fellow, Lowell, Phillips, and others lent the weight of their influence and the skill of their pens to the antislavery movement. Harriet Beecher Stowe exerted no small influence upon public sentiment in the North by "Uncle Tom's Cabin," a work in which the cruelties of slavery were graphically depicted. In a few years the abolition party became strong enough to enter national politics. The feeling between the North and the South became more pronounced and irreconcilable. Finally attempted. secession precipitated a civil war, which resulted in the abolition of slavery, and the cementing of our country into a homogeneous and indissoluble union.

ter.

With the First National Period our literature assumed, to some extent at least, a distinctively American characNew themes, requiring original treatment, were presented to the literary worker. In the East, Indian life had become sufficiently remote to admit of idealistic treatment. In Cooper's works the Indian is idealized as much as the medieval knight in the novels of Scott. The picturesque elements in pioneer life were more clearly discerned. The wild life of the frontiersman began to appear in fiction, which, possessing the charm of novelty, was cordially received abroad. In the older parts of the country, tradition lent a legendary charm to various localities and different events. The legends of the Indians were found to possess poetic elements. From these sources Irving, Longfellow, and Hawthorne drew the materials for some of their most original and popular works.

In the first half of the present century there were in New England two closely related movements that deserve mention for their important effect upon literature. The first of these was the Unitarian controversy. Though the

Unitarian doctrine is very old, and was held by a few New England churches in the eighteenth century, the controversy began in 1805, when Henry Ware, a learned Unitarian, was elected professor of divinity in Harvard College. The capture of this leading institution by the Unitarians. naturally provoked a theological conflict. The champions on the Unitarian side were Henry Ware, William Ellery Channing, and Andrews Norton; on the Trinitarian side, Leonard Woods, Moses Stuart, and Lyman Beecher. From 1815 to 1830 the discussion was the leading question of the time. Though conducted with great earnestness on both sides, the controversy was without that venomous character distinguished as odium theologicum. A large number of Congregational churches adopted the Unitarian belief. Emphasizing the moral duties rather than the doctrinal beliefs of Christianity, the Unitarians became very active in education, philanthropy, and reform. It is not too much to say that all the leading writers of New England felt the stimulating and liberalizing influence of the Unitarian movement.

The other movement referred to belongs to the sphere of philosophy, though it also affected religious belief. It has been characterized as transcendentalism. In spite of the levity with which the movement has sometimes been treated, it was an earnest protest against a materialistic philosophy, which teaches that the senses are our only source of knowledge. It was a reaction against what is dull, prosaic, and hard in every-day life. The central thing in transcendentalism is the belief that the human mind has the power to attain truth independently of the senses and the understanding. Emerson, himself a leading transcendentalist, defines it as follows: "What is

popularly called Transcendentalism among us is Idealism: Idealism as it appears in 1842. As thinkers, mankind have ever divided into two sects, Materialists and Idealists; the first class founding on experience, the second on consciousness; the first class beginning to think from the data of the senses, the second class perceive that the senses are not final, and say, the senses give us representations of things, but what are the things themselves, they cannot tell. The materialist insists on facts, on history, on the force of circumstances and the animal wants of man; the idealist on the power of Thought and of Will, on inspiration, on miracle, on individual culture."

This idealistic or transcendental philosophy did not originate in New England, though it received a special coloring and application there. It began in Germany with the writings of Kant, Fichte, and Schelling; it was transported to England by Coleridge and Carlyle, through whose works it first made its way to America. It abounded in profound and fertile thought. It was taken up by a remarkable group of men and women in Boston and Concord, among whom were Emerson, Alcott, Thoreau, Parker, and Margaret Fuller. Their organ (for every movement at that time had to have its periodical) was The Dial. Transcendentalism exerted an elevating influence upon New England thought, and gave to our literature one of its greatest writers in the person of Ralph Waldo Emerson.

Contemporary with the transcendental movement, all sorts of novelties and projects of reform kept New England in a state of ferment. Spiritualism, phrenology, and mesmerism attracted much attention. Temperance, woman's rights, and socialism were all discussed in public gatherings and in the press. Many of these schemes,

which aimed at the regeneration of society, had the sympathy and encouragement of the transcendentalists. Some of their leading spirits participated in the Brook Farm experiment, which was based on the communistic teachings of Fourier. Though the experiment ended in failure, it gave the world Hawthorne's "Blithedale Romance," in which the author utilized the observations made during his residence in the famous phalanstery.

WASHINGTON IRVING.

To Washington Irving belongs the distinction of being the first of our great writers in general literature. He was not a great theologian like Jonathan Edwards, nor a practical philosopher and moralist like Franklin, nor a statesman like Jefferson and Hamilton. He was above all a literary man; and his writings belong, in large measure at least, to the field of belles-lettres. In his most characteristic writings he aimed not so much at instruction as at entertainment. He achieved that finished excellence of form that at once elevates literature to the classic rank. He was the first American writer to gain general recognition abroad; or, to use Thackeray's words, "Irving was the first ambassador whom the New World of letters sent to the Old." Our literature has had many "ambassadors" since; but it is doubtful whether any other has ever been more cordially welcomed or more pleasantly remembered.

Washington Irving was born in the city of New York, April 3, 1783, the youngest of eleven children. The Revolutionary War was ended, and the American army occupied the city. "Washington's work is ended," said the mother, "and the child shall be named after him." Six years later, when Washington had become the first President of the young republic, a Scotch maid-servant of the Irving family one day followed him into a shop. "Please, your honor," said she, "here's a bairn was named after you. With grave dignity the President laid his hand on the child's head, and bestowed his blessing.

Not much can be said of young Irving's education. Like many another brilliant writer in English literature, he took