served as a chaplain in the Revolutionary army, and belonged to "The Hartford wits." But after the war, passing under French influence he became a Deist and a lawyer. Going to France in 1788, he associated with the leading Girondists. After acquiring considerable fortune, he returned to America and settled in Washington. Then he published his ambitious epic in a costly quarto. In 1811 he was sent as United States Minister to France. Being summoned to a conference with the Emperor Napoleon in Poland, he died suddenly while on the way. He is best remembered by his mock-heroic poem, "Hasty Pudding," which, written in Savoy in 1793, is a partial picture of New England life.

HASTY PUDDING.

(From Canto I.)

YE Alps audacious, through the heavens that rise,
To cramp the day and hide me from the skies;
Ye Gallic flags, that, o'er their heights unfurled,
Bear death to kings, and freedom to the world,
I sing not you. A softer theme I choose,
A virgin theme, unconscious of the Muse,
But fruitful, rich, well suited to inspire
The purest frenzy of poetic fire.

Despise it not, ye bards to terror steeled,
Who hurl your thunders round the epic field;
Nor ye who strain your midnight throats to sing
Joys that the vineyard and the still-house bring;
Or on some distant fair your notes employ,
And speak of raptures that you ne'er enjoy.

I sing the sweets I know, the charms I feel,
My morning incense, and my evening meal,
The sweets of Hasty Pudding. Come, dear bowl,
Glide o'er my palate, and inspire my soul.
The milk beside thee, smoking from the kine,
Its substance mingled, married in with thine,
Shall cool and temper thy superior heat,
And save the pains of blowing while I eat.

Oh! could the smooth, the emblematic song
Flow like thy genial juices o'er my tongue,
Could those mild morsels in my numbers chime,
And, as they roll in substance, roll in rhyme,

No more thy awkward, unpoetic name
Should shun the muse or prejudice thy fame,
But, rising grateful to the accustomed ear,

All bards should catch it, and all realms revere !
Assist me first with pious toil to trace,

Through wrecks of time, thy lineage and thy race;
Declare what lovely squaw in days of yore
(Ere great Columbus sought thy native shore)
First gave thee to the world; her works of fame
Have lived indeed, but lived without a name.

Some tawny Ceres, goddess of her days,

First learned with stones to crack the well-dried maze,
Through the rough sieve to shake the golden shower,
In boiling water stir the yellow flour:

The yellow flour, bestrewed and stirred with haste,
Swells in the flood and thickens to a paste,

Then puffs and wallops, rises to the brim,
Drinks the dry knobs that on the surface swim;
The knobs at last the busy ladle breaks,
And the whole mass its true consistence takes.
Could but her sacred name, unknown so long,
Rise, like her labors, to the son of song,

To her, to them, I'd consecrate my lays,

And blow her pudding with the breath of praise.
If 'twas Oella, whom I sang before,

I here ascribe her one great virtue more.

Not through the rich Peruvian realms alone

The fame of Sol's sweet daughter should be known,
But o'er the world's wide clime should live secure,
Far as his rays extend, as long as they endure.
Dear Hasty Pudding, what unpromised joy
Expands my heart, to meet thee in Savoy!

Doomed o'er the world through devious paths to roam,
Each clime my country, and each house my home,
My soul is soothed, my cares have found an end,

I greet my long-lost, unforgotten friend.

For thee through Paris, that corrupted town,

How long in vain I wandered up and down,

Where shameless Bacchus, with his drenching hoard,
Cold from his cave usurps the morning board.
London is lost in smoke and steeped in tea;
No Yankee there can lisp the name of thee;

The uncouth word, a libel on the town,
Would call a proclamation from the crown.
Those climes oblique, that fear the sun's full rays,
Chilled in their fogs, exclude the generous maize;
A grain, whose rich, luxuriant growth requires
Short, gentle showers, and bright, ethereal fires.

