the New World. For until then the human mind had employed itself with materials gathered from the past; with histories of nations begun and ended; with mythologies and traditions; with the doubtful enterprises of heroes and kings; and with the literatures of defunct peoples.

Whether we have a national literature characteristic and definable has long since ceased to be a debatable question. A most forcible showing of the fact is at hand in The Library of American Literature (Chas. L. Webster & Co., N. Y. 10 vols., 8vo), compiled and edited by Edmund Clarence Stedman and Ellen Mackay Hutchinson. The capabilities of the editors for a literary task so important and comprehensive was already established when this work was undertaken. After some seven years of arduous labor, their work, marked by a scrupulous painstaking, and a critical discrimination in the choice of material which no reviewer will venture to gainsay, is so far along toward completion as to justify publication. It is issued in large octavo volumes of about five hundred pages, beautifully printed in large and clear type on excellent paper. It will be illustrated with about one hundred and fifty portraits of American writers, some of them procured with great difficulty, doubtless, being rare and exceedingly valuable. The work is to be comprised in ten volumes, four of which are printed and now before us.

It will be difficult to imagine a literary enterprise of more importance to the American public. Nor will English readers and critics of this work find it easy to show that we as a people have not well employed the more than fifty years that have elapsed since one Smith, a reverend wit, or witty reverend, as you please, now almost forgotten, asked the question, "Who reads an American book?" It is safe to say that the time has long gone by when any intelligent man on the continent of Europe would care openly to admit that he had not read American books.

This Library of Literature is a gathering together of what the best American minds have thought since the first settlement in 1607. It proceeds by a method at once interesting and instructive, taking in its course every department of thought. The method is historical, teaching, by illustrious examples, the progress of the American mind occupied with the stirring events and active lives of a new era. It is not designed to be a history of American thought, but the reader who follows the selections page by page in the order they are presented cannot fail to see that there is here an intellectual development parallel with the chronology of events. The first beginnings of American literature are, of course, concerned chiefly with the struggles and adventures incident to the settlement of new

VOL. VIII.-40

countries. The powers of the mind were then so engaged in physical efforts to secure a foothold and maintain life as to leave but little ambition to give pleasing expression to its tastes, its sentiments, and its passions. Unquestionably there was much in the Colonial life which was susceptible of being shaped into representative ideals that would adorn any literature, but that life was itself an allabsorbing present.

The development of thought having distinctive American traits was rapid, as compared with the growth of the literatures of other peoples. It is true that it began with the advantage of a language already fitted to bear up the most ambitious flights of imagination as well as to disclose and portray the most subtle whims and passions of the human soul, but to be American in the Colonial period it must deal with the motives and experiences of men impelled to separate from the old civilization of Europe and construct for themselves a new-world society. Life was full of intense realities. There was very little of the romantic in their views of things. We find very few examples of true poetry in this early literature. Thought was chiefly retrospective and religious. This tendency culminates in the great mind of Jonathan Edwards, but we read the same spirit and prevailing ideas of the period in many examples of other writers. The student of psychology will find abundant material for reflection and speculation in the religious phenomena of the Colonial period as reflected in the writings of William Bradford, Thos. Hooker, Roger Williams, Increase and Cotton Mather, and many others who, though less known, afford scarcely less interest and instruction. Here we meet with phases of mind and thought which give to the intellectual life of that day a chilling, not to say repulsive aspect. And yet, sitting in the broad and cheerful light of to-day, we may find here something more than amusement in the grotesque superstitions-mental vagaries, produced under the strain of experiences as real and trying as death itself.

But the minds of men were not altogether hidden in the caverns of a gloomy theology. A life of activity and freedom was leading them away from these shadowy regions. They began to make political history. Very early we come upon the intellectual germs of American independence. Freedom of thought and action grew together; or, rather, were reciprocally moving causes. No superficial story of these times can give us so true an understanding of the efficient causes of our American civilization as a careful study of what men thought while preparing its foundations.

