of many of the foreign novelists whose personal influence
had swayed him in Paris and to a considerable extent those of
;

George Eliot, whose influence upon him must have been me-
diate, working through her French imitators, as well as em-
anating directly from her own work. More and more, serious '

novelists were denying themselves the breezy and picturesque |

variety of materials, the broad free stroke, of the old masters, in j

favour of a dramatic limitation, a dramatic closeness of weave,

a scientific minuteness of detail, an intimate psychological
notation, and a pictorial (as distinguished from picturesque)
—
consistency of tone, all of which we find in their extremest
development in the later novels of James. This is what
makes the international character of his art. Note should
be and
taken, of course, of a certain fussiness long-windedness,
as well as a certain tendency to the abstract, which are partly
to be set down to the score of personal idiosyncrasy. But in
general he is clearly following the ideals of George Eliot, of
Flaubert, of Turgenev. Perhaps too we should admit the
suggestion of F. M. Hueffer, who would trace back the lineage
of James, through Stendhal and other Frendi writers, ulti-
mately to Richardson, the early master of the technique of
manifold fine strokes, of the close and sentimental study of
souls.
Along with The Spoils of Poynton may be mentioned.
io6 Henry James

among the later novels, The Sacred Fount (1901) and What
Maisie Knew somewhat of the nature of
(1897) as partaking
long short stories. What Maisie Knew is, by the way, in a
class by not merely for reasons of technique too special
itself,

to be considered here, but also by reason of the great charm of

the little girl,-^-so naive, so earnest, so much a lady and so
much a girl, whose experience of evil is the subject of the story.
For the wiU suffice
full-fledged novels of the later period, it
to state briefly the themes of The Awkward Age (1899) and The
—
Golden Bowl (1904) without prejudice, however, to the special
claims of The Ambassadors, the novel considered by James
himself to be his most perfect work of art. The Awkward Age
is concerned with the adjustment called for in a certain London
circle by the emergence of the jeune fille and the consideration
due her innocence of the world. The adjustments prove to be
very extensive, but almost wholly subjective, and leaving
things very much where they were before so far as any outward
signs go. —
The book is almost literally aU talk, the talk of
people the most "civilized" and "modem," people the most
shy of "vulgarity, " who have ever been put in a book. It is a
—
fascinating performance for those who have the patience to
read it. The Golden Bowl is a study of a theme not unlike
that of The Portrait of a Lady. It is the story of an American
girl who marries an Italian prince, and the strategy by which
she wins his loyal affection. The time covered is much shorter
than that in the Portrait, the important characters only about
half as many, the amount of action much smaller and there is
:

little change of scene as compared with the earlier novel.

The length of the book is about the same and the space saved
;

by these various economies is devoted to the leisurely develop-

ment of a single situation as it shaped itself gradually in the
minds of those participating, the steady deepening of a sense
of mystery and misgiving, the tightening of emotional tension,
to a degree that means great drama for all readers for whom it
does not mean a very dull book.
For many it certainly means a very dull book.
readers In
a story almost everything has been discarded
this recipe for
which was the staple of the earlier English novel, even of
—
George Eliot, exciting incident, dramatic stuation, highly-
coloured character and dialogue, humour, philosophy, social
 '

^
His Latest Method io7

comment. Indeed, we may almost say the story itself has

been thrown out with the rest. For in the later novels and
tales of James there is not so much a story told as a situation
revealed; revealed to the characters and so to us; and the
process of gradual revelation, the calculated "release" of one
—
item after another that is the plot. It is as if we were
present at the painting of a picture by a distinguished artist,
as if we were invited to follow the successive strokes
by which
was made to bloom upon
this or that detail of his conception
the canvas; and when the last bit of oil had been applied, he
Should turn to us and say "Now you have heard Bordello's
story told." Some of us would be satisfied with the excite-
ment of having assisted at such a function, considering also
the picture which had thus
come into being. Others, and —
it is human nature, —
no doubt, would exclaim in vexed
bewilderment "But I have heard no story told!"

The stories of James tend to be records of seeing rather !

than of doing. The characters are more like patients than

agents; their business seems to be to register impressions; to
receive illumination rather than to make up their minds and |

But this is a way of conceiving our human

'

set about deeds.

business by no means confined to these novels; is it not more
or less characteristic of the whole period in which James wrote?
One passes by insensible degrees from the world of Renan to i

that of Pater and Swinburne, and thence to that of Oscar

Wilde and of writers yet living, in whom the cult of impres-
signshasJaeen^carried-to- lengths yet more extreme.
Among all these names the most 'significant here seems
to be that of Walter Pater, whose style and tone of writing — ,

corresponding to his intellectual quality and bias more —

nearly anticipate the style of James than do those of any
other writer, English or French. It does not matter that
Pater's subject is the art of the past and James's the life of
the present. No two writers were ever more concerned with ,

mere "impressions," and impressions mean for them dis-

criminations, intimate impressions, subtle and finely sym-}'
pathetic interpretations. None ever found it necessary, inl,

order to render the special quality of their impressions, to try /

them in so many different lights, to accompany their state-/

io8 Henry James

ments with so many and reservations impulses

qualifications :

giving rise to sentences more curiously complex and of longer

breath than were ever penned by writers of like pith and
moment. They were both of them averse to that raising of the
voice, that vehement or emphatic manner, characteristic of
the earlier Victorians and supposed to be associated with
strong feelings and firm principles. These reasonable and
well-bred writers, if they ever had strong feelings or firm
principles, could be trusted to dissimulate them under a tone
of quiet urbanity. They abhorred abrupt transitions and
violent attitudes. They proceed ever in their discourse
smoothly and without marked inflection, softly, as among
tea-tables, or like persons with weak hearts who must guard
themselves against excitement. There is a kind of hieratic
gentlen6ss and fastidiousness, —
and yet withal a hint of breath-
less awe, of restrained enthusiasm, —
in the manner in which
they celebrate the mysteries of their religion of culture, their
religion of art.
This, we say of James, is anything but American, indige-
nous this
; is the Zeitgeist; this is the spirit of England in the
England in
"aesthetic nineties" reacting against the spirit of
the time of Carlyle. But then we think of the "passionate
pilgrimage" of Isabel Archer and the others; we think of
James's Middle Years; we think, it may be, of ourselves and
eastward prostrations of our own. And we realize that what
the romancer has conjured up is a world not strange to our
experience. His genius is not the less American for present-
ing us, before all things, this vision of a bride rushing into the
arms of her bridegroom: vision of the mystic marriage (shall
we say ?) of new-world faith and old-world culture.
 CHAPTER XIII

Later Essayists

WHEN,
from
speaking to his classmates on their graduation
college, William EUery Channing^ made the
address entitled The Present Age (1798), the note
that he uttered was one that thenceforth reverberated through-
out our national life and literature. It showed affiliation with
the French Revolution, and with the England of Bums, Shelley,
and Wordsworth; and notable is the emphasis on the possibility
of all human progress, not alone American progress, and on the
importance of that culture which shall be shared by all classes
of mankind. To material objects Channing gave their due, but
regarded them merely as the manifestations of character and
of power that have in higher fields their most inspiring repre-
sentation and beauty was for him a vast treasury of benedic-
;

tion wherefrom he wished his fellow men to draw the priceless

blessings available to the poorest purse. Thus the essay on
Self-Culture, written as an address in 1838, is a composition to
which the writings of Emerson, Curtis, Higginson, Mabie, and
later authors owe a decided, even if in some cases unconscious,
—
debt the practical and poetical blending of humanity with
the humanities.
As Channing was the earliest, in that fimiament of lecturer-
where Emerson shone as the most benignant star, so
essayists
Nathaniel Parker Willis^ is the prototype of later semi-literary
American journalists. Now, the mark of the journalist, the trait
which surely establishes both his immediate success and his final
oblivion, is the intentness of seizure on what thepresent can give,
in swift, exciting, easily apprehensible interest. It was always
the present that fascinated Willis; and, save in fleeting mo-
'See Book II, Chap. viii. " Ibid., Chap. iii.

109
no Later Essayists

ments of early days, his vision did not seek the future with any
sincere scrutiny. Revelling in personalities, he is expository
only secondarily, if at all; and inspiring never. The writer of
our own time who works up an interview with some man of
mark is following Willis not alone in his interest in the super-
ficialities ofpersonality, but often in the very tricks of style,
varying from gaudy metaphor to the epithet that has the tang
of the unexpected. Our journalists, by and large, remain lesser
members of the Willis tribe.
Still a third writer, Washington Irving, ' exerted a notable

influence as the originator of a literary form which, for want

of a better phrase, might be called the story-essay, wherein
the narrative element runs its gentle course over a bed of
personal reflections and descriptive comment of individual
flavour. He had a whole school of followers, ^ and even Haw-
thorne ' for a time moved among them while two more natural
;

inheritors of his moods of tender sentiment and gentle satire

are Donald Grant Mitchell (1822-1908) and George William
Curtis, with whom the history of our later essayists may weU
begin.
The two volumes, Reveries of a Bachelor (1850) and Dream
Life (1851), which Mitchell, as a young writer, issued tinder
the pseudonym of Ik Marvel, are volumes that strike the same
chords whose artistically modulated music resounds in so much
of Irving, to whom the latter volume was dedicated; while in
The Lorgnette, or Studies of the Town (1850) we have a series
of papers directly modelled on Salmagundi. These sketches,
despite the facile manner of their kindly satire, belong in the
topical realm of ephemera, and are of interest mainly to the
historical critic,who, harking back to the days of The Spec-
tator and The Taller, finds in them another nexus between
English and American Uterature. Not so, however, can we
dismiss Reveries of a Bachelor and Dream Life. Their hold on
the affections of later generations is secure despite that naive
sentimentality frequently displayed by American literature in
the period just preceding the Civil War. Both these books
present a series of pictures in the imaginary
life of their author,

and there a general adherence to the concept of life as a

is

succession of the seasons. This parallel does not, however,

'See Book II, Chap. IV. "/Wd.,Chap. vii. ' /Wd., Chap. xi.
 Ik Marvel m
lead into paths of wintry regret. We find even December
logic taking on a golden hue in such a sentence as this from
the Reveries: "Affliction has tempered joy, and joy adorned
affliction. Life and all its troubles have become distilled into a
—
holy incense rising ever from your fireside ian offering to your
household Gods. " "And what if age comes '

—
Mitchell writes
'

—
further on, in the vein of Browning's Rabbi Ben Ezra "what
else proves the wine? It is but retreating towards the pure
sky depths." The note of joy in the springtime of life, the
accent of sympathy for young griefs as well as young loves, echo
from these charming pages; while the ingenuousness of Ik
Marvel's sentiments is embedded in an old-fashioned form of
sentimental phraseology which brings a smile to the lips of the
sophisticated critic. But after all it is the smile in the reader's
heart that attests the lasting human appeal of both the Reveries
and Dream Life. These books were written while their author
was still in his twenties, and they have the immaturity, both of
technique and philosophy, which precedes the labour of the
craftsman and the experiences of the man yet they have also,
;

with the aroma of youth, that even subtler fragrance the gift —
of the gods to all who comprehend the value of the dreaming
hour.
There are two elements in these works secondary in interest
only to the major themes of love, sorrow, and ambition. One is
the immediate affection for nature, nowhere more beautifully
expressed than in this springtime picture: "The dandelions lay
along the hillocks like stars in a sky of green." The other
note is of love for old books. These themes are repeatedly
found in Mitchell's later writings; and My Farm of Edgewood
(1863) — Edgewood was country home
his near New Haven
—^began a of
series volumes among the earliest of a steadily

increasing department of American literature revolving around

agricultural and rural themes.
Mitchell's own experiences with the soil of his native Con-
necticut are,in My Farm of Edgewood, recounted with the serious-
ness of the scientific farmer and the grace of the man of letters.
In Wet Days at Edgewood (1865) his pleasant discourse ranges
from ancient country poets to the latest practical studies of soil
cultivation while in the yet later volume Rural Studies, with
;

Hints for Country Places (1867) he continues in confidential

112 Later Essayists

mood to the widening circles of those readers whose love for

country life his own writings had in no small measure developed.
Thus Mitchell figures in a very personal way in the large group
of American writers on nature, and deserves recognition as an
influential pioneer in directing, with the urbanity of the scholar,
the attention of his countr5rmen to non-urban delights. This
point emphasized because, all told, American essayists have,
is

in their treatment of nature, covered an exceptionally wide

range, and approached this theme, both as to style and inter-
pretation, in ways that repay the most interested study:
Audubon, the important naturalist, indulging in exaggerated
'

poetical rhetoric in acquainting us with the habits of birds;

Emerson" and Thoreau, ' not impervious to the interest of
nature's details, yet winning from them the highest spiritual
sustenance for the world of men; Agassiz" and Warner and
Mabie and Burroughs and John Muir, approaching each ac-
cording to his temperament and qualifications this ever boun-
tiful theme. From some of these authors we derive knowledge
concerning animal life and plant life from others, messages of
;

the intimate relationship between human life and the great

world of nature. But Mitchell, in his Edgewood writings,
stands as one whose main interest sprang from the soil itself.
Towards the end of his long life, Mitchell wrote four volumes
on English Lands, Letters, and Kings (1890), and two on Ameri-
can Lands and Letters (1897-99). Here are many shrewd ob-
servations concerning his contemporaries, as well as pungent
estimates, often mingled with humour, of the writings and
character of earlier authors but these books, with their wealth
;

of pictures, were intended for the public at large, and cannot

be considered as original contributions to critical literature.
In them we have the somewhat obvious fruit of his travels,
experiences, and readings, but in a manner that has less flavour
than the gleanings of travel, published in far younger days,
such as A New Sheaf from the Old Fields of Continental Europe
(1847). Those earlier descriptive papers and legends, so
immediately related to Irving' s Tales of a Traveller, are more in
accord with Mitchell's fame as the author of the Reveries and
Dream Life, and through them Mitchell is most pleasantly
' See Book III, Chap. xxvi. » See Book II, Chap. ix.
3 lUd., Chap. X. 4 See Book III, Chap. xxvi.
 8

Ik Marvel 113

affiliated with many other American essayists —Emerson,

Bryant, '
^ —
Bayard Taylor, Curtis who made their travels the
basis of a great body of work that varies from the decorous
pace of well-phrased description to graceful flights of fancy
and even to soarings of the creative imagination.
Before we leave Mitchell there is, however, to be noted one
point which differentiates him from the majority of American
essayists. Again like Irving, whose life Mitchell's parallels in
details of ill health, early travels abroad, the study and abandon-
ment of law, and the tenure of official position in Europe,
the author of Dream Life held to the belief that a writer is not
called upon to take an active part in the great political and
social questions of his day, if he feels that he can best express
himself and, in the long run, most effectively serve mankind
through adherence to his literary art along the lines of his
own predilections. Irving, of course, was at one time most
adversely criticized by his countrymen for jurt such an attitude,
and his protracted stay abroad was misconstrued as a form of
national renegadism. Mitchell escaped hostile comment for
his general abstention from participation in those public topics,
ranging from the abolition of slavery and the preservation of
the Union to Civil Service reform, woman suffrage, national
copyright, and other themes of social betterment that led
Whittier,^ Lowell/ Curtis, and Higginson, and indeed almost
all the leading American poets and essayists for the last fifty
years, to become, at times, propagandists. This absence of
the outright didactic note a decided characteristic of Ik Mar-
is

vel, leaving him none the less creditably in the brotherhood

of those authors whose message remains abidingly sweet and
wholesome.
The most remarkable blending of the man of letters and
the devoted public servant among American authors is mani-
fested in the life and writings of George WilHam Curtis (1824-
92). In all the literary essays and addresses of Curtis, and
in even the briefest of his papers for "The Easy Chair," is
apparent his incomparably suave diction; but here, too, is that
firmness of thought clothing his civic aspirations in the im-
pregnable armour of dauntless and logical convictions. And

See Book II, Chap. v. ' See Book III, Chaps, x and xiv.
3 See Book II, Chap. xiii. " lUd., Chap. xxiv.

VOL. ni —
 —;

"4 Later Essayists

how graciously the two great streams in our essay literature

the Puritan stream softened by the elemental thought of the
brotherhood of man, with Channing as its fountainhead,
and the genial flow of benign art, with Irving as its fountain-
—
head have their confluence in Curtis! "Honor," he writes,
"is conscious and willing loyalty to the highest inward
leading. It is the quality which cannot be insulted"; thus
expressing the thought which underlay the memorable phrase
of a later essajdst, Woodrow Wilson, President of the United
States. One recalls in this connection another of Curtis's
sentences: " Reputation is favorable notoriety as distinguished
from fame, which is permanent approval of great deeds and
noble thoughts by the best intelligence of mankind.
The literary career of Curtis falls into two parts. Bom in
Providence, he went, as a boy, to New York, where, for a short
while, he held a clerkship. His first direct connection with
other men came with his sojourn in 1842 at Brook
of letters
Farm and this was followed by travels in Europe and in Egypt
;

and Syria. The result was a series of delightful books, based

on letters that he had sent to the New York Tribune; and in
them we find Curtis giving full and original vent to his nimble
fancy and his graceful descriptive powers. The Nile Notes of a
Howadji (1856), The Howadji in Syria (1852), and Lotus Eaters
(1852) are thus delectable resting places for the literary student
who seeks to cover the territory of our travel literature. In
Potiphar Papers (1853), Curtis resorted to our chief city, con-
tinuing the Salmagundi tradition of local satire, not without
immediate evidence of the influence of Thackeray; chastizing
with somewhat gentle blows of the moralist's whip the more
obvious faults of a community too much given to ostentation
and pointing with no very stem finger at the social excres-
cences of his (and other) times. But a more individual flavour
comes to the front in Prue and I (1856), one of the most charm-
ing of American books, wherein the poor man endowed with the
gift of imagination is shown to be a far richer and infinitely
more sympathetic figure than the millionaire whose festivities
he contemplates with the eye of a philosopher whom love has
blessed. About this same began those papers
period, Curtis
which made the "Editor's Easy Chair" in Harper's Monthly a
national, as well as a literary, institution; and he began, also,
 George William Curtis "5
his public lectures, which,till the time of his death some forty

years later, were so beneficially to affect the national life.

Prior to i860 Curtis was almost exclusively a man of let-
ters; and had not civic duties spoken to him with peremptory
voice, his early work bids us believe that he would have rounded
out his careerwith many volumes of the most graciously
conceived and gracefully expressed essays and fiction. But
with his entrance, during Lincoln's first candidacy, into the
were made -largely sub-
field of politics, his literary activities
servient to his civic endeavours and aspirations. First one of
the pillars of the Republican party, and later chairman of the
Independent Republicans who rebelled against the nomination
of Blaine; the chief exponent and the most influential advocate
of Civil Service reform; the kindly but firm leader in every
forward moving social cause, Curtis, during the latter half of
his life, gave up the chance that was his to achieve prepon-
derant literary fame, winning, instead, his high title in the
citizenship of his country. What he said of Lowell may
—
even more cordially be said of him that he had the "grace,
charm, and courtesy of established social order, blending with
the masculine force and the creative energy of the Puritan
spirit." The intimacy between Curtis, Lowell, and Norton,
so fully revealed in the letters of the three, embodies one of
the rarest and most fragrant episodes of friendship among
American men of letters. Each influenced the others, strength-
ening that faith in one's self which, among civilized men, is the
elementary religion. Each of these three was true to the con-
viction that acts which primarily serve ambition are seldom in
accordance with the ambition to serve. Yet Curtis, for all his
unfearing rectitude, felt most keenly that only those who are
virtuous have the right to judge severely; but a part of their
virtue consists in the frequent kindly abnegation of this right.
In his essays and addresses on Burns, on Bryant, on Sum-
ner,on Wendell Phillips, Curtis combines the qualities of the
scholar, the lover of romance, and the radical reformer; while
in his attitude towards nature, as apart from his interpretation
and exposition of the deeds of individuals, he shows a kinship
with Thoreau in his rarest moods. Lowell would have spumed
the thought that Thoreau was our most nobly imaginative
nature writer (to whom Emerson owed a debt that has not yet
ii6 Later Essayists

been fully appreciated) and indeed, one recalls how Lowell, as

;

editor of The Atlantic Monthly, objected to a paragraph of

Thoreau's wherein the pines were made to tower into a higher
heaven than might be reached by the souls of lesser men.
Curtis we cannot imagine thus adopting the theologian's views.

What man of you all [writes Curtis in his paper on Autumn Days]
what man of you all is as true and noble for a man as the oak upon
yon hill-top for an oak? The oak obeys every law, regularly
increases and develops, stretches its shady arms of blessing, proudly
wears its leafy coronel, and drops abundant acorns for future oaks
as faithful but who of you all does not violate the law of your life?
;

And a little further on: "A stately elm is the archbishop of my

green diocese. In full canonicals he stands sublime. His
flowing robes fill the blithe air with sacred grace." It is in
sentences like these that Curtis takes firm place beside Thoreau,
both of them ambassadors bringing messages from the world of
—
nature to the world of men and beside John Muir (1838-
1914), who, though bom in Scotland, was thoroughly natural-
ized in America, as inventive as any Yankee, and a passionate
foster -son of the western mountains.
To sit in judgment on the authors whose lives outran that
of Curtis —
men whose hospitality was extended to so many
younger writers, and whose personal inspiration has quickened
—
unforgettable hours is no easy task; and far more grateful it
would be to saunter in informal essay fashion along the paths of
past days, placing wreaths of affectionate reverence in homes
where Norton, Higginson, Stedman dwell no more. But we
are here concerned less with the charm of men in their social
intercourse than with the printed pages which are to suc-
ceeding generations their sole direct heritage — direct heritage
because who shall gauge those influences which, emanating
from personalities like Norton's and Stedman 's, come to flower
long after the hand that cast the initial seed has withered in
the grave? The bibUographer of Charles Eliot Norton (1827-
1908) finds comparatively little to record that is of importance
to the American essay. A study of Dante notes of travel and ;

study in Italy; some papers published in The Atlantic Monthly;

and, later in life, historical studies concerning church building in
—
the Middle Ages, these indicate to some extent the trend of
 Charles Eliot Norton "7
Norton's interests, and form a distinguished contribution in
those particular fields of literature and art. ^ It is, however, to
his letters, published after his death, that we must have recourse
for fuller appreciation of his place in the annals of our literary
culture. The revelation is a fine one. We behold a being
of simple and unswerving rectitude, with a capacity for noble
friendships, and with a rare power for instilling enthusiasm.
Not only to the large group of students who came, at an im-
pressionable age, under the influence of the Professor of the
Fine Arts at Harvard University, but also to men like Ruskin,
LoweU, Howells, and other intellectual leaders on both sides of
the Atlantic, the clear-visioned Norton spoke heartening words.
In a letter, in 1874, 'to Carlyle, Norton wrote of his aim

to give the students some definite notions of the Pine Arts as a mode
in which men in past times have expressed their thoughts, faiths,
sentiments, and desires; to show the political, moral, and social
conditions which have determined the foftns of the Arts, and to
qtiicken so far as may be, in the youth of a land barren of visible
memorials of former times, the sense of connection with the past
and gratitude for the effort and labours of other nations and former
generations.

This was Norton's gift to America: an accentuation of the con-

tinuity and permanence of the ideal aspects of the race life.

Culture, with both its esthetic and moral implications, was the
inheritance of this New Englander, in whose idealism was
inwoven that Brahminical strain which, while it strengthens, at
times compresses; and so we find him, in his letters as in his
life, a standard-bearer of cultivation who yet lacked the buoy-

ant enthusiasm of American democracy. His early letters

never overflow with the spirits of youth the missives of middle
;

life contain frequent sentences reflecting upon the unsatis-

factoriness of American society; and this morally Hebraic
descendant of ultra-religious Puritan forbears, sounds, in his
later letters, a note of impatient agnosticism. But withal,
how fine a quality flavours his correspondence, his comments
on Whitman, Sumner, Lincoln, Wendell Philhps, and other
subjects of his pen Norton stands among American essayists
!

and lecturers as the most un3aelding critic of vulgarity in the

'See also Book III, Chap. xxv.
ii8 Later Essayists

social life of his day and of futile sentimentalizing in the

political life. We miss in his letters that sense of humour which
is the touchstone of the philosopher, and which Norton's
friend Curtis used as a literary force in his pubhc career.
We miss also the hght touch of fancy and the quick thrust
of wit while, at times, fastidiousness of language and thought
;

accentuates Norton's aloofness from the ways of other

men. When George E. Woodberry sent Norton, in 1881, his
verses on America, Norton commented on their surplusage of
patriotism in this manner: "We love our country, but with
keen-eyed and disciplined passion, not blindly exalting her.
... To do justice to the America that may be, we must not
exalt the America that is, beyond her worth." This kind of
integrity of judgment, this almost bleak disregard of the
popular aspect of things, this stoical insistence on the discipline
of passion, made Norton a force to be reckoned with, even
when, almost alone among our American men of letters, he took
fearless issue with the national administration at the time of
the war with Spain. Yet his power with the written word was
not sufficiently forceful to assure any very vital hold on men of
a later day. He was a phenomenon of aesthetic intuition and of
intellectual purity to whom we willingly offer tribute of admir-
ation yet ;
we are aware of that pessimistic drop of acid which
made his blood run a little more coldly than that of his fellow
authors, precipitating the residue of an ultimately weary ex-
pression of New England culture.
One of our earlier essayists, Henry T. Tuckerman, ' in his
Defense of Enthusiasm attacked the New England philosophy
of life because of its too preponderant insistence on mental
capacity and moral tendencies, and wrote " It seems as if the :

great art of human culture consists chiefly in preserving the

glow and freshness of the heart." Had Tuckerman lived in
the later decades of the last century, he might, indeed, have
felt out of sympathy with Norton, but not with many of our
other essayists. The Civil War brought New England emotion-
ally into the full flow of that larger national life for which
Emerson and his school had prepared it, and while the later
American essayists have abstained from chauvinism, and have
written with the scholar's appreciation of what foreign culture
' See Book II, Chap. in.
 Thomas Wentworth Higginson "9

has to offer, theirs is a consistent and hopeful interpretation of

American ideals. Consider, for instance, Thomas Wentworth
Higginson (1823-1911). At the age of twenty-seven he gave
up his pastorate at Newburyport because he ran counter to the
sentiments of his congregation, believing that his foremost
duty was to preach a word for mankind in attacking the
institution of slavery. With Theodore Parker and Wendell
Phillips he became one of the leaders of the Abolition move-
ment, daring, in aiding the fugitive slaves, to obey a law higher
for him than that of Congress. In the dangers of the battle-
field he shared, when, as colonel of the first regiment of free
coloured soldiers, he served in the inevitable conflict. His
writings, beginning in 1853 and continuing almost incessantly
for well over threescore years, carried him into fields of history,
literature, education, and politics, and reveal him as sym-
pathetically familiar with the culture of the ancients as with
the creative thought of modem
democracy. In his translation
of Epictetus, in his delightful essay on Sappho, he was the
scholar of catholic tastes, whose shelves in his simple Cambridge
home gave equally gracious welcome to the message of the
Stoics and the appealing human lyricism of Heine; yet who
wrote in the fiy-leaf of a copy of his own volume of essays
entitled Old Cambridge, wherein he discusses the literary epochs
of his native town and writes at length on Holmes, Longfellow,
and Lowell "This book is one of my favourites among my too
:

numerous productions because it reproduces so fully the men

and traditions which surrounded my early youth." These
traditions, whose finest essence his own life emphasizes, con-
noted for him those duties of citizenship that made him a mili-
tant intellectual leader to the end of his long life; perhaps not
the least of his services being his espousal of the cause of woman
suffrage, whereto his admiration for Margaret Fuller, whose
life he wrote, contributed a quota of immediately personal

enthusiasm. Yet so varied was Higginson's culture, so easy

flowing his style, so wide the fund of quotations on which he
loved to draw, and so pleasant his wit, that his essays, even
when propagandist, are literature. And through them all
runs a stream of optimism which, let it be admitted, is to a
great degree a matter of temperament yet no less constructive
an element on that account. But for this optimism, this
I20 Later Essayists

American moulding the living material of his own day

faith in
into the finer forms inherent in his country's institutions,
Emerson, the most influential of our essayists, would have had
a lesser hold on the minds of his fellow citizens; and the value
of Higginson comes largely from a similar happy endowment.
The ministry, whose record in our annals is so frequently
interwoven with that of American literature, had its greatest
literary figures in New England. A distinguished exception
was Moncure D. Conway (i 832-1 907), who, like Higginson,
gave up his pulpit because of his anti-slavery pronouncements.
A Virginian by birth, he did his most important work as an
editor in Boston, where he conducted The Dial and The Com-
monwealth; and as a lecturer in England, especially in his
illuminating discourses during the Civil War. In later life,
again in America, he wrote many papers of sterling worth,
essays notable because of their high ethical plane; yet, lacking
the authentic fire of genius, the light of his writings has now
merely become mingled in the wide effulgence emanating from
that group of great citizen-writers in whose ranks he marched
with so firm a tread.
Probably the most immediately successful exponent of
practical optimism in the Cambridge group was Edward
Everett Hale (1822-1909), Higginson's senior by but a year,
and like Higginson a clergyman and one of the Overseers of
Harvard University. There is a pleasant logic in the fact that
this grand-nephew of the Revolutionary patriot whose only
regret, as he mounted the scaffold, was that he had but one
life to lose for his country, should have written a tale that,

despite the startling improbability of its plot, is, in its stir-

ring presentation of the value of patriotism, a masterpiece of
our literature. But while the fame of Edward Everett Hale
would be assured if he had done nothing further than to write,
during the Civil War times. The Man
Without a Country, ' let it
not be forgotten that his volume published in 1870, entitled Ten
Times One is Ten, led to the establishment of philanthropic
societies the world over, the nature of whose charitable activi-
'

ties is Look up and not down look

suggested in their motto : ' ;

forward and not back; look out and not in; lend a hand."
Hale's magazine with the final phrase of the preceding motto
" See Book III, Chap. vi.
 Julia Ward Howe; Emma Lazarus 121

was a journal of progress and a record of charity,

as its title
wherein were continued those ideas of liberal Christianity that
underlie an earlier publication, Old and New, which he had
founded in 1869. To both he contributed many papers, while
articles on historical and literary themes came frequently
from his pen, in addition to many stories of discovery and
adventure, of invention, of war, and of the sea. In his recently
published letters there is further disclosure of his mental
fertility and of his kind and practical Christianity; although
his style is simple to the point of bareness, and the ordinary
literary graces are absent.
Hale is not the only American author whose fame is inti-
mately inwoven with a single piece of work. The same period
in our history that brought forth his masterpiece is responsible
for the immortal poem to which the marching feet and the ded-
icated hearts of myriad soldiers kept time as they swept on
to bloody struggles with The Battle Hymn of the Republic on
their lips. But Julia Ward Howe
(1819-1910) was not alone
the creator of the most potent of our battle poems. ' Her place
is secure in the record of many liberalizing movements, espe-

cially those which had to do with the social and political eleva-
tion of her own
sex and, beyond this, she was the author of de-
;

lightful papers ranging in subject matter from a paper on

Aristophanes, prepared as a lecture at the Concord School
of Philosophy, to illuminating studies of social manners — such
—
as The Salon in America and Is Polite Society Polite? full of
intelligent criticism and that discriminating humour which is
yet too serious to indulge in any easy satire. Her achieve-
ment, as a whole, entitles her to rank as the most notable woman
of letters bom and bred in the metropolis of America; although
another woman belonging, like Julia Ward Howe, to an old
New York family displayed at least equal intellectual rarity.
Nor was the regard wherein Emma Lazarus (1849-87) was
held by such men as Emerson, Gilder, Stedman, Channing,
Eggleston, Dana, and Godkin due alone to those poems and
essays which did more than the writings of any other American
author to instil among Christians a sympathy for that people of
whom Emma Lazarus was so brave an exponent. Quite apart
from her poems and articles on Jewish themes, there can be no
See Book III, Chap. ii.
 !

122 Later Essayists

question that, one excepts Margaret Fuller, there was no

if

woman among our authors more ardent than Emma Lazarus

in her interminable search for aesthetic culture, no woman
whose conversation, to quote the words of the great editor
Charles A. Dana, was.more "deeply interesting and intensely-
instructive." Stedman once said that she was the "natural
companion of scholars and thinkers," a comment borne out by
Emerson's abiding affection and admiration for her. In the
field of prose, some of her most memorable achievements were
her essays on Russian Christianity versus American Judaism,
and her paper on Disraeli. The first of these, written some
twoscore years ago at the time of Russian massacres, presents,
without undue apology, or undue praise of her race, the basic
attitude that should be taken in regard to the persecution of
the Jews, and as the problem is still one that civilization has
not solved with fearless honour, let us listen again to Emma
Lazarus, as, reverting to the thought expressed by one of our
most high-minded statesmen, she concludes that essay:

Mr. Evarts has put the question upon the only ground which
Americans need consider or act upon. It is not that it is the
—
oppression of Jews by Russians it is the oppression of men and
women by men and women and we are men and women
;

To this trio of noble women —Margaret FuUer, Julia Ward

Howe, Emma Lazarus—there should be added the name of
Harriet Beecher Stowe (1812-96),' who, like Hale with his one
great story, and Julia Ward Howe with her one great poem, is
remembered on account of her one great novel. Uncle Tom's
Cabin has thrown her essays into the shade, where their
existence remains unknown to the large majority of present-
day readers. Yet those who love to have recourse to old
pages of The Atlantic Monthly find her an essayist of charm
and range. Her House and Home Papers, published under the
pseudonym of Christopher Crowfield, wherein the father of the
family discusses all manner of domestic topics,
their key- have
note in the thought that whereas to keep a house a practical is

affair "in the region of weights, measure, colour ... to keep

a home lies not merely in the sphere of all these, but it takes in
' See Book III, Chap. xi.
 Charles Dudley Warner 123

the intellectual, the social, the spiritual, the immortal." The

relationship of parents to children, and the nature of child-
hood the servant question; matters of house decoration;
itself;

Aunt Mehitable, with her "scru-

the inherited predilections of
pulous lustrations of every pane of glass"; discussions con-
cerning education, hospitality, pastimes helpful considerations
;

regarding the temptations that assail human nature, are all

mingled in a sane atmosphere of simplicity and true worth
which embraces, but in no Puritan spirit, the quietly heroical
approach to life, the desire not only to enjoy but the willing-
ness also "to encounter labour and sacrifice."
It was Mrs. Stowe's famous brother, Henry Ward Beecher,'
who introduced to the world of letters the most likable of all
the later American essayists, Charles Dudley Warner (1829-
1900), when, in 1870, Beecher wrote the preface to Warner's
first book, My Summer in a Garden. In these papers, as in his
Saunterings (1872), based on European travels, and his Back-
log Studies (1873), there are a genial humour and a grace of
style decidedly reminiscent of Washington Irving, whose life
Warner was later to write in a most sympathetic way. In the
long course of his lectures and essays we find many stimulating
appeals for greater personal and national culture, and helpful
discussions in the field of social topics, especially in connection
with prison reform. His travel essays, recording adventures
and observations in Europe and America, Africa and Asia, are
enjoyable additions to this branch of our literature; while
Warner's activities as an abolitionist bring him further into
touch with his fellow writers of the second half of the nineteenth
century. He, more than any other of the later essayists,
affected his lesser contemporaries of the pen. His papers,
with their fireside warmth, their sketchy touch, their humorous
and intimate personal note, were studied by many writers for
magazines and newspapers, a host of commonplace scribes who
found it easier to imitate the Warner flavour than to create any
original atmosphere in their own writings.
For a dehcious example of Warner's style one might turn
to that part of My Summer in a Garden where the adult agri-
culturist has an entirely ordinary experience in which his
labours are set at naught by the universal characteristics of
See Book II, Chap. xxii.
 : :

124 Later Essayists

boyhood. Here Warner rounds out a paragraph which begins

with an expression of semi-comic awe, with a reference to the
Greek conception of fate as that element in human affairs
against which are hopeless the prescience of the wisest minds,
the provisions of the most arduous hands. The most baffling
and sombre of themes is lightly and delightfully touched,
while the author instils in our attitude towards a pear tree that
sense of human companionship which, elsewhere in his pages,
makes peas and beans and the upspringing asparagus warm
and living things.
There are two other papers of Warner's from which a few
lines may indicate how he influenced the thought of his times,
and how he is directly related to other American essayists.
One is The Relation of Literature to Life, an address introductory
to a course of five lectures delivered at various universities.
Warner differed from others of our critics in his belief that
the development of American letters would be along lines
diverging from, rather than continuing in, the channels of
English literature, and his first precept, as a student and
expositor of American literature, was "to study the people for
whom it was produced." In the light of our national char-
acterwould thus be revealed the light of our works of author-
ship and Warner clearly understood that in the first century of
;

the United States the national character expressed itself most

widely in those activities of invention, material production
and construction, path-finding, and path-clearing, which have
led to concrete prosperity — all of which Warner summarizes in
the phrase "the ideal of Croesus. " But side by side with the
more material tendencies, he perceived those finer currents
which bear the rarer cargo of American idealism. Thus while
Warner with frankness pointed out that the majority of people
look upon literature as a decoration rather than as an essential
element in their lives, and while he saw that culture had its
own unfortunate arrogances, yet he showed how poetry (and
allthat poetry connotes) supplies the highest wants of a people
that literature is power as well as pleasure. In his Thoughts
Suggested by Mr. Froude's Progress, Warner wrote

When we speak of progress we may mean men or things. We

may mean the lifting of the race as a whole by reason of more
 Hamilton Wright Mabie 125

power over the material world, by reason of what we call the

conquest of nature; or we may mean a higher development of the
individual man, so that he shall he better and happier.

In progress of both these kinds Warner had faith. He never

forsook the American birthright of optimism, while the ethical
note in his writings, continuing the New England tradition, was
uttered with so much grace and fine whimsicality of style that
it lost didactic harshness.
There can be no doubt that American literature has con-
siderably suffered from the platitudinous didactic note. It is
for this reason that, with sentiments of utmost civic respect,
with full appreciation for the fluent diction of the most prolific
of our later essay writers, we must regard Hamilton Wright
Mabie (1845-1916) as a teacher of sweetness and sanity, as
a fair-minded expositor of literature, as a friendly observer
of nature, but not as an important man of letters. Lacking
colour, sharpness of outline, light and shade, —all those quali-

ties which the great stylists have as effectually at their com-

—
mand as have the greatest painters, he represents perhaps
more convincingly than any other of our essayists both the
possibilitiesand limitations inherent in writers seeking to
bring "sweetness and light" to a generation of readers whose
early education comes from the public schools, and who, for
later enlightenment, turn to innumerable magazines. As the
editor of The Independent, as a lecturer, as an indefatigable
author of volumes of essays, Mabie was a useful teacher in his
own day, but there is little in his writings that those who are
conversant with his European and American contemporaries
cannot find expressed elsewhere with more force and originality.
Mabie was a voluminous writer on literary topics, but
two keener students of literature, among the American writ-
ers in the second half of the nineteenth century, were Edwin
Percy Whipple (1819-86) and Edmund Clarence Stedman
( 1 833-1 908). Whipple is a critic whose attainments have
been neglected by later readers, yet whose works have force and
clarity of expression, sharp insight, frequent wit. He was
bom in Gloucester, Massachusetts, the very year that Wash-
ington Irving's Sketch Book marked the commencement of
American belles-lettres; but his first book, Essays and Reviews
126 Later Essayists

(1848), allieshim rather with the Macaulay school of essajdsts

than with the more personal and leisurely Irving tradition.
Indeed, it was Whipple's brilliant article on Macaulay, written
in 1843, that made its author known to the literary world of
Boston, where Whipple, a young man of twenty-four, was then
employed in the brokerage business; and Macaulay 's style is
reflected in much of the earlier work of his American admirer.
In the lectures and essays contained in the volumes entitled
Literature and Life (1871) and Character and Characteristic Men
(1877) Whipple continued to reveal that really keen pene-
tration into the strata of values and that ready entrance into
the temperament of his subject which had been shown in
his earlier appraisals of men and books. There are few better
essays on British critics than Whipple's paper wherein, in
charm of wit he is "by no means
discussing Jeffrey, to whose
insensible,"Whipple not only refers with succinct phraseology
to the "cool and provoking dogmatism" and "the insulting
tone of fairness" of the British but goes deeper into the
critic;
nature of esthetics, as where he writes By making beauty
:
'

'

dependent on the association of external things with the ordin-

ary emotions and affections of our nature, by denying its
existence both as an inward sense and as outward reality, he
substantially annihilates it." Then again, of Hazlitt: "He
was naturally shy and despairing of his own powers, but his
dogmatism was of that turbulent kind which comes from passion
and self-distrust." Sheridan, Fielding, Carlyle, and the earlier
English dramatists, beginning with Marlowe and Ben Jonson,
are all treated with the sympathy of the man of letters who is, at
the same time, the student of national and epochal tendencies;
and so, too, in his estimates of Rufus Choate, Emerson, Motley,
Sumner, and others of our own writers.
In the centennial year of American independence, Whipple
contributed to Harper's Magazine a paper entitled The First
Century of the Republic, in which he reviewed the development
of American literature and showed how its course had been
"subsidiary to the general movement American mind."
of the
In agreeing with this point of view, Stedman, in his Poets of
America (1885), expands the thesis: "Our imagination has
found exercise in the subjugation of a continent, in war, politics,
and government, in inventive and constructive energy, in
 Edmund Clarence Stedman 127

developing and controlling our material heritage." It was

because Stedman was so enthusiastic a follower of all the
efforts and advances of the human mind, an alert man of
experienced in business and finance, as well as a poet, ^
affairs,

that he possessed in such generous measure the ability to judge

both and poetically. His volumes Victorian Poets
scientifically
(1876) —
and Poets of America those standard works of fine
—
sanity and even finer vision reveal the great eclectic who
with warm heart and open mind had a thousand approaches
to life. His understanding of philosophy and his vibrating
sense of melody are evident, but perhaps nowhere more signi-
ficantly than in his appraisal of the poetry of Emerson, where
he uses a metaphor suggested by science and the practical
affairs of everyday life. Emerson, writes Stedman, "had
seasons when feeling and expression were in circuit, and others
when the wires were down."" Only Stedman could thus have
evalued the electric spark, the brilliant mysterious vitality
of Emerson's poetry, negated at times by the insufficiency of
his art.
Stedman 's essays were almost exclusively in the field
of literary criticism, but there have been published since his
death two copious volumes of letters revealing in delightful
fashion the range of his interest and the charm of his tempera-
ment. Beauty was his guide, and friendship was his passion.
He had that spirituality which led him to write to John Hay
— the most enjoyable of letter writers among our literary
—
statesmen that the earth "is smaller than either your soul or
mine"; and though Stedman's manliness remained undaunted
before cruel onsets of fate —frequent
illness, the loss of fortune,
the death of near and dear —he could
be moved almost to
woman's tears when the love of friends brought to him un-
expected tribute. "For of Heavenly Love we may dream, but
know nothing, while from the currents that flow between
— —
earthly hearts young and old we do gain our most real and
exquisite compensation." In the hurried life of New York
this poet who was a broker on the Stock Exchange made time
to correspond not alone with his many confreres in fame but
with a host of younger writers; and it was his chivalric boast
that no letter from a woman ever remained unanswered. The
' See also Book III, Chap. x.
128 Later Essayists

broadness of his sympathies in art, in drama, in music, as well

as in letters, coupled with his generous interest in the effort of
all those who even at the furthest radius came within his circle,

made of Stedman one of the finest influences in the develop-

ment of New York's cultural life. "New York," Stedman
wrote in his essay on Bayard Taylor, "is still too practical
to do much more than affect an esthetic sentiment." This
judgment was pronounced more than a score of years ago,
and if it is now increasingly open to qualification, Stedman is
one of those whom we have therefor most to thank.
Another, and to a marked degree, is William Winter
(1836-1917).' For many years the dean of American dramatic
critics, he ever rode full tilt and fearless against the commer-

cialism rampant on our stage. He was the most winning of

our essayists on Shakespeare, having in his own nature more
than a touch of Hamlet. Erudite in the technique of the play-
wright. Winter was still more versed in the lyric knowledge
of the poet and in that high wisdom which realizes both the
potentialities and the obligations of dramatic art; and thus
his critiques in the daily press were concerned with the eter-
nal, as opposed to the diurnal, aspect of things. But while
his standards were uncompromising, his style was gracious,
—
courteous, tender even as we should expect of a poet; and
in such a series of papers as are included in his Gray Days and
Gold (1894) "we see how great a part sentiment played in the
life and writings of that brave antagonist of all the blatant

and all the insidious influences which drag down the art of a
nation. The past lured him with every manner of associations,
and his writings on Shakespeare's England have the charm of
—
old days one of the characteristics most appealing in the work
of Washington Irving. Indeed, with a greater strain of mel-
ancholy, and a lesser strain of humour, William Winter was,
in the closing years of the nineteenth century, the last and most
winsome descendant of our first great essayist; and especially
by the English public should he continue to be read as one
who held that land in the tenderest regard.
—
The marked enjoyment in things of old old books, old
places, the myriad associations binding together the blossoms
of the years —
which casts glamour on many of the pages
" See also Book III, Chap, xviii.
 9

Other Essayists 129

of Winter, underlies the literary work of Laurence Hutton

(1843-1904),^ his companion in the field of dramatic criticism
and along the byways of foreign travel. Among collectors
Hutton is remembered for the treasures he amassed, especially

books relating to the theatre and play-bills. The corollary of

this enthusiasm is found in his papers and addresses on the
drama, wherefrom arises winningly the human note. He wrote,
also, a series of volumes describing literary pilgrimages in Eng-
land, Italy, and many another land, —
voltmies that place him
graciously in the large company of American essayists whose
theme has been that of travel and with him our own journey
;

fittingly ends.
The scope of present-day essayists is far wider than that of
the men of the preceding century. The tendency is away
from the traditionary essay of morals or of literary culture,
partially because the classics are no longer part and parcel of
our education, and largely because science and social economics
are more and more requisitioning the pens of many of our
most brilliant contemporary essayists. We have, however,
many writers, of course, whose work continues the literary
tradition and to name Howells, Woodberry, Santayana, Wood-
;

row Wilson, Henry Van Dyke, Brander Matthews, Paul Elmer

More, Agnes Repplier, and John Burroughs foremost among —
—
nature writers were yet to omit others well deserving of
inclusion lest too long a catalogue of ships should still over-
look some bark of letters already worthily launched, Our
grateful task has been to write of the men who have gone by,
a group of noble gentlemen, whose attitude towards hfe was
that of the idealist, and whose courtesy of spirit and courtesy
of phrase are permeating traits of their work. Not even in the
harshest days of the Civil War is there a brow-beating epithet
or sneering causticity. If the American essayists and critics
owe a debt to the English writers of the eighteenth and nine-
teenth centuries —as indeed they do—they have removed from
their inheritance all taint of bitterness and cruel satire, and our
critical literature has (with the exception of Poe in his unin-
spired moments) no mean, no biassed, no tyrannical— and no
fulsome —appraiser of literary values or of the motives of men's
actions. If, however, we turn to our group of later essayists
" See also Book III, Chap. xvui.
VOL. Ill —
J^3o Later Essayists

as a whole, we are soon aware that they leave something to be

desired, and that we must have recourse to European essays for
the supplying of this want. As our has refused to
fiction
portray life with full verity, to dissect with searching candour
the hidden motives in individual life, so, too, have our essay
writers abstained from the subtle workings of the mind in the
field of personal emotions and desires. There is, however, a
distinction to be made when we seek to explain these limitations
in American fiction and American essays. In the first case is
preponderantly involved the purpose of popular appeal along
the lines of least resistance, with financial success as the writ-
er's reward. In the second case, the purpose of educating the
mind of a nation not yet ready to appreciate art in all its
ramifications, has, whether directly or unconsciously, led our
essayists to refrain from themes which Continental writers have
made luminous to peoples inheriting the Renaissance rather
than the Puritan traditions. The group of essayists that we
are leaving may indeed have theoretically subscribed to the
French dictum that style is the man, yet they wrote, rather,
under the propulsion of the idea that mankind is more than
style.
 CHAPTER XIV

Travellers and Explorers, 1 846-1 900

THE central world-belt of

present era lies
human progress up to the
along the fortieth parallel of north
latitude with general limits ten degrees on each side.
That the region now the United States falls almost entirely
within this belt explains the instinctive drift of Europeans
westward to, and across, this particular untrodden field.
The Anglo-Saxon branch, attaining a dominance of power
therein, halted briefly at the obstacle of the Appalachian
mountain system, passed that barrier, and marched on its
predestined course to the western ocean with a development of
accompanying literature described up to 1846 in a former
—
chapter' and continued in this to the year 1900, with a slight
extension at each end.
A new order of events developed speedily with the triumph
of the Texans over Santa Anna and the creation of the Lone
Star Republic in 1841 with its premeditated intention of
annexation to the United States. This intention the Mexican
Republic declared would be, if consummated, a cause of war,
but the movement was not halted. The constant influx of
pioneers from the "States" made annexation a foregone con-
clusion, while books that now appeared like Colonel Edward
Stiff's The Texan Emigrant (1840) aided and abetted the
prospective addition to the American republic. He offers for a
frontispiece a map of Texas which has small consideration for
the expansive Texan idea that the new republic's western
limits were where the Texan pleased to place them, quite
regardless of Mexican contention, for the Colonel draws the
' Book II, Chap. i.

131
132 Travellers and Explorers, 1846 1900

western boundary at the Nueces River exactly where the

Mexicans declared it must be.
The ambitious Texans, however, were not of his mind.
They wanted territory and they understood that far beyond
the world of intervening desert unknown to them flowed the
Rio Grande del Norte, whose valley was productive and for
some two centuries had been cultivated by a Spanish popu-
lation with the attractive city of Santa Fe a trade centre worth
owning. The story of The Spanish Conquest of New Mexico
(1869) by W. W. H. Davis and El Gringo, or New Mexico and
her People (1857) by the same author, who spent some years in
the region, show that the Spaniards in entering and building
up New Mexico had no thought of the Texans that were to be.
Samuel Cozzens in The Marvellous Country or Three Years in
Arizona and New Mexico (1873) gives more of the story, with
modem additions, axid Historical Sketches of New Mexico (1883)
by ex-Governor L. Bradford Prince, who still hves in Santa Fe,
is another important volume on this subject.

Although the Rio Grande settlements and the capital city

of Santa Fe were so far from the outermost fringe of Texan life
that the Texans actually knew little about them, these had
fixed their minds on extending Texas to the Rio Grande, and to
the Rio Grande it must go. Therefore they decided to march
across the unknown and formally annex the old-time towns
and villages, whose inhabitants were supposed to be eager to
become Texans. A grand caravan accordingly was organized,
partly military, partly mercantile, to proceed to the conquest.
The expedition moved off into the wilderness with far rosier
expectations than facts warranted. Disaster was not long in
falling upon the party, and worse disaster awaited their strag-
gling remnant at the hands of the tyrannical, cruel, and unruly
governor of New Mexico, Armijo.
Probably the most interesting and valuable book on this
phase of Texan enterprise, and withal one having considerable
literary charm, is The Narrative of the Texan Santa Fe Expedi-
tion (1844) by George Wilkins Kendall. Kendall was one of
the survivors. He was finally released from the wretched
prison in Mexico into which he was cast with others who had not
succumbed to the desert, or to the brutality of Armijo, at
the request of the United States Minister, Waddy Thompson,
 The Santa Fe Trail i33

whose Recollections of Mexico (1846) mentions this release of

Kendall and his companions in misery, as well as the release of
the prisoners taken by the Mexicans at Mier in 1842. The
capture, sufferings, and release of these latter unfortunates are
told by William Preston Stapp in his book The Prisoners of
Perote (1845). It is interesting to note that Waddy Thompson
was no longer a United States official when he requested the
freedom of the captives; General Santa Anna granted the
request as a personal favour. Thompson gives an estimate of
Santa Anna's character which is not so black as the usual
descriptions.
Kendall printed a map, which he compiled, to give such
information as was possible of the wilderness the caravan had
struggled through, and in this he was aided by notes from
Josiah Gregg, then living and doing business as a merchant
at Santa Fe. In the year of the appearance of Kendall's
book, Gregg alone published the now famous volumes Com-
merce of the Prairies (1844). This is the classic of the Plains,
in which he describes the Santa Fe Trail and its history.
The Atchison, Topeka, and Santa F6 Railway approximately
follows the route of the Santa Fe Trail, and the latter almost
paralleled the great Kaw trail which ran about four
Indian
or five miles farther south. Everywhere the possible high-
ways had long ago been traced out by the Indians, and the main
routes of the white men usually followed, with more or less
exactness, according to method of transportation, these roads
of the natives.
Colonel Henry Inman, who had early experience on the
Plains, wrote The Old Santa Fe Trail (1897). Some of his
historical data are not quite correct, but there is much of value
derived from his own knowledge, and he gives accounts of the
frontiersmen he had met. With W. F. Cody, the last of the
"Buffalo Bills," he wrote The Great Salt Lake Trail (1898),
the trail being the one from Omaha up the Platte and to Salt
Lake by way of Echo Canyon. The Santa Fe Trail has also
been perpetuated in poetry, by Sharlot M. HaU with a vivid
poem of that title in Out West (1903), and the modern route
for automobiles by Vachel Lindsay, with a more original poem,
also of that title, in The Congo and Other Poems (191 4).
Many of the early travellers and explorers kept no records,
134 Travellers and Explorers, 1846-1900

and some who did refrained from publishing until long after
their experiences, as in the case of Osborne Russell, who had a
Rocky Mountain career between 1834 and 1843. The Journal
of a Trapper from his pen did not appear tiU 19 14, when it was
privately printed at Boise, Idaho. These delays were some-
times due to the reluctance of publishers to print the writings
of unknown and "unliterary " men.
While the Santa Fe Trail linked the Missouri with 'the Rio
Grande as early as 1822, there was for a long time no overland
highway to the Oregon country, the usual route being up the
Missouri first by keelboat and then by steamboat. Audubon
travelled that course in 1843 in the steamer Omega as far as
Fort Union, and he kept a fuU journal. This was mislaid and
fifty years elapsed before it was given to the world in Audubon
and his Journals by his granddaughter, Maria R. Audubon.
His son, John Woodhouse Audubon, in 1849-50 made a jour-
ney from New York to Texas and thence overland through
Mexico and Arizona to the gold fields of California, which is
recorded in John W. Audubon's Western Journal (1906), edited
by Prank H. Hodder.
The literature connected with the route up the Missouri
River is voluminous and it is vital to the historical annals of the
West. A great deal of it falls before 1846. H. M. Chittenden
gives a History of Early Steamboat Navigation of the Missouri
River. Life and Adventures of Joseph La Barge, Pioneer Navi-
gator and Indian Trader (1903); and with this title may be
coupled an important paper on the subject read by Phil. E.
Chappel before the Kansas State Historical Society (1904) and
printed in the Society's Publications (vol. ix), with the title
"A History of the Missouri River." He writes from personal
knowledge and adds a list of the steamboats.
A change was coming in this direction. Notwithstanding
the phenomenal scepticism as to the value of Oregon displayed
in Congress, the "common people" were learning by word of
mouth from trappers and explorers that good homes were to be
had there for the taking. They saw a vision of being land-
owners —a vision that became a life-preserver amid the dis-
comfort, danger, and disaster which befell a large proportion of
them in the journey to the land of promise. Presently, from the
same Independence that saw the wagon track vanish south-
 The Oregon Trail i35

westward with caravans for Santa Fe, another track faded

its

into the plains to the north-west and hammered its devious

sagebrush course over mountains, over valleys, through dif-
ficult canyons, across dangerous rivers or deserts of death to

the Columbia River, to Oregon, to California. This was the

path that Francis Parkman,' just out of college, followed in
1846 as far as Fort Laramie; an experience which gave us The
California and Oregon Trail (1849). Ezra Meeker travelled it
in 1852 and back again in 1906, and in The Ox-Team, or the Old
Oregon Trail (1906) he relates what befell him in this long, wild
—
journey with an ox-team a real "bull-whacker's" tale.
Mrs. Ann Boyd had experiences on this difficult highway in
the late forties, and she presents the record in The Oregon Trail
(1862). A rare volume on the same road is Joel Palmer's
Journal of Travels Over the Rocky Mountains to the Mouth of the
Columbia River (1847) For those desiring to identify in detail
.

the route and distances of the Oregon Trail of early days there is
a complete exposition in the masterly work by H. M. Chitten-
den, History of the American Fur Trade in the Far West (1902).
The chain binding Europe by the west to Cathay, of which
the Santa Fe and the Oregon trails were preliminary links,
was being forged to completion by this steady march of pioneers
across the salubrious uplands of the Far West. At the same
time the surrounding seas were breaking under the prows of
American ships. T. J. Jacobs writes of the cruise of the clipper
ship Margaret Oakley in Scenes, Incidents, and Adventures in
the Pacific Ocean (1844); and the United States government
took a hand in maritime exploration by sending Captain
Charles Wilkes with six ships and a large company of scientific
men on an important cruise to explore and survey the South
Seas. From Australia, Wilkes steered for the South Pole and on
19 January, 1840, he was the first to see the Antarctic Continent,
albeit only a very short time before the French navigator
D'Urville also sighted it. For 1500 miles WHkes skirted the
icy coast, and the region he reported was accordingly named
Wilkes Land. He also visited Hawaii, California, and Oregon,
carrying on some survey work in the latter region. Five
volumes were published: The Narrative of the United States
Exploring Expedition During the Years 1838, 1839, 1840, 1841,
' See also Book III, Chap. xv.
136 Travellers and Explorers, 1846-1900

1842 (1845), but the scientific data have not been issued,
although many of the projected volumes are printed. ' There
is extant the manuscript journal of Captain Hudson, who

commanded one of the ships and Lieutenant (later Admiral)

;

Colvocoresses attached to this command published Four Years

in the Government Exploring Expedition commanded by Captain
Charles Wilkes, etc. (1852). They saw Antarctic land fre-
quently, and he says that on one day they saw "distinctly
from sixty to seventy miles of coast, and a mountain in the
interior which we estimated to be 2500 feet high." There
are in this volume certain ethnological notes on the South Sea
Islanders that are important.
Wilkes also published separately a volume, Western America
Including California and Oregon (1849). Data on the same
region are contained in the fourth and fifth of the five narrative
volumes.
A prominent American sailor on the seas in the early fifties
and onward was Captain S. Samuels. He began his career as
cabin-boy at the age of eleven in 1836, and in ten years was a
captain. He commanded the famous Dreadnaught, the swift-
est ship of her time. He teUs a thrilling story, for which
Bishop Potter wrote the introduction, in From the Forecastle to
the Cabin (1887).
South America was not forgotten by our American travel-
lers and explorers, and a naval expedition in 1851-53 carried on
an Exploration of the Valley of the Amazon (1854) under William
L. Hemdon and Lardner Gibbon, while, earlier than this, John
Lloyd Stephens was investigating the intermediate part of
the Western Hemisphere, publishing his admirable results in.
Incidents of Travel in Central America, Chiapas, and Yucatan
(1841) and Incidents of Travel in Yucatan (1843). E. G. Squier's
operations came out in Nicaragua (1856) and The States of
Central America (1858). Far away in Turkey the Rev. Doctor
William Goodell was having the experiences which he recounts
in Forty Years in the Turkish Empire (1876), edited by his
son-in-law, E. D. G. Prime. Dr. Goodell belonged to a class
of workers, the religious missionaries, who travelled far and
wide seeking out all manner of places. They also became
active in the Far West at an early date. Samuel Parker for
' For contents of these volumes see MS. catalogue in the Library of Congress.
 The North- West i37

the Presbyterian Church went to Oregon in 1836, taking with

him a physician, Marcus Whitman. Parker wrote A Journal
of an Exploring Tour Beyond the Rocky Mountains (1838), one
of the valuable books of the period. Whitman became so
deeply interested in the religious welfare of the Indians that he
turned missionary and established a working centre at Waii-
latpu. Later, in the winter of 1842-43, he made the now much
discussed overland journey by the southern route to Washington.
This adventure is recorded in How Marcus Whitman Saved

Oregon (1895) by O. W. Nixon. Whitman is said to have ex-

posed nefarious British designs to the American government,
but this service has been disputed on good authority. W. I.
Marshall is one of those who oppose the "saviour" idea, and
he presents his views in the Report of the American Historical
Association (1900) and also in Acquisition of Oregon, and the
Long Suppressed Evidence about Marcus Whitman (191 1). At
any rate,Whitman was a splendid character and devoted his
life to work among the Indians, who, imagining some super-

stitious grievance against the whites, murdered many of them,

including their own benefactor and his wife, and held the others
prisoners. M. Cannon in his account of pioneer days tells the
story of this massacre in Waiilatpu, Its Rise and Fall (1915).
The captives were rescued by the skill and determined
bearing of one of the greatest frontiersmen of the West, Peter
Skene Ogden. Ogden, while not an American, was next thing
to it, as his father was born in Newark, New Jersey, but the
family, being royalists, travelled to more genial climes at the
outbreak of the trouble with George III T. C. Elliott, in a very
.

entertaining and instructive pamphlet, Peter Skene Ogden, Fur

Trader (19 10), relates the remarkable career of Ogden, chiefly
in the region south of the forty-ninth parallel. Ogden wrote
Traits of American Indian Life and Character hy a Fur Trader
(1853), revised in manuscript by Jesse Applegate. Ogden is
said to have taken it to Washington Irving, who was prevented
by circumstances from editing it.
Most of the travellers who penetrated the Western wilder-
ness in those early days were close and quite accurate observers,
and many of their books, like Gregg's and Kendall's and Edwin
Bryant's, have become of immeasurable historical value.
Another whose works take a similar high place is Thomas
 —

138 Travellers and Explorers, 1846-1900

Jefferson Farnham. No library of Americana can be con-

sidered complete which lacks his Travels in the Great Western
Prairies, the Anahuac and Rocky Mountains and in the Oregon
Territory (1843), and his Life, Adventures and Travels in Cali-
fornia (1849). Farnham followed some seldom travelled
trails, and he tells not only what he saw but what he heard

giving in the latter field one of the early descriptions of the

Grand Canyon of the Colorado, not accurate but interesting.
A missionarywho roamed widely over Oregon was Father P. J.
De Smet, and his writings are among the most vital, especially
Oregon Missions and Travels over the Rocky Mountains in 1845-
46 (1847) and Letters and Sketches (1843).
The Santa Fe Trail coupled the Rio Grande and the mighty
Missouri, as has been mentioned, by a weU-beaten and more or
less easy and comfortable way which halted at the city of Santa
Fe. Thence on to Los Angeles there were two or three routes
open to the traveller, taking any one of which was sure to make
him wish he had chosen another. One led down the Rio
Grande into Mexico, thence westward and up to the Gila
through Tucson, following the Gila on west to the Colorado, the
Mohave desert, and to Cajon Pass the other turned north from
;

Santa Fe and straggled over the mountains, to cross the Grand

River and the Green at the first opportunity the canyons
permitted (that on the Green being at what was afterwards
known as Gunnison Crossing), thence through the Wasatch,
down to the Virgin, and by that stream to the Mohave desert,
and across that stretch of Hades by the grace of God. This
trail was laid out in 1830 by WiUiam Wolf skill, an American,
but as it was travelled mostly by Spaniards it was called the
Spanish Trail. Between this and the extreme southern route
was a possible way down the Gila, and another between that
and the majestic Grand Canyon, followed in 1776 eastward
as far as the Hopi (Moqui) villages by Garces the Spanish
missionary but to take either intermediate route at that time
;

was almost like signing one's death warrant. They were not
often taken before 1846. Much about the early trails and
trappers and missionaries is told in Breaking the Wilderness
(1905) by Frederick S. Dellenbaugh.
The Oregon Trail, bearing far to the north, through South
Pass and down Snake River, was extended to the Columbia and
 Early California ^39

thence around south to California, but, before the "Days of

'49," although Ogden, Jedediah Smith, and Fremont had
dared the mid-passage across the Great Basin, there was no real
route directly to the rich, inviting mission settlements of the
Franciscan friars settlements that were a world unto them-
:

selves delightfully describedby Alfred Robinson in Life in

CaliforniaDuring a Residence of Several Years in that Territory,
Etc. By an American (1846). And in Two Years Before the
Mast (1840) R. H. Dana has some interesting chapters on this
primitive California paradise. The historical side is presented
by Fr. Zephyrin Englehardt in an extensive work, The Missions
and Missionaries of California (191 1).
In the early forties California was nothing more than a
detached colony nominally belonging to Mexico but ruled
over, so far as it was ruled at all, by the Mission friars and the
military governor in an arbitrary and personal fashion. Its
rich soil and attractive coast were coveted by France, by
Great Britain, and by the United States. This great prize
slipping from Mexico's fist had its northern limit at the forty-
second parallel and its eastern along the upper Arkansas and
down that river to the looth meridian, down that to Red River,
along that stream to a point north of the Sabine, and by the
Sabine to the Gulf of Mexico. Texas took away the portion
from the Sabine to the Nueces and claimed to the Rio Grande.
Thus matters stood at the time of the annexation of Texas,
with its claim of a western boundary at the Rio Grande which
the United States had undertaken to maintain with the
sword.
There was one statesman in Congress who had a clear per-
ception of conditions and possibilities. This was Thomas
Hart Benton, whose home was in St. Louis and was the rendez-
vous for leading trappers and explorers. His famous phrase
as he pointed to the sunset and said "There lies the road to
India" recognized the approach to each other of Europe and
Cathay westward across the Rocky Mountains and has appro-
priately been carved on his monument. In his Thirty Years'
View . . 1S20 to 1550 (1861) there is continual evidence of his
.

firm belief in the phenomenal value of the Far West region and
in a development which has since taken place. Benton was one
of the chief political figures of the time. Biographies of him
I40 Travellers and Explorers, 1846-1900

have been written by Theodore Roosevelt (1887) and by

WiUiam M. Meigs (1904).
As the fourth decade of the nineteenth century opened,
CaHfornia was receiving many emigrants from the Eastern
States chiefly by the Oregon Trail. About this time appears on
,

the scene a striking personality, John A. Sutter, independent,

indefatigable, who immediately created a unique fortified set-
tlement which, having been bom in Switzerland, he called New
Helvetia, but which was known generally as Sutter's Fort.
It was begun in 1841 and completed in 1845, on the site of the
present city of Sacramento. Although Sutter was Swiss he
may be classed as an American in view of all the circumstances
connected with his life. His fort mounted carronades and
cannon and was garrisoned by about forty weU armed, drilled,
uniformed Indians. There were extra arms for more if needed.
In his "Diary"' printed in the Argonaut (San Francisco, 26
Jan., 2, 9, 16 Feb., 1878) Sutter tells of his own doings, and
in the Life and Times of John A. Sutter (1907) T. J. Schoon-
over relates the entire story of this remarkable pioneer, the
good friend of everybody but "bankrupted by thieves."
By 1846 the dispute with Great Britain over Oregonwas set-
tled and the Americans there knew where they belonged. They
had been warmly defended and assisted by the then head of
Hudson Bay Company affairs in that region, John McLoughlin,
who himself finally became an American. The story of his life
is given by Frederick V. Holman, John McLoughlin, The Father

of Oregon (1900), and in McLoughlin and Old Oregon (1900) by

Mrs. Emery Dye.
Benton's son-in-law, John C. Fremont, had conducted an
expedition in 1842 along the Oregon Trail to the Wind River
Mountains, and he was selected to carry on a new reconnais-
sance, ostensibly to connect the survey of the Oregon Trail
with survey work done on the Pacific Coast by Wilkes. But
this 1843-44 expedition did not halt in Oregon. It headed
southward into Mexican territory along the eastern edge of the
Sierras, hunting for a mythical Buenaventura River that
would have made a fine military base had it existed. Not
discovering that entrancing Elysian valley, Fremont crossed the
high Sierras in dead winter to Sutter's Fort, returning by the
' See also Reminiscences in MS., Bancroft Collection.
 Early California 141

Spanish Trail to Utah and breaking through the Wasatch east

of Utah Lake. His Report of the Exploring Expedition to the
Rocky Mountains in the Year 1842 and to Oregon and Northern
California in the Years 1843-44 (1845) was a revelation to
most of the world. Ten thousand copies were printed by the
government, and it was reprinted by professional publishers,
minus the scientific matter, in their regular lists.
The very day Fremont handed in this report, i March, 1845,
the United States flung the gauntlet in the face of Mexico by
admitting Texas and assuming the Texan boundary affair.
War was inevitable and everybody knew it. Therefore when
Fremont headed a new "topographical surveying" expedition
to the Far West he had a force of sixty well-armed marksmen.
When he reached California and found an incipient rebellion
already organized by Americans, he placed himself with this
powerful party and the American flag at its head, supplanting
the Bear Flag of the revolutionists and giving immediate notice
thereby to the other covetous nations that California was only
for the United States.
The Bear Flag revolt from its beginning may be studied in
Scraps of California History Never Before Published. A Bio-
graphical Sketch of William B. Ide, etc. (1880), privately printed
by Simeon Ide. In H. H. Bancroft's History of California, vol.
another account; and the revolt and Fremont are sharply
V, is
criticized by Josiah Royce in California from the Conquest in
1846 to the Second Vigilance Committee in San Francisco (1888).
Royce also gave his analysis of Fremont's character in the
Atlantic Monthly in 1890.
Fremont tells his own story in Memoirs of My Life (1887;
only vol. I of the projected two volumes was published).
This contains a sketch of "The Life of Senator Benton in Con-
nection with Western Explorations" from the pen of his
daughter, Jessie Benton Fremont. Fremont's career up to the
time he ran for President was written by John Bigelow as a
campaign document in 1856: Memoir of the Life of John C.
FrSmont. Another Life of Fremont (1856) is by Charles W.
Upham, but there was no single volume containing all the
story of this active explorer and politician till Fremont and '4Q,
by Frederick S. Dellenbaugh, appeared in 1914.
California now attracted world attention, and there are a
142 Travellers and Explorers, 1846-1900

great number of interesting and valuable books relating to it.

Los Gringos (1849), by Lieutenant Wise, U. S. N., describes
the cruise of an American man-of-war which took active part
in the conquest along the coast. One of the most trustworthy
of all the volumes of this period is by Edwin Bryant, "late
Alcalde of San Francisco," What I saw in California in 1846-
1847 (1848). This wiU always stand in the first rank of West-
ern Americana, with Farnham, Gregg, etc. Bryant was in
Fremont's California Battalion during the conquest. The book
has been cheaply reprinted, with a "blood and thunder" title-
page supplanting the original, as Rocky Mountain Adventures
(1889).
While the conquest of California was proceeding to its
logical end an agricultural conquest of the valley of the Great
Salt Lake was begun by the Mormons, or Latter Day Saints as
they called themselves. Their late neighbours in Illinois had
inaugurated such great opposition to Mormon methods that
it culminated in the murder, by a mob, in Carthage jail, of

Joseph Smith, the prophet and originator of the sect, and a

migration was imperative. The Mormons now possessed a
martyr, the essential basis of religious success, and they needed
an independent field for expansion. Their new leader, Brigham
Young, discovered it in the Salt Lake Valley described glow-
ingly in Fremont's report. Brigham thought of founding a
separate state in this Mexican territory, but the events of the
Mexican war moved so rapidly that, even while he planned,
the valley fell under American rule. The Mormons went
forward nevertheless and arrived on the shore of the American
Dead Sea in August, 1847. Brigham complained that the
—
valley was not as represented by Fr6mont that it was really a
desert. Fremont had seen on the Rio Grande what irrigation
can do, and the Mormons resorted to it with an agricultural
success now well known.
The transit to the new home across the wide and unsettled
plains and mountains was a huge undertaking and entailed
much hardship. T. L. Kane, a non-Mormon, accompanied
the famous "hand cart expedition" and tells about it in The
Mormons ( 1 850) The literature connected with the Mormons
.

is voluminous. One of the latest, most comprehensive, and most

exact general books is W. J. Linn's Story of the Mormons (1902).

 Mexico and California HS
It has been charged that the Mormon
leaders employed a gang
from settling among them,
of cut-throats to discourage Gentiles
and Bill Hickman, when he became an apostate, claimed to have
been the leader of it. He issued a book, Brigham's Destroying
Angel Being the Life Confession and Startling Disclosures of the
Notorious Bill Hickman Written by Himself with Explanatory
Notes by J. H. Beadle (1872). Beadle also published Western
Wilds (1877), Lifein Utah (1870), The Undeveloped West (1873),
and "The Story of Marcus Whitman Refuted" in American
Catholic Historical Researches (1879). Mrs. Stenhouse, who
apostatized, wrote Tell it All (1874), a faithful account of her
sad life Mormon.
as a
While Fremont was aiding Commodore Stockton to clinch
the claim of the United States to California, the history of
which is told in Despatches Relating to Military and Naval
Operations in California (1849) and in A Sketch of the Life of
R. F. Stockton with his Correspondence with the Navy Department
Respecting his Conquest of California and the Defense of J. C.
Fremont (1856), the war in Mexico was in full swing. General
Stephen Kearny, with an army, was marching overland for
the Pacific Coast by way of Santa F,e, where he halted long
enough to raise the flag and destroy opposition.
Kearny was a noble officer whose early death in the Mexican
campaign prevented his writing about the California campaign.
Valentine Mott Porter wrote a sketch of him in Publications of
the Historical Society of Southern California, vol. vni (191 1);
and A Diary of the March with Kearny, Fort Leavenworth to
Santa Fe (1846) by G. R. Gibson gives details concerning that
part of the journey. Gibson also wrote two other diaries on a
trip to Chihuahua and return in 1 847. The journals of Captain
Johnson and of Colonel P. St. George Cooke on the march from'
Santa Fe to California appeared in House Executive Document
41, 1st Sess. 30th Congress, and Colonel Cooke's The Journal of
'
'

a March from Santa Fe to San Diego 1846-47" was printed in

Sen. Ex. Doc. 2 Special Sess. 31st Cong. Other literary pro-
ductions of Colonel Cooke were The Conquest of New Mexico
and California (1878) and Scenes and Adventures in Army Life
(1857).
Kearny, before proceeding to California, planned for the
holding of New Mexico, and one of the memorable expeditions
144 Travellers and Explorers, 1846-1900

of the war W. Doniphan. It was

resulted, that of Colonel A.
accurately recorded by John T. Hughes in Doniphan's Expedi-
tion; Containing an Account of the Conquest of New Mexico,
General Kearny's Overland Expedition to California, Doniphan's
Campaign Against the Navajos, his Unparalleled March upon
Chihuahua and Durango and the Operations of General Price at
Santa FS, with a Sketch of the Life of Colonel Doniphan (1847).
Hughes wrote another book now very hard to obtain, California,
Its History, Population, Climate, Soil, Productions, and Har-
bours, and an Account of the Revolution in California and the
Conquest of the Country by the United States, 1846-4^ (1848).
William E. Connelley has reprinted the Hughes Doniphan
with Hughes's diary and other related matter in Doniphan's
Expedition ( 1 907) .With the advance guard of the Army of the
West went Major William H. Emory, and his Notes of a Military
Reconnaissance from Fort Leavenworth to San Diego, California,
1846-47 (1848) is an important contribution to the documents
on this famous march.
The Rev. Walter Colton was in California before the con-
quest and he wrote an exceedingly valuable book, Three Years in
California, 1846-49 (1850), as well as another. Deck and Port,
or Incidents of a Cruise in the United States Frigate Congress, etc.
(i 850). Still another volume of this period is Notes on a Voyage

toCalifornia Together with Scenes in Eldorado in 184Q (1878)

by S. C. Upham. The name Eldorado enters so commonly
into the literature of the Far West that we may at this point
note the volume The Gilded Man (1893), by A. F. Bandelier,
which describes and explains the term and its origin. In a cer-
tain ceremonial in Peru a man was covered from head to foot
with gold dust and this gave rise to the expression as meaning
fabulous wealth.
With the prospect of closer contact with the Orient by way
of the Occident, relations with some of the far off Eastern coun-
triesbegan to be more intimately considered. Caleb Cushing
as Commissioner of the United States went to China in 1843 and
in 1845 negotiated the first treaty between the United States
and China. Missionaries, too, were at their task. Volumes
of the Chinese Repository edited by Dr. Bridgman were pub-
lishing at Canton, and from these volumes, and his own personal
observation and study of native authorities for twelve years,
 Gold in California ^45

S. Wells Williams, who went to China as a printer for the Board

of Foreign Missions, who mastered the Chinese language, and
who lectured in the United States to obtain money to pay for a
font of Chinese type, produced The Middle Kingdom. A Sur-
vey of the Geography, Government, Education, Social Life, Arts,
Religion, etc., of the Chinese Empire and its Inhabitants (1848),
a book that remains today one of the supreme authorities on
the subject.
Another traveller in that region was the afterwards eccen-
tric George Francis Train. Only twenty-four years of age,
he met with much success in commercial ventures in China,
and abook was theoMtcorae: An American Merchant in Europe,
A sia, and A ustralia ( 1 857) The last years of Train's life were
.

mainly spent on a bench in Madison Square Park, New York,

refusing conversation with all adults.
The year following the conclusion of the Mexican War, which
completed the sway of the United States over the entire West
between the Gila River and the forty-ninth parallel, one of the
large events of the world happened. A certain Marshall was
employed by Sutter in the construction of a saw-mill up in the
mountains, and one morning in January, 1848, when he picked
from the sluiceway a particle of metal half the size of a pea, shin-
ing in the sun, it made his heart thump, for he believed it to be
gold. Gold it proved to be. The great news was quick in reach-
ing the outermost ends of the earth, calling men of all kinds,
of all nationalities, pell-mell to Eldorado to pick up a fortune.
Men of Cathay, men of Europe, men of the Red Indian race,
all mingled on common terms in the scramble. Centuries of
creeping along the fortieth parallel had at last tied together
"Marshall's Own Account of the
the far ends of the earth.
Gold Discovery" appeared in The Century Magazine, vol.
XIX. Gold had been discovered some years before, but the
psychological moment had not arrived for its exploitation. A
vast literature developed on the subject, one of the earliest books
being The Emigrant's Guide to the Gold Mines, and Adventures
with the Gold Diggers of California in August 1848 (1848), by
Henry I. Simpson, of the New York Volunteers. This book
has become rare. Another early but not scarce "gold" item
is Theodore T. Johnson's Sights and Scenes in the Gold Regions,

and Scenes by the Way (1849).

