LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE. 



167 



and The Pathfinder. Bryant first attracted 

 notice by his poem of Thanatopsis, written in 

 his nineteenth year. His first volume, The 

 Af/ex, was published in 1825. William Ellery 

 Channing's essays, criticisms, and moral, 

 religious, and political writings won him much 

 celebrity as a prose writer. William Wirt, 

 author of The British ^py, a collection of 

 letters written in a chaste and elegant style ; 

 Charles Brockden Brown, the earliest Ameri- 

 can novelist, author of Wieland ; Richard 

 Henry Wilde, author of a Life of Tanso: Chief 

 Justice Marshall, who compiled a voluminous 

 IjAfe of Washington; Henry Wheaton, author 

 of standard works on law and political econ- 

 omy ; Judge Story, author of several celebrated 

 legal works; Edgar Allan Poe, a most original 

 and strongly marked character, who wrote the 

 poem of The Raven and a number of weird 

 and fantastic prose stories ; Margaret Fuller, a 

 woman of remarkable acquirements, who has 

 left behind her much admirable descriptive 

 and critical writing, are all entitled to distin- 

 guished mention. 



The stories and poems of N. P. Willis, as 

 well as his records of travels in Europe and 

 the East, are unsurpassed in point of bril- 

 liancy. Hawthorne, author of The Scarlet 

 Letter, The House of Seven Gables, and The 

 Marble Faun, is remarkable for the delicacy of 

 his psychological insight, his power of intense 

 characterization, and for his mastery of the 

 spiritual and the supernatural. His style is 

 the pure colorless medium of his thought ; the 

 plain current of his language is always equable, 

 full, and unvarying, whether in the company 

 of playful children, among the ancestral asso- 

 ciations of family or history, or in grappling 

 with the mysteries and terrors of the super- 

 natural world. Harriet Beecher Stowe, author 

 of Uncle Tom's Cabin, and a crowd of other 

 writers of various and high degrees of merit 

 and reputation, followed in almost unbroken 

 succession down to the present. Among these, 

 as writers of fiction, may be mentioned Wil- 

 liam Ware, author of Probus and Palmyra : 

 William Gilmore Simms, Oliver Wendell 

 Holmes, author of the Autocrat of the Break- 

 fast Table; George William Curtis, Donald G. 

 Mitchell, William Dean Howells, Henry 

 James, Helen Hunt Jackson, Frances Hodgson 

 Burnett, Elizabeth Stuart Phelps, Louisa M. 

 Alcott, F. Marion Crawford, George W. Cable, 

 F. J. Stimson, Edward Everett Hale, Bret 

 Harte, and Lew Wallace. Prominently de- 

 voted to poetry and criticism are Richard H. 

 Dana, Emerson, Longfellow, Lowell, Whit- 

 tier, Bayard Taylor, Walt Whitman, R. H. 

 Stoddard, T. B. Aldrich, R. W. Gilder, Edgar 

 Faucett, Joaquin Miller, James Whitcomb 



Riley, John Hay, and Edmund Clarence Sted- 

 man. 



To the historical school belong the names of 

 Prescott, Motley, Parkman, Bancroft, Hil- 

 dreth, Winsor, Fiske, and McMaster. The 

 works of Prescott are among the finest models 

 of historical composition, and they breathe 

 freely the spirit of our liberal institutions. 

 His History of Ferdinand and Isabella, of the 

 Conquest of Mexico, and the Conquest of Peru, 

 unite all the fascination of romantic fiction 

 with the grave interests of authentic events. 

 Motley's History of the Rise of the Dutch Re- 

 public is a work distinguished for its historical 

 accuracy, philosophical breadth of treatment, 

 and clearness and vigor of style. Bancroft 

 has written the most accurate and philosophical 

 account that has been given of the United 

 States, which has been worthily supplemented 

 by the volumes of McMaster. In Hildreth's 

 History of the United States, rhetorical grace 

 and effect give way to a plain narrative con- 

 fined to facts gleaned with great care and con- 

 scientiousness. The writing of Winsor and 

 Fiske has been confined to certain important 

 epochs. 



Of the statesmen of the present century 

 who have contributed to our literature of ora- 

 tory, the most eminent are Webster, Clay, and 

 Calhoun. The speeches and forensic argu- 

 ments of Webster are remarkable for clear- 

 ness and impressiveness, and rise occasionally 

 to grandeur. The speeches of Clay are dis- 

 tinguished by a sincerity and warmth which 

 were characteristic of the man, who united 

 the gentlest affections with the pride of the 

 haughtiest manhood. His eloquence reached 

 the heart of the whole nation. The style of 

 John C. Calhoun was terse and condensed, 

 and his eloquence, though sometimes impas- 

 sioned, was always severe. He had great skill 

 as a dialectician and remarkable power of 

 analysis, and his works will have a permanent 

 place in American literature. The writings 

 and speeches of John Quincy Adams are dis- 

 tinguished by universality of knowledge and 

 independence of judgment, and they are re- 

 positories of rich materials for the historian 

 and political philosopher. Edward Everett, 

 as an orator, had few equals, and his occasional 

 ! addresses and orations have become permanent 

 memorials of many important occasions of 

 public interest. Of the numerous other ora- 

 tors, eminent as rhetoricians or debaters, a few 

 only can be named ; among them are Legar6, 

 Randolph, Choate, Sumner, Phillips, Preston, 

 Prentiss, Lincoln, and Robert G. Ingersoll. 



Philosophy assumed its first distinctive char- 

 acter under the influence of the Transcendental 

 School of New England. The first to plant 



