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fiction, save as it dealt with incidents and backgrounds drawn from early history and from real scenes, was largely colorless. Irving had reflected the new soil in some of his most charming sketches, and Cooper had displayed his idealized frontiersmen and Indians against a carefully studied background, but there had been little attempt to draw minutely accurate pictures of real life and its surroundings. Europeans have always demanded that American literature shall "smack of the soil,”—shall be distinctively American in atmosphere, color and scene. This conception, false as it is, has borne abundant fruit. Cooper won tumultuous applause from foreign critics, chiefly on account of the strangeness of his materials, but the pure gold of his mine was quickly exhausted, as his numerous followers soon discovered, and it was not until the appearance of Bret Harte, with his wild tales of the California gulches, that this applause was repeated.

The almost sensational

success of these tales marks an epoch in the history of our fiction. During the decade following 1870 nearly every peculiar people within the limits of the Unior came prominently before the reading public. Edward Eggleston, with his rare powers of characterization, portrayed the life of the early settlers in Indiana; Mark Twain told with irresistible humor of rough life on the Western frontiers and on the Mississippi; Constance Fenimore Woolson drew conscientious pictures of life along the coasts of Florida and Georgia; Miss Jewett began loving sketches of her native Berwick; Cable wrote the first of his powerful Creole tales of the Louisiana bayous, and Joel Chandler Harris published his first studies of the Georgia negro. Since then Miss Murfree has explored the unknown fastnesses of the Tennessee Mountains; Alice French (Octave Thanet) has scoured the canebrakes of Arkansas; Thomas Nelson Page has studied the Virginia negro; H. S. Edwards and Richard M. Johnston have added to the echoes of the Georgia plantations; Hamlin Garland has explored the sod houses of the Dakotas, and Mary Hallock Foote has drawn graphic pictures of the Colorado and Idaho frontiers. American literature has overflowed with studies of provincial | life, of environments and types peculiarly American, until every section that has any individuality at all has now its chronicler.

New England, since it has a marked individuality and a great diversity of character, has received most careful attention. Its peculiar richness as a field for studies of character was recognized long before the popularity of the new movement had driven novelists to seek for fresh and unexplored domains. J. T. Trowbridge, with Neighbor Jackwood and Coupon Bonds, novels full of sparkling humor and characterization, had early shown the richness of the field, and Mrs. Stowe, after writing the two powerful antislavery novels on which her fame chiefly rests, had turned to her native soil to do her most careful work. Her Oldtown Folks and Sam Lawson, in their faithfulness to nature and their cheerful, gentle spirit, are worthy of comparison with the best studies of Jane Austen and Maria Edgeworth. Nearly all of the later students of New England life have been women. The work of Rose Terry Cooke, Jane G.

Austin, Harriet Prescott Spofford, Elizabeth Stuart Phelps, Sarah Orne Jewett and Mary E. Wilkins has been especially strong. With a few exceptions the group has been at its best in short sketches, or at the longest, novelettes. Their canvas, from the very nature of the conditions, has been small, but by patience and careful study they have drawn exquisite miniatures, as perfect in their way as Flemish pictures. The novels of Elizabeth Stuart Phelps, perhaps the leader of the group, are intense and earnest. Many of them, like The Story of Avis and A Singular Life, deal with living themes, with the great problems of life, in a light-bringing way, while others, like Jack the Fisherman, are prose idyls, charming in their perfect art. Miss Jewett's pleasing sketches, which deal with rural life along the Maine coast, have a naturalness and a fidelity to detail that makes them worthy of careful study. Her scenes and characters stand clean-cut and distinct; it is impossible to forget them. They seem like parts of our own past lives, like chapters from our own memories. This fidelity to nature, joined to a graceful humor and a limpid prose style, makes her sketches wellnigh faultless.

