So where high Hudson belts his hundred hills, Winds his wide wave, and York's broad basin fills; With engine force the fluid fields to plough, The mighty Steam-boat points his sailless prow. Knees from the winds no gales, the sea no tides, Whirls the wheel oar. and o'er the river rides. Lo with what art the nice machinery turns.
With what fierce force the pitchy pine pole burns. See the black Boiler, in whose darloome womb, The prison'd water vapours into fume: The hollow Cylinder, whose shining side Cramps the crook'd Chain, and turns the densing tide: Etc., etc., etc.
Of those of the magazines proper which were manfully and loyally sustained for many years is the Knickerbocker which was published in New York monthly for several years. Most of the authors who won distinction in the litera ture of the century made their maiden contribu tions to its pages. In Boston a beginning, which proved to be a foundation, was made in the issue of the Monthly Anthology, of which the first number was printed in 1809. It was the work of a literary club, and it is very creditable to the literary life of the day. Some original translations from the minor poems of the great German poets slipped in. And by this time, America had found out the resources of the German colleges. George Bancroft Frederick Hedge, Edward Everett, Henry Ff Quitman, George Ticknor studied in the German colleges. The success of the Anthology and perhaps a certain jealousy of the literary tyranny of the London Quarterly and the Edinburgh Review led William Tudor, with the spirited young fel lows who wrote for the Anthology, to announce the North American Review of which the first number was published in 1815. It may be said of the North American Review that a desire to imitate the English quarterlies weakened it for perhaps a quarter of a century. But its tone was always dignified and on really national questions it was American. In the earlier numbers of the Review it admitted poetry and some short articles which did not pretend to be criticism of books. The successive editors of the Review were William Tudor, Edward Tyrrel Channing Edward Everett, Jared Sparks, John G. Palfrey, Francis Bowen, An drew Preston Peabody, Alexander Everett, and James Russell Lowell. A few years after the Civil War it was removed from Boston to New York under the direction and charge of Allen Thorndike Rice. In Philadelphia what was called the American Quarterly Review was published under similar auspices.
Meanwhile what had attracted attention at once to a very great extent was the success of Cooper's novels. The later novels of Scott were still engaging the attention of readers when Cooper's earlier stories were published. He had left Yale College without a degree, dis gusted with something or other as youngsters are apt to be in colleges, and had joined the United States navy. This, as it proved, was fortunate for the literature of America. After the short war with England, he was stationed on Lake Ontario, which was at that time in the wilderness. At his father's home he had al ready made acquaintance with the wrecks of the Six Nation Indians. At Oswego he fell in somehow with the last of the Mohicans. His study of a real forest and his studies of the forecastle of American ships are both genuinely national, and although he could not resist the spell of the "great enchanter," and imitated Sir Walter Scott whenever he got a chance, the early Cooper novels have the great charm of being interesting. To this hour the school boy
reads them as his grandfather read them and regards them among his best friends. In Cooper's later novels there may be seen a tinge of ill temper because he fancied that he had not been esteemed fairly by his own countrymen. But the early novels have established them selves in a well-assured place in the literature of his country. Few people remember them, but it is said that the German novels on Ameri can subjects by Sealsfield were the inducement for a time of the great German emigration which began as soon as these spirited books began to be printed. His German name was Karl Postel.
Meanwhile the leaders of the nation had found out that a republic stands or falls accord ing to the education of its people. It is impos sible to estimate the change produced by the early determination of the more civilized States to improve the education of every child born in their borders. At the beginning of the century you might say that there was nobody to buy books, even if angels or archangels had de scended from heaven to write them. But even in the middle of the century an army of readers, men and women, had been created. It began to be evident that a good book in the English Ian page had more readers in America than it had in England. It began to appear that the reputa tions of English writers depended quite as much upon the American readers as upon those of the British Islands. Scott, Byron, Wordsworth, Coleridge and Southey had more readers on this side of the ocean than on their own. The same was true later of Macaulay's and of other books of permanent value. Disraeli said as early as 1845 that America was the pres ent posterity for the Englishman,— that an Eng lish author knew what posterity would think of him by learning what the American of to-day thought of him. The creation of such a body of readers led to the growth of a genuine Amer ican demand for what could be called an Amer ican literature. A school of history grew up first in which Irving had led the way in which the great historical addresses of Webster and the Everetts and other orators were an essential part. The subserviency to English critics di minished as more and more scholars came from France and Germany. It would be fair to say that Bancroft, Prescott and Motley, as histo rians, Emerson as a philosopher, Longfellow, Lowell, Holmes and Whittier as poets made a distinct American school after the year 1830 when Bancroft announced his plan for his his tory, or more definitely perhaps in 1833. So far as this was a New England school it was some what affected by the literature of the Continent of Europe. but this effect has been overstated. Emerson was not at all indebted to Germany in his work. Longfellow's poems are distinctly American when they are not translations. Lowell won his English reputation by the ad mirably national characteristics of the (Biglow Papers.' Still a distinct ripple on the tide of literary advance may be found in all the sea board States when in the twenties of the last century the Holy Alliance exiled from Germany Lieber, Follett Beck and some other young students who had displeased Metternich.