VOL. Ill — 10
146 Travellers and Explorers, 1846-1900

The gold seekers got as far as SaltLake over the Oregon

Trail by Bear River; or from Ft. Bridger by the new way Hast-
ings had found a little farther south, and more direct, through
Echo Canyon. From Salt Lake the chief trail west led down
the Humboldt River to the Sierra and over that mighty barrier
by what became known as Donner Pass to commemorate the
Donner party and the shocking result of their miscalculation,
the details of which are given in The Expedition of the Donner
Party and its Tragic Fate (191 1) by Mrs. Eliza P. Donner
'
Houghton. The Diary of one of the Donner Party by Pat-
'
' '

rick Breen, edited by F. J. Taggart, is given in Publications of

Pacific Coast History, vol. v. (1910); and C. F. McGlashan
published a History of the Donner Party (1880). This ill-fated
caravan originated in Illinois. John Carroll Power in a History
of the Early Settlers of Sangamon County, III. (1876) gives the
daily journal of the "Reed and Donner Emigrating Party."
The difficulties of travel by ox and mule team, the necessity
of obtaining communication better from a military point of view,
and other considerations led to talk of a railway to California.
George Wilkes published in 1845 a volume now rare, Project of a
National Railroad from the Atlantic to the Pacific Ocean, for the
Purpose of Obtaining a Short Route to Oregon. In 1848, Asa
Whitney made addresses, memorials, and petitions for a trans-
continental railway, and he gave his plan in a Congressional
document. Miscellaneous 28, Senate, joth Congress i: "Me-
morial of Asa Whitney for grants of land to enable him to buHd
a railway from Lake Michigan to the Pacific.
'

Whitney issued
'

a volume in the same line, from personal exploration: Project

for a Railroad to the Pacific with Reports and Other Facts Relating
Thereto (1849).
No one was more enthusiastic or confident of the feasibility
of a railway than Fr6mont, unless it was his father-in-law, Ben-
ton. They were both positive that neither rivers, nor hot
deserts,nor the deep mountain snows of winter would interfere
seriously with the operation of trains. Frdmont projected his
fourth expedition especially to prove that winter would be no
obstacle, and he attempted crossing the highest mountains in
the winter of 1848-49. He met with sad disaster in Colorado,
for which he blamed the guide for misleading him. This
dreadful experience he describes in his Memoirs, and it is
 The Indians H7
related in other books on Fremont's expeditions; and Micajah
McGehee, who was of the party, gives all the terror of their
struggle in "Rough Timesin Rough Places" in The Century
Magazine, vol. Xix. After this catastrophe Frdmont pro-
ceeded to California by the far southern route of upper Mexico
and the Gila, arriving just as the great gold excitement was in
its first heat.
Thousands were now preparing to follow thousands to the
fortune-field that lay against what Fremont previously had
named the Golden Gate. It mattered not that the way was
beset with impossibilities for the greenhorn (or in later nomen-
clature, the tenderfoot) to California he was bound through
;

fair and foul. Not the least of the troubles arose from Indians,
those people who already possessed the country and were
satisfied with it. They disliked to see their game destroyed
by these new hordes, their springs polluted by cattle, their
families treated with brutality or contempt according to the
physical strength of the pioneer party. The latter on their
part regarded the Indians as merely a dangerous nuisance, to be
got rid of by any possible means. Sometimes when the trap-
per's or pioneer's confidence ran high with power, the Indian,
armed only with a bow and arrows, was pursued and shot as
sport from horseback, just as the sportsman chases antelope
or buffalo'.

The misconception of Indian life and character so common

among the white people [remarks Francis LaFlesche, himself an
Indian, in his preface to his charming little story of his boy life. The
Middle Five: Indian Boys has been largely due to
at School (1900)]
ignorance of the Indian's language, of his mode of thought, his
beliefs, his ideals, and his native institutions.

We have heretofore viewed the Indians chiefly through the

eyes of those who were interested in exploiting them; or of
exterminating them. Perhaps it is time to listen to their

own words.
Another educated Indian, Dr. Charles A. Eastman (Ohi-
yesa), a full-blood Sioux, writing on this subject in The Soul of
the Indian (1900), declares:

The native American has been generally despised by his white

conquerors for his poverty and simplicity. They forget, perhaps,
148 Travellers and Explorers, 1846-1900

that his religion forbade the accumulation of wealth and the enjoy-
ment of luxury. To him as to other single minded men in every
age and race, from Diogenes to the brothers of Saint Francis, from
the Montanists to the Shakers, the love of possessions has appeared
a snare, and the burdens of a complex society a source of needless
peril and temptation. It is my personal belief after thirty-five
years experience of it, that there is no such thing as Christian
Civilization. I believe that Christianity and modern civilization
are opposed and irreconcilable and that the spirit of Christianity
and of our ancient religion is essentially the same. Since there is
. . .

nothing left us but remembrance, at least let that remembrance be

just.

With reference to the treachery of the whites, at times,

in the treatment of Indians it is permissible to refer the reader
to the Massacre of Cheyenne Indians, 38th Congress, 2nd Sess.,
House Doc, Jan. loth, 1865, wherein the Committee on the
Conduct of the War, Benjamin F. Wade, Chairman, reports on
an unprovoked attack by Colorado militia on a Cheyenne
village in which sixty-nine, two thirds women and children,
were killed and the bodies left on the field.
The Indian side of much of the trouble of the years following
1861 may be read in '

' Forty Years with the Cheyennes," written

by George Bent for The Frontier, a Colorado Springs monthly.
Bent's mother was Owl Woman of the Southern Cheyennes,
and his father. Col. William Bent, the widely known proprietor
of Bent's Fort on the Arkansas, also called Fort WiUiam.
Young Bent left school to join the Confederate army, was
captured, paroled, and sent to his father. He then went to his
mother's people and remained with them.
There was at least one American of early Western days who
looked on the Indian with more sympathy. This was George
Catlin, now famous for his paintings and books. Thanks to a
kind Providence, not to our foresight, his invaluable painted
records of a life that is past are now the property of the United
States. Thomas Donaldson gives an exhaustive review of
Catlin, his paintings in the National Museum, and his books
in Part V, Report of the U. S. National Museum (1885).
We are not here concerned with Catlin 's paintings and only
note his literary output. His Letters and Notes on the Manners
and Customs of the North American Indians, Written During
 George Catlin i49

Eight Years Travel Among the Wildest Tribes of Indians in North

America in 1832, jj, 34, 35, 36, 37, 38, and 39, with Four Hun-
dred Illustrations Carefully Engraved from his Original Paintings
was published first in London, at his own expense, in 1841.
The same year it was brought out in New York. Another' of
his volumes was Catlin's Notes of Eight Years Travels and
Residence in Europe with his North American Indian Collection,
with Anecdotes and Adventures of Three Different Parties of
American Indians whom he Introduced to the Courts of England,
France and Belgium (1848). A book of his that raised strong
doubts as to his veracity was Okeepa, A Religious Ceremony, and
other Customs of the Mandans, which was published in Philadel-
phia in 1867, and gave one of the earliest accounts of the extra-
ordinary Okeepa ceremonial a self-sacrificial affair akin to the
:

Sun Dance of the Dakotas. The book today is recognized as

veracious and valuable. He wrote Life among the Indians
(1861) for young folk, and in 1837 he brought out a Catalogue of
Catlin's Indian Gallery of Portraits, Landscapes, Manners,
Customs, and Costumes, etc. His well-known, and now rare.
North American Indian Portfolio, Twenty-five large Tinted
Drawings on Stone, some Coloured by Hand in Imitation of the
Author's Sketches, appeared in London in 1844; his Steam Raft
in 1850; Shut your Mouth in 1865; and Last Rambles amongst
the Indians of the Rocky Mountains and the Andes in London
in 1868.
His viewpoint was totally different from that of the trapper
or pioneer, explorer or traveller. Catlin was interested in the
Indian as a man. "The
Indians have always loved me," he
declares, and why should I not love the Indians ?
'
' He wrote
'

'

a "Creed," part of which was: "I love the people who have
always made me welcome to the best they had. I love the
people who have never hand against me, or stolen my
raised a
property, where there was no law to punish for either."
The Mormons soon adopted a conciliatory policy towards
the Indians, feeling it was more profitable to deal justly with
them, to pay them, than to fight them. It was obligatory to
have a cool clear-headed man to carry out such a policy, and
Brigham Young selected Jacob Hamblin for the service. No
better choice could have been made. Slow of speech, quick of
thought and action, this Leatherstocking of Utah was usually
ISO Travellers and Explorers, 1846-1900

called "Old Jacob." He

tells, an interesting story through

James A. Little in Jacob Hamblin, a Narrative of his Personal

Experiences (1881). A devoted Mormon, he was never un-
friendly to other sects and often assisted persons of opposite
faith, at least on two occasions saving lives.
The list of books on Indians is enormous, the Bureau of
Ethnology alone having produced a great many, including
the series of thirty-two invaluable Annual Reports inaugurated
by J. W. Powell, as well as more than fifty-eight equally impor-
tant Bulletins. George Bird Grinnell's Indians of Today
(1900) and The North Americans of Yesterday (i 901) by Fred-
erick S. Dellenbaugh are two volumes which present a wide
general survey.
A
famous man associated with Indians throughout his
lifewas Kit Carson, one of the most remarkable and upright
characters of the Far West. Dewitt C. Peters persuaded
Carson to dictate to him the story of his life. The last and
complete edition is Kit Carson's Life and Adventures (1873).
George D. Brewerton in Harper's Magazine (1853) wrote an
account of "A Ride with Kit Carson through the Great
American Desert and the Rocky Mountains." This ride was
made in 1848 and was over the Spanish Trail eastward from
Los Angeles. The springs are few and far between in South-
ern Nevada and South-Eastem California, and in stud3ring this
route and the literature pertaining to the region Walter C.
Mendenhall's Some Desert Watering Places (U. S. Water Supply
Paper 224, 1909) is most useful.
Some experiences were published long afterward, as in the
case of WilHam Lewis Manly's Death Valley in '49, which
was never printed till 1894. It is deeply interesting. The
author, arrived at Green River, decided with several others to
shorten the journey by taking to the river, and was hurled
through the torrential waters of Red Canyon and Lodore.
Later he joined a California caravan to suffer terribly in Death
Valley.
John Bidwell, an "earliest" pioneer, has contributed to
The Century Magazine, vol. xix, and to Out West Magazine,
vol. XX, some invaluable reminiscences. He was with the
firstemigrant train to California. It crossed in 184 1. In
1853 Captain Howard Stansbury made a report on his Explo-
 The Pacific Railway 151

ration and Survey of the Valley of Great Salt Lake, the valley
where the Mormons already were proving by irrigation the
accuracy of Fremont's statement as to its fertility.
Congress took up with energy the matter of a railway to the
Pacific, and several exploration routes were planned. Fremont
was to survey one, but the leadership was given instead to
Captain Gunnison, who proceeded by the "Central Route"
over the Sangre de Cristo Pass. Gunnison was killed by
Indians at Sevier Lake. He had been stationed at Salt Lake
when assisting Stansbury, and while there made a study of
Mormonism, The Mormons, or the Latter Day Saints in the
Valley of the Great Salt Lake (1852). Mrs. Gunnison believed
that the Mormons had instigated the murder of her husband,
and Judge Drummond, who tried the case, was of this opin-
ion also, and so stated in a letter to Mrs. Gunnison printed
in the edition of 1890. He believed that the murder was car-
ried out by Bill Hickman and eight others. One Mormon was
among those slain.
A series of large quarto volumes (thirteen in number, as the
last or twelfth volume was issued in two parts) was published
on railway surveys by the government Reports of Explorations
:

and Surveys to Ascertain the most Practicable and Economical

Route for a Railroad from the Mississippi River to the Pacific
Ocean (1855 to 1859). The explorers wrote with grace and
facility, as a rule, and these reports form an indispensable
library of information on the Far West of the fifties.
While these surveys were going on, an epoch-making Unk
in the chain that was forging between Europe and Cathay was
placed by Americans cruising in Asiatic waters: Commodore
Perry visited Japan and negotiated the first treaty between
a Western people and the Japanese. The record of this achieve-
ment is given in a Narrative of the Expedition of an American
Squadron to the China Seas and Japan Performed in the Years
1852, 18S3, and 1854. Compiled from the Original Notes and
Journals of Commodore Perry and his Officers at his Request and
under his Supervision by Francis L. Hawkes (1856).
A transcontinental railway became more and more a neces-
sity from numerous points of view, not the least of which was
the interchange of products across the Pacific. Preliminary
wagon roads were surveyed, and for this purpose Lieutenant
152 Travellers and Explorers, 1846-1900

E. F. Beale in returning to California struck across a little

ahead of Gunnison on the same route. With him was Gwin
Harris Heap, who wrote the narrative of the journey: Central
Route to the Pacific from the Valley of the Mississippi to Cali-
fornia (1854), ^'^ and interesting story.
attractive
Following almost the same route, as far as Gunnison's
crossing of- Green River, came later in the same year the
indefatigable Fremont on his fifth expedition. At Gunnison
Crossing he swung to the south through the "High Plateau"
country, a southern extension of the Wasatch uplift, and after
much suffering in the midwinter of 1853-54 the starving party
dragged into the Mormon settlement of Parowan with the loss
of one man. Every family in the town immediately took in
some of the men and gave them the kindest care. When
able, Fremont proceeded westward till he met the high Sierras'
icy wall, where he deflected south to the first available pass.
To the end of his life he never forgot the generous behavior of
the Mormons.
At time Mrs. Fremont reports in her Far West Sketches
this
( 1 890) a most remarkable vision she had of her husband's plight,

which came to her in the night at Washington. Mrs. Fremont

wrote other interesting books, The Story of the Guard (1863),
A Year of American Travel (1878), Souvenirs of my Time (1887),
and the "Origin of the Fremont Explorations" in The Century
Magazine (1890). The Recollections (1912) of her daughter,
Elizabeth Benton Fremont, belong to the story of Fremont's
career.
Fremont published no account, and no data, of the fifth and
last expedition excepting a letter to The National Intelligencer
(1854), reprinted in Bigelow's Life. The narrative was to
appear in the second volume of his Memoirs, but this was not
published. His exact route therefore cannot be located. The
main reliance for the narrative is Incidents of Travel and Adven-
ture in the Far West with Fremont's Last Expedition (1857), by
S. N. Carvalho, artist to the expedition.
One of the phenomenally reckless, daredevil frontiersmen
was James P. Beckwourth, a man of mixed blood, who dictated
a marvellous story of his escapades to T. D. Bonner. This was
published in 1856 as The Life and Adventures of James P.
Beckwourth. Somewhat highly coloured, no doubt, by Beck-
 Scouts and Hunters i53

wourth's fancy, it still remains a valuable record of the time.

Another book in this class is The Adventures of James Capen
Adams of California, edited by Theodore H. Hittell (i860 and
191 1); and still another is "William F. Drannan's Thirty-One
Years on the Plains and Mountains, or The Last Voice from the
Plains (1900), wherein he describes his intimacy with Kit
Carson and other frontiersmen, all apparently from memory,
as was the case with the life records of most of the rougher
class of hunters. Drannan published another book, Captain
W. F. Drannan, Chief of Scouts, etc. Joe Meek was a brilliant
example of the early trapper and had a varied experience which
Mrs. Frances Fuller Victor records in her fine work The River of
the West (1870).
Anextremely scarce volume is Reid's Tramp: or a Journal
of the Incidents of Ten Months' Travel Through Texas, New Mex-
ico, Arizona, etc. This volume by John C. Reid was published
in 1858 at Selma, Alabama. The United States, after the
Mexican War, had bought from Mexico a strip south of the
Gila River known as the "Gadsden Purchase," and to this
many pioneers flocked expecting a new Eden, Eldorado, Ely-
sian Fields, or what not. Reid remarks: "We may review the
history of the fall, death, and interment of these hopes in a far-
off country of irremediable disappointment." We know of
the existence of but four copies of Reid's book.
After the Gadsden Purchase the matter of the Mexican
boundary was ready for determination. The work was under
the direction of Major W. H. Emory, who made an excellent
Report on the United States and Mexican Boundary Survey (1857)
in two fine volumes, the first two chapters of volume i con-
taining a very interesting personal account. One of the bound-
ary commissioners, John Russell Bartlett, published his own
account in two volumes of Personal Narrative of Explorations
and Incidents in Texas, New Mexico, California, Sonora, and
Chihuahua During the Years 1850, '51, '52, and 1853 (1854),
a valuable addition to the literature of the South-west.
On the north the boundary was also surveyed, and Archi-
bald Campbell and W. J. Twining wrote Reports upon the Sur-
vey of the Boundary between the Territory of the United States
and the Possessions of Great Britain from the Lake of the Woods
to the Summit of the Rocky Mountains (1878). Previously the
 "

154 Travellers and Explorers, 1846-1900

boundary along the 49th parallel had been surveyed to the Gulf
of Georgia in settling the Oregon question.
A volume published for the author, Philip Tome, in Buffalo
in 1854, now very rare, is Pioneer Life, or Thirty Years a Hunter.
Being Scenes and Adventures in the Life of Philip Tome, Fifteen
Years Interpreter for Cornplanter and George Blacksnake, Chiefs
on the Alleghany River. Cornplanter, a half-breed Seneca, was
one of the most distinguished of the Iroquois leaders.
In the early fifties Joaquin Miller' was taken to California
overland by his parents, and the impressions he received
coloured his entire life. His poem, The Ship in the Desert
(1875), is a string of "these scenes and descriptions of a mighty
land of mystery, and wild and savage grandeur.

What scenes they passed, what camps at mom.

What weary columns kept the road;
What herds of troubled cattle low'd,
And trumpeted like lifted horn;
And everywhere, or road or rest.
All things were pointing to the West;
A weary, long and lonesome track.
And all led on, but one looked back.

Joaquin Miller also wrote the prose volume Life Among the
Modocs (1874).
A period was now beginning when the literature of the Far
West was not to be confined to the tales of trappers and explor-
ers. About i860 a young printer obtained employment in the
composing-room of The Golden Era in San Francisco, and he
was a contributor to that paper as well. He was invited to the
home of the Fremonts (who were then living on their Black
Point estate near the Golden Gate) because of the talent, the
genius, they discovered in his manuscripts. From that mo-
ment the career of Bret Harte^ flowed on successfully to the end.
About the same time there appeared on this remote and
primitive literary stage another genius who was dubbed the
"Wild Humorist of the Pacific Slope." He tried mining with
no success and then turned to his pen. The Jumping Frog
(1867) carried the name of the former Mississippi pilot to the
outer world, and "Mark Twain" became a star among the
' See Book III, Chap. x. ' Ibid., Chap. vi.
 The Orient i55

literary lights of the United States.' Further mention here of

either of these briUiant members of the American literary fra-
ternity is unnecessary except perhaps to note Mark Twain's Life
on the Mississippi and his Letter to the California Pioneers
(1 883)
(191 1 ), which
in the second of he describes his life as a miner.
An early literary explorer to the Pacific Coast was Theodore
Winthrop,^ who wrote The Canoe and Saddle, Adventures Among
the Northwestern Rivers and Forests; and Isthmiana (1862).
One of our inveterate travellers of the purely literary type
was Bayard Taylor. ^ Among the first he went to California
and published Eldorado, or Adventures in the Path of Empire
(1850). Taylor was a voluminous writer and his works
describe many parts of the globe. China was one country that
found him an early visitor, from which journey came A Visit
to India, China, and Japan in 1853 (1855).

The interesting experiences and rerniniscences of one of the

most prominent Americans in China during many decades,
Dr. William A. P. Martin, first president of the Imperial
University, are told in Dr. Martin's book, A Cycle of Cathay
(1897), an indispensable work in this field. William Elliot
Griffis visited the Orient too, and gave us The Mikado's Empire

(1876) and Corea, The Hermit Nation (1882). The road to the
East from the West, which Benton so dramatically pointed out,
was being followed with enthusiasm. Lafcadio Heam made
Japan his own. His Glimpses of Unfamiliar Japan (1894),
Leaves from the Diary of an Impressionist (1911), Out of the East
(1895), In Ghostly Japan (1899), and others are too well known
to require comment. A contribution of much interest to this
literature is Eliza Ruhamah Scidmore's Jinrikisha Days in
Japan (1891). She declares that "Japan six times revisited is
as full of charm and novelty as when I first went ashore from
the wreck of the Tokio."
A missionary who wrote Adventures in Patagonia (1880)
wrote also Life in Hawaii (1882), both of them "foundation"
books. He became identified with everything Hawaiian, and
wrote many letters from there to The American Journal of
Science and to The Missionary Herald. This indefatigable
worker in the missionary realm was the Rev. Titus Coan, whose
I
See Book III, Chap. viii. ' Ibid., Chap. xi.
3 Ibid., Chap. x.
156 Travellers and Explorers, 1846-1900

son, Dr. Titus Munson Coan, has written a brochure on The

Climate of Hawaii (1901) and on The Natives of Hawaii: A
Study in Polynesian Charm (1901).
The South Seas enthrall the visitor with this "Polynesian
charm"; a drifting away from material things on "tropic
spray 'which knows not if it be sea or sun' "; a plunge into a
conservatory of blossoms producing a sort of narcosis at least —
such was the effect in former days, and Charles Warren
Stoddard caught and presented this earlier delicioso in his
classic South Sea Idyls (1873), "^he lightest, sweetest, wildest
things that ever were written about the life of the summer
ocean," declares W. D. Howells in the introduction which he
wrote. "No one need ever write of the South Seas again."
Full of whales were these South Seas, too, as well as of the
fragrance of tropic fruits, and the life of the whaler in pursuit
ofthem there, as well as in the northern waters, has found
numerous recorders. But who has painted it as delightfully,
as masterfully, as Herman Melville' in Moby Dick? And
who can forget, once lost in its wonderful glow, that other
story of Melville's, the story of life among cannibals, told
in Typee ? And there is Omoo,
hardly less absorbing, telling of
life in Tahiti. These books of his belong to our American
classics. He wrote also White Jacket, of life on a man-of-war,
Redburn, and Mardi and a Voyage Thither.
"Wherever ship has sailed, there have I been," said Colum-
— —
bus, and the men and women of America were scarcely be-
hind him in travel and exploration. They tested out the far
far seas, the solitudes of continents, the innermost secrets of the
rivers. But there was one river, wild, rock-bound, and recal-
citrant, the Colorado, which, like a raging dragon, refused to
come to terms and was so fierce withal that trapper and
pioneer shunned its canyon tentacles and passed by. Finally
the government sent Lieutenant J. C. Ives to attack it at its
mouth, which is defended by a monstrous tidal wave, and to
ascend in his little iron steamer. The Explorer. Ives reached
the foot of Black Canyon, while Captain Johnson with another
steamer succeeded in reaching a somewhat higher point.
Johnson's journal has not been published, but Ives wrote an
interesting Report upon the Colorado River of the West Explored
' See Book II, Chap. vii.
 The Colorado River i57

in i8sy and 1858, published in 1861, the year the memorable

shot was fired at Fort Sumter. The Colorado was forgotten.
So far the explorer had merely examined the dragon's teeth,
but in 1867 Major J. W. Powell, a veteran of the Federal army,
investigating the geology of the Territory of Colorado, con-
ceived the idea of exploring the mysterious and fateful can-
yons by descending through their entire length of a thousand
miles in small boats.
The same year an uneducated man, James White, was
rescued near Callville from a raft on which he had come down
the river some distance. His condition was pitiful. He was
interviewed by Dr. Parry, who happened to be there with a
railway survey party, and Parry told White that he must have
come through the "Big" canyon. White therefore said he
had, when assured that he had, although he did not know the
—
topography of the canyons neither did Dr. Parry, nor any one
else. The White story was first told in General Palmer's
Report of Surveys Across the Continent in 186f-68 on the j^th
and J 2nd Parallels, etc. (1869). It was repeated in William A.
Bell's New Tracks in North America (1869) and quite recently
has been republished with notes and comments by Thomas F.
Dawson in The Grand Canyon, Doc. 42, Senate, 6^th Cong.,ist
Sess. (19 1 7).
Mr. Dawson, like others who have not run the huge and
numerous rapids of the Grand Canyon, believes that White
went through on his frail little raft, but all who know the
Canyon well are certain that White did not make the passage
and that the story that he did rests entirely on what Dr. Parry
thought. It is only necessary to add that White found but one
big rapid in his course, whereas there are dozens in the distance
it is claimed that he travelled. The river falls 1850 feet in the
Grand Canyon, 480 in Marble Canyon, and 690 between this
and the junction of the Green and Grand, or a total of 3020
feet in the distance White is said to have gone.
In the spring of 1869 Major Powell started from the Union
Pacific Railway in Wyoming and descended, in partly decked
rowboats, through the thousand miles of canyons so closely
connected that they are well-nigh one, with a total descent of
5375 ^®^t ^^ *^^ mouth of the Virgin. In 1871-72 he made a
second descent to complete the exploration and to obtain the
 158 Travellers and Explorers, 1846-1900

required topographical and geological data, prevented by dis-

asterand lack of trained men on the first voyage. The ac-
count of the first voyage is given in Powell's Exploration of the
Colorado River of the West (1875), a report to the government.
He did not include a narrative of the second descent, which is
•
related inA Canyon Voyage (1908) by Frederick S. Dellenbaugh,
a member of the party. The same author's The Romance of the
Colorado River (1902) tells the history of this unique river from
the Spanish discovery in 1540, and gives a table of altitudes
along the river. A recent experience (191 1) in navigating the
river which has been chronicled by Ellsworth Kolb in Through
the Grand Canyon from Wyoming to Mexico (1914) furnishes
valuable data.
In 1889 Frank M. Brown attempted a railway survey
through the canyons from Gunnison Crossing down. He was
drowned in Marble Canyon, as were two of his men. His en-
gineer, Robert B. Stanton, returned to the task the same year
with better boats and successfully completed the descent. He
relates what befell him and his men in an article in Scribner's
Magazine for November, 1890, "Through the Grand Canyon
of the Colorado," and there are other magazine articles on the
subject.
It is interesting to note that the first proper maps of the
United States were made of Far Western territory, and this was
due to the initiative of several energetic explorers. Clarence
King inaugurated a geological survey with map work in con-
junction with it, the results appearing in seven volumes, Report
of the Geological Exploration of the Fortieth Parallel iS'^oSo.
King wrote a charming volume, too. Mountaineering in the Sierra
Nevadct (1871), and later that literary gem in The Century
Magazine (1886), "The Helmet of Mambrino," the "helmet"
and the original manuscript being preserved in the library of
the Century Association.
Powell's Colorado River Exploring Expedition developed
into the Rocky Mountain Survey, and Dr. F. V. Hay den
conducted a series of surveys in Colorado, etc., called the
Geographical and Geological Survey of the Territories. At the
same time the army put into the Western field Lieut. George
M. Wheeler, who conducted Geographical Surveys West of the
xooth Meridian. Wheeler, in 1871, ascended the Colorado
 '

Pueblo and Plains Indians i59

River as far as Diamond Creek. Seven volumes were pro-

duced by the Wheeler Survey, eleven by the Hayden, and a
considerable number by the Powell Survey. At the same time
they turned out topographic maps of excellent character, all
—
things considered in most cases better than any then existing
of the Eastern part of the country.
In connection with the Powell Survey Captain C. E. But-
ton studied the geology of certain districts and wrote sev-
eral books that are almost unique in their combination of
literary charm with scientific accuracy: Physical Geology of
the Grand Canyon District (1880-81), Tertiary History of the
Grand Canyon (1882), and The High Plateaus of Utah (1880).
Powell established the Bureau of Ethnology and from this
issued the large number of volumes before referred to, a mine
of information on the North American Indian. Many workers
were in the field. One of the most picturesque of these labours
wasFrankH. Cushing'sinitiationinto the Zuni tribe described in
his A dventures in Zuni ( 1 883) He wrote, too, Zuni Folk Tales
.

(1901) and, in the Bureau reports, other articles on the Zuni. ^

; A
remarkable ceremonial of another Puebloan group was written
down by Captain John G. Bourke in The Snake Dance of the
Moguis [Hopi] of Arizona (1884). The Puebloans for many
centuries have built villages of adobe and stone in the South-
west in canyons, in valleys, and on mesas. One of these cliff-
bound plateaus, the Mesa Encantada, was the source of some
controversy as to whether or not its summit was once occupied.
Its walls were scaled and some evidences of the former presence
of natives were found. Professor William Libbey and F. W.
Hodge both have written on the subject.
While the pioneers were pouring into the West, exterminat-
ing the buffalo for hide-and-tallow profits, described by W. T.
Homaday in The Extermination of ike American Bison (1889),
and dispossessing the Plains Indians generally, the latter became
' '

restless and unruly. Under the spell of their crafty medicine

'

the Sioux were greatly disturbed. The

priest. Sitting Bull,
army was ordered to compel their obedience and in 1876 made
a determined move expected to crush the Indians. General
Crook was defeated in one of the first encounters; and a few
days later General Custer was annihilated with his immediate
' See also Book III, Chap, xxxiii.
 : —
i6o Travellers and Explorers, 1846-1900

command. The Sioux were superior in numbers and in arms.

The courage of Custer was of no avail.
Custer wrote My Life
on the Plains (1874) and a number
of articles for The Galaxy. General W. B, Hazen, who had a
quarrel with Custer, privately published Some Corrections of
"My Life on the Plains'' (1875). Frederick Whittaker wrote
a Complete Life of General George A. Custer (1876), fuU of de-
tails, and the whole written in a painstaking way. A large
amount of information given in an exceedingly pleasant manner
is found in the books of the General's widow, Elizabeth Bacon

Cnstex: Boots and Saddles, or Life in Dakota with General Custer

(1885) Tenting on the Plains, or General Custer in Kansas and
;

Texas (1887); Following the Guidon (1890). Mrs. Custer also

wrote the introduction for George Armstrong Custer (19 16) by
Frederick S. DeUenbaugh. There was comparatively little
trouble with the Sioux Indians after the massacre of Custer,
for even they seemed to be impressed by its horror; just as the
Modocs were when they destroyed the attacking troops
afterwards Scar-faced Charley said his "heart was sick of seeing
so many men killed."
One of the primary causes of Indian difficulties was the
rapid growth of the cattle and sheep industry on the Plains.
The remarkably nutritive grasses which had fattened buffalo
by the tens of thousands now fattened cattle and sheep in like
numbers. As cattle and sheep will not feed on the same range,
or rather cattle wiU not on a sheep range, there were clashes
that were well-nigh battles between the sheep and the cattle
men. Large tracts were bought or claimed, and fenced in
another cause of trouble. And still another was the character
of the cattle herders. There were suddenly many of them in
the later seventies. They lived in camps and for some reason
they dropped to a lower state of degradation than any class
of men, red or white, that the Far West had seen. Beside
a full-fledged "cowboy" of the earlier period of their brief
reign the Indian pales to a mere recalcitrant Quaker. With
the further development of the country the cowboy became
more civilized and later on he redeemed himself by writing
poetry and books. The reason for this desirable transforma-
tion from debauchery to inspiration may be read in the
lines
 Cowboy Poets i6i

When the last free trail is a prim fenced land,

And our graves grow weeds through forgetful Mays.

The country was becoming agricultural the trails were being

;

fenced in the herds growing smaller for lack of vast, unpaid-

;

for, free range; they were of necessity differently handled; and

the cowboy's pistol was confronted by the sheriff's. In short,
the wild cowboy was a wild cowboy no more. The quotation
is from the admirable volume of poems of the West by Charles

Badger Clark, Jr., Sun and Saddle Leather (191 5), which con-
tains "The Glory Trail" (known among the camps as "High
Chin Bob") and another equally rhythmical, "The Christmas
Trail," one stanza of which is:

The coyote's Winter howl cuts the dusk behind the hill.

But the ranch's shinin' window I kin see:

And though I don't deserve it, and I reckon never will,
There'll be room beside the fire kep' for me.
Skimp my plate 'cause I'm late. Let me hit the old kid gait.
For to-night I'm stumblin' tired of the new.
And I'm ridin' up the Christmas trail to you,
Old Folks,
I'm a-ridin' up the Christmas trail to you.

The man who wrote this, we may be sure, never "shot up" a
Western saloon. Another volimie of this delightful verse re-
flecting the freedom of the Western skies is Out Where the West
Begins, by Arthur Chapman, and two more are, Riders of the
Stars and Songs of the Outlands, both in ink of mountain hue,
from the pen of Herbert Knibbs. These are the things we
expect from men who have ridden the sagebrush plain, scamp-
ered up the painted cliffs with a horizon waving in the blue, or
slept in the winter white under the whispering pines.
Besides this native poetry we have some excellent prose
work in this field; Ten Years a Cowboy (1908) by C. C. Post;
The Log of a Cowboy (1903) by Andy Adams, as well as The
Outlet by the same author, the latter relating to the great cattle
drives formerly undertaken from Texas to the North-west.
Charles M. Russell, the "Cowboy Artist," who has preserved
with his brush some of the thrilling pictures of this ephemeral
and showy savagery, has expressed himself in a literary manner
VOL. Ill — 11
 ,

i62 Travellers and Explorers, 1846 1900

in Studies of Western Life (1890). And it is necessary to nien-

tion in this connection the drawings of Frederick Remington, as
well as Owen Wister's later classic of cowboy life, The Virginian
(1905)-
In the golden days of '49 there was a road to the Califomian
Eldorado by way of the Isthmus of Panama. There were no
Indians that way but there was the Chagres River, until a
railway was built. There is a particular literature of the Isth-
mus. A Story of Life on the Isthmus (1853) was written by
Joseph Warren Fabens and an even earlier one The Isthmus
;

of Panama and What I Saw There (1839) is by Chauncey D.

Griswold. Then there is Five Years at Panama (1889) by
Wolfred Nelson, and numerous others between these dates,
including an exceedingly scarce volume, The Panama Mas-
sacre (1857), which presents the evidence in the case of the
massacre of Americans in 1856. A few years after this event
Tracy Robinson appeared on the Isthmus and for forty-six
years he made it his home. This veteran published his Panama
a Personal Record of Forty-six Years, 1861-iQoy only a short time
before his death.
Frederick Law Olmsted was specially interested in the South
and in 1856 he wrote A Journey in the Seaboard Slave States
with Remarks on Their Economy; in 1857, A Journey through
Texas; in 1861, The Cotton Kingdom (made up from the two
preceding books) and in 1863, A Journey in the Back Country.
;

A very scarce item is a Southerner's impressions of the North

in Sketcheson a Tour Through the Northern and Eastern States,
the Canadas, and Nova Scotia (1840) by J. C. Meyers, one
traveller who was not impelled towards the Golden Gate.
Burroughs in the Catskills and Thoreau' in his favourite
haunts and on his Yankee Trip in Canada (1866) hardly need
mention, but there were some other outdoor men along the
eastern part of the continent. Lucius L. Hubbard in 1884
wrote Woods and Lakes of Maine, a Trip from Moosehead Lake
to New Brunswick in a Birch Canoe; Charles A. J. Farrar in
1886, Down in the West Branch, or Camps and Tramps around
Katahdin; and another. From Lake to Lake, or A Trip across the
Country, A Narrative of the Wilds of Maine.
Although J. T. Headley wrote Letters from the Backwoods
' See Book II, Chap. X.
 .

Americans in Africa 163

and Adirondack/in 1850, and others gave accounts of the

the
splendid "wilderness" of Northern New York, it remained for
W. H. H. Murray, a clergyman, to stir up sportsmen and
travellers on this topic with his enthusiastic book on the region,
Adventures in the Wilderness, or Camp Life in the Adirondacks
(1869), which earned for him the title of "Adirondack" Murray.
American travellers and explorers extended their researches
to the veritable ends of the earth, and their literary product was
enormous. Africa came in for examination, too. Paul B.
DuChaillu explored in West Africa in 1855-59 ^^<i reported the
surprising goriUa; and in 1863-65 he reported pygmies, both
bringing the reproach of prevarication against him. He was
not long in being vindicated. He published Explorations and
Adventures in Equatorial Africa (1861), A Journey to Ashango
Land (1867), The Country of the Dwarfs (1872), and Stories of
the Gorilla Country (1868). Then he turned his attention to
the north and gave us The Land of the Midnight Sun (1881), The
Viking Age (1889), The Land of the Long Night (1899).
An American newspaper correspondent was sent to seek the
lost Livingstone, andHenry M. Stanley tells his remarkablestory
in How I Found Livingstone (1872). He became the foremost
African explorer, and wrote Coomassie and Magdala (1874),
Through the Dark Continent (1878), In Darkest Africa (1890),
The Congoandthe Founding of its Free State (1885). This "free"
state turned out to be anjrthing but free and became the centre
of a storm of controversy. The Story of the Congo Free State
(1905) by H. W. Wack controverts the charges, but those who
know refuse to accept it.

Another part of Africa long had received attention Egypt. :

The list of American travellers and explorers in that ancient

land is almost beyond recording. Here again Bayard Taylor

is found with his A Journey to Central Africa ( 1 854) and George ,

W. Curtis' wrote Nile Notes ofaHowadji (1851) W. C. Prime ;

gives us Boat Life in Egypt and Nubia (1868) Bishop Potter,

;

The Gates of the East, or a Winter in Egypt (i 876)

But the most prominent American in the Egyptian region
was Charles Chaille-Long, who carried on some extensive ex-
plorations along the upper Nile. His chief literary works are:
Central Africa an Account of Expeditions to Lake Victoria
. . .

I
See Book III, Chap. xiii.
 ;

164 Travellers and Explorers, 1846-1900

Nyanza, etc. (1877), The Three Prophets: Chinese Gordon, Mo-

hammed Ahmed {el Maahdi), Arabi-Pasha (1884), and My Life
in Four Continents (1912).
Italy is not behind Egypt as regards of American travel-
literature. There is W. D. Howells' With." Italian Journeys in
1867 and Venetian Life of the year before James Jarvis Jackson ;

with Italian Sights and Papal Principalities Seen through Amer-

ican Spectacles (1856), and Helen Hunt Jackson's Bits of Travel
(1873).
Then there are another score or two on Spain John Hay's ;

CastilianDays (1871) Washington Irving's many contributions;

;

EdwardEverett Hale's Seven Spanish Cities (1899) William H. I

Bishop's A House Hunter in Europe [France, Italy, Spain]

(1893) and Bayard Taylor's The Land of the Saracens (1855).
;

Raphael Pumpelly went Across America and Asia and tells

about it in the book of that title published in 1870; W. W.
Rockhill made many journeys in Oriental lands. He published
Diary of a Journey through Mongolia and Tibet in i8qi-i8q2
(1894). "Sunset" [S. S.] Cox tells of the Diversions of a
Diplomat in Turkey (1887); Charles Dudley Warner^" of In
the Levant (1895) ; W. T, Homaday of Two Years in the Jungle
[India, Ceylon, etc.] (1886) ; and Samuel M. Zwemer of Arabia
the Cradle ofIslam (1900). The last named has also written
on Arabia, which he has studied long at first hand, other im-
portant volumes, beyond the horizon of this chapter.
Many Americans travelled in Russia, too, and wrote vol-
umes about that enigmatical country Nathan Appleton, Rus-
:

sian Life and Society as Seen in 1866-61 and A Journey to

Russia with General Banks i86q (1904) Edna Dean Proctor, A ;

Russian Journey (1873); Miss Isabel Hapgood, Russian Ram-

bles (1895); C. A. Dana, Eastern Journeys (1898); Eugene
Schuyler, iVo^ej of a Journey in Russian Turkestan, Etc. (1876)
and Poultney Bigelow, Paddles and Politics down the Danube;
A Canoe Voyage from the Black Forest to the Black Sea (1892).
Charles Augustus Stoddard was another ubiquitous travel-
ler whose works are difficult to classify in one group. His
Across Russia from the Baltic to the Danube (1891) takes us into
rather out-of-the-way paths, and then he strikes for Spanish
Cities with Glimpses of Gibraltar and Tangier (1892), only to
' See Book III, Chap. xi. » See Book III, Chap. xiii.
 ;

The Philippines 165

jump to Beyond the Rockies (1894), with^ Spring Journey in

California (1895) and some Cruising in the Caribhees the same
year.
Albert Payson Terhune shows us Syria from the Saddle (i 896)
with his customary John Bell Bouton takes us Round-
virility;
about to Moscow (1887), where we instinctively think of George
Kennan and his The Siberian Exile System (1891) and foUov/
him into J'e«fLi/eOT5'z&mc through two editions, 1871 and 1910.
From there we run back On Canada's Frontier (1892) with Julian
Ralph, and th.hn Down Historic Waterways (1888) with Reuben
Gold Thwaites, who also leads us On the Storied Ohio (1897),
after which he holds up the mirror to previous travellers in
thirty-two volumes of Early Western Travels (1904-06). If we
is Bradford Torrey, who con-
are interested in botany, there
tributed to Reports on Western exploration, and wrote inde-
pendently A Florida Sketch Book (1894), Spring Notes from
Tennessee (1895), and Footing in Franconia (1901).
it

The war with Spain landed the United States in the Philip-
pines, clear across the wide western ocean, thus at last forging
the final link in the chain stretching westward from Europe
to Cathay, and proving ultimately Senator Benton's prophecy
as he pointed towards the sunset and said: "There lies the road
to India."
The various islands of the Philippine group were occupied
by different tribes in varying stages of progress, and it became
the problem of the new governing power to give each protection
from the other and an opportunity to develop. In carrying out
this broad policy not only were schools established and towns
remodelled, but battles were fought with such tribes as were
recalcitrant and unruly like the wild Moros.
The literature which has grown out of all this effort is large
and of vast importance civically, ethnologically, and politically,
for it is the history of harmonizing antagonistic primitive groups,
guiding them into proper channels of progress, and fitting them
for eventual self government, a task never before set for itself
by any conqueror; and a task which has led to impatience and
misunderstanding not only among the warring tribes but among
people at home who were ignorant of the situation. Arthur
Judson Brown describes The New Era in the Philippines (1903)
James H. Blount asks (in The North American Review, 1907)
166 Travellers and Explorers, 1846-1900

"Philippine Independence, When?"; William H. Taft in The

Outlook (1902) gives a statement on "Civil Government in the
Philippines WilHam B Freer writes The Philippine Experiences
'

; .
'

of an American Teacher, A Narrative of Work and Travel in the

Philippine Islands (1906) and Dean C. Worcester, to whom
;

more than to any other individual belongs the credit for a

remarkable achievement by the United States in this far-off
region, wrote The Philippine Islands and their People, A Record
of Personal Observation and Experience (1898). A most inter-
esting and instructive "inside" account is Albert Sonnichsen's
Ten Months a Captive among Filipinos (1901). Sonnichsen
was not treated badly by Filipinos, and he was fortunate in
not falling into the clutches of some of the less developed
tribes.
An ethnological survey was begun and
has been carried for-
ward by An example
the bureau having this science in charge.
of results is the admirable study by Albert Ernest Jenks of
The Bontoc Igorot (1905), a volume of 266 pages printed at
Manila. These Bontoc Igorots occupy a district near the
centre of the northern part of the island of Luzon, and are
typical primitive Malayan stock, intelligent and amenable.
"I recall," says Mr. Jenks, "with great pleasure the months
spent in Bontoc pueblo, and I have a most sincere interest in
and respect for the Bontoc Igorot."
Besides the outlying possession of the Philippines, the
United States became owner by purchase in 1867 of Russian
America, afterwards named Alaska. Seward was ridiculed for
making such a purchase in the "frozen " north, and it was long
derided as Seward's "Ice-box." The vast number of publica-
tions favourably describing this region belie this term, and it is
now well understood that Seward secured a treasure house for
a pittance.
Seward's "Address on Alaska at Sitka, August 12, 1869,"
in Old South Leaflets, Vol. 6, No. 133 (1904) is interesting in this
connection. There are a great number of reports, and narra-
tives like those of the veteran William H. Dall; Captain W. R.
Abercrombie's Alaska, j8gg, Copper River Exploring Expedition
(1900) Henry T. Allen's Report of an Expedition to the Copper,
;

Tanana, and Koyukuk Rivers in the Territory of Alaska in the

Year 1885 (1887) M. M. Ballou's The New Eldorado, a Summer
;
 Alaska 167

Tour in Alaska (1889); Reports by A. H. Brooks; Miss Scid-

more's ^/o5^a (1885), etc.
In 1899 a private expedition was organized which cruised in
a chartered ship along the Alaskan coast and across Bering
Sea to Siberia. A large party of scientific men were guests of
the projector, Edward Henry Harriman, and there were also
The results were published in a series of vol-
several artists.
umes now issued by the Smithsonian Institution. The first
two are narrative, with chapters by John Burroughs, John
Muir, G. K. Gilbert, and others, and reproductions of paintings
by R. Swain Gifford, Louis A. Fuertes, and Frederick S. Dellen-
baugh. Burroughs in addition wrote a volume entitled Far
and Near (1904), and there were magazine articles and other
books. The same year as the Harriman Expedition, Angelo
Heilprin published Alaska and the Klondike, A Journey to the
New Eldorado. Gold had been found not only in the Klondike
but at Nome, in the sands of the beach, where a few square
feet yielded a fortune, and in other parts.
On the bleaker eastern arctic shores of North America no
gold had been found to lead armies of fortune-seekers through
incredible hardships, but men will suffer as much, or more, for
an idea, and there was the idea of Polar exploration with the
ignis fatuus of the Pole ever beckoning. A library of many
shelves would not hold all the books relating to this fateful
quest. Americans joined the English early in this field, in-
spired by a desire to discover the actual fate of Franklin.
In
1850 Elisha Kent Kane accompanied a party equipped by Grin-
nell with two ships under Lieutenant De Haven. They reached
Smith Sound as described in The United States Grinnell Ex-
pedition in Search of Sir John Franklin (1854). Kane went
north again iii 1853 and reached 78° 41'. This expedition is
recorded in his Arctic- Explorations: The Second Grinnell Expedi-
tion (1856).
Dr . Hayes followed this up by taking advantage of experi-
1. 1 .

ence acquired with Kane and in going to the ice regions in i860.
He wrote The Open Polar Sea (1867), An Arctic Boat Journey
(i860), The Land of Desolation (1881); and the Smithsonian
printed his "Physical Observations in the Arctic Seas"
(Volume 15).
One of the most devoted and interesting of all Arctic explor-
 i68 Travellers and Explorers, 1846 1900

ers was Charles Francis His heart was so thoroughly in

Hall.
the work, at first a search for Franklin, that he made three
fruitful expeditions and would have continued had he not
mysteriously died in full health on the last journey. The first
expedition was on an ordinary whaling ship to the Eskimos,
with whom he lived for two years in 1860-62. On the second
trip he again lived with Eskimos in 1864-69, and on the third
1
voyage in 1 87 1 in the Polaris he got to 82° 1 ', at the Polar ocean
via Smith Sound. His Narrative of the [Third or Polaris] North
Polar Expedition (1876) was edited by C. H. Davis: the Nar-
rative of the Second Arctic Expedition to Repulse Bay (1879) was
edited by Prof. J. E. Nourse. That of Hall's first journey was
published in 1864, the year in which he started on his second,
with the title A rctic Researches and Life among the Eskimaux. He
was the first, or one of the first, to note that the Eskimos knew
the geography of their environment and could make maps
of it. Some reproductions of such maps occur in Hall's voltmies.
E. V. Blake's Arctic Experiences (1874) contains an account of
Captain George E. Tyson's drift on the ice-floe, a history of the
Polaris expedition, and the rescue of the Polaris survivors.
The next American to push north with the great idea was
Lieutenant De Long under the auspices of the New York
Herald. A vessel named the Jeanette, supplied with provisions for
three years, sailed in July, 1879, from San Francisco, entering
the Polar Sea through Bering Strait. The Jeanette was sunk
by ice in June, 1 88 1 The crew got to Herald Island and thence
.

steered for the mouth of the Lena River in three boats, of

which one was lost and the crew of another, including De Long,
;

starved and froze to death on land, while George W. Melville

and nine more reached a small native village. After a fruitless
search for the others he came home, to return again to the
search. He wrote In the Lena Delta, A Narrative of the Search
for Lieutenant Commander De Long, and his Companions (1885).
Another volume is. The Narrative of the Jeanette Arctic Expedi-
tion as Related by the Survivors, Raymond Lee
etc. Revised by
Newcomb (1882). The naval command of the search
officer in
party (1882-84), Giles Bates Harber, found De Long's body
and nine other remains, and brought them home for burial.
He wrote a Report of Lieut. G. B. Harber of his Search for
Missing People of the Jeanette Expedition (1884). William
 Polar Explorations 169

H. Gilder wrote Ice Pack and Tundra (1883) on the same

subject.
A Polar expedition which accomplished its important work
and yet met with disaster was that of Greely, which co-operated
with eight other international stations meteorologically. His
disaster was due to inefficiency in the efforts of those at home
to get the annual supplies through. One of Greely's assist-
ants, Lieutenant Lockwood, reached the highest latitude up
to that time: 83° 24'. Lockwood's journal of his trip farthest
north is given in vol. I of the Report mentioned below and also
is described in The White World (1902) by David L. Brainard,
now General Brainard, who accompanied Lockwood, under
the title "Farthest North with Greely," an excellent account
of this memorable effort. Charles Lanman in Farthest North
(1885) tells the life story of Lieutenant Lockwood, who
died later at winter quarters of starvation. This was the
Lady Franklin Bay Expedition, but it is seldom referred to
except as the Greely Expedition. A full account is given in
Report on the Proceedings of the United States Expedition to Lady
Franklin Bay, Grinnell Land, by A. W. Greely ( 1 888) and Greely
;

also wrote Three Years of Arctic Service (1886). Winfield S.

Schley, afterwards Admiral Schley, commanded the second re-
lief expedition, and it was his energy and determination which
put his ships at Cape Sabine just in time to save the survivors,
who had to be carried on board. Schley made a report pub-
lished in House Documents of the 49th Congress and wrote,
with R. Soley, The Rescue of Greely (1885).
J.
Evelyn B. Baldwin led the first Ziegler expedition and tells
the story in The Search for the North Pole (1896), and Anthony
Fiala headed the second Ziegler expedition, recorded in his
Fighting the Polar Ice (1906).
Not only was the outer approach towards the Pole hazard-
ous and difficult, but the mathematical point lay in the midst
of a wide frozen ocean with hundreds of miles of barrier ice
constantly on the move and frequently splitting into broad
"leads" of open water, interposing forbidding obstacles to
progress or to return. One American had set his heart on
reaching this "inaccessible spot," and after twenty-three years
of amazing perseverance, Robert Edwin Peary succeeded,
6 April, 1909, in placing the flag of the United States at the
170 Travellers and Explorers, 1846-1900

point where all meridians meet under the North Star. Peary-
deserved every honour his countrymen could give him, but, alas,
at the moment of triumph the voice of an impostor dimmed the
glory.
The North Pole was won by the adoption of Eskimo clothing,
snow houses, and a relay dog-sledge system. Peary's account of
his long continued efforts to attain this object of centuries is foimd
in numerous and articles, but his chief literary
reports, lectures,
production is the several volumes Northward over the Great Ice
:

(1898), Snowland Folk (1904), Nearest the Pole (1907), and

The North Pole (1910), the last the story of the final success.
Besides the conquest of the Pole, Peary determined the insul-
arity of Greenland and added much other information to the
Polar records. My Arctic Journal (1893) by Mrs. Josephine
Debitsch Peary is interesting and valuable in North Pole
literature.
In travel and exploration in the period which we have thus
briefly reviewed, there are many notable and thrilling events,
but there is nothing that exhibits the striving after an ideal
regardless of pecuniary profit or physical comfort better than
the determination of Peary to reach the frozen centre of the
Northern Hemisphere. He
has a competent successor in
ViUijalmur Stefansson, another American whose whole heart
is in Arctic exploration, and whose bold and original method

of relying on his rifle for food, even on the wide ice of the
Polar ocean, has been rewarded by an astonishing success, a
success which has revealed, or at least emphasized, the facts
that everywhere in the farthest North there exists a large
amount of game.
Stefansson and his literary output do not properly belong
to this chapter, but in closing it may be permissible to refer
to him and his volume, My Life with the Eskimo (1913), since
he has accomplished much that must be considered in connec-
tion with all earlier Arctic exploration.
 CHAPTER XV

Later Historians

it evident," said an intelKgent librarian in 1876, "that

IT diligent workers in preserving the history of the nation
have been numerous and that whateverneglect there has
been in the pursuit of science or literature, we cannot be said
to have equally neglected our own history."^ This opinion,
when uttered, was supported by facts. It could not be held
today, partly because science and literature have made great
progress in recent years, and partly because the writing of
history has recently undergone a singular development. Al-
though the United States contains at present several times as
many educated people as in 1876, there exists among them no
historian who has the recognition enjoyed fifty years ago by
Bancroft, Parkman, and some others. To explain this change
is not the purpose here. It is sufficient to observe the progress
of the change, leaving the reader to make his own deductions
in regard to its causes.
When
the period began, history writing was proceeding on
the old Books were written about men and events with
lines.

an idea of pleasing the reader, stimulating his admiration for

his country or for exceptional men, or satisfying a commendable
desire for information. Such histories had to be well written
and had an advantage if they contained what our grandfathers
called "elevated sentiment." They always had a point of
view, and generally made the reader Uke or disUke one side or
the other of some controversy. These books were naturally in
constant demand among a people who were still in the habit of
viewing everything in a matter-of-fact way, and to whom but
' Henry A. Homes, Public Libraries in the United States, U. S. Bureau of Educa-
tion, 1876, pp. 312-325.

171
172 Later Historians

one political party was right and but one kind of man was great.
The change that came into these ideas amounts to a revolu-
tion. The scientific trend of the mid-century period reached
history and transformed it. Detachment of the author from
his feelings, accuracy of statement, dependence on original
sources, study of institutions,and increasing attention to social
and economic phenomena became the chief characteristics of a
new school of historians. Under such conditions history be-
came didactic, informational, and philosophical; and at the
same time it became less unified and vivid. This change came
at a time when the general tendency in literature was toward
the clever and amusing. In the view of the serious-minded
man, history today is better written than ever before, but it does
not maintain the place it held in 1876 in the esteem of the aver-
age reader of intelligence. This chapter deals with the transi-
tion from the old to the new school.

Three Underlying Movements. Accompanying the develop-

ment new school are three movements which are not to
of the
be Ignored by one who wishes to understand the subject as a
whole the wide growth of
: and
historical societies, the creation
publication of historical "collections" and other documents,
and the transformation of historical instruction in the colleges
and universities.
The beginning of the first goes back to 1 79 1, when the Mas-
sachusetts Historical Society was founded through the efforts
of Jeremy Belknap.^ Other societies followed, among them
the New York Historical Society in 1804, the American Anti-
quarian Society in 1 8 12, the Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, and
Maine Historical Societies in 1822, the New Hampshire His-
torical Society in 1823, the Georgia Historical Society in 1839,
the Maryland Historical Society in 1844, the New Jersey His-
torical Society in 1845, the Virginia Historical Society in 1851,
and the Delaware Historical Society in 1 864. Through Bel-
knap's efforts the Massachusetts society had a vigorous life from
the beginning, collecting and publishing valuable material
steadily. None of the other societies mentioned did so well.
Most of them were the offsprings of local pride and lived thin
and shallow lives until we come to the period treated In this
' See Book 11, Chap. xvn.
 ,

Historical Societies i73

chapter. For example, the New York society, in the richest

kept up a battle for existence for forty years
city in the Union,
and was saved from bankruptcy only by aid from the State
treasury. In sixty-four years it published eight small vol-
umes of a number of "discourses" in pam-
Collections, besides
phlet form. In the late forties it took on new life, obtained
money for a building of its own, and in 1857 began to raise the
publication fund which resulted in a series of annual Collec-
tions from 1868 to the present.
It is difficult to determine the origin of this renewed activity
which appeared in other societies than the New York Historical
Society. It was largely affected by Sparks's, Bancroft's, and
Force's activities in the fourth decade of the century, ' efforts
so widely discussed that they must have stimulated new efforts
everywhere. The return of John Romeyn Brodhead from
Europe in 1844 with his excellent collection of transcripts on
New York history and their publication by the State were an-
other strong impulse to progress, and others can probably be
discovered in the general development of the intellectual con-
ditions of the day. It is clear that with the end of the Civil
War the historical societies of the Atlantic States had passed
out of their dubious phase of existence and had begun to exer-
cise the important influence they have lately had in support of
history.
Beyond the Alleghanies we find trace of the same awaken-
ing. State historical societies were established in Ohio in 1 83 1
inWisconsin and Minnesota in 1849, in Iowa in 1857, in Kansas
in 1875, in Nebraska in 1878, and in Illinois and Missouri in
1899. Besides these state societies were several important
privately projected societies: as the Chicago Historical Society,
foimded in 1855, and the Missouri Historical Society estab-
lished in 1886. Within the latter part of the period under
discussion the creation of societies has proceeded rapidly
throughout the country.
Among the men who made this growth possible no one
stands higher than Lyman Copeland Draper (1815-91), whose
persistent efforts made the Wisconsin society pre-eminent
among State historical societies. Fired by the example of
Force and Sparks in Revolutionary history, he made his field

I
See Book II, Chap. xvii.
174 Later Historians

the Revolutionary struggle on the Western border, extending

it later to the entire Western region. He travelled widely in
the West, visiting the explorers who still lived, ransacking old
garrets,winning the confidence of important men, and collect-
ing finally a vast treasure of material out of which he hoped to
write a detailed history of the frontier. In 1853 he became
corresponding secretary and chief executive officer of the State
Historical Society of Wisconsin. His efforts were constantly
and wisely directed towards increasing its collections, enlarging
the scope of its publications, and inducing the State to appro-
priate the funds necessary for development. He is rightly
called the father of the Society. To it he bequeathed his large
collection of historical material, itself a worthy nucleus of any
His work was continued after his death
society's possessions.
by Reuben Gold Thwaites (1853-19 13), who was an active
writer of history as well as an eminent librarian. His service
to Western history has not been surpassed.
To crown the series of events attending the creation of his-
torical societies came the organization of the American Histor-
ical Association in 1884. Herbert Baxter Adams, of the Johns
Hopkins University, was the most active person in bringing
together the distinguished group of scholars who launched the
enterprise and got it incorporated by the national government
in 1889. In 1895 The American Historical Review was estab-
lished in connection with the work of the Association. Taken
together these two expressions of historical effort have boimd
up the interests of scattered American scholars, intensified their
purpose, clarified their understanding, and enabled them to lay
better foundations for a national school of history than we could
have expected to evolve under the old individualistic method
of procedure. They have had, also, an important influence on
the writing of history, although it is probable that their best
work is in the nature of a foundation for a greater structure to
be erected in the future.
The origin of the great collections of historical
documents
in the United States goes back to similar enterprises in Europe.
In France the series known as the Acta Sanctorum had been
projected in the seventeenth century, but the movement had
its fruition after the end of the Napoleonic wars, when

several national series were authorized at pubHc expense.

 Collections i75

Among them the most conspicuous were the Rolls Series in

Great Britain, projected in 1823, the Monumenta Germanica
in Germany, launched in 1823, and the Documents InMits in
France, begun in 1835. The desire to do something similar for
the United States led Peter Force to attempt his American
Archives, which was authorized by an act of Congress passed
2 March, 1833. I* was pubhshed at a large profit to the com-
pilers and smacked so much of jobbery that great dissatisfaction
was created in Congress and among the executive officers.
The result was that it was discontinued by Secretary of State
Marcy in 1855 when only nine volumes had been published.
Force's materials were badly arranged and his editorial notes
were nearly nil, but his ideal was good. Had it been carried
out with a fairer regard for economy it might have escaped the
rock on which it foundered. As it was, it served to call atten-
tion to a field in which much needed to be done, and it is prob-
able that the collections of documents undertaken about that
time in the states owed their inception in a considetable measure
to his widely heralded scheme.
Of these the most noticeable was Brodhead's tran-
efforts
scripts, already mentioned in this chapter. In 1849 the
legislature of New York ordered that they should be pub-
lished at the expense of the state. They appeared in due
time in ten quarto volumes, with an index in an eleventh
volume, and with the title New York Colonial Documents.
With some supplementary volumes they form a clear and
sufficient and permanent foundation for New York colonial
history.
In Pennsylvania a similar movement occurred at nearly the
same time. It began in 1837when the legislature, acting on
the suggestion of the Historical Society of Pennsylvania, au-
thorized the publication of the series eventually known as The
Colonial Records of Pennsylvania. Failure of funds in the panic
days that followed caused the suspension of the series when only
three volumes had been published, but it was resumed in 1851
on an enlarged basis. The Colonial Records were continued
through sixteen volumes, and another series, The Pennsylvania
Archives, was authorized. The former contains the minutes of
the provincial council, and the latter is devoted to other docu-
ments of historical importance on the colonial period. These
176 Later Historians

works were edited with much care by Samuel Hazard, son of

that Ebenezer Hazard' who as a friend and mentor of Jeremy
Belknap had made himself one of the first collectors and pub-
lishers of historical documents in this country. Many other
states have followed the examples of New York and Pennsyl-
vania. North Carolina, however, deserves special mention.
Through the efforts of her Secretary of State, William L. Saun-
ders, ten large volumes of her Colonial Records, followed by six-
teen volumes of State Records, were published by the State
between the years 1886 and 1905. They deal with great com-
pleteness with the history of North Carolina from the earliest
days to the adoption of the Constitution of the United States,
and they place the state in the lead among Southern states in
this essential phase of historical development.
The part taken by colleges and universities in promoting
historical literature is equally important with the services of
the historical societies and the projectors of great collections
of documents. The process by which instruction shifted from
the old haphazard method into the modem mode of instruc-
tion which regards history as an exhibition of the life process
of organized society, falls almost entirely within our present
period of discussion. The transition was made gradually. It
means that the older subjects, with the strictly text-book meth-
ods, have for the most part been relegated to the preparatory
schools and the lower college classes, while lectures by special-
ists have become the means of instructing and inspiring the
upper classmen among the undergraduates, and special research
in seminaries has been employed to make historical scholars out
of graduate students.
The origin of the movement was in Germany, from whose
universities many enthusiastic American students returned to
infuse new life into institutions in their native land or to give
direction to the instruction in newly established seats of learn-
ing. In the former the change came gradually, as in Harvard,
which established the first distinct chair of history when Jared
Sparks was made McLean Professor in 1839. It is not believed
that the "occasional examinations and lectures" he was re-
quired to give greatly advanced historical instruction in the
college. Distinct progress, however, was made under his suc-
I
See Book II, Chap. xvn.
 History in the Universities i77

cessors, and the new life that came to the institution in the time
of President Eliot completed the transformation in history as
in other branches of instruction. Similar courses of develop-
ment occurred in other universities.
Before this process was completed at Harvard or at any other
Eastern university it was well established under the influence
of Andrew D. White (1832-1918) at the University of Michigan
and Cornell University. Returning from Europe he became pro-
fessor of history in the former institution in 1857 and captivated
the students by his brilliant lectures. In his classes was Charles
Kendall Adams (1835- 1902), who so impressed the master that
he was made professor of history in Michigan when White
became president of Cornell in 1867. Adams became presi-
dent of the University of Wisconsin in 1891. Thus it hap-
pened that the influence of Andrew D. White in promoting
modem historical instruction was brought to bear on three of
the leading universities of the country, and that three strong
departments of history sprang into existence.
At Columbia University the zeal and wisdom of Professor
John W. Burgess brought into existence a department of po-
litical science in which history had an important place, with

results that have been far reaching. He gathered around him an

able group of assistants and set standards which have had much
influence in a university which, as the event showed, was about
to take a large place in our educational life. At Johns Hopkins
the same kind of work was done by Herbert B. Adams (1850-
1901), whose name wiU ever have place in the story of historical
development in this country. He was bom at Shutesbury Mas- ,

sachusetts, graduated at Amherst in 1872, was awarded the doc-

torate at Heidelberg in 1876, and was appointed a fellow at the
Johns Hopkins University in the same year. The illustrious
position of that university offered a stage for the development of
his talents. Among the mature and capable students who gath-
ered around him he became an enthusiastic leader. No man
knew better how to stimulate a young man to attempt author-
ship. In establishing The Johns Hopkins University Studies
in Historical and Political Science he opened a new door of
publication to American students. He took personal interest
in his students after they left the university and sought to save
them from the dry rot that menaces the young doctor when he
VOL. Ill — la
178 Later Historians

first realizesacademic success. It was in this work for his-

torical study and in the organization of the American Histori-
cal Association that Adams's best service was done. He wrote
many monographs on subjects of occasional importance. His
one large book, The Life and Writings 0} Jared Sparks (2 vols.,
1893) was received with disfavour by a public whom Adams and
,

men like him had already taught to condemn Sparks's uncritical

methods. Other directors of historical research have been
keener critics of their students and have given them a larger
portion of the divine doubts that makes the historian proof
against credulity; but no other has sent them forth with a
stronger desire to become historians.
One of the effects of the development of graduate instruc-
tion is that teachers of history write most of the history now
being written in the United States. The historian who is
merely a historian is rarely encountered. Whether the result
be good or bad is not a part of this discussion but the process
;

promotes the separation of the writer from his readers, which

may or may not be fortunate. The professor-historian, having
his subsistence in his college salary,may defy the bad taste of
his public and write history in accordance with the best canons
of the schools he may come to despise the just demand that
:

history be so written that it may maintain its place in the litera-

ture that appeals to serious and intelligent people who are not
specialists.

Minor Historians of Old School. When the writing of

the
history began to undergo the change that has been described,
a number of men were doing creditable work in the old way.
Although they worked in limited fields, they produced books
which are still respected by persons interested in those fields,
and their names are essentially connected with the history of
our historians. A "minor" historian is not necessarily an un-
important historian.
One of the striking things in this connection is the rise of
New York as a centre for such historians. While Boston gloried
in the possession of Sparks, Palfrey, Hildreth, Prescott, Motley,
and Parkman, New York produced a group of smaller men who
made the vocation of historian both pleasant and respectable
in the metropolis of wealth. Among them was Dr. John Wake-
 The Old School i79

field Francis (1789-1861), genial friend of letters and literary-

men and last of a series of literary doctors which included
Cadwallader Golden/ David Hosack, Hugh Williamson, and
Samuel L. Mitchill, not to mention Benjamin Rush and David
''

Ramsay^ who lived elsewhere. Francis's Old New York (1858)

is a charming description of the city under a generation then
vanishing. Others of the group were: Henry Onderdonck, Jr.
(1804-86), who wrote Annals of Hempstead (1878), Queens
County in Olden Times (1865), and other books on Long Island
history; Gabriel Furman (1800-53), who left a most accurate
book in his Notes Relating to the Town of Brooklyn
. . .

(1824); Rev. Francis Lister Hawks (i 789-1 866), best remem-

bered for his History of North Carolina (1857-58) and his
documents relating to the Anglican Ghurch in the colonies;
and Henry Barton Dawson (i 821-1889), a turbulent spirit who
served history best as editor of The Historical Magazine. John
Romeyn Brodhead (1814-73), whose transcripts have been men-
tioned, wrote an excellent History of New York, i6oQ-i6gi
(1853-71). He was one of the best esteemed members of the
New York group.
Two Gatholic historians added much to its efficiency: Ed-
ward Bailey O'Gallaghan (1797-1873) and John Dawson Gil-
mary Shea (1824-92). The first was an educated Irishman,
an agitator in the Canadian rebellion of 1837 who fled for
safety to Albany when the uprising collapsed, and a historian
of good ability. His History of New Netherland (1846-48) and
the Documentary History of New York (1849-51) introduced him
to the reading public. He became connected with the office of
Secretary of State in Albany, edited the ten volumes of Brod-
head's transcripts, and brought out many other documents and
reprints, always working hard and conscientiously. Shea, who
was educated to be a Jesuit priest but withdrew from his novi-
tiate before taking final vows, was most interested in church his-
tory. His largest work was a History of the Catholic Church in the
United States ( 1 88 6-92) in four volumes but he is best known in
, ;

secular history for his studies in the French history of North

America. His Cramoisy edition of the Jesuit Relations ( 1 857-66)
andhis editions of Gharlevoix's History of New France (1866-72),
' See Book I, Chap. ll. ' See Book II, Chap. ii.

3 See Book II, Chap. xvii.

i8o Later Historians

Hennepin's Description of Louisiana (1880), and other sim-

ilar original works were valuable additions to the assets of
historians in this particular field. By calling attention to the
French origins of our trans-Alleghany region O'CaUaghan and
Shea gave balance to a period of our history which had previ-
ously been too much accented on the English side, and opened
the way for the fuller and more appreciated volumes of Francis
Parkman.
Two college professors belong in this group of historians,
one a teacher of chemistry the other a teacher of Greek but
both best remembered as historians. Henry Martyn Baird
( 1 832-1 906) took for his theme the history of the Huguenots,

which he presented in the following instalments History of the

:

Rise of the Huguenots (2 vols., 1879), The Huguenots and Henry

of Navarre (2 vols., 1886), and The Huguenots and the Revocation
of the Edict of Nantes (2 vols., 1895). Besides these books he
wrote a short life of Theodore Beza (1899). His work was done
carefully and in great detail. It was weU written, but it always
took the side of the Huguenots, and it is to be classed with the
history of the old school, of which it was a notable and success-
ful specimen.
John William Draper (181 1-82) had won an assured posi-
tion as a scientist before he turned to history. Like Professor
Baird he was a member of the faculty of New York University.
At the middle of the century the idea that history is an
exact science, an idea that grew out of the teachings of Auguste
Comte, had been widely advocated by scientific men. Two
men. Buckle in London and Draper in New York, working
independently of each other, undertook to give the idea its
application. Buckle published the first volume of his History
of Civilization in England in 1857, and the second in 1861 fur-
;

ther efforts ceased with his death in 1862. Draper published

his book. The History of the Intellectual Development of Europe,
in 1862. We are assured that it was practically complete be-
fore the first volume of Buckle appeared and that it remained
in the author's hands in manuscript during the internal.
In our day the world has not a great interest in history as an
exact science; but in 1862 the work of Comte, Buckle, Darwin,
and Spencer had prepared it for another attitude. Draper
reaped the harvest thus made ready, and his book quickly
 Histories of the Civil War i8i

passed through several editions, in the United States and Eu-

rope. Its thesis was that history results from the action on
human activity of climate, soil, natural resources, and other
physical surroundings. Having stated it in principle, he took

up the history of nation after nation, showing to his own satis-

faction that his theory operated successfully in each. He had
little history to begin with and
Ijis statements, taken from un-

secondary works, were full of errors. The same failing

critical
appears even more plainly in his History of the American Civil
War (3 vols., 1867). His popularity was largely promoted by
his clear and vivid style and by the frankness with which he
repudiated what Comte called theological and metaphysical
states of knowledge, demanding that all truth should be studied
scientifically. Since most of his criticisms were aimed at the
Roman church he did not arouse the ire of the Protestants.
His History of the Conflict between Religion and Science (1874),
his last work, found place in the same series in which appeared
Bagehot's Physics and Politics, Spencer's Sociology, and Tyn-
dall's Forms of Water. It was one of the most widely demanded
of the group.
Draper's history of the Civil War brings him into relation
with a group of patriotic writers who attempted to record the
history of that struggle. The books that first appeared, as
William Swinton's Campaigns of the Army of the Potomac (1866)
and Horace Greeley's American Conflict (2 vols., 1864-66),
were tinged with prejudice, however much the authors strove
to keep it down. After ten years or more had passed a calmer
attitude existed, and we encounter a number of books in which
is discerned a serious striving to attain impartiality. In this
stage the first notable effort was the series published by the
Scribners as Campaigns of the Civil War (13 vols., 1881-
known
90), in which prominent military men co-operated. It was
followed by a similar series called The Navy in the Civil War
(3 vols., 1885). Another co-operative work, much read at the
time and stiU valuable, was Battles and Leaders of the Civil War
(4 vols., 1887-89), a collection of short papers written by
participants in the war, and presenting the views on both sides
of the struggle. Robert Underwood Johnson and Clarence
Clough Buel were the editors whose good judgment and indus-
try made the series a striking success. The same spirit of im'
1 82 Later Historians

partiality was observed inthe Civil Whr by John

The Story of
Codman Ropes came to an end after two
(1836-99), which
volumes had been published ( 1 894 and 1 898) To many people
.

Ropes's volumes seemed to promise the best military history of

the war we were likely to have.
A large number of books of personal experience appeared
from the hands of men who had taken a prominent part in the
war, and some of them have merit as literature. The most
notable in content and style was Ulysses Simpson Grant's
Personal Memoirs (2 vols., 1885, 1886). It was written in
simple and direct language and dealt with things in which
the humblest citizens could feel interest. Other important
books of similar nature were: William Tecumseh Sherman's
Memoirs (2 vols., 1875); Philip Henry Sheridan's Personal
Memoirs George Brinton McCleUan's My Own
(2 vols., 1888);
Story (1887) and Charles Anderson Dana's Recollections of the
;

Civil War (1898).