Outside of New England the four figures that stand out most prominently are Bret Harte, Mark Twain, George W. Cable, and Mary N. Murfree. Like that of nearly all of the school, Harte's best work lies in his short stories and sketches. Since his first work, he has written most voluminously, sometimes issuing three volumes in a year; but he has never equaled his first half-dozen sketches, poured from the freshness of his first impressions. As Lowell wrote of Cooper,

"One wild flower he 's plucked that is wet with the dew Of this fresh western world, and, the thing not to mince, He's done naught but copy it ill ever since."

His strength lies in the strangeness of his materials, the vividness of his scenes, the swift condensation that paints a picture in a few strokes, and the pathos and the humor that glow on every page of his work. Power for sustained effort, for the development, step by step, of a human soul, he certainly lacks. His pictures are flash-light photographs, poses caught when a brilliant ray lights for an instant the darkness of a wicked life.

In Mark Twain (Samuel L. Clemens) we have a strong individuality, with keen perception of the incongruous joined to accurate powers of observation and a fine poetic sense. He began his literary career in that most dangerous rôle, a popular humorist. His fun was boisterous and typical, full of the American elements of exaggeration and irreverence, and the public, even to the present day, has largely overlooked the fact that there is anything else in his books. But Mark Twain's humor is only one of the many elements that contribute to his literary strength, and even without it, rare as it often is, his books would have no ordinary value. His descriptions, sometimes even approaching the realms of poetry, his accurate characterizations, his powers of minute observation and of narration, his facility and his sense of proportion, give them their truest value. His most sarcastic wit has ever been leveled against shams and hypocrisy. Innocents Abroad laughed

and Page's Marse Chan.

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George W. Cable and Mary N. Murfree (Charles Egbert Craddock) have added to our literary domain regions as strange as were Harte's California mines. The Creoles of New Orleans, and the dwellers in the swamp regions of Louisiana, were unknown to the reading public until Cable laid bare their lives and described their peculiar environment. His Grandissimes, Madame Delphine and Dr. Sevier, aside from the freshness of their backgrounds and characters, are powerful novels, perhaps the most powerful in recent American fiction. He knows his field by heart, he conceives character strongly and paints it graphically, and he deals with problems that are fundamental in all human experience. What Cable has done for Louisiana, Miss Murfree has done for the Great Smoky Mountains of Tennessee. Her novels are largely studies, wonderful pictures of ragged peaks and dark ravines, in the foreground of which move strange figures of men and women as wild and elemental as the mountains themselves. Her strength lies in her descriptions of nature and in the picturesque reality of her characterizations.

It is as yet too early to estimate the real strength of this literary movement, or to predict confidently in what light it will be viewed in the future. Its value, however, in widening the range of American literature, both as to producers and products, cannot be disputed. On the whole, it seems to offer little of promise. The surface mines must be exhausted in time, and there will be no new fields for preemption.

3. The Short Story. The short story is perhaps the literary form in which Americans have achieved their greatest success. It seems singularly adapted to the American mind. Irving, Hawthorne and Poe did with it some of their most charming work, while during the past quarter-century it has been brought to such a degree of perfection that it is now generally recognized as the one literary department where America leads the world. That the period has been pre-eminently one of short stories has been the result of a distinct demand. It has been a time of rapid expansion, or extraordinary activity. The masses have had little leisure for voluminous fiction. The business man, if he reads at all, must have rapid, sparkling sketches that will furnish the maximum of entertainment in the minimum of time. There has been no distinct school of writers of this shorter fiction. Nearly all novelists of the period, including, with scarce an exception, the members of the preceding group, have done some of their best work in this literary form. A representative collection of recent short stories would contain such perfect works of art as Hale's The Man Without a Country, Stockton's The Lady or the Tiger? Aldrich's Marjorie Daw, O'Brien's The Diamond Lens, Mrs. Spofford's

Two novelists have belonged almost exclusively to this group, Edward Everett Hale and Frank R. Stockton. Both have accomplished their purpose without the use of local color; both command inexhaustible funds of wit and humor; both are masters of the rare art of verisimilitude. Stockton's situations and characters are often grotesquely absurd; yet with such gravity does he treat them that one often finds himself actually accepting without a murmur things that could have happened only in a world of fantasy.

