Revolution times in the South; Irving invested with romantic charm the Hudson River region and its Dutch legends; Poe and Hawthorne were fond of the mysterious and the unusual; even the later story-writers, Cable, Harris, Allen, and others, have dwelt with delight upon a vanishing picturesque past about which an atmosphere of romance had formed.

In the last two decades of the nineteenth century, however, there was a decided shift of emphasis from the romantic to the

realistic in novels and short stories. Absolute truth to life is what this newer school of writers demand. They felt that our fiction was falling into the bondage of tradition and in consequence failed sufficiently to take account of the vital forces round about it; "it remained for realism to assert that fidelity to experience and probability of motive are essential conditions of a great imaginative literature." They asserted that as romanticism displaced the worn-out classicism of the eighteenth century, so realism must supersede our tired romanticism. Instead of idealizing people and things, they would paint them as they are. The chief champions of realism in American fiction have been William Dean Howells and Henry James, both of whom will be considered presently. Howells defines realism as "nothing more and nothing less than

the truthful treatment of material"; and he asserts, furthermore, that "it wishes to know and to tell the truth, confident that consolation and delight are there." Democracy in literature, he thinks, demands this attitude of mind and this method of treatment. While the realists have not been able to apply their theory with perfect consistency, they have at any rate made its virtues clear and they have shown in their stories the, spirit of reaction against the older romantic writing. No doubt the great vogue of the short story in the magazines has also hastened the growth of realism.

The Middle States writers may be divided into three groups: (1) The Essayists, (2) the Poets, and (3) the Novelists. Among the essayists are George William Curtis, Charles Dudley Warner, Donald G. Mitchell, and John Burroughs; among the poets, Bayard Taylor, Richard Henry Stoddard, Walt Whitman, Edmund Clarence Stedman, and Richard Watson Gilder; the novelists are William Dean Howells, Henry James, and F. Marion Crawford.

THE ESSAYISTS

George William Curtis (1824-1892).-George William Curtis, essayist, orator, and reformer, was born in Providence, Rhode Island; attended school near Boston; moved to New York at fifteen; spent two years (from eighteen to twenty) at Brook Farm, the idealistic community near Boston; lived a year at Concord in association with Emerson and other idealists; spent four years (1846-'50) in Europe and the Orient; and upon his return, settled down to literary work in New York. In 1854 he took charge of the "Easy Chair" in Harper's Monthly, and with that department and with Harper's Weekly as editorial writer he was connected until his death. He was also editor of Putnam's Magazine until its failure in 1857, and it is to be remembered to his honor that he insisted on paying the creditors of that periodical—a task of sixteen years. Curtis was a leader

in civil service reform, being the first chairman of the Civil Service Commission. Though he was active in politics, he persistently declined office. At heart and in practice he was essentially a reformer.

The most important writings of Curtis are The Potiphar Papers, Prue and I, and Trumps, a novel. These books are satires on the sordidness of fashionable New York life. The most pleasing of them is Prue and I, a delicate little prose idyl of a simple and happy life in contrast to that of the shallow and selfish metropolitan society. The most charming of his works is the series of papers selected from the "Easy Chair"; in this chatty, rambling personal essay Curtis was perfectly at home. His genial, refined nature shows at its best in these monthly talks; kindliness and human sympathy run through them all, relieved by gentle humor and graceful satire. To the urbanity of Addison he added the mildly playful humor of Lamb, though he was a more serious reformer than either. American literature has no more delightful bits of genial human philosophy than the "Easy Chair" essays. Other volumes are Literary and Social Essays and Orations and Addresses. Curtis was an accomplished orator, greatly in demand on academic occasions; the polish and refinement of his style and the purity of his ideals won for him an appreciative hearing; such an address, for instance, as "The Leadership of Educated Men," delivered at Brown University in 1882, is one of the most striking of his public utterances. Along with his charm of personality went the virtue of intense idealism, a fineness of culture, and an unwavering devotion to moral principles.

Charles Dudley Warner (1829-1900).-Charles Dudley Warner, essayist and journalist, was born in Plainfield, Massachusetts; educated at Hamilton College and the University of Pennsylvania; was for a few years a lawyer in Chicago; then turned to journalism, and was editor of newspapers in Hartford, Connecticut, and later, one of the editors of Harper's Magazine.

His first noteworthy book was My Summer in a Garden (1870), a collection of pleasing sketches which established his reputation as an essayist and humorist. Other works are Being a Boy, Backlog Studies, and several entertaining volumes of travels. Being a Boy abounds in reminiscences of the author's own New England boyhood, and is an altogether charming book; Backlog Studies is a volume of delightful conversations on literature, topics of the day, and matters of sentiment. Besides these works, Warner wrote several novels, which have not added to his fame, and collaborated with Mark Twain in The Gilded Age. He is, moreover, author of an interesting life of Irving in the "American Men of Letters" series, of which he was the general editor.

Whatever Charles Dudley Warner touched he adorned; he was a man of wide culture, broad sympathies, keen moral sensibilities, and delicate humor. He combined the qualities of a journalist of the best type with those of the lover of books and the successful man of letters; there is in his writings an element of genial friendliness which wins the reader at once. He belongs in the same class with Irving, Oliver Wendell Holmes, and George William Curtis, all of them personal essayists who please by the "diffused light which illuminates their writing on various themes, not by any startling or sensational effect."

Donald G. Mitchell (1822-1908).-Donald Grant Mitchell, better known by his penname of "Ik Marvel," was born at Norwich, Connecticut; educated at Yale; traveled in Europe, and wrote a volume of impressions; studied law, but never practised; after another trip abroad, he wrote a book of sketches in the vein of Irving's earlier work; was United States consul at Venice from 1853 to 1855; on his return to America he settled down on his farm Edgewood, near New Haven, where as a sort of rural philosopher and gentleman farmer he spent the rest of his life. He was for many years a member of the

council of the Yale Art School and gave some lectures on English literature in the university.

The two books that brought fame to Mitchell are Reveries of a Bachelor (1850) and Dream Life (1851), sketches of gentle sentiment, somewhat old-fashioned in this day of strenuous realism, but pleasant reading when the dreamy mood holds youth in thrall on soft summer days. Few books of their kind have attained a wider popularity. "Ik Marvel" wrote many other works My Farm at Edgewood, Wet Days at Edgewood, Rural Studies, English Lands, Letters, and Kings, American Lands and Letters, besides editing the Atlantic Almanac and Hearth and Home for a year or two. His life was one of quiet devotion to literature in a charming rural retreat; he was a bucolic philosopher of mellow culture, mildly sentimental and tenderly sympathetic, who wrote in a clear, high-bred, leisurely style not unlike Irving's.

John Burroughs (1837-).—John Burroughs, essayist and naturalist, was born in Roxbury, New York; had scant opportunities for an education, but was an eager and diligent reader and a keen observer of outdoor life; taught school for nine years; worked for a time in the Treasury Department at Washington, and was later employed as a bank-examiner; in 1874 he settled down at West Park on the Hudson River; here at his home, Riverby, and at his retreat a mile away in the woods, Slabsides, he reads, writes, and enjoys the undisturbed companionship of his neighbors, the birds and the squirrels. He is a naturalist with the curiosity and patience of a scientist and the artistic sensibilities of a literary man.

Burroughs has written a number of books on nature-Wake Robin, Locusts and Wild Honey, Fresh Fields, Signs and Seasons, Sharp Eyes, and others,-all drawn directly from his close observation of life about him at Slabsides. "You must have the bird in your heart," says he, "before you can find it in the bush." That is the secret of his lively portrayal of animate as well as inanimate life-he has both the bird and the bush in