Apart from all other works on the Civil War is that which
appeared with the title Abraham Lincoln, a History (10 vols.,
1890), by John George Nicolay and John Hay, both of whom
had been private secretaries of the war president. In complete-
ness of treatment, clearness of statement, and fair discussion of
the men and problems that Lincoln encountered, it is one of the
best historical works of the generation in which it was written.
Of the joint authors Nicolay (i 832-1 901) was an historian of
unusual breadth of view and industry while Hay' (1838-1905)
was noted for his clear and natural style.
The Southern histories of the war pass through the two
stages just described in the Northern histories. Immediately
after the conflict ended there were published such books as
Edward Albert Pollard's The Lost Cause (1866) and Alexander
Hamilton Stephens's Constitutional View of the Late War be-
tween the States (2 vols., 1868-70), both warmly Southern.
So much belated that it might have been less apologetic was
Jefferson Davis's Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government
(2 vols., 1 881). It was, however, what might have been ex-
pected under the circumstances, an official statement of the
Southern side of the question. No fair and ample Southern
history of the war has been published.
' See also Book III, Chaps, x and xi.
 Americana 183

'^The Great Subject.'' Reverence for worthy deeds or men

characterized the histories written by the men mentioned in the
preceding section. To them succeeded a group who were car-
ried away by what John Carter Brown called "the great sub-
ject," that is, the age of discovery and exploration. Columbus
and the men and things of his age were their chief interest.
Some of them were books in this field, others
collectors of rare
were historians merely, and still others were both collectors
and writers. The efforts of all were closely interrelated. The
significance of the group is that here was the first theme on
which the American historians made an exhaustive search into
the original sources of information and wrote out their conclu-
sions with acute reasoning regardless of preconceived opinions.
It was a transition phase from the old to the new school.
Book collectors who were historians existed in England
and the United States long before the period now under dis-
cussion. Among them were Peter Force, George Bancroft,
Jared Sparks, William H. Prescott, and most other writers of
history. Public libraries were undeveloped, and it was difficult
for a man to write history who was not able to buy a large por-
tion of the books he used in collecting information. By 1840
the library of Harvard University was recognized as one of the
important buyers when a rich collection came into the markets,
but it was only with the advent of the Astor Library in 1854
and the donation of James Lenox's rich collection to the public
in 1870 that New York had public libraries in which a student
of history could find what he needed. The Boston Public
Library, incorporated in 1848, the Athenaeum, a private founda-
tion, and the Harvard College library gave the same kind of
support to the historians of Boston.
Meanwhile a group of wealthy men had taken up the occu-
pation of collector, most of them dealing in early Americana.
John Carter Brown, of Providence, led off in the movement, and
found worthy seconds in James Lenox and Samuel L. M. Bar-
low of New York, George Brinsley of Hartford, and Colonel
Thomas Aspinwall, who was long the American consul in Lon-
don. The collections of the first two became permanent and
were converted into libraries open to the public. The collec-
tions of the others were placed on the market and passed for the
most part, after various vicissitudes, into the public libraries.
 ,

1 84 Later Historians

It was the persistent idea of most of these collectors to gather

every item possible on Columbus and his associates. The
process naturally stimulated interest in history writing.
The best outgrowth of this movement was Henry Harrisse
(1823-1910). He was born in Paris, removed to the United
States when still a boy, graduated from the University of South
Carolina, taught in the University of North Carolina, and at
length became a lawyer with a small practice in New York City.
Here he came into contact with Samuel L. M. Barlow, who
proved his fast friend and mentor. Thus inspired he decided
to write a history of the rise, decline, and fall of the Spanish
empire in America. His first step was to undertake to make a
bibliography of the Columbian period, using Barlow's library
as a basis and examining further the other collections in the
city. The results he embodied in his Notes on Columbus ( 1 866)
in which not only titles were given but much additional informa-
tion in regard to editions and contents. Favourable criticisms
came from collectors and he decided to make a bibliography of
Americana for the years 1492 to 1551. Thus was prepared his
Bibliotheca Americana Vetustissima, which appeared in 1866.
The few interested in the subject were loud in their praise, but
the general public were so indifferent that the publisher threw
a large part of the edition on the market at a sacrifice. Harrisse
was so indignant that he set out for France, unwilling to reside
in a country in which his researches were so slightly esteemed.
In Paris he received a warm welcome. Ernest Desjardins
brought him to the notice of the Societ6 de Geographic in
flattering terms, declaring him the author of
'

' the first work of

solid erudition which American science has produced." He
assumed a prominent place at once among French savants.
Continuing his profession of lawyer he was retained to give
advice to the American government in regard to legal matters
connected with the construction of the Panama Canal. The
remuneration was so satisfactory that he was able, by good
management, to lay the foundation of a fortune amounting at
his death to a million francs. Freed from financial anxieties
he could give himself to a career of scholarly labour.
Thirty volumes and a large nimiber of pamphlets remain to
attest the persistence of his efforts. He entered the hitherto
uncharted region of the discoverers, explored it with the great-
 Henry Harrisse 185

est attention to details, debated every disputed point with

and revealed to the world not only its metes and
great ability,
bounds but its most salient interior features. Not all of his
conclusions have been accepted by his successors, but no man
has opposed him without acknowledging that Harrisse made
possible the investigations of his critics. Of his Discovery
of North America (1892), a comprehensive view of the whole
field of his labour made when he had advanced far in his own
development. Professor Edward Gaylord Bourne said that it
was "the greatest contribution to the history of American geo-
graphy since Humboldt's Examen."
Harrisse gave a large portion of his thought to three great
figures in the period of discovery, Columbus, Cabot, and Ves-
puccius, planning an exhaustive book on each. On the first he
produced his Jean et Sebastien Cabot (1882), besides several
smaller pieces; and on the second he wrote his Christophe Co-
lombe (2 vols. 1 884-85)
, . On the third he collected a great mass
of material, discussing some of the points in monographs, but
death intervened before a final and exhaustive work was ac-
tually written. Like a true explorer he was ever seeking new
knowledge, correcting in one voyage errors made in another.
He did not hesitate to alter his views when newly discovered
facts demanded it. He was strong in defending his opinions
and did not escape controversies with those who opposed them.
But he was a true scholar and no love of ease or honour tempted
him away from the joyful toil of his studies. Although he
spent the best part of his life in Paris, he considered himself an
American to the end. He bequeathed his annotated set of his
own writings together with the most valuable of his manuscripts
and maps to the Library of Congress.
Harrisse's achievements tend to dwarf the work of two New
York historians who took a high stand in the circle out of which
he got his first impulses to historical scholarship. James Car-
son Brevoort (1818-87) was a business man who gave his
leisure to history. His Verrazano, the Navigator (1874) was an
important book on that phase of our early history. Henry
Cruse Murphy (1810-82), a lawyer and Democratic leader of
high character, found himself stranded when the Civil War
swept his party into a hopeless minority. Unwilling to twist
himself into a Republican he retired from politics and devoted
1 86 Later Historians

himself to history and the care of the large library he had col-
lected. One The Voyage of Verrazano (1875),
of his books,
taking the opposite side from Brevoort's, was received as the
best on its side of the controversy.
These men represent the early manifestations of "the great
subject." Two others, Justin Winsor (1831-97) and Edward
Gaylord Bourne (1860-1908), stand at the point of its fruition.
Alike in scholarship and deep interest in the earliest phase of our
history, they were widely apart in their use of language to ex-
press their ideas. Winsor wrote a tedious page, filled with
details Bourne wrote in a simple and well digested style which
;

did not lack in clearness and charm of expression.

Winsor was of a prosperous Boston mercantile family and
began life with every opportunity that a Boston boy could de-
sire. He withdrew from Harvard because he disliked the rou-
tine of the college classes but read widely in the best literature.
Determined to become a literary man he gave himself to poetry
and the drama until he realized that he was not likely to
succeed in creative literature. During this period of his life he
wrote much for the Boston periodicals and projected a defini-
tive life of David Garrick which was never completed. In 1868
he became librarian of the Boston Public Library and served
with such success that he was called to the same position at
Harvard in 1877, where he remained the rest of his life.
It was about this time that he assumed editorial direction of
a co-operative history of Boston, for which the leading men of
the city had been selected to write special chapters. The work
was published in four volumes as The Memorial History of
Boston (1880-82). Winsor 's part was so well done that he was
asked by the publishers to undertake a similar work on Ameri-
can history. Thus was written and published his Narrative and
Critical History of America (8 vols., 1886-89), probably the
most stimulating book in American history that has been pro-
duced in this country. The editor's part was the best and
consisted chiefly in an abundance of bibliographical and carto-
logical notes. Before the appearance of the book the student had
been left to stumble as he could toward his bibliography. Now
he had in one work such a wealth of this information that he
could always have a point of departure for his studies and
need not hesitate in the early stages of any investigation. The
 Justin Winsor; Edward Gaylord Bourne 187

book, however, was richer in its suggestions on colonial and

Revolutionary history than on the later period and this was ;

because the editor's interest was strongest in our early history.

Winsor came under the influence of "the great subject,"
and probably his most intense study was given to the achieve-
ment of the explorers. He was a high authority on early
American cartography. His interest in the period of discovery
led him to write his Christopher Columbus and How he Received
and Imparted the Spirit of Discovery (1891). It was a minute
and conscientious discussion of the career of the discoverer and
of the progress of geographical knowledge in the Columbian
period. He carried on the history of discoveries and explora-
tions in three other books: From Cartier to Frontenac (1894),
The Mississippi Basin (1895), and The Westward Movement
(1897). These books proved disappointing to persons who
sought readable narratives. They were filled with details and
poorly constructed; but the maps and cartological informa-
tion in them were very valuable.
In fact, in Winsor's philosophy the historian's function was to
burrow into the past for the facts that had been overlooked by
other writers, and when the facts were found he took little pains
how he arranged them before the eyes of the reader.
I may made history a thing of
confess [he said], that I have
shreds and patches. have
I only to say that the life of the world
is a thing of shreds and patches, and it is only when we consider
the well rounded life of the individual that we find permeating the
record a reasonable constancy of purpose. This is the province of
biography, and we must not confound biography with history.

Of "shreds-and-patches" history Justin Winsor was a master.

He was loved of the student and nearly unknown to the reader.
Professor Bourne was the son of a village minister in New
England. Unlike Winsor, his life was always overcast with the
problem of earning a living. Lameness from childhood handi-
capped his efforts and eventually resulted in his death when he
had just demonstrated his capacity for historical work of the
first class. Wide information, good judgment, and a keen eye
for inaccuracies characterized his work. A sense of proportion
is ever found in the structure of his books, and his language is
clear and sometimes graceful. In the latter part of his life he
1 88 Later Historians

came under the sway of "the great subject," and when he died
he was the leading Americanist in the United States. One small
book, Spain in America (1905), remains as an expression of
this phase of his activity; but it is so well done that it is not
likely to be superseded as long as we hold our present views on
the period of the explorers. In his Essays in Historical Criti-
cism he gave the student and general reader a model of sound
historical analysis and showed how to test historical statement
in a practical way. Most of the Essays had previously been
published in various places. The most notable was the pa-
per called The Legend of Marcus Whitman, which was received
with angry protest from those to whom the legend had become
dear.

Four Literary Historians. The members of this group had

something to do with Motley and Prescott on the one hand and
something with the new school on the other; but they were
first of all artists in expression, working in the field of history

with such success as they were able to attain. They were John
Foster Kirk (1824-1904), Francis Parkman (1823-93), Edward
Eggleston (1837-1902), and John Fiske (1842-1901).
Kirk was the eflficient literary secretary of WiUiam H.
Prescott' during the latter part of the career of this nearly
blind historian, travelling with him on both sides of the Atlantic
and meeting many of the leading men of the day. During this
period he began to write for The North American Review and
other magazines. Prescott and his friends encouraged his
efforts, and after the death of his employer in 1859 he embarked
definitely on the sea of authorship. It was natural for him to
select a subject in Prescott's field. He chose the career of
Charles the Bold, founder of the Burgundian power and great-
grandfather of Charles V. It was a subject worthy of a bril-
liant pen, and his book The Life of Charles the Bold (3 vols.,
1863) met all expectations. While it rested on secondary
authorities and has been rendered obsolete by later investiga-
tions, it was worthy to rank with the books by Robertson, Pres-
cott, and Motley which had already made the Burgundian-
Austrian cycle a famous period in historiography. Vividness
and colour were its notable qualities. The great expectations it
' See Book II, Chap, xviil.
 Francis Parkman 189

raised were doomed to disappointment ; for although the author

Hved forty-one years after its publication, his Charles the Bold
remains his one important book. From 1870 to 1886 he edited
Lippincott's Magazine, and for five years later was engaged in
preparing a supplement to Allibone's Dictionary. The re-
mainder of his life was given to a new dictionary which the
Lippincott's proposed to publish. This submergence of liter-
ary talents by hack work brought regret to many who knew
Kirk's talents. When Edward A. Freemen was introduced to
him he exclaimed: "Why did you stop? I looked for more
books on European history from you and have been much
disappointed."
Francis Parkman had the best of Boston's inheritance ex-
cept health, and against the effects of that handicap he inter-
posed a resolute spirit which enabled him to devote to his books
the few hours he could snatch from a constant state of pain.
From early life he had the desire to write the history of the
New England border wars. During his college vacations he
visited the scenes of these conflicts, and he read always widely
in the books on that subject. When he graduated at Harvard
in 1844 he knew the New England Indians thoroughly. Much
of the next two years was spent in visiting the historic spots on
the Pennsylvania border and in the region beyond. In 1846
he made a journey to the land of the Siotix, where he spent
some weeks in the camps of a native tribe, studying the Indian
in the savage state. His experiences were described in a series
of letters inThe Knickerbocker Magazine and republished in his
first book. The California and Oregon Trail (1849), still con-

sidered one of our best descriptions of Indian life.

Now prepared for his main task, Parkman took a striking
incident of Indian history and wrote on it his Conspiracy of
Pontiac (1851). In this book he placed much introductory-
matter on the Indians, together with a comprehensive review
of the history of the French settlements before 1761, when the
conspiracy of Pontiac began. From this large use of prelimi-
nary materials it would seem that he had not yet determined to
undertake the series of volumes in which he later treated the
same period. The Pontiac was well received and it was a good
book from a young author. But it lacked conciseness and was
overdrawn.
 ;

iQo Later Historians

For several years after its publication Parkman suffered

great physical pain, and he seemed about to lose the use of his
eyes and limbs. But he never gave up his ambition or ceased
to collect information about the Indians. In this interval he
wrote Vassall Morton (1856), a novel which did not succeed.
Turning back to history he revised his entire plan and outlined
his France and England in North America. The series was
limited to the period before the Pontiac war. It embraced
the whole story of French colonization in North America from
the Huguenot colonies of the sixteenth century to the fall of
Quebec. The various parts appeared as follows : The Pioneers
of France in the New World (1865) The Jesuits in North America
;

(1867) La Salle and the Discovery of the Great West (1869) The
; ;

Old RSgime in Canada (1874) Count Frontenac and New France

;

under Louis XIV (1877) Montcalm and Wolfe (2 vols., 1884)

;

and A Half Century of Conflict (2 vols. 1 892) He described the

, .

series as including "the whole coiirse of the American conflict

between France and England, or in other words, the history of
the American forest; for this was the light in which I regarded
it. My theme fascinated me, and I was haimted with wilder-
'

ness images day and night. Parkman's purposes were wholly

'

American. He loved the vast recesses of mtumuring pines,

with their tragedies, adventures, and earnest striving. Pres-
cott and Motley might paint the gorgeous scenes of royal courts
and Bancroft might interrupt his labours in writing the pane-
gyric of democracy to play a complacent r61e as minister at
Berlin, but Parkman never ceased to find his chief interest in
the American forest and its denizens.
His avowed method of writing was "while scruptilously and
rigorously adhering to the truth of facts, to animate them with
the life of the past, and, so far as might be, clothe the skeleton
with flesh. Faithfulness to the truth of history involves far
more than research, however patient and scrupulous, into
special facts. The narrator must seek to imbue himself with
the life and spirit of the time. " Few writers have achieved their
ideal of expression as well as he. What Cooper ' did in the realm
of fiction Parkman did with even better fidelity to nature in the
realm of history. He never studied in the seminar school
but he understood its lessons instinctively and made them his
' See Book II, Chap. vi.
 :

Edward Eggleston 191

own without loss of the best things in the old school — ^vigour,
harmony, and colour.
Edward Eggleston entered history through the door of
fiction. ' He was born in Indiana of the Western branch of a
leading Virginia family, had scant educational opportunities,
spent several years as an itinerant Methodist minister, became
an editor in Chicago and New York, and in 187 1 published the
widely read story of frontier life, The Hoosier Schoolmaster.
Two years later he retired from the profession of editor, and
became pastor of a Brooklyn Congregational church, with the
expressed understanding that he was not to conform to specific
dogmas. Increasing skepticism made him give up this position
in 1 879. The step was taken after internal struggles which left
him in a state of nervous prostration. Rest brought restoration
and he turned to history as a serious study. Fiction he still
followed as a breadwinning art, but from 1880 to his death in
1902 he considered himself primarily a historian.
Social history was his field. What his Hoosier stories did
for the Indiana backwoods, he wished his histories to do in
simple narrative for the life of all the people. To his brother
he described his plan in the following words

I am
going to write a series of volumes which together shall
constitute a History of Life in the United States not a history of —
the United States, bear in mind, but a history of the life there, the
life of the people, the soxu-ces of their ideas and habits, the course

of their development from beginnings. These beginnings will be

carefully studied in the first volume. Beyond that my plans for
the ordering of the material are not fully formed. It will be a
work designed to answer the questions "How?" and "Whence?"
and "Why?" All this will require a great deal of research, but I
stand ready to give ten years of my life to the task, if necessary.

Ten years allow brief space to write such a history for a man
of less desultory habits of work than Eggleston had. At the
end of twenty-two years he had finished only two of the pro-
posed volumes. The Beginners of a Nation (1897) and The
Transit of Civilization (1901). They carried the story of
colonial life to the year 1640. Had the work proceeded on the
same scale to the end of the nineteenth century it would have
'
' See also Book III, Chap. xi.
 "'
;

192 Later Historians

gone to forty volumes. Eggleston had undertaken it without

realizing its greatness. The plan, however, was worthily made
and the two volumes completed deserve more esteem than they
fragments of a too ambitious dream by a man already
will get as
old when he dreamed. They are characterized by accuracy,
breadth of view, and great charm of narration. Eggleston com-
bined research and good literary style as truly as Parkman, but
he worked less persistently and gauged the situation less wisely.
There was a time when John Fiske seemed likely to pass
into our literary history as the man who best combined the vir-
tures of the new and old schools. Time has defeated the hope
by discovering that he lacked accuracy. Nature gave him two
excellent gifts, the art of writing and the art of lecttiring as few
others could write or lecture. Each was performed with great
facility and in the use of each he surpassed most of his con-
temporaries. In early life he became an evolutionist and was
much disliked by the orthodox until he finally appeared in the
r61e of reconciler of evolution and religion. As the leading
defender of the philosophy of Darwin and Spencer in the
United States he gained a wide influence and wrote constantly.
By 1885 the battle of evolution had been won in high places
and Fiske seems to have had no desire to pursue it in the lower
circles. At the same time he was gradually drifting away from
Spencer, through attempting to bring religion into the scope of
his philosophy. After 1885 he wrote nothing philosophical.
In the same year he published American Political Ideals,
a short sketch of our political history, and it opened a new field
of activity. In 1879 he had given six lectures on "Americ9,'s
Place in History" in the Old South Church, Boston. With a
fine sense of the picturesque, he selected such subjects as the
old sea kings, the Spanish and French explorers, and the causes
of the Revolution. It was his first handling of historical events
and the result was a revelation to himself. His own words
were: "This thing takes the people, you see: they understand
and feel it all, as they can't when I lecture on abstract things.
Other lectures followed and met with such great success that
he fully committed himself to history.
One of these courses was on the period following the Revolu-
tion and was published as The Critical Period of American His-
I
See Book III, Chap. xvii.
 John Fiske i93

tory (1888); another light as The Beginnings of New

saw the
England (1889) while still another after being presented many-
;

times on the platform was published as The American Revolu-

tion (2 vols., 1 891). Before these volumes appeared he had
made plans for a series to cover the whole period, of Amer-
ican history, and he proposed ^o make these re-baked lectures
fit into the scheme. It was necessary to go back to the begin-
nings and he accordingly set to work on The Discovery of America
(2 vols., 1892). This was followed by Old Virginia and her
Neighbors (2 vols., 1897) and The Dutch and Quaker Colonies
(2 vols., 1899). Another instalment. New France and New
England, carrying the story down to the Revolution, was not
published until 1902, the year after Fiske died. A group of lec-
tures was published in 1900 in a fascinating volume called The
Mississippi Valley in the Civil War. He wrote two text-books
which had remarkable success Civil Government in the United
:

States (1890) and A History of the United States for Schools

(1892). A biography of his friend Edward L. Youmans (1892),
a volume called A Century of Science and Other Essays (1899),
and two posthumous works, Essays, Historical and Literary
(1902) and How the United States Became a Nation (1904), com-
pleted his historical works.
has been said that Fiske applied the principles of evolu-
It
tion to history, and he asserted that such was his purpose.
But a brief examination of his books is enough to show that he
was the historian of episodes and human action. It is the
dramatic rather than the philosophical that occupies his atten-
tion. In preparing to write he read many books and out of his
capacious memory he wrote with feverish haste. Too ready
dependence on memory, an unwillingness to look deeply into
minute sources, and an extreme tendency to the picturesque
undermined his sense of accuracy. None of the other men
in the group under treatment equalled him in mere power of
narration.

Historians of the Latest Period. * Of the men in this group

not one rejected the dogma of the supremacy of accuracy, but in

' This chapter does not deal with living historians, even though it is neces-
sary, in carrying out sucha policy, to omit any discussion of so excellent an
historian as James Ford Rhodes.

VOL. Ill — 13
 ;

194 Later Historians

varying degrees they cherished the notion that history should

have literary merits. In all of them the new school triumphed
but the old yielded slowly. It was only with Mahan and Henry
Adams that style became an unconscious expression of clearly
formed That it was always good is too much to assert
ideas.
but at its best it was a subordinate part of the historian's

purpose. The men of this group, the most conspicuous of our

recently deceased historians, all worked in constant fear of
inaccuracies.
Henry Charles Lea (1825-1909) may be placed at the head
of the group. He was a prosperous Philadelphia publisher,
the grandson of Mathew Carey, ' the publisher, nephew of Henry
C. Carey, ^ the economist, and son of Isaac Lea, a naturalist
notable in his day. To this family inheritance add a general
Quaker background and we may understand the origin of his
desire to describe some of the most striking phases of the history
of religious zeal. In two book-reviews published in 1859 h^
managed to introduce a great deal about compurgation, the
wager of battle, and ordeals. His interest in the subject was so
much aroused that he subsequently revised the essays in a vol-
ume called Superstition and Force (1866). It was followed by
The History of Sacerdotal Celibacy (1867) and Studies in Church
History (1869). These books were written in such hours as he
could snatch from business. Convinced that the two kinds of
labour could not be carried on jointly with perfect success, he
gave up authorship for a time. In 1880 he was able to retire
from active business and devote himself to literature. The
books written in this second period are richer in the evidences
of research and broader in plan and judgment. They are
The History of the Inquisition in the Middle Ages (3 vols., 1888),
Chapters from the Religious History of Spain Connected with the
Inquisition (1890), History of Auricular Confession (3 vols.,
1896), The Moriscoes in Spain (1901), History of the Inquisition
in Spain (4 vols., 1906- 1908), and History of the Inquisition in
the Spanish Dependencies (1908). When Lea died he was
preparing a history of witchcraft.
These works are monuments of industry and learning, and
they deal with a most difficult class of phenomena in a scientific
spirit. They have encountered the opposition of most Catholic
' See Book III, Chap. xxix. " Ibid., Chap. xxiv.
Henry Charles Lea; Hubert Howe Bancroft i95

writers,but some, notably Lord Acton, have given them their

approval. Lea did not hesitate to lay evils at the doors to
which he thought they belonged. '
I have always sought,
' he
'
'

'
said even though infinitesimally, to contribute to the better-
'

ment of the world, by indicating the consequences of evil and of

inconsiderate and misdirected zeal. He was accused of inter-
'

'

preting his documents improperly and of showing only the dark

side of the medieval church. As to the first point it is difficult
to find a man who can pass upon its truth. Lea himself was,
perhaps, the fairest critic in the field. That he was not nar-
rowly prejudiced is shown by his treatment of the motives of
Philip II in his inaugural address as president of the American
Historical Association. As to the second charge, we should
remember that Lea did not propose to write about the light
sides of the church. He was dealing with a dark phase of his-
tory, and he did not try to make it lighter than he thought it
should be made.
Another publisher who became a historian was Hubert Howe
Bancroft (1832-1918), of San Francisco, who gave us our most
conspicuous group of local histories. Having formed a large
collection of materials on the history of the Pacific coast, he
decided to embody the contents in a comprehensive work. He
adopted the method of the business man who has a task too large
for his own efforts. He employed assistants to prepare state-
ments of the facts for large sections of the proposed history.
Originally he seems to have intended to use these statements as
the basis of a narrative from his own hand but as the work pro-
;

gressed he came to use them with slight changes. We have his

own word that the assistants were capable investigators and
there is independent evidence to show that some of them de-
served his confidence. But his failure to give credit leaves
us in a state of doubt concerning the value of any particular
part. Bancroft considered himself the author of the work.
We must look upon him as the director of a useful enterprise,
but not possible to consider him its author.
it is

His Works contain thirty-nine large volumes with the fol-

lowing titles Native Races of the Pacific States (vols. 1-5, 1874),
:

History of Central America (vols. 6-8, 1883-87), History of

Mexico (vols. 9-14, 1883-87), History of the Northern Mexican
States and Texas (vols, 15-16, 1884-89), History of Arizona
196 Later Historians

and New Mexico (vol. History of California (vols.

17, 1889),
18-24, 1884-90), History of Nevada, Colorado, and Wyoming
(vol. 25, 1890), History of Utah (vol. 26, 1889), History of the
North-West Coast (vols. 27-28, 1884), History of Oregon (vols.
29-30, 1886-88), History of Washington, Idaho, and Montana
(vol. 31, 1890), History of British Columbia (vol. 32, 1887),
History of Alaska (vol. 33, 1886), California Pastorals (vol.34,
1888), California inter Pocula (vol. 35, 1888), Popular Tribunals
(vols. 36-37, 1887), Essays and Miscellany (vol. 38, 1890),
and Literary Industries (vol. 39, 1890).
Neither Bancroft nor his assistants had the preliminary-
training to save thenx from the ordinary pitfalls along the path
of the scholar. They carried to their tasks uncritical enthus-
iasms and made good books which, nevertheless, had some
serious defects. In a period when the reviewer generally ap-
praised a book for its style Bancroft's early volumes generally
received approbation. Francis Parkman himself gave The
Native Races high credit in The North American Review. But
the work did not escape the eyes of Lewis H. Morgan, whose
revolutionary theory of Indian culture was then new to the
world. In an article called "Montezuma's Dinner" Morgan
completely reversed Parkman's verdict and implanted a doubt
in the minds of the intelligent public which extended to other
volumes of the series. Bancroft's comments on Morgan's
criticism suggest that he did not understand Morgan's theory,
now generally accepted by scholars.
Alfred Thayer Mahan (1840-1914) graduated at the Naval
Academy at Annapolis in 1859, served the usual course at sea,
and was ordered to duty at the Naval War College shortly
after it was established in 1885. A course of lectures prepared
for that service was the basis of a book. The Influence of Sea
Power in History, i66o-iy8j (1890), which established his
reputation as an historian. Following the same idea he pub-
lished Influence of Sea Power on the French Revolution (1892),
Life of Farragut (1892), The Life of Nelson, the Embodiment of the
Sea Power of Great Britain (2 vols., 1897), •S'ea Power in its Re-
lation to the War of 1812 (1905), and From Sail to Steam (1907),
the last a book relating to his own career. In his later years
he wrote, also, many articles for the magazines, and out of them
were formed several volumes of essays.
 "

Alfred Thayer Mahan i97

Rear-Admiral Mahan is the best example we have had in

the United States of a man who wrote history successfully for
propaganda. He wished to show that a nation that would
play a large r61e in the world must have a great navy. He won
immediate fame in Great Britain, where his books served to
strengthen the naval policy of the government. They were
also greatly appreciated in Germany, and it is said that they
opened the eyes of the German government to the need of a
great navy. In his own country he was highly esteemed as an
historian, but he never had the satisfaction of seeing the gov-
ernment adopt a great naval policy.
While Mahan was a scholarly historian, he cannot be pro-
nounced a man of research. With a thesis to prove it was not
necessary to go to the sources to prove it. His early books were
written entirely from secondary materials but he used sources
;

in his later work, particularly in the book on the War of 1812,

of which he said: "It is by far the most thorough work I have
done. " Something of his mental character may be seen in the
following statement in reference to a book which most students
find uninteresting: "Though not a lawyer, nor a student of
constitutions, I found Stubbs's Constitutional History of Eng-
land fascinating. I have not analyzed my pleasure, but I be-
lieve it to have been due to arrangement of data by a man
exceptionally gifted for vivid presentation, who had so lived
with his subject that it had realized itself to him as a living
whole, which he successfully conveyed to his readers.
Three sons of Charles Francis Adams, grandsons of John
Quincy Adams, became historians, and two of them, Charles
Francis Adams, Jr. (1835-1915) and Henry Adams (1838-
1918), fall within the limits assigned to this chapter. Both
of them had the Puritan mind, so strong in their ancestry, as
well as that independent Adams spirit which put the family,
from John Adams to Henry, out of touch with the dominant
thought of Boston. Turning to history, both of them became
able critics of conventional views and won high respect from
an age turning towards cosmopolitan ideals. The elder of
the two, however, did not go all the way in revolt. New
Englander he remained to the last. He loved Boston, although
he rapped its knuckles at times, and he sought to reform its
intellectual life. The younger clung to Boston for many years,
198 Later Historians

giving himself to a phase of our history in which the town had a

deep interest but finally, having reached a stage of disillusion-
;

ment, as he considered it, he broke local ties, turned toward

the unanchored spaces of the remote past, and became a master
in the realm of detached thinking.
After serving in the army until 1865 Charles Francis Adams,
Jr., gave himself to the study of the railroad situation, writing
and publishing articles that led to his appointment on the
Massachusetts railroad commission in 1869. In the same year
he published a remarkable essay, A Chapter in Erie, exposing
the methods by which some of the leading railroad directors
manipulated the stocks of their roads for their own benefit. He
became a government director of the Union Pacific Railroad in
1882 and served as its president from 1884 to 1890. Retiring
from this position he gave the remainder of his life to history.
The results of his labours appeared in many books and pam-
phlets, the most important of which were Chapters of Erie and
—
Other Essays in collaboration with Henry Adams —
(1871),
Railroads, their Origin and Problems (1878), Notes on Railroad
Accidents (1879), The New English Canaan of Thomas Morton
(new edition with introduction, 1883), Richard Henry Dana, a
Biography (2 vols., 1890), History of Quincy (1891), History of
Braintree (1891), Three Episodes of Massachusetts History (2
vols., 1892), Massachusetts, its Historians and History (1893),
Charles Francis Adams, the First (1900), Three Phi Beta Kappa
Addresses (1907), Studies, Military and Diplomatic (191 1),
Trans-Atlantic Historical Solidarity {igi^) and Charles Francis
,

Adams, an Autobiography (191 6).

He was not content to be merely an historian but did many
things to promote historical interests. He was in constant
demand for historical addresses. Several of his discourses were
made in the South, where his appreciation of Southern character
was warmly received, and his words did much to promote good
feeling between the two sections. As vice-president and presi-
dent of the Massachusetts Historical Society he was the leader
of an important group of historians. It was in these extra-
literary activities that he served history best.
The historical career of Henry Adams falls into two periods.
One of them began with his return from London in 1868, where
he had been private secretary to his father, then minister to
 Henry Adams i99

Great Britain, and continued until 1892, when he turned his

back on all he had been doing and began again what he termed
his "education." The second extended from that change of
purpose to his death. The editorship of The North American
Review (1869-76) and an assistant-professorship in history at
Harvard (1870-77) ushered in the first period. Teaching did
not suit him and he resigned because he felt that his efforts were
failures. His mind was too original to go through life in the
routine of college instruction. He now turned to American
history, producing by much industry in fourteen years the
following books Documents Relating to
: New England Federalism
(,1877) Life of Albert Gallatin (1879),
Writings of Albert Gallatin
(1879), John Randolph (1882), History of the United States
during the Administrations of Jefferson and Madison (9 vols.,
1889-91), and Historical Essays (1891). The best scholarship
and excellent literary form characterize all these books. No
better historical work has been done in this country. Yet
the books were little read and the author became discouraged.
He concluded that what he had been doing was without value to
the world, since it was not noticed by the world.
Then began the second period of his literary life. Settling
down to a quiet life of study, and following his taste, he delved
long and patiently in the Middle Ages. The result appeared in
Mont Saint Michel and Chartres (1904, 1913), probably the best
expression of the spirit of the Middle Ages yet published in the
English language. It was followed by Essays in Anglo-Saxon
Law (1905), The Education of Henry Adams (1906, 1918), A
Letter to American Teachers of History (19 10), and Life of
George Cabot (191 1). Two of these books, the Mont Saint
Michel and the Education, deserve to rank among the best
American books that have yet been written. The first is a
model of literary construction and a fine illustration of how a
skilled writer may use the history of a small piece of activity
as a means of interpreting a great phase of human life. Through
the Education runs a note of futility, not entirely counter-
balanced by the brilliant character-sketching and wise observa-
tions upon the times. But the Mont Saint Michel redeems this
fault. It shows us Henry Adams at his best, and under its
charm we are prepared to overlook the aloofness which limited
his interests while it depressed his spirits.
200 Later Historians

In the Education Henry Adams defined history in these

words " To historians the single interest is the law of reaction
:

—
between force and force between mind and nature the law —
of progress." He thus announced in his maturity his alle-
giance to the most modern concept of history. In his early his-
torical writings he dealt with the relations of men with men,
as Parkman, Lea, Mahan, and many others dealt. In his
revised opinions he conceived that the story of man's progress
as affected by natural forces was the true task of the historian.
It is a concept to which the best modern thinkers have been
slowly moving. Adams grasped it with the greatest boldness
and in the Mont Saint Michel gave future historians an example
of how to realize it in actual literature.
 "

CHAPTER XVI
Later Theology

AMERICAN theology since the Civil War represents an

age of transition, of much fortunate silence, of expect-
ant waiting, as on a threshold. But there are one or
two sturdy souls, like William G. T. Shedd (1820-94) and
Charles Hodge (1797-1878), who gathered up the olden time
with a disdain of the new. Yet perhaps disdain is scarcely the
word to associate with Charles Hodge. His three huge volumes
on Systematic Theology (1873) are found now mostly in pub he
libraries and in the attic chambers of aging parsons. Theology
isout of vogue, and his volumes represent a system which is less
and less widely held as the years go by. But Charles Hodge had
a genuine religious experience. Disdain certainly fades from
the lips of any tolerant modern man as he browses in these
books. Thetableof contents is schematical, wooden. The first
volume, after an introduction, deals with "Theology Proper,"
the second volume is devoted to "Anthropology," and the
third is divided between " Soteriology " and "Eschatology.
—
But though "Evolution" is in the air and indeed in the first
—
volume there is no apologetic explanation of the division.
Hodge is not ashamed of the tenets of past ages. He does not
write for the public but to the public. But he writes with
transparent sincerity. There is no evasion. There is neither
condescension nor cringing. There is nothing left at loose ends.
There is no sparing of thought. His weighty opponents are
fairly treated and his words are devoid of sarcasm— the weapon
of conscious and obtrusive superiority. He does not pretend
to understand God nor those who seem to him to claim that
they do. He only claims to apprehend the Word of God. In
his introduction he reaches, on what he regards as rational
201
202 Later Theology

grounds, the conclusion that the Scriptures are the Word of

God and therefore that their teachings are infallible. Thereon
he stands unmoved. Approaching the profound subject of the
decrees of God, for every Calvinist thrilling in its audacity, he
says simply:

It must be remembered that theology is not philosophy. It does

not assume to discover truth, or to reconcile what it teaches as true
with all other truths. Its province is simply to state what God has
revealed in His Word and to vindicate those statements, as far as
possible, from misconceptions and objections. This limited and
humble office of theology it is especially necessary to bear in mind,
when we come to speak of the acts and purposes of God. All that is
proposed is simply to state what the Spirit has seen fit to reveal on
that subject.

So he looks without flinching over the vast unsunned spaces

to the place of eternal punishment. On the "Duration of
Future Punishment" he writes:

It is obvious that this is a question which can be decided only by

divine revelation. No one can reasonably presume to decide how

long the wicked are to suffer for their sins upon any general princi-
ples of right and wrong. The conditions of the problem are not
within our grasp. What the infinitely wise and good God may see
to do with His creatures, or what the exigencies of a government,
fit

embracing the whole universe and continuing throughout eternal

ages, may demand, it is not for such worms of the dust, as we are, to
determine. If we believe the Bible to be the Word of God, we
all
have to do is to ascertain what it teaches on this subject, and humbly
submit. ... should constrain us to humility and to silence on
It
this subject that the most solemn and explicit declarations of the
everlasting misery of the wicked recorded in the Scriptures, fell from
the lips of Him, who, though equal with God, was found in fashion
as a man, and humbled Himself unto death, even the death of the
cross, for us men and our salvation.

There is a strange sublimity and extraordinary perspicuity

about the style of Charles Hodge. It is not style at all. He
is writing a treatise for students. His sentences are con-
stantly interruptedby A) B) C), and the like. Yet,
i) 2) 3),

notwithstanding the nature of the doctrine and the ponderous

 The Question of Authority 203

character of the subject, there are few books which open the
mind on the fields of grandeur more frequently than this sys-
tematic theology. Its prose is not unworthy of being associ-
ated in one's mind with that of Milton. Out of the depths this
man has cried unto God and found Him.
But, undeniably, theology has gone out of fashion. Huge
treatises like those of Hodge or Shedd or Augustus Strong never
found many way to many book-
readers, but they found their
shelves. They were treated with reverence. Now they are
utterly ignored. The chief reason for this contempt of the-
ology is that men impugn its ancient authority. Hodge rightly
declared that theology was to be differentiated from philosophy
by its source of authority. with revelation while
It dealt
philosophy dealt with speculation. function was the
Its
interpretation of absolute truth, committed to men by the
Holy Ghost through the pages of the Scripture. In our period
this supposedly infallible book was subjected to the most
searching examination. The ordinary canons of historical
and literary criticism were applied to it and as a result the
awesome phrase "Thus saith the Lord" came to bear diverse
connotations. It was in the eighties and nineties that the
authority of the Scripture, already long questioned in Europe,
became a vital question in American thought. Then a series
of heresy trials —
five within the Presbyterian Church — con-
centrated the attention of religious people upon the subject.
The most prominent figure in the great controversy in America
was Charles Augustus Briggs (1841-1913), professor in Union
Theological Seminary in New York from 1874 ^^ ^9^3- This
controversy was preceded by a bitter controversy in the an-
cient Congregational Seminary at Andover, Massachusetts,
on questions of the future state, into which Briggs also entered.
But the main question was the nature of Biblical inspira-
tion. After a defence conducted by himself with great skill
and acumen, he was acquitted of the charges of heresy
by his Presbytery in January, 1893, but upon appeal to the
General Assembly was convicted and suspended from the
ministry of the Presbyterian Church in March of the same
year.
from some minor peculiarities of personal temper, no
Apa];t
one couid well have been found better able than Briggs to com-
 '

204 Later Theology

mend the newer views on the Scripttires to the conservative

circles of America and particularly to the members of the Presby-
terian Church who occupied so large a place in the educational
life of the country. He was the leading authority on the history
of the Westminster Assembly which framed the Presbyterian
standards. In his treatise Whither (1889) he is at great pains
to show that the doctrine of inerrancy of Scripture is a modem
development of orthodox opinion, and that it was with careful
forethought that the Assembly refrained from committing
itself and the Church to any specific doctrine of inspiration or
to the statement that the Bible is the Word of God. It had
proclaimed indeed that the Bible was the only infallible rule of
faith and practice but refused to extend its authority beyond
the moral and religious sphere. "The Church ought to be in
advance of the Confession. But the Confession is in advance
of the Church so that the children of the Puritans must first ad-
vance to the high mark of their own standards before they can
' '
go beyond them into the higher reaches of Christian theology.
His own temper was conservative in a very high degree. He re-
joiced that he was essentially at one with historic Christendom.
At the end of his life he occupied the chair of Irenics at the
Seminary which proved so loyal to him, and as a priest in the
Protestant Episcopal Church gave much of his energy to the re-
union of Christendom. Moreover, the field upon which he chiefly
laboured in his six student years in Germany and in the Seminary
was the Old Testament. And although he frankly admitted
that "in every department of Biblical study we come upon
errors, " it was with questions of Old Testament literattire that
he was primarily concerned. The application of the canons of
criticism to the New Testament was fortunately deferred. The
figure of Jesus, indeed, was first brought into the realm of criti-
cism in America by his utterances in regard to the Old Testament
books which were under discussion. The Bible was discovered
by the American public to be literature by way of the Old
Testament. It was, however, no literary interest which im-
pelled the discovery, but rather the deepest loyalty to religious
truth. With the same fearless loyalty to fact with which
Hodge faced hell, did Briggs and his fellows descry errors in a
book which they held to be the repository of eternal truth.
' Whither, p. 296.
 '

Inspiration 205

To
claim beforehand that inspiration or any such divine process
must be this or that, that it must have certain characteristics, is to
venture beyond our limits. In all humility, instead of dictating
what God should do, let us inquire reverently what God has done,—
in what form concretely the revelation of His will has come to men.
All a priori definition of inspiration not only unscientific but
is
irreverent, presumptuous, lacking in the humility with which we
should approach a divine, supernatural fact.

So speaks another who later was the object of heresy

proceedings in the Presbyterian Church, Professor Llewelyn
J. Evans of Lane Theological Seminary in Cincinnati.
Now
although the discovery of errors in Scripture, of
pseudepigraphs in the Old Testament, of unfulfillable pro-
phecies, —
the asseveration of which occupied so prominent a
place in the trial of Briggs, —
of authors separated by centuries
within the confines of the Pentateuch alone, of false ascriptions
of late laws to the holy but dimming figure of Moses, have
undoubtedly helped us to regard the Bible as primarily a pro-
duct of human literary and religious genius, they have also
gradually changed both the conception of the place of the
Bible in our religion and of our religion itself. We find these
changes emerging even in the pages of Briggs.

If a man use it [the Bible] as a means of grace, it is of small

importance what he may think of its inspiration. If it bring him
to the presence of the living God and give him a personal acquaint-
ance with Jesus Christ, that is its main purpose. They [the . . .

Scriptural errors] intimate that the authority of God and His

gracious discipline transcend the highest possibilities of human
speech or human writing, and that the religion of Jesus Christ is not
only the religion of the Bible, but the religion of personal com-
munion with the living God.^

at least of the profound change in a man's

The beginning
religion which comes about through the change in his religious
authority is delicately portrayed by Professor William N. Clarke
(1841-1912) of Colgate College. Professor Clarke's theological
books have been the most popular attempt of our period to pre-
' See his Biblical Scholarship and Inspiration, 1891, pp. 12, 13, 20.
" The Bible, Church and Reason, 1892, pp. 82, 117.
 "

2o6 Later Theology

serve in systematic form the essentials of historic Christianity

without inhospitality to modern science and criticism. In his
Sixty Years with the Bible (1909) he writes:

I have described the change by saying that I passed on from using

the Bible in the light of its statements to using it in the light of its

principles. At first I said, The Scriptures limit me to this; later I

said, The Scriptures open my way to this. As for the Bible, I am
not bound to work all its statements into my system; nay, I am
bound not to work them all in; for some of them are not congenial
to the spirit of Jesus and some express truths in forms which cannot
be of permanent validity.

Popular interest in the authority of the Bible was prepared

for by the appearance of the Revised Version of the Bible just a
decade before the dramatic trial of Charles A. Briggs. Thirty-
four of the leading Hebrew and Greek scholars of America
united with siKty-seven Englishmen in this great undertaking,
which Philip Schaflf, the chairman of the American revisers,
declared to be "the noblest monument of Christian union and
co-operation in this nineteenth century. " After a laborious
toil of eight years, during which "no sectarian question was

ever raised," the New Testament was given to the public.

"The rapidity and extent of its sale surpassed all expectations
and are without a parallel in the history of the book- trade.
The New Testament appeared in 1881 and the Old Testament
in 1885. Although one of the Old Testament revisers took
pains to say in his Companion to the Revised Old Testament that
"they have no fellowship with that disposition which of late
years has appeared among some who profess and call them-
selves Christians to speak lightly of the Scriptures as a partial
and imperfect record of revelation," and although the Old
Testament Committee was presided over by Professor Wm. H.
Green of Princeton Seminary and the New Testament Com-
mittee by ex-President Theodore D. Woolsey of Yale College,
both eminently conservative scholars, the mere publication of a
new translation of the Scriptures, founded upon a revised He-
brew and Greek text, prepared the public mind for some modi-
fication of the concept of infallibiUty which had possessed it
hitherto. The printing of the Bible in paragraphs like other
books —instead of in the oracular verses—and the appearance
 Higher Criticism 207

of portions of the Old Testament in poetic form helped greatly in

convincing the plain people of the country that the Bible was to
be subsumed under the genus literature rather than kept as a
sacred oracle in mysterious isolation.
Nor did the fact that the most brilliant attacks upon the
infallibility of the Bible and many of its ablest defences origin-
ated in Germany militate against the progress of the newer
thought in America as much as might have been expected.
Our scholars felt themselves dependent upon European thought.
Providentially, too, German theological scholarship had been
introduced to American minds by the presence and fecundity
of Philip SchaflE (1819-93), a man of most conservative temper,
who, in an amazing number of volumes, chiefly in the domain
of Church History, had commended the thoroughness and
sanity of German research to the American public from his
chair in Wittenberg, Pennsylvania, and later in Union Theo-
logical Seminary, New York.
It cannot be said that during the period under consideration
American scholarship contributed anything of material value
to the higher criticism of the Bible. It has to its credit the
great New Testament Lexicon (1893) of Professor J. Henry
Thayer of Andover Seminary and the equally pre-eminent He-
brew Lexicon (1891) edited by President Francis Brown of Union
Seminary, assisted by Professor Briggs of Union and Professor
Driver of Oxford. But in the higher discipline its work was
of a more mediating and imitative character. Few of our
leading scholars took an unyielding attitude to the spirit of
the times. Manfully and with unassuming temper. Green
of Princeton defended the ancient opinions in a debate with
President Harper of the University of Chicago and later in his
books. The Higher Criticism 0} the Pentateuch (1895), The
Unity of the Book of Genesis (1895), and General Introduction to
the Old Testament (1898). With the exception of more search-
ing work by still living scholars, still fewer of our writers took
radical ground. Here we may mention only the lucid books
of Orello Cone of St. Lawrence University, Levi L. Paine's
suggestive Evolution of Trinitarianism (1900) with its appendix
challenging the apostoUc authorship of the fourth Gospel, and
particularly Edward H. and his Contemporaries
Hall's Papias

(1899), which connects the Gospel of John with the Gnostic

2o8 Later Theology

movement of the second century. The majority of our schol-

ars took a moderately progressive stand. As the pregnant
debate approached the New Testament, American scholarship
maintained largely a dignified silence but refused to move the
previous question. The most substantial contribution of our
scholars in the whole field of Biblical literature is probably Ezra
Abbot's Authorship of the Fourth Gospel (1880), which, while
it defends the widely disputed apostolic authorship of the book,

admits the cogency of opposing opinion and the discrepancies

between the fourth Gospel and the other three. George P.
Fisher, Professor of Church History in the Yale Divinity School
and author of a very usable History oj the Christian Church,
sensed the vital import of the criticism of the gospels and
devoted the greater part of his careful and well-poised works
on The Supernatural Origin of Christianity (1870) and Grounds
of Theistic and Christian Belief (1883) to a vigorous and able
defence of the historicity of the gospels. But while doing so
with full conviction, he is clear-sighted enough to declare:

The Bible is one thing and Christianity is another. The religion

of Christ, in the right signification of these terms, not to be con-
is

founded with the Scriptures, even of the New Testament. The

point of view from which the Bible, in its relation to Christianity,
is looked on as the Koran appears to devout Mohammedans, is a

mistaken one. The entire conception, according to which the

energies of the Divine Being, as exerted in the Christian revelation,
are thought to have been concentrated on the production of a book
is a misconception and one that is prolific of error.

Or as T. T. Munger, Professor Fisher's neighbour in New

Haven, has it in his notable essay on the New
Theology: "It
[the Bible] is not a revelation but is a history of a revelation it ;

is a chosen and indispensable means of the redemption of the

—
world, but it is not the absolute means, that is in the Spirit."
While Marvin R. Vincent is right in saying that "Germany
'

furnishes the most and the best, our theologians have main-
'

tained an open mind in the study of the book upon which their
whole discipline rests.
One reason, then, for the waning prestige of theology is
the fact that its source of authority can no longer be regarded
as lying in a class apart from all other works of the human
 : '

Evolution 209

spirit. Its aloofness and uniqueness are even more threatened,

however, by the doctrine of evolution, which subsumes not
only the Christian religion but the entire nature of man under
universal rubrics. At first this doctrine shocked not only the
theological but also the scientific thinkers of America. Louis
Agassiz and Asa Gray opposed it almost as vigorously as did
Charles Hodge, who declared "that a more absolutely incredi-
ble theory was never propounded for acceptance among men."
The burden of his logical and able What is Darwinism? (1874)
is expressed in these sentences

The conclusion of the whole matter is that the denial of design

in nature is virtually the denial of God.
Mr. Darwin's theory
does deny design in nature, therefore, his theory is virtually
all

atheistical; his theory, not he himself. He believes in a Creator.

—
But He is virtually consigned, so far as we are concerned, to
non-existence.

That this attitude toward evolution was speedily changed

among theologians was due partly to President James McCosh
(181 1-94) of Princeton. He had but recently come from Great
Britain to America. Many of his long list of books, expounding
the Scottish "Common Sense" philosophy, had been written.
There was no question of his complete orthodoxy, of his intense
religious zeal, or of his international standing as thinker and
educator. He, however, gave liberal recognition to "powers
modifying evolution." These agents are light, life, sensation,
instinct and intelligence, morality. "As evolution by physi-
cal causes cannot [produce them], we infer that God does it
by an immediate fiat, even as He created matter. ... It
makes God continue the work of creation, and if God's creation
"
be a good work, why should He not continue it ?
In wide circles this acceptance of evolution of species went
hand in hand with the denial of the unhmited sway of evolu-
tion. Chasms which "no evolution can leap" were insisted
upon, "between the inorganic and the organic, between the
irrational and the rational, between the non-moral and the
moral.
'
' It was widely felt that
'
' Natural Selection " is inade-
quate to account for the entire process of evolution, and Dar-
win's variability of species was emphasized. Thus for example
• Religious Aspect of Evolvtion, p. 54.
VOL. Ill 14—
210 Later Theology

Lewis Diman, who left the pastorate for a professorship of

history in Brown University, asserts in his Lowell lectures on
The Theistic Argument (1882) :

Some internal principle of transformation must be admitted.

... If we allow that the modifications of an organ are the result of
some more or less conscious tendency which serves as a directing
principle, then we are brought to recognize finality as the very
foundation of nature. ... To affirm that life is the continuous
adjustment of inner relations to outer relations is to afiirm nothing
to the point, since the adjustment is the very fact for which we are
seeking to account.

Or as the scintillating Joseph Cook from his lecture-throne

in Tremont Temple, Boston, put it: "The law of development
explains much but not itself." Gradually, however the
imagination of theologians, like that of other men, refused to
accentuate the small gaps of the stupendous process and evolu-
tion, not very clearly defined or delimited, became accepted as
God's method of creation.
Belief in the unique sonship of Christ is a difficulty in the
complete acceptance of evolution. George Harris of Andover
: '
Seminary and later President of Amherst College writes There '

is no reason to suppose that any other man will be thus God-

filled. . . . We may was one who trans-

well believe that he
cended the human."' Because Christ produced "a new moral
type," Harris feels that we need not deny either his nature
miracles or his resurrection. Among the most thoroughgoing
Christian evolutionists of our period may be mentioned
President Hyde (1858-1917) of Bowdoin College and Presi-
dent John Bascom (1827-1911) of the University of Wiscon-
sin. The latter, in his Evolution and Religion or Faith as a
Part of a Complete Cosmic System (1915), rejoices in the breadth
of view and the boundless hope with which the doctrine of evolu-
tion invests its believers. In youth Bascom studied both law and
theology; in mature years he taught sociology and philosophy;
he occupied influential positions in the educational institutions
of the East and the West. His lapidary style and his avoidance
of the concrete have kept his numerous works confined to a
small circle of readers, but they are thankful for them.
' Moral Evolution, chapter xvi.
 Foreign Missions 211

Evolution [he writes] implies a movement perfectly coherent

in every portion of it. It is one therefore which can be traced in
all its parts by the mind —
one in which we, as intelligent agents,
are partakers, first, as diligently inquiring into it; second, as con-
currently active under it, and third, as in no inconsiderable degree
modifying its results. The secret of evolution lies here We
. . . —
always lie under the creative hand at the centre of creative forces.
. . We are constantly speaking of the eternal and immutable
.

character of truth. These adjectives are hardly applicable.

. . .

The universe does not tarry in its nest. It is ever becoming another
and superior product. We must accept the truth as giving uS
. . .

directions of thought, axes of growth, and no final product whatever.

A third great factor in destroying the isolation of Christian-

ity from hiiman life, worthy to be mentioned with Biblical
criticism and the theory of evolution, was the wide-spreading
interest in the foreign missionary enterprise. The various
monographs in the excellent American Church History series
indicate that missions share with education and the federation
of the sects the chief interest of the denominational life of this
period. An increasingly large number of intelligent men and
women went into the lands "occupied" by other religions for
the sake of Christianizing them. They returned frequently
with the reports of their activity, their successes, and their
difficulties. The chief difficulty which confronted them in the
civilized lands of the East was t^ie firmly rooted conceptions
and emotions at the base of Hinduism, Buddhism, Confucian-
ism, and Mohammedanism. It became borne in upon the
Christian consciousness that Christianity and religion were not
synonymous. Before they realized it, the churches were face
to face with the discipline of "Comparative Religion" what —
Nash called "the most significant debate the world has ever
known."' James Freeman Clarke, one and of the tenderest
truest ministers of Jesus in composed a series of New England,
Lowell lectures on Ten Great Religions (1871) which went
through at least twenty -two editions, and brought a knowledge
of the high aspirations of other reUgious leaders to Christian
people. Toward the end of our period, the World's Parliament
of Religions, held in conjunction with the Columbian Exposi-
tion in Chicago, composed of representatives of ten religions,
' Ethics and Revelation, p. 92.
 :

212 Later Theology

visited by more than one hundred and fifty thousand people,

' "
gave dramatic underscoring to the Brotherhood of Religions'

— the phrase in which they were welcomed by one of the

—
authorities and adopted as its motto the words from Malachi:
"Have we not all one Father? hath not one God created us?"
It was possible, of course, to take the ground and it was —
at first widely taken —
that these religions were so many evi-
dences of the sinfulness of mankind. James S. Dennis, author
of the three-volume work on Christian Missions and Social
Progress (1898) —
a mine of rare and accurate sociological
material —holds: "They are the corruptions and perversion of
a primitive, monotheistic faith, which was directly taught by
God to the early progenitors of the race. They are gross . . .

caricatures and fragmentary semblances of the true religion."

W. C. Wilkinson of the University of Chicago, speaking at the
Parliament of Religions, declared The attitude of Christianity
:
'

'

towards religions other than itself is an attitude of universal,

absolute, eternal, unappeasable hostility, while toward all men
its attitude is an attitude of grace, mercy, peace for whosoever

will." And the noble and eloquent Bishop J. M. Thobum of

India castigates the preposterous view that the great religions
were all originated and developed by God Himself and that they
all have been and still are serving their purpose in the education

of the human race, and declares that he has "no more respect
for Mohammedanism as a system than for Mormonism."
As time went on, however, a wise agnosticism regarding
the origin of the religions of the Eastern world came to be
combined with an ever more intelligently founded conviction
of the moral supremacy of Christianity. Arthiu: H. Smith,
brilliant speaker and keen observer, has given a record of his
twenty -two years of life in China in the popular books Chinese
Characteristics (1894) ^^<^ Village Life in China (1899). He
finds the Confucian classics to be "the best chart ever con-
structed by man" and feels that not too much
"perhaps it is

to say that its authors may have had

in some sense a divine
guidance." He still insists, however, that the Chinese lack
"character and conscience" and that they must have "a
knowledge of God and a new conception of man to attain them. '
'

William N. Clarke, after a tour of the missions abroad, sums

up thus
 :

Comparative Religion ^13

In Confucianism, where the religious movement is ethical, the

ethics become human and religion is lost. In Buddhism, where it is
philosophical, the philosophy becomes pessimistic and religion dies
out. In Hinduism, where it is emotional, the emotion becomes
degrading and rehgion is defiled. In Mohammedanism, where it is
doctrinal, the doctrine becomes cold and lifeless and religion is
atrophied. ... A personal God, possessing a moral character and
offering himself in personal relations to man, is known in Christianity-
alone.

But a
still more outspoken sympathy and reverence for the

religionswhich Christianity is to "complete" are to be found

among missionaries and their devoutest supporters. George
William Knox, for fifteen years a missionary in Japan and after-
ward Professor of the Philosophy and History of Religion in
Union Theological Seminary, who died in Corea while Union
Seminary Lecturer in the East, thus expresses himself in The
Spirit of the Orient (1906)

If God rules, we cannot join in the wholesale condemnation of

the East as if it were a blot on His creation. As one thinks of . .

Confucianism, its vast antiquity, its immense influence over such

multitudes, its practical common sense, its freedom from all that is

superstitious or licentious or cruel or priestly, of the intelligent men

ithas led to high views of righteousness, one cannot but regard it as
a revelation from the God of truth and righteousness.

As we should expect, this viewpoint was strongly urged

at the Parliament of Religions in Chicago. Dr. Barrows, its

organizer, asked the frank question: "Why should not

Christians be glad to leam what God has wrought through
Buddha and Zoroaster?" And Robert Hume, a missionary
from India who had been prominently identified with the
liberal wing in the Andover controversy, and author of Missions
from the Modern View (1905), declared:

By thecontact of Christian and Hindu thought, each will help

the other. . The Hindu's recognition of the immanence of
. .

God in every part of his universe will quicken the present move-
ment of western thought to recognize everywhere a present and a
living God. The Hindu's longing for unity will help the western
mind ... to appreciate . . . that there has been and will be one
 :

214 Later Theology

plan and one purpose from the least atom to the highest intelligence.
From the testimony of Hindu thought, Christians will more appreci-
ate the superiority of the spiritual and invisible over the material
and the seen, of the eternal over the evanescent.

At the two lectureships were es-

close of the Parliament,
tablished to conserve the temper and purpose of that re-
markable assemblage. One of these is named the Barrows
lectureship, and upon its incumbent is laid the duty of deliver-
ing a series of lectures, interpretative of the Christian spirit,

in the intellectual centres of the East. Charles Cuthbert Hall,

the President of Union Theological Seminary, was twice the Bar-
rows lecturer. As the result of this last strenuous and congenial
service he laid down his devoted life. Between those two
periods of Oriental travel he delivered the Cole lectures before
VanderbUt University, on the The Universal Elements of the
Christian Religion (1905). Their chief impression concerns
the folly of further sectarianism in the Protestant communion,
but upon the matter immediately occupying us the lecturer
declares in words thoroughly and inclusively t3rpical of our
period

When one stands in the heart of the venerable East; feels the
atmosphere charged with religious impulse; reads on the faces of the
people marks of the unsatisfied soul; considers the monumental
expression of the religious idea in grand and enduring architectural
forms, then the suggestion that all this means nothing —
that it is to
be stamped out and exterminated before Christianity can rise upon
its ruins, —
becomes an unthinkable suggestion. I look with
reverence upon the hopes and yearnings of non-Christian faiths,
believing them to contain flickering and broken lights of God, which
shall be purged and purified and consummated through the
absolute self-revelation of the Father in Christ Incarnate."

As a result then of these three great world-movements of

thought —the science of Biblical criticism, the theory of evolu-
tion,and the emergence of comparative religion Christian —
theology has renounced
its lofty isolation and become a depart-

ment of human knowledge. But though finding religion at the

heart of common human life, instead of in a holy sphere apart
from it, modern theologians have not found it empty of signifi-
cance. They have discovered the world to be not, as Plato
 :

Christian Service 215

feared, a creature marked by changing cycles but the theatre and

stuff ofa steady upward movement, culminating in man. They
have found the Christian Bible to contain the most significant
segment of man's history, to be the transcript of that strenuous
and sublime process by which the foundations of reverence and
justice and truth were laid for Love to build upon. They
have discovered Jesus of Nazareth to be Love's supreme crea-
tion and channel. They believe the Christian function to be
the transformation of human life by the energy of that Love.
They find that mankind is to be led, as George W. Knox said,
'
not'along the road of dialectics to our God but by the great
highway of service to our fellowmen." Consequently, with a
growing scorn for sectarian problems and debates, they are
applying themselves to the outstanding tasks of human society.
Here many scholars and pastors have wrought nobly. In the
earlier stages of this modem thought the books of Josiah Strong
and C. Loring Brace and Edward Everett Hale' were of much
avail. William J. Tucker made the chair of Practical Theology
at Andover seem one of Sociology and directed the founding
of the first settlement house in Boston. Joseph Tuckerman
founded a pastorship-at-large in the same city and helped to
crystallize Unitarian socialsympathy in paths of definite ser-
vice to the poor. These men and many others have con-
tributed to what E. Winchester Donald of Trinity Church,
Boston, so happily called in his Lowell lectures "The Expan-
sion of Religion." From this social viewpoint, two eminent
educators, in particular, have wrought at a revolution in
theology, William DeWitt Hyde, already mentioned, and
Walter Rauschenbusch (1861-1918) of Rochester Theological
—
Seminary the latter perhaps the most creative spirit in the
American theological world. The heart of their gospel may
be presented, though inadequately, in a few sentences

This glorious work of helping to complete God's fair creation;

this high task of making human life anci human society the realiza-
tion of the Father's loving will for all his children; this is the real
substance of the spiritual life, of which the services and devotions
of the church are but the outward forms. They ought not to be
separated. Yet if we can have but one, social service is of infinitely

more worth than pious profession. . . . The world has been re-

' See Book III, Chaps, vi and xili.

 '

2i6 Later Theology

deemed from the moment when Christ came into it; from the
moment when Love was consciously accepted as the true law of
human life. This Christian principle of loving service and willing
self-sacrifice for the glory of God and the good of man ... is the
spiritual principle of the modern world. ... It is not always
explicitly conscious of the historic source of its inspiration; it is not
always in intellectual sympathy with the formulas in which the
Christian tradition is expressed. But the presence of this
. . .

Spirit of Love as the accepted and accredited ideal of conduct and

character is itself the proof that the world has been redeemed. It is
the promise and potency of its complete redemption.
The religion that lived in the heart of Jesus and spoke in his
words not only had a social faith; it was a social faith. The . . .

Kingdom of God calls for no ceremonial, for no specific doings. . . .

Like Jesus, it makes love to God and love to man the sole outlet
for the energy of religion and thereby harnesses that energy to the
ethical purification of the natural social relations of men. We . . .

are a wasteful nation. But the most terrible waste of all has been
the waste of the power of religion on dress performances. The . . .

Kingdom of God deals not only with the immortal souls of men, but
with their bodies, their nourishment, their homes, their cleanliness,
and it makes those who serve these fundamental needs of life,
veritable ministers of God. ... If the Kingdom of God on earth
once more became the central object of religion, Christianity would
necessarily resume the attitude of attack with which it set out. It
had the temper of the pioneer. But where it has taken the existing
order for granted and has devoted itself to saving souls, it has
become a conservative force, bent on maintaining the great institu-
tion of the church and preserving the treasure of doctrine and
supernatural grace committed to it. When we accept the faith of
the Kingdom of God, we take the same attitude toward our own social
order which missionaries take toward the social life of heathenism.
. . The Church would have to "about face." The centre of
.

gravity in the whole Christian structure of history would be shirted

from the past to the future. '

Many Christian pastors have attempted to live in the spirit

of this gospel, butit is scarcely invidious to single out Washing-

ton Gladden (1836-1918) as the best-known and most effective

worker for the regeneration of the social organism in the pulpit
of our period. He was pastor in North Adams and Springfield,
'
Hyde, Social Theology, pp. 215-16, 229-30.
" Rauschenbusch, Christianizing the Social Order, pp. 96-102.
 Washington Gladden 217

Massachusetts, and, for over thirty years, in Columbus, Ohio.

He was the author of many books on the social and religious
readjustment, of which perhaps On Being a Christian (1876),
Applied Christianity (1886), Who Wrote the Bible? (1891), Tools
and 'the Man (1893), The Christian Pastor (1898), and The
Labor Question (191 1) have had the largest sale. No one of
these volumes, however, was written merely in order to be
published they grew out of the pressing problems of his minis-
;

try. His fine-spirited Recollections (1909) indicates the stormy

theological and sociological times through which he lived.
He refused to be silent and he was fortunately mediatory by
nature. His fairness won him a hearing and his good-will
gave him effectiveness. He challenged the official conserva-
tism of the Congregational churches, he threw his influence into
the struggle for untrammelled investigation of the Bible, he
insisted upon a larger share of the profits of industry for the
labourers, he movement for the change of the time
initiated the
of election inOhio from October to November, he had himself
elected to the city council in Columbus when important
franchises were to be decided, and became firmly convinced
of the necessity of municipal ownership of pubKc works. He
writes: "Dishonest men can be bought and ignorant men can
be manipulated. This is the kind of government which private
capital, invested in public-service industries, naturally feels that
it must have. ... do not think that the people of any city
I
can afford to have ten or twenty or two hundred millions of
dollars directly and consciously interested in promoting bad
government." During a fierce street-car strike in Cleveland
in 1886 he journeyed thither and spoke to a great meeting of
employers and employees on "Is it Peace or War?" openly
favouring the right of the workingmen to combine for the de-
fence of their interests. In a later street-car strike in his own
city he upon the arbitration which the
intervened, insisting
labourers desired and the employers refused. He was an enemy
of war. As late as 1909 he declared that he wished secession
had been tried " I cannot help wishing that the ethical passion
:

of the North for liberty had been matched with a faith equally
compelling in the cogency of good-will." An enemy of social-
ism, he became at length convinced that the functions of gov-
ernment should be extended. His opinions moved slowly but
2i8 Later Theology

somewhat in advance of the opinion of the churches. When he

died in 1918 the New York Evening Post remarked: "Wash-
ington Gladden seemed to have an extra sense. In matters . . .

affecting religion and church organization, in matters political,

in matters social, in matters international, he had an almost

uncanny way of anticipating what was to come." The truth
of this comment may be tested by a paragraph from his essay
on The Strength and Weakness of Socialism, written as far back
as 1886.

Out of unrestricted competition arise many wrongs that the

State must redress and many abuses which it must check. It
may become the duty of the State to reform its taxation, so that
its burdens shall rest less heavily upon the lower classes; to repress
monopolies of all sorts; to prevent and punish gambling; to regulate
or control the railroads and telegraphs; to limit the ownership of
land; to modify the laws of inheritance; and possibly to levy a
progressive income-tax, so that the enormous fortunes should bear
more rather than less than their share of the public burdens.

He was a
strong believer in profit-sharing; he was president
of an association for Christian education of the negroes and
Indians and backward peoples he was the moderator of the Con-
;

gregational National Council; he was the champion of interna-

tional peace. He was withal a Christian pastor and conscientious
preacher. He said, indeed:
»

I maintain that good sermons may

be and ought to be good
a theme in
literature; that the free, direct, conversational handling of
the presence of an audience makes good reading in a book. If I am
permitted to judge my own work, I should say that the best of my
books as literature is the book of sermons, Where Does the Sky
Begin ?

The one man who, demonstrated this

in our period, best
thesis of Washington Gladden is PhiUips Brooks (1835-93).'
He was most fortunately constituted and placed to be a great
preacher. Just about the time of his birth in Boston, his
family gave up its pew in the Unitarian meeting-house and, as a

^ The volume the writer of this chapter would recommend as an introduction

to Brooks's writings is the fourth series of his sermons, entitled Twenty Sermons,
published in 1886. The new edition (1910) is entitled Visions and Tasks.
 Phillips Brooks 219

compromise between its Unitarian and Congregational strands,

took one in St. Paul's Episcopal Church, its freedom and
strength becoming tinged with mystery and wrapped about in
dignified historicity. And when Phillips Brooks, after an
unsuccessful experiment in teaching in the Boston Latin School,
hesitatingly determined to be a minister, his mind seemed to
rest in the solidarity of humanity, in the perpetual and abiding
emotions, conceptions, and satisfactions which underlie all
change. The strong conservatism, so often noted in college
students, seemed to remain with him long after the under-
graduate years and to be a constitutive element of his character.
With the great controversies of his times he was not unac-
quainted. He took the gradually prevailing view with regard
to them all. He believed the great books of other religions
to be "younger brothers" of the Bible. He travelled with
sympathetic interest in India and Japan. "No mischief,"
he thought, "can begin to equal the mischief which must come
from the obstinate dishonesty of men who refuse to recognize
any of the new light which has been thrown upon the Bible."
When Heber Newton was threatened with a trial for heresy
because of his belief in the methods and some of the more
radical conclusions of the higher criticism, Brooks invited
him to preach in his pulpit. He says remarkably little regard-
ing the Darwinian controversy. He had but a superficial
acquaintance with science. He finds his comfort in believing
that "the orderliness of nature must make more certain the
existence of an orderer, " and suggests that "Christ's truth of
the Father Life of God has the most intimate connection with
Darwin's doctrine of development, which is simply the
continual indwelling and action of creative power." He
added, however, but little to the controversies. Save where,
as in the problem of comparative religion, they came into
close contact with his own gospel of the universal sonship of
man to God, hewas not fundamentally interested in them.
His sympathetic sermon on Gamaliel, who left the upshot of
controversies to God, is In the Theological
characteristic.
Seminary at Alexandria he wrote in his student's notebook:

Truth has laid her strong piers in the past Eternity and the
Eternity to come and now she is bridging the interval with this life
 :

220 Later Theology

of ours. .Controversies grow tame and tiresome to the mind

. .

which has looked on Truth. We walk the bridge of life.

. . .

Can we not trust its safety on the two great resting-places of God's
wisdom?

Brooks was habitually more aware of the back-

Phillips
ground than of the foreground. Occasionally, indeed, it was
otherwise. In his Philadelphia ministry he spoke out boldly,
at the conclusion of the War, for negro suffrage. In his later
life the radical in him showed itself more conspicuously. He
rose in his place in the Church Congress to plead for the use of
the Revised Version of the Bible in public worship, and in the
Convention of 1886 he protested vigorously against the pro-
posal to strike the words "Protestant Episcopal" from the
title of his Church. On his return from the Convention to
Boston, he even went so far as to declare from the pulpit that
if the name were changed, he did not see how any one could

remain in the Church who, like himself, disbelieved in the doc-

trine of Apostolic Succession. But in the main he lived above
controversy. He believed neither in "insisting on full require-
ments of doctrine nor on paring them down The duty
of such times as these is to go deeper into the spirituality of our
truths. . Jesus let the shell stand as he found it, until
. .

the new life within could burst it for itself." His rare bio-
grapher, A. V. G. Allen, makes this significant comment upon
a Thanksgiving sermon of his

He offers no solution of the conflict between religion and science.

But it means something that in the disorder of thought and feeling,
so many men are fleeing to the study of orderly nature. He turges
his hearers to make much of the experiences of life which are per-
petual, joy, sorrow, friendship, work, charity, relation with one's
brethren, for these are eternal.

For Brooks this was no evasion. It was digging below the

questions of the day to the eternal, unquestioned, proven
truths of human It was losing one's self in hu-
experience.
manity. He
occasionally looked forward, and increasingly,
but he loved best to look from the present backward and up-
ward. Just after his graduation from Harvard, we find this
in his notebook:
 :

Phillips Brooks 221

A spark of original thought . . . strengthens a man's feeling of

individuality, but weakens his sense of race. It is an inspiring,
ennobling, elevating, but not a social thing. But what a kindly-
power, what a warm human family feeling clusters around the
thought which we find common to our mind and to some old mind
which was thinking away back in the twihght of time. ... So
when we recognize a common impulse or rule of life ... we must
feel humanity in its spirit, bearing witness with our spirits, that it
is the offspring of a common divinity.

His native conservatism lived through the awakening years

of the Seminary. We find these musings in his notebook
Originality is a fine thing, but first have you the head to bear it?
. . . Our best and strongest thoughts, like men's earliest and
ruder homes, are found or hollowed in the old primaeval rock. . . .

Not till our pride rebels against the architecture of these first homes
and we go out and build more stately houses of theory and specula-
tion and discovery and science, do we begin to feel the feebleness
that is in us.

As his biographer keenly says: "Nowhere in these note-

books does Brooks regard himself as a pioneer in search of
new thought. He does not test truth by individual ex-
. . .

periences but by the larger experiences of humanity." He

told the Yale theological students in his middle life that a
part of the Christian assurance lies in the fact that the Chris-
tian message is "the identical message which has comedown
from the beginning." Part of his satisfaction in preaching
lay in his confidence that he was in his proper communion.
He rejoiced "in her strong historic spirit, her sense of union
with the ages which have passed out of sight. The insignia of '

'

spiritual truth to him were largely antiquity and catholicity.

He had profound faith in the people. He believed in prophets
when they had been accepted by the people; that is, usually
some ages after they have lived and died. Few prominent men
have let their friends and the public decide in their crises more
than Brooks—and in nearly every case against his own original
instinct. on the heart of humanity as the supreme
He relied
judge. Out of this primitive conviction of his grew his one
essential message, that every man who has ever lived is a son
 : '

222 Later Theology

of God. Consequently when a great doctrine came before him

which had the ages of experience behind it or upon it, the
question he asked was not " Is it true ? " but " Why is it true ?
'

or "Wherein resides its truth?" So it was with the great

pivotal doctrine of the divinity of Christ, or, as he preferred to
call it, the Incarnation. He found its truth to reside in the
fact that Christ had lived out the secret yearnings and possi-
bilities of humanity; Christ was the prophecy of the Christ
that was everywhere to be. On the great question of the
miracles he was orthodox. He lived in a time when Biblical
criticism in this country was in its earlier stages. He could
honestly write to a German inquirer: "There is nothing
in the results of modern scholarship which conflicts with
the statements in the Apostles' and Nicene Creeds concern-
ing the birth of Jesus." As Allen remarks, Brooks was
in the habit of "sheathing his critical faculties where the
people's faith was concerned." He used the Bible, therefore,
pretty much as he found it, or rather he used what he found
beneath it.
It was toward middle life, about the time that a fresh study
of the Gospels found expression in the Influence of Jesus
(1880), that his emphasis seemed to shift from historic Chris-
tianity to the personal Christ. Over and over he insisted on
the centrality of Christ. " Not Christianity but Christ Not
!

a doctrine but a person! Christianity only for Christ! . . .

—
Our religion is Christ. To believe in Him is what? To
say a Creed? To join a church? No, but to have a great,
strong, divine Master, whom we perfectly love." And how
perfectly he loved him and how Christ responded to the em-
braces of this man's love, a letter on the eve of his consecration
to the bishopric shows

These have a peace and fulness which there did not

last years
use to be. do not think it is the mere quietness of advancing age.
I

I am sure it is not indifference to anything which I used to care

for. I am sure that it is a deeper knowledge and truer love of
Christ. ... I cannot tell you how personal this grows to me.
He is here. He knows me and I know Him. It is no figure of
speech. It is the reallest thing in the world. And every day
makes it realler. And one wonders with delight what it will grow
to as the years go on.
 —
Phillips Brooks 223

And yet, notwithstanding his anchorage in the past, he

believed in a port ahead, for each individual primarily, but also
for the race. Even his ecstatic and unreserved loyalty to the
incarnate Christ did not serve as an iron door let down athwart
the highway of progress. He intimated that his teaching
regarding divorce was determined by temporary circum-
stances and that his scheme of punishments is not an essential
factor of his religion. with his strong belief
It is true, naturally,
in immortality and in the individual's sonship to God, thathe
held that society is here for the sake of the individual and not
the individual for the sake of society. But in the later years
we find almost a new note in his writings. Life may become too'
'

strong for literature, he says.

'
'"It may be the former methods
and standards are not sufficient for the expression of the grow-
ing life, its new activities, its unexpected energies, its feverish
problems. ... A man must believe in the future more than
he reverences the past. " In a speech before the Boston Chamber
of Commerce he is reported as having said that " the world was
bound to press onward and find an escape from the things that
terrified it, not by retreat but by a perpetual progress into the
large calm that lay beyond." In the sermon which gives the
title to his volume The Light of the World (1890), wherein —
is succinctly set forth his gospel, "the essential possibility and
richness of humanity and its essential belonging to divinity,"
we have these majestic words:

It is so hard for us to believe in the mystery of man. "Behold

man is this," we say, shutting down some near gate which falls
only just beyond, quite in sight of, what human nature already has

attained. If man would go beyond that, he must be something else

than man. And just then something breaks the gate away, and, lo
far out beyond where we can see, stretches the mystery of man,
the beautiful, the awful mystery of man. To him, to man, all
lower lives have climbed, and, having come to him, have found a
field where evolution may go on for ever.