4. Idealism.

To draw an absolute line to separate all novelists into two groups, realists and idealists, would be an impossible task. With the extremes there is no question, but midway between there is a large class who are allied more or less with both schools. Of purely romantic novelists the period has produced comparatively few. Many who, in opposition to the realists, have insisted that a novel must have a hero and heroine, a well-defined plot, and a rapid play of incident, have also been careful to draw their backgrounds and characters faithfully from nature. It is a significant fact that almost without exception the novels of the period that have proved most widely acceptable have belonged to this group. From the mere standpoint of enormously multiplied editions, E. P. Roe and Lewis Wallace stand, after Mrs. Stowe, as the most successful of American novelists. Roe produced his novels with a purpose. He was a clergyman, and to reach a wide audience he put his moral teachings into the form of fiction, skillfully mingling enough of sentiment, sensation and story to win the masses. Many were led to read Roe's novels by the fact that their author was a clergyman, and that the morals of his work were plain; the same readers were attracted to Wallace because his Ben Hur was a historical novel and a "tale of the Christ." a prodigal wealth of imagination and a fine mastery, at times, of vivid narration, Wallace lacks sustained power. Were his novels symmetrical, and as good as a whole as they are in parts, his rank would be indeed high. Another author with a large contemporary popularity was J. G. Holland, who wrote many romances from a wide knowledge of American life, but all are fatally defective at some point, as is proved by the rapidity with which they have been forgotten. Miss Louisa M. Alcott, on the contrary, has constantly grown in popularity. The freshness and simplicity of her tales for boys and girls have already made them classics in their field.

With

Of the younger group of novelists few have as yet settled into the places which they will ultimately occupy. Julian Hawthorne, at one time the most promising figure in later fiction, has produced no strong work since his early success. His Archibald Malmaison is one of the strongest purely romantic novels since the time of the elder Hawthorne, but his later attempts, like A Fool of Nature, may be ranked among the weakest. Arthur Sherburne Hardy, with his But Yet a Woman and Passé Rose, both drawn with exquisite art, Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen, with his charmning prose idyls of Norwe

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gian life, Margaret Deland, with her strong studies of religious and social problems, and many others, deserve more than a passing mention. Perhaps the most promising of the younger group is F. Marion Crawford, whose strong dramatic studies, chiefly of Italian life, reveal a mastery of materials and a breadth of view which, if rightly exercised, may in time yield work of the first rank.

ESSAYS AND HISTORY. After prose fiction, the most popular form of literary expression during the period has been the essay. This variety of composition has meant many different things since the days of Francis Bacon, but of late it has been generally accepted as covering all short prose studies not claimed as fiction. Mitchell's pensive sketches, Whipple's reviews, Curtis's chats on contemporary life, Warner's sparkling "roundabout talks," and Burroughs's nature-studies may all be discussed as essays. Three of the most delightful of modern essayists belong in reality with the older group. Donald G. Mitchell, Thomas Wentworth Higginson and George William Curtis published their earliest work near the middle of the nineteenth century, yet so completely have they identified themselves with the present that they are best studied with the members of the later group. The one who belongs the least to the present is Mitchell, who may be characterized as the last member of the school of Irving. The nervous haste of modern life has never ruffled his prose. It flows on and on with a refinement of movement like a meadow brook in June, its gentle murmur full of tenderness and humor and pathos. Higginson has won laurels as a poet, novelist and essayist, but his best work is unquestionably his Outdoor Papers and his essays on literary themes. Curtis stands as the best example that we have yet produced of the cultured literary journalist. His training was most exceptional. Eighteen months at Brook Farm and eighteen months at Concord under the direct influence of Emerson were followed by four years of travel in Europe, Egypt and Syria. His first works were descriptive of his life on the Nile and in Syria-gorgeous sketches, full of the sensuous dreams of the Orient. His later work sprung largely from his journalistic experience. His essays, contributed monthly to Harper's Magazine for nearly forty years, his Literary and Social Essays, and his charming series, Prue and I,--all reveal a rare personality and a refinement of prose style which make them worthy of comparison with the best works of such masters even, as Addison and Charles Lamb.

