No. 4.] THE ETHICS OF BOOKS. 133 



other nations. While there were chances innumerable for 

 the romancer, there started up a mania for realism, for bare 

 surface facts. Bayard Taylor gave us " Hannah Thurston," 

 a distinctly American book. Holmes, Higginson, Beecher 

 and some others still adhered to their old way. 



In 1871, Bret Harte, after living many years among the 

 mines and mountains of California, gave us his California 

 stories ; Rebecca Harding Davis brought choice thoughts 

 from Pennsylvania ; Edward Eggleston talked to us of the 

 early days of Indiana; Trowbridge showed us New York 

 life from the village point of view ; Constance Fennimore 

 Woolson portrayed the life as manifested in the northern 

 lake region ; George W. Cable contributed histories of 

 French Creole life in Louisiana; Sara Orne Jewett dealt 

 with ideal scenery in isolated places ; Mary Hallock Foote 

 dashed across our vision with the olive leaf of peace, as she 

 touched the sweetness of Quaker life ; Miss Mm*free told of 

 the mountain districts of Georgia, Carolina and Tennessee ; 

 Joel Chandler Harris translated the folklore of the negro 

 plantations of the South; Mrs. Whitney still continued to 

 tell good stories of girl life ; Dr. Holland took a new im- 

 pulse, and wrote " Arthur Bonnicastle " and " Seven Oaks," 

 the last bein£ rich in material from the social and civil 

 impurities of the day. Julian Hawthorne, Lew Wallace and 

 Edward Everett Hale came before the public as new men, 

 each taking his owu prescribed way. 



Yet we say we have no decidedly national literature. It 

 takes many years to evolve such. Herbert Spencer says, 

 "Because of its size and the heterogeneity of its compo- 

 nents, the American nation will be a long time in evolving 

 its ultimate form, but its ultimate form will be high." 

 Emerson and Longfellow are the real founders of American 

 literature. They will not satisfy those who seek the sensu- 

 ous in life, but they did the most to instil the true idea of 

 poetry into the minds of the masses. Wordsworth pre- 

 dicted, more than half a century ago, that some day there 

 would come before the people a person who would be. a 

 union of the poet and philosopher. Emerson most nearly 

 fulfilled this prediction. We realize that the greatest poet 