Such passages are rare in his writings, for usually his gaze
takes in the past with Christ resplendent in it and does not lose
itself in the future; then gratitude gets the upper hand of strug-

gle. He rarely preaches an entirely " social " sermon. In The

Christian City, wherein he departs from his custom, he be-
 :

^24 Later Theology

seeches Londoners to take heart because the modem city is so

Christian, though unconsciously. The Giant with the Wounded
Heel is one of the finest and most characteristic of his sermons.
He believes the giant, man, is constantly crushing the serpent,
and he is content to see a pretty large wound in his heel.
This largeness and poise of viewthe most distinctive
is

characteristic of Phillips Brooks. stamps him with the

It
mark of intellect. Occasionally he seems to value the mind
for itself and to ascribe to it standards of its own. "The ink
of the learned is as precious as the blood of the martyrs."
Once he admits, without catching himself, that the mind is
"the noblest part of us." In the sermon where this admission
is made. The Mind's Love for God, he declares: "You cannot

know that one idea is necessarily true because seems to help

it

you, nor that another idea because it

is false wounds and seems
to hinder you. Your mind
your faculty for judging what is
is

true." But these are isolated sayings. Ordinarily he refuses to

think of the intellect as a thing apart from the entire man, and
he finds truth, as did his Master, inherent in life, a personal
quality, discovered, determined, and determinable by personal
ends. When he first began to think, Socrates was almost the
ideal figure. But later, Socrates seemed thin in compari-
son with Christ. "Socrates brings an argument to meet an
objection. Jesus always brings a nature to meet a nature; a
whole being which the truth has filled with strength to meet
another whole being, which error has filled with feebleness."
In his sermon on the death of Lincoln he discloses his inner
thought

A great many people have discussed very crudely whether

Abraham Lincoln was an intellectual man or not, as if intellect
were a thing, always of the same sort, which you could precipitate
from the other constituents of a man's nature and weigh by itself.
. . The fact is that in all the simplest characters, the line between
.

the mental and moral nature is always vague and indistinct. They
run together, and in their best combination you are unable to dis-
criminate, in the wisdom which is their result, how much is moral
and how much is intellectual.

In his student days he confides to his notebook: "A fresh

thought niay be spoiled by sheer admiration. It was given us
 Phillips Brooks ,225

to work in and to live by. . . . It will give its blessing to us

only on its knees. From this point of view, thought is as holy a
thing as prayer, for both are worship." The best description,
perhaps, of his own mind is to be found in his enumeration of
the "intellectual characteristics which Christ's disciples gath-
ered from their Master, " namely: "A poetic conception of
the world we live in, a willing acceptance of mystery, an ex-
pectation of progress by development, an absence of fastidious-
ness that comes from a sense of the possibilities of all humanity,
and a perpetual enlargement of thought from the arbitrary into
the essential."
These peculiar intellectual characteristics, rooted in their
passionate reverence for humanity, for its ideals and its achieve-
ments, determine the place of Brooks among the great preachers
of the world. He is when he preaches by indirec-
at his best
tion. Enlargement is his effect. A man sees his own time in
relation to all time, discovers his greatness by the greatness of
which he is a part. Brooks's mission was not to advance the
frontiers of knowledge, not even of spiritual knowledge, but
rather to annex the cleared areas to the old domains. His
abiding preoccupation — fatal to the scientist, detrimental to the
sociologist, fortunate for the fame and immediate influence
of the preacher —was to
hold the present, changing into the
future, loyal to the past. He was not the stuff of which martyrs
are made, but his soul was of that vastness which kept the public
from making martyrs of the truthful. He seems to watch and
bless rather than to urge forward. His great service to his
age was that of a mediator. Standing himself as a trinitarian
and a supematuralist, rejoicing in the greenness of the historic
pastures, he discovered at the base of his doctrines the same
essential spiritual food which others sought on freer uplands
and less confined stretches. He ministered to orthodox and
unorthodox alike beneath their differences. He did much to
keep spiritual evolution free from the bitterness and contempt
of revolution.

VOL. HI IS
 1 .

CHAPTER XVII

Later Philosophy

THE prevailing other-worldliness of American philosophers

seems to be the only explanation for our failure to
1

develop an original and vigorous political philosophy

to meet our unique political experience. On a priori grounds
it seems indisputable that philosophy must share the charac-

teristics of the life of which it is a part and on which it is its

business to reflect. But we actually do not know with certainty ,'

what kind of philosophy any given set of historic conditions

will always produce. Thus no one has convincingly pointed
out any direct and really significant influence on American
philosophy exercised by our colonial organization, by the Re-
volutionary War, by the slavery struggle, by the Civil War,
by our unprecedented immigration, or by the open frontier
life which our historians now generally regard as the key to

American history. The fact that, excepting some passages in

Calhoun, ' none of our important philosophic writings mentions
the existence of slavery or of the negro race, that liberal demo-
cratic philosophers like Jefferson^ could continue to own and
even sell slaves and still fervently believe that all men are
created free and equal, ought to serve as a reminder of the
air-tightcompartments into which the human mind is fre-
quently divided, and of the extent to which one's professed
philosophy can be entirely disconnected from the routine of
one's daily occupation. Indeed, itwould seem that most of our
philosophy is not a reflection on life but, like music or Utopian
' See Book II, Chap. xv. The keen pamphlet on Slavery and Freedom by A.
T. Bledsoe, the most versatile of our Southern philosophers, and the references
to the ethics of slavery in Wayland's Moral Philosophy, can hardly be considered
as derogating from the statement in the text. " See Book I, Chap.
viii.

226
 !;

Foreign Influences 227

and romantic literature, an escape from it, a turning one's back |

upon its prosaic monotony. But though genuine philosophy i

never restricts itself to purely local and temporal affairs, the

history of philosophy, as part of the history of the intellectual
life of any country, is largely concerned with the life of various
national or local traditions, with their growth and struggles,
and the interaction between them and the general currents of
life into which they must fit, with the general conditions, that
is, under which intellectual life is carried on.
The main American philosophy have been
traditions of
British, that is, English and Scotch; and the Declaration of ;

Independence has had no more influence in the realm of meta-

physical speculation than it has had in the realm of our common
law. French and German influences have, indeed, not been
absent. The community of Western civilization which found
in Latin its common language has never been completely broken
up. But French and German influences have not been any
greater in the United States than in Great Britain. Up to very
'

recently our philosophers have mostly been theologians, and

the latter, like the lawyers, cultivate intense loyalty to ancient
traditions. In our early national period French free-thought
exercised considerable influence, especially in the South; but
the free thought of Voltaire, Condillac, and Volney was, after
all, an adaptation of Locke and English deism and its American ;

apostles like Thomas Paine," Priestley, and Thomas Cooper were,

like Franklin'and Jefferson, characteristically British as were —
Hume and Gibbon in their day. This movement of intellectual
liberalism was almost completely annihilated in the greater
portion of the country by the evangelical or revivalist move-
ment. The triumph of revivalism was rendered easier by the
weakly organized intellectual life and the economic bankruptcy
of the older Southern aristocracy, as reflected in the financial
difficulties which embarrassed Jefferson, Madison, and Monroe
in their old age. The second French wave, the eclectic philo-
sophy of Cousin and Jouffroy, was at bottom simply the Scotch
realism of Reid and Stewart over again, with only slight traces
of Schelling.
With the organization of our graduate schools on German
models, and With a large number of our teachers taking their
» See Book I, Chap. viii. ' See Book I, Chap. vi.
 '

228 Later Philosophy

doctors' degrees in Germany, Germanic terms and mannerisms

gained an apparent ascendancy in our philosophic teachings
'

and writings; but in its substance, philosophy in America has

followed the modes prevailing in Great Britain. The first

serious attempt to introduce German philosophy into this

country came with Coleridge's Aids to Reflection (1829), and I

the apologetic tone of President Marsh's introductory essay

showed how powerfully the philosophy of Locke and Reid had
become entrenched as a part of the Christian thought of Amer-
ica. Some acquaintance with German philosophy was shown
by New England radicals like Theodore Parker, ' but in the
main their interest in things Germanic was restricted to the
realm of belles-lettres, biblical criticism, and philology. Though
some stray bits of Schelling's romantic nature-philosophy be-
came merged in American transcendentalism, the latter was
really a form of Neoplatonism directly descended from the Cam-
bridge platonism of More and Cudworth. Hickok's Rational
Psychology (1848) is our only philosophic work of the first two-
thirds of the nineteenth century to show any direct and serious
assimilation of Kant's thought. Hickok, however, professes to
whole transcendental philosophy, and, in the niain,
reject the
the Kantian elements in his system are no larger than in the
writings of British thinkers like Hamilton
and Whewell. The
Hegelian influence, which made itself strongly felt in the
work of William T. Harris, was even more potent in Great
Britain.
In 1835 De Tocqueville reported that in no part
of the civil-
ized world was paid to philosophy than in the
less attention
United States. " Whether because of absorption in the material
conquest of a vast continent, or because of a narrow orthodoxy
which was then hindering free intellectual life in England as
well as in the United States, the fact remains that nowhere else
were free theoretic inquiries held in such little honour. As our
colleges were originally
all sectarian or denominational, clergy-/
men occupied
the chairs of philosophy. Despite the multi-'
all
tude of sects, the Scottish common-sense philosophy introduced
j
at the end of the eighteenth century at Princeton by Presi-'

' See Book II, Chap. viii.

"One gets the same impression from Harriet Martineau's Society in America
and fr-jm the account of Philarfete Chasles.
 Common-Sense Philosophy 229

dent Witherspoon, spread until formed almost the sole basis

it \

of philosophic instruction. Here and there some notice was

taken of Mill and Positivism, and Edward's Freedom of the
Will^ continued to agitate thoughtful minds inside and out-
side of the colleges, but in the main both idealism and empiri-
cism were suspected as leading to pantheism or to downright
/ atheism. The creation of the earth before man was a potent \

I argument against Berkeleian idealism or denial of matter. The

Scottish common-sense realism was a democratic philosophy in
the sense that it did not depart widely from the popular views as !

to the nature of the material world, the soul, and God. " It did f

not rely on subtle arguments, but appealed to established beliefs.

'

It could easily be reconciled with the most literal interpretation

of the Bible and could thus be used as a club against freethinkers. \

Above all, it was eminently teachable. It eliminated all disturb-

ing doubts by direct appeal to the testimony of consciousness,
and readily settled all questions by elevating disputed opinions
into indubitable principles. It could thus be authoritatively
taught to adolescent minds, and students could readily recite onj
it. Unfortunately, however, philosophy does not thrive under
the rod of authority; and in spite of many acute minds like
Bowen, Mahan, Bledsoe, or Tappan, or powerful minds like
Shedd and Hickok, ^ American philosophy before the Civil War I

produced not a single original philosophic work of commanding

importance. To the modem reader it is all an arid desert of com-
monplace opinion covered with the dust of pedantic language. '

The storm which broke the stagnant air and aroused many \

American minds from this dogmatic torpor came with the ;

controversy over evolution which followed the publication of

Lyell's Geology, Darwin's Origin of Species, and Spencer's First \

The evolutionary philosophy was flanked on the

''

Principles.

' See Book I, Chap. iv.

' It is interesting to note that Jefferson was converted to it by Stewart.
3 Soldier, lawyer, minister, publicist, and editor, as well as professor of ma-
thematics, Albert T. Bledsoe deserves to be better known. His Philosophy of
Mathematics is still worth reading. So also is Shedd's Philosophy of History,
which illustrates the independence of the evolutionary conception of history
from the thought of Spencer or Darwin. For sheer intellectual power, however,
and for comprehensive grasp of technical philosophy Hickok is easily the foremost
figure in American philosophy between the time of Jonathan
Edwards and the
period of the Civil War. He left, however, no influential disciples except Presi-

dents Seeley and Bascom.

 !

230 Later Philosophy

left by, the empirical or positivistic philosophy of Comte, Mill,

Lewes, Buckle, and Bain, and on the right by the dialectic
/I
evolutionism of Hegel. The work of John Fiske, the leader of
the evolutionary host, of Chauncey Wright, who nobly repre-
sented scientific empiricism, and of William T. Harris, the
saintly and practical minded Hegelian, united to give American
philosophy a wider basis. With these the history of the modem
period of American philosophy begins.
To understand the profound revolution in religious and
philosophic thought caused by the advent of the hypothesis of
organic evolution, we must remember that natural history was, ,

after Paley an integral part of American theology. The current

,

religious philosophy rested very largely on what were then called

the evidences of design in the organic world and the theory of
;

natural selection rendered all these arguments futile. The mass

of geologic and biologic evidence marshalled with such skill and
transparent honesty by Darwin proved an overwhelming blow
against those who accepted the biblical account of the creation
of man and of animals as literal history. Modem physical
sciencehad dispossessed theology from its proud position as the
authoritative source of truth on astronomic questions. If, then,
the biblical account of creation and its specific declaration,
"According to their kind created He them," were to be dis-
regarded, could Protestant Christianity, relying on the author-
ity of the Bible, survive? These fears for the safety of religion
proved groundless, but there is no doubt that the evolutionary
movement profoundly shook the position of theology and theo-
logians. Not only was the intellectual eminence of our theo-
logians seriously damaged in the eyes of the community as a
result of the controversy, but theology was profoundly altered
by the evolutionary philosophy. As a religious doctrine the
latter was in effect a revival of an older deism, according to
which the world was the manifestation of an immanent Power
expressing itself in general laws revealed by natural reason and
experience, instead of being specially created and governed by
divine interventions or occasional miracles revealed to us by
supernatural authority.
In the realm of pure philosophy Spencer and his disciple
Fiske brought no new ideas of any importance. Their doctrine
of the relativity of human knowledge was a common possession
 The Evolutionary Philosophy 231

of both English and Scottish writers, and their agnosticism,

based on our supposed inability to know the infinite, had been
common coin since the days of Kant. But the idea of universal
evolution or development, though as old as Greek philosophy
and fully exploited in all departments of human thought by
Hegel, received a most impressive popular impetus from the
work of Darwin and Spencer, and stirred the popular imagina-
tion as few intellectual achievements had done since the rise of /
the Copernican astronomy. Just as the displacement of man's
abode as the centre of the universe led by way of compensation
to a modern idealism which said "The whole cosmos is in our
mind," so the discovery of man's essential kinship with brute
creation led to the renewal of an idealistic philosophy which
made human development and perfection the end of the cosmic
process travailing through the aeons. Thus, instead of doing
away with all teleology, the evolutionary philosophy itself
became a teleology, replacing bleak Calvinism with the warm,
rosy outlook of a perpetual and universal upward progress.
This absorption of the evolutionary philosophy by theology
is clearly brought out in the works of John Fiske (1842-1901).

In his main philosophic work, the Outlines oj Cosmic Philosophy,

which he delivered as lectures in Harvard in 1869-71, he fol-
lowed Spencer so closely in his agnosticism and opposition to
anthropomorphic theism that he brought down the wrath of the
orthodox and made a permanent position for himself in the
department of philosophy at Harvard impossible. Yet his own
cosmic theism and his attempt to reconcile the existence of evil
with that of a benevolent, omnipotent, quasi-psychical Power
should have shown discerning theologians that here was a pre-
cious ally. In his later writings Fiske, though never expressly
withdrawing his earlier argument that the ideas of personality
and infinity are incompatible, did emphasize more and more
the personality of God; and his original contrast between cosmic
and anthropomorphic theism reduced itself to a contrast between
the immanent theology of Athanasius and the transcendent
theology of St. Augustine. By making man's spiritual develop-|,
ment the goal of the whole evolutionary process, Fiske replaced \
man in his old position as head of the universe even as in the
days of Dante and Aquinas.
What primarily attracted Fiske to the evolutionary philo-
 ' ' 1

232 Later Philosophy

sophy was precisely that which made that philosophy so popu-

lar, the easy way in which it could serve as a universal key to

open up a comprehensive view on every subject of human in-

terest. Despite his services to popular science, Fiske was not
His knowledge of biology was
himself a scientific investigator.
second-hand, neither extensive nor very accurate, and even less
can be said about his knowledge of physics. But he was widely
read in history, in -which he was always primarily interested.
The evolutionary philosophy appealed to him above all as a
clue to the tangled, complicated mass of facts that constitutes
human history. Like Buckle, Fiske wanted to eliminate the mar-
vellous or catastrophic view of history and reduce it to simple
laws. In his historic writings, however, he does not seem to have
used the evolutionary philosophy to throw new light on past
events, and in his actual historic representation his dramatic
instinct gave full scope to the part of great men, to issues of
battles, and to like incidents. V
The extent to which Fiske as a philosopher was dominated
by traditional views is best seen when we ask for the ethical
and political teaching of his evolutionary philosophy. Only a
few pages of the Cosmic Philosophy are devoted to this topic,
and the results do not in any respect rise above the common-
place. He naively accepts the crude popular analysis which
makes morality synonymous with yielding to the "dictates of
sympathy" instead of to the "dictates of selfishness." The
conception of evolution as consisting of slow, imperceptible
changes—thus ignoring all saltations_orjnutations — is made to
support the ordinary conservative aversion for radical change.
The philosophy of Voltaire and the encyclopaedists is sweepingly
condemned as socially subversive; and against Comte it is

maintained that society cannot be organized on the basis

of
scientific philosophy, not even the evolutionary philosophy.
Statesmen should study history, but men cannot be taught the
higher state of civilization they can only be bred in it. Just
;

how the latter process is to take place we are not told. Fiske
left nothing of a theory of education." He belittles the im-
portance of social institutions and concludes by making social f

' For his historical writings see Book III, Chap. xv.
" His important apergu as to the significance of prolonged infancy as the basis
of civilization relates to his theory of social and moral evolution.
 —
John Fiske .
233

salvation depend upon a change of heart in individual men

quite in the tradition of the Protestant theology which he had
inherited.
Fiske was not an original or a logically rigorous thinker, and
his knowledge of the history of science and philosophy was by
no means adequate; but he was a remarkably lucid, vigorous,
and engaging writer who had no fear of repeating the same
point. His Cosmic Philosophy went through sixteen editions,
and this, as well as his other books, which sold by the thousands,
undoubtedly exerted wide influence. Thus he greatly aided the
spread of the Berkeleian argument that all we know of matter is
states of consciousness, and at the same time of the argument
(really inconsistent with this) for a psychical parallelism ac-
cording to which matter and mind form parallel streams of
causality without one causing the other. But above all, he
made fashionable the evolutionary myth according to which
everything has a function, evolves, and necessarily passes
through certain stages. Thus he also introduced a new intel-
lectual orthodoxy according to which the elect pride themselves
on following the "dynamic" rather than the "static" point of /
view. n/
The pietistic philosophy which gained complete control of f

the American college and of dominant public opinion did not i

completely break all communication between America and |

foreign liberal thought as represented by Comte, Fourier, and

even Proudhon, or by Bentham, Grote, and Mill. Even the 1

arch-skeptic Hume continued to be reprinted in this country;

and the vitality of the sensualistic or quasi-materialistic tradi-
tion in the medical profession is evidenced by James Rush's
Analysis oj the Human Intellect (1865). Despite, however, the
presence with us of men of such first-rate scientific eminence
as Joseph Henry, Benjamin Peirce, or Nathaniel Bowditch,
scientific thought was not sufficiently organized to demand a
philosophy more in consonance with its own procedure. Even
in Great Britain, where science was earlier and better organized
by means of the Association for the Advancement of Science
(1832), Mill's effort to revive and continue Hume's attempt
to introduce the experimental method of natural sciences into
mental and moral questions found acceptance very slowly.
Toward the end of his life Mill testified that for one British
234 Later Philosophy

philosopher who beUeved in the experimental method twenty

were followers of the a priori method. Empiricism was cer-
tainly not the dominant characteristic of Anglo-Saxon thought
in the period when Coleridge, Hamilton, and Whewell were in
the foreground. Slowly the scientific mode of thought spread,
however, and found in Mill's Logic its most convenient for-
mulation. Chauncey Wright (1830-75), a computer for the
Nautical Almanac who had made important contributions to
mathematics and physics, had, like most of the thinking men of
his day, been brought up on Hamilton. But his reading of Mill
converted Wright completely; and while never a disciple of Mill
to the extent that Fiske was of Spencer, he was in a fair way to
re-enforce and develop Mill's logic in a most original manner
when an untimely death cut him off. All his papers, published
mostly in The North American Review (1864-73), fill only one
volume. But if the test of a philosopher be intellectual keen-
ness and persistent devotion to the truth rather than skill in
making sweeping generalizations plausible, Chauncey Wright
deserves a foremost place in American philosophy. Unlike
Fiske, Wright knew at first hand the technique of biologic as
well as mathematical and physical research, and his contribu-
tion to the discussion of natural selectionwas highly valued by
Darwin. But he rejects the evolutionary philosophy of Spen-
cer, not only because of its inadequate grasp of modern physics,
nor merely because, like all cosmogonic philosophies, it goes
beyond the bounds of known fact, but primarily because it is
metaphysical, that is, it deals with the general laws of physics
as abstract elements out of which a picture of the universe is
to be drawn. To draw such a picture of the universe is a part
of religion and of poetic or myth-making art. It does not be-
long to science. For whenever we go beyond the limited body
of observed fact we order things according to our imagination
and inevitably develop a cosmos as if it were an epic poem, with a
beginning, middle, and end. The scientist, according to Wright,
is interested in a general law like gravitation not as a descrip-

tion of the cosmos, but rather as a means for extending his

knowledge of a field of concrete fact. Metaphysics speculated
about universal gravitation before Newton. What Newton
found was a law which enabled him to deduce the facts of the
solar system and led to the discovery of many more facts which
 Chauncey Wright 235

—
would not otherwise have come to light, the existence of the
planet Neptune, for instance. If the philosopher wishes to be
scientific, let him discipline himself by carrying on an original
investigation in some department of empirical science so as to
gain a clear idea how knowledge is actually used as a basis for
discovering new truths. Anticipating the instrumentaUsm of
Dewey, as well as the pragmatism of James, Wright points out
that the principles of modem mathematical and physical phi-
losophy are rather the eyes with which nature is seen than
the elements and constitution of the object discovered, that
general laws are finders, not merely summaries of truth.
Wright does not underestimate the value of religious or
metaphysical philosophies, though they may be full of vague
ideas, crude fancies, and unverified convictions; for they "con-
stitute more of human happiness and human wealth than the nar-
row material standards of science have been able to measure."
But scientific philosophy must be clearly distinguished from
these. The motives of science arise in rational curiosity or
wonder, while religious and metaphysical philosophies arise
— —
from the desire not to discover new truths but to defend our
emotional and vital preferences by exhibiting them as entirely
free from inconsistency. Logical refutation of every opposing
philosophy affords us satisfaction but does not convince our
opponents; because the choice of ultimate metaphysical dog-
mas is a matter of character (or temperament, as James later
said) and not of logic.
Wright's own choice, which he does not pretend to demon-
strate, is for the view attributed to Aristotle, that creation is
not a progression toward a single end, but rather an endless
succession of changes, simple and constant in their elements,
though infinite in their combinations, which constitute an order
without beginning and without termination. This distinction
between elements and their combination enabled him to unite
the belief in the universaUty of physical causation which is the
scientist's protection against the refined superstitions of teleo-
logy with the Aristotelian belief in accidents which keeps the
scientist from erecting his discoveries into metaphysical dogmas.
must postulate the universality of the causal
Scientific research
relation between elementary facts and cannot make use of any
teleology, since there is no scientific test for distinguishing
 —

236 Later Philosophy

which facts are ends and which are only means. But there is no
evidence that any law like that of gravity is absolutely exact
or more than approximately true or that it holds beyond the
observable stars. The
inductive or empirical character of the
actual laws of science explains the reality of accidents or pheno-
mena which could not have been predicted from any finite
human knowledge The rise of self-con-
of their antecedents.
sciousness, the use of the voice as a means of communication,
or the properties of new chemical combinations, all illustrate
phenomena which are subject to law yet unpredictable. Though
life issubject to the law of conservation of energy, nothing
characteristic of life can be deduced from such a law.

I
Wright's penetrating and well-founded reflections on the
I nature of scientific method did not attract widespread atten-
tion. The vast majority come to philosophy to find or to con-
firm some simple "scheme of things entire." And though all

scientists are empirical in their own field, most of them demand

some absolute finality when they come to philosophy. Wright's
profound modesty and austere self-control in the presence of
glittering and tempting generalizations and his willingness to
a world subject to the uncertainties of "cosmic weather"
live in
Iwill never attract more than a few. But the character of his
thought, though rare, is nevertheless indicative of a tendency
toward the scientific philosophy, the negative side of which was
more crudely and more popularly represented by Draper's
History of the Intellectual Development of Europe (1862) and in '

many articles in The Popular Science Monthly. But at least

jitwo great American philosophers were directly and profoundly
!
influenced by Chauncey Wright, and those were Charles Peirce
-and William James.
"^ To the modem reader the writings of William T. Harris
even his last and most
finished book, Psycholo^c^dundations
of Education (1898) —
sound rather obsolete and somewhat
/ mechanical. But the position of the author, who from 1867
i to 1 910 was regarded as the intellectual leader of the educa-
tional profession in the United States, who for over twenty-five

]
years edited The Journal of Speculative Philosophy, and who
i
was the chief organizer of the Concord School of Philosophy, ^
» See Book III, Chap. xv.
' The Concord School, of which Alcott was the nominal head and Harris the
 William T. Harris 237

gave his writings an amount of influence far beyond what

the reader might expect. Sweetly generous, devout, and en-
terprising, Harris was an ideal apostle of philosophy to the |

American people, calling upon them to enter the world's great

intellectual heritage and assuring them that the truths of religion
—God, freedom, and immortality—have always been best pro-
tectedby true philosophy and are in no need of the ill-advised
guardians who, by discouraging free inquiry, transform religion
into fetishism.
Just as the work of Chauncey Wright may be summarized
in its attack on the pretentiousness and inadequate scientific
basis of the Spencerian evolutionary philosophy, so i'the work
of William T. Harris may be summed up as an attack against
agnosticism. On its psychologic side Harris's argument is

directed against Spencer's assumption (directly derived from

Sir William Hamilton) that we cannot conceive the infinite.
Against this Harris clearly points out that Hamilton and Spen-
cer are confusing the process of conception and the process of
imagination. It is true that we cannot form a picture or an
image of the infinite, but neither can we form an image of any
motion or process as such. This, however, need not prevent us
from grasping or conceiving any universal process of which the
imagination fixes the dead static result at any moment. On
the objective side Harris reaches the same result by the dialectic
argument that the finite particular cannot be the ultimate
reality. Particular things are given in sense perception, but
the scientific understanding shows us that every object depends
on other things to make it what it is; everything depends upon
an environment. Science in its development must thus em-
phasize dynamic processes, and its highest point is reached in
the discovery of the correlation of all forces. But the moment
we begin to reason as to the nature of these processes or activi-
ties, we are inevitably led to the idea of self -activity; for since

every finite object gets its activity from some other object, the
ultimate source of all must be that which is not limited
activity
by something else, and that is an infinite or self-limited Ac-
tivity. Thus the stages of sense-perception, understanding,

directing genius, thus represented the union of New England transcendentalism

with Germanic scholarship and idea.lism. As such its history is a significant
incident in the intellectual life of America.
 "

238 Later Philosophy

and reason lead to atomism or materialism, pantheism, and

theism respectively.
With the simplicity that comes from undiluted sincerity,
Harris repeats this argument over and over again, finding in it
the clue to fruitful insight in all fields of human interest. It is
ll
the weapon with which he refutes all empiricism, which bases
J
truth on the knowledge of particulars. All such philosophy, he
says, stops at the stage of understanding and fails to note that
a particular fact possesses whatever unity or character it has
only in virtue of some universal. Time, space, and causaHty
cannot, therefore, be derived from particular experiences, but
are, as Kant maintained,
the a priori conditions of all experience.
In social philosophy Harris follows Hegel rather closely with
a characteristic New England emphasis on the freedom of the
I
will. Thus the state is "a social unit in which the individual
I exists not for himself, but for the use of that unit"; but social

•order is not to be secured by external authority, but by free

choice. Like his master, Hegel, Harris inteUectualizes religion
and art, the function of both being to reveal ultimate or philo-
sophic truth, religion in the form of dogmatic faith, art by sen-
suous representation which "piques the soul to ascend out of
the stage of sense perception into reflection and free thought."
Like all HegeHans and most believers in the adequacy of
one system, Harris frequently thinks he has gained insight
when he has translated a fact into his own terminology'; and
the allegoric method of interpreting works of art and great
literary masterpieces, notably Dante's Divine Comedy and
Goethe's Faust, easily lent itself to that result. Still the general
was
result of Harris's theoretic as well as his practical activity
undoubtedly to broaden the basis and subject matter of Ameri-
can philosophy. His Journal of Speculative Philosophy (1867-
1
93) the first journal in the English language devoted exclusively
'
to philosophy, made the thought of Plato and Aristotle as well
as that of the German philosophers accessible to American
jreaders. When it was objected that America needed something
jmore original, he justly replied that an originality which
'cherished its own idiosyncrasies was despicable. His convic-

' Harris, for instance, believed that he found a new insight into the nature
of light when he characterized it as "a point making
itself valid outside of itself.
See a similar account of gravity, in Psychologic Foundations of Education, p. 22.
 '

Philosophy in the Colleges 239

tion that a worthy originality can come only through deep

acquaintance with the best of ancient and modem thought
stands justified by at least one fact. The most original Ameri-
can thinkers, Peirce, Royce, James, and Dewey, were also the
most learned, and their first philosophic papers appeared in
The Journal of Speculative Philosophy.
The general spread of the evolutionary theory, popular
science, and more accurate historical acquaintance with Euro-
pean thought affected the American colleges only very slowly.
An examination of the catalogues of American colleges will
bear out the picture of dismal unenlightenment which Stanley
Hall drew in 1879 of the state of philosophic teaching.' The
beginning of a better order of things may be dated from the 1

election of a layman, Charles W. Eliot, as President of Harvard

College in 1869 or from the introduction of post-graduate i

instruction at Johns Hopkins in 1 876. As the American colleges \

began to expand and as training for the educational profession

became an important consideration, teachers of philosophy and
psychology began to be selected with some regard for pro-
fessional training and competency rather than exclusively for
piety or pastoral experience. Such professional training an
increasing number obtained in Germany, where, if they did not
always get much fresh wisdom, they did generally learn the
meaning of scientific accuracy in experimental psychology and
philologic accuracy in the history of philosophy. It was through
men of this class that the idealistic philosophy of Kant and
Hegel was introduced into the American colleges.^ In this
they were aided by the spread of German idealism in the Eng-
lish and Scottish universities, which found expression in the
works of J. F. Ferrier, Hutchison Stirling, F. H. Bradley, T. H.
Green, Bosanquet, John and Edward Caird, Mahaffy, and
William Wallace.
The triumph of the idealistic movement may be
definitive
|
dated from the founding in 1892 of The Philosophical Review un- i

der the editorship of Jacob Gould Schurman and James Edwin I'

'
Mind, vol. iv, 1879. Professor Gildersleeve of Johns Hopkins has testified
that in his youth positions as college teachers were generally given to those who
had failed in missionary work abroad.
» Typical of this class was G. S. Morris, Professor of Philosophy at Johns Hop-

kins, translator of Uberweg's History of Philosophy, and editor of a series of ex-

positions of German philosophic classics by Dewey, Watson, Harris, and Everett.
 240 Later Philosophy

Creighton. As has always been open to scholarly

this review
contributions in all the various fields of philosophy, the char-
acter of its contributions during its first decade bears ample
evidence to the complete dominance of the Kantian and He-
geUan idealism. The old Scottish philosophy could not hold
its own before the superior finesse and technical equipment of

the new school. ' At bottom, too, it realized the necessity of an

alliance with the new rationalistic philosophy in the fight for a
and spiritual view of the world against scientific posi-
theistic
tivism and popular materialism. At Harvard Francis Bowen
continued for many years to oppose dialectic Hegehanism as
well as the "mind philosophy" of the British empiricists; but
his assistant and successor, the gentle and classical minded G.
H. Palmer, turned in the main to the Hegelian idealism intro-
iduced at Harvard in 1869 by C. C. Everett. At Princeton
'
James McCosh, the leader of the Scottish school, poured forth an
interminable list of books defending common-sense realism and
attacking without excessive refinements all its opponents, includ-
'
ing the Hegelians with their ' thinking in trinities. " But most of
his attention had to be devoted to rendering the new evolutionary
philosophy harmless to the cause of orthodoxy. His successor,
Ormond, so expanded the realism of his master with Berkeleian
and Kantian elements as to make it lose its historic identity.
I A similar development took place at Yale. Noah Porter had
studied in Germany under Trendelenburg, and his great text-
book on The Human Mind (1868) showed a painstaking, if not
a penetrating, knowledge of Herbart, Lotze, and Wundt as well
as of the British empiricists. But he remained substantially an
adherent of a Scottish intuitive philosophy. Like McCosh,
but with greater urbanity, he directed his energy mainly against
popular agnosticism and materialism. His pupil and successor,
George Trumbull Ladd, while professing to be eclectic and in-
dependent, follows in the main the method of Lotze, ^ and in the

' This increased technical interest necessarily led philosophy to become less
popular and somewhat more narrow in its aims. Hence popular thought came
to draw its inspiration either from the vague but sweeping generalizations of
Spencer or other popularizers of science, or from mystic culture theosophy, —
spiritualism, or "new thought" —
which except in the writings of Horatio Dresser
have nothing to do with the philosophy treated in this chapter.
' A more direct follower of Lotze was Borden P. Bowne, one of the keenest
of American metaphysicians.
 '

Charles S. Peirce 241

end bases his spiritualistic metaphysics on epistemol6gy quite in

the Kantian fashion. A leader in the introduction of modem ;

physiologic psychology into this country, Ladd stands for a phi-

|

losophy that criticizes the procedures and fundamental ideas of *

the special sciences. But his primary interest in philosophy is \

to make better Christian citizens. His idealism is a branch of

'

modem Christian apologetics, justifying the ways of God and ;

defending the church and the established moral and social

order.
Its most distinguished and also its most influential leader
j|

the idealistic school found in Josiah Royce at Harvard. To '

understand his development, however, we must first take some

note of Charles S. Peirce.
^^
If philosophic eminence were measured not by the number
of finished treatises of dignified length but by the extent to
which a man brought forth new and fruitful ideas of radical
importance, then Charles S. Peirce (1840-1914) would easily be
the greatest figure in American philosophy. Unrivalled in his
wide and thorough knowledge of the methods and history of the
exact sciences (logic, mathematics, and physics), he was also 1

endowed with the bountiful but capricious originality of genius.

Few are the genuine contributions of America to philosophy of |

which the germinal idea is not to be found in some of his stray

papers.
Peirce was too a pioneer or explorer to be able to
restless
settle down and who build complete
imitate the great masters
systems like stately palaces towering to the moon. He was
rather of those who are always trying to penetrate the jungle
that surrounds our patch of cultivated science; and his writ- j

ings are all rough, cryptic sketches of new fields, without much
';

regard to the limitations of the human understanding, so that I

James found his lectures on pragmatism "flashes of brilliant ;

light against Cimmerian darkness. " Overt departure from the I

conventional moral code and inability to work in hamess made I

it impossible for Peirce to keep any permanent academic posi-
i

tion, and thus he was deprived of a needed incentive to intelli-

gibility and to ordinary consistency. Intellectual pioneers are a
rarely gregarious creatures. In their isolation they lose touch {

with those who follow the beaten paths, and when they return
to the community they speak strangely of strange sights, so
VOL. Ill — i6
 242 Later Philosophy

that few have the faith to follow them and change their trails
(into high roads. Peirce was fortunate in that two powerful
i
minds, Josiah Royce and William James, were able to follow
some of the directions from his Pisgah heights and thus take
:'
possession of rich philosophic domains. What further gains
philosophy might make by developing other of his numerous
suggestive ideas, not an affair of history. We may note,
is

I however, that in our own day the field of mathematical logic

I which he developed has become the ground which supports our
I latest philosophic movement, neo-realism.
;|
Peirce was by antecedents, training, and occupation a scien-
tist. A son of Benjamin Peirce, the great mathematician, he
had a thorough knowledge of pure mathematics and of modem
laboratory methods. He made
important contributions not
only to mathematical or symbolic logic but also to photometric
astronomy, geodesy, and psycho-physics, as well as to philology.
For many yeard he was engaged in the United States Coast and
Geodetic Survey, and one of his researches on the pendulum
received unusual attention from the International Geodetic
Congress to which he was the first American delegate. He
was, therefore, predominantly concerned with a philosophy of
science.
Science, according to Peirce, is a method of banishing doubt >

1
and arriving at stable ideas. Commonly wefix beliefs by reiterat-
ing them, by surrounding them with emotional safeguards, and
by avoiding anything which casts doubt upon them ^by "the —
will to believe." This method breaks down when the com-
munity ceases to be homogeneous. Social effort, by the method
of authority, to eliminate diversity of beUefs also fails in the
end to prevent doubts from cropping up. Hence we
reflective
must the method of free inquiry and let science
finally resort to
stabilize our ideas by clarifying them. How can this be done?
Early in his life in Cambridge Peirce came under the personal
influence of Chauncey Wright, and in a Uttle club of which
Wright was the strongest spirit he first developed the doctrine
•
of pragmatism. The Newtonian experimental philosopher, as
Wright had pointed out, always translates general propositions
II

into prescriptions for attaining new experimental facts, and

this led Peirce to formulate the general maxim of pragmatism
i
that the meaning of any concept is to be found in "all the con-
 :

Charles S. Peirce 243

ceivable experimental phenomena which the affirmation or

denial of a concept could imply."'
In his earlier statements of the pragmatic maxim Peirce^
emphasized the consequences for conduct that follow from the
acceptance or rejection of an idea; but the stoical maxim that
the end of man is action did not appeal to him as much at sixty
as it did at thirty. Indeed, if we want to clarify the meaning
of the idea of pragmatism, let us apply the pragmatic maxim to
it. What will be the effect of accepting it? Obviously it will
be to develop certain general ideas or habits of looking at things.
As Peirce accepts the view that the good must be in the evolu-
tionary process, he concludes that it cannot be in individual
reactions in their segregation, but rather in something general
or continuous, namely, in the growth of concrete reasonable-
ness, "becoming governed by law, becoming instinct with
general ideas."' In this emphasis on general ideas Peirce's
pragmatism differs sharply from that of his follower, James, ;

who, like most modem psychologists, was a thorough nominalist

and always emphasized particular sensible experience. Peirce's"]
belief in the reality and potency of general ideas was connected
in his mind with a vast philosophic system of which he left only
some fragmentary outlines." He called it f,ynechistic tychisti c
|^

agapism (from the Greek words for continuity, chance, and \

love). It assumed the primacy of mind and chance and re-

garded matter and law as the result of habit. The principal j

law of mind is that ideas literally spread themselves and be-

come more general or inclusive, so that people who form com-
munities or churches develop distinct general ideas. The
nourishing love which parents have for their children or thinkers
for their own ideas is the creative cause of evolution. Stated 1

thus baldly these views sound fantastic. But Peirce re-enforces

them with such a wealth of illustration from modem mathe-
matics and physics as to make them extraordinarily suggestive
to all whose minds are not closed against new ideas.
Peirce was one of the very few modern scientific thinkers
to lay hands on that sacred cow of philosophy, the belief thati
' Popular Science Monthly, 1878-9.
' Monist, vol. XV, p. 162.
3 These phrases (from the article on Pragmatism in Baldwin's Dictionary of
Philosophy) strongly suggest the central idea of Santayana's philosophy, but the
present writer does not know whether Santayana was ever acquainted with
Peirce's writings. " See his articles in the Monist, vols, i, ii, and iii.
 244 Later Philosophy

I everjrthing happens absolutely in accordance with certain

'
simple eternal laws. He was too well acquainted with labora-
tory methods and the theory of probability to share the common
such universal laws is demonstrated
belief that the existence of

j!
by science. Try to verify any law of nature and you will find
'
'

I
that the more precise your observations, the more certain they
be to show irregular departures from law. " The Platonic
'will
on simple geometric lines has un-
faith that nature is created
doubtedly been a powerful weapon against those who would
have supernatural interferences interrupt the work of science.
But there is no empirical evidence to prevent us from saying
that all the so-called constants of nature are merely instances
i

of variation between limits so near each other that their differ-

i

ence can be neglected for practical purposes. Impressed by the

modern theory of gases and the statistical view of nature as
developed by Willard Gibbs and Maxwell, and perhaps also
(influenced by Wright's doctrine as to "cosmic weather, " Peirce
(/came to believe in the primacy of chance. What we call law is
ihabit, and what we call matter is inert mind. The universe
develops from a chaos of feeling, and the tendency to law is itself
'

the result of an accidental variation which has grown habitual

j

Iwith things. The limiting ratios which we call laws of nature

'are thus themselves slowly changing in time. This conception
of the universe growing in its very constitution may sound
mythologic. But it has at least the merit of an empirically
I

supported rational alternative to the mechanical mythology.

'j

}ln many respects it anticipated the philosophy of Bergson.

In the hands of James this tychism becomes a gospel of wonder-
fulpower in releasing men from the oppression of a fixed or
"block" universe, but in the hands of Peirce it was a philosophic
support for the application of the fruitful theorems of scientific
f
probability to all walks of life.

1 Unlike most of America's distinguished philosophers, Josiah

I,
Royce (1855-1916) was not brought up in New England.
•
He was born in a mining town in California and received his
;
philosophic education in the university of his own state, at
Johns Hopkins, and at Gottingen, where he studied under
Lotze. Many diverse elements stimulated his subtle and ac-
quisitivemind to philosophic reflection the theistic evolution-
;

ism of the geologist Le Conte, the fine literary spirit of E. R.

 Josiah Royce 245

Sill/ and hisown reading of Mill and Spencer as well as of

the great German
philosophers, Kant, ScheUing, Hegel, and
Schopenhauer.
In 1882 he went to Harvard, where his prodigious learning,
his keen and catholic appreciation of poetry, and the biblical
eloquence with which he expressed a rich inner experience, at
once made a profound impression. His singularly pure and
loyal, though shy, spirit attracted a few strong friendships; but
his life at Cambridge was in the main one of philosophic de-
tachment. As a citizen of the great intellectual world, however,
he closely followed its multitudinous events and his successive
;

books only partly reflected his unusually active and varied

intellectual interests. In his earliest published papers he is
inclined to follow Kant in denying the possibility of ultimate
metaphysical solutions except by ethical postulates, but in his
first book. The Religious Aspect of Philosophy (1885), he comes

out as a full-fledged metaphysical idealist. This brilliant book

at once made a profound impression, especially with the argu-
ments that the very possibility of error cannot be formulated
except in terms of an absolute truth or rational totality which
requires an absolute knower. Like the parts of a sentence, all
things find their condition and meaning in the final totality to i

which they belong. The world must thus be either through

'

and through of the same nature as our mind, or else be utterly

unknowable. But to affirm the unknowable is to involve one's
self in contradictions. Royce delights in these sharp antitheses
and the reduction of opposing arguments to contradictions.
In his next book, an unusually eloquent one entitled The
Spirit of Modern Philosophy (1892), the element of will rather
than knowledge receives the greater emphasis. The Berkeleian
analysis of the world as composed of ideas is taken for granted,
and the emphasis is rather on the nature of the World Mind or
Logos. Following Schopenhauer, he points out that even in
the idealistic view of the world there is an irrational element,
namely, the brute existence of just this kind of world. The
great and tragic fact of experience is the fact of effort and
passionate toil which never finds complete satisfaction. This
eternal frustration of our ideals or will is an essential part of
spiritual life, and enriches it just as the shadows enrich the
' See Book III, Chap. x.
 "

246 Later Philosophy

]! picture or certain discords bring about richer harmony. The

Absolute himself suffers our daily crucifixion, but his triumph-
ant spiritual nature asserts itself in us through that very suffer-
ing. This profoundly consoling argument, which both elevates
us and sinks our individual sorrows in a great cosmic drama, is,
of course, an expression of the historical Christian wisdom of
the beatitude of suffering. But it offended the traditional
individualism which finds its theologic and metaphysical ex-
pression in the doctrine of free will. If each individual is a
[part of the divine self, how can we censure the poor wretch who
fails to live up to the proper standard ?' It is significant of the
unconventionality of Royce's thought that he never attached
great importance to the question of blame or the free and inten-"»
tional nature of sin. The evils uppermost in his mind are those
resulting from ignorance, from the citimsiness of inexperience
rather than from wilful misdeeds; and, unlike most American
philosophers, he rightly saw that the religious conscience of
mankind has always regarded sin as something which happens
to us even against our will. Against the complacent belief of
the comfortable that no one suffers or succeeds except through
his own sins or virtues, Royce opposes the view of St. Paul that
we are all members of each other's bodies and that "no man
amongst us is wholly free from the consequences or from the
degradation involved in the crimes of his less enlightened or
'less devoted neighbours, that the solidarity of mankind links
i'the crimes of each to the sorrows of all.

J
For the elaboration of the social nature of our intellectual
1 as well as of our moral concepts, Royce was largely indebted
'to suggestions from Peirce. In his earliest books we find no
direct reference to Peirce. We can only conjecture that he
jowed to that man of genius the emphasis on the social nature
\ioi truth and the formulation of the ethical imperative: Live in

'ithe light of all possible consequences But with the publica-

.

I
tion of the two volumes of The World and the Individual (1901),
Royce's indebtedness to Peirce becomes explicit and steadily
increases thereafter.
The main thesis of that book, the reconciliation of the exist-
ence of the Absolute Self with the genuine individuality of our
' See Howison in The Conception
of God, by Royce, Le Conte, Howison, and
Mezes.
 Josiah Royce 247

particular selves, is effected by means of illustrations from the

field of modern mathematics, especially by the use of the

modern mathematical concept of the infinite as a collection of
which a part may be similar to the whole. Peirce had done this
before him in a remarkable article entitled The Law of Mind,
in the second volume of The Monist. In generously acknowledg-
ing his obligation to Peirce, Royce rightly felt his fundamental
idealistic position tobe independent of that of Peirce; but it is
noticeable that Royce' s references to the logic of mathe-
all

matics are in full agreement with Peirce' s view of the reality of

abstract logical and mathematical universals, and it may well
be questioned whether this can be harmonized with the nomi-
nalist or Berkeleian elements of Royce's idealism.
His subsequent work falls into two distinct groups, the
mathematical-logical and the ethical-religious. Of the former
group, his essay on logic in The Encyclopcsdia of the Philosophi-
cal Sciences is philosophically the most important. Logic is
there presented not as primarily concerned with the laws of
thought or even with methodology but after the manner of
Peirce as the most general science of objective order. In this
as in other of his mathematical-logical papers Royce still pro-
fesses adherence to his idealism, but this adherence in no way
affects any of the arguments which proceed on a perfectly
realistic basis. In his religio-ethical works he follows Peirce
even more, and the Mind or Spirit of the Community replaces
the Absolute. In his last important book. The Problem of
Christianity (1913), all the concepts of Pauline Christianity
are interpreted in terms of a social psychology, the personality
of Christ being entirely left out except as an embodiment of
the spirit of the beloved community.
The World and the Individual is still, as regards sustained ||

mastery of technical metaphysics, the nearest approach to a ,

"

philosophic classic that America has as yet produced. Its pub-

lication was the high- water mark of the idealistic tide. Royce's
previous monism had aroused the opposition of pluralistic ideal-
ists like Howison and Thomas Davidson. But with the begin-
'

" Howison and Davidson both owed much of their impulse to philosophy to

W. T. Harris. Howison proved one of the most successful and inspiring teachers
of philosophy that America has as yet produced. Within a
short period three
to the presidency
of his pupils, Bakewell.McGilvary, and Lovejoy were elected
of the American Philosophical Association. Davidson
did not write much on
 " :

248 Later Philosophy

;
ning of the twentieth century idealism itself became the object
'
of organized attack by two movements known as pragmatism
and naif- or neo-realism. The former was due to the work of
James and Dewey; the latter to the spread of renewed and
serious interest in scientific philosophy, especially in the
renaissance of mathematical philosophy best represented by
•
Bertrand Russell. It is, however, an historic fact that Royce
contributed very largely to the effective spread of these new
pragmatism by his ethical (as opposed to
philosophies, to
intellectual) idealism and by his emphasis on the practical as-

j
pect of ideas, and to neo-realism by his teaching and writing
'ion mathematical logic. His profound and loyal devotion to
the ethical interests of mankind did not prevent him from
I

regarding the question of human immortality as "one for rea-

;son in precisely the same sense in which the properties of
prime numbers and the kinetic theory of gases are matters for
'exact investigation. " In this way he continued to represent,
against the growing tide of anti-intellectualism, the old faith
in the dignity and potency of reason which is the corner-stone
of humanistic liberalism.
In William James (1842-1910) we meet a personality of such
and of such powerful appeal to contemporane-
large proportions
ous sentiment that we may well doubt whether the time has
yet come when his work can be adequately estimated. There
are many who claim that he has transformed the very sub-
stance of philosophy by bringing it down from the cold, trans-
cendental heights to men's business and bosoms. But whether
jthat be so or not, the width and depth of his sympathies and

I
the irresistible magic of his words have undoubtedly trans-
'^

formed the tone and manner of American philosophic writing.

,
Outside of America also his influence has been impressive and
is steadily increasing.
note at the outset the judgment
It is instructive to of
orthodox philosophers, boldly expressed by Howison

Emerson and James were both great men of letters, great writers,
if you will, but they do not belong in the strict
yes, great thinkers,

technical philosophy, confining himself for the most part to books on education.
James called him a "knight errant of the intellectual life" {Memories and Studies).
In a letter to the writer. Professor Hoffding calls Davidson "one of the most
beautiful figures in modem philosophy.
 j

William James 249

list of philosophers. Mastery in logic is the cardinal test of the true

philosopher, and neither Emerson nor James possessed it. Both,
on the contrary, did their best to discredit it.'

As a criticism this is hardly fair. James certainly elaborated

definite doctrines as to the nature of mind, truth, and reality.
In his Radical Empiricism and in The Meaning of Truth he even
showed considerable dialectic skill. Moreover, it may well be
maintained that he did not seek to discredit logic in general, i

but only the logic of "vicious intellectualism. " Nevertheless,

Howison's opinion is significant in calling attention to the dis-
tinction between philosophy as technique and philosophy as /^ i

vision. From the professional point of view it is not siifficient

'

that a man should believe in free will, absolute chance, or the

survival of consciousness beyond death. To be worthy of being
called a philosopher, one must have a logically reasoned basis
for his belief. James was aware of the importance of technique,
and was, in fact, extraordinarily well informed as to the sub-
stance and main tendencies of all the diverse technical schools.
But he was wholly interested in philosophy as a religious vision *'"
of life, and he had the cultivated gentleman's aversion for,
'

pedantry. His thoughts ran in vivid pictures, and he could not}

trust logical demonstration as much as his intuitive suggestions. \

Hence his philosophic writings are extremely rich in the variety

of concrete factual insight, but not in effective answers to the
searching criticisms of men
like Royce, Russell, and Bradley.

James was aware of this and asked that his philosophy be judged
generously in its large outlines; the elaboration of details might
well be left to the future.
The originality of William James, says one of his European
' '
' '
J

admirers, "does not appear so much in his cardinal beliefs,

which he took from the general current of Christian thought, as i,.

in the novel and audacious method by which he defended them \

'" This, also, not
against the learned philosophies of his day. is :-

true without qualification. James took almost nothing fromij

current Christian philosophy. Nor do any of the great historic \

Christian doctrines of sin and atonement or salvation find any

echo in his thought. Orthodox Christianity would condemn
James as a confessed pantheist who denied the omnipotence of
^Philosophical Review, vol. xxv, p. 241, May, 1916..
' Floumoy, William James, p. 16.
 1

250 Later Philosophy

God. But though James is far from Christian theology, he

gives vivid utterance to the ordinary popular Christianity which
believes, not in aGod who expresses himself in universal laws,
but in a God to whom we can pray for help against our enemies,
whom we can please and even help by our faith in Him. This
is due to James's deep sympathy with common experience

rather than with the problems of the reflective-minded. But

the modern sophisticated intellect is certainly tickled by the
sight of a most learned savant espousing the cause of popular
as opposed to learned theology, and by the open confession of
belief in piecemeal supernaturalism on the basis of spiritistic
phenomena. James's antipathy to the Hegelian and Roycean
< attempts to prove the existence of the Absolute certainly plays
';
a more prominent part in his writings than does his antipathy
ito popular unbelief. But the method of the absolutist he re-
jected, not only because of its insufferable pretension to finality i

of proof, but mainly because it is in the way of one who prefers ^

an anthropomorphic universe that is tingling with life through
and through and is constantly meeting with new adventures.
The union of religious mysticism with biologic and psycho- ;

logic empiricism is characteristic of James's work from the very / !

beginning. He grew up in a household characterized by liberal

\ culture and mystic Swedenborgian piety. ' The teacher who
* made the greatest impression upon him, Louis Agassiz, was a '
pious opponent of Darwin but a rare master in the art of ob-
serving significant details. More than one American naturalist
caught the fire of his enthusiasm for fact. The companion-
I
ship of Chauncey Wright and the writings of Renouvier weaned
James from his father's religio-philosophicalmonism. The
empirical way of thought of Hume and Mill proved most con-
genial to one who was par excellence a naturalist and delighted f

in the observation of significant detail.'

James began his career as a teacher of physiology and gradu-
J

ally drifted into psychology. His Principles of Psychology (2

I
vols., 1890) contains the substance of his philosophy. Having,
' His father, Henry James, St., was a Swedenborgian philosopher and a cul-
tivated gentleman of ample means, who
united to genuine originality of thought a
remarkable insight into human character and a delightful freshness and pungency
of language.
' James studied art and was a proficient draftsman before he finally decided
to study medicine.
 William James 251

despite the influence of Agassiz, become converted to Darwin- )

ism, he was led to adopt as fundamental the view of Spencer <

that thought is something developed in the course of evolution

and must, therefore, have a biologic function. The great idealis-
tic argument against the old associationist psychology of Hume,
Mill, Bain, and Spencer was to the effect that the sensational
elements can at most account for the qualities of things, but
not for their relations or connections; and when it was once
granted that the relations between things were of a non-sensa-
tional or non-empirical character, very little of the world was
left to the empiricist. James early became convinced of the
force of this argument and, following certain suggestions of
Peirce and possibly Hodgson, tried to save empiricism by mak-
ing it more radical, by giving the connecting relations themselves
a psychologic status on a par with the things they connect.
Thus he thought to restore the fluidity and connectedness
of our world without admitting the necessity for the idealist's
transcendental glue to keep together the discrete elements of
experience. Radical empiricism thus becomes a metaphysic
which holds the whole world to be composed of a single stuff
called pure experience. This sounds monistic enough, and
James's adherence to the view of Bergson re-enforces this im-
pression. Nevertheless, James insisted that the world as ex- ^

perienced does not possess the degree of unity claimed for it by

Royce and other monists, but that things are essentially many
and their connections often external and accidental. At times
James professes the dualistic realism of commonsense. "I
'

start with two things, the objective facts and the claims. But'

ideas and things are both experiences taken in different con-

texts, so that his position has not inaptly been called neutral
monism, and thus assimilated to the philosophy of Ernst
Mach.
It has been claimed that this view eliminates most of the
traditional problems of metaphysics, such as that of the rela-
tion of mind and body, and also eliminates the need for the
Spencerian unknowable and Royce's or Bradley's absolute.
But just exactly what experience is, James does not tell us,
except that it is something to be lived rather than to be defined.
The exigencies of controversy as well as James's generous :

desire to give all possible credit to Peirce, have led the public to
 252 Later Philosophy

f
regard pragmatism and James's philosophy as identical terms.
To James, however, pragmatism was but the method of philo-
sophic discussion, the vestibule to his radical empiricism. The
controversy, hoWever, which arose about pragmatism enabled
James to elaborate from different approaches his account of the
i
nature of truth. The meaning of ideas is to be found in their
(particular experimental consequences. Abstract ideas are not
copies of things but their substitutes or derivatives, evolved in
the process of evolution to enable us to deal more adequately
with the stream of immediate experience. An idea is, therefore,
true enables us to deal satisfactorily with the concrete
if it

i
experiences at which it aims. An idea is said to work satis-
factorily if it leads us to expected facts, harmonizes with
if it

other accepted ideas, if it releases our energies or satisfies emo-

tional craving for elegance, peace, economy, or any kind of
utility.
So anxious was James to overthrow the view that the truth
lof an idea consists in its being an inert copy of reality, so anx-

ious to substitute for it the more activist view that an idea is

'true if it works or leads to certain results, thatiie neglected to
indicate the relative importance of these results. This led to a
great deal of misunderstanding and caused considerable scaadal.
Those brought up in the scientific tradition and trained to view
the emotionally satisfactory consequences of ideas as having
nothing to do with their scientific or theoretic value were scan-
jdalized by James's doctrine of the will or right to believe any-
thing the acceptance of which made us more comfortable. This
was in part a tragic misunderstanding. Most of James's life
was a fight against accepting the monistic philosophy simply
because of its aesthetic nobility. He rejected it precisely because
it was "too buttoned up and white chockered, too clean-shaven
a thing to speak for the vast slow-breeding, unconscious cosmos
with its dread abysses and its unknown tides. " It is true, how-
ever, that absorption in the psychologic factor, personal or
aesthetic, which actually does make some people prefer a
narrowly classic universe and others a generously romantic
one, made him obscure the distinction between the causes of
belief for the truth which we believe. We
and the evidence
may with a biassed or emotional preface, but that is
all start

neither evidence nor guaranty of our arriving at scientific truth.

 ;' '

William James 253

Like other violent opponents of intellectualism, James himself

fallsinto the intellectualistic assumption that we must either
wholly believe or wholly disbelieve, just as one must either go
to church or stay out. He ignores the scientific attitude of
suspended judgment and the fact that men may be compelled
to act without being constrained in judgment. We may vote for
X or Y and yet know that owing to the absence of adequate in-
formation our choice has been little more than a blind guess. His
interest in vital preferences and his impatience with the emotion-
ally thin air of purely logical argumentation led James, towards
the end of his life, to the acceptance of the extreme anti-
logical view of Bergson that our logical and mathematical
ideas are inherently incapable of revealing the real and chang-
ing world.
James's interest in philosophy was fundamentally restricted^
to the psychological aspect of things. He therefore never!
elaborated any systematic theory of morals, politics, or social
|

organization. His temperamental preference for the novel, the j

unique, and the colourful re-enforced his traditional American

liberalism and made him an extreme individualist. He at-
tached scant value to the organized or fixed channels through
which the fitful tides of ordinary human emotion find perma-
nent expression. This shows itself best in his Varieties of Re-
ligious Experience (1902). He is interested only in the extreme
variations of religious experiences, in the geniuses or aristocrats
of the religious life. The religious experience of the great mass,
or even of intellectual men like Chief Justice Marshall,who go
to church without troubling much about matters of belief, seems
to James "second-hand" and does not solicit his attention.

Neither does the whole question of ritual or ceremony. He is^

interested in the beliefs of extraordinary and picturesque in-jS
dividuals. Hence his book on religion tells us almost nothing to
explain the spread and the vitality of the great historic religions,
Buddhism, Confucianism, Judaism, Islam, and Christianity.
This extreme individualism, however, is connected with an
extraordinary democratic openness and readiness to admit that
it is only the blindness in human nature that prevents us from

seeing the uniqueness of every individual. Unlike any other

philosopher, William James was entirely devoid of the pride
of the intellect. He was as willing as Jesus of Nazareth to
 254 Later Philosophy

t associate with the intellectual publicans and sinners and learn

from the denizens of the intellectual underworld.
James's position in the history of metaphysics is still a
matter of debate, but as a seer or prophet he may fitly be put
beside Emerson. Like Emerson, he preached and nobly exem-
plified faith in one's intuition and the duty of keeping one's
oracular soul open. In spite of a note of obscurantism in his atti-
tude to logic and "over beliefs," there is no doubt that the main
I

effect of his work was to raise the American standard of

I
'
intellectual honesty and courage Let us stop this miserable
' :

pretence of having at last logically proved the comforting cer-

tainties of our inherited religion. Let us admit that we have
no absolute assurance of the complete success of our ideals.
But the fight is on. We can all take our part. Shame on the
one who sulks and stays out.
"^ The vital and arresting words in which James was able to
put his thoughts were bound to attract large public attention.
But it is doubtful whether he would have got a full hearing
frorh American philosophers if it were not for the powerful
support of John Dewey, the only American about whom has
ji

been formed a regular philosophic school. Dewey began his

II

philosophic career under the influence of Harris, T. H. Green,

and Bosanquet, and in his early writings, e.g., his Psychology, he
showed himself a master of Hegelian dialectics. Reflection,
however, led him to find an incurable incompatibility between
the supernaturalism latent in idealism and the naturalistic
{ account of the origin of human thought. He completely accepts
'James's view of the biologic function of thought, and brings
to its service such a thorough mastery of philosophic technique
as to compel attention from philosophers who, like other pro-
fessionals, find it hard to admit the existence of good music
where there is no obvious virtuosity. Despite his large debt to

I
James's Principles of Psychology, Dewey is an independent ally
'rather than a disciple, and James was largely indebted in his
! later writings to Dewey's doctrine of the instrumental charac-
ter of our ideas. It appears that pragmatism, like other success-
ful human movements, can appeal to men of most diverse
temperaments. While James is keenly alive to the claims of
the traditional supernaturalism and uses pragmatism as a way
of justifyingit, Dewey uses pragmatism as a means of eliminat-f
 '

John Dewey 255

ing all theologic problems. Philosophic concepts, like God,

Freedom, and Immortality, he tells us bluntly, have outlived
their usefulness as sanctions,and the business of philosophy
henceforth to be with those ideas which will help us to trans-
is

form the empirical world.' Despite the complexity of his

sentences, which an austere regard for accuracy causes to be
overloaded with qualifications, Dewey is essentially one of
those philosophers who, like Spinoza, impress the world with
theirprofound simplicity. He is entirely free from that human
complexity which makes James banish the soul and even con-
sciousness as psychologic entities and yet favour the sub-
conscious mind, Fechner's earth spirits, and the like. Dewey
is a thoroughgoing and consistent naturalist. He not only I

'

accepts the Darwinian account of the origin of the human

faculty, but he also on the method of the Darwinian
relies
descriptive naturalist to build up the body of philosophic ideas.
He makes no attempt to build up or deduce any part of the
world on the basis of his fundamental assumption, but ideas
are sought in their natural state and described just where, when,
and how they function. This preference for naturalistic de-
scription rather than for systematic deduction as a philosophic
method is not merely a matter of temperament it also indicates ;

the extent to which Darwin's work has so affected men's imagi-

nation as to cause natural history to replace mathematics and
physics as the model of scientific method.
In the history of philosophy naturalism has been associated
with the study of physics (generally atomic), with emphasis on
the way our thoughts are controlled by our bodies or by the
physical environment. Dewey has no physical theories. He is \

a psychologist, primarily interested in how and why men think

and how their thoughts modify their experience. He is a pro- •

fessed realist in his belief that our thoughts alone do not con-
stitute the nature of things but that there is a pre-existing
world of which thought is an outgrowth and on which it reacts.
But the continual emphasis on thought as efficient in trans-
forming our world gives him the appearance of having remained

• Dewey's disciples like Moore and Bode are outspoken in their contempt for .

the view that philosophy may be a consolation for the irremediable evil growing I

out of our human limitations. Philosophy is to help us in our daily job and has |
nothing to do with vacations or holidays.
 256 Later Philosophy

an Like the Hegelian ideal-

idealist in spite of his conversion.
ists, he distrusts abstractions and prefers the "organic" point

of view to that which views things as composed of distinct

ekments. He differs from the Hegelians in this respect only in
his contention that everything acquires its meaning by refer-
ence to a changing "situation" instead of by reference to an
all inclusive totality. Like the ethical idealists, also, Dewey
with Puritanic austerity on the serious responsibility of
insists
philosophy. It must not be a merely aesthetic contemplation of
the world, nor a satisfaction of idle curiosity or wonder. It
imust be a means for reforming or improving. Just what con-
^ stitutes an improvement of man's estate we are not clearly told.
In his theory of education which forms the chief impetus and
I

j
application of his theoretic views the plasticity of human nature
j
is fully recognized; and he argues that intelligence not only

f
makes us more efficient in attaining given ends, but liberalizes
'f
our ends. In the main, however, he emphasizes improved con-
;
trol over external nature rather than improved control over our
own passions and desires.
Judged by the ever-increasing number and contagious zeal
of his disciples, Dewey has proved to be the most influential
^
philosopher that America has as yet produced. This is all the
more remarkable when we remember that all his writings are
fragmentary, highly technical, and without any extraneous
graces of style to relieve the close-knitting of the arguments.
Clearly this triumph due not only to rare personal qualities
is

as a teacher but also to the extent that his thought corresponds

to the prevailing American temper of the time. Dewey appeals
powerfully to the prevailing distrust of other-worldliness, a
1 distrust which permeates even our theology with its emphasis
on the social mission of the Church. The doctrine that all
ideas are and ought to be instruments for reforming the world j
:and making it a better place to live in, appeals at once to popu-
lar utilitarianism, to the worship of immediate practical results
of which Theodore Roosevelt was such a conspicuous repre-
sentative. In a country where so many great deeds in the
conquest of nature are still to be performed, the practical man's
contempt for the contemplative and the visionary- is re-enforced
by the Puritanic horror of idle play and of things which are
purely ornamental. A philosophy which views nature as
 !

J. Mark Baldwin 257

"^
material to be transformed by our intelligence appeals to the pre-
vailing light-hearted optimism which sees success as the con-
stant reward of intelligent effort
and finds no inherent obstacles
to the establishment of a heaven on earth. Certainly Dewey
nowhere calls to our attention the existence of incurable evil — ||

'

the evil against which our only remedy is some form of wisely 'i

cultivated resignation.
In his zeal for making philosophy useful and responsible, a
good deal of the traditional glory of philosophy is ignored, if
not denied. The intellectual activity which we call theoretic
j|

science is subordinated to its practical application. ^ In elimin-

ating the personal consolations of philosophy, he also eliminates
the great saving experience which it affords us in making us
spectators of a great cosmic drama in which solar systems are
born and destroyed, a drama in which our part as actors is of
infinitesimal significance. Yet historically the most significant If
feature of Dewey's thought is undoubtedly the fact that in an'^^
—
age of waning faith in human reason witness the rapid spread
—
of the romantic mysticism of Bergson he has rallied those who!
'|

stni believe in the cause of liberalism based on faith in the value) |

of intellectual enlightenment.
Similar to the view of James and Dewey in accepting the^
evolutionary philosophy as basic, and keeping even closer toij
Darwinian ideas, is the philosophy of J. Mark Baldwin. Bald-
win began as a psychologist of the orthodox type; but availing
himself of the views on social consciousness propounded by
Royce in the early nineties, he produced a systern_j3fjevolu-
tionary_sqcial psychology with a very elaborate technical ter-
minology and analytic scaffolding. This emphasis on technical
apparatus makes his great three-volumed treatise on Thoughts
and Things (i 906-11) one of the most obscure books written in
America, but for all that it seems to have met with appreciation
in France and Germany, where it has been translated. An in-
telligible summary of his later views is to be found in his Genetic
Theory oj Reality (1915), in which he develops this theory of pan-
"
Dewey insists with some justice that by practical he does not necessarily
mean ends of the bread-and-butter type. But his illustrations of the process of

knowledge are overwhehningly of the type generally called useful and very sel-
dom drawn from the experience of the mathematician or the philosopher himself,
even if he is a pragmatist. He glorifies zeal for developing the applications of ;

propositions rather than their implications.

VOL. Ill — 17
 258 Later Philosophy

calism, viz., that the aesthetic consciousness is primary. In this

emphasis on the importance of the
respect, as well as in his
play impulse, Baldwin is unique among American philosophers.
-; The philosophic temper of an age can be judged by the kind
'of merit it neglects as well as by what it worships. For this
reason as well as for the unique value of his work, no account
of American philosophy should omit a consideration of George
|Santayana. ' If a European critic like Taine were to ask for an
[American book on philosophy containing a distinct and com-
prehensive view of human life, its aims and diverse manifesta-
j

tions, we could not mention anything more appropriate than

Santayana's Life of Reason (5 vols., 1905-06). Most American
'

f; philosophic works are either monographs on special topics or else

. more or less elaborate controversial pamphlets on behalf of one
'
view or other. " Santayana more than any other American since
{Emerson has cultivated the ancient virtue of calm detachment
which distinguishes the philosopher from the partisan journalist
or the zealous missionary. His zeal, if any, is that of the artist
!

freely picturing the whole of human experience as surveyed

retrospectively by one interested in the life of reason. "The
jl unsolved problems of life and nature and the Babel of society
'
need not disturb the genial observer." Dewey's anathemas
I

against the purely contemplative philosopher, the "otiose

observer," do not disturb one who holds that man's natural
i] —
dignity and joy as manifested in art, pure science, and philo-
—
sophy consists "in representing many things without being
1^;
them and in letting imagination,' through sympathy, celebrate
;

,!and echo their life." Man's proper happiness is constituted

(by the interest and beauty of the mind's "inward landscape
I

rather than by any fortunes that await his body in the outer
i'

iworld. " ^ Philosophy is not merely a means for improving the

!conditions of common life, but is itself "a more intense sort of
experience than common life is, just as pure and subtle music
heard in retirement is something keener and more intense than
'the howling of storms or the rumble of cities."''

' Another excuse for departing from the prudent policy

of avoiding in history
any treatment of those still alive and active, is that at this date (1919) it does not
seem that Santayana's future career will belong to America.
' The conditions of academic life, in which nearly all of
, i
our philosophers are
,
placed, are certainly not favourable for sustained, deliberate, and thorough com-
position. 3 Winds of Doctrine, p. 215. * Three Philosophic Poets,
i
p. 124.
 '

George Santayana 259

That which distinguishes Santayana from all other modern

philosophers is the way he combines thoroughgoing naturalism
with profound appreciation of the wisdom commonly called
idealism or other- worldliness. Completely free from all trace)
of supernaturalism in metaphysics, he is thoroughly Greek or \

humanistic in his valuation of those reasonable restraints which •

give order, dignity, and beauty to human life. Like Dewey, I

perhaps more than Dewey, Santa5jana is a thoroughgoing!

naturalist, beUeving that mind is the natural effect of bodily
growth and organization. But unlike any other philosopher!
Santayana holds fast to a sharp and clear dis-
since Aristotle, I

tinction between the origin and the validity of our ideals. *

Though our ideals are of bodily origin they need not serve
bodily needs, and above all they need no actual or sensible
embodiment to justify their claims. There is no necessity for ?

accepting the modern evolutionist's identification of the best :

with the latest. "Modern Greece not exactly the crown of

is j

ancient Hellas." Other confusions between morality and

physics, such as the Hegelian identification of the ideal and the
real, of the desirable and the existent, are vehemently rejected
as servile worship of brute power and treacherous to our ideal
aspirations. Thus while naturalism is the only intelligible
philosophy, the attempt of naturalists to look for all motives

and sanctions in the material world always generates a pro-

found melancholy from which manldnd instinctively shrinks.
The sensuous optimism called Greek or the industrial optimism
called American are but "thin disguises for despair," against
wJiich the mind will always rebel and revert, in some form or
other, to a cultus of the unseen. The explanation of this para-
doxical fact Santayana finds in a Greek distinction between the
form and the brute existence of things. The form and qualities
of things are congenial to the mind's free activity, but "when an
empirical philosophy calls us back from the irresponsible flights
of the imagination to the shock of sense and tries to remind us
that in this alone we touch existence, —we feel dispossessed of
our nature and cramped in our life. " ' The true life of reason, j

however, is not to be found but in

in wilful idealistic dreams,
the logical activity "which is docile to fact and illumines the
actual world in which our bodies move.
' Reason in Common Sense, p. 191.
 26o Later Philosophy

As a child of Latin and Catholic civilization, Santayana is

profoundly devoted to those classic forms which enshrine the
wisdom and happiness of the past. He abhors German philoso-
phy for what he calls its romantic wilfulness, that protestant or
rebellious spirit which regards the mere removal of restraints as
a good. The life of reason is a heritage and exists only through
'
'

tradition."' Traditional forms may, indeed, cramp our life,

and a vital mind but the end or good is
like Shelley will revolt,
not freedom but some more congenial form. Santayana holds
in contempt the prevailing philosophy which glorifies striving
and progress but in which there are no ^ndS' to be achieved
and no ideal by which progress is to be measured.
The burden of his philosophy is the analysis of common
sense, social institutions, religion, art, and science to showjaow
reflection can distinguish the ideal from the physical embodi-
ment in which traditional wisdom is delivered from generation
to generation.
In his social philosophy he is essentially an aristocrat, valu-
I

ing highly those historic institutions, cultivated forms, and

reasonable restraints which impose order on our natural im-
Ipulses. But he recognizes the shallowness of purely personal
culture and admits that our emancipated, atheistic, inter-
national democracy is not only replacing the old order, but
that "like every vital impulse pregnant with a morality
[it] is

of its own. " is essentially a mode or

Religion to Santayana
emancipating man from worldliness and from merely personal
limitations. But the wisdom which its dogmas, ritual forms,
and prayers embody is not truth about existence but about those
ideals which give us internal strength and peace. To regard
God as an existence rather than an ideal leads to superstition.
Religious superstitions, he admits, often debauch morality and
impede science, but the errors of religion should be viewed with
indulgent sympathy. Thus Catholic dogma is viewed as in-
volving a reasonable deference to authority but leaving the
mind essentially free. In his theory of art Santayana follows
his master Aristotle closely in spirit though not in words. Art
looks atilife from above, and portraying our passions in their
beauty makes them interesting and delightful, at the same time
softening their vital compulsion. "Art is abstract and incon-
Winds of Doctrine, -p. 156.
 a 1

George Santayana 261

sequential nothing concerns it less than to influence the

. . .

world"; but in revealing beauty it gives us the best hint of the

ultimate good which life offers. Without this sight of beauty,
the soul would not continue its mortal toil. Perhaps the most
characteristic of Santayana's views is his estimate of the value
of modern science for the
life of reason or civilization. He
accords recognition to mechanical science" not merely as a*
full
source of useful insight but as a liberation of the human soul. I
But though the various parts of science are mutually illumi- \

nating, scientific achievement fragmentary and a mechani-

is

cal science like physiologic psychology may not give a man as i

much insight as does some poetic suggestion. Science grows 'i

out of common experience, but its power is new, comparatively

feeble, and easily blighted. "The experience of the vanity of
the world, of sin, of salvation, of miracle, of strange revelations,
and of mystic loves, is a far deeper, more primitive, and there-
fore probably more lasting human possession than is that of
clear historical or scientific ideas. "'
Why, in spite of the incomparable distinction and moder- i

nity of his work, has Santayana received so little recognition ?v

In part this is doubtless due to the unfortunate manner in
which his principal book. The Life of Reason, is written —
manner which does not attract the public and repels the pro-
fessional philosopher. ^ Despite unusual felicity of diction and
a cadence which often reminds us of Walter Pater, his books are
difficult reading. It is difficult to find the thought because of
his preference for pithy and oracular epigrams rather than fully
and clearly developed arguments. His abstract and distant
view of the world unrolls itself without any vivid or passionate
incidents to grip our attention. In the main, however, San-
tayana has failed to draw fire because few people are interested
in a frankly speculative and detached philosophy that departs
radically from the accepted traditions and makes no appeal to
the -partisan zeal of either conservatives or reformers. He does
not aim to be edifying or scientifically informing. American
philosophy has attracted two types of mind those to whom —
' Winds of Doctrine, p. 56.
' single survey of American philosophy hitherto published mentions
Not a
even the name of Santayana. See the works of Riley, Thilly, Perry, and Mcintosh
mentioned in the Bibliography.
 262 Later Philosophy

philosophy is religion rationalized, and those but (a smaller

perhaps growing number) to whom philosophy is a scientific
method of dealing with certain general ideas. To the former a
combination of atheistic Catholicism and anti-puritanic, non-
democratic, aesthetic morality, lacking withal in missionary
enthusiasm, typifies almost all that is abhorrent. To the
scientificgroup Santayana is just a speculative poet who may
value science very highly but does so as a well-groomed gentle-
man who knows it at a polite distance, afraid to soil his hands
with its grimy details. ' These judgments illustrate the great
tragedy of modern philosophy. In view of the enormous ex-
pansion of modern knowledge and the increased rigour of scien-
tific accuracy, the philosopher can no longer pretend to
universal knowledge and yet he cannot abandon the universe
as his province. Genuinely devoted to philosophy's ancient
and humanly indispensable task of drawing a picture or unified
plan of the world in which we live, Santayana is willing to
abandon the pretension to scientific accuracy and to face the
problem as a poet or moralist. But whether because interest
in a unified world view is weak and the possession of poetic
faculty such as Santayana's uncommon, or whether because
philosophy has been too long wedded to logical argumentation
and scientific pretensions, the marked tendency is to make
philosophy like one of the special sciences, dealing with a
limited field and definitely solving problems. As philosophy is

thus abandoning its old pretensions to be the sovereign and

legislative science — it is no longer taught by the college presi-

—
dent himself all the fields of concrete information, physics,
economics, politics, psychology, and even logic, are parcelled
out among the special sciences and there is nothing left to the
I

I
philosopher except the problem as to the nature of knowledge
' itself. On this problem Santayana has some suggestive hints,
but no completely elaborated solution. Hence his essential
loneliness. But perhaps every true philosopher, like the true
poet, is essentially lonely.
The latest movement in American philosophy, opposing •,

' Santayana himself speaks of that virtual knowledge of

physics which is
enough for moral and poetic purposes (Reason in Science, pp. 303-304). Such
virtual knowledge does not save him from absurd statements such as that Plato
had no physics.
 The New Realism 263

certain phases of pragmatism as well as of the older idealism, is

the tendency known as the new realism. The common element j|

in the diverse and often conflicting doctrines which constitute j!

this general tendency is the opposition to the Lockian.tradi- \\

tion that the objects of knowledge are always our own ideas. >>

Realism maintains that the nature of objects is not determined |

by our knowing them. Unlike the older Scotch realism, it does <

not view the mind and nature as two distinct entities, but tends
j

rather, like Santayana and Dewey, to conceive the mind in an

Aristotelian fashion as theform or function of a natural or-
body responding to its environment. The pioneers of this
ganic
movement were Professors Woodbridge, Montague, Holt, and
Perry.
~ Frederick J. E. Woodbridge is one of the very few Americans
interestedrTnTneEapKysics"'6T the philosophy of nature rather
than in psychology or epistemology. His sources are in Aris-
totle, Hobbes, and Spinoza rather than in Locke and Kant.

