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from England left a great deal to be done. It was necessary to appeal to common sense and moderation and to discuss the nature of government logically and philosophically before a nation could be founded. The formation of the Constitution was the great critical work which occupied the best thought of the nation, and it called for a tempered reasoning, the spirit of compromise, practical examination of history, and judgment based on knowledge of the American communities. This work was well and nobly done and it was all-engrossing, pressing, and dominant. The national foundations of England are ten centuries old, and though we borrowed much from the mother country and profited by her experience, it is impossible to build a nation in a generation. In fact, the work is not complete yet, and we can hardly be surprised. that our Revolutionary fathers found so much to do in the higher branches of statesmanship and administration that they had little leisure to spend in the "criticism of life.”

The Revolution produced a crop of ballads, rhymed squibs, and doggerel songs like the "Battle of the Kegs" Ballads of the by Francis Hopkinson of Philadelphia, whose Revolution. son Joseph wrote "Hail Columbia." "Bold Hathorne" (Hawthorne's grandfather, the captain of a privateer) is a lively ballad, but most of the ballad literature of the period is strictly ephemeral. The "Ballad of Nathan Hale" has in one or two stanzas a fine imaginative quality, but falls sadly in others. The first two stanzas are a real inspiration:

BALLAD OF NATHAN HALE

The breezes went steadily through the tall pines,
A saying "Oh! hush!"—a saying "Oh! hush!"

As stilly stole by a bold legion of horse,

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For Hale in the bush; for Hale in the bush.

Keep still," said the thrush as she nestled her young,
In a nest by the road; in a nest by the road,

"For the tyrants are near and with them appear
What bodes us no good; what bodes us no good."

The brave captain heard it and thought of his home
In a cot by the brook; in a cot by the brook,
With mother and sister and memories dear,
He so gayly forsook; he so gayly forsook.

He warily trod on the dry rustling leaves

As he passed through the wood; as he passed through the wood, And silently gained his rude launch on the shore,

As she played with the flood; as she played with the flood.

The guards at the camp on that dark, dreary night,
Had a murderous will; had a murderous will,
They took him and bore him afar from the shore,
To a hut on the hill; to a hut on the hill.

Five minutes were given, short moments, no more,
For him to repent; for him to repent,

He prayed for his mother, he asked not another,
To heaven he went; to heaven he went.

The faith of a martyr the tragedy showed,

As he trod the last stage; as he trod the last stage,
And Britons will shudder at gallant Hale's blood,

Character

As his words do presage; as his words do presage.

The literature of America up to the breaking out of the Revolutionary struggle is almost entirely devoid of artistic quality, and is interesting only as the expression istics of Early of a community of men of vigorous prejudices. and thorough intellectual honesty. The Puritans entirely repudiated the idea that there was anything divine in the principle of beauty which forms so

American

Literature.

important a part of the character of the material universe. Music they regarded as profane. They assumed that all pleasant things were sinful because some sinful actions were manifestly pleasant. Their minds were continually in contact with one of the greatest of the world's literatures, the English translations of the Hebrew sacred books, but the God that was formed in their conception was a God of power and justice, inexorable and even vengeful. The narrative of the Gospels did not appeal to their consciousness as did that of the trials and victories. of the chosen people, to whom they instinctively compared themselves. Their theological system was marked by an attempt at logical perfection, and the idea of duty was magnified to the exclusion of the idea of divine love. Even God's mercy and long-suffering were regarded as proceeding from indifference rather than from the essence of the divine nature. A literature which is the expression of these inadequate conceptions may possess vigor and essential truth, but must lack charm and universal interest and beauty of form.

As time went on, the community became secularized and the control of affairs passed from the ministers to the lawyers. The claims of letters were recognized at the colleges of Yale and Harvard, and the practical questions of civil liberty were debated in a practical argumentative manner. A temperate eloquence and common sense marked the discussions of the "Federalist" and the papers written on the other side of the issues. Barlow, Dwight, and Trumbull reëcho the notes of the eighteenth-century English verse, which is a product of scholastic leisure hardly natural in a country where the leisure class was so limited in numbers. The interest of the early American literature is almost entirely historical.

CHAPTER XII

AMERICAN LITERATURE-THE NATIONAL PERIOD

Historical
Sketch.

ACCORDING to the census of 1800 the inhabitants of the United States numbered 5,308,483, of whom one fifth were negro slaves. The center of population was within eighteen miles of Baltimore. Some 50,000 people had settled west of the Alleghanies, and communication was still as slow and irregular as it was a century earlier. Boston contained 25,000 inhabitants, New York nearly 60,000, and Philadelphia 70,000. The Constitution had been adopted, but the country was so large and ill compacted and sparsely settled that grave doubts were entertained as to the perpetuity of the Union. The rapid growth of the West did not begin till the opening of the Erie Canal (1825) and the invention of the steamboat and of the locomotive had made intercommunication easier. The Ordinance for the government of the Northwest Territory (1787) opened vast areas of fertile land to settlement, and the Louisiana Purchase (1803) gave the Southwest a waterway to the Gulf of Mexico. Emigration from Ireland and Germany added greatly to our strength and numbers, and the era of rapid expansion set in early in the first quarter of the century.

The War of 1812, though not particularly honorable to us on land, reflected credit on the naval arm of the service and tended to increase our national pride. The application of steam to internal navigation caused the rapid settlement of the region about the Great Lakes and

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the valley of the Mississippi. The war with Mexico (1848) added to our domain the imperial states of Texas and California. The discovery of gold in the latter, in 1849, attracted a host of adventurous and courageous settlers, and resulted in the rapid growth of a vigorous and prosperous community on the Pacific coast. In 1861 the antagonisms between the parties favoring and opposing the extension of negro slavery resulted in the Civil War, which happily ended in the reëstablishment of the Federal Union after the most bitter and bloody contest ever carried on in the history of the human race. A nation has grown up, great in numbers and wealth, and unequaled in productive capacity, and resting on a profound and passionate sentiment of patriotism.

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Although the tumultuous and exciting material progress of the century has engrossed the attention and absorbed the energy of many of the best minds of the time, literary expression has not been neglected. The antislavery struggle and the Civil War aroused men's deeper emotions, and gave rise to poetry, oratory, and fiction which will remain a permanent national possession. Educational institutions schools, colleges, and universities — have multiplied with increasing population. Though no preeminent literary genius has appeared in America, and though so new a country must necessarily lack the picturesque historical background of Italy, France, or England, and the vast amount of literary material afforded by the long struggle of civilization in its older homes, a literature has been produced which expresses not inadequately the life of the nation.

Washington Irving was the first American to make literature a profession. American writers before him

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