Of the later essayists, the typical figures are Charles Dudley Warner and John Burroughs, both of whom did their first work during the remarkable decade which opened in 1870. Warner is the most humorous of essayists. His volumes, like My Summer in a Garden and Backlog Studies, fairly sparkle with their wealth of droll conceits, their wise turns, and brilliant epigrams. But he is more than a mere jester: he is a close observer of nature and a student of life. His works are intensely original, full of a deep honesty and a manly independence. He is pre-eminently an essayist; even his volumes of travel, like My Winter on the Nile, are in reality but collections of essays. His humor is abundant and

never too broad, his style is finished and graceful, and over all is the charm of a rare personality as delightful in its way as that of Irving.

One more characteristic of the present period remains to be mentioned, the formation of what may be called the out-door school of writers. External nature, especially the ways of birds, has been studied with extreme care. Nothing connected with the woods and fields has been deemed too unimportant for patient investigation. In reality this is but a phase of the realism that has dominated the period, -a branch of what has already been termed "literature of the soil." It was but natural that some one should do for the birds and the forest denizens what the novelists were doing with human types. The movement originated unquestionably with Thoreau. No one has ever equaled him as a minute observer of nature's ways, or as an enthusiastic interpreter of her secrets. It remained for John Burroughs, the leader of the later school, to mingle the poetic with the scientific, to humanize and idealize nature. studies birds as if they were "little people in feathers"; his woodchucks and bees and foxes are all strangely human. He delights in the borderlands between the forest and farm; he talks delightfully of footpaths, of wild apples, of locusts and wild honey. Everywhere he beckons to fresh fields,— fields which we may have passed through constantly, yet which this prophet of the fields at once transforms into pastures new. There have been many disciples of Thoreau and Burroughs. Maurice Thompson, Bradford Torrey, Olive Thorne Miller and Frank Bolles are but a few of the school of writers who have studied nature, especially the ways of wild birds, with loving care.

He

In the fields of history the period has been especially brilliant. Confining themselves wholly to American themes, our historians have covered minutely almost every section of the continent and every significant event since its discovery. The modern methods of writing history introduced by Macaulay, Prescott, Bancroft and Motley have been carried to a high degree of perfection. No labor is spared in securing perfect accuracy. Public documents, state papers, contemporary maps, newspapers and letters must be examined with thoroughness; the condition of the common people, the "noiseless revolutions" of the school, the church, the mill and the store are studied as carefully as the doings of courts; the elements of cause and effect are constantly looked to and lessons are drawn for the future. In addition to this thoroughness of study, our historians have cultivated a graphic narrative style, so that history is no longer a dry collection of facts.

The typical historian of the modern group is Francis Parkman, who took as his field for study the History of France and England in North America. Although partially blind and able to work only a few hours daily, he has covered this broad subject so completely that he will never be displaced as its historian. His preparation was most thorough. For one summer he lived in the wigwams of a tribe of Sioux Indians, that he might know in all its details the life of this people who

were to figure so conspicuously in his work. He visited every scene described in his history, and made no statement which he could not corroborate by unqestioned documents. But he was not merely a master of materials, he was master also of a most brilliant prose style, one that can be compared only with that of Prescott. The stirring scenes seem to reenact themselves, and the reader is drawn on and on by the narrative as if it were a romance. Of later historians of the United States the leaders are John Bach McMaster, who is publishing a comprehensive study of the period from the close of the Revolution to the Civil War; John Fiske, who is making most valuable studies of the Colonial and Revolutionary eras; Justin Winsor, who has made exhaustive researches into the beginnings of American history, and Hubert Howe Bancroft, who has filled forty volumes with a minute history of the Western coast.