He rejects the Lockian tradition that we must first examine thel

mind as the organ of knowledge before we can study the naturel
of existing things. For you cannot begin the epistemologic ^
inquiry, how knowledge is possible, without assuming some-
thing already known; and we cannot know any mind entirely
apart from nature. When the earth was a fiery mist there was
no consciousness on it at all. Besides, the question how in
general we come to know is irrelevant to the determination of
any specific issue: as, for example, why the flowers bloom in the
spring.
Studying mind not as a bare subject of knowledge, but as a
natural manifestation in nature, we find it to be not an addi-
tional thing or term, but a relation between things, namely, the
relation of meaning. Whenever through an organic body
things come to stand in the relation of meaning to each other
we have consciousness. From this distinctive view of mind
and meaning, logic ceases to be a study of the laws of thinking
and becomes a study of the laws of being.
For one reason or another, Professor Woodbridge has never
fully elaborated his views, but has barely sketched
them in oc-
casional essays and papers. His personal influence, however,
and the support of The Journal of Philosophy, Psychology, and
Scientific Method, of which he is the editor, have
undoubtedly
 264 Later Philosophy

helped to make the new realism astrong organized movement.

Such it became with the publication of a volume of co-opera-
tive studies entitledThe New Realism (1912) by Walter Taylor
Marvin, Ralph Barton Perry, Edward Gleason Spaulding,
I W. P. Montague, Edwin Holt, and Walter B. Pitkin. The
I
new realism began as an appeal to the naive consciousness of
reality but relying naively as it does on modem physics, physi-
;

ology, and experimental biology (as opposed to the field and

1
speculative biology of the Darwinians) its doctrine necessarily
becomes very technical and complicated. Its insistence on
rigorous definitions and definitive intellectual solutions to spe-
cific problems has brought on it the charge of being a new
I

1
scholasticism. But whatever the merits of scholasticism the —
renaissance of logical studies has begun to reveal some of them
— the new realism has certainly tried to avoid the tendency of
philosophy to become a branch of apologetics or a brief in behalf
of supposed valuable interests of humanity. In this a technical
vocabulary and the ethically neutral symbols of mathematics
are a great aid.
The period covered by the greater portion of this chapter is
too near us tomake a just appreciation of its achievement
likely at this time. In the main it has been dominated by two
interests, the theologic and the psychologic. The development '

during this period has been to weaken the former and to deepen
I

but narrow the latter and make it more and more technical.
I

For this reason the philosophers covered in this chapter have

as yet exerted little influenceon the general thought of the coun-
try. The general current of American economic, political, and
legal thought has until very recently been entirely dominated by
our traditional eighteenth-century individualism or natural-law
philosophy. Neither does our general literature, religious life,
or current scientific procedure as yet show any distinctive in-
fluence of our professional philosophy. But it must be re-
membered that all our universities are comparatively young
" The history of philosophy has occupied a large portion of
American philoso-
I

and writing. But apart from the books of Albee, Husik, Riley, and
phic instruction
Salter (mentioned in the bibliography to this chapter) and articles by Lovejoy
on Kant, and on the history of evolution, American philosophy has no noteworthy
—
achievement to its credit certainly nothing comparable to the historical works
of Caird, Bosanquet, Benn, or Whittaker, not to mention the great German and
French achievements in this field.
 '

Conclusion 265

institutions and our university-trained men numerically an al-

most insignificant portion of our total population. In the field
of education William T. Harris and after him Dewey have un-
doubtedly exerted potent influences, and it looks as if American
legal thought is certain to be profoundly impressed by Roscoe
Pound, who draws some of his inspiration from philosophic
pragmatism as well as from Ward's social theories.
From the point of view of European culture, America has]
certainly not produced a philosopher as influential as was
Willard Gibbs in the realm of physics or Lester Ward in the
realms of sociology. Though Ward and even Gibbs may with
some justice be claimed as philosophers, this can be done only
by disregarding the unmistakable tendency to divorce technical
philosophy entirely from physical and social theory. James, i

however, is undoubtedly a European force, and, in a lesser!

degree, Baldwin, Royce, and Dewey. Serious and competent'
students in Germany, Italy, and Great Britain have also recog-
j

nized the permanent importance of C. S. Peirce's contribution f

to the field of logic. History frequently shows philosophers who

receive no adequate recognition except from later generations,
but it is hazardous to anticipate the judgment of posterity.^
 8

CHAPTER XVIII

The Drama, i860- 191

ten years preceding the advent Bronson Howard,
FORthetheAmerican drama upon settled
of
staid and not very
vigorous times. The War was
not conducive to
Civil
original production at the time; and its influence was not great
upon the character of the amusement in the American theatre.
Only after many years had passed, and after local and national
feeling had been allowed to cool, did the Civil War become a
topic for the stage, —
in such dramas as William Gillette's
Held by the Enemy (Madison Square Theatre, 1 6 August, 1886),'
Shenandoah (Star Theatre, 9 September, 1889) by Bronson
\. Howard, T^ke^GirU Left Behind Me (Empire Theatre,
25 Janu-
ary, 1893) by David Belasco and Franklyn Fyles, The Heart of
Maryland (Herald Square Theatre, 22 October, 1895) by DaAnd
Belasco, William Gillette's Secret Service (Garrick Theatre, 5
October, 1896), James A. Heme's Griffith Davenpo rt (Washing-
ton, Lafayette Square Theatre, 16 January, 1899), Barbara
Frietchie (Criterion Theatre, 24 October, 1899) by Clyde Fitch.
No one dared to take the moral issue of the war and treat it
seriously, Mrs. Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin (first played 24
August, 1852) having ante-dated the internecine struggle.
Even today, the subject of the negro and his relation with the
white is one warily handled by the American dramatist. Dion
Boucicault's The Octoropn (Winter Garden, 5 December, 1859),
was typical of the way that dramatist had of making hay out
of the popular sunshine of others. William DeMille wanted
to treat of the negro's social isolation, but compromised when
he came to write Strongheart_{'BM6son Theatre, 30 January,

• Unless it is otherwise stated, the theatres and dates given with the titles of
plays apply to initial New York productions.
266
 The Civil War Period 267

1905) by making the hero an Indian; and he later fell into the
conventional way of treating the war when he wrote The Warrens
of Virginia (Belasco Theatre, 3 December, 1907). The more
sensational aspects of the negro question, as treated by Thomas
Dixon in The Clansman (Liberty Theatre, 8 January, 1906)
were wisely softened and made into an elaborate record of the
Civil War, in the panoramic moving picture. The Birth of a
Nation (New York, 191 5). Though Ridgely Torrence, in a
series of one-act plays {Granny Maumee, The Rider oJJDrearris,
and Simon the Cyrenian, Garden Theatre, 5 April, 191 7), has
sought poetically to exploit negro psychology, the only Ameri-
can dramatist who has approached the topic boldly, melo-
dramatically, and effectively, thus far, has been Edward
Sheldon, in The Nigger (New Theatre, 4 December, 1909).
It will be seen from this enumeration that during the period
immediately preceding the Civil War the issues of the coming
struggle were not treated for propaganda purposes, as were the
issues of the Revolutionary War in our pre-national drama.
The fact is, the features of the American theatre, and of the
plays on the American stage, preceding the year 1870, were
fairly well predetermined by the strong personalities among the
managers and actors: by the distinct predilection, among
theatre-going peoples, for plays to fit the temperaments of the
and by the styles and fashions that
reigning stage favourites,
emanated from London and Paris. Neither the Wallacks,
John Brougham, W.'E. Burton, nor Augustin Daly showed, by
their actual productions, that their tastes were native, al-
though Brougham was led, through burlesque, to exercise his
Irish wit on the land of his adoption, and Daly, as shown by his
recent biographer, attempted to turn such Uterary workers as
Bret Harte, Mark Twain, Henry James, and Howells to dra-
matic writing. Men expert in other literary forms have seldom
fully grasped the demands of the theatre. Thomas Bailey Al-
drich had his Judith of BethuUa produced (Boston, Tremont
Theatre, 13 October, 1904) and his biographer says that in
New York "it failed to take the taste of the large Itixurious
audiences that throng the Broadway theatres betwixt dinner
and bedtime." But the poetic purple patches of Aldrich's
verse might be another explanation for its short life on the
stage.
268 The Drama, 1860-1918

When i86p dawned, Dion Boucicault ( 1 822-1 890) and John

Brougham (1810-1880) reigned supreme in American popu-
larity, and they were both Irish. The former had yet to do his
most popular and characteristic pieces, in which he won de-
served success both as an actor and playwright to read Jessie :

Brown; The Relief of Lucknow (Wallack's Theatre, 22 Feb-

or,

ruary, 1858) and The Colleen Bawn (Laura Keene's Theatre,

29 March, i860), and to compare them with the later Arrah-na-
Pogue; or. The Wicklow Wedding (London, 22 March, 1865) and
The Shaughraun (Wallack's Theatre, 14 November, 1874), is
to sound the genial depths of a flexible workman, who could find
it as easy to shape a drama for Laura Keene as to re-fashion

Charles Burke's version of Washington Irving's Rip Van

Winkle for presentation by Jefferson (London, Adelphi, 4
September, 1865). One would say of Boucicault, as one would
claim of John Brougham, that his local influence was due to
local popularity rather than to any impetus he gave to native
drama. While Brougham's Po-ca-hon-tas; or, The Gentle
Savage (Burton's Lycexxm, 24 December, 1855) and his Colum-
bus et Filibustero (Burton's Lyceum, December, 1857) exhibited
the good-nature of his irony; while his dramatizations of
Dickens's David Copperjield and Dombey and Son were in accord
with the popular taste that hailed W. E. Burton's Cap'n Cuttle
— ^these dramatic products were exotic to the American drama,
while reflecting the fashion of the American stage.
Yet nothing Boucicault enjoyed better than to descant on
the future of the American stage. Like Palmer, like Daly, he
was continually writing about the reasons for its poverty and
the possibilities of its improvement. No one of these men,
however, had any real faith in the American drama or in the
native subject. Edwin Forrest (i 806-1 872) encouraged the
Philadelphia group of writers, ' but the topics chosen by Bird,
Conrad, Stone, Smith, Miles, and Boker were largely in accord
with English romantic models. Stone's Metamora; or. The Last
of the Wampanoags spoke the language of James Sheridan
Knowles; Boker's Francesca da Rimini reflected the accents of
the Elizabethans. Forrest, therefore, encouraged the American
drama indirectly. Charlotte Cushman
(1816-1876) never even
went so far, though her friendship with Bryant, R. H. Stod-
' See Book II, Chap. 11.
 Actors 269

dard, Sidney Lanier, together with the esteem in which she was
held by America, would show that she was- not
all intellectual

I aloof from the life of the time. One looks in vain through the
I repertories of the great actors for that encouragement of the
American drama which it most needed as an "infant industry."
Edwin Booth (i 833-1 893) at the time the assassination of
Lincoln by John Wilkes Booth, 14 April, 1865, drove him tem-
porarily from the stage had built for himself a permanent
reputation in Shakespeare, which he resumed and maintained
appearance as Hamlet, 4 April, 1891. Even as
until his last
a manager, he chose English plays; and his close associate,
Lawrence Barrett (1838-1891), was of the same mind, though
he appeared in Boker's Francesca da Rimini (Chicago, 14 Sep-
tember, 1882) and W. D. Howells's version, from the Spanish,
of Yorick's Love (Cleveland, 26 October, 1878).
Though as a family of managers the tradition of the Wal-
lacks was distinctly English, Lester Wallack (i8t9-i888)
romantically masked his old English comedy manner beneath
local colour in Central Park (14 February, 1861); but his dash
was happiest in such pieces, of his own concoction, as The
Romance of a Poor Young Man (adapted by him 24 January,
i860) and Rosedale (produced 30 September, 1863). To the
time of his last appearance (29 May, 1886), he was true to his
English taste. To see Lester Wallack at his best, one had to
see him as Shakespeare's Benedick or Mercutio; as Dumas's
D'Artagnan, or in the social suavity of the Robertson and con-
temporary French drama.

The British traditionseemed so natural to Lester Wallack

[writes Brander Matthews], so inevitable, that when Bronson
Howard, in his 'prentice days, took him a piece called Drum-Taps,
— which was to supply more than one comedy-scene to the later
—
Shenandoah, the New York manager did not dare to risk a play
on so American a theme as the Civil War. He returned it to the
young author, saying, "Couldn't you make it the Crimea?"

In i860, the comedian W. E. Burton died; his last appear-

—
ance was as Micawber, 15 October, 1859 a fitting end, as he
was in the forefront of the Dickens interpreters. Dramatiza-
tions of Dickens in America kept pace with those in England.
It is well to emphasize Burton's stage career, because it brings
 I

270 The Drama, 1860-1918

to mind that the American theatre of that time was rich in

comedians —
all of them of the old school which looked for

character parts to suit the old comedy style of acting. It was I

unfortunate for the American drama which began to develop

after i860 that it started just when the old-time stock com-
pany tradition passed from Burton and Brougham and Laura
Keene to Mrs. John Drew (i 820-1 897), who assumed control
of the Philadelphia Arch Street Theatre on 3 August, 1861: —
inaugurating a brilliant record which began to fade in 1877,/
just as Bronson Howard was gaining in his pioneer fight 'fori
the American dramatist, and just as the modern business of
'

the theatre began to challenge consideration.

The reasons for the poverty of American plays in the decade
1 860-1 870 are thus readily suggested. Our modern native drama
did not grow out of literature, as it did in England and in Prance;

it grew out of the theatre, and so it had to bide its time until the
theatre found a need for it.
Tradition, on the whole, is the element which most handi-
capped the American drama. Daly scanned the German
horizon for adaptations, as Dunlap had done before him; A.
M. Palmer was as eager for the French play as were the English
managers abroad, who would complacently have kept T. W.
Robertson and Tom Taylor literary hacks at ten pounds a play,
if they had not rebelled. When one puts down the titles of
dramas which Augustin Daly (i 838-1 899) actually had a
literary hand in, it is surprising how far afield from the Ameri-
can spirit he could get; with him adaptation meant change of
locality only, and though one can imagine what the scenic
artist might do with his "flats" in picturing New York during
the time opera reigned on Fourteenth Street, one can but re-
servedly call Boucicault's The Poor of New York (Wallack's
Theatre, 8 December, 1857) or Daly's Under the Gaslight (The
New York Theatre, 12 August, 1867) native dramas; they
were domestic perversions of the same French source. The I

fact of the matter is that Bronson Howard, who came under

the direct influence of the French drama of the time, felt, when
he began to write such a comedy as Saratoga (Fifth Avenue
Theatre, 21 December, 1870) that he must follow French con-
vention; and when he reconstructed The Banker's Daughter
on the ground-plan of Lillian's Last Love his originality was
 Actors 271

tiedhand and foot. He was borrowing French villains, and

making his American men exclaim "egad."
Daly adapted and wrote over four dozen plays. Among his
so-called original attempts, this generation can recall only
Divorce (Fifth Avenue Theatre, 5 September, 1871), Horizon
(Olympic Theatre, izs March, 1871), and Pique (Fifth Avenue
Theatre, 14 December, 1875); among his adaptations, Leah the
Forsaken (Niblo's Garden, 19 January, 1863), Frou-Frou (Fifth
Avenue Theatre, 12 February, 1870), and Article 47 (Fifth
Avenue Theatre, 2 April, 1872). But in these, as in most of his
attempts, he dpes not deserve any more claim to native ori-
ginality than Matilda Heron does for her version of Camille
(Wallack's Broome St. Theatre, 22 January, 1857), or A. M.
Palmer for his productions of D'Ennery and Cormon's A
Celebrated Case, adapted by A. R. Cazauran (Boston Museum,
28 January, 1878), and D'Ennery 's The Two Orphans, adapted
by Hart Jackson (Union Square Theatre, 21 December, 1874).
What he did so successfully, and what Clyde Fitch did so well
in later years, was to create roles for the special qualities in his
players: he wrote Frou-Frou for Agnes Ethel, Ai'ticle 47 for
'
Clara Morris, and Pique for Fanny Davenport.
The emotional play went hand in hand with the emotional
actress, and one fails to find Clara Morris showing a penchant
for the American drama; her success in Miss Mutton, a play
built on a French version of East Lynne (Union Square Theatre,
20 November, 1876), and her Cora in Article 47 measured her
taste and training, rather than her Lucy Carter in Howard's
Saratoga, which Daly produced. Palmer and Daly gave their
drama or the classics. In such
players large doses of foreign
tradition Fanny Davenport flourished, and Ada Rehan was
reared.
This was an unsettled period, therefore, of taste and mana-
gerial inclination; it is necessary to pick up the scant threads of
American drama and hold them fast lest they be forgotten.
Such a play as Densmore's pirated version of The Gilded, Age,
in which John T. Raymond made such a success during the
early seventies, is scarcely known, even by Mark Twain's
biographer; Benjamin Woolf's The Mighty Dollar (Park Theatre,
6 September, 1875), once the talk of the American theatre, is, so
far as Woolf's family is concerned, non-existent.
272 The Drama, 1860-1918

up to the time I started in 1870 [wrote Bronson Howard in

1906], American plays had been written only sporadically here and
there by men and women who never met each other. Except
. . .

for Daly, I was practically alone; but he offered me the same oppor-
tunity and promise he gave to himself. From
for the future that
him developed a school of managers and eager to produce
willing
American plays on American subjects. ... It was not until about
1890 that they [the writers] suddenly discovered themselves as a
body of dramatists. This was at a private supper given ... to the
veteran playwright, Charles Gaylor.

It was on this occasion that Howard founded the American

Dramatists Club.
At the same time other forces were preparing the way for
the American drama, and these, viewed from a distance, are
significant when one knows what actually followed them. In
San Francisco, David Belasco was serving his novitiate as an
actor, a playwright, a manager, and was coming into direct con-
tact with the actors of the East, who travelled West for regular
seasons. He was writing mining-camp melodrama, which was
afterwards to flower into The Girl of the Golden West, and he
was experimenting in all the subterfuges of stagecraft. The
Frohman brothers were in their rough-and-tumble days, when
Tony Pastor, Harrigan and Hart, the "Black Crook," and
the Callender Minstrels were the ideals of managerial success.
^

Close upon Charles and Daniel Frohman came David Belasco

to New York in the later seventies. They arrived at a moment
which was propitious, for Bronson Howard, rightly designated
the Dean of American Drama, as Dunlap is called the Father
of the American Theatre, had insisted on A. M. Palmer's ad- j

vertising his play, The Banker's Daughter, as an American

Comedy, and he stood for the rights of the native dramatist I

as opposed to the foreigner. It was a long time in the mana-

gerial careers of either Daniel or Charles Frohman before they
could be brought to think that the word "American" was of
commercial advantage; and this attitude of theirs is the first
suggestion of the future estimate of the theatre as a commer-
cial enterprise, against which all later native art has had to
contend.
These days of the theatre have been chronicled by three
critics: Laurence Hutton, Brander Matthews, and William
 Brander Matthews 273

\ Winter. Winter' had a long perspective in theatre attendance,

and left available a large body of journalistic reporting; it may
be said that from 1854 to the time of his death in 1917 his pen
was recording theatrical matters continually. But he was not
concerned with the development of an American drama; his
professional duty was to take the theatre as it came to him
nightly; to estimate it as a presented thing, and to measure its
acting value. His attitude, as becomes a dramatic critic for
newspapers, was not concerned primarily with the literary side.
Therefore, neither his The Wallet of Time nor his other volumi-
nous works give one a comprehensive view of American drama.
Laurence Hutton,^ on the other hand, was interested in the
appearance of American characteristics on the boards, and no
more suggestive chapters can be read than in his Curiosities of
the American Theatre. Certainly, his close friend and colla-
borator, Brander Matthews, must have had Hutton in mind
when he compiled his essays A Booh About the Theatre. It is to
—
Professor Matthews who has held the chair of Dramatic
Literature at Columbia University since 1900, and who is the
author of many poems, stories, and novels, as well as an essay-
ist of wide range —
that we must turn for estimates of American
dramatists as distinct personalities in a native form of art. He
has done for the American play what he has done for the sub-
ject of drama in general: popularized the philosophy of the
theatre. That service is of inestimable worth. He has edited
old texts, he helped to found The Players and The Dunlap
Society; but, unfortunately, he has written no book on Ameri-
can drama. Yet his volumes of essays have full reference to the
American theatre. He has a more organic sense of its develop-
ment than either Hutton or Winter. In his reminiscences.
These Many Years (1917), we not only have his love of the play
well depicted, and his reflection of the New York, London, and
Paris theatres during the period just sketched; but there is also
the record of his own efforts as a dramatist efforts coincident —
with those of Howells and Howard and James. One obtains fleet-
ing glimpses of the managerial guUty conscience regarding the
fate of American drama, in the efforts made by managers to
engage the literary world in the interest of the theatre. In
1878 Professor Matthews wrote Margery's Lovers, produced in
» See also Book III, Chap. xiii. ' Ibid.
VOL. Ill 18
274 The Drama, 1860-1918

1887 at an author's matinee at the Madison Square Theatre,

by A. M. Palmer, who likewise presented George Parsons
Lathrop's Elaine and Howells's dramatization of A Foregone
Conclusion. In similar fashion was Decision of the Court pre-
sented, 23 March, 1893, by the Theatre of Arts and Letters.
This organization also offered Mary E. Wilkins's Giles Corey,
Frank R. Stockton's Squirrel Inn, and Clyde Fitch's Harvest
—^which latter was afterwards evolved into The Moth and the
Flame. Professor Matthews, as an American dramatist, has
scarcely exhibited the qualities or won the fame which belong
to him as a professor of Dramatic Literature. ^ The reason may
be, as Bronson Howard declared after the experience they had
together in collaboration over Peter ^^wywe^owi (2 October, 1899),
that Professor Matthews, used to viewing the finished product
in the theatre, was not used to the constant labour which always
attends the writing and further re-writing of a play.
Bronson Howard (i 842-1908) came to the theatre with a
full journalistic career behind him. He had the serious mind
of a student, the keen, polished culture of a man of the world.
To play-writing he brought a convention typical of the day
and a constructive ability which made him always an excellent
workman but which often prompted him to sacrifice thought-
fulness for stage effectiveness and solid characterization for
effervescent sprightliness. His style, so well contrasted in
Saratoga (21 December, 1870), The Banker's Daughter (30
September, 1878), The Young Mrs. Winthrop (9 October, 1882),
and The Henrietta (26 September, 1887), is limited by all the
reticence, the lack of frankness which the seventies and eighties
courted. In other words, he went on the supposition that so
long as one was French one could be broad, but that Americans
would never stand for too much latitude of morals from Ameri-
can characters. But, as a pioneer in the field of the drama of
contemporary manners, Howard's plays are interesting and
significant. His treatment of capital and labour, as shown in
Baron Rudolph (25 October, 1887), his reflection of business
stress, in The Henrietta, —
these were, in their day, novel de-
partures. But his plays were none of them organically close
knit. It was easy to make Saratoga ready for consumption in

' For Professor Matthews's important writing on the short story see Book
III, Chap. VI.
 Bronson Howard 275

London theatres by calling it Brighton. In 1886 Howard de-

livered a lecture before the students of Harvard University,
illustrating the general laws of drama, and outlining the con-
ventional traditions against which he worked. He was never
able to escape them. Shenandoah (9 September, 1889) was '

more national than most of his work. To its preparation he

;

brought that scholarly orderliness of mind which characterized

the man in conversation.
The successes of those early dayswhen Howard was knock-
ing at the doors of Daly and Palmer, were fitful, and, though
they are known by name today, their lack of a true note of
reality and their stereotyped romanticism make them im-
dramas or as revivals. Joaquin Mil-
possible either as reading
ler's The Danites (Broadway Theatre, 22 August, 1877),
J.
Cheever Goodwin's burlesque Evangeline (Niblo's Garden,
27 July, 1874), Bartley Campbell's My
Partner (Union Square,
16 September, 1879), Wallack's Rosedale (Wallack's Theatre,
30 September, 1863), Olive Logan's Surf (Daly's Theatre, 12
January, 1870), —these were the types of native successes.
None of them exploited deep-founded American characteristics,
though they suggested the melodrama of American life. It
was only by individualizing and localizing that the American
drama, previous to i860, became distinct. Only by these tradi-
tional marks could one recognize American drama of the early
"
days. Until Howard's attempt at reality. New York society
'
'

drama was either English or else crudely rustic, like Asa Trench-
ard in Taylor's Our American Cousin (Laura Keene's Theatre,
18 October, 1858). Over into this period of transition came the
Yankee, the backwoodsman, the humorous lawyer of "flush
times. " As Howard said, writing of the American drama, the
native dramatists were concerned with American character,
hence Solon Shingle, Colonel Sellers, Judge Bardwell Slote, and
Mose the fire-boy. Without them, we should not have had
Joshua Whitcomb, Davy Crockett, and Pudd'nhead Wilson
Perhaps one of the most typically American pieces produced]
in this period of the seventies was Frank Murdock's Davy\
Crockett (New York, Niblo's Garden, 9 March, 1874), reminiscent
in its colour of the elder Hackett's Colonel Nimrod Wildfire,
and a romantic forerunner of Moody's The Great Divide. Mrs
Bateman's Self finds continuation in Howard's Saratoga am
276 The Drama, 1860-1918

Mrs. Logan's Surf, while these point the way to Langdon

Mitchell's The New York Idea, written when dialogue for the
theatre had grown in literary form and feeling, when a sense of
atmosphere created an ironic response to fashionable manners
and customs.
It is because of this isolated, accidental character of Ameri-
can drama that Bronson Howard's position was all the more
remarkable in 1870, and thereafter. Yet his plays are dated.
It may be that some day Saratoga can be made over into a cos-
tume play, though it was written as an up-to-date "society"
comedy. But the difference between it and Mitchell's The
New York Idea (19 November, 1906) is that the latter contains
some of the universal depth that mere change in time and con-
dition will not alter.
The theatre of the sixties and seventies was surfeited with
the strong melodrama and romantic violences which suited a
special robust acting. When David Belasco ttimed East, as
stock dramatist for The Madison Square Theatre, a house to
compete with the traditions of the Union Square and Daly's,
there came into vogue a form of drama which allowed of a quiet,
—
domestic atmosphere in imitation of what Robertson, Byron,
and their British contemporaries were striving for in London.
The "milk and water" acting which was here introduced was
what made of The Young Mrs. Winthrop (Madison Square
Theatre, 9 October, 1882) such a phenomenal success. It was
this tradition, not new but novel, which evolved into the present
naturalistic method of acting. But the Madison Square Thea-
tre gave impetus to something more than a school of acting.
In its intimate management it furthered the dramatic writing
of Steele MacKaye, whose Hazel Kirke (4 February, 1880)
was written expressly .for the stock company gathered there,
and it brought Belasco and De Mille together in preparation
for their later collaboration when, with Daniel Frohman, they
went over to the Lyceum Theatre and in rapid succession
wrote The Wife (i November, 1887), Lord Chumley (21 August,
1888), The Charity Ball (19 November, 1889), Men and Women
(21 October, 1890).
Steele MacKaye (1844- 1894) while with the Madison
Square management won popularity as a playwright, but none
of his pieces is widely known to the theatre now, except by
 The MacKayes 277

name. Rose Michel (23 November, 1875), Hazel Kirke, Dako-

lar (6 April, 1885), and Paul Kauvar (24 December, 1887) are
among those that linger in memory as examples of picturesque
melodrama created for a certain type of stage effect, with
emotionalism of the Dumas kind. MacKaye once wrote
'
The
: '

master playwright combines the constructive faculty of the

mechanic and the analytical mind of the philosopher, with
the aesthetic instinct of a poet, and the ethical ardour of an
apostle." This is an all-inclusive definition, which MacKaye
never encompassed in any of his plays, but which in himself
was exemplified by the ardour of his temperament and the
visionary character of his imagination. His son Percy might
be said to have the same ideal, to which can be added a passion
for civic art. He has tried to express this latter element in his
pageants, but has never successfully done so. For Percy Mac^
Kay e is one of the most aristocratic of writers —farthest removed
from a thorough realization of the emotions of the crowd. His
poetic drama is academic in its scholarly allusions. One only
has to read Sappho and Phaon (21 October, 1907) to realize
this. As striking examples of the excellence of his dramatic
force there are The Scarecrow (produced 17 January, 191 1),
Jeanne d'Arc (28 January, 1907), and A Thousand Years Ago
( I December, 1 9 1 3)
. The Scarecrow, based on Hawthorne, ranks
high among American plays. MacKaye 's political philosophy,
earnest but hazy, is seen in his Mater (25 September, 1908) his ;

socio-scientific approach is measured in To-Morrow (31 October,

191 3); his imaginative breadth and picturesque enthusiasm

are evident in any one of his masques and pageants, The Canter-
bury Pilgrims (Gloucester, Mass., 3 August, 1909), Sanctuary
(12 September, 1913), Saint Louis (St. Louis, 28 May, 1914),
and Caliban (New York, 25 May, 1916). But all told, MacKaye
has not reached the ideal he emphasizes in his essays on the
theatre. If the civic theatre ever becomes a feature of Ameri-
can theatrical history, he will occupy, unless he changes his
method of thought and character of technique, the peculiar
position of being a pioneer believer in its efficacy, and of being
unable in his plays to sound the true democratic note. The
sense of American history is uppermost in his mind, but at
present his use of materials is distinctly caviare to the popular
theatregoer.
278 The Drama, 1860-1918

By the eighties there had been established in New York

the nucleus of what was to be known as the modern American
theatre. Daniel Frohman was Madison Square, his
at the
brother Charles was on the road with Wallack successes, and
was thus early exhibiting his ability to pick plays and players
by corralling Bronson Howard's Shenandoah (9 September,
1889) — ^his first real production in New York. William Gillette
began his career as playTvright in 1881 while it was 1889 before
;

Augustus Thomas entered the field. The gradual rise of Rich-

ard Mansfield was identified with the names of Palmer and
Wallack and though he cannot be said to have been a patron of
;

the American dramatist, his early appearances were in pieces

like Hjalmar Boyesen's Alpine Roses (Madison Square Theatre,
31 January, 1884) and Henry Guy Carleton's Victor Durand
(Wallack's Theatre, 1 8 December, 1 884) But these were merely
.

pieces of the theatre, like Cazauran's adaptation of a play by

Octave Feuillet, called A Parisian Romance, in which Mans-
field first attained prominent recognition (Union Square
Theatre, January, 1883). It was not until some while after-
1 1

— —
wards in 1890, to be exact that he offered Clyde Fitch the
opportunity to collaborate with him in Beau Brummell (Madi-
son Square Theatre, 17 May, 1890), and this may be accounted
Fitch's beginning, followed directly afterward by a one-act
sketch, Frederic Lemaitre (i December, 1890), written for
Henry Miller.
Up to the time of the appearance of these names in the
history of American playwriting, it is difficult to give coherence
to the development of American dramatic consciousness. The
style in theatre management was "stock, " untU business com-
bination began to assert itself. And such names as Bartley
Campbell (1843-1888), Henry Guy Carlton (1856-1910), Edgar
Fawcett (i 847-1 904) mean nothing in the way of native feeling
for drama, however much Campbell's My Partner reflected
Western melodrama. Even James A. Heme, who had a career
as actor in San Francisco which presaged greater work to come,
did not arrive in New York until later, though he had begun his
playwriting when Hearts of Oak was given at Baldwin's Theatre,
San Francisco, 9 September, 1879. And we are rightly inclined
to regard Heme as our first exponent of reality in the sense
of getting close to the soil. Edward Harrigan's (1845-1911)
 The Commercial Theatre 279

plays—the best of which were Squatter Sovereignty (Theatre

Comique, 9 January, 1882), Old Lavender (Theatre Comique,
3 September, 1877), The Mulligan Guard Ball (Theatre Co-
—
mique, 9 February, 1879) were varied in their local colour, as
were the farces of Charles Hoyt (i 859-1 900), who began play-
writing with A Bunch of Keys (Newark, 13 December, 1883)
and created such pieces of the political and social moment as
A Parlor Match, A Rag Baby, A Texas Steer; or, Money Makes
the Mare Go, A Trip to Chinatown, A Milk White Flag, and A
Temperance Town.
By 1880 the modern period of American drama was in the
bud: a journalistic sense had entered the American theatre,
and entered to good purpose, for it had given Howard a sense
of reality. It has stayed in the theatre and has deprived it, in
later exponents, of a logical completeness of idea. It has in
most cases kept our drama external.
Stage history must again be recalled, because the affairs of
the theatre have so completely governed our playwrights.
Howard, Heme, MacKaye, De Mille, Belasco, Gillette,
—
Thomas, and Fitch names which practically represent the
—
American dramatist from 1888 until 1900 grew up, fought,
and flourished under the increasing shadow of the commercial
theatre. After Daniel Frohman left the Madison Square
Theatre and opened his Lyceum (in May, 1885), and after his
brother Charles (1860-19 15) had opened the Empire Theatre
(in January, 1893), with estimable stock companies, it became
evident that two new elements confronted the American thea-
tregoers. First, the interest in the play was largely centred in
the personality of the player. Julia Marlowe, Edward H.
Sothern, Otis Skinner, William Faversham, Henry Miller,
Margaret Anglin, Maude Adams, James K. Hackett, Viola
Allen, —all and many more came into prominence through th
—
adoption of the "star" system a system which was mon
firmly believed in by Charles Frohman than by his brothej
Daniel. But both of them began thus early to monopolizi
certain English dramatists, tying them up in "futures," as
Pinero was tied, and as, later, the English playwrights J. M. ^

Barrie, Jones, Carton, Marshall, Davies, and their generation

were "signed up" by Charles Frohman on his yearly trips to
London for material.
"
The theatre was run on principles more
 —"

28o The Drama, 1860-1918

and more commercial, though both the Lyceum and the Empire
in these days gave agreeable artistic productions. It is true
that Daniel Frohman produced pieces by American playwrights
like Belasco, De Mille, Marguerite Merrington (Captain Letter-
blair, i6 August, 1892), Fitch (An American Duchess, 20
November, 1893; The Moth and the Flame, 11 April, 1898; The
Girl and the Judge, 4 December, 1901), Mrs. Frances Hodgson
Burnett {The First Gentleman of Europe, 25 January, 1897),
Madeleine Lucette Ryley {The Mysterious Mr. Bugle, 19 April,
1897; Richard Savage, 4 February, 1901), Grace Livingston
Furness and Abby Sage Richardson {Colonial Girl, 31 October,
i8g8; Americans at Home, 13 March, 1899). It is also true that
Charles Frohman, opening his Empire Theatre with the Belasco-
Fyles military drama. The Girl I Left Behind Me (25 January,
1893), figured largely in the development of Gillette, Fitch, and
Thomas. Nevertheless, it was not by their faith in the Ameri-
can playwright that the powerful position of the theatrical
managers was won, but rather through the astute manner in
which they watched the foreign market. They were sure ofl
foreign successes; they were not willing to risk the untried
American. Besides, with the end of the stock company fashion,
travelling companies began to increase in favour, and this 1

meant the growth of a system of "booking" which put into the \

hands of a few the power of dictating what amusements the

theatregoing Americans, outside of large theatrical centres,
j

could have. The managers throttled the theatres by 1896,

when the Theatrical Trust was formed, and though actors!
rebelled —men like Mansfield, Francis Wilson, Heme, and)'
Joseph Jefferson though such actresses as Mrs. Fiske
; and Mme. 1

Bernhardt suffered from their enmity by being debarred fromj

places where the Trust owned the only available theatres
still, the actors finally succumbed one by one, the playwrights

listened to their commercial dictators, managers of minbr|

theatres became their henchmen. In such an atmosphere,'
while in time we got good plays, it was impossible for a serious!
body of American dramaturgic art to develop. It was thought ^
that if the monopolistic power of the Trust could be broken, all
might be well again. And it was broken: there soon came two
—
combinations instead of one with the same evils of "booking,
the same paucity of good things because of commercial regula-
 David Belasco 281

tionsand measurements. Nothing could dispel this dull at-

mosphere but a complete reorganization of the theatre. It will
later be seen that this break-up is now (19 19) in process.
The only manager who, early in the nineties, seems to have\
had faith in the native product was David Belasco, and his
'

belief was founded on faith in himself. His early training, as

secretary to Dion Boucicault, as manager and stock-dramatist
at the San Francisco Baldwin's Theatre; his ability to work
over material supplied by others at the Madison Square Thea-
tre —
all served him to excellent account when he finally began

for himself and fought against the Trust which did not care for
his independence and grudged him his success. In his long and
useful career we find his interest as a manager prompting his
ability as a writer; we find his genius as a trainer of "stars " like
Mrs. Leslie Carter, Blanche Bates, David Warfield, and Frances
Starr regulating his selection of subjects for treatment as play-
wright. The advance from The Heart of Maryland (22 October,
1895) to the adaptation of Zaza (8 January, 1899) represented ;

his discovery of increasing ability in the emotionalism of Mrs.

Carter and his successive presentation of her in such spectacu-
;

lar dramas as Du Barry (25 December, 1901) and Adrea (11

January, 1905) measured his belief in her histrionic power.
In the same way, his faith in Blanche Bates prompted him to
write many scenes in Madame Butterfly (5 March, 1900), The
Darling of the Gods (3 December, 1902), and The Girl of the
Golden West (14 November, 1905) for her. Taking Warfield
from the Weber and Fields organization (a combination which ,

produced about 1 897-1 900, by their burlesque of current Ameri-

can successes, a type of humour truly Aristophanean), Belasco
had plays cut by himself and Charles Klein to fit Warfield's
—
personality and this impulse was back of The Auctioneer
(23 September, 1901) and The Music Master (26 September,
1 904). But there was something more behind Belasco's ability
to create stage atmosphere by lighting and scene. His love
of the West suggested The Girl of the Golden West and prompt-
ed his acceptance of Richard Walton TuUy's The Rose of the
—
Rancho (27 November, 1906) a collaboration which left Tully
with a love for the spectacular, apparent in his own independ-
ent dramas, The Bird of Paradise (Daly's Theatre, 8 January,
1912) and Omar, the Tent Maker (Lyric Theatre, 13 January,
282 The Drama, 1860-1918

1914). In all of his productions, as a manager, Belasco has

held the guiding hand. Though John Luther Long gave him
the central materials for Madame Butterfly, The Darling of the
Gods, and Adrea, the Belasco touch brought them to flower.
This has been the invariable result of his collaboration. The
one original play of his which best illustrates the mental interest
of the man is The Return of Peter Grimm (2 January, 191 1),
which deals with the presence of the dead. A related subject
of interest was dual personality, which prompted his accept-
ance of The Case of Becky (i October, 1912) by Edward Locke
and The Secret (23 December, 1913) by Henri Bernstein. The
latter revealed the expertness of Belasco as an adapter far
better than his work on Hermann Bahr's The Concert (3 October,
1 9 10) or on The Lily (23 December, 1909) by Wolff and Leroux.

Had Belasco not been a manager, the effect on his own work
might have been different. As it is, he has sought variety, he
has followed the changing times. His interest in emotion, in pic-
turesque situation, in unusual atmosphere, in modern realism, is
evident in the long list of plays by himself, and in other dramas
he has produced. Sentiment for the past encouraged him to
further the career of William C. De Mille, son of his early asso-
ciate, and while The Warrens of Virginia (Belasco Theatre, 3
December, 1907) and The Woman (Republic Theatre, 19 Septem-
ber, 191 1) — —
both superior to Strongheart show the younger De
Mille an adept at the game of the theatre, there is no doubt
that Belasco was an agent in the success of these two dramas.
The entire history of the American theatre within the past
quarter of a century has been the continued struggle between
the dramatist and the manager, resulting in the complete sur-
render of the former to the dictates of the latter. The native
plays given us have been variously pruned and patched until,
like fashion patterns, they have fitted a particular "star," or
until the goods have become salable, dependent on box-office
demand. When the play became a reading as well as an acting
"thing, "the dramatist first sensed that it was incumbent on
him to turn out a literary product, enriched by style, and
marked by conviction.
If, one reads the early dramas of Augustus
however,
Thomas and Clyde Fitch, it will be realized how dexterously
the American playwright profited by the French technician
 Augustus Thomas; Clyde Fitch 283

in whom the commercial manager had faith. Considering the

demands of the box-office, it is surprising that these dramatists
developed so often along the lines of their own interests. Their
plays are representative in part of the demands of the theatre
of the time, but also they measure something more personal.
Thomas at first wrote local dramas, like Alabama (i April, 1891)
a.nd Arizona (Chicago, 12 June, 1899), which in content he never
excelled; he showed his brilliancy of observation and terseness
of dialogue in such pieces as Mrs. Leffingwell's Boots (11 Janu-
ary, 1905) and The Other Girl (29 December, 1903). Then he
arrived at his serious period, where interest in psychic pheno-
mena resulted in The Witching Hour (18 November, 1907), The
Harvest Moon (18 October, 1909), and As a Man Thinks (13
—
March, 191 1) the latter extravagant in its use of several
themes, excellent in its sheer talk. This development was not
imposed on Thomas by commercial conditions.
But, like his contemporaries, Thomas was experimental in
form he was not moved by a body of philosophy in his dealing
;

with character or theme. He was just as ready to write a farce

like The Earl of Pawtucket (5 February, 1903) as he was to do a
costume play like Oliver Goldsmith (19 March, 1900) just as ;

willing to turn a series of cartoons into a play, like The Educa-

tion of Mr. Pipp (20 February, 1905), as he was to dramatize
popular novels of such different range as F. Hopkinson Smith's
Colonel Carter of Carter sville (22 March, 1892) and Richard
Harding Davis's Soldiers of Fortune (17 March, 1902). Thom-
as's observation of "things about town" is acute; one sees that
to best advantage in The Other Girl and The Witching Hour.
Most of his plays, as his introductions to the printed editions
suggest, reveal his method of workmanship.
He has not the distinct literary flavour of Clyde Fitch ; his
not so warmly human,
stories are his characters not so finished.
Fitch 865-1 909) was as independent of the manager as
(1

Thomas, but he nearly always constructed his plays with a

"star" in mind. He helped to increase the popularity of Julia
Marlowe with Barbara Frietchie (24 October, 1899), Nat Good-
win with Nathan Hale (2 January, 1899), Mansfield with Beau
Brummell (17 May, 1890), Maxine Elliott with Her Great Match
(4 September, 1905), and Clara Bloodgood with The Truth
the Green Eyes (25 Decern-
(7 January, 1907) and The Girl with
284 The Drama, 1860-1918

ber, 1902). That is But

the superficial classification of Fitch.
there was a deeper sensitiveness and feeling in what he wrote.
His appreciation of small details was a constant source of enter-
tainment in his dramas; they rushed upon us with brilliant and
rapid succession. To see a Fitch play was to become impressed
with his facility in dialogue and ease of invention. But the
fact is, Fitch's pen moved rapidly merely because he had pon-
dered the plot, incident, and actual dialogue long before the
transcribing began. And when he did write, it was a process of
setting down from memory. For three years he studied over
the psychology and situation of what he called his "jealousy"
play, before he began The Girl with the Green Eyes.
Fitch, like Thomas, could do work for the commercial
manager; and soon they both gained positions of confidence
which allowed them to lead rather than be led. The mere fact
that their dramas are readable measures something of their
literary value. Thomas has always shown the limitation of not
too clear thinking Fitch often obtruded his smartness in places
;

where sound characterization was needed. One noted this in

a favourite piece of his, A Happy Marriage (12 April, 1909).
But those who regarded Fitch's contribution to American
drama as largely picturesque sentimentality, as in Lovers' Lane
(6 February, 1901), The Stubbornness of Geraldine (3 Novem-
ber, 1902), and Granny (24 October, 1904); those who depre-
him by saying he spent his time flippantly in converting
ciate
German farce to American taste, as in The Blue Mouse (30
November, 1908), should recall two of his dramas which com-
pare favourably with the best of modem psychological pieces
— The Truth and The Girl with the Green Eyes. He tried every
form of comedy and farce; and while many of his stories, as
plots,were slight and unworthy of him, he brought to the task
always a radiant spirit which gave his dramas a distinctive
tone. He could write melodrama too; The Woman in the Case
(30 January, 1905) won recognition on the Continent. He
could, through sheer strength of situation and fearlessness of
attack, create something of the tragic, as in The City (22 Decem-
ber, 1909), written largely to refute the charge that
he was
solely a dramatist of the feminine. There was some of the
bric-^-brac quality about Fitch. He caught the volatile in
American life, —more especially in New York life, —and it is
 James A. Heme 285

this quality which keeps so many of his plays still alive and
fresh.
At the time Fitch and Thomas were gaining headway,
another playwright came to the front, having attained before-
hand a reputation for powerful acting and excellent stage
management. This was James A. Heme (i 839-1901). His
distinctive gifts as a writer were clarity and simplicity, and his
art of expression lay in the illumination he infused into homely
things and simple people. Coming East from California with
the traditions of florid melodrama which influenced Belasco
(the two having worked together at the Baldwin Theatre),
Heme fell under the influence of Darwin and Herbert Spen-
cer, in philosophy, and of Henry George in economics. He
arrived in Boston at the time W. D. Howells,' an exponent of
realism in the novel, was the foremost writer of the day.
prompted Heme to deal with the fundamentals
All these forces
of character in his dramatic work. He became interested, as
Maeterlinck would say, in conditions of soul. His dialogue in
Margaret Fleming (Lynn, Mass., 4 July, 1880), rang true, in-
stinct with homely life; his Griffith Davenport (Washington,
—
D. C, 16 January, 1899) a drama of the. Civil War based not
—
on external action but on inward struggle was filled with sin-
cerity; his Shore Acres (Chicago, 23 May, 1892) which, —
because of the precieuse success of Margaret Fleming, made con-
cessions to the old-time melodrama, had passages of dominant
realism, simple conversation warm with human meaning, which
have not been surpassed by an American playwright thus far.
The popular notion is that Heme wrote "by gosh" drama of the
type of The Vermont Wool-Dealer and Denman Thompson's Old
Homestead (Boston, 5 April, 1885). But that is farthest from
a true comparison, for Heme's observation was based on pro-
found appreciation of character and human relationship, and
the Yankee-type drama was dependent on outward eccentricity.
The work in play-writing of William Gillette has been so
closely identified with his peculiar technique as an actor that it
is diffictilt to separate the two. Apart from his first collabora-
tion with Mrs. Frances Hodgson Burnett in Esmeralda (29 Octo-
ber, 1881) apart from his dependence on French sources in Too
;

Much Johnson (26 November, 1894) ^^^ Because She Loved

» See Book III, Chap. xi.
286 The Drama, 1860-1918

Him So (i6 January, 1899), both of which showed the quickness

of his farce spirit, one should judge him by the tenseness of his
Civil War pieces, Held by the Enemy (16 August, 1886) and
Secret Service (5 October, 1896) ; and by the melodrama
refined
of his Sherlock Holmes dramatization (6 November, 1899),
which, for was so dependent on the nervous quiet
its success,

of his acting. As an actor, Gillette requires peculiar oppor-

tunities of hesitant firmness; only one dramatist outside of
himself has recognized his special needs ^J. —
M. Barrie in The
Admirable Crichton (17 November, 1903). Gillette himself
did not rightly estimate them when he wrote the sentimental
comedy Clarice (16 October, 1906), nor did he, either as a
technician or as a psychologist, create aright in such a piece as
Electricity (31 October, 1910). As a dramatist he has remained
undisturbed by the interest in modern ideas; his social con-
science has not ruffled the even amusement tenor of his plays,
which always arouse the observer to moods romantically tense,
and depend on thoroughly legitimate situations rather than on
ideas.
The American drama now began show a greater sensi-
to
tiveness to the social forces of the times. Heme's reaHsm was
not one of social condition, but expressed itself in hiunan
psychology. Charles Klein, however, tried to give newspaper
crispness to business condition, which Bronson Howard had
suggested in The Henrietta. In fact, the Dean of American
Drama once said that in order to see how far American taste
had advanced since his day, one had only to contrast the moral
attitude of the heroine in Rachel Crothers's The Three of Us
(Madison Square Theatre, 17 October, 1906) and the social
fervour of the heroine in Klein's The Lion and the Mouse (20
November, 1905) with any of his own plays. The fact is
that Charles Klein (1867-1915), from the moment he stopped
writing librettos like El Capitan, had a strongly developed
reportorial sense which was more theatrical than profound.
None of his plays could bear close logical analysis; all of his
plays had situations that were "actor-proof" and sure to get
across on the emotional force of the moment. But his social
and economic knowledge was incomplete. One feels this in
contrasting his Daughters of Men (19 November, 1906) with
George Bernard Shaw's Widowers' Houses. The fact is, Klein
 Later Melodrama 287

had no political vision, though none of his contemporaries could

be more earnest in the handling of social materials. The Third
Degree (i February, 1909), The Gamblers
(31 October, 1910),
Maggie Pepper (31 August, 1911), are obviously built for effect;
they have no organic growth. The truth is, Klein's solutions
for the ills-of-America condition
were all sentimental. He was
much nearer his natural psychology in writing The Music
Master (26 September, 1904) than in determining the outcome
and economic problems.
of social
In 1900 melodrama had a grip on the interest of the Ameri-
can middle class; it was the beau ideal of entertainment for the
working people. Its violence accentuated the violences of
American life, and Owen Davis and Theodore Kramer, the
Thomas and Fitch of melodrama, flourished on half a dozen or
more successes a year. The very names suggest their sentiment
and colour: Tony, the Bootblack; Nellie, the Beautiful Cloak
Model; Bertha, the Sewing Machine Girl; Convict ggg. But
soon, through the educational agency of the public libraries,
the melodrama audiences began reading books more reserved
in action, more logical in plot. While their eye would accept
scenes of violence, their mind began to balk at repeated in-
consistencies. Melodrama of this type began to fail, and the
melodramatists were drawn towards work of a different kind.
But the breathless stimulation, excitement, and variety of this
special form of playwriting were taken over by the moving
picture, which is based on restlessness, on kinetic motion.
Until 1900 the modern American drama advanced by fash-
I ions; managers followed like sheep in the wake of a popular
success until the vein was exhausted. The dramatized novel
went through its many phases of popular taste, beginning with
Anthony Hope's The Prisoner oj Zenda, Stanley Weyman's
Under the Red Robe, and Mrs. Burnett's The Lady 0} Quality,
and passing to Paul Leicester Ford's Janice Meredith, which as
a novel competed with S. Weir Mitchell's Hugh Wynnes
The manager thought there was certainty in a play based
on a book which had sold into the thousands. The book
market was full of literary successes and was drawn upon for the
stage. Mary Johnston's To Have and To Hold and Audrey;
Winston Churchill's Richard Carvel and The Crisis; Charles
' See Book III, Chap. xi.
 '

288 The Drama, 1860-1918

Major's When Knighthood was in Flower; George W. Cable's

The Cavalier; John Fox's Trail of the Lonesome Pine; Richard
—
Harding Davis's Soldiers of Fortune the list might be stretched
to interminable length. Out of this type of playivriting the
theatre gained certain striking successes. After the popularity
of Monsieur Beaucaire, Booth Tarkington entered the dramatic
ranks with his The Man from Home (in collaboration, Astor
Theatre, 17 August, 1908), Cameo Kirby (Hackett Theatre,
20 December, 1909), Your Humble Servant (Garrick Theatre,
3 January, 1909), The Country Cousin (Gaiety Theatre, 3
September, 1917), Penrod (Globe Theatre, 2 September, 1918).
Richard Harding Davis came from novel-writing to an occa-
sional theatre piece like The Galloper (Garden Theatre, 22
February, 1906) and The Yankee Consul (Broadway Theatre,
22 February, 1904). Lorimer Stoddard, with his Tess of the
D'Urbervilles (Miner's Fifth Avenue Theatre, 2 March, 1897)
and Langdon Mitchell with his Becky Sharp likewise came into
the theatre fold. Many American writers rushed in because it
was a lucrative venture when successful; and coming in thus
crudely and without preparation, they learned their technique
at the expense of a theatre-going public.
It is a nondescript position taken by the novelist in his
attitude towards the theatre. Rex Beach has had his novels
turned into plays by others, and has written moving-picture
scenarios. Alice Hegan Rice met with as great success in the
dramatization of Mrs. Wiggs of the Cabbage Patch (3 September,
1904) as she did when the story ran into its million circulation
as a book. Mrs. Kate Douglas Wiggin Riggs has tried time
and time again to enter the magic realm, and did so with Re-
becca of Sunnybrook Farm (Republic Theatre, 3 October, 1910).
But the literary life of America has never, thus far, considered
the theatre as anything more than a by-product of the novelist's
art. Writers have, to use George Ade's phrase, "butted in"
too easily, and they have had no appreciable influence on the
craft.
Then, later on, the reverse process began. Though plays
were being published and widely read by an audience trained
—
in the special ability required through a visualizing itnagina-
—
tion to get the most from the play form, it has been a long
and arduous road to persuade American playwrights to publish
 ;

George Ade; George M. Cohan 289

their plays,even though they saw what good results followed

the publication of British and Continental drama. Rather
iid they prefer to see their plays converted by some literary
iggler into a novel, with the dialogue embedded in narrative
id explanatory matter furnished by others. Long before any
of the plays of Belasco, Broadhurst, Klein, Walter, and others
wipre printed, they were thus "novelized" and read by a fiction
public. But the custom is abating somewhat in favour of re-
taining the integrity of the play form.
The use of a college theme first undertaken by George Ade
in The College Widow (20 September, 1904) was imitated by
William De Mille in Strongheart (30 January, 1905) and by
Rida Johnson Young in Brown of Harvard (26 February, 1906)
and George Ade carried to the stage the newspaper humour
which reflected so well the national characteristics celebrated
by Eugene Field, Peter Finley Dunne, and Ade himself, the one
humorist who builded in the theatre better than any of his
brotherhood before him. For the kind of satirical fun one saw
in The Sultan of Sulu (Wallack's Theatre, 29 December, 1902),
The County Chairman (Wallack's Theatre, 24 November, 1903),
The Sho-Gun (10 October, 1904), and The College Widow (20
September, 1904) had a national tang which transcended the
local pride of the Indiana School. His humour bears the same
relation toward social things that Mr. Dooley's political vein
bears toward national politics. ' In his generous modesty, Ade
has always maintained that George M. Cohan, the many-handed
wonder of Yankee-doodle-flag farces and Over There music, was
more typically American than he. Cohan is the type of manager-
plajnvright who has his pulse on the moment he grows rich on ;

local allusion. His Little Johnny Jones (7 November, 1904),

George Washington, Jr. (12 February, 1906), Forty-five Minutes
from Broadway (i^March., I9i2),and The Man Who Owns Broad-
way have the tang of the street about them.
(11 October, 1909)
There a quality to his music which has been brought nearer
is

the psycho-state of a nervous crowd by Irving Berlin, with

nis jazz noises and his syncopated songs. But as a producer,
in the sense that Belasco is a dramatist-producer, Cohan
shows a genius more serious. His adaptation of Earl Biggers's
story, Seven Keys to Baldpate (22 September, 1913), illustrated
' See Book III, Chap. ix.
290 The Drama, 1860-1918

the more solid variety of his ability. All told, he reflects a

nervousness which, while representative of the times, is not an
enviable attribute in a nation, though its flexible humour indi-

cates aliveness of mind and quick realization of national foibles.

Mr. Dooley, Ade, and Cohan show, by the success they have
had at the hands of the public, that as a people we are capable
of enjojdng humour, comic and trenchant, at our own expense.
The matter of popularity and permanence has confused
the history of playwriting in America. There was a time when
Joaquin Miller's The Danites held audiences spellbound; when
Campbell's My Partner was considered as representative of
America as Bret Harte's The Luck of Roaring Camp. Way
Down East (7 February, 1898) and In Old Kentucky (27 April,
1897), by their extended acceptance, should place Lottie Blair
Parker and Charles T. Dazey in the forefront of the theatre.
But they are not widely known today. Nor is Martha Morton
the significant figure she bid fair to be when she Avrote His Wife's
Father (Miner's Fifth Avenue Theatre, 25 February, 1895).
Even the success of Little Lord Fauntleroy (10 September,
1888) did not make Frances Hodgson Burnett a dramatist,
though she commanded the stage in several other plays for
many years. The allurement held forth by large profits at
first attracted the literary worker and then the layman in any

field who thought Colleges began offer-,

playwriting lucrative.
ing courses in dramatic technique, and from the classes ot
Professor George P. Baker at Harvard and Professor Brander
Matthews at Columbia commendable graduates have come to
the thea'tre. The consequence is that the number of American!
writers of drama has increased largely, with not a commen-
surate increase of typically American plays.
The most notable examples of dramatic contributions within
the past twenty years are William Vaughn Moody's The Great
Divide (3 October, 1906), Josephine Preston Peabody's The
Piper (New Theatre, 30 January, 191 1), George C. Hazelton
and J. H. Benrimo's The Yellow Jacket (Fulton Theatre, 4 No-
vember, 1912), Charles Kenyon's Kindling (Daly's Theatre, 3
December, 191 1), and Eugene Walter's The Easiest Way (Be-
lasco Theatre, 19 January, 1909). Moody,' whose untimely
death cut short the future of a man who, with his literary sense,
' See Book III, Chap. x.
 '

Literary and Poetic Drama 291

might have grown into theatre requirements because of an

innate dramatic touch, in The Great Divide created something
which in substance showed a deep feeling for native atmosphere
and a broad understanding of human passion. However un-
satisfying certain features of The Great Divide, for instance, —
its lack of unity of scene, its —yet
mistakes in motive, it gives
one a comprehension of stern reality which makes Hawthorne's
The Scarlet Letter so permanent a contribution to literature. But
Moody's poetic sense, which was stronger and greater than his
sense of drama, led him entirely astray in his The Faith Healer
(Savoy Theatre, 19 January, 1910), with its mystical atmos-
phere where belief did not mix with reality, and conviction did
not rise above picturesqueness. But in The Great Divide Moody
caught the permanent passions of real people. This also may
j

be said of Alice Brown's Children of Earth (12 January, 1915),

which won a $10,000 prize offered by Winthrop Ames in the
hope that competition would bring forth the American master-
pieces which popular belief imagined were hid under a bushel
by the ruthless hand of the managers of commerce. Miss
Brown committed extravagances in her desire to reflect the New
—
England life she knows so well an atmosphere which relates
her to the school of fiction ably represented by Sarah Orne
Jewett, Mary E. WUkins Freeman, and Mrs. Margaret Deland.
But Children of Earth failed because a narrative declaration
of passion was substituted for the reality which would have
made the heroine's moment of June madness grippingly con-
vincing.
Mrs. Josephine Preston Peabody Marks, a poet with liter-
ary feeling, with an eye for the pictorial, won a prize offered
by the English actor, Frank Benson, with The Piper (New
—
Theatre, 30 January, 191 1) a charming resetting of the old
Hamelin legend which has modern implication and applica-
tion. Patches of poetry beautify the text but weight the acting
quality. Its imaginative stretch was refreshing in the Ameri-
can theatre, however, and the production given by Winthrop
Ames was distinctive. It possessed youthful spirit, and hints
of dramatic tenseness. But Mrs. Marks has not yet added con-
vincing proof that she a dramatist above a poet, though her
is

Marlowe furnishes a commendable example of poetic drama.

' See Book III, Chap. vi.
292 The Drama, 1860-1918

The fact is, American drama has always been so completely

shadowing the newspaper on one hand or catering to Broad-
way on the other that any example of imaginative freshness
with fanciful idea would appeal instantly to a sated public. It
is on such psychology that Eleanor Gates's The Poor Little Rich

Girl (Hudson Theatre, 21 January, 1913) succeeded — a literary

feat in fantastic story-telling which possessed Barriesque quali-
ties without Barrie's craftsmanship as a writer for the theatre.
Is it fair to say that it was one of those happy accidents which
so often happen in the theatre? For Miss Gates, in her next
piece, We Are Seven (Maxine Elliott Theatre, 24 December,
1913), convinced the critics that she was happier as a story-
teller than as a playTvright. Her position in the theatre has
yet to be won.
From the theatre direct, however, there has come a play
which succeeded because of its universal dramatic and pic-
turesque appeal and which, were the repertory idea again to
become a fashion, should place it prominently in a list of per-
—
manent American products George Hazelton and J. H. Ben-
rimo's The Yellow Jacket (4 November, 1912), an imaginative
creation of real worth, far exceeding anything that Hazelton
had ever done before, and defying imitation by Benrimo, who
built The Willow Tree (Cohan and Harris Theatre, 6 March,
1 9 1 7) upon it
. It convinces the most unhopeful critic that what
the American theatre needs is not so much material as an in-
tellectual, a spiritual unity about it which will encourage such
writers as Hazelton, Austin Strong, whose The Toymaker of
Niiremburg (1907) was simple and poetic, Edward Childs Car-
penter, whose The Cinderella Man (17 January, 1916) was
wholesome, and whose The Pipes of Pan (6 November, 19 17)
impressed one with its literary quality, to create rather than to
build with an eye on what the manager conceives the public
wants.
For it is this lack of guiding principle, this aloofness of
dramatic effort, this isolation of the craft, which is quite as
wrong as is the idea of a commercial theatre governing the art
product. It is surprising, in view of these limitations, how ex-
cellently the American dramatist has progressed. We cannot,
at present, put by the side of the school of British playwrights
who grew in unity against the Censor, who grew in intellectual
 The Broadway School 293

feeling under the impulse of Ibsen, who related themselves to

a literary movement and to a social evolution, any such school
of our own. We may be ashamed to claim that our theatre
has produced a Broadway school of playr^^rights, of whom
George Broadhurst (with his Bought and Paid For, Playhouse,
26 September, 191 1) and Bayard Veiller (with his Within the
Law, Eltinge Theatre, 11 September, 1912) are the typical
examples. And the annoying feature of such a tradition is that
here and there in the work done by these men there is some
real flash, some real creative contribution, showing the in-
herent ability which purpose would have moulded into dis-
tinction. Now and then, out of such workmanship, the theatre
gets a whole piece like Eugene Walter's The Easiest Way
(19 January, 1909), which goes to the bone of realistic condi-
tion, cruel, ironic, relating it to a morbid type of emotionaUsm,
of which Pinero's Iris is an example. Walter, by a feeling for
character and situation, builds better than his contemporaries.
His Paid in Full (25 February, 1908), barring certain evident
situations on which uncertain suspense is built, has as much
careful reproduction of average American life as Miss Baker's
Chains has of English. And Walter's melodramatic sense, in
The Wolf (Bijou Theatre, 18 April, 1908) and The Knife (Bijou
Theatre, 12 April, 191 7), is better than Veiller 's .trick method
of suspense in such a piece of the theatre as The 13th Chair
(48th Street Theatre, 20 November, 1917).
^ The American dramatist has always taken his logic second-
jhand he has always allowed his theatrical sense to be a slave
;

to managerial circumstance. The new drama of reality is not

based on snap appreciation or judgment. Imagine John Gals-
worthy writing Justice after reading someone else's impression
of the cell system of prison life. Yet Charles Klein wrote The
Lion and the Mouse after reading Ida Tarbell's History of the
Standard Oil Trust, and Edward Sheldon wrote his one political
play, The Boss (30 January, 191 1), after reading an editorial in
Collier's Weekly. No drama can be built truly unless one feels
deeply the materials used. Sheldon's The Nigger (New Thea-
tre, 4 December, 1909) shows every evidence — however effec-
tive the situation — of the author's learning of the Southern
problem from books read at Harvard University. It has none
of the innate sincerity of Moody's The Great Divide or Alice
294 The Drama, 1860-1918

Brown's Children of Earth, written out of inherited feeling for

spiritual yearnings and ancestral prejudices. Sheldon, cleverly-
alive to drama, —one of the many men who have come out of
university courses specially dedicated to dramatic technique,
like Professor —
Baker's Workshop at Harvard, ^has always
been entertaining, with a dexterity which might have gone far
had he not, later in his youthful career, been swamped by
—
managerial and actor demands as when he dramatized Suder-
mann's The Song^ of Songs (Eltinge Theatre, 22 December,
1 9 14). His first play, Salvation Nell (17 November, 1908),
showed freshness of atmosphere but it was brought to distinc-
;

tion by Mrs. Fiske, and it had none of the ironic intent of Shaw's
Major Barbara. Even in the creating of atmosphere, Sheldon
has not always been happy. His Romance (10 February, 191 3)
has none of the real New York flavour of Fitch's Captain Jinks
of the Horse Marines (4 February, 1901).
With no philosophic body of ideas moving American drama,
it is surprising what an excellent number of plays can be

mentioned as illustrative of certain definite types of drama.