But here, though distant from our native shore,
With mutual glee we meet and laugh once more;
The same! I know thee by that yellow face,
That strong complexion of true Indian race,
Which time can never change, nor soil impair,
Nor Alpine snows, nor Turkey's morbid air;
For endless years, through every mild domain,
Where grows the maize, there thou art sure to reign.
But man, more fickle, the bold license claims
In different realms to give thee different names
Thee the soft nations round the warm Levant
Polenta call, the French, of course, Polente.
E'en in thy native regions, how I blush
To hear the Pennsylvanians call thee Mush!
On Hudson's banks while men of Belgic spawn
Insult and eat thee by the name Suppawn!
All spurious appellations, void of truth;
I've better known thee from my earliest youth.
Thy name is Hasty Pudding; thus my sire
Was wont to greet thee fuming from his fire;
And, while he argued in thy just defence.
With logic clear, he thus explained the sense:
"In haste the boiling caldron, o'er the blaze,
Receives and cooks the ready powdered maize;
In haste 'tis served, and then in equal haste,
With cooling milk, we make the sweet repast.
No carving to be done, no knife to grate
The tender ear and wound the stony plate;
But the smooth spoon, just fitted to the lip,
And taught with art the yielding mass to dip,
By frequent journeys to the bowl well stored,
Performs the hasty honors of the board."
Such is thy name, significant and clear,

A name, a sound, to every Yankee dear,
But most to me, whose heart and plate chaste
Preserve my pure hereditary taste.

AMERICAN LITERATURE.

PERIOD III.-NATIONAL. 1800-1870.

MERICAN literature could not properly exist until the American nation had entered on its independent career. During the colonial period the people were occupied in subduing the wilderness and adapting themselves to new conditions of life. Few but the scholarly preachers of the gospel had inclination or leisure for writing, and the chief printed productions of the times were religious and theological. For books of other kinds the people looked to the mother country. In the Revolutionary period questions of human rights and government were urgent and drew forth treatises of marked ability. Yet there were some evidences of literary activity in other directions. Newspapers, now struggling into existence, furnished a ready means for circulating satires and occasional verses.

With the beginning of the new century the turbulence of war had ceased, a stable government was formed, and the minds of Americans were turned from their former dependence on the writers of England. There came an original tone of thought, a deep reflection on the new aspects of the world, a wholesome independence of mind. For a time Philadelphia seemed likely to become the literary centre, as it was the capital, of the nation. Charles Brockden Brown was the first American novelist, and Joseph Dennie, the editor of the Portfolio, was hailed as the American Addison, but his writings are now forgotten. Philadelphia continued to be the place of

publication even for New England authors, and Graham's Magazine was the medium through which Longfellow and others reached the public.

But the pioneers of the new era of American literature belonged to New York, if not by birth, by choice of residence. Three men stand forth as representatives of this class-Irving, Cooper and Bryant. Widely different in their nature and training, as in their finished work, they were yet all distinctively American. The cheerful Irving began as a playful satirist and delineator of oddities, and became a skillful sketcher of the pleasant features of merry England and picturesque Spain, as well as of his beloved Hudson. In much of his work he exhibits the contrast of the past with the present, producing sometimes humorous, and sometimes. pathetic scenes. Cooper belonged to that lake region of New York where the Indians and whites came into closest contact and unequal conflict. He revealed to Europe the romance of the American forest. Again, as an officer in the navy, he acquired such familiarity with sea-life, as to make him the foremost sea-novelist of the language. Excellent in description and well furnished with material, he yet rated his own abilities too highly, and wrote much which may readily be neglected. Bryant early displayed his power as a meditative poet on nature, but the duties of active life summoned him to quite different work in New York City. As editor of a daily newspaper, he battled strenuously and honorably for righteousness until in old age he received the loving veneration of his fellow-citizens. But in literature he remains the author of "Thanatopsis" and a translator of Homer.

The influence of Harvard College as a promoter of learning tended to give Boston a supremacy in literature. Here the North American Review was early established, and the study of German and other foreign literatures was promoted. The Unitarian movement, apart from its theological effects, had a distinct uplifting effect on American culture. Channing and Emerson, Longfellow and Lowell, assisted, each in his own way, in broadening and elevating the minds of their countrymen. As an outgrowth of this humanitarian tendency came the anti-slavery movement, which stirred some of these