head. . . . That the moral lesson to be learnt from the play is of no practical utility in England may be true. . . . The lesson, however, is not the less couched under the form of an admirable drama; nor needs it any laborious effort of the imagination to extend the moral precept resulting from the story to a salutory admonition against all ill-assorted, clandestine, and unnatural marriages."

Twenty years later we have from the American pulpit itself, in pleasing contrast, an example of what is really a "high tone" in criticism, viz., the impartial application of a rigidly impersonal standard, and the association of Art with the larger emotions and nobler interests of human life. Dr. CHANNING'S work is so far from that of a mere intellectual sensualist that he has been called a purist; but he loved Beauty as well as Virtue for its own sake, and his style is generally free from the defects of taste frequent in the writings of his contemporaries. The Essay on National Literature (1824), by which his reputation was first made, is singularly suggestive, and only errs by the intrusion, here and there, of anti-Calvinistic polemic. His review of Fénélon abounds in passages, as the often quoted picture of religious peace, which exhibit the delicacy of his perceptions; but the breadth and force of his sympathy is most manifest in his Remarks on Milton, à propos of the publication of the posthumous De Doctrina Christiana. That this treatise was much to Channing's mind appears in the theological part of his review. We are more concerned to call attention to its appreciation, then rare, of Milton's prose, to its fair view of his relation to Dr. Johnson, and to its anticipation of the now hackneyed truism that the hell of the great iconoclast poet "yields to the spirit which it imprisons. . . Its intense fires reveal the intenser passions and more vehement will of the ruined archangel, who gathers into himself the sublimity of the scene which surrounds him." Perhaps, however, the most beautiful page of this justly famous review is the comment on our first parents in their "Bower of Bliss:"

CHANNING-SCIENTIFIC WRITERS.

185

"Their new existence has the freshness and peacefulness of the dewy morning. Their souls, unsated and untainted, find an innocent joy in the youthful creation, which spreads and smiles around them. Their mutual love is deep, for it is the love of young, unworn, unexhausted hearts, which meet in each other the only human objects on whom to pour forth their fulness of affection; and still it is serene, for it is the love of happy beings, who know not suffering even by name, whose innocence excludes not only the tumults but the thought of jealousy and shame, who, imparadised in one another's arms,' scarce dream of futurity, so blessed is their present being. We will not say that we envy our first parents; for we feel that there may be higher happiness than theirs, a happiness won through struggle with inward and outward foes, the happiness of power and moral victory, the happiness of disinterested sacrifices and widespread love, the happiness of boundless hope, and of 'thoughts which wander through eternity.' Still there are times, when the spirit, oppressed with pain, worn with toil, tired of tumult, sick at the sight of guilt, wounded in its love, baffled in its hope, and trembling in its faith, almost longs for the 'wings of a dove, that it might fly away' and take refuge amidst the 'shady bowers,' the 'vernal airs,' the 'roses without thorns,' the quiet, the beauty, the loveliness of Eden. It is the contrast of this deep peace of Paradise with the storms of life which gives to the fourth and fifth books of this poem a charm so irresistible that not a few would sooner relinquish the two first books, with all their sublimity, than part with these. It has sometimes been said that the English language has no good pastoral poetry. We would ask, in what age or country has the pastoral reed breathed such sweet strains as are borne to us on the odoriferous wings of gentle gales' from Milton's Paradise?"

In a rapid survey of this prolific age, we can only signalise its contributions to Philological Criticism and the several branches of Science, physical and mental. In the exploration of animate Nature, AUDUBON succeeded to the Bertrams and to Wilson; and so far surpassed them in artistic power that his descriptions have, from an artistic point of view, been compared to Buffon. He remains, to this day, the one conspicuous literary glory of Louisiana. During the last two generations, the United States have been justly proud of the names of Morton and Schoolcraft in Ethnology, of BOWDITCH in Mathematics, of Silliman and Dana in Chemistry and Mineralogy, of Loomis and Wells in Natural Philosophy, and, above all, of their greatest literary import, the Swiss Agassiz.