It is not a dead creative field which can point to the high
comedy of A. E. Thomas's Her Husband's Wife (9 May, 1910),
Thompson Buchanan's A Woman's Way (22 February, 1909),
Harry James. Smith's Mrs. Bumpstead Leigh (Lyceum Theatre,
3 April, 191 1), and Jesse Lynch Williams's Why Marry? (Astor
Theatre, 25 December, 1917). Perhaps these examples are
overtopped by Langdon Mitchell's The New York Idea (L5nic
Theatre, 19 November, 1906), which has an irony of universal
—
import a 'tang of the Restoration drama, without its blatant
—
vulgarity a critical sense of manners at once timely and for
ever true. This ability shown by Mitchell makes one deplore
the time spent by him on dramatizations like Becky Sharp
(12 September, 1899) and Pendennis (26 October, 1916).
We may point with just pride to examples of drama of social
condition like Charles Kenyon's Kindling (Daly's Theatre, 3
December, 191 1) and Medill Patterson's Rebellion (Maxine
Elliott's Theatre, 3 October, 191 1). And, even with its ex-
crescences of bad taste, Louis K. Anspacher's The Unchastened
Woman (9 October, 191 5) possessed marked distinction of
characterization. In the sphere of simple human comedy,
Winchell Smith's The Fortune Hunter (4 September, 1909) and
 Tricks and Farces 295

J. Hartley Manners's Peg o' My Heart (Cort Theatre, 20 De-

cember, 1912), are typical; wMe
Elmer Reizenstein's On Trial
(31 August, 1914), with its "cut back" scenes, showed the
direct influence of moving-picture technique on dramatic writ-
ing. There are hosts of American farces, true to type, racy
with American foibles, like Rupert Hughes's Excuse Me (Gaiety
Theatre, 13 February, 191 1), Roi Cooper Megrue's It Pays to
Advertise (Cohan Theatre, 8 September, 1914), Augustin Mc-
Hugh's Officer 666 (Gaiety Theatre, 12 August, 1912), Avery
Hopwood and Mary Roberts Rinehart's Seven Days (Astor
Theatre, 10 November, 1909).
One may point to Rachel Crothers's The Three oj Us (17
October, 1906) and^ Man's World (8 February, 1910) and say
she is example of how a woman, anxious to show unity of pur-
pose in her work, has been forced later into catering to popular
demand. One may
deplore that Margaret Mayo's cleverness
of technique was used for the creation of such an advertising
catch-piece as —
Twin Beds which failed even to win the soldiers
in cantonment or afield during the past war. ' One may applaud
the theatre atmosphere of James Forbes's The Chorus Lady
(i September, 1906), and yet see his limitations in the blind

way he, like his contemporaries, gropes about for some external
novelty.
The unfortunate thing is that the American drama has had
' It is too early to state what effect the entertainment of the soldier will have

on the future theatre. When the Govemment mobilized men in cantonments it

established a Liberty Theatre at each military centre. To this, entertainments
were sent by an organized committee which drew upon the commercial theatre as
well as upon the amateur. The draft army itself was so full of dramatic talent, so
many writers and musicians found themselves in uniform, that in addition to pro-
fessional entertainment sent to the camp, the soldiers created an army drama, rich
in humour and local colour. Community interest centred itself in aiding the
Govemment, whose sole desire was, both at home and abroad, to maintain the
morale of men suddenly drawn by the draft from normal life and occupation.
Community houses were established in towns nearest cantonments and embarka-
tion points, and these community centres may give impulse to the community
theatre. Certain it is that the Govemment has found amusement a "war neces-
sity," and has determined, in peace times, to maintain Govemment theatres at
military posts. If in war time the theatre has made itself necessary, does it not
follow that some day the Govemment, regarding the theatre as a necessary social
institution for the American people, will give it Congressional support in its ar-
tistic maintenance, and recognize its importance by having it represented in the
Presidential Cabinet by a Secretary of Fine Arts? This might do much to give
direction and purpose to future American playwriting.
296 The Drama, 1860-1918

many promises which have finally thinned out and

brilliant
never materialized. At the present moment we have every
reason to believe that Clare Kummer {Good Gracious, Anna-
belle, Republic Theatre, 31 October, 1916, and A Successful
Calamity, Booth Theatre, 5 February, 191 7), Robert Housam
{The Gypsy Trail, Plymouth Theatre, 4 December, 191 7), the
Hattons, W. J. Hurlbut, and Channing Pollock will contribute
something to the future theatre.
The drama activity is constant, but uneven and fitful in

quality. There a depression somewhere, as there always has

is

been in the theatre, and that depression has resulted, at times,

in impetuous rebellion against the manner in which the theatre
is run. While the democratic mass still supports musical
comedy, which is as much our national art as goldenrod is our
national flower; while the moving picture has deflected many
—
pens into channels of scenario writing, as it has deflected
actors from the legitimate stage, —
there still seems to be a
public clamouring for a theatre of art and ideas. The spirit of
secession, upon which the Shaw-Galsworthy-Barker school of
plajrvmghts flourished in England, seems at times to have flared
up in America. We have had our Independent Theatres,
our National Art Theatre Societies, our New Theatres, our
Leagues for the support of the better drama. But these, while
having some permanent effects, have not as yet changed the
face of theatrical conditions. Even the New Theatre (which
opened 6 November, 1909, and lasted nearly three years) an —
institution begun on a money guarantee rather than on a body
of ideas and a public that believed in them —
was able to get
from the drama market but one original American play for its
repertory (Sheldon's The Nigger), unless we include Mary
Austin's The Arrow Maker (27 February, 191 1) —
a thoughtful,
accurate study of Indian life.
What, therefore, seems to be the salvation of the artist of the
theatre? How will he gain his freedom from the dictates of the
commercial manager? One way out was hailed by Percy
—
MacKaye and others the rise of the civic spirit, which caught
hold of the idea begun in England by Louis N. Parker, who re-
vived the conception of the mediaeval guild pageant and applied
it to local history. To the standard of this idea there flocked
numberless enthusiasts: MacKaye, Thomas Wood Stevens,
 New Movements 297

head of the Drama Department of the Carnegie School of

Technology in Pittsburgh, William C. Langdon, of the Russell
Sage Foundation. It became a social matter as well as an art
matter. Towns, cities, localities dug deep into the public
treasury, and spectacles— suggesting a community of interest
Hke the New Orleans Mardi Gras, but actually based on a more
self-conscious attempt at celebration —
have encouraged a type
of drama requiring special writing. But the pageant
is not the
popular form of drama which will satisfy democratic Ameri-
ica. Nor has the pageant changed the face of the American
theatre.
But what it did help to do was to awaken in communities
an art consciousness. Individuals began to take pride in materi-
als out of which local drama might be constructed. In addition
this interest in pageantry, which called on the co-operation of
the amateur spirit, made people all over the country feel that
in the theatre they had heretofore possessed no participatory
voice. For the public was coming more to understand the
theatre and the drama, through the reading of plays, through
books on the drama's history, through extension lectures on the
theatre, through increasing numbers of courses in the practice
and theory of the art of the theatre. And they began looking
on the picture in their minds of the ideal theatre, and then on
the actual commercial playhouse in their towns as run by the
commercial manager; they compared the plays they liked to
read with the plays they were forced by the Trust's system of
"booking" to witness season in and season out. And the im-
pression was not favourable to the old regime.
This critical attitude is behind the secession which is going
on now (1919) in the theatre. Drama groups all through the
country have sprung up, and whether it be in Boston, New
York, Baltimore, Cleveland, Detroit, Chicago, and so on to the
Pacific coast, the secession impulse is the same a little theatre,
:

managed by some radical artist, has sprung up. Apparently there

is no compromise: the old theatre must go; the new theatre and

the new art must reign instead. These theatres are independent
of each other, though they exchange plays; they have no uni-
fying idea which brings them close together; they are working
in their separate ways, and upholding their own philosophies,
which are not always philosophies in accord with the American
298 The Drama, 1860-1918

spirit. Being they fly far afield in their interpre-

secessionists,
tation of American they are youthful. But their presence
life;

has already pointed a way to a more national unity in the art

of the theatre. They have called forth scenic artists of their
own, and in Robert Jones the regular manager has found a
treasure from the amateur ranks. They have created schools
of playwrights, like the Washington Square Players, the Pro-
vincetown Players, the Wisconsin Players. But if they ever
expect to have real influence on the theatre as an institution
they have yet to bring themselves out of amateur execution
into the dignified ranks of the professional.
The per se, is a misnomer; it has been carried
little theatre,

too far.Art has often been cramped in a thimble. The

amateur has built a small theatre because the large theatre
was unwieldy for him. But the future salvation of the theatre
has nothing to do with size. The little theatre has encouraged
the one-act play, of which form George Middleton and Percival
Wilde have been excellent exponents, and Theodore Dreiser,
with his Plays Natural and Supernatural, a surprising one; but
though the one-act play has great possibility it is not to be the
reforming element in the theatre. What really matters is that
the public taste is having a free outlet in its amusement. It is
showing the manager that amusement governed by the cost of
production is bound to debar from the theatre much that is
good, much that the American dramatist would like to do
which is of an experimental nature, but for which heretofore
there has been no outlet. These little theatres bring to mind
the possibilities of regional repertory and regional circuits they ;

point to less extravagance of material in the theatre, more

dependence, in scene, plot, and literary expression, on the
imaginative aliveness of audiences. It is in such atmosphere,
which must sooner or later be recognized by the theatre at large,
that the future American dramatist will work.
 CHAPTER XIX

Later Magazines

an earlier volume be found a record of

of this history ' will
IN the beginnings of periodical literature in America, and
some account of the many ambitious attempts made by
magazine editors and publishers before the middle of the nine-
teenth century. Since 1850 individual mistakes and failures
have been more nimierous than before, but there have been a
few successes, and magazines as a class have attained a position
of great importance. In fact, it is hardly an overstatement to
say that the rise of the magazine has been the most significant
phenomenon in the development of American publishing. The
reading of magazines has come to be far more common than
the reading of books. Thousands of persons who would resent
the imputation that they are lacking in culture read almost no
books at all and thousands more read only those which they
;

obtain at a public library. No home, however, in which there

is pretence of intellectual interest is without magazines, which

are usually read by all members of the family. This gain in the
prestige of the magazine is due in part to the desire of many
readers to be strictly up-to-date, in part to clubbing rates and
special offers which are presented with an assiduity that book
publishers rarely equal, but chiefly to the better reason that the
magazines offer the writings of the best authors, artistically
printed and often admirably illustrated, far cheaper than such
work can be purchased elsewhere.
This generosity of offering on the part of the magazines is
made possible by an illogically liberal postal policy and by the
development of modern advertising. A century ago, and even
much later, a magazine carried but a few pages of advertising,
' Book II, Chap. xx.
299
300 Later Magazines

mostly announcements of books and articles of stationery. The

great development of advertising did not begin until some time
after the Civil War, and it perhaps reached its climax about
the close of the century. At that time many magazines printed
more advertising pages than pages of text. In an earlier day
the magazine had derived its revenue from its readers ^from —
yearly subscriptions and from the sale of odd copies. In order
to meet expenses the subscription price was placed high, and
this price, in turn, kept the number of readers down. More-
over, the fear of alienating subscribers led the publisher to
continue on his mailing list many persons who were hopelessly
in arrears. The consumed the greater part
printer's bill often
of the total income, and both editorial salaries and payments to
contributors were meagre. The addition of a large revenue
from advertising made it possible to cut the subscription price
to the amount that would secure the largest circulation; for
advertising rates are determined chiefly by the circulation, and
if they can be made to yield enough the receipts from subscrip-

tions become an item of minor importance. It is said that in

some states of the market the blank paper on which a successful
magazine was printed has cost as much as the publisher re-
ceived for the edition. Contributors, editorial and office ex-
penses, printer's bUls, and profits were all paid from advertising.
The receipts from this source were so large as to make possible
honorariums to authors far greater than had been usual before,
and large enough to tempt into the pages of the more enter-
prising magazines almost any writer whom the editor might
desire.
Short which have proved so important a part of
stories,
American literature during the last fifty years,
have almost in-
variably made their appearance in magazines. By far the
greater number of novels by writers of distinction have been
published as serials before they were issued in book form. A
considerable amount of poetry, many essays, and even his-
torical writings of scholarly importance have found a place in
the better popular magazines.
These changes have been accompanied by the good and the
questionable effects that always accompany the democratiza-
tion of culture. It has been well that the patron of the news-
stand should be able to procure, sometimes for so small a sum
 General Characteristics 3oi

as a dime, a periodical that contained work by the best living

authors. has been a misfortune that magazines which called
It
themselves literary should be in the control of men who valued
literature chiefly for its indirect effect
on advertising receipts,
and who mixed contributions signed by great names with others
whose merit was a showy and specious appeal to the mass of
readers. Nor has the offer of high pay to contributors been an
unmixed The great author who was aware that the
blessing.
editor cared more for his name than for literary merit has been
tempted to print work that he must have known was unworthy;
and the young man or woman just coming into notice has been
persuaded by an exploiting publisher to write too hastily. All
the phenomena just mentioned can, however, best be traced
in connection with a brief survey of some of the more important
magazines.
It will be impossible, in the brief space allotted to this
chapter, to discuss or even to name
all the magazines with
which the student of American literature may find himself
concerned. There have been informational magazines, which
made much of the timeliness of their articles; scientific and
professional journals, popular, semi-popular, and technical;
journals of sports; juveniles; and many others not easily
classified. The changes have been the
of greatest importance
death or metamorphosis of the old-fashioned quarterlies and
other heavy reviews, and the rise of two groups of popular
magazines. One of these groups is represented by the Atlantic,
Harper's, Scribnefs Monthly, afterward the Century, and Scrib-
ber's Magazine, which all pride themselves on maintaining the
and artistic excellence;
highest practicable standard of literary
the other and later group by The Ladies' Home
is represented
Journal, McClure's, The American Magazine, and a number
more which frankly make an appeal to the widest possible
constituency of fairly intelligent readers.
In 1850 the chief quarterlies and reviews in existence were
The North American Review, Brownson's Quarterly Review, The
Christian Examiner, The New Englander, The Democratic Re-
view, The American Whig Review, The Princeton Review, The
Southern Literary Messenger, and The Southern Quarterly Review.
The decline of the quarterlies had already begun in England,
and of the American list named above but one lived virtually
302 Later Magazines

unchanged through the Civil War. This was The North Ameri-
can Review, which since its establishment in 1815 had been the
leader in its class. In 1850 it was continuing its steady course
under the editorship of Professor Francis Bowen. In the early
fifties Professor Bowen was succeeded by Dr. Andrew Preston

Peabody, who continued in control until after the Civil War

had begun. During these years the Review maintained its
original character as a sound, scholarly, if not a very virile
journal, modelled as far as might be on the great English quar-
terlies. Its small circulation was distributed throughout the
country, and when political and sectional animosities became
strong it declined all controversial articles that might alienate
subscribers. At last it reached the condition which Lowell
described in a well-known letter to Motley: "It wanted three
chief elements to be successful. It wasn't thoroughly, that is
thick and thinly, loyal, it wasn't lively, and it had no particu-
lar opinions on any particular subject. It was an eminently
safe periodical, and accordingly was in great danger of run-
'
ning aground. Lowell and Charles Eliot Norton became joint
'

editors in 1864, and succeeded in giving the Review new force

and character, though they naturally rendered it at the same
time more provincial. About 1873 Henry Adams and Henry
Cabot Lodge assumed the editorship. During the presidential
campaign of 1876 these gentlemen found themselves at vari-
ance with the publishers regarding matters of editorial policy,
and withdrew. The Review was then sold to Allen Thorndike
Rice, who moved it from Boston to New York and made it first
a bi-monthly, later a monthly. Since this time its character
has still further changed, until current issues, with their short
semi-popular and timely articles, bear slight resemblance to
those of 1850. Since no other American magazine has lasted,
even in name, for a hundred years, the centenary of the North
American in 1915 attracted much attention.
The other New England reviews that were in existence in
1850 or that were established later had something of a theologi-
cal cast. Orestes A. Brownson in Brownson's Quarterly Review
(founded in 1844) continued to present his personal interpreta-
Roman Catholic faith until 1864, when he began a
tion .of the
"National Series," announcing that the Quarterly "ceases to
be a theological review" and "is to be national and secular,
 Reviews 303

devoted to philosophy, science, politics, literature, and the

general interests of civilization, especially American civiliza-
tion. " After one volume of this series the Review was aban-
doned for eight years. In 1 873 the indefatigable editor renewed
it for the purpose, as he said, of showing that he was still loyal

to the church and he again protested this loyalty when in 1875

;

he brought the venture to a final close. While Brownson was

erratic in literary as well as in other judgments, he was an
original thinker and a forceful personality, and the reviews of
secular books in his quarterly are of constant value to the stu-
dent of American literature and American thought.
The New Englander, founded at Yale College in 1843 to
support evangelical Christianity though not avowedly a theo-
logical journal, passed through a variety of changes, and in
time found itself devoted chiefly to history and economics.
In 1885 it was known as The New Englander and Yale Review,
and in 1892 it became The Yale Review. In 1896 it relinquished
history to the newly founded American Historical Review, and
when in 191 1 the American Economic Association made plans
for a journal of its own the occupation of the Review was gone.
It then passed under the editorship of Wilbur L. Cross, who has
continued it as a general literary magazine and review, print-
ing poems, descriptive essays, and timely articles of moderate
length, as well as more serious dissertations. For a time The
New Englander and Yale Review tried the experiment of
monthly and then of bi-monthly issue, but for the great
part of its career the journal has been, as it is now, published
quarterly.
The Christian Examiner (dating from 1824), a bi-monthly
which bore something the same relation to the faculty of Har-
vard that The New Englander did to that of Yale, continued to
1869. It contained a large number of articles on purely liter-
ary topics, some of them fully the equal of those in the North
American.
In connection with these semi-theological periodicals of New
England may be conveniently mentioned The Princeton Review,
which expressed the devotion of the faculty of Princeton College
to conservative Presbyterianism, and was frankly a religious

journal. It always contained, however, some articles of general

literary interest. During its career from 1825 to 1884 it under-
304 Later Magazines

went changes in name and in place and frequency of publica-

tion that need not be traced here.
New York was the centre for political rather than religious
reviews. The Democratic Review, founded in 1838, partook
somewhat of the nature of a general magazine. Among its
contributors were many of the most prominent American
authors, including the New Englanders; and it also accepted
contributions from relatively unknown writers, like Whitman
in his early period. The contents included a little poetry and
fiction, much on historical and political subjects, and some
literary criticism,. For a time The Democratic Review was a
periodical of large relative importance, but it must have felt
keenly the competition of the popular illustrated Harper's
Monthly, and later of the Atlantic. Between 1853 and its death
in 1859 adopted sundry changes of name, and tried experi-
it

ments in monthly, weekly, and quarterly publication. The

American Whig Review had a briefer career, beginning in 1845
and coming to an end in 1852. It was a monthly, containing
some verse and fiction, and a considerable amount of general
literary criticism.
Among later attempts made to publish a review in New
York may be mentioned The New York Quarterly, which ran
from 1852 to 1855, The National Quarterly Review, i860 to
1880, and The International Review, a bi-monthly, 1874 to 1883.
All these, and especially the two last mentioned, show dis-
tinguished names on the list of contributors, and contain
articles of value. Their successive deaths were doubtless due
to the fact that the form of periodical to which they belonged
had had its day. The latest venture. The Unpartizan Review
(until 19 1 9 the Unpopular Review), established in 1914 by
Henry Holt and Company, and especially in charge of the
senior member of that firm, frankly makes an appeal to a
limited group of readers, and gives an opportunity for the
publication of clever and valuable essays that might not see the
light elsewhere.
The South, with conservative tastes in literature, has
its

perhaps offered of late the best field for the quarterly. The
Southern Quarterly Review, published at Charleston and at
Columbia from 1842 to 1857, had distinction of the old-fash-
ioned sort, and contained articles on science, law, philosophy,
 '

The Magazines of the Fifties 305

and literature, and many brief book notices. The Sewanee

Review, another quarterly, established in 1892, still continues.
Though it is closely connected with the University of the South
its contributors are not all local, and it has maintained its
dignity and its literary tradition well. The South Atlantic
Quarterly, edited at Trinity College, Durham, South Carolina,
began publication in 1902, and has also kept to a uniformly high
standard.
The most important popular magazines in existence in 1850
were the Knickerbocker in New York, Godey's Lady's Book and
Graham's in Philadelphia, and The Southern Literary Messenger
in Richmond. The Knickerbocker felt keenly the competition
of the newer magazines, but it continued to be published
through the Civil War, in its dying struggles adopting the name
of American Monthly, with Knickerbocker as a sub-title, and in
a final volume, January to June, 1865, dropping the old name
altogether. Though never distinguished, the Knickerbocker
had an honourable tradition, and offered a place of publication
for many American writers. Godey's Lady's Book was continued
to 1876, though it lost much of its popularity and almost all its

literary prestige before its death. A magazine devoting much

attention to the fashions and to fancy work never seems the
most dignified medium of publication, but in the height of its
glory Godey's was able to command original contributions from
authors of the highest rank. Graham's, which during the edi-
torship of Poe and for a few years thereafter had been the
greatest of the Philadelphia magazines and one of the most
honourable mediums of publication for authors all over the
country, had deteriorated greatly by the mid-century, though
it struggled on until 1859. The Southern Literary Messenger
survived at Richmond, with better quality than might have
been expected during the war, until 1864; but its period of
greatest importance was earlier, and it has already been treated
in another chapter.
Of the four leading popular magazines of first rank the most
important, though not the earliest in point of time, was The
Atlantic Monthly. Emerson, Hawthorne, Ixjngfellow, Whittier,
and Holmes had been writing for more than twenty years, and
Lowell for more than ten, before New England maintained a
' See Book II, Chap. xx.
VOL. Ill — 20
 ' "

3o6 Later Magazines

general literary magazine of high grade. It was not till the

stirring of political and movements emphasized
sociological
the need of an organ in which distinctly New England thought
could find expression that the Atlantic was founded. The real
father of the Atlantic was Francis H. Underwood, who pro-
jected a magazine as early as 1853 when he was in the offices
of John P. Jewett and Co. of Boston. This firm had come
into prominence as the publishers of Uncle Tom's Cabin, then
at the height of its fame, and a serial story by Mrs. Stowe was
to have been a feature of the new periodical. Financial con-
siderations prevented the appearance of the magazine as
planned. After the firm of Jewett failed. Underwood became
connected with Phillips, Sampson and Co., and at length
persuaded them to undertake the venture. According to a
familiar story the plan was really launched at a dinner given
by Phillips, the senior member of the firm, to Underwood,
Cabot, Motley, Longfellow, Lowell, Holmes, and Emerson.
Later, Lowell was decided upon as the first editor. To Holmes
is given the credit of suggesting the name "Atlantic Monthly.

Underwood went to Englajid in the interest of the project, and

elicited promises of support from some English writers. Later
a number of manuscript offerings from these men were entrusted
to Charles Eliot Norton, who was returning from Europe, and
were mysteriously lost en route. New Englanders afterward
felt a pious thankfulness for this accident, since it helped to
make more certain that the Atlantic should be distinctly
American.
The first issue of the magazine, that for November, 1857,
contained contributions from Emerson, Whittier, LoweU, C. E.
Norton, J. T. Trowbridge, and others. The most notable
feature was The Autocrat which ran as a
of the Breakfast-Table,
serial inthe first twelve numbers, and was followed in succes-
sive years by The Professor at the Breakfast-Table and The
Professor's Story [Elsie Venner]. With the failure of the pub-
lishers in 1859 the Atlantic passed to Ticknor and Fields, and a
little later James T. Fields, the junior member of this firm,

succeeded Lowell in editorial charge. Fields was one of the few

publishers who have been regarded by most of their authors as

» See Dr. Edward Waldo Emerson's The Early History of the Saturday Club,
1918, Chap. II.
 " —
"The Atlantic Monthly" 307

personal friends, and in many ways he made an ideal editor.

No other magazine has come so near to comprehending the
best that American writers had to offer as did the Atlantic
during these early years. It was fortunate in having so many
of its contributors within easy reach of Boston, and the dinners
of the Atlantic —
Club which seems never to have been a club
and of virtually the same group of men in the Saturday Club
have often been celebrated in reminiscence and history. The
jealous charge that only New Englanders were welcome to the
pages of the Atlantic was probably never well founded, though
it was natural that New England standards should be applied

in judging contributions. It was the Atlantic which first recog-

nized the value of Bret Harte's early tales, and drew the author
from the West and this is but one example of the reaching out
;

of the magazine for what was best everywhere. A list of the

contributors for the first fifty years would lack but few names
of American writers of distinction, and these would in almost
all cases be men who were committed to some other publisher.

Yet perhaps after all the case is best put by Howells when he
says: "The Atlantic Monthly .was distinctively a New
. .

England magazine, though from the first it has been charac-

terized by what was more national, what was more universal,
in the New England temperament.
Successive editors of The Atlantic Monthly have been James
Russell Lowell (1857-61), James T. Fields (1861-71), William
Dean Howells (1871-81), Thomas Bailey Aldrich (1881-90),
Horace E. Scudder (1890-98), Walter Hines Page (1898-99),
Bliss Perry (i 899-1 908), EUery Sedgwick (1908- ). While
the development of the illustrated magazines during the seven-
ties deprived the Atlantic of its conspicuous pre-eminence it
long continued to maintain its high standard and its distinctive
character. In 1908 it was sold by the Houghton Mifflin Com-
pany, the direct successors of Ticknor and Fields, to the Atlantic
Publishing Company, of which EUery Sedgwick is president, and
under his editorship it has increased its circulation without be-
coming cheapened, though to conservative readers who recol-
lect former days it seems to have departed sadly from its old
traditions.
Harper's Monthly Magazine, the first of the greater illus-
trated magazines, was established in 1850 by Harper and
 :

3o8 Later Magazines

Brothers, publishers, of New

York. It was founded, as a
member of the firm said, as a "tender" to the pubUshing busi-
ness. At first the contents were taken from English journals.
The prospectus, issued in 1850, announced:
The Publishers of the New Monthly Magazine intend ... to
place everything of the periodical literature of the day, which has
permanent value and commanding interest, in the hands of all who
have the slightest desire to become acquainted with it. The . . .

magazine will transfer to its pages as rapidly as they may be issued

all the continuous tales of Dickens, Bulwer, Croly, Lever, Warren,

and other distinguished contributors to British Periodicals: articles

of commanding interest from all the leading Quarterly Reviews of
both Great Britain and the United States: Critical Notices of the
current publications of the day: Speeches and Addresses. ... A
carefully prepared Fashion Plate, and other pictorial illustrations
will also accompany each number.

Borrowings were for a time credited to their original sovirces,

but soon this credit was omitted. In a business way the venture
was immediately successful, the circulation being given as
fifty thousand after six months, and one hundred and thirty
thousand after three years. Other magazines, especially those
which published chiefly the work of American authors, re-
sented this new competition and the attitude of Harper and
Brothers toward international copyright. The American Whig
Review for July, 1852, prints a long Letter to the Publishers of
Harper's Magazine signed "An American Writer," which ex-
presses with some show of temper sentiments that were not
'
infrequently uttered. After asking, ' Is such a publication cal-
culated to benefit American literature? and secondly, is it

just ? " the writer continues

Your publication, gentlemen, with all others of the same nature,

is simply a monstrosity; and the more widely it is diffused, the more
clearly is its moral ugliness revealed. It is an ever-present, ever-
living insult to the brains of Americans, and its indignity
every is
day increasing in intensity. Heading a select band of English re-
publications, it comes into oiu- literary market month by month,

offering a show of matter which no other magazine could present

were it fairly paid for, and effectually shutting out the attempts of
American pubhshers from even the chances of a sale. Its contents
are often attractive, although, considering the unbounded range of
 "Harper's Monthly" 309

your pillage, I have wondered that they were not better; it displays
a large number of well-printed pages, and generally boasts a few
thievings from Punch hardly up to the style of that very amusing
sheet; and it pleases the economical tastes of its readers. As a
scheme for making money, I cannot too highly commend your en-
terprise. It is a manifest improvement of the shopkeeper's maxim
oiE buying in the cheapest market and selling in the dearest, for you

do not buy in the market at all. You walk through the array of
literary wares which the English nation spreads before you, taking
what you please, and giving neither money nor thanks in return.
You reproduce what you have so cheaply obtained, and are thus
enabled to undersell your more scrupulous competitors. By this
process of appropriation and sale, you prove your right to the en-
viable title of sharp business men, but you also show yourselves
utterly destitute of regard for the literary talent of your own coun-
trymen, and for those national opinions and sentiments which are
only partially disseminated by the newspapers, and which it is the
peculiar province of English literature to supplant and destroy.

In time Harper's came more and more to take the work of

Americans, and it has long made a practice of printing only
original contributions. If during its early career it sinned by
ignoring and discouraging American authors, it seemed at a
later date almost to sin in the opposite direction. At times it
has published so many contributions from a young author of
growing popularity as to raise the question whether it was not
encouraging hasty and ill-considered writing. Among writers
of tales whom it exploited in this way were Richard Harding
Davis, Mary E. Wilkins, and Stephen Crane.
The first editor of Harper's Monthly was Henry J. Raymond.
Henry M. Alden, his successor, was editor for fifty years
(1869-1919). Fletcher Harper, a member of the firm, habitu-
ally contracted for the serials and for much other fiction, and
had a great share in determining the contents of the maga-
zine. Of the special departments which are distinctive of
Harper's Magazine the most important is " The Editor's Easy
Chair." George William Curtis assumed control of this in
are among
1853, and his essays which appeared under this head
the most delightful of his works. The most distinguished of

Curtis's successors in the "Easy Chair" is its present occupant,

William Dean Howells. Another department, "The Editor's
310 Later Magazines

Study," has been conducted at different times by William

Dean Howells and Charles Dudley Warner. Among the men
in charge of "The Editor's Drawer" have been Lewis Gaylord
Clark and John Kendrick Bangs.
The early numbers of Harper's Monthly each contained a
few woodcuts, many of them portraits. The proprietors soon
began to pay greater attention to illustration, and in 1856
started an engraving department of their own. Among well-
known artists who have been upon the staff are C. S. Rein-
hart, E. A. Abbey, and A. B. Frost, while many others were
frequent contributors of pictures. While Harper's Magazine
may well claim to be the pioneer among high-class illustrated
magazines in America, it was not spurred to its greatest exer-
tions until the appearance of Scribner's Monthly in 1870. The
rivalry between these two magazines, and later the triangular
rivalry engaged in by Harper's, the Century, and Scribner's
Magazine, has led to great improvements in the art of engraving
and in the technique of printing illustrations. When wood
engraving reached what was apparently its highest perfection,
attention was turned to process engraving, and later to methods
of colour reproduction and though there have been some freak-
;

ish and inartistic experiments the pictures in the better Ameri-

can magazines have been worthy accompaniments of the
letterpress. The excellence of American illustrating attracted
attention in Europe, and the three chief illustrated magazines
have each maintained a London edition. That of Harper's
was begun in 1880; Andrew Lang became editor in 1884.
The second of the greater illustrated periodicals in point of
time, Scribner's Monthly, began publication in 1870, after
Harper's Magazine had been in existence for twenty years.
The editor and one of the proprietorswas Josiah Gilbert Hol-
land, who had made a wide appeal as author of commonplace
works in prose and verse, and as successful editor of The Spring-
field Republican. Associated with Dr. Holland in the owner-
ship of the magazine were Roswell Smith and Charles Scribner,
head of the well-known firm of book publishers. After the
death of Charles Scribner differences arose between the manage-
ment and the publishing firm of Charles Scribner's Sons, which
resulted in the withdrawal of the Scribner interests and a
change of name to The Century Magazine in 188 1. Dr. Holland
 "The Century Magazine" 3ii

was to have contifiued in the editorship, but before the appear-

ance of the first issue of the Century he died and was succeeded
by Richard "Watson Gilder, who from the first had been asso-
ciate editor. The change of name brought no radical change
in scope or policy, and Scribner's Monthly and the Century
constitute virtually an unbroken series from 1870 to the present
time.
Dr. Holland was a clever editor who knew what the public
wanted. Prom the first he secured well-known contributors of
high rank. A Publisher's Department," with "A word to our
'

'

readers," or "A talk with our readers," though relegated to

the advertising pages, continued the methods of the old-fash-
ioned personal journalist. Richard Watson Gilder was a man
of greater literary ability and
finer taste, and though he could
hardly have gained initial success for the venture as well as
did Holland it is to him that the high rank of the Century is
largely due. Scribner's Monthly at first printed serials by Eng-
lish writers, but later made much of the fact that its longer
selections in fiction were all of American origin. Howells's A
Modern Instance was made a feature of the first volume after
the change of name. The Century has always given much space
to illustrated articles on history. There was something a trifle
"journalistic " in a series of articles on the Civil War by North-
ern and Southern generals, yet even in these the editorial con-
trol was such as to insure a reasonable standard of excellence.
The Life of Lincoln by Nicolay and Hay, large parts of which
appeared serially in the Century, was of higher grade. In
literary criticism E. C. Stedman had, even in the days of Scrib-
ner's Monthly, contributed articles on the American poets.
Without neglecting fiction, poetry, and other general literature
the magazine has devoted rather more attention than has
Harper's to matters of timely though not of temporary, interest.
,

From the first Scribner's Monthly made much of its illustrations,

and both directly and by the effect on its competitors its advent
had much to do with the improvement of American engraving
and printing. It claims credit for originating, in the mechanical
department, several practical innovations of value, such as the
dry printing of engravings.
Scribner's Magazine (always to be distinguished from
Scribner's Monthly), pubUshed by Charles Scribner's Sons and
312 Later Magazines

edited continuously until 1914 by Edward L. Burlingame, first

appeared in January, 1 887. Like Harper's Magazine it is closely
associated with a great publishing house, but unlike Harper's
in the early years it was never a mere "tender to the business."
Though announced by a rather conventional prospectus it

began auspiciously. Among the earliest contributors were

William James, Robert Louis Stevenson, Sarah Ome Jewett,
Thomas Nelson Page, EHzabeth Akers, H. C. Bunner, Andrew
Lang, Austin Dobson, Charles Edwin Markham, Edith Thomas,
Percival Lowell, A. S. Hill, and Thomas A. Janvier; and it has
since kept up the high quality and the diversity of material sug-
gested by these names. Like its chief rivals it maintains an
English edition.
not easy to characterize the distinctions between Har-
It is
per's Magazine, the Century, and Scribner's Magazine as these
have existed for the last thirty years. The long editorships of
Alden, Gilder, and Burlingame tended, fortunately, to produce
stability and to develop an individuality of tone in the periodi-
cals with which these men were respectively associated. The
difference is, however, one of tone merely, and is too subtle to
be readily analyzed or phrased. As has been said, the Century
is distinguished by special attention to history and timely

articles, but in fiction, verse, and general essays they are much
the same. None has been supported by a clique, party, or
school. Most of the greater American writers of the last genera-
tion have contributed to at least two, many to all three of these
magazines. None of them has had a monopoly of the work of
any distinctive and distinguished writer as the Knickerbocker
had a monopoly of Irving and the Atlantic had a monopoly of,
for example. Holmes.
Before the middle of the nineteenth century the better
magazines had mostly refrained from illustrations, except,
perhaps, occasional full-page inserted plates. It was for
Harper's Magazine and Scribner's Monthly to show that pic-
tures in the text were not incompatible with literary dignity
and excellence and they did this by securing the best available
;

literary material, and developing illustrations that were not

unworthy to accompany it. In so doing they indirectly and
unconsciously helped to prepare the way for the cheaper
magazines which sprang into such prominence a few years later.
 :

"Putnam's Monthly Magazine" 3i3

Amongthe less successful attempts at a literary magazine

were three which bore the name of another distinguished New
York publishing house. Putnam's Monthly Magazine first ap-
peared in January 1853, with C. F. Briggs as editor and George
,

William Curtis and Parke Godwin as assistant editors. In

introducing itself it said, with an evident glance at Harper's,
then so conspicuous and so irritating a figure in the magazine
world

A man —
buys a Magazine to be amused to be instructed, if you
please, but the lesson must be made amusing. He buys it to read in
—
the cars, in his leisure hours at home in the hotel, at all chance
moments. It makes very little difference to him whether the article
date from Greece or Guinea if it only interest him. He does not
read upon principle, and troubles himself little about copyright and
justice to authors. If a man goes to Timbuctoo and describes his
visit picturesquely and well, the reader devours the story, and is not
at all concerned because the publisher may have broken the author's
head or heart, to obtain the manuscript. A popular Magazine must
amuse, interest, and instruct, or the public will pass by upon the
other side. Nor will it be persuaded to "come over and help us"
by any consideration of abstract right. It says, very justly, "if you
had no legs, why did you try to walk?"
It is because we are confident that neither Greece nor Guinea
can offer the American reader a richer variety of instruction and
amusement in every kind, than the country whose pulses throb with
his, and whose every interest is his own, that this magazine presents
itself today.

This opinion, that for interest American writings could hold

their own with those that might be purloined anywhere in
the world, must have been pleasing to American authors.
The editors gave evidence of their sincerity by preserving the
anonymity of articles, letting each stand on its merits. The
firstvolume contained poems by Longfellow and Lowell, and
others of the New England group wrote for the magazine.
Curtis contributed his Potiphar Papers and Prue and I, Lowell
his Fireside Travels and Moosehead Journal, and Thoreau his
Cape Cod Papers. It would seem that a journal so edited and so
-

supported ought at this time to have succeeded, even though

in mechanical appearance it was somewhat heavy and un-
attractive. For reasons not fully explained, but supposedly
 "

314 Later Magazines

financial, the house of Putnam sold it after two years, and after
three years of deterioration under another management it was
merged with Emerson's Magazine, which itself died soon after.
Putnam's Magazine, sometimes referred to as a revival of
the older Putnam's Monthly Magazine, began publication in
January, 1868. R. H. Stoddard, E. C. Stedman, and Bayard
Taylor were connected with the editorial staff, but the list of
contributors was hardly as impressive as that of the former
Putnam's. According to the frank statement of the publishers
thismagazine did not pay, and after three years it was merged
with the newly founded Scribner's Monthly. In 1906 a third
Putnam's made its appearance, this time Putnam's Monthly
and The Critic. The last half of the title was retained from an
older periodical which was merged in the new. It was a semi-
popular, illustrated, bookish journal which lasted with some
changes-of name until 1910.
The Galaxy, an Magazine of Entertaining Reading
Illustrated
was published in New York from 1866 to 1878. Among con-
tributors to the first volume were William Dean Howells,
Henry James, Stedman, Stoddard, Bayard Taylor, Anthony
TroUope, William Winter, Phoebe Gary, and C. G. Leland.
As might be inferred from the subtitle, the Galaxy devoted
much space to fiction, yet its quality may be indicated by the
fact that when it died its subscription list went to The Atlantic
Monthly.
In Philadelphia, Sartain's Union Magazine of Literature and
Art ran its brief course from 1849 to 1852. The proprietor,
John was one of the greatest of American mezzotint
Sartain,
engravers,and the artistic excellence of the plates issued with
the magazine may have helped to arouse interest in periodi-
cal illustrations ofhigh grade; but the development of later
magazine illustration did not lie in the direction of mezzotints.
Lippincott's Magazine of Literature, Science, and Education,
founded in 1868, was at first a fairly solid general magazine,
without illustrations. In the competition toward the close of
the century it adopted a popular form, with many pictures and
a complete novelette in each issue, and boasted in its prospec-
tus: "It offers no problems to solve, has no continued stories
to hinder, and appeals to you just when you want it.
Many cities of the South and of the West have had their
 "The Ladies' Home Journal" 315

literary journals, the brief careers of

which are duly chronicled
in local histories,but they can hardly claim space in a more
general survey. The one exception is The Overland Monthly,
which began publication at San Francisco in 1868, with Bret
Harte as the first editor. An earlier chapter of this history'
remarks on the number of creditable literary periodicals that
were developed in the Ohio Valley while difficulties of com-
munication isolated communities in which there were many
persons of intellectual interests. By 1850 the Alleghanies were
no longer a serious hindrance to intercourse with Eastern cities,
and the magazines of Kentucky, Ohio, and Illinois had lost their
chief reason for existence. Soon after the discovery of gold the
Pacific slope offered another example of an isolated community
with a civilization of its own. The Overland was not the first
attempt at a literary magazine in San Francisco and though it
;

had considerable real merit it owes its fame chiefly to Bret

Harte. With the completion of the trans-continental railroads
the culture of the West was free to merge in that of the nation.
The Overland ceased publication in 1875. A successor, bearing
the same name and established in 1883, is still, however, one of
the best of the frankly provincial literary periodicals.
Among the magazines of a more recent generation is The
Ladies' Home Journal, a periodical of a sort which has always
flourished in Philadelphia. This had a small beginning in 1883,
and entered on its period of rapid growth with the accession of
Edward W. Bok to the editorship in 1889. Bok adopted some
of the methods of personal journalism, and thousands of readers
who named no other magazine editor knew of him,
could have
and rejoiced that his career was in outline that of the traditional
industrious apprentice. Even more than its predecessor,
Godey's Lady's Book, The Ladies' Home Journal is devoted to
household arts, but it has always laid emphasis on the stories,
essays, and poems that it published. Many of these make a
specious sentimental appeal, but from time to time the Journal
has contained noteworthy contributions from men of the rank
of Kipling and Howells. Many of the million readers which it
long boasted firmly believed it to be a literary magazine, and its
influence on popular taste must have been considerable.
The most significant group of later popular magazines had
' See Book II, Chap. xx.
3i6 Later Magazines

itsphenomenal development in New York during the last de-

cade of the nineteenth century and the earlier years of the
twentieth. The most conspicuous members of this group, with
the dates of their establishment were: The Cosmopolitan (1886,
founded in Rochester but removed to New York in 1887),
Munsey's (1891), McClure's (1893), Everybody's (1899), The
American {i<)06), Hampton's (1908). All of these were profusely
illustrated, mostly with half-tone engravings all of them were
;

—
supported chiefly by the advertising pages the improvement
of the half-tone process and the development of advertising
being the two things that made them economically possible.
All ofthem were planned as business enterprises, rather than as
mediums for the literary expression of certain communities or
groups of authors. All of them sold for some years, as a result
j'of competition, at the surprisingly low rate of ten cents a copy
or one dollar a year. All of them attained large circulations,
estimated in several instances as nearly three-fourths of a
million copies of each issue.
Of those mentioned, McClure's may be taken as a type, and
as most interesting to the student of literature, though it was
not the earliest in the field, it did not attain the greatest circu-
lation,and in recent years it has suffered a more serious decline
than some of its rivals. S. S. McClure, the projector and editor,
had established a syndicate which bought the work of promi-
nent authors and sold the rights of publication to newspapers.
He was thus able to pay sums which obtained manuscripts from
the more distinguished writers of the day, English and Ameri-
can. Among those who contributed, often of their very best
work, to the early volumes of the magazine were Stevenson,
Kipling, Thomas Hardy, Andrew Lang, Conan Doyle, WiUiam
Dean Howells, Joel Chandler Harris, F. Marion Crawford,
Edward Everett Hale, George W. Cable, and others of similar
rank. however, great names or even meritorious
It is not,
articles bought and inserted at random which give character
to a literary periodical. In its best days McClure's was in no
sense a rival of the Atlantic, Harper's, the Century, or Scrib-
ner's, though at times these could hardly boast more impressive
lists of contributors. It did not even equal in popularity some
of the other magazines of its own class. Its greatest success
was due, not to the work of the well-known writers named
 —
"Muck-raking" 317

above, but to articles of a sensational and timely nature

the so-called "literature of exposure." The formula for these
articles was simple. It consisted in adhering strictly to the
literal truth,but in so arranging and proportioning statements
of fact as to show most disadvantageously some person, cor-
poration, or other organization of which the public mind was
predisposed to believe the worst. Although the formula was
simple, the technique attained was in its way masterly. The
writers were mostly persons of journalistic instincts and prac-
tical newspaper training who on giving evidence of unusual
aptitude for this kind of writing were regularly employed on
the staff of the magazine. Ida Tarbell, who had previously
compiled a life of Napoleon and a popular life of Lincoln, pre-
pared a hostile history of the Standard Oil Company. Ray
Stannard Baker also wrote sensationally on economic questions,
and attacked other corporations. Lincoln Stefiens confined
himself especially to political corruption. These flourished in
McClure's from 1902 or earlier until 1906, when they associated
themselves with the newly-established American Magazine,
and McClure's developed a new staff of workers according to
the same models. In 1906 President Roosevelt in a famous
address expressed his disapproval of this kind of writing, and
applied to its authors the term "muck-rakers," which with
the derivative "muck-raking" has since been accepted as a
fitting designation. Popular judgment agreed on the whole
with the President, and while this type of writing is not even
now extinct, it gradually lost its vogue. Though it may fairly
be said to have begun with McClure's Magazine, it was really
symptomatic of a tendency of the time, and most other popular
magazines with the exception of Munsey's indulged in it. One
of the most famous series of muck-raking articles, in some ways
more sensational than anything in McClure's, was Frenzied
Finance, by Thomas W. Lawson, published in Everybody's.
Most of the magazines named above are still issued though
in most instances with change of format, and at an increased
price; but they no longer exert so great an influence. It
is too early to comment with certainty on their significance;

yet they cannot be ignored in a study of nineteenth century

literature, even if they reached their culmination just after
1900. Indeed, it may appear that many of the literary ten-
3i8 Later Magazines

dencies that developed during the nineteenth century were

concentrated and delivered to the twentieth century through
this peculiar development of periodical literature. If irresisti-
ble forces are making toward the democratization of litera-
ture, then the rise of these magazines marks an important
step in the movement. They brought writers who were un-
questionably the best of their time to a great number of readers
who might not otherwise have known them. On the other hand,
they brought into magazine writing some of the qualities that
had been developed by the modem journalist. Bad as the
muck-raking articles were in content and temper, they showed
forth methods of popular exposition that later essayists, even
the most conservative, are now adopting. Nor have the older
magazines escaped the influence of their younger rivals. The
Atlantic Monthly, long the exponent of the most reserved and
^bookish tradition, has for its present editor a man who received
his training with Frank Leslie's Monthly, The American Maga-
zine, and McClure's; and while old-fashioned readers may now
and then regret the resulting change of tone, it would be rash
to say that the change was all for the worse, or to feel that the
outlook for periodical literature today was not as bright as it
has been at any period of our national life.
 CHAPTER XX

Newspapers Since i860

WHEN the sudden beginning of the Civil War changed'

the whole current of national life, the newspapers of
the country were in many respects prepared to report
and interpret the great event. Had the war been clearly fore-
seen for a decade, more adequate preparation could hardly have
been made to adjust the service to the momentous changes
which came so swiftly. Ingenuity and aggressiveness in the
gathering of news, the rise and growth of which has been sketched
in another chapter, ' had quickened the whole profession. The
telegraph, which was little more than an experiment when the
Mexican War came on, had by i860 been extended to all parts
by the war. The revolution
of the country directly affected
thereby created in methods of gathering, transmitting, and
vending news had been accomplished in the interval of twelve
or fifteen years, and journalism was becoming accustomed to
the new order. The growing use and expensiveness of the tele-
graph had already led to the formation of press associations.
And at almost the same time the invention of the modern
papier macM process of stereotyping, together with improve-
ments in printing presses, removed mechanical obstructions
which until 1861 had curbed the production of newspapers.
With all these general developments there had been, until a
few weeks before hostilities began, Uttle detailed preparation to
meet the actual crisis; the press was not on a war footing there
;

were no experienced war correspondents.

Newspapers had spread over the whole country, flowing into
the Central valleys and plains and down the Western slopes
' See Book II, Chap. xxi.
319
320 Newspapers Since 1860

along with the most enterprising of the early settlers. When

Lincoln read his first inaugural, only four states or territories in
the Union were without newspapers to report it; twelve years

later, not one was without a newspaper to chronicle the defeat

and death of the great journalist who sought the Presidency.
News style had taken essentially the form still to be found in
the more conservative papers of the country headlines were
; still

inconspicuous, never more than one column wide, and seldom

revealing the news they topped. The custom among many pa-
pers of sending correspondents throughout the South and the
Far West to report conditions and events was now to prove use-
ful preparation for the period when the South became the great-
est source of news in the world. Foreign correspondence after
its rapid spread in the forties had been somewhat more fully
organized, although it was no more ably conducted. The pres-
sure of domestic events led to some neglect of the foreign field,
just before and during the war, and it was not until the short
Franco-Prussian confiict that European affairs again received
much attention from the American press.
Never before was a war so well reported as was the American
Civil War —so fully, promptly, and accurately. Although it is
generally believed that Englishmen in the Crimea virtually cre-
ated modern war correspondence, its real beginnings had been
made years before by American reporters in the war with Mex-
ico, and the whole system of reporting the progress of war and
presenting it fully and promptly to the public was developed
very nearly to perfection by American journahstic enterprise
in the Civil War. The problems confronting the newspapers
when the war began were the greatest ever faced by journalists.
The size of country to be covered, the number of armies and of
widely separated actions, and the still primitive means of com-
munication tested the valour and ingenuity that sought to over-
come them. When the first gun was fired no paper had a system
for reporting from the front, though in the weeks before that
event several of them had begun to send men to important
places by way of precaution. Before Sumter fell, the New York
Herald had received enough papers from its correspondents to
furnish a roster of the Southern army which convinced the
leaders that there was a spy in the Confederate war office, and
in a short time after Sumter a net of reporters was spread all
 The Civil War 321

over the South, placed at every important point, and sent with
every army. The Herald quickly built a great news-gathering
organization, with the Tribune and the Time^ following as close
competitors, while every important paper in the country sent at
leastone correspondent to Washington or to the front. These
men, nearly all inexperienced in their special duties, but called
upon to report a more rapid and long-continued series of mili-
tary movements than had ever before been recorded, not only
accomplished a remarkable series of individual achievements
but set a new standard in that type of journalism.
The task of organizing such corps of correspondents as were
sent out by the Herald, Tribune, and Times, of New York, of
discharging the normal functions of the papers, and of supplying
the unprecedented demand for newspapers, extraordinary as it
was, did not lead to many important
advances in journalistic
practice. The changes due to the war were mainly economic.
In the South, which had depended almost entirely on the North
for its supplies, the lack of paper was soon felt and before peace
came had caused the suspension of many papers. Many others
were suppressed by Northern military authorities. The press
of the South, indeed, lost much and gained little or nothing by
the war. A rigid government censorship and news bureau de-
prived those papers even of such opportunities as other cir-
cumstances might have permitted. Less enterprise was manifest
in news-gathering than in printing official communications and
editorials. But it may be said that, although before the war
began there was much difference of Southern editorial opinion
regarding the advisability of secession, after the decision was
made, a united press supported the Confederate authorities.
Censorship in the North was unorganized, spasmodic, some-
times oppressive, and generally ineffectual. The Post Office
Department then, as more recently, denied the privilege of the
mails to papers adjudged to be treasonable, even to some which
criticized the use of force against the seceding states. Corre-
spondents were in some welcomed and trusted by the mili-
cases
tary authorities in others they were excluded. Early in the war
;

a censor was placed in the telegraph office at Washington; but

official oversuppression finally brought about a reaction which led

to a more liberal policy. The natural desire of the authorities

to prevent the circulation of information that might be useful to
VOL. HI 21
322 Newspapers Since 1860

the enemy, and the nervousness caused by the many Copper-

head papers opposed to the war, friendly to the South, or un-
friendly to the government, led to much official criticism of
mere news enterprise and to acts of suppression by the author-
ities. For instance General McClellan requested the War
Department to suppress the New York Times for printing a map
of the works and a statement of forces beyond the Potomac, no
part of which had, in fact, come from other than public sources.
The New York World and Journal of Commerce were suspended
for several days because they unsuspectingly published a bogus
presidential proclamation. The Chicago Times, a leading Cop-
perhead paper, was forced to suspend publication for a short
time because of disloyal utterances. The strong feeling engen-
dered by the conflict led to many acts of mob violence against
newspapers, most of them in smaller towns, and in the aggregate,
scores of them were as a result suspended or destroyed, though
relatively fewer fatalities resulted than from the earlier acts of
violence against the abolitionist press. The most important
mob attack on a great city paper was directed against the New
York Tribune during the draft riots on 13 July, 1863.
It was not mere editorial arrogance or vanity that James
Gordon Bennett displayed when at the outbreak of the war he
assured President Lincoln of the support of the New York
Herald. Lincoln's subsequent offer of the French mission to the
erratic journalist vouches for that. For editorial influence was
then at its greatest, and the power wielded by the leaders in the
—
great era of personal journalism such men as Greeley, Ben-
nett, Bowles, Raymond, Bryant, Schouler — made government
by newspapers something more than a phrase. The country
was accustomed to a journalistic leadership in which it had
faith. Not a few editors felt competent to instruct the govern-
ment in both political and military affairs, and some undertook
to do so, notably Horace Greeley, in the New York Tribune, to
the clamour of which paper is attributed the ill-advised aggression
which led to the defeat at Bull Run. Of all the editorials writ-
ten during the war, Greeley's "The Prayer of Twenty Millions,"
printed in the Tribune on 20 August, 1862, is probably the most
significant, not only because it indicates the tone assumed in
many papers, but especially because it drew from President
Lincoln a reply which defined more clearly than ever before his
 The Civil War 323

position on the question and made unmistakable the

of slavery
relative positions of Presidentand editor. There is a resem-
blance between this encounter and an earlier and less public one
between Lincoln and Seward, and the two events are not incom-
parable in importance. After that exchange of ideas the news-
papers of the North supported the President more completely
than before. As the war progressed, however, the editorial
gradually came to occupy a important place than news, and
less
by the close of the conflict the authority and influence of the
great personalities of journalism had appreciably declined.
The war produced one immediate economic change which
proved the beginning of a revolution still going on. The great
demand for news brought a tremendous increase in circulation
to those papers able to furnish the fullest accounts of the war,
and contributed to the prosperity of the larger papers at the
expense of the smaller ones. Although great numbers of papers
were set up to meet the demand for war news, still more suffered
extinction, with the result that in many states there were fewer
in 1865 than in 1861. In Illinois, for instance, 144 papers were
begun, and 155 were discontinued in the four years. Part of
the decrease was due to lack of labour, a condition which led to
the invention of the "patent insides." Contrived as a means
of economy, this device led to important developments in
country journalism in later decades by reducing the cost of
printing.
Reconstruction was accompanied by still further mechan-

icalimprovements in stereotyping and in presses which made

possible great growth in the industry. The extension of co-oper-
ative news-gathering was rapid after 1865, when the Western
Associated Press was formed, largely through the initiative of
Joseph Medill of the Chicago Tribune. This association, co-or-
dinated with that of New York, greatly broadened the news
resources of both Western and Eastern papers. The rapid
growth to the West and in the great Central valleys continued,
accelerated by a decrease in the price of paper towards the end
of the period, as well as by the increase in population. In the
South, where the business had suffered most, the dozen years
following the war were a time of restoration, as well as of exten-
sion. Many of the leading papers had survived —in Louisville,

Memphis, Nashville, Richmond, Atlanta, New Orleans —and

324 Newspapers Since 1860

these laboured energetically, in the face of appalling difficulties,

hasten the revival of the country.
political as well as material, to
Many suspended papers were restored, and many new ones of
stability were begun. There were other new ones, also, ephem-
eral but troublesome, set up to support the carpet-baggers
and others who delayed the healing of old sectional wounds.
Twenty years passed before the newspapers of the South re-
covered from the injury wrought by the war.
The war had accustomed publishers to lavish expenditure
of money in gathering news and had created many new readers
who could not be retained by editorial discussion or heavy style.
They had been attracted by lists of killed and wounded, narra-
tives of vivid fact, rather than by discussion it was necessary
;

to find a substitute for the absorbing accounts of war. One

result of this effort to avert a return to the earlier heaviness,
perhaps, was the development of a new journalistic technique,
the cultivation of an artistic narrative style. It was Charles A.
Dana, through the New York Sun, who set the new pattern
that was followed by the American press generally for two
decades. His idea was merely to apply the art of literary crafts-
manship to the choosing and the telling of the varied stories of
the day's events. Human interest, not importance of meaning
or consequences, governed the choice of topics. This new style
possessed simplicity and clearness; abounded in details chosen
it

for artistic efifectiveness rather than for intrinsic news value. It

added grace, without losing force; the deft touch replaced the
heavy or awkward stroke. Dana had begun his journalistic
career on the New York Tribune under Greeley, where he was
managing editor and a most important figure until 1862. He
became editor of the Sun early in 1868. What he meant to do,
and did, Dana announced thus: "The Sun .will study
. .

condensation, clearness, point, and will endeavour to present its

daily photograph of the whole world's doings in the most lumi-
nous and lively manner."
In certain other respects, also, Dana and the Sun were
characteristic of the new era. The great majority of papers
were still was as bitter
servile party organs; political discussion
as ever, and nowhere more so than in the Sun; vigorously
expressed personahties enlivened the editorial columns. The
rancour displayed in the presidential campaign of 1872 was un-
 Weekly Papers 325

paralleled. But in the midst of bitter party controversy, inde-

pendent journalism was growing apace; the editor and the
politician were becoming more and more disentangled. The
politician kept political power and the editor looked elsewhere
for his influence —in a variety of interests, social, literary, and
commercial. The influential editors throughout the country
who were taking the place of the giants of the preceding era
were following the precept of Bowles in learning to control
what they seemed only to transcribe and narrate. They no
longer preached or laid down the law. It was the publishing
and depicting of facts, not the invective of editorial attack,
that achieved results in the exposure of the Tweed ring by the
New York Times and Harper's Weekly in 1871 and of the "Whis-
key Ring " by the St. Loms Globe-Democrat. Exploits like these
had never been attempted before; though they have never
since been equalled in daring or in results obtained, they were
progenitors of the sensational press characteristic of a later
period.
Independent political thought and discussion were greatly
strengthened by the growth of weekly papers which were estab-
lished or which became prominent just after the war. The
Independent, founded as a progressive and liberal religious jour-
nal in 1848, had been a powerful anti-slavery force, a leading
journal of political, literary, and social, as well as of religious

discussion. When Henry Ward Beecher took the editorship

in 1 861 he said he "would assume the liberty of meddling with
every question which agitated the civil or Christian commu-
nity," and in doing so he wrote, in this weekly newspaper, and
in the Christian Union, now the Outlook, of which he became
editor in 1870, some of the strongest editorials in the American
press. "It is the aim of the Christian Union to gospehze all
the industrial functions of life," Beecher wrote. These two are
but the most conspicuous of a large class of religious journals,
more nearly newspapers than magazines, which had much
popularity and influence as organs of general discussion through
the years of Reconstruction.
When the New York Times attacked the Tweed ring, its
most effective ally was Harper's Weekly, an illustrated paper
estabUshed in 1857, which partly through its remarkable use of
illustrations and its sound editorial policy under George William
326 Newspapers Since I860

Curtis' had become popular and influential. The illustrations

and cartoons of Thomas Nast in this paper were one of the strik-
ing features of the journalism of the war, and in the years fol-
—
lowing became a national force the artist was declared by-
General Grant to be the foremost figure in civil life developed
by the war. His power as a cartoonist was still growing when
in 1870 the Times began its great exposure, and Nast, who in
Harper's Weekly had already begun the fight, collaborated with
a series of cartoons which still rank with the greatest, both in
conception and in effect, ever published. At the same time
Curtis, who became political editor in 1863 and editor three
years later, made the paper a telling force in independent jour-
nalism, notably during the following decade in advocating
civil service reform and similar movements for the cleansing
of politics.
A more potent force in the movement towards independence
was another weekly, the Nation, established under the editor-
ship of Edwin Lawrence Godkin in 1865, which in the course
of a few years set a new standard of free and intelligent criticism
of public affairs. Godkin had begun serious work in journal-
ism when in 1853, at the age of twenty-two, he had gone to the
Crimea for the London Daily News. He had come to the United
States in 1856, had become a keen student of American life,
politics, and journalism, and during the war had done the coun-
try great service by telKng Englishmen, through the Daily
News, the truth concerning American conditions. He felt that
the American press did not fairly represent the thought and
opinions of educated men. He wanted to "see whether the
best writers in America cannot get a fair hearing from the
American public on questions of politics, art, and literature
through a newspaper." Within a year after the Nation was
established a discerning observer said that "it will do much to
raise the reputation of American journalism in Europe and by
its example to raise the tone of our other newspapers," and

twenty years later an eminent English editor called it the best

periodical in the world.It has been said that all the problems
of democracy had a fascination for Godkin, and into the dis-
cussion of them he flung himself with enthusiasm and vigour
equalled only by his breadth and keenness of understanding
' See Book III, Chap. xm.
 The Decline of Editorials 327

and the clear, pungent attractiveness of his style. He soon made

the Nation a source of intellectual and political inspiration for
that somewhat Hmited number to whom intellectual journalism
could appeal. Best known for the long struggle of the Nation
for civil service reform,and for a prolonged and finally success-
ful fight against Tammany, through the Evening Post, of which
he became editor in 1881, and for other great combats in which
popularity was never considered, Godkin was probably the
greatest single force for better government in the thirty years
following the war. And although never read by the people
generally, he profoundly affected the leaders of thought and of
journalism, and through them exerted an influence no less wide,
and, certainly no less vital to the health of the finer type of
democracy, than that of men whose service to journalism is
more frequently mentioned and imitated.
But the strongest tendency of the newspapers was not indi-
cated by the independence of a Bowles or a Godkin, nor by any
apparent revival of the idea that editorial discussion was an
important function of the newspaper. Successors of the early
editorial giants were found in Prentice, Medill, Grady, Rhett,
Gay, Young, Halstead, McCuUagh, the second Samuel Bowles,
Rublee, McKelway, Hemphill, and Watterson, to mention only
a few of many; personality continued to make itself felt, as it
—
has done in Henry Watterson, who carried into the new cen-
—
tury traits of a journalism fifty years old, ^in Scripps, Otis,
Nelson, Scott, and scores of others; but by the early eighties
the name of the editor had become relatively unimportant
along with the editorial.
The principal features in journalistic development after the
close of the era of Reconstruction were the transformation of
the larger papers into great business concerns closely connected
with the manifold increase in the amount of advertising printed,
the extension and minute organization of news service, the de-
velopment of variety in subject matter, and the growth of sen-
sationalism in the treatment of news. The tremendous growth
of advertising, which by 1890 had become the principal source
of income, and which has gained greatly since then, transferred
the controlling interest in newspaper policy from the editorial
office to the business office, from politics to salesmanship. Cir-
culation was stimulated to furnish an outlet for advertising
328 Newspapers Since 1860

rather than, as in earUer times, for its own sake as a sotirce of

income and power.
The largest single factor in building the machinery for news-
gathering was the press association. After a period of change
and struggle beginning in the forties, the Associated Press grad-
ually acquired a dominant position, taking its present form in
1900, and growing in prestige ever since. For years it dealt
only with routine events reported by its clients, but in later
years it has formed a staff of experienced journalists of its own,
has established its bureaus in all leading cities in this country,
in the capitals larger cities of Europe, and in Cen-
and the
tral and, more South America. Except that the lead-
recently.
ing papers maintain special correspondents in Washington, all
papers obtain most of their news, except that of local affairs,
from the Associated Press or one of its two chief competitors.
This news is written in full, and printed, usually, as served.
Consequently the press association has had a great influence
not only in establishing the tenor of news and the point of view
in reporting, but in developing a uniform style in news-writing
as well. The influence has been one of restraint, conservative
and sound, and for thirty years has tended to improve the tone,
as well as the news quality, of American newspapers. The art
of reporting and interviewing was assiduously cultivated the ;

practice of correspondence declined, and along with it the atten-

tion paid to foreign news. Although the Associated Press and
several newspapers had European bureaus, that field was but
superficially covered between the Civil War and 1898, except
for a few exploits during the Franco-Prussian war. The war
with Spain gave occasion for some of the most brilliant feats
of individual reporting yet achieved, and in its sequel served
to stimulate interest in events beyond our borders. Several
papers, notably the Chicago Daily News, built up staffs in
the foreign field exceeding in scope and effectiveness those of
any other newspapers in the world. But in general the foreign
news service languished.
The most conspicuous and pervasive influence was the sen-
sationalism introduced about 1880 and reaching its climax
early in the present century. It was compounded of the prac-
tices first exemplified by Bennett and of all subsequent methods
capable of appealing to popular curiosity and emotion, all car-
 Sensationalism 329

ried to extremes. The example was set by Joseph Pulitzer, a

brilliant journalist ofHungarian birth who in 1878 bought the
St. Louis Post-Dispatch, put his methods into effect with marked
success, and in 1883 carried his idea to New York, where he
bought the moribund World from Jay iGould and in a few years
made it the most profitable and the most widely imitated news-
paper in the country. In the hands of Pulitzer the new jour-
nalism was much more than merely sensational. His purpose
was to make his paper an organ for the expression of popular
opinion, in order to achieve social and political reforms through
giving expression to the democratic will. The programme he
laid down in 1883 and followed vigorously was to advocate a tax
on incomes, inheritances, luxuries, monopolies, and privileges,
to reform the civil service, punish corruption, and otherwise
equalize the distribution of opportunities and advantages. To
that end he produced one of the most brilliant and forcible
editorial pages in the country.
Journalistic practice was less influenced by the example of
the editorial page of the World, however, than by the sensa-
tional selection and treatment of news. The tone of the paper
was brisk and vivacious, the subject matter appealed to the
emotions and interests of the largest number of people in the mid-
dle and lower classes. Wrongs of all sorts from which the people
suffered were to be corrected by the exposure of startling
examples. Naturally, having found the way to make a start-
ling appeal through the recital of evil and misfortune, it was dis-
covered that a similar appeal to any emotions produced much
the same result, and yellow journalism was the inevitable sequel.
The many papers which followed the example of Pulitzer lacked
the fine purpose and the genius of their model, and therefore
imitated only the blatancy, the vulgarity, the lack of restraint
and of scruple which became an invariable part of the method.
The greatest of the followers of Pulitzer was William
all

Randolph Hearst, who, beginning with the San Franciso Exam-

iner in the middle eighties, by the use of methods much the same
as those of Pulitzer soon surpassed the elder sensationalist
because he was untrammelled by other journalistic purposes
than the most profitable news-vending. Hearst's task, as has
been said, was to cheapen the newspaper until it sold at the
coin of the gutter and the streets. So he rejected news which
330 Newspapers Since 1860

"did not contain that thrill of sensation loved by the man on

the street and the woman in the kitchen. He trained his men
to look for the one sensational picturesque fact in every occur-
rence, and to twist that fact to the fore." In 1895 he went to
New York, where he bought the Journal, and contested with
Pulitzer for the palm of "yellow" sensationalism. He won, for
by the close of the century the World had begun to moderate
its tone and methods, while Hearst had only fairly begun the

career which has strung a series of his papers from coast to

coast and tainted the whole of American journalism with cheap
and flashy emotionalism.
The changes which the example of these leaders brought
into the newspapers at large were various, and not all unde-
sirable. The militant journalists exposed abuses and accom-
plished many reforms and undoubtedly made themselves feared
by many wrongdoers. And in doing so they gained in boldness
and independence, especially so far as poUtics was concerned.
Not only have PuHtzer and Hearst attacked some of the oldest
and worst abuses of intrenched privilege; they have been the
example for many other journalists, who, in spite of extrava-
gances and mistakes, have helped to cure many an evil by expos-
ing it to the light. They reached an ever increasing proportion
of the population, vastly added to the sum of general knowledge
among the least literate elements of the population, and appealed
to a greater variety of interests than had before been touched
by the newspapers. More attention was given to amusements,
to sports, to the special domains of women and children. The
made the use of illustrations
perfecting of mechanical engraving
convenient and cheap, and the possibilities in this field were
promptly exploited. There had been but a slight increase in
the use of cartoons in the daily newspapers, even after the great
battle of pictures in the campaign of 1872, until the World
during the eighties developed that feature into a leading char-
acteristic of popular daily journalism. Its popularity and its
both as a source of entertainment and as a ready and
utility,

have never decreased.

effective substitute for the editorial,
Closely related to this aspect of growth is the rise of the
Sunday supplement. Sunday newspapers had occasionally
vexed the pious all through the nineteenth century, and Sunday
issues of daily newspapers, containing some news, but mainly
 Changing Standards 33i

fiction, features, and pictures, had gradually found a place,

especially during and after the Civil War, when seven issues a
week were deemed a necessity. But the old-fashioned jour-
nalists were unfriendly to the idea. Greeley in the later fifties
had no sympathy with the proposal of Dana, then his managing
editor, to issue a Sunday "picture paper." The essence of the
modern Sunday supplement is that it is made of pictures, light
or sensational fiction, accounts of the strange, mysterious, or
queer, gossip about persons of interest or notoriety —the froth-
iest part of the journalism of sensation. Its popularity has
been due in great measure not merely to the lightness of tone
but to the "comics" and the coloured pages, which interest the
uneducated and the very young without making any demand on
the intelligence. Only a small number of papers have been able
to sustain, against the demand for the sensational, a Sunday
supplement of real literary or pictorial worth.
Although sensationalism has contributed much of value to
journalism, much that is undesirable must be charged against
it. One of its staple commodities is gossip, scandal, crime, the
whole miserable calendar of misery and ugliness of life, served
with a flavor of sentimentalism. This aspect of life was kept
to the fore in the leading mongers of sensation, and, although
the worst of them have gradually modified their tone since
the closing decade of the last century, and a relatively small
number of papers went to extremes at any time, the effect has
been general and lasting. The demand for gossip led to ruth-
less trespassing on the right of privacy; the taste for exciting
details led to distortion of facts or deliberate falsification; the
appetite for the personal and concrete induced rank abuses of
the otherwise admirable development of the interview. The
inevitable effect of this emphasizing of the superficial and mere-
tricious decline in the more substantial content of the
was a
papers. Instead of what a speaker said, appeared light-hearted
chatter about his appearance, the audience, an interruption.
Instead of the substance of discussions on pubUc questions, in
Congress or elsewhere, brief, inconsequential resumes were pro-
vided by writers of no authority. Against this tendency the
most substantial press associations have exerted a constant and
helpful influence,and a growing number of papers, great and
small, have steadily maintained and improved many of the
332 Newspapers Since 1860

better characteristics of journalism; but these have not altered

the general drift. The quality of editorial discussion has de-
clined along with that of the news. Discussion and criticism
of literature, drama, and art has almost disappeared in a flood
of gossip about writers, actors, and artists. These important
matters, which were once a leading occupation of the daily-
press, have been driven to find other journalistic lodgment.
The period embraced in the first twenty years of the present
century may not inappropriately be characterized as one of
transition and specialization. The older journalism has passed
away and the newer has not yet found a medium of control
satisfactory to the press itself and to society. The decay of
old political and social definitions in society itself has aggra-
vated and prolonged the process. As additional sources of news
have been developed and the machinery for gathering and dis-
tributing the product has been improved, the problem of what
to do with the available material has become increasingly diffi-
cult and important. In so far as a solution has been found, it
has been in the selection of news and in the growth of innumer-
able papers having special interests. The all-round newspaper
has become so huge an undertaking, entirely dependent on the
more or less uncertain whim of popular favour, that the organs
of special interests have usually taken some other form.
The necessity of selecting for publication only a small part
of the available wealth of daily news has made of the news
editor the judge of what aspect of the world's activity should be
presented to the readers, who must see the world through his
eyes, if at all, and has placed in his hands incalculable power in
moulding public opinion, in establishing in countless ways the
levels and proportions of daily thought and life. This has always
been true in some measure of course, and so long as newspapers
were predominantly political the bias of the editor was under-
stood and discounted. When they were no longer mainly con-
cerned with politics, and the lines of cleavage in public affairs
became uncertain, shifting from the political to the social and
economic, the point of view of the editor became not only increas-
ingly important to the reader who sought the light of truth but
also increasingly difficult to ascertain. In such measure as the line
of cleavage has been established between the two chief economic
elements in society, self-interest, if nothing else, would naturally
 ,

Recent Manifestations 333

have led the greatly capitalized newspapers to look at life from

the point of view of property interest. Enough of such a bias
has been perceptible to arouse a profound distrust of the daily
press as an institution in which the point of view, the purposes,
and aspirations of large classes were sure of adequate or sym-
pathetic representation. A similar distrust of the Associated
Press has arisen for precisely the same reasons. It has been
the avowed aim of that association to render its members a
service entirely uncolouredby prejudice, and so long as political
bias was the only one to be taken into account it succeeded
admirably. Whether justified in doing so or not, the leaders
and sympathizers in labour movements and other manifestations
of new social and industrial forces have come to believe that
the press associations have the same restricted outlook as the
"capitalistic" press, and that the world they picture day by
day but a partial world. An equally widespread possibility
is

of control of opinion through the purposeful selection or modi-

fication of intelligence has been perceived in the "plate matter"
furnished to thousands of smaller papers throughout the coun-
try by the Western Newspaper Union.
The editorial page of the daily newspaper has in recent years
become a receptacle for humour, health hints, religious tidbits,
questions and answers, social pleasantries, and other rniscellany,
crowding the early solid area of discussion and debate into a
column or two of uncertain significance or value. There are
striking exceptions to this, but generally, thoughtful editorial
discussion has gone from the daily papers to the weeklies. The
inadequacy of American newspapers in discussing the problems
produced by the World War is a sobering manifestation of
present journalistic limitations. No errors of the administra-
tion during the latest war have been charged to the compelling
leaders of the Greeleys of today.
Such papers as the Outlook, the Independent, the Nation,
and other survivors from an earlier period have come to have a
place of increased importance in the journalistic scheme, and
have been joined by many later comers, like Collier's, the Survey,
the New Republic, theReview, the Liberator (formerly the Masses)
Reedy s Mirror, the Dial, the Bellman (some of which have
already run their course and died), and a number of others to
which the thinking public must turn for much important but
334 Newspapers Since 1860

unexciting news and well-considered discussion of matters of

current interest. There have also arisen a number of party or
individual organs, like Bryan's Commoner, La Follette's, and
Harvey's Weekly, which seek to preserve the personality and
individuality now almost wholly gone from the daily press.
Enterprises in social service have become an established ac-
tivity of the newspapers. From lending aid to police officials

in investigating crime and detecting criminals, reporters have

proceeded on behalf of their papers and the public to many
notable exploits of this kind. These have been in large measure,
like Stanley's search for Livingstone, undertaken to create sen-
sational news. Related to this conception of the uses of a news-
paper go the departments of personal aid, giving advice in
matters of health, courtship, manners, law, greatly helpful,
though sometimes reminiscent of the Athenian Mercury. More
ambitious have been such undertakings as the long-continued
campaign carried on by the Chicago Tribune for a "sane
Fourth" and the Good Fellow movement at Christmas time,
the series of free lectures and other educational endeavours of
the Chicago Daily News, the municipal projects of the Kansas
City Star, the fresh air funds, ice funds, pure milk funds, and
other philanthropic projects supported by many papers. These
had become an established function of American newspapers
long before the calamities of Europe made of them the wonderful
collectors of charitable gifts they have been throughout and
since the war. The newspapers have made efforts to prevent
swindling by excluding questionable advertising and expos-
ing frauds. Some have gone so far as to guarantee their adver-
tisements. Others have established "bureaus of accuracy and
fair play" and made systematic plans to publish corrections of
their mistakes.
While the newspapers have been finding new ways in which
to serve the public, the public through state and Federal laws
has been manifesting a similar interest. In 1900 the Associated
Press gave up its charter in IlUnois and secured a new one in
New York because the Illinois Supreme Court held that it had
devoted its property to a public use ... in effect, granted
'

'

to the public such an interest in its use that it must submit to

be controlled by the public, for the common good, to the extent
of the interest it has thus created in the public in its private
 The World War 335

property." In somewhat this spirit, laws have been enacted

within the present century requiring the publication of owner-
ship and circulation of newspapers, stipulating that all adver-
tisements shall be labelled, and in various states curtailing the
right of papers to emphasize the evil exposed in divorce and other
trials.

These manifestations of a desire to make the newspapers as

clean and useful as possible are in part a development of, in part
a reaction from, the era of sensationalism. The excesses of
that era, together with the growing wealth of the larger papers,
and a clarifying realization of the Arital need for honest news-
papers with more than a commercial purpose, are beginning to
show secondary consequences.
The principal journaUstic result of the World War was the
elimination of the war correspondent, in the character displayed
in previous wars. Scores of correspondents went to Europe,
and the burden of expense laid upon the newspapers by the
enormous conflict and the excessive cable tolls was unprece-
dented. But the correspondents were rigorously restricted in
their movements and their reports censored so thoroughly that,
although a vast quantity of matter was transmitted, for the
first time the news of a great war was under practically com-

plete governmental control. In addition to being subject to

the trans-Atlantic official censorship of European news, our
newspapers united in a voluntary censorship of domestic news,
suggested by the Committee on Public Information. Restric-
tions were laid on the press by the Espionage and other laws
which led to considerable suppression, principally through de-
nial of mailing privileges, and brought up for consideration
the perennial question of the freedom of the press.
The great advance during and since the World War accel-
erated an already considerable decrease in the number of week-
Ues and smaller dailies and led to the disappearance of many
larger papers, including some of the oldest and best known in
the country. War-time conditions served also to diminish
greatly the number of papers printed in the German language,
and brought sharply to- public notice the great number and
influence of the foreign-language papers.
American newspapers surpass in number the papers of all
other countries; they have steadily for many decades led in the
336 Newspapers Since 1860

development of energy and resourcefulness in collecting and dis-

pensing news, as well as in adroitness in perceiving and satisfying
popular tastes and demands for information and entertainment.
Unsettled as are now the foundations on which the institution
of journalism lies, its desire and ability to serve what it con-
siders the best public interests are on the whole remark-
able. The extravagances of sensationalism are passing out of
fashion newspaper style, despite the argot of sports and the
;

extravagances due to overzealous pursuit of brightness and

catchiness of phrase, is gaining in effectiveness and finish bar-
;

ring the spectacular sheets, no other newspapers in the world

show such typographical beauty. Within the present century
men with college education have rapidly replaced the earlier
type of journalist, and multiplying schools of journalism are
making a profession of the trade.
 CHAPTER XXI

Political Writing Since 1850

THEInyear 850 was

September
1 a landmark in American political history.
the Great Compromise was enacted. It
tempered the slavery controversy and checked impending
secession. To abide by the measure or to reject it was the issue
in state campaigns, especially in the cotton states, during 1851.
There, and also in the North and the West, the Whigs worked
intensely for popular support of the compromise. In fact, they
seem to have spent their strength in the cause, and when the
country accepted "the finality of the compromise" they were
unable to raise a new issue, and their organization rapidly went
to pieces after 1 852 In the meantime a change was taking place
.

in the personnel of political leadership. Calhoun' died before

the compromise bill became a law, Clay^ and Webster^ in 1852.
A number of men of less distinction but of invaluable service
retired from politics about the same time: Van Buren in 1848,
likewise Benton, Winthrop of Massachusetts, Ewing of Ohio,
Foote of Mississippi, and Berrien of Georgia in 1851. With the
death or retirement of these men the sentiment for union which
they had fostered, declined. Among those who took their places
partizanship was supreme, and until the advent of Lincoln origi-
nality and sincerity were almost totally lacking. It is not sur-
prising, therefore, that for two decades after 1850 political
thought and discussion centred around inherited issues relat-
ing to sectionalism and nationality.
In the South the philosophy and defence of slavery and of a
society based on inequalities among its members became the
dominating theme. The discussion had begun a generation
earlier with the memorable debates in the Virginia Legislature
» See Book II, Chap. XV. 'Ibid. 3 See Book II, Chap. xvi.
337
 ;

338 Political Writing Since 1850

of 1 83 1. To
a committee was referred a number of petitions
and memorials requesting emancipation or colonization of
slaves and the removal of free negroes from the state. These
furnished the cue for one of the really notable books in the his-
tory of American political thought, Thomas R. Dew's Review
of the Debates in the Virginia Legislature (1833). The author,
after graduation from William and Mary at the early age of
twenty, travelled and studied in Europe; then in 1827 became
Professor of History, Metaphysics, Natural and National Law,
Government and Political Science at his Alma Mater, and in
1836 was made president of the institution. His writing and
teaching marked the beginning of the transition in the South
from the political philosophy of the Revolution and the early
nineteenth century, of which Jefferson was the ablest exponent,
to that which dominated that section in the fifties. He argued
against emancipation or colonization. His reasons were based
on history, religion, and economics. Slavery was a character-
istic of classical civilization it was approved by the Scriptures
;

and in America the slave-holding states produced most of the

country's wealth — in fact, in Virginia the sale of surplus slaves
equalled each year the value of the tobacco crop. Moreover,
emancipation and deportation were impractical and the con-
dition of the negro slave in the South was far better than that
of the native African. Professor Dew publicly stated what
many were privately thinking. His book therefore had a wide
circulation and was reprinted in 1852 by William Gilmore
Simms' in his collection entitled Pro-Slavery Argument.
Dew's defence of slavery was based on things practical;
others sought to justify it through political and social philosophy.
Consequently the theories of social contract, equality, and in-
alienable rights, immortalized by Jefferson, were subjected to
rigorous criticism. One of the pioneers in this task was Chan-
cellor Harper of South Carolina. His Memoir on Slavery, pub-
lished in 1838, was likewise reprinted in Simms's collection. In
contrast to the dictum of Jefferson that "all men are created
freeand equal" Harper declared that "man is bom to subjec-
—
tion as he is born to sin and ignorance." The proclivity of
the natural man is to dominate or to be subservient, not to
make social compacts. Civil liberty is therefore an artificial
' See Book II, Chap. vil.
 Pro-Slavery Arguments 339

product, and the inalienable rights oflife, liberty, and the pur-

happiness are merely unmeaning verbiage. There is no

suit of
place for contract as the basis of government, since it is "the
order of nature and of God that the beings of superior faculties
and knowledge, and superior power, should control and dispose
of those who are inferior." It is therefore as much in the order
of nature that "men should enslave each other, as that animals
should prey upon each other."
Yet Harper's book is more of a defence of Southern society
than an attack on existing political theories. Such an attack
was more definitely the aim of Albert T. Bledsoe, Professor of
Mathematics in the University of Virginia, in his Liberty and
Slavery (1856). He boldly rejected the traditional conceptions
of natural liberty and the origin of government. Public order
and private liberty, he held, are non-antagonistic. Civil society
is "not a thing of compacts, bound together by promises and

paper, but is itself a law of nature as irreversible as any other."

The only inalienable rights are those coupled with duty, and
they do not include life and liberty. Another teacher, William
A. Smith, President of Randolph Macon College, gave to the
public the arguments already presented to his classes in his
and Practice of Slavery (1856). Two
Lectures on the Philosophy
aims inspired his work: to show "that the philosophy of Jeffer-
son is false, and that the opposite is true, namely, that the
great abstract principle of domestic slavery is, per se right,"
and that "we should have a Southern literature," especially
textbooks in which there should be no poison of untruth. The
books of these two teachers were widely circulated; Bledsoe's
was especially well-known, finding its way into many private
libraries of the age.
Not only were Jefferson's ideals combatted, but in society as
organized there was also found a basis for the defence of slavery.
In Europe the industrial revolution had brought in its train
poverty, child labour, distress, new social philosophies, and re-
volt. In contrast was the South with its contented labourers,
its planters who had a personal interest in the welfare of those

dependent on them, its wealth, its conservatism, and its spirit

of chivalry. Here lay the theme of George Fitzhugh's Sociology

for the South (1854). In Europe, he pointed. out, free labour had
resulted in exploitation of the workers by the capitalists. There
 ;

340 Political Writing Since 1850

actual conditions demonstrated the failure of the laissez faire

theory of economics and politics. The remedy was a proper
stratification of society through a strong-armed government.
Let the state see that men, women, and children have employ-
ment and support. To this end let the EngUsh Government sub-
ordinate the mill owners to the state, and let the state furnish
them employees who will be compelled to labour by the govern-
ment at wages fixed by the state, which will insure a decent
living. Thus only can strife and poverty be abolished in Eng-
land. In our own country, let the government make over the
public lands to responsible men, to be entailed to their eldest
sons let the landless and idle population of the Eastern states
;

be attached to these vast tracts of land as tenants for life. By

such a process peace and order will be established. Make the '

'

man who owns a thousand dollars of capital the guardian (the

term master is objectionable) of one white pauper of average
value; give a man who is worth ten thousand dollars ten pau-
pers, and the millionaire a thousand. This would be an act of
simple justice and mercy; for the capitalists now live by the pro-
ceeds of poor men's labour, which capital enables them to com-
mand; and they command and enjoy it in almost the exact
proportions which we have designated.
'
Undoubtedly this pro- '

gramme of rigid state control was not acceptable to the South

but Fitzhugh's attack on free society and its political philoso-
phy was approved, and his work in revised form was repub-
lished in 1857 under the title Cannibals All! or Slaves Without
Masters. should also be noted that Fitzhugh was an admirer
It
of Thomas whom he corresponded, and that his
Carlyle, with
style shows unmistakable evidences of the great Scotchman's
influence.
Pro-slavery propaganda was not confined to teachers and
publicists. The clergy also made their contribution. Dr. Thorn-
ton Stringfellow of Virginia wrote The Bible Argument against
Slavery in the Light of Divine Revelation (i 850) The Rev. Fred .

A. Ross of Alabama in his Slavery Ordained of God (1857) main-

'

tained that ' Slavery is part of a government ordained to cer-

tain conditions of fallen mankind . '

Charles Hodge ' of Princeton '

with learned erudition criticized the religious argument against

slavery. Parson " W. G. Brownlow of Tennessee, in a memor-
'
'

' See Book III, Chap. xvi.