For several years preceding and during the French and Indian wars (1754) the energies of the colonies were wholly engaged in

struggles with the savages, in the defence of their acquired homes, and in support of the British crown, in its conflicts with France for territory. There was timely discipline in the military schooling thus received, and a consequent awakening of conscious power. Intellectual activity logically follows, and the course of events brings us to the beginning of the Revolutionary period, 17651787-twenty-two years of American history, weighted with events of immeasurable importance!

The turning points of history are usually periods of short duration. This was the beginning of an epoch. The idea of intellectual freedom had at last developed into significant clearness in the general consciousness. During our century of national life just ended, civilization has advanced with a tenfold rapidity, largely due to impulses arising in the Revolutionary times. What intelligent mind can afford to neglect the literature of that period?

The third volume of The Library of American Literature begins with the writings of Benjamin Franklin. This is peculiarly fit ing as an opening of the Revolutionary period. It is a new and suggestive point of departure for American thought. This literature had not been wanting in those higher qualities which are afforded by philosophy. There were prophetic hints in the true liberal-mindedness of Roger Williams' tolerant views; Jonathan Edwards had considered, among speculative questions, "ideas" of "Liberty," "Moral Agency,' "Cause and Effect," with great power, and from a theological point of view had arrived at pure idealism; while the subtle Berkeley himself, the greatest of idealists next to Plato, from his country house at Newport, had contributed to American literature before the time of Franklin.

It is not strange that a lasting interest remains in the life and writings of Benjamin Franklin, for every mind—for that of the inquisitive, book-loving boy, as well as for that of the mature and practical-minded sage. His life in youth and early manhood is a most admirable instance of self-help and self-education. The story, as told by himself, has lost nothing of its interest and value, and has proved worthy of imitation in many cases of youth-at least in the generation preceding this, when the privileges of schooling and employment for wages were scant and unpromising. This illustrious example of self-culture, with others not a few in number in our history, are not to be taken as against schools and the many advantages for acquiring knowledge of our day. But there is here in the unassisted literary efforts of one of our greatest American writers an obvious and striking lesson

for the teacher of the youth who would practice the true art of instruction. The presence and skill of the teacher should not destroy nor weaken the native power of the mind of the learner to think and act for itself, but should rather awaken and strengthen it. There is always a highest place for originality in the literature of thought. There can, in fact, be no real education of the mind that is not self-born. First must come the desire for knowledge, which instruction may stimulate, and then the effort of the learner to secure it; it only becomes complete and clear in the mind of the learner when by himself reproduced and expressed in thought. The highest quality of an educated mind is its ability to think well in fitly chosen words. Literature furnishes us with models illustrating this quality. It is noteworthy that the specimens before us are just such models, and, being American, should claim a first consideration.

In the writings of Franklin we find remarkable anticipations of the present. For the American mind he stands the typical representative and pioneer of the newspaper in all that has made it a power to influence, control and create public opinion. The practical printer has become the all-powerful editor and political philosopher. The debt of American literature to Franklin the printer is incalculable. The example of Franklin in his adopted vocation leads on to attainments that qualify for great usefulness in eminent places. But not less remarkable is his example in the domain of science. The latest and most brilliant feats of the faculty of discovery and invention have been exhibited in the department of electricity. Of all the forces of nature, this-subtle, fugitive, destructive-is the most intimate attendant and servant of the human mind. How it is brought into service we learn from Franklin's own discoveries and writings upon the subject, which is peculiarly American in its incipient stages, as well as in its vastly extended bearings and applications, since the discussion of a theory of electricity by Franklin has grown to a body of scientific learning that requires a good share of a lifetime to compass it. Franklin's philosophy, replete with wisdom, often profound, yet never apart from every-day uses, is but the record and reflection of his life, private and public-s noble specimen of democracy in thought and conduct, standing at the entrance into the world of a permanent democratic civilization.

But there were other great minds in the Revolutionary period, whose writings are fully exemplified in The Library of American Literature, and in whom there must continue an interest as lasting as time. Each one, like Franklin, occupies a place which no other could fill so well.

