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had moved from Massachusetts to Philadelphia, but now New York began to hold the place of honor. The authors belonging to the Knickerbocker School are Irving, Cooper, and Bryant, with the minor poets, Halleck, Drake, and Willis. Knickerbocker's History of New York made Irving somewhat known on both sides of the ocean, but his Sketch Book was the first American book to win a European reputation. He afterwards wrote much history and biography. Cooper attempted first an English novel, then wrote The Spy, which made him famous in both England and America. He wrote many other tales of the forest and the ocean. He was popular as a novelist, but unpopular as a man. writer of the Knickerbocker School was Bryant. He wrote his masterpiece, Thanatopsis, before he was eighteen. His early poems were highly praised, but brought him little money. He was editor of The Evening Post for nearly fifty years, wrote many poems, and translated the Iliad and the Odyssey. He was the Father of American Poetry. Among the minor Knickerbocker Poets were Halleck, Drake, and Willis. Long before the death of Willis, it was evident that the literary centre was again to be found in New England.

The third great

CHAPTER IV

THE NATIONAL PERIOD, 1815

I. EARLIER YEARS, 1815-1865

B. THE TRANSCENDENTALISTS

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23. The Transcendentalists. Before the year 1840 had arrived, a remarkable group of writers of New England ancestry and birth had begun their work. They were fortunate in more than one way. They had the inspiration of knowing that good literature had already been written in America; and they had the stimulus arising from a movement, or manner of thought, known as transcendentalism. This movement began in Germany, was felt first in England and then in America, introduced by the works of Carlyle and Coleridge. Three of its "notes were: (1) There are ideas in the human mind that were "born there" and were not acquired by experience; (2) Thought is the only reality; (3) Every one must do his own thinking. The Transcendental Club was formed, and the new movement had its literary organ, The Dial, whose first editor was the brilliant Margaret Fuller. It had also its representatives in the pulpit, for the persuasive charm of William Ellery Channing and the impassioned eloquence of Theodore Parker were employed to proclaim the new gospel. Another advocate was Amos Bronson Alcott, gentle, visionary, and immovable, who is so well pictured in the opening chapters of his daughter's Little Women.

The first thrill of all new movements leads to extremes, and transcendentalism was no exception. Freedom! Re

of transcenden

form! was the war-cry; and to those who were inclined to act first and think afterwards, the new im- Influence pulse was merely an incitement to tear down the fences. There were wild projects and fantastic talism. schemes innumerable. A sense of humor would have guided and controlled much of this unbalanced enthusiasm; but it is only great men like Lincoln who can see any fellowship between humor and earnestness. The very people who were to profit by this movement were

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the loudest laughers at these dreamers who gazed in rapture upon the planets and sometimes stubbed their toes against the pebbles. Nevertheless, the ripened fruits of transcendentalism were in their degree like those of the Renaissance; it widened the horizon and it inspired men with courage to think for themselves and to live their own lives. This atmosphere of freedom had a noble effect upon literature. Two of the authors of the New England group, the poet-philosopher Emerson and the poet-naturalist Thoreau, were so imbued with its spirit that in literary classifications they are usually ranked as

the transcendentalists; and Hawthorne is often classed with them, partly by virtue of a few months' connection with a transcendental scheme, and even more because in his romances the thought and the spirit are so much more real than the deeds by which they are manifested and symbolized.

Now and then

Once a cow was

24. Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1803-1882. The poetphilosopher was one of five boys who lived with their widowed mother in Boston. They were poor, for clergymen do not amass fortunes, and their father had been no exception to the rule. The famous First Church, however, of which he had been in charge, did not forget the family of their beloved minister. other kind friends gave a bit of help. lent them, and every morning the boys drove her down Beacon Hill to pasture. In spite of their poverty it never entered the mind of any member of the family that the children could grow up without an education. Four of the boys graduated at Harvard. The oldest son, who was then a sedate gentleman of twenty, opened a school for young ladies; and his brother Ralph, two years younger, became his assistant. The evenings were free, and the young man of eighteen was even then jotting down the thoughts that he was to use many years later in his essay, Compensation. He was a descendant Enters the of eight generations of ministers, and there seems to have been in his mind hardly a thought of entering any other profession than the ministry. A minister he became; but a few years later he told his congregation frankly that his belief differed on one or two points from theirs and it seemed to him best to resign. They urged him to remain with them, but he did not think it wise to do so.

ministry.

A year later he went to Europe for his health. He

Carlyle.

wanted to see three or four men rather than places, he said. He met Coleridge and Wordsworth; and Friendship then he sought out the lonely little farm of with Craigenputtock, the home of Carlyle. His coming was "like the visit of an angel," said the Scotch philosopher to Longfellow. The two men became friends, and the friendship lasted as long as their lives.

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When Emerson came back to America, he made his home in Concord, Massachusetts, but for a long while he was almost as much at home on railroad trains and in stages. Those were the times when people were eager to hear from the lecture platform what the best thinkers of the day could tell them. In 1837 Emerson delivered at Harvard his Phi Beta Kappa address entitled The AmeriThe American Scholar; and then for the first Scholar, time the American people were told seriously 1837. and with dignity that they must no longer listen to "the courtly muses of Europe." "We will walk on our own feet; we will work with our own hands; we will speak our own minds," said Emerson. These last words were the keynote of his message to the world. Whoever listens may hear the voice of God, he declared; and for that reason each person's individuality was sacred to him. Therefore it was that he met every man with a gently expectant deference that was far above the ordinary courtesy of society. A humble working woman. once said that she did not understand his lectures, but she liked to go to them and see him look as if he thought everybody else just as good as he. On the lecture platform Emerson's manner was that of one who was trying to interpret what had been told to him, of one who was striving to put his thoughts into a language which had no words to express them fully.

Some parts of Emerson's writings are simple enough

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