 ;

Pro-Slavery Arguments 34i

able debate with Abram Prynne, portrayed the advantages of

Southern society over that of the North. Political economists
also wrote in the defence. Edmund RuflBn of Virginia, success-
ful planter, pioneer in scientific farming, and editor of agricul-
tural journals, in his Political Economy of Slavery (1857) claimed
blessings for the existing relation of master and slave. David
Christy of Cincinnati in Cotton is King (1855) showed the place
of the plantation system in the wealth of the nation and pointed
out the need of more territory for slavery and the cultivation
of cotton.
These writings and others of minor importance are the rec-
ord of a change in Southern opinion, the passing of the convic-
tion that slavery is inherently wrong, to be abolished in the
future, to as strong a conviction that slavery is right per se; they
also mark the declining influence of Jefferson's political ideas.
The constitutional theories of states' rights and secession, to
which the protagonists of slavery looked for ultimate defence,
were likewise the subject of discussion. Calhoun's Disquisition
on Government and Discourse on the Constitution were posthu-
mously published in 1851. Politics gave an opportunity to
carry to the people the constitutional conceptions of the great
theorist. This was notably true just after the compromise of
1850 was enacted, when a definite movement was inaugurated
in the cotton states to reject the compromise and bring about
secession. Typical was the trend of argument and appeal in
South Carolina. Edward B. Bryan, in advocating immediate
secession, anticipated one of Lincoln's themes when he wrote:
"The cement broken; the house is divided against itself. It
is

must fall." William Henry Trescott, about to begin a long ca-

reer in diplomatic service, likewise wrote; "The only safety for
the South is the establishment of a political centre within itself
in simpler words, the formation of an independent nation."
The aged Langdon Cheves wrote the following call to the South-
em people "Unite, and you shall form one of the most splendid
:

empires on which the sun ever shone, of the most homogeneous

population, all of the same blood and lineage, in soil most fruit-
ful, —
and in climate most fruitful. But submit submit! The
very sound curdles the blood in my veins. But, Oh, Great God,
unite us, and a tale of submission shall never be told."
Against this rabid sectionalism there were a few notable
342 Political Writing Since 1850

protests. Grayson, Collector of the Port of Charles-

William J.
ton, and a lifelong champion of slavery, boldly opposed the
secession movement in his state. So too did Benjamin P.
Perry, an up-country editor, and Bishop Ellison Capers of the
Protestant Episcopal Church. a strange coincidence
It is also
that a nationalistic philosophy, as radical as that of the seces-
sionists when compared with the thought of earlier days, also
emanated from South Carolina. Its author was Francis Lieber,
a German liberal who, persecuted in his native land, sought
refuge in America and became Professor of Political Economy
in South Carolina College —
a position he held from 1835 to
1857, when he went to New York to join the faculty of Colum-
bia College. Like contemporary Southerners, he rejected the
social compact theory; he could assign no definite explanation
for the origin of the state, but found it to be in the institutional
forces of human Most significant was the distinction
nature.
he drew between the people and the nation. The former sig-
'
nifies the aggregate of the inhabitants of a territory without
'

any additional idea " the latter implies a homogeneous popula-

;

'

tion having an organic unity with one another as well as being

'

conscious of a common destiny." In other words, the nation

is organic, not contractual, in nature. In it, not in the indi-
vidual states, lies sovereignty, which is one and indivisible.

Such was the elemental thought in Lieber's Political Ethics

(1838) and Civil Liberty and Self Government (1853), books
which in time profoundly influenced political science in the
United States. That Lieber, holding such views and also hav-
ing no sympathy for slavery, could live so long in the very heart
of the cotton kingdom, is remarkable. While his son lost his
lifein the Confederate Army, Lieber became legal advisor to
President Lincoln and was the author of Instructions for the
Government of the Armies of the United States in the Field, which
was a starting point for more humane rules of warfare, both
in this countryand abroad.
Against slavery there were a few notable protests in the
South. They were made, however, in the interest of the white
man rather than of the negro. Daniel Reaves Goodloe, a North
Carolinian, and editor
of newspapers in his native state and
Washington, published in 1846 a pamphlet in which he con-
cluded that "capital invested in slaves is unproductive in that
 "The Impending Crisis" 343

itonly serves to appropriate the wages of the labourer." In 1858

he also issued his Southern Platform, a digest of the opinions of
"the most eminent southern Revolutionary characters" upon
the subject of slavery, which was widely circulated. In Vir-
ginia, Dr. Henry Ruffner, President of Washington College, the
present Washington and Lee University, advocated in 1847 the
gradual emancipation of slaves in the western counties of the
state, on the ground that slavery was destructive to the best
interests of the white people. After a lengthy demonstration of
: '
the evils induced by slave labour, he declared Delay not, then,
'

we beseech you, to raise a barrier against this Stygian inun-

—
dation to stand at the Blue Ridge, and with sovereign energy
say to this Black Son of misery 'Hitherto shalt thou come, and
;

no farther!' " But the Southern protest par excellence was The
Impending Crisis of the South (1859), the work of Hinton Rowan
Helper of North Carolina. With the moral aspect of slavery
he had no interest that he left to Northern writers, especially
;

to "Yankee wives" who have "written the most popular anti-

slavery literature of the day. Against this I have nothing to
say it is all well enough for women to give the fictions of sla-
;

very; men should give the facts." These facts were suggested
to him by a visit to the free states of the West. Their wealth
and prosperity, as compared with conditions in the home coun-
try, made a deep impression upon him. He thereupon made a
study of the comparative resources and development of the
slave and free states. His conclusion was that slavery was a
positive evil to the white men of the South. Notable was the
distinction he drew between the slaveholders who were numeri-
cally in the minority, but shaped the public policy, and the non-
slaveholders, numerically in the majority, but having little po-
litical power. Let the latter organize, take over the govern-
ment, exclude the slavocracy from office holding, and abolish
the institution which sapped the strength of the country. The
book, published after some difficulty, became exceedingly pop-
ular in the North, and was reprinted in 1859 as a campaign
document. was regarded as incendiary litera-
In the South it

ture agents who distributed it were imprisoned and fined, and

;

any one possessing a copy was regarded as a traitor to his coun-

try. Among those who had commended the book was John
Sherman, candidate for the speakership of the House of Repre-
344 Political Writing Since 1850

sentatives in 1859. During the contest this fact was brought

into the discussion. Thereupon a Virginia congressman de-
clared that "one who consciously, deliberately, and of purpose
lends his name and influence to the propagation of such writing
is not only not fit to be Speaker, but he is not fit to live." Yet,
strange to say, the particular passage which called forth this
remark was a quotation from the Virginia Debates of 1831.
Between the extremes represented by Helper and Thomas
Dew, there existed a moderate school of thought, which ac-
knowledged the evils of slavery, especially the burden it im-
posed upon the whites, but deprecated any artificial attempt
toward its abolition. This, it was held, time and natural causes
would bring about. Such a writer was J. H. Hammond, of
South Carolina. In his Letters on Slavery, written in reply to the
criticisms of Thomas Clarkson, he conceded that slavery was
more expensive than free labour, but that the remedy lay not in
immediate abolition but in an increase in the density of the
population, which would make the supply of free labour more
available. Likewise George M. Weston, a native of Maine, who
lived in Washington, pointed out, in his Progress of Slavery in
the United States (1857), the steady encroachment of free labour
upon slave labour along the border of the South, the ultimate
advantage in the continuance of this process, and the purely
political character of the demand for the extension of slavery
into the territories of the Northwest. Such undoubtedly were
the convictions of thousands; but they smacked too much of
compromise in a decade when an increasing number of radicals,
North and South, would yield not one jot or one tittle from
their respective positions.
While Southern thought was being moulded into the unity
of conservation, opposite tendencieswere at work in the North
and West. Trade-unionism took on new life about 1850, and Wil-
liam H. Sylvis, the first great figure in the American labour
movement, began his agitation. Wilhelm Weitling, a German
immigrant, introduced the ideas of Marxian socialism. In the
demand for suffrage and broader legal rights for women,
Thomas Wentworth Higginson, William Lloyd Garrison, Jo-
seph Sayers, Henry Ward Beecher, and Elizabeth Cady Stanton
were leaders. Traditional political alignment was threatened
by the American or Know Nothing movement, which sought
 "Uncle Tom's Cabin" 345

to capitalize the prejudice against those of foreign birth and

the Catholic faith. Among its propagandists were S. F. B.
Morse, whose Foreign Conspiracies Against the Liberties of the
United States (1852) ran through seven editions, and Thomas R.
Whitney, author of a Defense of American Policy as Opposed to
the Encroachment of Foreign Influence (1856). These issues,
also the industrial development and commercial expansion,
tended to divert attention from the slavery question. Indeed,
the capitalists of the Northeast and the large planters of the
cotton states drifted toward a rapprochement. Noteworthy
also was the fact that many defenders of slavery were found
among the clergy of the North, and that silence on the issue
became the policy of the churches. The Rev. Nehemiah
Adams won notoriety by his favorable South Side View of
Slavery (1854), as did also Nathan Lord, President of Dart-
mouth College, the Rev. Samuel Seabury of the Episcopal
Church, Moses Stuart, Professor of Hebrew at Andover, and
John Henry Hopkins, Episcopal Bishop of Vermont, for their
various defences of slavery.
Three factors, however, kept alive and stimulated the moral
interest in human bondage. One of these was the Federal Fugi-
tive Slave Law, a part of the Great Compromise. There was
considerable violence in resisting its enforcement, but its great-
est contribution was to inspire a novel —
Harriet Beecher
Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin (1852), a book which the author
declared to be "a collection and arrangement of real incidents,
of actions really performed, of words and expressions really ut-
tered, grouped together with reference to a general result, in
the manner that a mosaic artist groups his fragments of various
stones into one general picture." The political significance of
the book was that it made the people of the North and the West
ponder questions which the Great Compromise, it was generally
said, had settled. Very significant was its influence on the
rising generation. Says James Ford Rhodes:

The mothers' opinion was a potent factor in politics between 1852

and i860, and boys in their teens in the one year were voters in the
other. It is often remarked that previous to the war the Republican
party attracted the great majority of schoolboys, and that the first
voters were an important factor in the final success . the . .

youth of America whose first ideas on slavery were formed by read-

 '

346 Political Writing Since 1850

ing Uncle Tom's Cabin, were ready to vote with the party whose
existence was based on opposition to the extension of the great evil.

Abroad, the book made a deep impression. It was translated

into twenty-three languages, and over a million copies were
sold in the British Empire.
A second factor in stimulating interest in the slavery issue
was the Kansas Nebraska Act of 1854, by which more territory
was opened to the slave system. The moral revolt which
Uncle Tom's Cabin had kindled took the form of political action
in the organization of the Republican party. A new group of
leaders sought to arouse the conscience of the country. Among
them was Charles Sumner, of Massachusetts, member of the Sen-
ate from 1 85 1 to 1874. ^^ the movement against slavery he is
the logical successor of John Quincy Adams, ^ with the excep-
tion that his opposition was moral as well as political. His
pamphlets, Crime against Kansas (1856) and Barbarism of Slavery
(i860) were circulated by the million. Not the equal of Web-
ster as a constitutional lawyer, and too often extremely personal
in his discussion of Southern policies, he was a most skilful and
resourceful special pleader in a great cause. With him should
be mentioned William H. Seward, a noted politician of New
York and chief figure in the Republican party in the East.
His presentation of the "irrepressible conflict" which would
make the United States "a slave-holding nation or a free labour
nation" did much to crystallize opinion in the East. The crisis
also brought forth Abraham Lincoln, who re-interpreted the
American theory of democracy. As the author of political
phrases and aphorisms, he is equalled only by Jefferson. No '
'

man is good enough to govern another man without that

other's consent" applies the principle of democracy to the
fact of slavery. "When the white man governs himself, that
is self-government; but when he governs himself and also

governs another man, that is more than self-government that

'
—
is despotism. Finally, the Dred Scott case brought the slavery
'

issue to a climax, for in that decision it was evident that

the Supreme Court was pro-slavery. Shortly followed the
Lincoln-Douglas debates, in which Lincoln pointed out
the antithesis between popular sovereignty and the Dred
'See also Book III, Chap. xi. ' See Book II, Chap. xv.
 '

Constitutional Theories in War-Time 347

Scott decision. Thereafter his leadership in the West was

unquestioned.
The advent war forced the nationalists to re-shape their
of
political theories.The legal and constitutional proofs that the
United States was a nation, advanced by Webster and his
school, had not counteracted sectionalism; the conflict of arms
threatened to demonstrate how baseless they were. Moreover
the conduct of the war brought about a certain disregard, on
the part of the government, of various limitations, rights, and
liberties set forth in the Constitution. It is not strange, there-
fore, that a new basis for nationality was sought, not in the
Constitution or the old political formulas, but in the hard
school of necessity. Thus President Lincoln declared that
"measures otherwise unconstitutional might become lawful by
becoming indispensable to the preservation of the constitution
through the preservation of the Nation." Pertinent also were
the words of Sydney George Fisher written in 1852: "If the
Union and the Government cannot be saved out of this terrible
shock of war constitutionally, a Union and a government must
be saved unconstitutionally." The pathway for the new
thought had already been indicated by Francis Lieber, and soon
the organic theory, with sovereignty in the nation rather than
the states, was well under way. Very significant was the effort
to distinguish between the written and the unwritten constitu-
tion. Thus J. A. Jameson, eminent jurist and exponent of the
new school, divided constitutions into two classes those which ;

are organic growths, the products of social and political forces,

and those which are "instruments of evidence," the results of
attempts to express in language the sense of organic growth.
Likewise Orestes A. Brownson, ^ a devoted Catholic, who found
in the church fathers and the traditions of early Christianity
the principles of democracy, distinguished between the consti-
tution of the state or nation and the constitution of the govern-
ment. In the same vein was the declaration of John C. Hurd,
that sovereignty cannot be an attribute of law because by the
'
'

nature of things, law must proceed from sovereignty," and con-

sequently the Constitution of the United States cannot be cited
as evidence for the sovereignty of the states or the nation.
" See also Book III, Chap. xxii.
' See also Book II, Chap, viii and Book III, Chap. xix.
348 Political Writing Since 1850

Naturally, by such writers sovereignty is conceived as undi-

vided and as being in the nation, and the social compact and
related political theories are rejected. With the passing of
years their views have predominated. Thus the war which
"joined with bayonets" the Union, Hke the defence of slavery,
caused a decline of the poHtical theory of the Revolutionary
and federal periods.
Among the practical problems in the preservation of nation-
alitywere certain measures taken to preserve unity behind the
military lines, the treatment of conquered enemies and their
property, and the relations between the South and the national
goverrmient. States' rights ideas were widely disseminated in
the North and West and there was also much sympathy with
secession. Consequently the executive authority expanded;
particularly military arrests and the denial of the writ of habeas
corpus were frequent. Captured Confederates were not exe-
cuted as traitors, yet Confederate property was confiscated.
These matters, and the kindred question of emancipation and
conscription, were the subject of extensive legal and constitu-
tional discussion, of which Whiting's War Powers (1862 et seq.)
was the most comprehensive. The eclipse of constitutional
rights enjoyed in time of peace arid the supremacy of the war
powers became the chief issue in politics. "The Constitution
as it is, and the Union as it was" became the slogan of the
opposition. In New York the Society for the Diffusion of Polit-
ical Knowledge, with S. F. B. Morse as president, was active
in the publication of pamphlets criticizing the measures of the
administration. were to popularize the principles
Its objects
of constitutional liberty "to the end that usurpation may be
prevented, that arbitrary and unconstitutional measures may
be checked, that the Constitution may be preserved, that the
Union may be restored, and that the blessings of free institu-
tions and public order may be kept by ourselves and be trans-
mitted to our Posterity." Among the contributors to its
pamphlets were Morse, Samuel J. Tilden, and George Ticknor
Curtis. Likewise, in the defence of the administration, the
Loyal Publication Society was organized, and among the writers
were Francis Lieber, Robert Dale Owen,
for its publications
and Peter Cooper. Much of the Hterature in criticism of the
government has been lost. Of that which survives, D. A.
 :

Opposition to Lincoln's Administration 349

Mahoney's Prisoner of State (1863), the recital by an Iowa

editor of his own imprisonment and that of others, is illustra-
tive. The author's theme is summarized in the following
sentence from the dedication

To you, then, far beyond and above all others of the monsters
which have been begotten by the demon of fanaticism which is
causing our country to be desolated, belongs the distinction of con-
necting your name with this work, not only to live in the memory
of the deeds which you have caused to be committed, but to be
kept forever present in the American mind whenever it recurs in
time to come to that period in American history when the Consti-
tution of the United States was first abrogated, when the Govern-
ment of theUnion was subverted, and when the rights and liberties
of the American People were trampled like dust beneath the feet of
.a person clothed in a little brief authority which is used to subvert
and destroy that which it should preserve, protect and defend, and
who uses as the heel of his despotism, you, Edwin M. Stanton.

More widely known was the case of Clement L. Vallanding-

ham. A member of Congress and actively engaged in cam-
paigning against the administration in 1863, he was arrested
by military authority, tried by court martial, and sentenced
to imprisonment. The commuted by President
sentence was
Lincoln to exile within the Confederate lines. The episode led
to the writing of Edward Everett Hale's short story, A Man
Without a Country (1863), of which five hundred thousand
copies were sold within thirteen years.
The relation of the South to the Union became the subject
of discussion with the first signs of Federal victory, and grew
acute with the close of hostilities. If secession, as the Lincoln
administration had claimed, was unconstitutional and the
Southern states had never been out of the Union, it seemed
logical for those states to resume their functions under the Con-
stitution, by participating in Federal elections, by sending rep-
resentatives to Congress, and by exercising other rights gener-
ally guaranteed to the states. Such a policy was in harmony
with antebellum nationalism, and it was advocated by leading
Southerners. But such a procedure did not harmonize with the
new sense of nationality; it made no guarantee against another
experiment in secession; and it might also restore to political
350 Political Writing Since 1850

authority in the South the very class that had been in power
in i860. For these reasons four contrary theories were evolved.
They were given the names Presidential, State Suicide, Con-
quered Province, and Forfeited Rights. According to the
Presidential theory, the Southern states, though they had never
been out of the Union, no longer had constitutional govern-
ments. To establish such governments, representative in form
and loyal to the Union, the President proposed to lend aid, and
even to exercise a certain amount of control. This theory was
formulated by Lincoln and was notable for its liberal conditions,
which the Southerners might easily fulfil. Application was
attempted in Louisiana, Arkansas, and Tennessee. But the
Presidential plan was too lenient for the leaders of Congress,
even under the stricter terms imposed by Andrew Johnson.
Hence Charles Sumner advanced the theory of State Suicide.
Although the states had not been out of the Union, the adop-
tion of ordinances of secession had caused them to commit
felo de se, and they were, therefore, in the status of territories,
for which Congress should prescribe rules and regulations.
More extreme was the Conquered Province theory of Thaddeus
Stevens, of Pennsylvania, which held that the states in question
had lost all their rights under the Constitution, and were merely
so much conquered territory, possessing only the rights they
might claim under international law. Finally, by the Forfeited
Rights theory, the states had never been out of the Union, but
had forfeited certain rights under the Constitution, which
could be restored only through the direction of Congress. These
theories, the controversies, the violence, and the bitterness
which developed over their adoption or rejection, were but the
birth pangs of a new political and constitutional order. For the
ultimate result, the theory of the Supreme Court in Texas vs.
White is also pertinent; that the Constitution, in all its provi-
sions, looks to "an indestructible Union, composed of inde-
structible states." The great monuments of the new sense of
nationality, the thirteenth, fourteenth, and fifteenth amend-
ments, likewise precipitated questions which have enriched le-
galliterature. What is involuntary servitude ? How inclusive
are rights and liberties ? What is due process of law? When
does a state deny suffrage on the ground of race, colour, or pre-
vious condition of servitude? Meanwhile, the view of the
 "

Memoirs 35i

Union which had made secession possible was given able and
sympathetic defence by Alexander H. Stephens in his War Be-
tween the States (1868), by Jefferson Davis in the Rise and Fall
of the Confederate States (1881), and by Bernard J. Sage's Repub-
lic of Republics (1865).
One of the characteristics of literature in America since the
war has been the increasing number of personal narratives,
autobiographies, memoirs, and diaries. Many of these arise
from a desire to tell one's relation, however humble, to the great
conflict and its heroes —
a desire which possessed all classes and
conditions from the commanders of armies to Mrs. Keckley, the
coloured serving woman of Mrs. Lincoln. Others have an aim
primarily political, to recount policies and movements in which
the authors participated. In the latter class a few have pre-
eminence. Hugh McCuUoch's Men and Measures of Half a Cen-
tury (1888) is invaluable for financial history and its sketches
of conditions in the West. John Sherman's Recollections of
Forty Years (1895) is likewise important for financial meas-

ures, and is also an uncommonly good revelation of political

opportunism. S. S. Cox's Three Decades of Federal Legislation
(1885) is notable for a lengthy account of reconstruction in the
Southern states, which was written by Daniel Reaves Goodloe
and inserted without explanation of authorship. G. S. Bout-
weU's Sixty Years in Public Affairs (1902) entertaining for
is

its sketches of public men, and is also illustrative of the limita-

tions of mind and training in the average American politician.

Inimitable are the Reminiscences of Benjamin Perley Poore, with
their intimate sketches of men and events around Washington
for half a century. The Autobiography of G. F. Hoar (1903)
reveals a blind devotion to party in a soul of unquestioned integ-
rity. Surpassing all other narratives by contemporaries is the
Diary Gideon Welles (191 1), Secretary of the Navy under
of
Lincoln, rich for the light it throws on personalities and animos-
ities in the cabinet and on political conditions in 1866, and

revolutionary in its interpretation of Andrew Johnson.

While Northern politicians vied with each other to tell their
story, the leaders of the South, with the exception of the mili-
tary men, were singularly silent, Alexander H. Stephens's Pmon
Diary and John H. Reagan's Memoirs (1906) being the only
intimately personal accounts by the poUtical leaders of the Con-
352 Political Writing Since 1850

federacy. But so personal in tone as to make them almost

autobiographical are Fielder's Life and Times of Joseph E.
Brown and Dowd's Life of Zeb Vance, and the writings of E. A.
Pollard, a Richmond editor during war time.' Humorous, but
accurately portraying certain types of Southern character, is

Charles H. Smith's BillArp So Called, a book which in a period

of economic depression and political disappointment had the
power to make Southerners laugh. Among the Southern mal-
contents who had no sympathy for secession, two left accounts
of their opinions and experiences. "Parson" Brownlow, who
was expelled from Tennessee early in the war, published in
1862 his Sketches of the Rise and Progress of Secession, replete
with quotations from the contemporary Southern press. A few
years later a Virginian, John M. Botts, made Southern poUcies
the subject of denunciation in his Great Rebellion (1866) and
started a memorable historical controversy by declaring that
Lincoln had offered to surrender Fort Sumter provided that
the Virginia convention of 1861 would adjourn without tak-
ing action on secession.
Closely related to the autobiography were the reports of
newspaper correspondents and tourists. These were especially
noticeable between 1865 and 1876 when the economic and so-
cial upheaval in the South was a subject of general interest. Of
this literature, some was "inspired," notably the reports made
to President Johnson in 1866 by B. C. Truman, Carl Schurz,
and General Grant. Other contributions to this class of writ-
ing were Whitelaw Reid's After the War, Sidney Andrew's The
South Since the War, and J. T. Trowbridge's The South, all pub-
lished in 1866. More notable were the books of two former
abolitionists, J. S. Pike and Charles Nordhoff the former left ;

a memorable description of the barbarism of negro rule in South

Carolina in his Prostrate State (1874), and the latter gave a val-
uable account of Southern conditions in his Cotton States in 1875.
The personal experiences of a Northerner during his residence in
the South were the basis for the novels of A. W. Tourgee, ' and
of similar characteris A. T. Morgan's Yazoo, or On the Picket

Line of Freedom in the South.

Hardly had the Civil War ended when other questions, in
For other memoirs, see also Book III, Chap. xv.
' See Book II, Chap. xi.
 Civil Service Reform 353

addition to those involving theories with respect to the nature

of the nation, claimed public attention. Of these four were of
primary importance and were productive of a new trend in
political thought: civil service reform, tariff reform, the cur-
rency,and the farmer's movement.
The spoils system had long characterized office holding in
the United States. Shortly after 1865 certain general influences
made possible the agitation for efficiency and merit in the pat-
ronage. Among these were the revelations of inefficiency in the
conduct of the war, the conflict between Andrew Johnson and
Congress over control of the patronage, and examples of cor-
ruption in contemporary life. Especially did the activities of
the Tweed Ring, ridiculed in the celebrated cartoons of Thomas
Nast, create a sense of revolt against the existing order. The
pioneer in the movement for new standards in the public service
was Thomas A. Jenckes of Rhode Island. A lawyer, a man of
wealth, and a congressman, he secured the reference of the ap-
pointing system to the committee on retrenchment in 1866.
The resulting report, submitted in 1868, is "the effective start-
ing point" in the modem movement for civil service reform in
this country. Yet there was at first little interest in the cause.
'
Mr. Jenckes was aptly compared to Paul at Athens, declaring '

the unknown God." The average citizen regarded corruption

as an unavoidable evil. The professional politician had only
sneers for the reformer. Said Roscoe Conkling: "When Dr.
Johnson defined patriotism as the last refuge of a scoundrel,
he was then unconscious of the then undeveloped capabilities
of the word 'reform.'"
In a few years recruits were gathered from the intellectual
and literary class. George William Curtis, ' editor and essayist,
was chairman of the first commission to draft rules for the civil
service. After Congress failed to provide an appropriation and
also after a period of flirtation with the issue by political parties,
Curtis became, in 1881, the first president of the National

Civil Service League. For ten years he was "the intellectual

and the moral inspiration of the Civil
head, the guiding force,
Service movement. The addresses he delivered at the annual
meetings of the League were like milestones in the progress of
—
the work ^he reported to the country what had been done and
' See Book III, Chap. xiii.

VOL. Ill —23

354 Political Writing Since 1850

what was still to be done, enlightening public sentiment, en-

couraging his fellow-labourers and distributing with even-handed

justice, praise and reproof among the political parties as they
deserved Other early leaders of the cause were Dorman B.
it."

Eaton, whose Civil Government in Great Britain (1880) ranks

with Jenckes's report in the literature of the reform movement;
Carl Schurz, Curtis 's successor as head of the Civil Service Re-
form League and champion of the movement in the President's
cabinet; Andrew D. White' and Charles W. Eliot, presidents of
Cornell and Harvard and a group of young politicians, among
;

whom were Theodore Roosevelt and Henry Cabot Lodge.

Soon the attitude toward civil service reform became the test
of executive independence.
Hayes was notable he rendered it, while Cleve-
for the aid
land's declaration "Public office a public trust" won for him
is

wide popularity. The principle involved, that efficiency and

merit rather than party loyalty should be the standard for pub-
lic office, aroused the interest of the intellectual class as had

no other issue except that of slavery. It caused thousands to

break party lines and played a great part in the rise to power of
the independent vote.
The movement for tariff reform paralleled and, in many
respects, was similar to that for civil service reform.
Just as
the existing political machines were wedded to the spoils system,
the Republican party was identified with the policy of protec-
tion. It had won the election of i860 very largely on that issue,
had put the policy into practice during the war, and after the
conflict continued it. The result was a period of exploitation
of natural resources, great increase in manufacturing, alternat-
ing periods of speculation and trade depression due to displace-
ment of capital, and special privileges for special interests.
Leadership and protest came to a large extent from the class
from which came the early agitation for civil service reform the —
intellectuals. The pioneer was David A. Wells, ^ chairman of
the Revenue Commission which made recommendations for a
readjustment of national finances from a war to a peace basis.
His examination of conditions in the United States caused a
radical reaction in his views from a protectionist he became a
;

violent anti-protectionist. His report to Congress in 1870 was

» See Book III, Chap. xv. » See Book III, Chap. xxiv.
 '

Tariff Reform 355

extremely free trade in tone, and deserves a place with that of

Jenckes on the civil service as indicating the dawn of a new po-
litical thought, while his Creed of a Free Trader (1875) more

definitely set forth his convictions.

Equally notable was the influence of William G. Sumner,
Professor of Political and Social Science in Yale College. In
classroom and before the public, by lecture, pamphlet, and
book, he assailed the protectionist system as "an arrant piece
of economic quackery," masquerading "under such an air of
' '

learning and philosophy as deserved only contempt and scorn,

' '

satire and ridicule." No one did more than he to lay the basis
of new thought concerning our national economy. To the manu-
facturing and commercial classes protectionism was a fetish,
essential to American prosperity; and whoever rejected it or
even questioned it could not be a patriot. It is not surprising,
therefore, that Wells was accused of sympathy for the "lost
cause" of the Confederacy, even of being bribed by British gold
to advance free trade principles, and that there was a demand
that Professor Sumner be removed from his position at Yale.
However, the increasing surplus in the national treasury and the
demand for tariff reform by the Democratic party relieved anti-
protectionism of its opprobrium. The campaign of 1888 was
notable, for both political parties sought to inform the voter on
the tariff issue by book and pamphlet, as well as by speech and
editorial. Wells, in his Relation of Tariff to Wages, pointed out
that higher wages in the United States are the results of the
productiveness of labour rather than of the protectionist policy.
Sumner's Protectionism answered in simple but bellicose lan-
guage the stock arguments of the protectionists. Half a dozen
other works, about equally divided in defence and criticism of
the existing tariff policy, were issued during the campaign, and
the presidential campaign four years later was also notable for
a similar tariff literature. The results on public opinion were
favourable to the anti-protectionists ever since the criticism of
;

protection has steadily increased and the more scholarly writ-

ings on the tariff have been with a few exceptions unsympa-
thetic toward the principle of protection.
Agitation for civil service reform and revision of the tariff
centred in the East. On the other hand, the agrarian agita-
» See Book III, Chap. xxiv.
 356 Political Writing Since 1850

tion and the demand for more liberal coinage of silver were West-
ern movements. Rapid settlement and the exploitation of the
West with borrowed capital, insufficient commercial facilities
and high rates of interest, and speculation in railway construc-
tion created economic depression in that region. For relief, the
farmers in the seventies organized the "Grange" or "Patrons
of Husbandry," a secret society. Among its objects were
co-operation in business and state-regulation of public utilities.
The grievances and purposes of the organization were reflected
in scores of periodicals; also in three widely circulated books,
Jonathan Perriam's Groundswell, E. W. Martin's History of the
Granger Movement, and O. H. Kelley's Origin and Progress of the
Patrons of Husbandry.
Now the prevailing doctrine was that of economic individual-
ism, which emphasized the sanctity of private property, the de-
velopment of natural resources under private direction only,
and the laissez faire theory of economics. With this the agrarian
experiments in co-operation and the demand for state control
were at variance. The conflict of ideals deeply influenced
jurisprudence, for it raised the question of public regulation
of railroads and other utilities versus the rights of property
guaranteed by the Constitution. Undoubtedly one purpose of
the fourteenth amendment was to afford protection to property
interests against hostile legislation ; but the Supreme Court of
the United States was not prone to extend the scope of Federal
supervision, and an Illinois statute regulating
in 1876 it upheld
grain elevators. "For protection against abuses by legisla-
tures the people must resort to the polls, not to the courts."
Twelve years later, however, in the celebrated Minnesota
Rate Case the court took the opposite opinion, holding that
the reasonableness of railroad rates was a question for ju-
dicial review.

The question of the reasonableness of the rate of charge for

transportation by the railroad company, involving as it does the ele-
ment of reasonableness both as regards the company, and as regards
the public, eminently a question for judicial determination. If
is

the company is deprived of the power of charging reasonable rates

for the use of its property,and such deprivation takes place in the
absence of the investigation by judicial machinery, it is deprived of
>Hl^^e lawful use of its property, and thus in substance and effect, of
 Agrarian Movements 357

the property itself without due process of the law and in violation
of the Constitution of the United States.

Deep was the significance of this decision; property inter-

ests now found protection against public regulations, and nat-
urally the courts became the object of increasing criticism by
those who were discontented with the existing social and eco-
nomic order.
The Grange and the minor political parties identified with
it declined, but a second wave of discontent in the eighties was

the background for the Farmers' Alliance and the Populist

party of the early nineties. In the whole range of American
political literature no document is more remarkable than the
Populist platform of 1892; it summarized the existing discon-
tent and recommended remedies which, generally regarded at
the time as too radical ever to be applied, today are a part of
our orthodox political system. Most of the literature relating
to Populism is ephemeral; but of real artistic merit is The
Kansas Bandit, or the Fall of Ingalls, a dramatic dialogue in-
spired by the defeat of Senator Ingalls of Kansas in his contest
for re-election to the United States Senate.
Parallel with the agrarian movement was the demand for
bimetallism; indeed Senator Peffer in his Farmers' Side urged
free silver as a remedy for the grievances of the farmers. The
"battle of the standards" became the all absorbing political
issue between 1 888 and 1 896. Most of the economists favoured
the gold standard, notably Professor J. Laurence Laughlin of the
University of Chicago. His History of Bimetallism in the United
Stateswas more than a history; it was also a defence of mono-
metallism, and was widely quoted throughout the silver agita-
tion. The minority of the economists, who defended bimetal-
lism,was best represented by E. Benjamin Andrews, President
of Brown University, in his An Honest Dollar. So strongly
was the monometallic theory favoured among the conservative
classes of theEast that President Andrews's contrary views
were one cause of his resignation from Brown in 1897.
But the pi^ce de resistance in the whole agitation was W. H.
Harvey's Coin's Financial School (1894), a little book, simple
in style, graphic in illustration, which, reprinted during the
campaign of 1896, enjoyed a circulation similar to that of the
358 Political Writing Since 1850

Impending Crisis in i860. A reply to his arguments, in imita-

tive style, was made by Horace White in Coin's Financial
Fool.
In the meantime, whatever complacency the average man
of business between 1875 and 1890 possessed was rudely shaken
by three phenomena the rapid organization of labour, the trust
:

movement, and the disfranchisement of the negro. The

Knights of Labour, the first extensive labour organization in
the United States, disturbed the balance of American temper.
Said Francis Walker,' the economist: "Rarely has the scep-
tical, practical, compromising spirit of our people, which leads

them to avoid extremes, to distrust large expectations and to

take all they can get, 'down,' for anything they have in hand,
however promising, so far lost control of our acts and thoughts
and feelings. The nascent consciousness of labour was well re-
'
'

flected in Powderley's Thirty Years oj Labour, the author being

official head of the Knights.

The tendency towards combination in industry was the sub-

ject of many investigations by Congress and state legislatures.
These disclosed notorious methods of competition and sinister
activities in politics. Here was the subject matter of Henry
Demorest Lloyd's Wealth vs. Commonwealth (1894), ^ popular
presentation of the methods and policies of the Standard CHI
Company. Startling facts concealed in the masses of legislative
documents and court proceedings were dramatically marshalled.
In shaping public opinion the book has a place not unsimilar
to that of Uncle Tom's Cabin. Finally, in spite of the guar-
antees of the fourteenth and fifteenth amendments, negroes in
the South endured discrimination in "Jim Crow car laws" and
police regulations, and in 1890 and after they were practically
disfranchised in seven of the Southern states. Convictions
born of race proved superior to the mandates of government.
Contemporary with political agitation went a transforma-
tion in economic thought and the philosophy of government.
Its immediate cause was a remarkable growth of industrialism
with attendant concentration of wealth, poverty, and
its in-
equality in the enjoyment of luxuries.
Criticism was started by Henry George^ in his Progress and
Poverty (1879):
' See Book III, Chap. xxiv. 'Ibid.
 Taxation 359

So long as the increased wealth which modem progress brings

all

goes but to build up great fortunes, to increase luxury and make

sharper the contrast between the House of Have and the House of
Want, progress is not real and cannot be permanent. The reaction
must come. The tower leans from its foundations, and every new
story but hastens the final catastrophe. To educate men who must
be condemned to poverty, is but to make them restive to base on a
;

state of most glaring social inequality political institutions under

which men are theoretically equal, is to stand a pyramid on its apex.

The remedy was an application of the physiocratic doctrine of

the eighteenth century. The land
of each country belongs to
all used by individuals. There-
of its people but it is occupied or
fore all land rents, or taxes on rents, should be used for the com-
mon good, thus removing all existing revenues. Thus abol-
ishing taxes on labour and production would stimulate wages
and profits. Land values would decline and land held for spec- •

ulation would be thrown in the market. This argument won

great popularity and George suddenly became the leader of a
new movement —the single tax. It had much popularity and
influence abroad; it contributed to the introduction of incre-
ment taxes in Germany and Australia; in England it was well
received on account of the Irish situation. In the United States
it has had less practical results, but one of the attendant theo-

ries —
that wages are paid out of the value created by labour,
—
not out of capital has had a wide acceptance. Gradually,
also, all types of economist emphasized questions of distri-
bution and the ground of the older individualistic laissez faire
school was abandoned.The great question of taxation was
subjected to analysis andnew sources of revenue were defended
in Max West's Inheritance Tax and E. R. A. Seligman's Essays
on the Income Tax. Thus within fifteen years after the publica-
tion of George's work the revision of America's tax systems
was well under way. Reform was openly advocated by liberals
and bitterly opposed by conservatives. Illustrative of the con-
servative view were the words of Justice Field in the decision
by which the Federal income tax law of 1894 was declared
unconstitutional: "The present assault upon capital is but the
beginning. It will be but the stepping-stone to others larger
and more sweeping till our political conditions will become a

war of the poor against the rich; a war growing in intensity

36o Political Writing Since 1850

and bitterness." In contrast was the more liberal spirit in

Justice Harian's dissenting opinion:

The today is to give certain kinds

practical effect of the decision
of property a position of favouritism and advantage inconsistent
with the fundamental principles of our social organization, and to
invest them with power and influence that may be perilous to that
portion of the American people upon whom rests the larger part of
the burdens of the Government and who ought not to be subjected
to the dominion of aggregated wealth any more than the property
of the country should be at the mercy of the lawless.

In the meantime a vision of a new and radically different

socialand industrial order was popularized in 1888 in Edward
Bellamy's Looking Backward.^ The book was a romance in
which the hero, after going to sleep in 1887, awakes in the year
2000 to find vast changes. He learned that

there were no longer any who were or could be richer or poorer than
others, but that were economic equals. He learned that no one
all

any longer worked for another, either by compulsion or for hire, but
that all alike were in the service of the nation working for the com-
mon fund, which all equally shared, and even necessary personal
attendance, as of the physician, was rendered as to the state, like that
of a military surgeon. All these wonders, it was explained, had very
simply come about as the results of replacing private capitalism by
public capitalism, and organizing the machinery of production and
distribution, like the political government, as business of general
concern to be carried on for the public benefit instead of private gain.

The book was extremely popular for a few years. Bellamy

Clubs were organized to discuss the questions it suggested, and
it became the confession of faith of the Nationalist party.
Equally important was the new criticism of the operation
of government and its purposes. This began with Woodrow
Wilson's Congressional Government (1885), which pointed out
the evil results in the existing relations of the executive and the
legislature, notably the irresponsibility in legislation and the
lack of leadership in Congress, which his own administration
has since so well illustrated. A few years later Frank J. Good-
' See also Book III, Chap. xi.
 Functions of Government 361

now pointed out the defects in the American theory of the

separation of powers; indeed his Comparative Administrative
Law was the first work in English on administrative
(1893)
as distinct from constitutional law. John R. Commons in
his Proportional Representation (1896) advanced a substitute
for the existing unjust methods of representation. Munici-
pal government also became the subject of criticism. A
supplementary chapter to Bryce's American Commonwealth
on the Tweed Ring caused the whole first edition of that excel-
lent book to be suppressed. E. L. Godkin pointed out the
weaknesses in the government of our large cities in his Unfore-
seen Tendencies of Democracy, while Albert Shaw showed the
superiority in municipal ideals and forms of government of
English and Continental cities as compared with those of the
United States. Finally, the function of the state was re-exam-
ined. The early conception, bom in the days of the Revolution,
that the function of the state is confined to the protection of
liberty, and property yielded to one more comprehensive.
life,

Thus Woolsey declares that "the sphere of the State may reach
as far as nature and the needs of men reach." Woodrow
Wilson in his The State advocated state regulation in indus-
trial matters. W. W. Willoughby makes the economic, .indus-
trial, and moral interests of the people "one of the essential

concerns of the state"; and John W. Burgess, working under

the influence of German rather than American ideals, makes
the ultimate aim of the state "the perfection of humanity, the
civilization of the world; the perfect development of himian
reason and its attainment to universal command over individ-
ualism; the apotheosis of man."
The changes in the viewpoint of the leaders of thought came
as a shock to the pillars of conservatism. Not infrequently the
writings and influence of teachers cost them their positions
in colleges and universities.
In the meantime a startling change took place in foreign
policy. From the close of the Civil War
to 1898 the native
mania for territorial expansion was held in restraint. Alaska,
it istrue, had been acquired, but an excuse was found in a desire
to accommodate Russia. The offer by Denmark and Sweden of
their West Indian possessions was rejected. Instead of annex-
ing Hawaii in 1894 the sovereignty of a native queen was openly
362 Political Writing Since 1850

supported. With this sort of background came the Spanish-

American War of 1898, and with it the annexation of Hawaii,
and in its train the estabUshment of a protectorate over Porto
Rico and the acquisition of the Philippines. For this sudden
shift to a policy of territorial expansion economic conditions
were largely responsible. By 1890 more manufactured goods
were produced than were necessary for home consumption and
the nation began to compete with European countries in the
markets of the world. By 1898 the country was filled with cap-
ital, production was greater than consumption, and interest

rates were falling. The leaders, of industry were alarmed over

the unrest in labour and intellectual circles to them the remedy
;

seemed to lie in a foreign policy which would encourage trade

expansion. The argument for such a policy was ably presented
by Charles A. Conant:

There are three important solutions of this enormous congestion

demand. One of these is the social-
of capital in excess of legitimate
istic solution of the abandonment of saving, the application of the
whole earnings of the labourer to current consumption, and the sup-
port of old age out of taxes levied upon production of the community.
It will be long before this solution will be accepted in a comprehen-
sive form in any modem civilized state. The second solution is the
creation of new demands at home for the absorption of capital.
This has occurred at several previous stages of the world's history,
and is likely to continue as long as human desires continue expan-
sible. But there has never been a time before when the proportion
of capital to be absorbed was so great in proportion to possible new
demands.
Aside from the waste of capital in war, which is only a form of
constimption, there remains, therefore, as the final resource, the
equipment of new countries with the means of production and ex-
change. Such countries have yet to be equipped with the mechan-
ism of production and of luxuries which has been created in the
progressive countries of recent generations. They have not only to
—
obtain buildings and machinery the necessary elements in produc-
—
ing machine-made goods but they have to build their roads, drain
their marshes, dam their rivers, build aqueducts for water supplies,
and sewers for their towns and cities.
The United States cannot afford to adhere to a policy of isola-
tion while other nations are reaching out for the commerce of these
new markets. . . . The interest rates have greatly declined
 . '

Imperialism 363

here during the last five years. New markets and new ports must,
therefore, be found if surplus capital is to be profitably employed.

The argument for foreign territory met vigorous oppo-

sition. Prominent among were those who had been
its critics
identified with the abolition of slavery, notably George S.
Boutwell, George P. Hoar, George F.Edmunds, Samuel Bowles,
John Sherman, Charles Francis Adams, and Carl Schurz.
Illustrative of the sentiments of these men is the following pas-
sage from the Autobiography of George F. Hoar upon the con-
quest of the Philippines:

When I think of my party, whose glory and whose service to

Liberty are the guide of my life, crushing out this people in their
effort to establish a republic, and hear people talking about giving
them good government and that they are better off than they ever
were under Spain, I feel very much as if I had learned that my father
or some other honoured ancestor had been a slave trader in his time
and had boasted that he had introduced a new and easier kind of
handcuffs or fetters to be worn by the slaves during the horrors of
the middle passage

Co-operating with this group were Samuel Gompers, the

labour leader, Edward Atkinson, statistician. Professor Sumner,
David Starr Jordan, President of Leland Stanford University,
and Andrew Carnegie. As an organ for propaganda the New
England Anti-imperialistic League was formed at Boston in
1899, and about one hundred subsidiary branches were estab-
lished. A notable episode was the exclusion from the mails by
the postmaster at San Francisco of three pamphlets addressed
to members of the Philippine Commission, written by Edward
Atkinson. These were entitled The Cost of a National Crime,
The Hell of War and Its Penalties, and Criminal Aggression;
By Whom Committed. They pointed out the cost of imperial-
ism, its "moral, physical, and social degradation," and the re-
sponsibility of President McKinley for the annexation of the
Philippines. Not daunted by the action of the government
Atkinson promptly reprinted the pamphlets and gave them a
wide circulation in his serial publication, The Anti-Imperialist.
Other noteworthy pamphlets were Sumner's Conquest of the
' Economic Basis of Imperialism in the United States and the Orient.
364 Political Writing Since 1850

United States by Spain (1898), Schurz's American Imperialist

(1899), and Hoar's No Power to Conquer Foreign Nations (1899).
These protests were ineffectual. The triumph of the manu-
facturing and commercial interests in shaping public policy was
well illustrated by two practical problems: Did the Consti-
tution and the laws of the United States apply to conquered
territory without special legislation by Congress? Was Con-
gress bound by all of the principles of the Constitution in
legislating for the territories? Regarding the first of these the
policy of the President was negative, and Congress took a simi-
lar position in regard to the second. The issue involved was
the application of tariff duties to goods coming from the newly
acquired territories, the beet sugar and other trade interests
opposing free competition and demanding the application of
tariff duties to Porto Rican and Philippine products. The posi-

tion of the executive and the legislature was upheld by the

Supreme Court in the celebrated Insular Cases, but the reason-
ing of the majority opinions was notoriously confusing and un-
from the standpoint of constitutional law.
satisfactory
Imperialism did not allay criticism of the existing order.
Gradually public opinion concerning the scope and purpose of
government in its relation to the general welfare underwent a
transformation. The view which had
long been dominant was
that national prosperity depended upon the prosperity of the
manufacturing and commercial classes of the country; when
they flourished the labourer would enjoy a "full dinner pail,"
the shopkeeper a good trade, the farmers high markets, and
the professional classes would collect their fees; consequently
it was only right that such important matters as the tariff and

monetary standards should be determined according to the

ideals of the great business interests of the country. The new
view was that the object of legislation should be to aid all citi-
zens with no special privilege or regard to any one class. Its
birth was in the Granger movement. It was more widely dis-
seminated by Populism, but its ablest presentation was by
William Jennings Bryan, notably in his speech before the
Democratic Convention in Chicago in 1896:

You have made the definition of a business man too limited in

its application. A man who is employed for wages is as much a
 Progressivism 365

business man as his employer. The attorney in a country town is as

much a business man as the corporation counsel in a great metropo-
lis. The merchant at the crossroads store is as much a business
man as a merchant of New York. The farmer who goes forth in the
—
morning and toils all day who begins in the spring and toils all
—
summer and who, by the application of brain and muscle to the
natural resources of the country, creates wealth, is as much a busi-

ness man as the man who goes upon the Board of Trade and bets
upon the price of grain. The miners who go down a thousand feet
into the earth, or climb two thousand feet upon the
and bring cliffs

forth from their hiding place the precious metals to be poured into
the channels of trade, are as much business men as the few financial
magnates, who, in a back room, corner the money of the world. We
come to speak for this broader class of business men.

This ideal, rejected by the dominant political parties, led

to a revolt. Elaborated into a definite programme with definite
methods, became known as Progressivism, possessing three
it

aims: to remove special, minority, or corrupt influences in the

government and to revise the political machinery to enlarge the ;

functions of government by exercising greater authority over

individual and corporate activities; and to provide measures
of relief for the less fortunate citizens. The first triumphs of its
origins and conflicts, in Wisconsin, are well told in Robert M.
La FoUette's Autobiography (191 1) and its definite programme
in thesame State in McCarthy's The Wisconsin Idea (1912);
while progressive achievements along the Pacific coast are de-
scribed in Hichborn's Story oj the California Legislature of igii
and Barnett's Oregon Plan. In municipal affairs the Progres-
sives looked to stricter control of franchises and the commission
and managerial forms of government; in the literature of this
phase of the movement, Tom L. Johnson's My Story (1913) is
pre-eminent. In national government it brought about stricter
Federal control of railways, a definition of restraint of trade, a
more democratic banking system, and efforts toward conserva-
tion of natural resources. Progressivism was the dominant
issue in the presidential campaign of 1912. Its arguments as
set forth at that time may be found in Theodore Roosevelt's
New Nationalism and Woodrow Wilson's New Freedom. Less
popular but more profound presentation of its philosophy is

given in the writings of Walter Weyl and Herbert Croly.

366 Political Writing Since 1850

Aside from its practical merits and achievements, Progres-

sivism marked something of a revolution in American political
ideals. Representative government, as understood by the old
schools of thought, was to be replaced by direct government;
the supremacy of the judiciary was to be questioned if not over-

thrown; the last limits of government interference in private

rights and property were to be removed and with the breaking
;

of the alliance of business interests with the government, a new

type of leader and public servant was to appear upon the scene.
The World War, however, so greatly confused the issues and
involved the policies of the nation that at the moment Progres-
sivism appears under very different colours from those it wore
even two or three years ago, and judgment upon the movement
cannot safely be passed.
 CHAPTER XXII

Lincoln

THE man of
variable
many minds who uponthe siirface, at least, is
not thought of ordinarily as a great leader.
is

And yet in some of the greatest of men a surface vari-

ableness has not in the long run prevented a consummate
achievement. There is Caesar, to be pondered upon by all who
consider such men second rate. And in American history, there
is Lincoln. His life as man of action brings this out well enough.
He wavered during many ye^rs, hesitating between politics and
law, not drivingly conscious of his main bent. Still more clearl}'
is brought out by his personal life and by those literary and
this
mystical phases that are linked so intimately with the personal.
The changes of his mood are at times bewildering. He is often
like a wayfarer passing through successive strata of light and
darkness, the existence of which does not seem to be explained
by circumstance, of whose causes neither he nor his observers
have explanation. Did they arise from obscure powers within?
Were they the reaction of an ultra-sensitive nature to things
without that most people were not able to perceive? He speaks
of himself in one of his letters as superstitious. Should the
word give us a hint? Whatever theory of him shall eventually
prevail, it is sure to rest on this fact he was a shrouded and a
:

mysterious character, a man apart, intensely reticent, very

little of whose inner life has been opened to the world.

It is significant that he was not precocious. The touching

picture, preserved in several memories —
the lonely, illiterate boy
with a passion for reading, indulging the passion at night by a
—
cabin fire this picture has nothing of early cleverness. Of the
qualities that appear after his advent, it is the moral not the
mental ones that were clearly foreshadowed in his youth. The
367
 —
368 Lincoln

moderation of the
simplicity, the kindliness, the courage, the
matured man have their evident beginnings in the boy. His
purely mental characteristics appeared so gradually, so unos-
tentatiously, that his neighbours did not note their coming.
Today, seen in the perspective of his career, their approach is
more discernible. To one who goes carefully through the twelve
volumes of the chronological edition of Lincoln's writings,
though the transition from characterlessness to individuality
is nowhere sudden, the consciousness of a steady progress in

mental power, of a subtle evolution of the literary sense, is

unmistakable. The revelation gains in celerity as one proceeds.
But there is no sunburst, no sudden change of direction. And
yet, for all the equivocality of the early years, one ends by won-
dering why the process has seemed vague. It is like that type
of play whose secret is not disclosed until just before the
curtain but which, once disclosed, brings all preceding it into
harmony.
So of the literary Lincoln. Looking back from the few great
performances of his fruition, why did we not earlier foresee
them? There are gleams all along that now strike us as the
careless hints of a great unseen power that was approaching.
—
But why considering the greatness of the final achievement
were they no more than gleams?
Here is an original literary artist who never did any delib-
erate literary work, who enriched English style in spite of him-
self under pressure of circumstances. His style is but the flexi-
bility with which his expression follows the movements of a
peculiar mind. And as the mind slowly unfolds, becomes over-
cast, recedes, advances, so, in the main, does the style. The
usual symptoms of the literary impulse are all to seek. He is
wholly preoccupied with the thing behind the style. Again the
idea of a nature shrouded, withdrawn, that dwells within, that
emerges mysteriously. His youth, indeed, has a scattered, un-
emphatic intimation of something else. What might be called
the juvenilia of this inscrutable mind include some attempts at
verse. They have no literary value. More significant than his
own attempts is the fact that verse early laid a strong hold
upon him. Years later, when the period of his juvenilia may
be counted in the past, as late as 1846, in denying the author-
ship of a newspaper poem he added: "I would give all I am
 —
First Period 369

worth and go in debt to be able to write so fine a piece." Even

in the first period of his maturity
he could still lapse into verse.
A visit to his former home in 1844 called forth two poems that
have survived. One was a reverie in the vein of

O Memory thou midway world

!

Twixt earth and Paradise,

Where things decayed and loved ones lost
In dreamy shadows rise.

The other was a description of an idiot, long a familiar village

figure. Commenting on this poem, Lincoln refers to his
"poetizing mood." His official biographers tell us that his
favourite poets were Shakespeare, Burns, Byron, and Tom
Hood, and add that his taste was "rather morbid." Byron's
Dream was one of his favourites. It is a commonplace that he
never tired of the trivial stanzas beginning

Oh why should the spirit of mortal be proud.

When his writings come to be edited as literary remains

—
not merely as historical data the period of his juvenilia will
close with the year 1842. The first period of his maturity will
extend to the close of his one term in Congress. Or, it may be,
these two periods will be run together. To repeat, there are no
sharp dividing lines across this part of his life. He was thirty-
three in 1842; forty when he
from Congress. Either
retired
age, in such a connection, is strangely removed from the pre-
cocious. In his writings before the end of his thirty-third year
there is nothing that would have kept his name alive. However,
even as early as twenty- three, in an address to the "People of
Sangamon County" submitting himself as a candidate for the
legislature, Lincoln revealed two, at least, of the character-
istics of his eventual style —
^its lucidity and its sense of rhythm.

Boy as he was, he was little touched by the bombastic rhetori-

caJity of his day. On this side, from the first, he had purity of
taste. His sense of rhythm — ^faintly to be sure —
was also begin-
ning to assert itself in 1832. rhythm was far
Lincoln's sense of
deeper, far more subtle, than mere cadence. In time it became
a marvellous power for arranging ideas in patterns so firmly,
so clearly, with such unfaltering disposition of emphasis that
VOL. Ill — 24
370 Lincoln

it is impossible to read them into confusion —as

so easy to do
is

with the idea-patterns of ordinary writers. And

with this sense
of the idea-pattern grew up at last a sense of cadence most del-
icately and beautifully accompanying, and reinforcing, the
movement of the ideas. In 1832 there were but gleams of all
this —
but genuine gleams.
The ten years following, sterile from the point of view of
production, are none the less to the student of Lincoln's mind
most important. As to literary workmanship in these years,
—
what he did to develop his power of expression in all but the
vaguest outline the story is gone. That he read insatiably, that
he studied and practised law, that he won local fame as an oral
story-tellerand as an impromptu debater, these details are
preserved. With these is another tradition borne out by his
writing. He was a constant reader of the Bible. This intro-
duces the most perplexing question of his inner life. What was
his religion? The later Lincoln —the one to whom, perhaps, we
get the clue in these ten years between twenty-three and thirty-
three — is invariably thought of in popular local tradition as a
man of piety. But on this point what do we know? Lincoln
has left us no self revelation. His letters, with the exception
of one group, are not intimate. His native taciturnity, in this
respect, was unconquerable.
Though born in a family of Baptists, he never became a
member of the Baptist or of any church. Except for one amaz-
ing fragment he has left no writings that are not more or less
obscure where they touch on religious themes. It is a curious
fact that in the index to the voluminous official Life the word reli-
gion does not occur. As against this singular negative evidence
there are anecdotes of a religious attitude. But the historian
learns to question the value of all anecdotes. Nevertheless the
tradition of Lincoln's piety —of his essentially religious nature
— will not down. A rooted tradition, almost contemporary, is
more significant than anecdotes, less susceptible of that constant
dramatic heightening which makes the anecdote in retelling
more and more positive. Now, the traditional Lincoln is a man
overshadowed, a man of infinite gentleness whose pity seems to
be more than mere friendliness or generosity. His own world,
though uninformed as to his specific beliefs, persistently con-
ceived of him as a mystic, as a walker apart with God. For
 —"
Religion 371

evidence to support this impression we naturally look to his

intimate letters. If we may judge by the surviving correspond-
ence, this man, of whose friendliness ten thousand authentic
instances testify, seems none the less to have lived and died
solitary. The one mitigating experience appears in his early
friendship for Joshua F. Speed. Cordial, trustful, sympathetic
he was with many friends. The group of letters written to
Speed in 1842 are in a vein that sets them apart. Both men
had suffered through their emotions, and each in an analytical,
self-torturing way. Upon Lincoln the sudden death of Ann
Rutledge, with whom he thought himself in love at twenty-
three, is supposed to have had, for the time at least, a deeply
saddening effect. A second love affair was lukewarm and ended
happily in divergence. The serious matter, his engagement to
Miss Mary Todd, led to such acute questioning of himself,
such painful analysis of his feeling, such doubt of his ability to
make her happy, that the engagement was broken off. Within
a month he had written: "I am now the most miserable man
living. If what I feel were equally distributed to the whole
human family, there would not be one cheerful face on earth.
(23 January, 1841.) Two years were to elapse before the harm
was repaired and Lincoln and Miss Todd married. Meanwhile
Speed, becoming engaged, suffered a similar ordeal of intro-
spection, of pitiless self-analysis. He too doubted the reality
of his feeling, feared that he would be wronging the woman he
loved by marrying her. Lincoln's letters to his unhappy friend
are the most intimate utterances he has left. Sane, cheerful,
—
except for passing references to his own misfortune, thought-
ful, they helped to pull Speed out of the Slough of Despond.

As nothing in these letters has the least hint of the perfunc-

tory their reverent phrases must be accepted at face value.
That a belief in God, even in God's personal direction of human
affairs, Ues back of these letters, is not to be doubted. Never-
theless the subject remains vague. Lincoln's approach to it is

almost timid. There is no hint of dogma. But the fact that

he here calls himself superstitious sends us back to his earHest
days, to his formative environment, seeking for clues to the
religious life he may have inherited.
LoneUness was the all-pervading characteristic of that Ufe.
The pioneer cabin, whether in Kentucky, Indiana, or Illinois,
372 Lincoln

was an island in a wilderness. The pioneer village was merely a

slightly larger island. Both for cabin and for village, the near
horizon encircled it with the primeval. This close boundary,
the shadow of the old gods, is a mighty, neglected factor in all
the psychological history of the American people. In the lives
of the pioneers, scattered over the lonely West, it is of first
magnitude. It bore in upon them from every point of the com-
pass, the consciousness of a world mightier than their own, the
world of natural force. To a sensitive, poetic spirit, tempera-
mentally melancholy, that encircling shadow must have had
the effect of the night on Browning's David, though without
producing the elation of David. That the mysticism of the
primitive should have developed to full strength in a dreamer of
these spiritual islands, but that it should not have risen victo-
rious out of the primeval shadow, is explicable, perhaps, by two
—
things by the extreme hardness of pioneer life and by the lack
of mental fecundity in these men whose primitive estate was a
reversion not a development. While their sensibiHties had re-
covered the primitive emotions, their minds, like stalled engines,
merely came to a pause. Except for its emotional sensing of the
vast unseen, the religious life of the pioneer islands lay most of
the time dormant. It is a fact of much significance that the
Western pioneers were not accompanied by ministers of relig-
ion —which is one detail of the wider fact that their migration
was singly, by families, not communal. What a vast difference
between the settlement of a colonial community, bringing with
it organized religion, and these isolated, almost vagrant, move-

ments into the West with organized religion left behind Most!

of the time, in the places where Lincoln's boyhood was passed,

there were no public religious services. Periodically a circuit-
rider appeared. And then, in a terrific prodigaHty, the pent-up
religious emotion burst forth. The student of Dionysus who
would glimpse the psychology of the wild women of the Ecsta-
sies, if he is equal to translating human nature through widely

differing externals, may get hints from the religious passion of

the pioneer revival. Conversely, Dionysus will help him to
understand the West. That there was not much Christianity
in all this goes without saying. It was older, simpler, more
elemental. But it was fettered mentally in a Christian phrase-
ology. Out of this contradiction grew its incoherency, its mean-
 :

Religion 373

inglessness. With the passing of one of these seasons of storm-

ful ecstasy, there was left in its wake often a great recharge of
natural piety but nothing —or hardly anything— of spiritual
understanding.
And out of these conditions grew the spiritual life of Lincoln.
He absorbed to the full its one great quahty, the mystical
consciousness of a world transcending the world of matter. He
has no more doubt of this than all the other supreme men have
had, whether good or bad; than Napoleon with his impatient
gesture toward the stars, that night on shipboard, and his
words, "There must be a God." But when it comes to giving
form to what he feels encompassing him, then Lincoln's lucid
mind asserts itself, and what has imposed on his fellow-villagers,
as a formulation, fades into nothing. And
here is revealed a
characteristic that forms a basal clue. His mind has no bent
toward this sort of thinking. Before the task of formulating
his religion he stands quite powerless. His feeling for it is
closer than hands or feet. But just what it is that he feels im-
—
pinging on him from every side even he does not know. He
is like a sensitive man who is neither a scientist nor a poet in

the midst of a night of stars. The reality of his experience

gives him no power either to explain or to express it.

Long afterward, in one of his most remarkable fragments,

the reality of his faith, along with the futility of his religious
thinking, is wonderfully preserved. It was written in Septem-
ber, 1862. The previous February the death of one of his
children had produced an emotional crisis. For a time he was
scarcely able to discharge his official duties. This was followed
by renewed interest in religion, expressing itself chiefly by con-
stant reading of Scripture. Whether any new light came to him
we do not know. But in the autumn he wrote this

The will of God prevails. In great contests, each party claims

to act in accordance with the will of God. Both may be, and one
must be wrong. God cannot be for and against the same thing at
the same time. In the present Civil War it is quite possible that
God's purpose is something quite different from the purpose of

either party; and yet the human instrumentalities working just as

they do, are the best adaptation to effect His purpose. I am almost
ready to say that this is probably true; that God wills this contest
and wills that it shall not end yet. By His mere great power on the
 : —
374 Lincoln

minds of the now contestants, He could either have saved or de-

stroyed the Union without a human contest. Yet the contest be-
gan. And, having begun, He could give the final victory to either
side any day. Yet the contest proceeds.

Six months later one of the great pages of his prose called
the nation to observe a day of "national humiliation, fasting,
'
and prayer. That the Dionysian and circuit-riding philosophy
'

had made no impression on his mind is evinced by the silences

of this singular document. Not a word upon victory over ene-
—
mies eagerly though, at the moment, he was hoping for it
but all in the vein of this question

And insomuch as we know that by His divine law nations, like

individuals, are subjected to punishment and chastisement in this
world, may we not justly fear that the awful calamity of civil war
which now desolates the land may be a punishment inflicted upon
us for our presumptuous sins, to the needful end of our national
reformation as a whole people?

—
The context shows that he was not as the abolitionists wished
—
him to do merely hitting at slavery over the Lord's shoulder.
The proclamation continues the fragment. This great mystic,
pondering what is wrong with the world, wonders whether all

the values, in God's eyes, are not different from what they seem
to be in the eyes of men. And yet he goes on steadfast in the
immediate task as it has been given him to understand that
task. So it was to him always —
the inscrutable shadow of the
Almighty for ever round about him the understanding of His
;

ways for ever an insistent mystery.

To return to Lincoln's thirty- third year. Is it fanciful to
find a connection between the way in which his mysticism devel-
ops —its atmospheric, non-dogmatic pervasiveness — and the
way in which his style develops? Certainly the hterary part of
him works into all the portions of his utterance with the grad-
ualness of the dayHght through a shadowy wood. Those seven
years following 1842 show a gradual change; but it is extremely
gradual. And it is to be noted that the literary quality, so far
—
as there is any during these years for it comes and goes is —
never incisive. It is of the whole, not of the detail. It does not
appear as a gift of phrases. Rather it is the slow unfolding of
 —
Humour 375

those two original characteristics, taste and rhythm. What is

growing is the degree of both things. The man is becoming
deeper,and as he does so he imposes himself, in this atmospheric
way, more steadily on his language.
Curiously enough it is to this period that his only comic
writings belong. Too much has been
said about Lincoln's hu-
mour. Almost none has survived. Apparently it was nei-
of it

ther better nor worse than the typical American humour of the
period. Humorously, Lincoln illustrated as an individual that
riotousrebound which so often distinguishes the nature pre-
dominantly melancholy; and as a type, he illustrates the
American contentment with the externals of humour, with bad
grammar, buffoonery, and ironic impudence. His sure taste as
a serious writer deserts him at times as a reader. He shared
the illusions of his day about Artemus Ward. When he tried
to write humorously he did somewhat the same sort of thing
he was of the school of Artemus.
A speech which he made in Congress, a landmark in his de-
velopment, shows the quality of his humour, and shows also that
he was altogether a man of his period, not superior in many
small ways to the standards of his period. The Congress of the
United States has never been distinguished for a scrupulous use
of its time; today, however, even the worst of Congresses
would hardly pervert its function, neglect business, and trans-
form itself into an electioneering forum, with the brazenness of
the Congresses of the middle of the last century. In the spri«g
of 1848, with Zachary Taylor before the country as the Whig
nominee for president, Lincoln went the way of all flesh polit-
ical, squandering the time of the House in a jocose electioneering

speech, nominally on a point before the House, really having no

—
connection with it in fact, a romping burlesque of the Demo-
cratic candidate, Cass. As such things went at that day, it was
capital. was better than most such speeches because, grant-
It
ing the commonplace thing he had set out to do, Lincoln's
better sense of language gave even to his romp a quality the
others did not have.
We come now to the year 1849, to Lincoln's fortieth birth-
day, and probably to another obscure crisis in his career. For
thirteen years at least, politics had appeared to contain his
dominant ambition. Amid bursts of melancholy of the most
376 Lincoln

intense sort, in spite, it would seem, of occasional fits of idle-

ness, he seems in the main to have worked hard; he had made

headway both in politics and in law he had risen from grinding
;

poverty to what relatively was ease. Now, he made the sur-

prising decision to abandon politics. The reasons remain ob-
scure. However, he carried his decision into effect. What the
literary student might call his second period extends from his
abandonment of politics to his return, from 1849 to 1855 or —
perhaps through the famous Douglas controversy in 1858.
—
It was -a period of slight literary production even including
—
the speeches against Douglas but of increasingly rapid liter-
ary development. One curious detail perhaps affords a clue
worth following up. Shortly after his return from Congress
Lincoln, with several other middle-aged men, formed a class
that met in his law office for the study of German. Was this an
evidence that his two years in the East had given him a new
point of view? Was this restless mind, superficially changeable,
—
sensitive to its surroundings, was it impressed perhaps for the
—
moment, overawed by that Eastern culture of the mid-cen-
tury, of the time — —
so utterly remote it seems today! when
German was the soul's language in New England? Lincoln had
visited New England, on a speech-making invitation, as a con-
sequence of his romp against Cass. He was made much of by
—
the New England Whigs ^perhaps for what he was, perhaps
as a Western prodigy uncouth but entertaining. From New
England, and from his two years in Congress, he came home to
forsake politics, to apply himself with immense zeal to the law,
to apply himself to the acquisition of culture. The latter pur-
pose appears before long to have burned itself out. There was
a certain laziness in Lincoln alongside his titanic energy. It
would seem that the question whether he could keep steadily
at a thing depended not on his own will but on the nature of
the task. With those things that struck deep into the parts of
him that were permanent he was proof against weariness. But
with anything that was grounded on the surface part of him,
especially on his own reactions to the moment, it was hit or
miss how long he would keep going. Whatever it was that
started him after formal education in 1849, it had no result.
In the rapid development of the next few years his new-found
enthusiasm disappears. It is the native Lincoln moving still
 Understanding of Men 377

upon his original bent, though with swiftly increasing mentality,

who goes steadily forward from the able buffoonery of the
speech against Cass to the splendid directness of the speeches
against Douglas.
In these years he became a very busy man. At their close
he was one of the leading lawyers of the state. Two things
grew upon him. The first was his understanding of men, the
generality of men. He always seemed to have known men's
hearts. —
This was the gift of his mysticism the gift which
mysticism has often bestowed upon natures predisposed to
kindness. Almost inevitably this gift produces sadness. Lin-
coln did not form an exception. The pity of men's burdens,
the vision of the tears of the world f alUng for ever behind its
silences, was as dreamer of our rude West
real in this peasant
as in that clerkly medieval dreamer whom Walter Pater has
staged so magically in the choir at Amiens. But the exquisite
melancholy of the singer in the high church with its glorious
windows can easily slide down smooth reaches of artistic con-
templation into egoism. The rough, hard world of the West,
having less of refuge for the dreamer, made the descent less
likely. Nevertheless its equivalent was possible. To stifle com-
passion, or to be made
unstable by compassion, was a possible
alternative before the rapidly changing Lincoln of the early
years of this period. What delivered him from that alternative,
what forced him completely around, turning him permanently
from all the perils of mysticism while he retained its great gift,

may well have been his years of hard work, not in contemplating
men but in serving them. The law absorbed his compassion;
it became for him a spiritual enthusiasm. To lift men's bur-
dens became in his eyes its aim. The man who serves is the
one who comes to understand other men. It is not strange,
having such native equipment for the result, that Lincoln
emerged from this period all but uncannily sure in his insight
into his fellows.
The other thing that grew upon him was his power to reach
and influence them through words. The court room was his
finishing academy. The faculty that had been with him from
— —
the start directness, freedom from rhetoric was seized upon
in the life-and-death-ness of the legal battle, and given an edge,
so to speak, that was incomparable. The distinction between
378 Lincoln

pure and applied art, like the distinction between pure and
applied mathematics, is never to be forgotten. Applied art, the
art that must be kept in hand, steadily incidental to an ulterior
purpose, affords, in a way, the sharpest test of artisticality.
Many a mere writer who might infuse himself into an imagina-
tive fantasy wouldmiserably to infuse himself into a state-
fail

ment of fact. To
attend strictly to business, and yet to be
entirely individual —
this is a thrilling triumph of intellectual
assimilation. This is what Lincoln in these years of his second
period acquired the power to do. When he emerges at its close
in the speeches against Douglas, at last he has his second man-
ner, a manner quite his own. It is not his final manner, the one
that was to give him his assured place in literature. However,
in a wonderful blend of simplicity, directness, candour, joined
with a clearness beyond praise, and a delightful cadence, it has
outstripped every other politician of the hour. And back of its
words, subtly affecting its phrases, echoing with the dreaminess
of a distant sound through all its cadences, is that brooding
sadness which was to be with him to the end.
Another period in Lincoln's literary life extends from his
return to politics to the First Inaugural. Of all parts of his
personal experience it is the most problematic. At its opening
there rises the question why he returned to politics. Was there
a crisis of some sort about 1855 as, surely, there was about 1849?
His official biographers are unsatisfying. Their Lincoln is exas-
peratingly conventional —always the saint and the hero, as
saint-heroes were conceived by the average American in the
days when was a supreme virtue to be "self-made." That
it

there was some sort of failure of courage in the Lincoln who

gave up politics in 1849 is of course too much for official biog-
raphy to be expected to consider. But it might perceive some-
thing besides pure devotion to the pubUc weal in Lincoln's
return. That this successful provincial lawyer who had made
a namefor conscientiousness should be deeply stirred when
politicstook a turn that seemed to him wicked, was of course
quite what one would expect. And yet, was the Lincoln who
returned to the political arena the same who had withdrawn
from it? Was there not power in him in 1855 that was not in
him in 1849? May it not be that he had fled from his ambition
in an excess of self-distrust, just as in his love affair doubt of
 Second Period 379

himself led him for a time to forsake what he most desired?

had
And may not the new strength that had come to him have
revived the old ambition, blended it with his zeal for service,
and thus in a less explicit way than his biographers would have
us think, faced him back toward politics. Be that as it may,
his literary power, which took a bound forward in the excite-
ment following thef Nebraska Bill, holds itself at a high level for
several years, and then suddenly enters into eclipse. Beginning
with the speech at Springfield on the Dred Scott case, including
the "house divided" speech, the Douglas speeches, and closing
with the Cooper Union speech in February, i860, there are a
dozen pieces of prose in this second manner of Lincoln's that
are all masterly. If they had closed his literary career we
should not, to be sure, particularly remember him today. In
his writing as in his statesmanship it was what he did after
—the age he reached 12 February,
fifty 1859 —that secures his
position. None the less for surety of touch, for boldness, for
an austere serenity with no hint of self -distrust, these speeches
have no superiors among all his utterances, not even among the
few supreme examples of his final manner. Reading these
speeches it is hard to believe that this man in other moods had
tasted the very dregs of self-distrust, had known the bitterest
of all fear —that which rushes upon the dreamer from within,
that snatches him back from his opportunity because he doubts
his ability to live up to it.

The confident tone of these speeches makes all the more

bewildering the sudden eclipse in which this period ends. The
observerwho reaches this point in Lincoln's career, having pon-
dered upon his previous hesitation, naturally watches the year
i860 with curious eyes, wondering whether 1841 and 1849 wiU
be repeated, whether the man of many minds will waver, turn
into himself, become painfully analytical, morbidly fearful, on
the verge of a possible nomination for the Presidency. But the
doubtfulness of the mystics —who, like Du Maurier's artists,

"live so many lives besides their own, and die so many deaths
before they die" — not the same thing as the timidity of the
is

man afraid of his fate. Hamlet was not a coward. The impres-
sion which Lincoln had recently made upon the country was
—
a true impression that he was a strong man. However, not
his policies, not his course of action, had won for Lincoln his
38o Lincoln

commanding position in his party in i860, but his way of sajdng

things. In every revolution, there is a moment when the man
who can phrase it can lead it. Witness Robespierre. If the
phraser is only a man of letters unable to convert literature
into authority, heaven help him. Again witness Robespierre.
Although if we conclude that the average American in the
spring of i860 Lincoln's way of hand-
was able to read through
ling words deep enough into his character to perceive his power
to handle men, we impute to the average American an insight
not justified history, yet that average man was quite right
by
in hearing such an accent in those speeches of the second man-
ner as indicated behind the literary person a character that was
void of fear —at what we mean by fear when thinking
least, of
of men of action. That Lincoln wanted the nomination, wel-
comed fought hard for his election, only the sentimental
it,

devotees of the saint-hero object to admitting. Nor did his

boldness stop at that. Between the election and New Year's
Day, the secession of South Carolina and the debates in Con-
gress forced the Republicans to define their policy. The Presi-
was the determining factor. Peace or war
dent-elect, of course,
was the issue. There is no greater boldness in American history
than Lincoln's calm but inflexible insistence on conditions that
pointed toward war. No amiable pacifism, no ordinary dread
of an issue, animated the man of the hour at the close of i860.
Then, in the later winter, between his determination of the
new policy and his inauguration, came the eclipse. AU the
questions roused in the past by his seasons of shadow, recur.
Was it superstition ? Was it mystical premonition? Was there
something here aldn to those periods of intense gloom that
overtook the Puritans of the seventeenth century? In a few
respects there are points of likeness between Lincoln and Crom-
well. In most respects, the two men are widely dissimilar.
But in their susceptibility to periodic and inexplicable over-
shadowing they are alike. With Cromwell, besides his mysti-
cism, there was a definite, an appalling dogma. Though Lincoln
did not carry the weight of Cromwell's dogma, perhaps the
essential thing was the same in both —the overwhelming, en-
compassing sense that, God human
being just and our Father,
suffering must somehow be the consequence of our human sins.
Endow Cromwell with Lincoln's power of expression, and we
 The Eve of His Inauguration 381

can imagine him in one of his grand moments writing that piece
of superb humility, the Fast Day Proclamation. Again, was it
superstition, waspremonition, that created in Lincoln, as he
it

faced toward Washington, a personal unhappiness? No recol-

more singular than one preserved by his
lection of Lincoln is
law partner with regard to this period of eclipse. He tells of
Lincoln's insistence that their sign should continue to hang over
the office door; of his sad eagerness to have everyone understand
that his departure was not final of his reiteration that some day
;

he would come back, that his business would be resumed in the

plain old office just as if nothing had happened.
Lincoln was so absolutely the reverse of the rhetorician that
when he had nothing to say he could not cover up his emptiness
with a lacquer of images. Never his the florid vacuousness of
the popular orators of his day. When his vision deserted him,
his style deserted him. It is confidently asserted that he never
was able to press a law case unless he wholly believed in it.
Strong evidence for the truth of the tradition is the obedience
of his style to the same law. It behaved in this way, the eclipse
being still upon him, when he was subjected to the misfortune of
having to speak out of the shadow, in February, 1861, on his
way to the inauguration. He could not escape this misfortune.
The notions of the time required the President-elect to talk all
the way from his home to the White House. This group of
speeches forms an interlude in Lincoln's development so strange
that the most psychological biographer might well hesitate to
attack its problem. As statecraft the speeches were ruinously
inopportune. Their matter was a fatuous assurance to the
country that the crisis was not really acute. As literature, his
utterances have little character. The force, the courage, the
confident note of the second manner had left him. His partisans
were appalled. One of the most sincere among them wrote
angrily "Lincoln is a Simple Susan."
And then, lightning-like, both as statecraft and as literature,
came the First Inaugural. Richard was himself again. He was
much more, he was a new Richard. The final manner appeared
in the First Inaugural.All the confident qualities of the second
manner are there, and with them something else. Now, at
last, reading him, we are conscious of beauty. Now
we see
what the second manner lacked. Keen, powerful, full of char-
382 Lincoln

acter, melodious, impressive, nevertheless it had not that

sublimation of all these, and with that the power to awaken the
imagination which, in argumentative prose, is beauty.
Lincoln had apparently passed through one of those inde-
scribable inward experiences —always, seems, accompanied
it

by deep gloom —which in mystical natures so often precede a

rebirth of the mind. Psychology has not yet analyzed and
classified them. But history is familiar with a sufficient number
to be sure of their reality. From Saul agonizing in his tent to
Luther throwing his inkpot at the devil from Cromwell wrest-
;

Lord to Lincoln striving to be vocal when his mind

ling with the
—
was dumb in a hundred instances there is the same range of
phenomena, the same spiritual night, the same amazing dawn.
And now the most interesting of the literary questions con-
cerning Lincoln presents itself. It is to be borne in mind that
he was essentially non-rhetorical. He towers out of the literary
murk of his day through his freedom from rhetoric. And
yet, pernicious as it is, mere rhetoricity has its base in genuine
artistic impulse. It is art perverted and made unreal, just
as sentimentality sentiment perverted and made unreal.
is

And just as the vision of conduct which sentimentality per-

ceives —
and spoils—is an essential to noble living, so the
vision of word-use which rhetoric perceives and spoils is es-
sential to literature. Hitherto Lincoln had been ultra-sensi-
tive to the spoiling done by rhetoricality. Had he been duly
sensitive to the vision which the word-jobbers of his day had
degraded to their own measure? It may be fairly doubted.
But hereafter, in the literary richness of the final manner, no
one can doubt the fulness and the range of his vision as an imag-
inative artificer in words. Had any new influence, purely
literary entered into his life ? One hesitates to say, and yet there
is the following to consider. Lincoln submitted his First Inaug-
ural to Seward. Several of Seward's criticisms he accepted.
But Seward, never doubting that he was worth a dozen of the
President in a literary way, did not confine himself to criticism.
He graciously submitted a wholly new paragraph which Mr.
Lincoln might, if he cared to, use as peroration. It read:

I close. We are not, we must not be, aliens or enemies, but fellow
countrymen and brethren. Although passion has strained our bonds
 :

Third Period 383

of affection too hardly, they must not, I am sure they will not, be
broken. The mystic chords which, proceeding from so many battle-
fields and so many patriotic graves, pass through all the hearts and
all hearths in this broad continent of ours, will yet again harmonize

in their ancient music when breathed upon by the guardian angel

of the nation.