THE OUTLOOK. The period beginning with the Civil War is as yet unfinished, and while we can now, more or less darkly, perceive its general characteristics, it is as yet impossible to predict its limits. As the first great creative period was a direct result of the confidence inspired by the outcome of the second war with England, a war that gave us for the first time a secure place among nations, so the present era has been largely the result of the outcome of the civil struggle, a war that settled many problems that had long impeded national progress. It was followed by a period of rapid expansion in every domain of activity, including that of letters. Literature had been largely confined to the northeastern coast section of America, but it now crept into the South and the West, until literary centers now cover the continent. Many unprecedented elements have appeared. The marvelous growth of the newspaper and the literary magazine, the enormous increase of the reading public, the rapidity of communication between all parts of the republic, and indeed of the world, the great rise in the pecuniary values of literary products, the modern American trait of rapid action and high tension,a thousand elements, many that have never before influenced literary production,-have given the period its character. While it has been unquestionably an "interregnum," a distinctively minor period, inasmuch as it has not produced a single writer of high rank, it has nevertheless been an important one. It may be called the era of literary expansion, a time of establishing new landmarks and of laying new and broad foundations. When conditions have become more settled, when the confusion of mere material expansion shall have died away, a new era of literary creation, one surpassing even the first in power, must surely result. F. L. PATTEE.

AMERICAN PARTY, THE, OR NATIVE AMERICAN AND KNOW-NOTHING, as it was sometimes called, sprang from that dread of the naturalized citizen, which has never been wholly absent from our political life, and which is sure to break out at times remarkable for the large numbers of newcomers to our shores. The Irish risings, the French Revolution, the massacre at San Domingo, and the establishment of the Negro Republic,

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drove to this country, during the last decade of the eighteenth century, thousands upon thousands of Frenchmen and Irishmen, who, availing themselves of our liberal naturalization laws, became citizens and entered political life in the land of their adoption. Then, for the first time, fear was expressed that the founders of the republic had been too liberal; that it was not safe to invest the new citizen so early in his career with all the rights of the native; and in 1798 the term of residence prior to naturalization was changed to 14 years.

The Republicans, who secured control of affairs in 1801, repealed this law, and reduced the term to five years, and a whole generation passed away without any further signs of hostility to the foreigner.

Fortunately, the period during which this feeling was strongest was that during which immigration was smallest. But, with the end of the Napoleonic wars, the tide again set strongly toward America; foreigners came to us at the rate of 20,000 a year; and with their appearance the old spirit of Native Americanism revived.

From 30,000, in 1830, the number of immigrants grew steadily till it passed 60,000, in 1836. In the decade between 1830 and 1840 more than 500,000 landed at New York alone, and when it was known that I white person in every 20 of the population was foreign-born, these arrivals began to assume an alarming significance. In Cincinnati, in 1840, half of the voters were of foreign birth; 28 per cent were Germans; 16 per cent were English, and I per cent French. In Dubuque County, Iowa, the aliens cast one third of all the votes given at local elections. In St. Louis and in New Orleans the influence of foreigners was felt still more, and from the men of the West came the cry that they were being swamped by the dregs of Europe. A demand was then made for a reform in the naturalization laws, and the extension. of the term of residence to 21 years. But both Whigs and Democrats, in their platforms, indorsed the cause of the emigrant, and the question became. Shall a new party be formed, or the old parties reformed? The question was answered by the people of Louisiana, who called a state convention in 1841 and founded the American-Republican party, or as it now came to be called, "The Native American." The principles of the new party were,—

1. Extend the term of naturalization to 21 years. 2. Nominate no man to office who is not nativeborn.

3. Prevent the union of church and state. 4. Keep the Bible in the schools.

5. Resist the encroachment of a foreign, civil and spiritual power on the institutions of our country.

In a community thus excited, some local incident was all that was needed to bring about the instant union of the natives, and this incident was furnished by the political leaders in New York. For years past the elections in that city had been closely contested by the Whigs and Democrats; and when, with the aid of the Irish vote, the Democrats won in 1843, and gave a large proportion of the patronage to citizens of foreign birth, both Whigs and Democrats bolted their parties, joined the feeble AmericanRepublicans, and in April, 1844, chose a native