his romances. ford's "Vathek," Godwin's "Caleb Williams" and "St. Character of Leon," Mrs. Shelley's "Frankenstein," and such "Gothic" romances as Lewis's "Monk," Walpole's "Castle of Otranto," and Mrs. Radcliffe's "Mysteries of Udolpho." A distinguishing characteristic of this whole school is what we may call the clumsy-horrible. Brown's romances are not wanting in inventive power; in occasional situations that are intensely thrilling, and in subtle analysis of character; but they are fatally defective in art. The narrative is by turns abrupt and tiresomely prolix, proceeding not so much by dialogue as by elaborate dissection and discussion of motives and states of mind, interspersed with the author's reflections. The wild improbabilities of plot and the unnatural and even monstrous developments of character are in startling contrast with the old-fashioned preciseness of the language; the conversations, when there are any, being conducted in that insipid dialect in which a fine woman was called an "" elegant female." The following is a sample description of one of Brown's heroines, and is taken from his novel of "Ormond,” the leading character in which— a combination of unearthly intellect with fiendish wickedness-is thought to have been suggested by Aaron Burr : "Helena Cleves was endowed with every feminine and fascinating quality. Her features were modified by the most transient sentiments and were the seat of a softness at all times blushful and bewitching. All those graces of symmetry, smoothness, and luster, which assemble in the imagination of the painter when he calls from the bosom of her natal deep the Paphian divinity, blended their perfections in the shade, complexion, and hair of this lady." But, alas! "Helena's intellectual deficiencies could not be concealed. She was proficient in the elements of no science. The doctrine of lines and surfaces was as disproportionate with her intellects as with those of the mocking "Ormond." "Wieland." Tales of morbid psychology. John Woolman's Journal. She bird. She had not reasoned on the principles of human Brown frequently raises a superstructure of mystery on a basis ludicrously weak. Thus the hero of his first novel, "Wieland" (whose father anticipates "Old Krook" in Dickens's "Bleak House," by dying of spontaneous combustion), is led on by what he mistakes for spiritual voices to kill his wife and children; and the voices turn out to be produced by the ventriloquism of one Carwin, the villain of the story. Similarly in "Edgar Huntley," the plot turns upon the phenomena of sleep-walking. Brown had the good sense to place the scene of his romances in his own country, and the only passages in them which have now a living interest are his descriptions of wilderness scenery in "Edgar Huntley," and his graphic account in "Arthur Mervyn" of the yellow-fever epidemic in Philadelphia in 1793. Shelley was an admirer of Brown, and his experiments in prose fiction, such as "Zastrozzi" and "St. Irvyne the Rosicrucian," are of the same abnormal and speculative type. Another book which falls within this period was the Journal, 1774, of John Woolman, a New Jersey Quaker, which has received the highest praise from Channing, Charles Lamb, and many others. แ 'Get the writings of John Woolman by heart," wrote Lamb, "and love the early Quakers." The charm of this journal resides in its singular sweetness aud innocence of feeling, the "deep inward stillness" peculiar to the people called Quakers. Apart from his constant use of certain phrases peculiar to the Friends, Woolman's English is also remarkably graceful and pure, the transparent medium of a soul absolutely sincere, and tender and humble in its sincerity. When not working at his trade as a tailor Woolman spent his time in visiting and ministering to the monthly, quarterly, and yearly meetings of Friends, traveling on horseback to their scattered communities in the backwoods of Virginia and North Carolina, and northward along the coast as far as Boston and Nantucket. He was under a 66 11 concern Woolman influences and a "heavy exercise" touching the keeping of slaves, and by his writing and speaking did much to influence the Quakers against slavery. His love went out, indeed, to all the wretched and oppressed; to sailors, and to the Indians in particular. One of his most perilous journeys was made to the settlements of Moravian Indians in the wilderness of western Pennsylvania, at Bethlehem, and at Wehaloosing, on the Susquehanna. Some of the scruples which Woolman felt, and the quaint naïveté with which he expresses them, may make the modern reader smile, but the smile will be very close to a tear. Thus, when in Englandwhere he died in 1772—he would not ride nor send a letter the Indians against slavery. His philan by mail-coach, because the poor postboys were compelled thropy. to ride long stages in winter nights, and were sometimes frozen to death. "So great is the hurry in the spirit of this world that, in aiming to do business quickly and to gain wealth, the creation at this day doth loudly groan." Again, having reflected that war was caused by luxury in dress, etc., the use of dyed garments grew uneasy to him, and he got and wore a hat of the natural color of the fur. "In attending meetings this singularity was a trial to me, and some Friends, who knew not from what motives I wore it, grew shy of me. who spoke with me I generally informed, in a few words, Those His bad hat. that I believed my wearing it was not in my own will.” 1. " Representative American Orations." Edited by Alexander Johnston. New York: 1884. 2. "The Federalist." New York: 1863. 3. THOMAS JEFFERSON: "Notes on Virginia." Boston: 1829. 4. TIMOTHY DWIGHT: "Travels in New England and New York." New Haven: 1821. 5. JOHN TRUMBULL: "McFingal." Trumbull's Poetical Works. Hartford: 1820. 6. JOEL BARLOW: Hasty Pudding." FRANCIS HOPKINSON: "Modern Learning." PHILIP FRENEAU: "Indian Student," "Indian Burying-Ground," "White Honeysuckle." Vol. I. of Duyckinck's "Cyclopedia of American Literature." New York: 1866. 7. CHARLES BROCKDEN BROWN: "Arthur Mervyn." Boston: 1827. 8. "The Journal of John Woolman." With an Introduction by John G. Whittier. Boston: 1871. 9. CHARLES F. RICHARDSON: "American Literature." New York: 1887. 10. JOHN NICHOL: "American Literature." Edinburgh: 1882. CHAPTER III. THE ERA OF NATIONAL EXPANSION-1815-1837. THE attempt to preserve a strictly chronological order must here be abandoned. About all the American literature in existence that is of any value as literature is the product of the past three quarters of a century, and the men who produced it, though older or younger, were still contemporaries. Irving's "Knickerbocker's History of New York," 1809, was published within the recollection of some yet living, and the venerable poet Richard H. Dana -Irving's junior by only four years-survived to 1879, when the youngest of the generation of writers that now occupy public attention had already won their spurs. Bryant, whose "Thanatopsis was printed in 1816, lived down to 1878. He saw the beginnings of our national literature, and he saw almost as much of the latest phase of it as we see to-day in this year 1895. Still, even within the limits of a single lifetime, there have been progress and change. And so, while it will happen that the consideration of writers, a part of whose work falls between the dates at the head of this chapter, may be postponed to subsequent chapters, we may in a general way follow the sequence of time. American literature not yet a century old. The period between the close of the second war with England, in 1815, and the great financial crash of 1837 has been called in language attributed to President Monroe, "the era of good feeling." It was a time of peace and good feeling." prosperity, of rapid growth in population and rapid exten "The era of |