As such, therefore, the book must go down to posterity, not a perfect song, rounded, complete, and detached, but a cry, whether clear and strong or husky and broken, vibrant still with the feeling of the man who uttered it. Here it seems well to mark the conclusion of the first national period-the creative period-of our literature, though of course literature, like history itself, is continuous, and can have no real conclusion short of national extinction. From Brown and Irving to Lowell and Whitman the compass has travelled a pretty wide arc. At first timid in spirit, and bound more or less consciously to conventional, old-world forms, our literature gradually shook itself free and stood forth a native product, willing to be gauged by its inherent vitality and its unborrowed charms. It began to register faithfully, too, the various steps in our national progress-the merely material subjugation of the wilderness, the declaration of moral and intellectual independence that followed upon the declaration of political independence, the development of a worthy cisAtlantic scholarship, the encouragement of science and the scientific spirit, and the final establishment of the great modern principle of human equality. The progress was one that looked always toward making "the bounds of freedom wider yet." And with Lincoln's emancipation proclamation on the political side, and, on the literary side, the vindication by Emerson, Whitman, and others of the inviolate rights of the individual, America's part in the foremost mission of the nineteenth century seems to have been accomplished and the way cleared for new effort. CONTINUOUS though our literature was and is, a very perceptible change came over the character of it in the seventh decade of the nineteenth century. The Civil War troubled and retarded the current. The elder writers held on faithfully, but, except in the cases of two or three-Lowell, rather younger than the rest, and Holmes, to whom was given a second youth, there was naturally a falling off in the quality of their product, or they turned their attention to translation and other less original work. to take their places. And the younger generation was slow Of two reasons that may be assigned for this phenomenon, one has just been mentioned. The civil conflict, so long averted, but coming finally with such terrible and prolonged results, absorbed the best energies and blood of the youth of the nation. Even the masses of the people who took no direct part in it were necessarily distracted by it, and the conditions of life were made harder. There was no leisure for art, and no demand for it no surplus of wealth to support it. The latest birthyear of our great writers was that of Lowell and Whitman, 1819, or, to include Parkman, Curtis, and Taylor, that of Taylor, 1825. Manifestly, those born later had not time to get fully settled into the literary way of life before the great struggle came; and the prohibitive conditions which it brought remained operative for many years. The other reason is scarcely a reason,-it is rather an observed fact. Literature, like other phenomena, seems to follow some law of rhythm. Great writers appear in groups, and a period of great achievement is followed by a period of lesser achievement or even barrenness. It was perhaps inevitable that the end of the nineteenth century should show no such literary record as the middle. The drift of the age, too, away from idealistic philosophy, toward a materialistic science and toward industrialism and commercialism, has tended to check artistic creation and assist this rhythmic ebb. Possibly we are wrong in fancying that there is any antagonism between science and poetry-at bottom there probably is not; and possibly we fail to estimate rightly the artistic product of our times; but the fact remains that, in our present judgment, not a single poet arose in the closing decades of the century who could compare with the least of the seven who filled the preceding decades with song; nor was there any writer of imaginative prose to compare with Poe and Hawthorne, nor any orator like Webster, nor any sage like Emerson. Criticism is ran But the period has been far from barren. sacking all the records of the past; science is making new records; and journalism grows apace. Pens were never busier than now, and ephemeral as their product for the most part seems, the future will doubtless find in it something worthy to be preserved. Meanwhile, we observe that new notes have been sounded, both in verse and in prose, and though our judgment must be still cautious and apologetic, we feel assured that our literature is daily growing, if not deeper, yet broader and richer. We observe too, the wide geographical distribution of this later product. New England and the Middle Atlantic States no longer hold a monopoly. The South was gathering strength in letters even at the outbreak of the war; and since then, literature, after taking one great leap with the leap of settlement to the Pacific coast, has gradually spread over the country until now there is scarcely a considerable valley, plain, or mountain-side, south, west, north, or east, that has not its local writers and even its local tone. Indeed, among the new notes of our literature, this vogue of the provincial, this strong and |