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were adopted, and in February, 1829, the protest was duly laid before the Senate and ordered to be printed.† But South Carolina was not alone. Her example was followed by Alabama and by Georgia, who, in her "sovereign character," protested against the tariff "as deceptive in its intentions; fraudulent in its pretexts; oppressive in its exactions; partial and unjust in its operations; unconstitutional in its well-known objects; ruinous to commerce and agriculture." "Demanding the repeal of an act" which had already disturbed the Union, endangered the public tranquillity, and "diminished the affection of large masses of the people of the Union itself," "the State of Georgia expects" that this protest will be carefully preserved among the archives of the Senate. +

*December 19, 1828.

Journal of the Senate of the United States, Twentieth Congress, Second Session, pp. 115-117.

Protest of the Legislature of Georgia against the act of Congress of the last session "on alteration of the several acts imposing duties on imports."-Executive Documents, Twentieth Congress, Second Session, No. 33. The Protest of Alabama is Executive Document No. 103.

CHAPTER XLVII.

EARLY LITERATURE.

Ir has often been remarked-and the remark is truethat literature pure and simple never existed in America till Washington Irving began to write. There is, indeed, no portion of our history which presents a spectacle of so much dreariness as our literary annals during the two hundred years which followed the landing at Jamestown. In all that time no one great work of the imagination was produced. It could not have been otherwise. Men were too busy clearing farms, cutting roads, building towns, acquiring wealth, to have any time for literature. During the stormy years which immediately preceded the rebellion of the colonies, when events turned the thoughts of men into new channels, and forced them to take up the pen before they ventured to take up the sword, our countrymen, it is true, began to make lasting contributions to the world's stock of literature. Great questions were then to be settled; great principles of government explained and expounded. The people were to be educated as to the rights of man and the duties of kings and parliaments, and to this end a mass of political literature of the very highest order was produced. Nothing superior to the declarations, the remonstrances, the petitions, the State papers, the State constitutions, the treatises on government, and the pamphlets on the public questions of the day, which teemed from the press in the ten years before and in the fifteen years which immediately followed the Declaration of Independence, has ever been produced by any people at any time. That quarter of a century was pre-eminently the age of political writing. The authors appealed to a living audience, and, treating of questions which

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were then present and which soon passed away, their writings have come to be much praised and little read.

But the men whose writings will not soon pass away; the men who founded our national literature; the men whose works and names we have come to regard as classic, belong to a later generation. With scarce an exception all were born after the Revolution had ended. Between these two periods the period when our ancestors were reading and writing political tracts and fast-day sermons, and the period when they read "Salmagundi," "Knickerbocker's History," "Thanatopsis," and "The Spy "-is an interval of some thirty years. Yet that interval, so destitute of native authors, is precisely the one during which the most serious efforts were made to establish that sort of literature which depends for success on nothing so much as on the number and variety of well-trained writers. That was the age of magazines, asylums, museums, censors, repositories, repertories, registers, and impartial reviews, very few of which ever lived through a presidential term. On a list by no means complete of magazines which saw the light during the administrations of Washington and Adams, there are forty-one titles. Eleven of these were published at New York, five at Boston, and sixteen at Philadelphia, which was then and long remained the literary centre of the country. Two were issued in Vermont, three in Connecticut, and one at Charleston. Two mark an early effort to establish medical journals. Five were devoted to matters of religion.

If the statements of the projectors of our early periodicals may be trusted, they were moved by a spirit very different from that which animates their successors. It was with no idea of filling a long-felt want, or their own pockets, or the coffers of a corporation, that they began to till this field of letters. They were moralists, philanthropists, censors whose high duty it was to lead, not to follow. They were purveyors of that sort of mental food which the people ought to have; not caterers to every passing fad, or commentators on the topic or sensation of the hour. One of them in his prospectus is at great pains to assure the public that guardians and tutors will find his Miscellany worthy of recommendation to the

children and youth committed to their care, for it is his purpose to awaken attention, cultivate benevolence, improve the understanding, and amend the heart. Another is content with the assurance that his Monthly Mirror "shall contain a variety of matter calculated to improve and amend the mind." A third, waiving such assurances as unnecessary, appeals to State pride on behalf of his Monthly Repository of Knowledge and Rational Entertainment. Every State, he informs the people of Connecticut, has such a Repository. Even New Hampshire supports one. Surely, therefore, the enlightened people of Connecticut will not be behind in a magazine of their own.

Not infrequently the prospectus would fill a column of some local newspaper, and would set forth with the utmost detail the character and object of the projected Museum. In it the editor would promise there should be found miscellaneous essays some original, some selected-on philosophy, natural history, the useful and ornamental arts, on politics, travel, and on subjects "calculated to amuse the mind and advance the best interests of society." From time to time. there should also be "agreeable and entertaining moral tales," short novels, anecdotes, and what were called "elegant dissertations and lively sallies of wit and humor." A promise was always made that nothing should be admitted that could "call a blush to the cheek of innocence," and was strictly kept.

When at last, after two or three months of advertising, two or three hundred subscribers were secured, the first number would appear, and would contain a jumble of articles such as cannot now be found in any magazine or journal. Everybody was to be instructed. There were, therefore, articles to instruct everybody-" medical facts and observations" for the doctors; notes on law cases and comments on decisions for the lawyer; State papers for the politician; "intelligence" respecting the arts, the sciences, agriculture, and manufactures for the general reader; and poetry and book reviews for such as affected literature. A monthly chronicle of events, compiled from the newspapers, a list of marriages and deaths, a catalogue of the names of persons appointed to

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office, and the rates of exchange, completed the usual table of contents.

Such a publication existed in every city of importance in the country, and was sure to have some high-sounding and pretentious name. Thus in Boston there was the Columbian Phoenix and Boston Review. The Polyanthus, a magazine whose editor aimed "to please the learned and enlighten the ignorant, to allure the idle from folly and confirm the timid in virtue." "Is there," said he, "a gem that sparkles yet unknown? Ours be the task to place it where its radiance may illuminate society. We will transplant the rose that has hitherto blushed unseen on the field of science, and select flowers of the noblest kind from the variegated carpet of Nature." This was fine writing in 1805, and was closely imitated, in 1806, by the editor of the Boston Magazine when he announced that its successor, The Emerald, would "be polished by the labors of the learned and occasionally glitter with the gayety of wit, and would be found worthy to shine among the gems which sparkle on the regalia of literature."

In New York there was the Monthly Magazine and American Review. Philadelphia had the Philadelphia Monthly Magazine, or Universal Repository of Knowledge and Entertainment; The Repository of Knowledge, Historical, Literary, Miscellaneous, and Theological; the Philadelphisches Magazin oder unterpollender Gesellschafter für die Deutschen in Amerika; and The American Review and Literary Journal.

Baltimore, as early as 1804, could boast of The Orphan's Friend, a monthly magazine whose mission it was to amuse the mind, strengthen the judgment, affect the heart, and awaken the fancy; and The Companion, a weekly periodical, whose editor frankly and wisely declared that he wanted no profits. In Virginia there was then The Virginia Religious Magazine. At Charleston, in South Carolina, the first number of the Monthly Register and Review of the United States was announced to appear in January, 1805; but as "no good paper could be had out of Philadelphia," and as the vessel carrying the paper purchased in that city was "ice-bound in the Delaware," the publication of number one of volume one was postponed till June.