One of themost precious pages in the sealed story of Lin-

coln's inner life would contain his reflections as he pondered
this paragraph. Deeply as he knew the hearts of men, here in —
spite of its lack of weight —
was something that hitherto he had
not been able to use. The power of it in afiecting men he must
have understood. If it could be brought within his own instru-
ment, assimilated to his own attitude, a new range would be
given to his effectiveness. Was he capable of assimilating it?
We do not know how he reasoned in this last artistic crisis but ;

we do know what he did. He made Seward's paragraph his

own. Into the graceful but not masterly—the half-way rhetor-
ical —^words of Seward he infused his own quality. He reorgan-
ized their feeble pattern by means of his own incomparable
sense of rhythm. The result was the concluding paragraph of
the First Inaugural

I am loath to close. We are not enemies, but friends. We must

not be enemies. Though passion may have strained, it must not
break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory, stretch-
ing from every battlefield and every patriot grave to every living
heart and hearthstone all over this broad land, will yet swell the
chorus of the Union when again touched as surely they will be, by
the better angels of our nature.

The final Lincoln, in the literary sense, had arrived. Though

an ultra-delicate critic might find a subdivision of this final
period in the year 1862, the point is minute and hardly worth
making. During the four years remaining in his life, his style
has always the same qualities: flexibility, directness, pregnancy,
wealth. It is always applied art, never for an instant unfaithful
to the business in hand. Never for an instant does it incrust
—
the business, as the rhetorician would do, nor ever overlay—
itwith decoration. At the same time it contrives always to
compel the business to transact itself in an atmosphere that is
384 Lincoln

the writer's own creation; an atmosphere in which great

thoughts are enriched by golden lustres, while ordinary thoughts
bear themselves as do poor souls transfigured, raised momen-
tarily to a level with the great by a passionate vision of great
things.
 CHAPTER XXIII

Education

THE contribution of America to education

of practical ideas and
is in the realm
institutional organization, not in
that of philosophical theory or of literature. Even an
adequate literary expression of the practical ideals which have
dominated in varying form from decade to decade, or of the
institutions which sprang therefrom, is rarely found. For the
most part the literature has been ephemeral, serving the pur-
poses of its own generation but carrjring no great message to
subsequent ones; or incidental, forming but a minor interpo-
lated part of some other type of literature. Not until our own
generation has there arisen a philosopher to give vitalizing ex-
pression to the dominant progressive ideas of America, or scien-
tists to apply in literary form their instruments and methods

to the problems of education.

The colonists of the seventeenth century transplanted to a
virgin soil the old institutions of Europe. Some, as those of
the South or of New Netherland, sought a new home merely to
—
better their economic condition not to modify a social system
with which they were otherwise well satisfied. Some, chiefly of
the Middle Colonies, sought to escape from persecution and
thus to preserve cherished institutions. Only those of New
England were beckoned by the vision of new institutions and
customs in conformity with ideals cherished in the home land
but not to be realized there.
Of the first type, Berkeley, the testy governor of Virginia,
is the best spokesman. Replying in 1672 to the inquiry of the
home government as to what policy was pursued in the colony
regarding the religious training and education of the youth
and of the heathen, he wrote "The same course that is taken in
:

"
385
 ' :

386 Education

England, out of towns, every man according to his ability in-

structing his children." This represents accurately the condi-
tion of a colony where the largest town numbered not over
twenty families, and the total population, no greater than that
of a London -parish, was scattered over a region larger than all
England. While this part of the Governor's reply is seldom
quoted, the latter part of it, probably inaccurate, certainly
misleading, is often given. It continues:

But I thank God there are no free schools or printing, and I

hope we shall not have them these hundred years; for learning has
brought disobedience and heresy and sects into the world and print-
ing has divulged them and libels against the best of governments.
God keep us from both.

Much of the scanty educational writings of colonial Virginia

concerns the founding and the early work of its university,
William and Mary, founded in 1693 through the efforts of the
Rev. William Blair, a Scotch cleric, the head of the Established
Church in the colony. Of this body of material, one bit is of
more than ephemeral value. For when the persuasive Blair
pleaded for the chartering and endowment of the college by
the monarchs on the grounds that the colonists, as well as the
people at home, had souls to save, the testy Seymour replied,
with more force than elegance, "Damn your souls! Make
! '

tobacco
The fullest account of Southern colonial education, in fact
of Southern colonial life, is Hugh Jones's Present State of Vir-
ginia (1724). He pays his compliments to the prevailing type
of education in the following description of an important
educational custom of the colonial period

As England for it, though the

for education, several are sent to
Virginians, being naturally ofgood parts (as I have already hinted)
neither require nor admire as much learning as we do in Britain;
yet more would be sent over were they not afraid of the smallpox,
which most commonly proves fatal to them. But indeed, when they
come to England they are generally put to learn to persons that
know little of their temper, who keep them drudging on in what is
of little use to them, in pedantic methods, too tedious for their
volatile genius. For grammar learning, taught after the common
 The Middle Colonies 387

round-about way, is not much beneficial nor delightful to them; so

that they are noted to be more apt to spoil their schoolfellows than
improve themselves; because they are imprisoned and enslaved to
what they hate and think useless, and have not peculiar management
proper for their humour and occasion.

From the harassed Quakers of Penn's colony came a far more

radical and forward-looking statement of the social theory of
education, as befitted those persecuted for their ideals. It is
obvious, however, from later records that little more was ac-
tually accomplished in Pennsylvania than in the South. The
Frame of Government of 1682, with greater precision than any
other colonial document, required that "to the end that the
poor as well as rich may be instructed in good and commendable
learning which is to be preferred before wealth" all children

should be instructed "that they may be able at least to read

the Scriptures and write by the time they attain to twelve
years of age." Then that there should be neither failure to
provide the fundamental practical training nor failure to per-
ceive the social theory underlying it, these makers of society
add "and that they [all children] be taught some useful trade
and skill, that the poor may work to live, and the rich if they
become poor may not want." But in order to meet the wishes
of a heterogeneous population, Pennsylvania within a genera-
tion adopted the policy of giving to each religious sect the con-
trol of the education of its own This plan remained in
youth.
force until near the middle of the nineteenth century.
Throughout its history the Dutch colony of New Nether-
land was little more than the trading outpost of a commercial
company. The career of the earliest schoolmaster we learn
through the unsavoury record of the police court; those of his
successors through the tedious records of the church, examining,
licensing, and supervising, and through those more sordid
though more human documents, the records of the commercial
company, providing, under greater or less protest, the meagre
salary.
It was the colonists of New England, particularly those of
Massachusetts, who had visions of a new education in a new
society and who left us abundant written records of their pur-
poses and achievements. As specific as the Pennsylvania for-
 —
388 Education

mulation and far more effective was the often quoted statement
of the Massachusetts law of 1647:

It being one chief point of that old deluder, Satan, to keep men
from the knowledge of Scriptures, as in former times, by keeping
them in an unknown tongue, so in these latter times, by persuading
them from the use of tongues that so at last the true sense and mean-
ing of the original might be clouded by false glosses of saint-seeming
deceivers, that learning might not be buried in the graves of our
fathers, in church and commonwealth, the Lord assisting our
endeavours, — it is therefore ordered. . . .

From this law came the establishment of schools in every

town, elementary schools only in towns of fifty families, sec-
ondary or Latin grammar schools also in towns of over one
hundred families. Within the century, through the provision
of the law and the experience of a free people, these schools
became free. Consequently this statute of 1647 constitutes
the Magna Charta of the American public school system. The
theory of education expounded may now seem narrow, but it
was at least far more concrete, definite, and vitally connected
with the life of the times than the worn-out theories used by
later generations to justify the same narrow linguistic edu-
cation.
Specific literary education was supplemented by, or rather
was supplemental to, a broader social training provided for by
a law enacted five years previously which related to the train-
ing of all children "in learning, labour, and other employments
which may be profitable to the commonwealth," and provided
adequate machinery to see that its provisions were applied to
every child. Local records of the towns afford abundant evi-
dence that these laws were carried out with fidelity throughout
the seventeenth and most of the eighteenth centuries. Educa-
tion in handicraft or some form of industry through the ap-
prentice system constituted, indeed, the most important aspect
of education throughout the colonial period ;and those who are
content to form their picture of educational conditions in the
colonies from the laws or documents concerning the schools or
—
more particularly the colleges which affected but the few
overlook the most substantial and far-reaching part of the
educational system. Many legislative enactments refer to it,
 The Apprentice System 389

though as a matter of fact it was not actually necessary to

legaUze English customs in English colonies.
The fullest account of the apprentice system, especially as
it was appUed to the adult labourer, is given in the diary of
John narrower, a Scotchman, who, having indentured himself
for some years to pay for his passage, landed in Virginia in 1774.
Like many others he was sold as a schoolmaster; but unlike
the many known only through newspaper advertisements, he
lefta long detailed record of his experience. A good account of
the apprentice system as a scheme of education is found in the
Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin. PrankUn speaks of his
father's desire to give him an academic education and of the
unattractiveness of the Latin grammar school. That this dis-
inclination to acquire the prevailing literary education was not
due to lack of genuine interest in books is indicated by the
fact that after other ventures the boy was finally apprenticed
to the printer's trade on account of his "bookish inclination."
Custom and finally statute in most of the colonies required that
all such apprentices should be taught to read and write, as the

early Massachusetts and Pennsylvania laws had dictated from

the first.

The colonial elementary school received little attention in

written records except in the minutes of ecclesiastical bodies
and in town records. In these references the records of Massa-
chusetts towns are particularly rich. The town of Salem ordered
in 1644 " that a rate be published on next lecture day that such
as have children to be kept at school would bring in their names
and what they will give for one whole year, and also that if any
poor body hath children, or a child, that the town will pay for it
by rate. The first part of this town order indicates the method
'
'

by which the earliest schools were generally supported that of —

voluntary contribution. The last clause of the entry constitutes
probably the first instance in America of legal provision for free
education by state support. From these conditions and within
a generation free public education in the Massachusetts towns
developed.
It was, however, the Latin grammar school, found in all the
colonies, that received the greatest attention, attaining at times
the dignity of a newspaper or pamphlet agitation. Cotton
Mather has left us the petition which John Eliot offered repeat-
390 Education

edly at the synod of churches: "Lord, for schools eversrwhere

amongst us That our schools may flourish That every mem-
! !

ber of this assembly go home and procure a good school to be

encouraged by the town where he lives That before we die we
!

may be so happy as to see a good school encouraged by every

plantation in the country!" Such zeal was not an isolated
phenomenon and could not but bear fruit. The enthusiasm
of America for education and the great public school system
of subsequent days are but the legitimate results of such early
devotion.
The outstanding figure in the conduct of the Latin school,
as well as the chief representative of the colonial schoolmaster,
is Ezekiel Cheever, who taught for seventy years, the last
thirty-eight of them as master of the Boston Grammar School.
Cheever himself contributed little to literature except a Latin
Accidence, probably the earliest American school book, en-
titled A Short Introduction to the Latin Tongue (before 1650).
This in itself was no more voluminous than the poetic tribute
paid after his death by one of his pupils. Cotton Mather. With
better motive perhaps than metre he thus records his esteem:

A mighty tribe of well instructed youth

Tell what they owe to him and tell with truth.
All the eight parts of speech he taught to them
They now employ to trumpet his esteem.

Ink is too vile a liquor; liquid gold

Should fill the pen by which such things are told.

Another of Cheever's pupils was Judge Sewall, who has left us

in his diary some details of the schooling of his children. After
hearing Mather's funeral oration upon Cheever, Sewall made
in this diary but one brief entry about their departed master:
"He abominated periwigs."
Of the other colonial schoolmasters who contributed to lit-
erature the German pedagogue of Pennsylvania, Christopher
Dock, has left the most substantial literary product. Besides
a text or treatise he wrote an elaborate set of rules, one hundred
in number, which portray in great detail the conduct of schools
of the time, but which after all reveal merely transplanted Eu-
ropean customs. Methods were extremely practical; although
 "The New England Primer" 39i

they indicate considerable empirical knowledge of human na-

ture they show no scientific or philosophical knowledge of edu-
cation. When he can say his A B C's and point out each letter
'
'

with his index finger, he is put into the A, b, abs. When he

reaches this class his father owes him a penny and his mother
must fry him two eggs for his diligence." One of the most
fundamental of modern educational principles is indeed recog-
nized: "DifiEerent children need different treatment." But
how typical of the times is the interpretation, for he goes on
to say: "That is because the wickedness of youth exhibits
itself in so many ways." This most elaborate of colonial peda-

gogical works is similar in form and purpose to the numerous

books on behaviour produced in all European countries dur-
ing the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, but it has little
of the penetration or urbanity and none of the literary grace
of Castiglione or of Chesterfield, or of the good Bishop de la
Casa.
The most most characteristic textbook
influential as well as
was The New England Primer, ' first issued
of the colonial period
about 1690 by a Boston printer. Constructed on principles
borrowed from Comenius's Orhis Pictus and from the Protestant
Tutor, it was used quite generally throughout the colonies and
universally in New England. Countless youth made their way
through the alphabet from "In Adam's Fall We Sinned All" to
"Zaccheus he Did Climb the Tree, Our Lord to See." To its
sombre interpretation of life was given a touch of human inter-
est by the vivid description and illustrations of the martyrdom
of Mr. John Rogers in the presence of his wife and nine small
This little volume, no larger
' '

children and one at the Breast.

' '

than the palm of a child's hand, was speUing book, reader, and
text in rehgion, morals, and history. It culminated in the short-
er catechism, but no part of it was without its religious phase,
for the achievement in speUing extended to "abomination" and
'
justification.
' From the seed of this little volume sprang the
'
'

notable harvest of schoolbooks, one of the most practical as

well as most substantial of American achievements in education.
A maturer companion piece to The New England Primer was
Wigglesworth's The Day of Doom (1662). Though it was used
perhaps more for home reading than for schools, few Puritan
'
See also Book II, Chap. vil.
 '

392 Education

children escaped the task of memorizing its description of the

last judgment.
More voluminous than the literature of the lower schools
is One of the earliest literary pro-
that relating to the colleges.
ductions of the colonists, the anonymous New England's First
Fruits published in 1643, gives a full description of Harvard
with its charter, curriculum, and rules governing student con-
duct. It reflects the spirit of the times, revealing the concep-
tion of education and the devotion of the people.

After God had carried us safe to New England, and we had

builded our houses, provided necessaries for our livelihood, named
convenient places for God's worship and settled the civil govern-
ment, one of the next thingswe longed for and looked after was to
advance learning and perpetuate it to posterity, dreading to leave
an illiterate ministry to the churches when our present ministry
shall be in the dust.

At the close of the century Cotton Mather in his Magnolia

gave an elaborate history of the college, with accounts of its
later rules and Such charters and codes of
its chief dignitaries.
rules are to be found for all the colonial colleges.
These include
Harvard, founded in 1636, named two years later, opened in
1639, and graduating its first class in 1642; Wilham and Mary,
founded in 1693 but for a generation perhaps little more than a
grammar school; Yale, founded in 170 1 but migratory for six-
teen years; the college of New Jersey, more popularly called
Princeton, founded in 1746; Pennsylvania, founded as an
academy by FrankUn in 1746 but chartered as a "college, acad-
emy and charitable school" in 1756; King's, now Columbia,
founded in 1754; Brown, founded in Rhode Island by the Bap-
tists in 1764; Queen's, now Rutgers, founded by the Dutch
Reformed Church in 1766; and Dartmouth, founded as an
Indian charity school in 1754 and chartered as a college in 1785.
The first six were the achievements of entire colonies in which
the sectarian motive was strong and the early population unified
by belief. Two were direct outgrowths of rehgious sects. The
lastwas a philanthropic venture. Benefactors gave their names
to three; colonies to two; loyalty to reigning monarchs to three;
Franklin was largely instrumental in the creation of Pennsyl-
' See Book I, Chap. ix.
 :

Franklin 393

vania. Dartmouth alone was "the lengthened shadow of a

man," Eleazar Wheelock.
Each institution developed a mass of literature, in some
cases controversial, but for the most part merely descriptive or
apologetic. With the middle of the eighteenth century there
appeared an educational literature revolutionary in character.
Benjamin Franklin was the protagonist of these writers, and
in truth colonial America's greatest educational leader. No one
more clearly portrayed or did more to formulate the practical
temper of American education for the half century succeeding
the achievement of political maturity as well as for the half
century preceding. Through the pages of Poor Richard's Alma-
nac and by his own philanthropic activities he instilled the
practical wisdom of economy, industry, thrift, virtue, into the
receptive minds of his fellow colonists. He set up models of
self-education in his Plan oj Daily Examinations in Moral
Virtues and in Father Abraham's Speech, which was a condensa-
tion of the wisdom of Poor Richard. His educational ideals,
realized only fragmentarily in his own lifetime but more fully
in succeeding generations, he formulated in his Proposals Re-
lating to the Education of the Youth of Pennsylvania and in his
Sketch of an English School. The former led ultimately to the
establishment of the University of Pennsylvania.
The scheme for an EngHsh classical school or academy was
the first effective revolt against the traditional education.
While this portion of the school thrived not at all and persisted
only under great difficulties, yet the idea survived and effected
reform in the college from time to time. The same practical
ideas appear in the announcement of King's College in 1754.
The first president outlined his curriculum as follows

And lastly, a serious, virtuous, and industrious course of life

being first provided for, it is ftirther the design of this college to in-

struct and perfect the youth in the learned languages, and in the
arts of reasoning exactly, of writing correctly, and speaking elo-
quently; and in the arts of numbering and measuring, of surveying
and navigation, of geography and history, of husbandry, com-
merce, and government, and in the knowledge of all nature in the
heavens above us, and in the air, water, and earth around us, and
the various kinds of meteors, stones, mines and minerals, plants
and animals, and of everything useful for the comfort, the conven-
394 Education

ience, and elegance life; in the chief manufactures relating to

of
any of these things,and finally to lead them from the study of
nature to the knowledge of themselves and of the God of natttre,
their duty to Him, themselves and one another and everything that
can constitute to their true happiness, both here and hereafter.

Though this programme was set forth by President Johnson,

the chief advocate of these views before the public was Dr.
William Smith, who was largely instrumental in the founding
of King' s and who became the first provost of Pennsylvania. In
1753 he published his College of Mirania, a Utopian educational
scheme containing the ideas advanced in the curriculum given
above and in fact the germ of a reformed higher education.
The underlying principle of Smith's proposed reforms is one
which has been repeated by educational innovators of many
generations, the realization of which must be attained anew by
each generation. "The knowledge of what tends neither di-
rectly nor indirectly to make better men and better citizens is
but a knowledge of trifles. It is not learning but a specious and
ingenious sort of idleness." The most revolutionary part of his
scheme was the proposal of a mechanics' academy, as a counter-
part of the collegiate school for the learned professions. This
academy was to formulate an education for those "designed for
the mechanic professions and all the remaining people of the
country." The essential features of the curriculum of this type
of schools are what in present times we should call the sciences,
theoretical and applied. Franklin's scheme in the English acad-
emy was essentially the same.
But the dawning of political revolution eclipsed the rising
educational one, the new back into the easier ways
colleges fell
of the old, and educational advance awaited a new nation, a
new century, and a new vision.
Problems of political construction, of economic development,
of national expansion and protection thoroughly absorbed the
interests and energies of the Americans for the first half century
of their national existence. Education was left to individual
initiative or to quasi-public philanthropic interests. During
this period there is no literature which may be termed educa-
tional except by loosest interpretation, and the references to
education in such literature as was produced are few.
 Early National Legislation 395

Our national constitution, the great political document of

the era, does not mention the subject. Of the sixteen state con-
stitutions adopted during the eighteenth century, only five treat
and these, with one exception, in the most general manner.
of it,
Thus it would seem that our forefathers looked upon education,
at least of the elementary type, as a matter of individual con-
cern, or as of local interest only. Two enactments of the na-
tional legislature had profound influence on the subsequent
development of education and represent all that the national
government did for pubUc education until the Civil War period.
The third article of the famous ordinance of 1 787 reads Reli-
:
'
'

gion, morality, and knowledge being necessary to good govern-

ment and the happiness of mankind, schools and means of edu-
cation shall be encouraged." Two years previously, however.
Congress had passed the Land Ordinance of 1785 by which the
sixteenth section in each township was set aside for educational
and gospel purposes. These two ordinances, together with sub-
sequent modifications, ultimately gave as an endowment for
public education a domain about as large as the Netherlands
or Belgium or Denmark.
The local legislation of this period was chiefly permissive,
and outside of New York and New England of little significance.
In these states as elsewhere legislation was directed to the estab-
lishment of a district system of elementary schools. Such a
system was the expression in educational terms of the most
extreme principle of democracy. For it gave to the smallest
unit which had or could have political organization and which
could utilize a school, complete determination and control of
the method of its support, the length of term, the character and
equipment of teachers, the curriculum, and the textbooks. In
time this system performed the great service of educating the
American democracy to an interest in education, a belief in
publicly supported schools, and an educated citizenship. Yet
it also greatly limited that education and retarded educational

development in other respects, in that the poorest teacher and

the briefest term meant economy for the taxpayer, as irregular
attendance and cheap textbooks did for the parent; while a
restricted curriculum accomplished the same result for both
these and the pupil as well. Such a system was destructive of
professional interest and injurious to public spirit but such no
;
396 Education

doubt was the necessary path to a broader and freer education

ifworked out in the democratic way. This explains largely the
dearth of educational Uterature during this period, or its Hmi-
tation to casual interpolations, private letters, legislative mat-
ter, or advertisement. One such advertisement contains in itself
a further explanation of the indifferent status of education:

Wanted —a person qualified to teach school, and as an amanu-

ensis to write grammatically for the press the composition of an old
invalid. He must
be a proper judge of securities for cash; draw
leases; make wills; and undertake the clerkship of a large Benefit
Society, with whom he must, by their articles, pray extempore and
give them lectures. He ought to be able to sing and play different
instruments of music, to teach his pupils to dance, and to shave and
dress a few gentlemen in the neighborhood. Bleeding, drawing of
teeth, and curing fire-legs, agues, and chilblains in children, will be
considered as extra qualifications.

During this periodcommunication was slow, travel most

diflficult, publication costly. As bespeaks an age of relative
leisure, much of the literature was epistolary in character. The
subject of education often entered into the correspondence of
our forefathers, and sometimes found its way into the public
press of the day. But on the whole the amount of such writing
is surprisingly small the interest in education of the generation
;

that founded our government and put it into operation was

slight and lacking in penetration.
Washington believed in a national university and wrote
frequently on that subject. His outlook here, as on other as-
pects of education, was that of a Virginian or an English country
—
gentleman that educators were necessary but that the means
to this end were a matter chiefly of individual concern. John
Adams wrote his views into the first state constitution of Mas-
sachusetts, but they were the traditional views of colonial
Massachusetts. He also left a diary or fragmentary autobiog-
raphy which covers his experience as a district school teacher,
without revealing more than a passing interest in education.
James Madison held a broad conception of education, expressed
frequently in his correspondence, but not at length. "A popu-
largovernment, without popular information or the means of
acquiring it, is but a prologue to a farce or a tragedy or perhaps
 Jefferson 397

both." Though probably the most widely informed man of his

time, he did little more for education than occasionally to
express such views.
Of all the national leaders, Thomas
Jefferson alone took a
vital interest in education, held broad and progressive views
upon the subject, laboured incessantly for their realization, and
left a literary record of them. The two most elaborate presen-

tations of these views are in proposed laws or codes, one of 1779,

the other of 1816. The first, a bill for the general diffusion of
knowledge, proposed for Virginia a reproduction with elabora-
tions of the essential features of the New England school system
which was never realized; the second eventuated in the Uni-
versity of Virginia, the first of the state institutions, now so
characteristic of America, to achieve material form. Much of
the voluminous correspondence of Jefferson relates to these
projects. He wrote often to his friend and political and legis-
lative representative, George Cabell, advancing arguments,
answering objections. His correspondence with Professor
Ticknor of Harvard, lately returned from European universi-
ties, reveals his interest in and knowledge of foreign institutions.

From this source no doubt came the innovations regarding free-

dom of choice of studies, the divorce of these from degrees, the
lack of a permanent administrative head, the democratic gov-
ernment of both students and faculties, and other features
which made the University of Virginia unique among American
universities.
Jefferson's influence on education was local, not national.
Only one other local or state leader of this generation was com-
parable to Jefferson: Governor De Witt Clinton of New York.
CUnton, an organizer and a promoter of all movements for

social betterment, left numerous addresses on various phases

of the quasi-pubUc educational endeavours of his time. Sci-
entific societies, libraries, mechanics' institutes, hospitals,
societies for the reUef of the poor, infant school societies, Lan-
casterian societies, all held his interest and called forth state-
ments of his democratic views. These, together with his
messages to the legislature commending educational reforms,
constitute the most considerable body of educational materials

of the times. It was particularly the mechanical and tempo-

rarily successful Lancasterian system which aroused his
greatest
398 Education

enthusiasm. While Mayor of New York City he was instru-

mental in organizing (1805) the Free School Society of which
he was president until his death. For thirty-eight years this
society was the sole public or quasi-public educational agency
for the children of the metropoUs, and for ten years longer it

continued a potent factor in competition with the growing pub-

He school system. As Governor of the state (1817-22 and
1824-28) Qintori continued an ardent advocate of this system
through public address and official paper.
The chief literary as well as practical exponent of the system
was John Griscom (1774-1852), a New York Quaker. In 1819
he published his observations on a visit to European countries,
as A Year in Europe. In this he records his impressions of all
types of European educational, philanthropic, and reformatory
efforts, thus giving to his countrymen in this direction a great
stimulus to endeavour. Of this work Henry Barnard later de-.
clared " No one volume in the first half of the nineteenth cen-
:

tury had so wide an influence on our educational, reformatory,

and preventive measures, directly and indirectly, as this."
Griscom's Recollections gives an intimate account of his serv-
and pub-
ices as teacher, administrator, educational innovator,
lic-spirited citizen, covering a period of more than half a century.
The Lancasterian system had run its course before the death
of Griscom. Its mechanical scheme of organization made it
possible at least to attempt the education of children in large
groups. Lancaster claimed that one teacher, by using the older
pupils as monitors, could teach one thousand pupils. This ideal
was beyond the reach of his followers, though he himself is said
to have demonstrated its feasibility. The early New York
schoolrooms were built for five hundred pupils. Economic-
ally the scheme claimed to educate the child at an expense of
one dollar a year. Thus it put within the realm of possibility
the education of all the children of a community on the basis
of philanthropic and later of public support. To communities
not yet accustomed to taxation for police or fire protection, for
means of communication, care of streets, or sanitary provisions,
experience with the Lancasterian plan was an essential factor
in the evolution of schools. But the superficiality of the method
and its meagre intellectual results, its repressive disciplinary
measures, its false conception of child nature, its low moral
 Pestalozzian Influences 399

plane resulting from dependence on motives of reward and pun-

ishment, and the formality of its religious instruction brought
about its final rejection.

Meanwhile a European educational influence of quite dif-

ferent character was being exerted through literary channels.
This was the Pestalozzian movement in Switzerland and Ger-
many, destined in later decades to have a powerful effect on
American education. In 1806 William McClure, a Scotch
philanthropist recently settled in Philadelphia, returned from
Paris whither he had been sent as a commissioner to settle the
French war claims. While there he had gone on an occasion to
see the great Emperor, when it had been announced that
Napoleon was to visit an experimental school kept by one of his
old soldiers, Neef by name. Napoleon rejected the Pestaloz-
zian ideas urged on him by Neef, while McClure accepted
them, as did also the Prussian government.
Through various articles McClure was the first to introduce
the Pestalozzian conception of education into America later he ;

induced Neef to remove to America, and in Philadelphia in 1808

Neef issued his Plan and Method of Education, the first distinctly
pedagogical work published in the United States. The work of
Neef in his first school was briefly described in later years in the
memoirs of his most distinguished pupil. Admiral Parragut.
Subsequently McClure and Neef both joined in the communis-
tic and educational scheme which Robert Owen established at
New Harmony, Indiana, in 1825. Owen had published in 1813
his New Views of Society, which was widely circulated in Amer-
ica as a means of educational and social propaganda. The sub-
stance of this dissertation was delivered by invitation before
the American Congress, of which Owen's son, Robert Dale
Owen, was later a member. The son also issued his Outline of
the System of Education at New Lanark, Scotland, as a part of the
American propaganda. The New Harmony experiment was a
failure (1828), and the literary propaganda aroused intense op-
position upon the part of the conservative elements in American
society, particularly the, religious, which then dominated the
traditional education. The general triumph of the Pestalozzian
ideas did not come until after the Civil War.
One great factor in the secularization of American education
was formulated during this early national period —the school
400 Education

textbook. A second factor in this process was the change of

dominant profession. During the colonial period, in education
as in social and political life, this was the ministry. Immediately-
preceding and following the Revolutionary War leadership was
largely assjimed by the legal profession. The practical bent
given to education by such men as Franklin and by the actual
conditions of American life constituted a third factor. The
three together resulted during the middle national period in the
complete secularization of education at least in the elementary
field. This change was accomplished in the United States long
before it came about in any European country.
The textbooks of the colonial period were almost exclusively
religious in character and content. From the close of the
Revolution a distinct type of American textbook began to
appear. Political material in the form of orations, patriotic
appeals, and more or less exaggerated or distorted descriptions
progressively replaced the sombre religious contents of the
earlier books. Undoubtedly the bombastic oratory, exagger-
ated style of speech, and rather flamboyant views and claims
of the American citizens of these and succeeding generations
were largely due to this change. However, this was one of the
means, perhaps a necessary one, by which provincialism vindi-
cated itself maintained its independence of "effete" European
,

society, and developed in time a strong nationalism.

The earliest and most influential of these textbook writers
was Noah Webster (i 758-1 843), whose fame as a lexicographer
has long outlived his fame as textbook writer. In explanation
of his work he wrote: "In 1782, while the American army was
lying on the banks of the Hudson, I kept a classical school at
Goshen, N. Y. The country was impoverished; intercourse
with Great Britain was interrupted, and schoolbooks were
scarce and hardly attainable." Accordingly, in 1783 he issued
the first part of his Grammatical Institute of the English Lan-
guage, Comprising an Easy, Concise, and Systematic Method of
Education Designed for the Use of English Schools in America.
This was a combination speller, reader, and grammar, which
had patriotic as well as educational aims. Out of it grew vari-
ous modifications, the most noted of which was The American
Speller. This is the premier American textbook, of which more
than seventy-five million copies have been sold and which still
 Early Textbooks 401

has its devotees.

In 1806 appeared his Compendious Dictionary
of the English Language,
which in its school or in its unabridged
form has ever since been a famiHar and popular work of
reference.
The only rival to Webster in popularity and fame was
Lindley Murray (1745-1826), a Quaker educator of New York
and New In 1795 he published his English Grammar,
Jersey.
in 1797 his English Reader, and in 1804 his Spelling Book.
These, somewhat more scholarly than those of Webster, and,
as became an author English-born, somewhat less narrowly
nationalistic, were also extremely popular, widely used, and
greatly influential. In 1784 Jedidiah Morse issued his Geog-
raphy Made Easy, the first American text on this subject. This
was followed in 1789 by American Geography, or a View oj the
Present Situation of the United States, which was even more dis-
tinctly a means of political and nationalistic propaganda. In
1797 he published his Elements of Geography, and in 18 14 his
Universal Geography. The New and Complete System of Arith-
metic by Nicholas Pike, avowedly a patriotic or nationalistic
endeavour, came from the press in 1788. In its original form,
too bulky for simple school use, or in numerous simpler off-
spring it dominated American schools for half a century.
There followed a deluge of school texts, as might be expected
of an independent people blessed with initiative and groping
for a democratic education. Many of these attempted the syn-
thesis of the old and the new. There were those which began
geographical studies with the exploration by Moses of the Red
Sea or the study of ichthyology with Jonah. Many still used
;

the old catechetical form. Most included material of religious

character, some of it in violently controversial form. Some
adopted Biblical phraseology, hoping that the form would make
alive, even if the spirit were gone. All were intensely nation-
alistic.

In the higher education, the outstanding change

field of
during this period was the development of the professional
schools of medicine and law. The creation of a professional
hterature followed. The old colonial government was super-
seded by national and state governments basedon written con-
stitutions, "a government of law, not of men." Law reports
began to appear in 1789, with Kirby's Connecticut Reports,
VOL. Ill 126
402 Education

and a book of practice was published as early as 1802. Courses

in law were offered as early as 1773 at King's, now Columbia;
at William and Mary, Yale, and Princeton before 1795. In
1793 James Kent was appointed lecturer in law at Columbia
and served for three years. After twenty-five years at the bar
and on the bench he returned to the academic position and
delivered the series of lectures which forms the basis of Ameri-
can legal literature, his Commentaries on American Law,^
Medical education, like legal education, had been given dur-
ing the colonial period chiefly by the apprentice system Tran- .

sition from this occurred through proprietary schools. While

these schools persisted for the most part until the middle of the
nineteenth century, yet university affiliation was found as early
as 1767 at King's, now Columbia. More noted, however, was
the proprietary school in Philadelphia from which the patriot
physician Benjamin Rush laid the foundation of American
medical literature.
The literature of science and philosophy stimulated in
England and France chiefly through the quasi-public academies
and in the Teutonic countries chiefly through state-controlled
universities, found its chief encouragement in America through
privately organized societies. The earliest of these was the
famous Junto of Benjamin Franklin, organized in 1743. In
1780 this developed into the American Philosophical Society at
Philadelphia. The same year the American Academy of Arts
and Sciences was organized at Boston. This institution was
chiefly under English influences, as the former was under
French. Under the auspices of these two organizations most
of the early scientific and philosophical publications of Ameri-
cans were produced. Much of this literature was of very prac-
tical character, relating to agriculture, climatology, applied
sciences, industry. Before 1820 eight or ten such societies were
organized. After that period the number of such societies in-
creased rapidly; but with growth in numbers came increased
specialization. The development of the natural sciences
brought about a less popular character of publication. Finally
the literature of these societies became so technical as to fall

out of the field of general educational literature.

As has been indicated, almost half a century of national
See Book II, Chap. xv.
 ;

Educational Periodicals 403

lifehad passed before the masses or even the leaders came to

any general realization of the importance of public education
to the new nation. During the second half century (1825-
1875), which may be termed the middle national period, educa-
tion was nationalized, democratized, and made free. This
necessitated the education of the masses of the new democracy
to the significance of education in its political and social bearing
the conversion of the professional teacher to a revised form of
schooling less aristocratic in control, content, and method and ;

the persuasion of the hard-headed, not to say close-fisted, tax-

payer that the expense was a legitimate object of government,
not simply a matter of individual inclination and ambition.
Each was a difficult task, and each produced its own type of
literature.
Periodical publications devoted to education made their ap-
pearance. In 18 1 8-19 there was published in New York The
Academician, the first American educational periodical. Its
standard was high, its appeal was made in no pettifogging
spirit:

O ye, whom science choose to guide

Her unpolluted stream along,
Adorn with flowers its cultured side
And to its taste allure the young.

This was followed by The American Journal of Education

(1826-30), making its appeal to the cultured classes and aiming
to inform them on the subject of education and to persuade
them of its fundamental importance. In the broadest social
sense, not in the narrow technical one, it aimed to be educative.
It proposed to diffuse enlarged and liberal views of education,
to lay emphasis on physical education, moral education, domes-
tic education, and personal education. Above all it considered
female education to be unspeakably important.
'
the subject of '

The Journal was continued in The American Annals of Education

(1831-39), the editors of which were William C. Woodbridge
and A. Bronson Alcott. Alcott's other contribution to educa-
tional literature, The Records of a School, aroused to violent
reaction the conservatives of his time, for in it were set forth
educational doctrines which were not only radical after the type
of Pestalozzi but revolutionary in the sense of the "modern
404 Education

schools" of Ferrer and other more recent radicals. From

Alcott's school Louisa M. Alcott is said to have chosen the char-
acters for some of her stories for the young. The Journal and
the Annals were as worthy educational publications as any that
we have in our own time, and appealed to the interests of the
entire educated class instead of to the teaching profession,
which indeed can hardly be said to have existed then.
Similar to these, in content at least, was the first educa-
tional periodical of the Middle West, The Western Literary
Magazine and Institute of Instruction, published in Cincinnati
(1835-39) • The quality of this jotirnal is a surprising comment
on the high character of the interests of the frontier region. Its
efforts were largely directed toward the development of free
public schools and the higher education of women.
These were succeeded by a number of other magazines
whose interests were localized in particular states, whose appeal
was to the teaching profession alone, and whose objects were
merely the development of a particular school system and of the
technique of teaching. By the close of this period practically
every state had one or more such publication. Only one of
these, the first and the most influential, need be mentioned.
This was The Common School Journal of Massachusetts, founded
and for ten years edited by Horace Mann. It became the
channel of official report and leadership, the source of profes-
sional trainingand stimulation, and the chief means by which
Mann on his prolonged struggle for the reform and bet-
carried
terment of popular education. Yet this journal, like all of its
type, was distinctly below the grade of the group of magazines
firstmentioned.
In magnitude, scope, and quality, however, all were out-
classed by one great publication, Henry Barnard's American
Journal of Education (1856-82). No other educational period-
ical so voluminous and exhaustive has issued from either private
or public sources. It will ever constitute a mine of information
concerning this and earlier periods in both Europe and America.
Through this and his other publications, as well as through his
Commissioner of Education at the head of the
position as first
National Bureau (founded 1867), Barnard exerted widespread
influence on the developing educational interests of America.
So valuable are the volumes of this magazine that when in
 Labour and Education 405

subsequent years it was proposed to destroy the plates from

which they were printed, a private subscription by appreciative
friends of education in England saved them.
During the third, fourth, and fifth decades of the century
another class of periodicals disseminated much material on
education and exerted a peculiar influence on the developing
ideas of the new democracy. These were the labour publications,
particularly The Workingman' s Advocate, The Daily Sentinel,
and The Young American. Those enumerated were all issued
in New York, but similar publications appeared in Boston,
Philadelphia, Baltimore, and Cincinnati. The labour ele-
ment, which during this period came into self-consciousness
and achieved organization, took greater interest in education
than at any subsequent time, but was peculiarly interested
in the establishment of free public education of democratic
character.
The most succinct and effective of the statements of labour
on education is found in a series of sIk articles first issued in 1830
and republished subsequently in a number of publications. The
first essay addressed itself to the question "What sort of an

education is befitting a republic?" and answered "One that is

open and free to all." An education, such as then prevailed,
which shut the book of knowledge to one and opened it to
another, was undemocratic. The second essay discussed the
source of support, and asserted that it should be "from the
Government," because education was in reality a form of legis-
lation and if wisely cared for might to a great extent supersede
the necessity and save the expense of criminal law, jails, and
almshouses. The third essay considered the question "What
sort of an education should the people have?" and answered
"Whatever is good enough for human beings." The current
aristocratic education "of adornment" was rejected, "not
because Hebrew and velvet painting are good only for the
rich and privileged, but only because we think them useless for
The purpose of education is to make men not frac-
'
'

any one. ' '

tions of human beings, sometimes mere producing machines,

sometimes mere consuming drones, but an integral republic, at
once the creators and employers of industry, at once master and
servant, governor and governed." The specific scheme recom-
mended was a combination of industrial and agricultural train-
406 Education

ing with a more practical literary education than that in vogue

at the time.
These educational demands of labour were combined with
many other calls for social reform. Some of these, long since
attained, such as free access to public lands, abolition of impris-
onment for debt, adoption of general bankruptcy laws, removal
of property qualification for voting, have an antiquated sound
at present. Some, such as abolition of monopolies, shorter
working hours, equal rights for women with men in all respects,
are still familiar slogans some, such as the abolition of all laws
;

for the collection of debts, the housing of all children in barracks

for educational purposes, possess a radicalism which puts them
in the realm of Utopias, desired or undesired.
With the substantial achievement of free public education,
at least in theory, by themiddleof thecentury, the labour groups
lost their interest in education and in large public questions in
general, and transferred it to the economic problems in which
they were interested.
During this period America was peculiarly conscious of its
growth in national independence and sensitive as to its provin-
cialism. This sensitiveness was not rendered less acute by the
comments of friendly visitors such as Miss Martineau {Society
in America, 1837) ^^^^ Charles Dickens {American Notes, 1842),
guests not inclined to "see Americans first." Some of these
foreign commentators on educational America were more gen-
erous in appreciation. George Combe, the celebrated phrenol-
ogist, in his three volumes of Notes on the United States of
America (1841), makes frequent reference to educational affairs
in which he was much interested; the Swede, Siljestrom, pub-
lished in 1853 The Educational Institutions of the United States,
the most elaborate description and most favourable commentary
of all.

The educational leaders of America, however, and to a less

extent the educated public, were keenly alive to the technical
superiority of European education and to the value of some of
the novel European experiments. The two most important of
these have been mentioned. The mechanical English Lancas-
terianism reached the zenith of its popularity before the middle
of the century and disappeared before the close of this middle
national period. The Swiss Pestalozzianism, especially in its
 Practical Education 407

systematized German form, greatly increased in influence.

Because of its liberal and more accurate interpretation of human
nature, its kindly sentiment, its democratic bearing, and the
social significance which itgave to education, it fitted into the
American environment. School method was greatly modified
and in time shaped by a more psychologically accurate inter-
pretation of the child mind, as school management was by a
more human conception of the educational process. Both
Lancasterianism and Pestalozzianism occasioned a mass of
publications, in pamphlets, newspapers, periodicals, books, and
special reports. The infant school, borrowed from England,
though it had a briefer vogue than Lancasterianism, contributed
to the development of our primary schools.
The Fellenberg experiment in Switzerland (1809-44) ex-
erted, according to Barnard, a greater influence in America than
any other single educational institution ever did. Its funda-
mental idea was the unifying of an academic and a practical
industrial or agricultural education as this union is now achieved
by such an institution as Hampton. Scarcely an American col-
lege and few academies founded between 1825 and the middle
of the century but sought to embody this idea. Consequently
early collegiate literature is saturated with this suggestion.
Suggestion only, however, it proved to be, for few followed the
experiment long and none actually understood the fundamental
educational principles involved. The plan commended itself
to provincial America, since it made collegiate education feas-
ible to many to whom were otherwise impossible because of
it

financial limitations. It met with approval also because it pro-

moted the physical health so much needed by students who
were yet living under the ideals of a religious asceticism tem-
pered only by occasional relapse. There were good souls who
justified this type of education by recalling that Samson was a
man of strength, David was ruddy of countenance, and that
Moses must have been of strong physique to judge by certain
incidents in his early manhood.
European endeavour and achievement in education became
the subject of much study by American educators and occa-
sioned a few outstanding reports. Some of these reports were
personal only, as that on the Fellenberg plan (1831-32) by
William C. Woodbridge, who taught for a year in the parent
4o8 Education

institution. Others were official, as that made by Professor

Calvin E. Stowe on the Prussian school system to the Ohio
legislature in 1837. This brief volume, admirable in concise-
ness, temper, and insight, had wide influence and was repub-
lished by many state legislatures. So also was the report of the
French philosopher Cousin, On the State of Public Instruction
in Germany, Particularly in Prussia (1831). This, indeed,
because of its wide influence came to be considered a part of
American educational literature.
More ponderous and less influential was the exhaustive re-
port of Alexander Dallas Bache (1839), the first president of
Girard College. Authorized by the trustees to gather informa-
tion concerning the education of orphans, he included an elab-
orate study of school systems of most European countries. The
influence of all these reportswas focussed by Horace Mann in
his Seventh Annual Report (1844) as Secretary of the Massa-
chusetts Board of Education.
Mann was an ardent patriot, an experienced politician and
public administrator, a keen observer, an energetic reformer,
and the wielder of a trenchant pen. His forceful statement was
followed up by yet more forceful practical endeavour. The abo-
lition of corporal punishment, the introduction of an enriched
curriculum, the training of teachers, the adoption of methods
based on a scientific knowledge of the human mind, the proper
classification of school children, the elaboration of the public
school system to include many if not all of the quasi-public
organizations so numerous in America —these
were his de-
mands. The effect of all of the efforts to borrow lessons from
European, particularly German, experience was thoroughly in
evidence.
One other European experiment has
of these observers of
already been mentioned, —Henry
Barnard (1811-1900), the —
record of whose observations exceeds in bulk the work of all
the others. In 1852 Barnard issued a volimie of School Archi-
tecture placing that phase of educational activity on the most
advanced plane, where it has since been maintained. In 1851
he published an extensive volume on Normal Schools, and
in 1854 one on National Education. These activities were
continued in the serial publication of the American Journal oj
Education.
 .

OfEcial Reports 409

Horace Mann's activities were directed pointedly against

local evils and produced violent reaction. The controversy in
magazine and newspaper was prolonged and became of national
interest. So it happened that the great educational reforms of
the fourth, fifth, and sixth decades of the century, in which
Barnard and many others laboured no less effectively than
Mann, became generally connected with Mann's name
In this period official educational reports appeared in great
quantities. Such documents actually began as early as 1789
with the Reports of the Regents of the State of New York
to the legislature. This series, still continued, gives us the
longest survey of education to be found in state or nation.
Reports of state superintendents of education began with the
establishment of such an office in the State of New York in 1 8 1 2
These two series were the only ones, however, before the ap-
pointment of Mann in Massachusetts in 1837 and of Barnard
in Connecticut in 1838. The reports of Horace Mann are to
this day outstanding documents and reveal in detail the accom-
plishments as well as the needs of education in his time. Others
of importance were those of Lewis of Ohio, Pierce of Michigan,
and Oilman of Connecticut, later the first president of Johns
Hopkins University. While none of these documentary reports
possess the literary quality of those of Mann and Barnard, and
perhaps gain their classification as literature merely because
they appear in print and cumber the shelves of our libraries,
yet in them one can discover the educational achievements and
aspirations of the period.
Technical professional literature began to appear towards
the middle of the century, with the founding of the normal
schools. Omitting the short production of Neef, the earliest
and undoubtedly the most popular and influential through all
of this period was The Theory and Practice of Teaching (1847)
by David T. Page, principal of the first New York normal
school.
Popular educational discussion was largely if not wholly
directed to the question of free public schools as opposed to the
traditional private, church, or quasi-public schools supported
by tuition fees or rates. It is difficult for Americans of the pres-
ent generation to realize that little more than half a century
ago free public schools were frequently attacked as having
410 Education

dangerous socialistic tendencies, as being atheistic, or as devices

of the evil one. Even political radicals could resolve "that all
compulsory school establishments are as oppressive as church
establishments and no reasoning, no arguments, can be offered
in support of the former which are not equally applicable to
the latter." The conservatives, represented by the most influ-
ential National Gazette (1830), argued: "It is our strong incli-
nation and our obvious interest that literary education should
be universal; but we should be guilty of imposture if we pro-
consummation ....
fessed to believe in the possibility of that
The peasant must labour during those hours of the day which
'
'

his wealthy neighbour can give to the abstract culture of the

mind." The ecclesiastical representative arguing for the repeal
of the free school act in New York (1850) claimed that "it
will at least give us hope that if the people of the State shall be
delivered from this odious act, the people of this city will soon
follow in demanding freedom from schools that are a moral
nuisance, and have no kind of claim upon the confidence of the
public. The views of the aristocratic class may be represented
'
'

in a sentence or two from John C. Calhoun (1834) •

The poor and uneducated are increasing ; there is no power in a

republican government to repress them; the number and disor-
derly tempers will make them the efficient enemies and the ruin of
property . . . Education will do nothing for them; they will
not give it to their children it will do them no good if you do.
; . . .

Slavery is indispensable to a republican government.

To
counteract and destroy such views was not an easy or a
brief task. The controversy was prolonged through years of
public discussion and debate. The most important of the argu-
ments which found permanent form were the
for the free school
Essays on Popular Education (1824) by James T. Carter of
Massachusetts; the address of Thaddeus Stevens on Free
Schools vs. Charity or Pauper Schools before the legislature of
Pennsylvania in 1835 the Tenth Annual Report of Horace Maiin
;

in 1846; and finally the address of James A. Garfield, then con-

gressman, later President, on the establishment of a national
bureau of education in 1867. Surprising as it now seems, the
controversy terminated only after the Civil War. The free
 Education for Women 411

school system was not finally established in New York iintil

1867, in New Jersey until 1869; in actual practice it was not in

operation in a number of the Middle Western states until after
1870, and in some of the Southern states a decade or so later.
As The Journal of Education said, during this period the
problem of "female education" was "unspeakably important."
In the successful agitation of that subject America made
one of her great contributions to education. Undoubtedly
the prevalent view was that "education renders females less
contented with the lot assigned them by God and by the
customs of society; that it tends to withdraw them from their
appropriate domestic duties, and thus make them less happy
and less useful." The first effective protest against this view
was made by Mrs. Emma Hart Willard (i 787-1 870). After a
teaching experience which began at the age of seventeen, she
drew up in 181 6 an Address to the Public, Particularly to the
Legislature of New York, Proposing a Plan for Improving Fe-
male Education. At the urgent advice of Governor Clinton the
legislature voted (18 19) that the academy which Mrs. Wil-
lard had founded should be entitled to share in the state
funds. Though these funds were probably never granted by
the regents and consequently never became available, the
institution has the credit of being the first institution, in
America at least, for the higher education of women to which
state aid was voted. Mrs. Willard wrote many textbooks and
was credited by her generation with opening to women the
"masculine subjects" of mathematics and the descriptive
sciences.
The pioneer work of Mrs. Willard in founding the Troy
Academy was followed by that of Mary Lyon in the founding
of Mount Holyoke Seminary (1837). Miss Lyon's one contri-
bution to literature, aside from the circular of the institution,
was Female Education (1839), which was but an enlarged pro-
spectus of the Seminary and a defence of the type of education
then offered to girls. By
a narrow margin the institution es-
caped being labelled "The Pangynaikean Seminary," and by a
margin quite as narrow did the education offered vary from the
traditional formal education of young men. The tendency to
make women's newly won privilege a mere copy of the formal
education offered to men is revealed in a yet more extreme form
412 Education

in the next step, the establishment of the first women's college,

Vassar, in 1861. Nevertheless the literary documents produced
by these foundations are farmore radical than the views preva-
lent and reveal a greater independence of thought than do the
institutions in their practice.
The literary discussions called forth by this subject during
this entire period while voluminous in quantity have only
historical interest; nor had the cause any advocates who can
compare in literary skill or influence with Hannah More or
Maria Edgeworth.
In the field of higher education the middle half-century
was one of great activity and advance. The Dartmouth Col-
lege Case by its decision (18 19) that the state could have no
part in determining the character or activities of denomina-
tional institutions once chartered, stimulated both secular au-
thorities and sectarian religious interests to renewed activity in
fostering such institutions. Beginning with the University of
Virginia, opened in 1824, and led particularly by the University
of Michigan, opened in 1841, such secular institutions miolti-
plied and flourished. Similar to these were Wisconsin, 1848,
—
Minnesota, 1864, Illinois, 1867, California, 1873 to name only
the largest and most widely known of the state universities and ;

of privately endowed institutions, the Johns Hopkins Univer-

sity, 1876, and Leland Stanford, Jr., University, 1891. In the
case of denominational foundations the situation was similar.
While eleven colleges were established previous to the Revo-
lution and thirty-four in the following half century, no less
than 285 such institutions, of acknowledged standing and still
in existence, originated during the middle half-century. The
University of Chicago, established in 1892, is the most famous.
Each institution produced certain literary efforts in the form
of propaganda, report, and product. Undergraduate journalism
originated and flourished. Sectarian propaganda was stimu-
lated. College officials in time ceased to regard student instruc-
tion and discipline as their only function and began to attend
to larger and more impersonal educational problems. The two
most important products of these new interests were reports,
one by the faculty of Amherst College in 1827, the other by the
faculty of Yale College in 1829. It is an indication either of
the progessiveness of that period or of the non-progressiveness
 :

College Problems 413

of the century intervening between then and now, or perhaps

of the traditional character of educational ideas in general, that
the problems discussed in these pamphlets are much the same
as those of the present day, and that the arguments then of-
fered differ but little from those now heard. A paragraph from
the Amherst report states theproblem clearly

Why, it is demanded, such reluctance to admit modern improve-

ments and modern literature ? Why so little attention to the natural,
civil, and political history of our own country and to the genius of

our government? Why so little regard to the French and Spanish

languages, especially considering the commercial relations which are
now so rapidly forming, and which bid fair to be indefinitely extend-
ed between the United States and all the great Southern republics?
Why should my son, who is to be a merchant at home, or an agent
in some foreign port; or why, if he is to inherit my fortune, and
wishes to qualify himself for the duties and standing of a private
—
gentleman, or a scientific farmer why, in either case, should he be
compelled to spend nearly four years out of six in the study of the
dead languages, for which he has no taste, from which he expects
to derive no material advantage, and for which he will in fact have
but very little use after his senior examination?

This quotation indicates the tenor of the Amherst reply; it was

favourable to a progressive, even radical, solution. On the other
hand the very elaborate Y,ale discussion of the same subject,
the product of prolonged faculty deliberation, is the fullest
statement of the traditional "disciplinary" view of collegiate
education.
The best literary presentation of the period of conflict is
President Wayland's Thoughts on the Present Collegiate System
in the United States (1842). This discussion, as also President
Wayland's various annual reports, emphasized the need of
radical reform in the collegiate system.
The middle decades of the century were characterized by
the prominence of a few influential college presidents whose per-
sonality dominated the period and whose writings and official
reports gave character to the literature relating to higher edu-
cation. Among these were EHphalet Nott (1804-66) of Union,
Francis Wayland (1827-55) of Brown, Mark Hopkins (1836-72)
of WiUiams, Frederick A. P. Barnard (1864-89) of Columbia.
Nott for more than half a century gave his impress to the in-
414 Education

dependent non-sectarian type of institution Wayland directed ;

the transformation of a small denominational college into an

institution with broad outlook, efficiently serving the whole
community; Hopkins' represents the entire conception of col-
legiate education as the moulding of the character of youth, as
witnessed by the proverbial collegiate log with Hopldns at one
end and the future President, Garfield, at the other; Barnard
first caught the vision of the future university, growing out of

the traditional college, and led the way to the threshold of a

new day. Whether the curriculum should be reformed by the
introduction of modern subjects; whether there should be a
choice of these, when introduced, to the exclusion of the tradi-
tional classics; whether technical subjects, preparatory to the
new professions of engineering, medicine, industry, and business
should find a place —thesebecame the subjects of continued
discussion. The sectarian and hortatory discussions which pre-
vailed before the Civil War gave way rather definitely after
that conflict to such as these.
An important phase of the public education movement of
the early half of the century has almost faded from our concep-
tion of education. To these generations, to whom the new,
broader democratic views appealed because of the social, polit-
ical, and economic benefits to the contemporary generation, the

problem of adult education was of far more significance than it

is today. This adult education was given through the medium

of mechanics' institutes, debating clubs, "Ciceronian associa-

tions,
'

' and, most nimierous of all, lyceums. A national conven-

tion of 83 1 enumerated almost a thousand such organizations.
1

The Massachusetts Report of 1840 lists eight mechanics' in-

stitutes and 137 lyceums. The lyceum organization, launched
in Boston in 1829, included the town lyceum, and country,
state, and national organizations. In reality the scheme never
arrived at such complete general organization; however, it

did attain universal popularity, very general distribution, and

insome sections effective state as well as local organization.
As the epistolary form of was the most
literary composition
popular in the preceding period, the lecture or address was dur-
ing this period the dominant form of expression, even in the
field of education. The leaders of thought in every walk of life

See also Book II, Chap. xxii.

 The Lyceum: Emerson 415

participated in this adult form of education, and much of the

most important literary expression of the period was originally
pubUshed through this channel. De Witt CUnton, Edward
Everett, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Wendell Phillips, William
Lloyd Garrison, Bronson Alcott, George William Curtis,
WilUam Cullen Bryant, Henry David Thoreau, James Russell
Lowell, Edward Everett Hale; such political leaders as
Sumner, Douglas, Greeley; women leaders, as Julia Ward
Howe, Susan B. Anthony, Emma Willard; foreign visitors;
and almost every man of literary prominence made con-
tributions to this form of literature, more or less permanent,
and more or less educational in character.
The most important contributor to the lyceum type of edu-
cation and its chief adornment was Emerson, ' an essayist be-
cause he was a lecturer, rather than a lecturer because he was
an essayist. His livelihood for a considerable period depended
upon his professional activity upon the platform. Though the
remuneration of these lecturers seems absurdly small when com-
pared with the extravagant earnings of Chautauqua favourites,
yet they were sufficient for the simple life of that period. The
lecture had to be adapted to a mixed audience it had to be lim-
;

ited to an hour's time it had to be varied and stimulating and

; ;

it had to conform to certain literary or technical forms. Never-

theless there was a freedom in this literature given for the occa-
sion and the people which bespeaks the educational character.
Emerson himself said " I preach in the lecture room, and there
:

it tells, for there is no prescription. You may laugh, weep,

reason, sing, sneer, or pray, according to your genius." The
stimulating and illuminating idealism of Emerson's essays is an
indication of the high purpose, if not an index of the normal
attainment, of the adult educational endeavour of this genera-
tion. For his Self Reliance, Compensation, Prudence, Intellect,
The Over-Soul not so much moulded the beliefs of his genera-
tion as expressed the unformulated thought and the highest
aspiration of the New England Puritanism of his day.
Of literature presided over by the muses, there is little which
relates to education. In this group Irving's Legend of Sleepy
Hollow (18 1 9) undoubtedly takes first place. If the delineation
of Ichabod Crane is a caricature, that of the school is not, nor
"
See Book II, Chap. ix.
4i6 Education

is the "half itinerant life" of the master. No other account of

the old district school approaches this one in charm. Nathaniel
Hawthorne's Grandfather' s Chair retells the story of Ezekiel
Cheever; and Daffy-down-Dilly and other stories draw on the
rich experience of the district school. Henry Ward Beecher's
Norwood (1868) is a tale, or rather a series of sketches, of New
England life in which the New England academy finds a place,
as it properly should, since no institution or phase of life was
more characteristic of this period. In a more humorous vein
is Oliver Wendell Holmes's description of the ApoUinean Female

Institute in Elsie Venner. At a later day and in more attrac-

tive form the New England private school receives probably
the most attractive treatment given to a school in American
literature in J. G. Holland's Arthur Bonnicastle (1873).
If American literature is not rich in materials chosen from
the schools, probably no other literature is so enriched by casual
references to the school. Perhaps no evidence of the practical
efficiency and worth of the American public schools is more sig-
nificant than the frequent reference in public speech, in the
daily press, in ephemeral or permanent literature, to "the little
red schoolhouse." This conventional phrase typifies the simple
and somewhat forbidding form of our education of the past, and
at the same time the sturdy activities and high ideals of our
moral life from which the generations of the past have drawn
their sustenance. If our theme were the contribution of edu-
cators to literature a most fruitful subject would here be pre-
sented. For the mid-century productive period in American
literature was closely associated with college Hfe, particularly
in New England. The period when Longfellow, Holmes, Low-
ell, and Agassiz were members of the Harvard faculty was an

epoch-making one in our American Kterature. Holmes's Pro-

fessor at the Breakfast Table and Longfellow's Outre-Mer give
the flavour of this life and make the nearest approach to the sub-
ject of the technical educator; perhaps by the same measure
they fall below the literary standard of the other writings of
these professors.
The one ambitious attempt to draw the materials of fiction
from the life of the school is found in Locke Amsden, or the
Schoolmaster (1847),' by Daniel Pierce Thompson. The old
' See Book II, Chap. vii.
 College Secret Societies 417

district school finds here its fullest literary presentation.

Though the mid-century, popularity of this book was sufficient
to call forth many editions, it is now nearly forgotten, and its
author is remembered, if at all, by
more stirring Green his
Mountain Boys. At the close of this period, but drawing its
inspiration from the frontier conditions of the early portion of
this period in the Middle West, appeared Edward Eggleston's
The Hoosier Schoolmaster (1871).^ This racy narrative is the
liveliestaccount of the pioneer schoolmaster to be found, -and
as a delineation of frontier life will compare favotirably with
the best in its sort. Eggleston's later work, The Hoosier School-
boy (1883), is in similar vein. His Schoolmaster in Literature
(1892) adds nothing to his repute and little to our subject.
A characteristic feature of American life is its tendency
to voluntary organization. Perhaps as a substitute for the
pomp and ceremony of an aristocratic society the tendency
reveals itself in the many secret societies with their elabo-
rate ceremonials. This national characteristic shows itself in
American college life in the numerous Greek letter societies or
fraternities. Only the earliest of these, founded as an honour
society with political purposes also, has furnished occasion for
a considerable literary product, much of it of superior quality.
The Phi Beta Kappa was organized at the College of William
and Mary in 1776 with membership based on scholarly attain-
ments. Chapters were soon to be found in the leading institu-
tions of the country. The annual meetings of these constituent
chapters have been the occasion of many notable addresses or
poems. Emerson's The American Scholar was written for such
an occasion (1837). The list of these productions is a long
one, most of them having an academic significance. As illus-
trative of this type may be mentioned: The American Doc-
trine of Liberty, by George William Curtis; The Scholar 0/ the
Republic by Wendell Phillips Academic Freedom by Charles W.
;

EHot; What is Vital in Christianity? by Josiah Royce; The Mys-

tery of Education by Barrett Wendell; The Spirit of Learning
by Woodrow Wilson. These with many others of similar ex-
cellence are scattered throughout the century.
One other type of literary production having incidental edu-
cational importance is found in the reminiscences or memoirs of
I
See Book III, Chap. xi.

VOL. MI —26
 8

41 Education

the men of this period. None of these writers, however, enter

seriously enough into their earlier experiences to make the ac-
counts of any value except that of personal testimony as to
existing conditions. The best of these are from Edward Ever-
ett, Samuel G. Goodrich, and Noah Webster. Similar to these,
though much fuller and of no great literary merit, was The
District School As It Was by the Rev. Warren Burton, depicting
conditions at the opening of the century.
No phase more important than the
of informal education is
moulding of the character of children by their choice of interests
and activities out of school, particularly as determined through
their reading. In another chapter' of this history will be found
an account of American books for children here it is sufficient ;

to note the steady trend away from moralizing and religious

disquisition to wholesome amusement and secular instruction.
The last three or four decades have witnessed a marked
change in the character of the literature relating to education.
As in other phases of thought and action, the dominating influ-
ence has been that of science. Educational literature charac-
teristic of the period is scientific, either psychological, experi-
mental, or statistical; consequently it has become far more
technical.
Old types continue, perhaps still dominating in mere quan-
tity but they are no longer characteristic.
; School publications
of advice and device yet flourish, but the scientific educational
journal now receives the support of a definite and daily enlarg-
ing clientele. Official reports multiply with an annual certainty
which sets at naught any Malthusian law in the world of books.
But accurate statistical method is making an impression on the
content, providing these forbidding tomes with an enhanced
value; while the school survey has furnished an entirely new
type. Works on pedagogy, addressed to the profession, have
become so numerous as to preclude even comparison with those
of the preceding period; yet the nascent sciences of psychology
and sociology have given to many of these a substantial char-
acter which justifies a large allotment of space in libraries and
bibliographies.
While there has been much of note along scientific and
philosophical lines, literature as an art has paid little heed to

' See Book III, Chap. vii.

 Memoirs 419

the schoolmaster or his need. Professor William

James wrote
' '
'

psychology which reads like a novel," and Henry James added =>

to his novels the autobiographical volumes A Small Boy and

Others and Notes of a Son and a Brother which contain much
material of interest relating to the educational experience of
the two brothers. Howells,' Aldrich," and Hamlin Garland s
in their autobiographical volumes adorn the schoolday tales of
their youth with the grace of the life of the imagination; but no
Kipling dramatizes fully the incidents of school life and no
Wells makes the novel the instrument of educational reform.
The nearest approach to this standard is that of a few educa-
tional romances, whose appeal does not carry beyond the
teachers' circle. Chief among these is William Hawley Smith's
Evolution of Dodd, remarkable for its early failure due to the
prejudice against the title, its later success, and the fact that
though over a million copies have been sold the author received
not a penny.
A number of memoirs furnish valuable literary
volumes of
materials of education. The works
of Henry James have been
mentioned. The reminiscences of Senator Hoar and of Senator
Lodge give illuminating accounts of mid-century New England
education. More recently and at greater length. Professor
Brander Matthews has performed a similar service for New
York. Most important of all is the recent volume entitled The
Educationof Henry Adams {igo8, 1916). More frankly devoted
to the educational aspect of experience than any other autobio-
graphical work, vying with them all in literary charm, this study
by one of the most reflective students and keenest observers of
the generation just passing holds an outstanding place in this
type of literature, and in educational literature is unique. ^
Children's literature, as fits a "children's century," has be-
come most varied and attractive. No longer is it the formal
piety of the adult reduced to the priggishness of the child nor, ;

on the other hand, the extravagant tale for surreptitious enjoy-

ment. Child life depicted for the enjoyment of the adult adult ;

life brought within the interest and comprehension of the, child

through the new knowledge of psychology; animal life personi-

' See Book III, Chap. xvil. 'Ibid., Chap. xii.

3 Ibid., Chap. XI. 'ilbid..Chaps, vi, vil, and x.
^Ibid., Chap. vi. ^Ibid., Chap. xv.
 —
420 Education

fied science
; humanized, so that the child can Uve in an environ-
ment of tenanted by the creatures of his imagination
reality,
into such classes do the books for children now chiefly fall.
Most of these assist in the real education of the child in ac-
cordance with principles which were anathema to our fathers.
Some of them, as George Madden Martin's Emmy Lou, belong
to the school. Myra Kelly's stories of the East Side New York
schoolchild, Little Citizens and Aliens, have introduced to lit-
erature a new type, the children of the immigrant, with their
himiour, pathos, promise. In Lucy Pratt's Ezekiel the negro
schoolchild of the South finds utterance. On the borderland
of the literattire of the school are the stories Seventeen and Pen-
rod, by Booth Tarldngton, revealing the experience of the ado-
lescent schoolboy and girl on its obverse and reverse side — ^its

tragic seriousness to them, its humour and irritation to the adult.

Literature for children has now become so voluminous in quan-
tity, so varied in character, so rich in content, that it can no
longer be considered merely as a class of educational literature.
However, it performs more than ever before a genuine
efficiently
educational function through the happy union
of humanitarian
sentiment, scientific psychological knowledge, and attractive
literary form.
One type of literature is peculiar to America, the Uterature
of the immigrant. Muchis educational, for the whole
of this
process of making the immigrant into the citizen of the adopted
country is an educational one of scarcely realized importance.
Of fascinating interest also are the literary accounts of the
process. First among these was The Making of an American
(1901) by Jacob Riis, a newspaper reporter and social reformer,
of Danish birth. The Reminiscences (1907) of Carl Schurz, the
soldier, statesman, and liberal political leader, of German birth,
are quite the most voluminous and important of these books
from the general, though not from the educational, point of
view. The numerous volumes of Edward A. Steiner, of Bohe-
mian origin, cover the experience of a successful educator, lec-
turer, and sociologist in a variety of phases of American life.
Chief among his works are From Alien to Citizen and Confessions
of a Hyphenated American. Mary Antin's Promised Land
(1912) contains much that is of interest to the educator, for it

gives a detached and yet intimate or personal view of many of

 —
Immigrants 421

our customs and institutions, including the school, into all of

which the native so gradually grows that he never becomes
reflectively conscious of them. This conscious reaction to the
new environment by one foreign to it and acute enough to ob-
serve, constitutes in fact the real educative influence of a
society. More recently a Syrian, Abraham M. Rihbany, has
given an account from a new angle; while the latest, and from
the formal educational point of view the fullest, account is An
American in the Making, by M. E. Ravage, of Rumanian origin.
This latter gives quite the best description of the life and spirit
of a Mid- Western university that is to be found. No other part
of the recent educational literature of America deserves greater
attention than the volumes of this group or possesses any-
thing like their charm, originality, or significance.
With the increasingly technical character and appeal of sci-
—
and philosophical literature particularly the former
entific
has gone a similar technical development of the literature of edu-
cation. This has been of profound significance," for a sort of
has taken place, resulting in two new species
cross-fertilization
a genuinely scientific and a genuinely philosophical type of
educational writings. Both groups sprang originally from the
new science of psychology and the less accurate one of sociology,
or more specifically from the methods of measiu-ement, whether
experimental or statistical, developed in connection with psy-
chology and sociology. Even though the results obtained are,
as some maintain, "the vociferous reiteration of the obvious,"
yet there is much to be gained through a scientific interpretation
of the obvious. The application of the same methods to prob-
lems where conclusions are not obvious results in profoundly
important, if gradual, advance. The two-volume Principles of
Psychology (1890) of William James,' probably the most fas-
cinating presentation of scientific material in literature, is the
most important, though not the earliest manifestation of this
progress. His brief popular application of these principles to
the problems of education. Talks to Teachers, is yet the most

widely circulated of books for teachers. Since those days, the

literature of psychology in its application to education has be-
come most voluminous. Numerous university departments
have perfected the technique of such work; several scientific
' See Book III, Chap. xvii.
422 Education

magazines devoted to this field afford channels of publication.

Of this literature the features of two distinct types may be
mentioned.
The field of child and adolescent psychology was developed
by President G. Stanley Hall; none of the numerous investi-
gations or publications in these fields but bear the distinct im-
press of the work of this pioneer, or at least owe a great debt
to him. His Adolescence (1904), with its great store of accumu-
lated data and its vast range of observation, represents, though
often in an ill-digested form, the results of several decades of
research of this entire school of investigation.
In the later development of scientific method, that of exact
quantitative measurement, particularly as applied to groups,
the methods of Galton have been applied in the field of edu-
cation. The work has been Professor
chief exponent of this
Edward His Educational Measurements and
L. Thorndike.
Principles of Psychology laid the foundation for this type of
educational literature. A new type of literature, rapidly ex-
panding, has been produced. Much of this, fostered by educa-
tional endowments, university departments, and the national
Bureau of Education, has appeared in the form of school or
institutional surveys. Such surveys attempt to measure by
accurate scientific standards the efficiency of organization,
the character of instruction, the value of specific methods, the
amount of acceleration and of retardation of pupils, the prac-
tical value of the school plant, and a variety of phases of school
work hardly thought of previously in any definite quantitative
way. All of this promises a new era of scientific progress in
education.
On the philosophical side, modern science has given to edu-
cation a more pragmatic and realistic interpretation. Many
volumes of exposition, logical or sociological in character, have
appeared. The closing decades of the century witnessed a revi-
field, chiefly under the leadership of Dr.
val of interest in this
William T. Harris, United States Commissioner of Education
'

from 1889 to 1906. Through official reports, public addresses,

and published volumes he was chiefly responsible for the popu-
larity of German philosophical interpretation, particularly of
the Hegelian character. In a more general field President
"
See also Book III, Chap. xvii.
 "

General Comment 423

Butler, through his Meaning of Education and other essays, has

given more popular interpretation of educational principles. In
this field of philosophical interpretation the writings of one man.
John Dewey, ^ transcend all others in American educational
literature. In fact it may be said that in the field of strictly
technical literature Professor Dewey has made the one great
American contribution. While most of these writings have ap-
peared in monographic form, such as his School and Society
(1890), Interest as Related to Effort (1896), Child and the Cur-
riculum (1902), How We Think (1911), his Democracy and
Education (1917) is a complete logical scheme of educational
interpretation, the only one ever worked out by an American,
and the one most representative of present world thought and
modern science.
In the literature of appreciation some contributions have
been made. Professor Barrett Wendell's Universities in France
uses the foil of French customs and institutions to reveal
American light and shade. Professor Gayley's Idols, as well as
occasional essays from a number of pens, reminds us of the
inexhaustible field for appreciation or for criticism of the teach-
er's experience or of the teacher's problems.Effective and de-
form is Professor Francis G. Peabody's Education
lightful in its
for Life (1918), an appreciation of one of America's most
significant educational experiments, Hampton Institute.
Foreign observers, with either greater detachment or more
scientific attitude,have rendered their tribute of comment.
Some of these, as the Moseley Commission from England, offer
comments valuable to both observed and observer. Perhaps
the chief defect to be noted in these foreign comments is the
failure to perceive that the "feminization" of American educa-
tion does not necessarily mean its " effeminization.
On
the whole, the literature of American education is typ-
ical of that education. In the past when education was a subor-
dinate thing, a concern of the church or of the family or of the
individual, the literature was fragmentary and interpolated.
When education became general and technical in a crude way,
a technical literature having similar crudities developed. With
the fresh substance for literary creation at hand, furnished by
savages, by frontier life, by the new life of freedom, with its new
' See also Book III, Chap. xvn.
424 Education

institutions, by ingenious conquest of the nation's boundless

wealth, the literary creator had no need to turn for materials
for the imagination to the slightly stimulating and highly con-
ventional life of the school taskmaster. Still is much of the
present educational literature characterized too often by super-
ficiality, as is our education ; still is it inaccurate, as our educa-
tive processes are inexact practical, as the
;
demands of our lives
are practical; still does it deal with immediate problems, as

our education and our social organization are bound to do.

On the other hand, much of it has attained a scientific character
unknown any preceding period some of it possesses a philo-
in ;

sophical penetration and reveals a form of exposition worthy of

the best of any period. Much of it is rich in the promise of the
future. In some respects even the practical working idealism
of 'American life, usually concealed under a materialistic exterior,
finds expression in literary forms worthy of its conscious,
though usually unexpressed, purposes.
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