PERIOD III.—NATIONAL AGE.

1830-1876.

(Embracing, in English history, the reigns of Wm. IV. and Victoria.)

WE

E have called this period "The National Age," because now for the first time our literature began to assume a national importance and to show signs of a distinct national life. In the preceding ages it had beer., apart from works of local and temporary interest, insignificant in amount and imitative in character; but with the advent of Cooper, Irving, Bryant, and Emerson, it began to challenge the attention of the world, and to show the results of American thought and culture. The unexampled material prosperity of the nation has been accompanied by a corresponding intellectual development; and there has been great literary activity in poetry, history, biography, travels, fiction, and especially in the various departments of scientific inquiry. And with our enormous material growth there has come greater independence of thought and judgment, less dependence on foreign opinion. We no longer ask with fear and trembling, as formerly, what does England think of this or that; we have set up literary standards equally high, of our own, and our authors are judged by these standards, on their own intrinsic merits.

The authors of this period being numerous, will be divided into two classes :

I. THE POETS, represented by Bryant, Longfellow, Whittier, Lowell, Holmes, Poe, Saxe, Read, Boker, Taylor, Alice Cary, Celia Thaxter, Aldrich, Stedman, Holland, Harte, Miller, Stoddard, Hayne, and Timrod.

II. THE PROSE WRITERS, represented by Irving, Prescott, Bancroft, Motley, Cooper, Hawthorne, Stowe, Everett, Webster, Agassiz, Emerson, Whipple, White, Simms, Parkman, Howells, E. E. Hale, Henry James, and "Mark Twain."

NOTE. This classification is necessarily imperfect, as most poets are also prose writers, and many prose writers are also poets; but some authors are chiefly noted for their verse, others for their prose, and they are classed accordingly.

I. POETS OF THE NATIONAL AGE.

BRYANT. 1794-1878.

William Cullen Bryant, who may almost be called the fatner of American poetry, was born at Cummington, Mass., in 1794. After receiving a thorough education and devoting himself for some years to the study and practice of law, he connected himself, in 1826, with the New York Evening Post, which he edited during the rest of his life. He died in 1878, at the ripe age of eighty-four, universally loved and lamented.

Among his finest poems are the following: Thanatopsis, Death of the Flowers, Forest Hymn, Green River, The Evening Wind, Song of the Stars, Song of the Sower, The Planting of the Appletree, Waiting at the Gate, and The Flood of Years. The first of these was written at the age of eighteen, the last at the age of eighty-two. These two points mark the extremes of a literary career remarkable no less for its brilliancy than its extent.

Besides his original poems, he has published an excellent Translation of Homer, and several books of travel.

Bryant may appropriately be called the American Wordsworth, being characterized by the same minute and reverent observation of nature, and the same deep religious feeling, that appear in the works of that great poet; but in classic dignity of style and purity of diction he is Wordsworth's superior.

EXTRACTS.
I.

Truth, crushed to earth, shall rise again;
The eternal years of God are hers;

But Error, wounded, writhes in pain,
And dies amid his worshippers.

II.

The Battlefield.

The groves were God's first temples. Ere man learned

To hew the shaft and lay the architrave,

And spread the roof above them; ere he framed

The lofty vault, to gather and roll back

The sound of anthems; in the darkling wood,
Amid the cool and silence, he knelt down,
And offered to the Mightiest solemn thanks
And supplication.

III.

Forest Hymn.

Spirit that breathest through my lattice, thou
That cool'st the twilight of the sultry day,
Gratefully flows thy freshness round my brow;
Thou hast been out upon the deep at play,
Riding all day the wild blue waves till now,
Roughening their crests, and scattering high their spray,
And swelling the white sail. I welcome thee

To the scorched land, thou wanderer of the sea.

IV.

The Evening Wind

So live that, when thy summons comes to join
The innumerable caravan that moves
To that mysterious realm where each shall take
His chamber in the silent halls of death,-
Thou go, not like the quarry-slave at night,
Scourged to his dungeon, but sustained and soothed
By an unfaltering trust, approach thy grave
Like one who wraps the drapery of his couch
About him, and lies down to pleasant dreams.

LONGFELLOW. 1807-1882.

Thanatopsis.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, the most popular of our poets, was born at Portland, Maine, in 1807. He graduated at Bowdoin College in the class of 1825, and afterwards, at various times, further enriched his mind by European study and travel. For twenty-five years (1829 to 1854) he filled a professorship in college, six years in Bowdoin, and nineteen years in Harvard.

He lived at Cambridge, Mass., in an old house once occupied by General Washington as his headquarters. To this fact he alludes in his pcem, To a Child, in which he says,—

"Once, ah, once within these walls,
One whom memory oft recalls,
The father of his country dwelt."

Professor Longfellow was twice married.

His first wife

died at Rotterdam, Holland, in 1835; his second wife was burned to death in 1861, her clothes having accidentally taken fire while sealing an envelope at the flame of a taper.

The following are some of Mr. Longfellow's most popular poems: Evangeline, Tales of a Wayside Inn, Courtship of Miles Standish, The Building of the Ship, The Old Clock on the Stairs, Santa Filomena, The Bridge, The Builders, Resignation, The Day is Done, The Hanging of the Crane, and Morituri Saluta

mus.

He also published three popular prose works-Outre Mer, Hyperion, and Kavanagh—and an excellent poetical Translation of Dante, with copious notes and commentaries.

Longfellow's chief characteristics are simplicity, grace, and refinement. Of imagination and passion he has but little. He does not often startle his readers by the utterance of a new and striking thought, but he perpetually charms them by present. ing the ordinary sentiments of humanity in a new and more attractive garb. He died March 24, 1882.

II.

There is no death; what seems so is transition;
This life of mortal breath

Is but a suburb of the life elysian
Whose portal we call death.

III.

Be not like a stream that brawls

Loud with shallow waterfalls,

But in quiet self-control

Link together soul and soul.

IV.

Alike are life and death,
When life in death survives,
And the uninterrupted breath
Inspires a thousand lives.

V.

Resignation.

Songo River.

On Charles Sumner.

Up soared the lark into the air,
A shaft of song, a winged prayer,
As if a soul, released from pain,
Were flying back to heaven again.

VI.

The Sermon of St. Francis.

The talent of success is nothing more than doing what you can do well, and doing well whatever you do, without a thought of fame.

WHITTIER. 1807-1892.

John Greenleaf Whittier was born at Haverhill, Mass., in 1807. While a boy he worked with his father on a farm, sometimes assisting, during the winter months, in making shoes. His education was obtained in the schools of his native village. On becoming of age he became editor of a paper, and has ever since devoted himself to literature. He never married. His residence, during the greater part of his life, was at Amesbury, Mass., where he died in 1893, in the enjoyment of the love and veneration of all his countrymen.

Whittier has written much both in prose and poetry, but is chiefly distinguished as a poet. Among his most popular poems are--Maud Muller, Barbara Frietchie, My Psalm, My Playmate,