Washington's letters and papers, while occupying a comparatively small space in our literature, will yet always bear evidence to his greatness of character, and reflect the supreme qualities of the personality of the First President of the American Republic. The literary merits of his state papers, as well as their purity of thought and embodiments of wise, statesman-like views, that infinitely distinguish them from the demagogical conceits of a merely partisan leader, should secure the fame of Washington from comparisons that bring it into association with a character and reputation which cannot, for conscience sake, be thought of in the same day.

To this period, too, belong the writingschiefly political, and therefore most important contributions to the history and development of the American mind-of John Adams, Jefferson and Madison. Of course, of these three great names, Jefferson is the most suggestive as paramount in influence, and significant of a distinct phase of political thought and action. We shall have occasion to return to the writings of Jefferson when considering those of Alexander Hamilton, who belonged to the Constitutional period. Indeed, the student of American political literature will find it profitable to compare the views of Jefferson and Hamilton as representatives of the two great leading ideas running through and characterizing the national constitution and succeeding political events.

There is scarcely any name in this catalogue of writers to which it would not be a pleasure to refer. Among these are many whose merits are not the less deserving because unknown to general fame. There is nothing in these volumes that will not bring pleasure to the reader, and there is much that will prove to be a fresh acquisition to the stock of knowledge already gained. In fact, the majority of us will be convinced that hitherto we have known comparatively little of American Literature, that with many of its most deserving writers we are still unacquainted, and that, with it as a whole, representing, as it does, the development of the American mind, the growth of American thought, we are but just now gaining anything like an adequate conception.

There are more salient points in the literature of the Revolutionary period, to a few of which we may merely refer. Among these are "The Declaration of Independence;" "Revolutionary Congs and Ballads;" the writings of John Woolman-"How He Testified in Meeting Against Slavery, etc.; of Thomas Paine-Representative Government," "In a French Prison, 1794," etc.; of Francis Hopkinson-"Benedick, the Married Man," "The Battle of the

Kegs,"

"To a Recreant American," etc.; of Josiah Quincy, Jr.-"The Duty of Americans,' "The Consequences of Taste," etc.; the poems of Philip Freneau; the letters of Abigail Adams; and the papers of John Jay.

Volume IV. of this work must be reserved for a future review. The importance of the time with which it deals -the Constitutional period, 1788 to 1820-demands a more careful and extended consideration than we can now give it.

In closing this article it may be well to summarize the chief excellences of The Library of American Literature. It is a critically discriminating collection of the best productions of American minds, including authors, public speakers, statesmen, jurists and theologians.

The arrangement is chronological, revealing the events and progressive phases of the history of the Republic, in their due order, and at the same time displaying more and more distinctly the features of the American mind.

As a completed whole it must serve as an indispensable work of reference and an invaluable aid in the study of American thought, as well as a help in further private collections of the works of American authors.

*

**

The Science of Thought, by F. Max Müller (The Open Court Pub. Co., Chicago). This book consists of three "Introductory Lectures on the Science of Thought," delivered at the Royal Institution in London, March, 1887, to which is added an appendix that contains a correspondence of the author with distinguished objectors to his views.

The great learning of the author will ensure a careful reading of these lectures on the part of philological students, and they should also possess interest for the general reader. There is very little in them beyond the reach of the common understanding. Prof. Müller has the very rare ability of making the profound things of thought and philosophy appear plain and simple to every mind.

Whether he will be able to convince any mind of the correctness of the theory which he himself boasts is "revolutionary," is quite another matter. That "language and thought are identical" is his theory. It is not true because "revolutionary." The great learning of the propounder does not make a theory so labelled, by virtue of both learning and characteristics combined, any more credible. It is well established that too much learning has occasionally made men mad."

The very clearness with which the author states his theory tells against it. He says that all thought is nothing more than simple

illustrate the greatness of the human soul in its best moods of virtue, moral heroism, devotion to honor and duty, without the "world" knowing anything about what is going on.