Their classical scholarship has been well maintained by the Everetts, Lewis, Felton, Woolsey, Anthon, and Robinson. Dr. Frederick Hedge has done much to keep alive an interest in "German Literature" by his lectures; and Charles T. Brooks even more, by his admirable translations of the main works of Jean Paul Richter. W. D. Whitney and Dr. Marsh are among the most accurate modern philologists-the latter an excellent and deservedly popular writer. R. C. White is known as a learned editor of Shakespeare, and H. N. Hudson as an able commentator; Dr. Child is one of the foremost authorities in old English, especially ballad literature. Worcester has worthily followed Webster in lexicography. The metaphysical school of Locke is nowhere better represented than in America by Dr. Bowen, nor the views of Herbert Spencer more sytematically developed than in the "Cosmical Philosophy" of John Fiske, nor those of Swedenborg than by Dr. George Bush. Horace Bushnell is acknowledged as an original divine; Dr. Hodge and Jacob Abbott as good popular expositors of the orthodox theology. The place of Marshall as a jurist has been filled by Chief-Justice Kent and Judge Story; Wheaton is over Europe the leading authority on International Law; while HORACE MANN, by his combination of large practical experience and insight into character, has elevated Education into a science, the principles of which he expounds with remarkable richness of illustration, frequently humorous, and a general grace of style rare in his profession. It were even further beyond our province to pass judgment on the numerous artists, conspicuously the great sculptors, by whom America has been adorned. We can only offer a tribute of recognition to the names of Copley, Allston, West, Leslie, Greenough, Church, Powers, Bierstadt, and Story.

REPRESENTATIVE POETS.

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CHAPTER VI.

REPRESENTATIVE POETS OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY.

BRYANT-LONGFELLOW-WHITMAN-POE.

In spite of the melodious preludes of minor versifiers, De Tocqueville was still able, in 1835, to assert, with some plausibility, that America had not yet produced a single poet of a high order. At that time there only existed a single poem to contradict him; and the collective works of the author of this poem seem to vindicate another generalisation of the French critic. He remarks "that, in democratic communities, where men are all socially insignificant, and each one sees his fellows when he sees himself, poetry will be less apt to celebrate individuals"; that it will seldom be dramatic, but will incline to dwell either on external nature or on the ideas which concern humanity in general it will be either descriptive or abstract. The poem I refer to is reflective and descriptive, and its author, WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT, is a poet of nature and contemplation.

:

It is told of Bryant that, while on a visit to England many years ago, he called at Rydal Mount, and was received with the somewhat surly salutation-" Well, sir, you are, I believe, an American poet. I never read American poetry; I never read any poetry but my own." "But," interrupted a more sympathetic member of the family, "this is the author

of Thanatopsis, which only the other week you repeated to me from memory." As one of the best illustrations of a phase of Transatlantic thought, I shall quote the concluding lines of the poem that William Wordsworth had learnt by heart—

"Yet not to thine eternal resting place

Shalt thou retire alone-nor couldst thou wish
Couch more magnificent. Thou shalt lie down
With patriarchs of the infant world—with kings,
The powerful of the earth-the wise, the good,
Fair forms and hoary seers of ages past,
All in one mighty sepulchre. The hills,
Rock-ribbed and ancient as the sun-the vales
Stretching in pensive quietness between ;
The venerable woods-rivers that move

In majesty, and the complaining brooks

That make the meadows green; and poured round all,
Old ocean's gray and melancholy waste,-

Are but the solemn decorations all

Of the great tomb of man.

The golden sun,

The planets, all the infinite host of heaven,
Are shining on the sad abodes of death
Through the still lapse of ages. All that tread
The globe are but a handful to the tribes
That slumber in its bosom-take the wings
Of morning and the Barcan desert pierce,

Or lose myself in the continuous woods
Where rolls the Oregon and hears no sound

Save his own dashings-yet-the dead are there."

The reason why Bryant has never surpassed, and seldom equalled, this effort of his youth, is to be found partly in the cast of his mind, which is characterised by a narrow greatness; and partly in the fact that, during the great portion of his life, he has been forced "to scrawl strange words with the barbarous pen," as the editor of a daily newspaper-a fact to which he makes a touching reference at the close of his Green River. But no one of his compeers has penetrated so deeply into the western woods as Bryant has done. He has lived in thronging streets, an honest and energetic politician; but, in his leisure hours, his fancy has roamed away