But we are not quite sure that the author does not make her minor characters too strong sometimes. For example, "Elsa," the servant, in the main an admirably-drawn character, but who, occasionally, seems to surpass herself. And then, it is observable, too, that when several of the leading characters are brought together in conversation, they each lose a share of individuality, and are betrayed into talking upon the same high level of wisdom. We seem to see too much of the author on these occasions.

Nevertheless, the book deserves the great reputation it long since won, and in its present form will find its way to thousands of new readers.

**

By

The Animal Life of Our Seashore. Angelo Heilprin. (Lippincott & Co.) This book has particular reference to the New Jersey coast and the southern shore of Long Island, and is specially prepared for summer dwellers on the seashore to enable them to study intelligently its animal life. And while it is designed for the general reader, it is yet so thorough and painstaking as to satisfy and delight the more critical scientist. The style of the author is pleasing and clear. There is not an ambiguous phrase throughout the book. It is profusely illustrated and well printed.

In all cases, for the better known objects common names are used, accompanied, however, by the corresponding technical terms; and in referring to less familiar and rare specimens, English equivalents are given for Latin names. This really adds to the reader's interest and confidence, since he is nowhere frightened by the masks of learning. It is surprising how much solid matter and positive knowledge is found between the covers of this little book-all methodically arranged and supplemented with a good index. The author is entitled to the highest praise for his delightfully instructive contribution to the healthful tastes of an intelligent public. For it is calculated to stimulate an interest in scientific pursuits for pastime, as well as for intellectual profit.

* **

The Republican Party: Its History, Principles and Policies. Edited by Hon. John D. Long. (The M. W. Hazen Co.) The names of Ex-Gov. Long, Gen. Hawley and Henry Cabot Lodge alone assure to this book a high literary character. There is not a contributor to its pages who could afford to associate his name and reputation with an ephemeral publication on the subjects allotted with especial reference to the respective abilities of the writers.

The Republican party has already made a

place in history that belongs to the brightest records of an established and progressive civilization. Its principles and its policies will, as time wears on, lose in the general mind their separative partisan aspects, and become merged in the common stock of political truths and experiences, as approved and accepted.

The writer very well remembers a singularly interesting and significant literary event which had a bearing on the early life of this party. In September, 1854, there appeared in Putnam's Magazine for that month an article on "Parties and Politics," written by Mr. Parke Godwin. Up to this time Putnam's Monthly had been well received in the South, for its excellence as a periodical. In the article by Mr. Godwin, one of great ability, and remarkably correct in its survey of "Parties and Politics" at that time, the South found sufficient reason for condemning the magazine, and for refusing to receive it. The destruction of intellectual slavery in any portion of the country was not less an object of pursuit for a freedom-loving party than was that of political slavery, as early as 1854. And yet we find (page 46) that in 1855 the first legislative assembly of the territory of Kansas enacted a law, accompanied by a severe penalty for its infraction, forbidding the introduction "into the territory, of any book, paper, magazine, pamphlet or circular containing any denial of the right of persons to hold slaves in the Territory of Kansas." Under this law, Mr. Godwin's article in Putnam's Monthly could not have been safely carried through Kansas in a United States mail-bag. The Government's mail pouch is not more sacred than the citizen's ballot-box. It is quite fitting that Senator Ingalls of Kansas should discuss

a fair vote and an honest count," and it is not less appropriate that Senator Hoar of Massachusetts should say: "Not till the Republic is a synonym for “ne universal intelligence, freedom, equality, and political and social happiness of every one of its citizens, will the mission of the Republican party be ended.”

Governor Long, under the head of "Political Parties: 1789-1856," gives a brief but admirably succinct survey of the political history of our country up to the time of the formation of the Republican party.

The Hon. Edward McPherson takes up the story at this point and continues to the present. Perhaps no man in the country is better prepared to command the respectful attention of the nation in an account of the "Rise and Progress of the Republican Party." Few will attempt to question his statements, whatever they may think of the inferences which seem to cling to his figures. But Mr. McPherson has supplied us with something more than a careful array of facts.