Through the pale door,

A hideous throng rush out forever,

And laugh — but smile no more.

"There comes Poe, with his raven, like Barnaby Rudge,
Three fifths of him genius and two fifths sheer fudge,
Who talks like a book of iambs and pentameters,

In a way to make people of common sense damn metres,
Who has written some things quite the best of their kind,
But the heart somehow seems all squeezed out by the mind,
Who But hey-day! What's this? Messieurs Mathews and Poe,
You mustn't fling mud-balls at Longfellow so,

Does it make a man worse that his character's such

As to make his friends love him (as you think) too much?
Why, there is not a bard at this moment alive

More willing than he that his fellows should thrive;

While you are abusing him thus, even now

He would help either one of you out of a slough;

You may say that he's smooth and all that till you're hoarse,
But remember that elegance also is force;
After polishing granite as much as you will,
The heart keeps its tough old persistency still;
Deduct all you can, that still keeps you at bay
Why, he'll live till men weary of Collins and Gray.”

Daniel

Webster, 1782-1852.

From the "Fable for Critics" (Lowell).

A full review of the history of expression and thought in America would give no little space to our long line of orators and statesmen. The oration is a literary form, but our limits confine us to that which is written primarily to be read, not spoken. But many of the speeches, arguments, and orations of the great constitutional lawyer, Daniel Webster, are in so and elevated a rhetorical form, and have had so wide an influence as printed documents, that he has his place rightfully in any survey of American literature, however brief. He was roused and inspired not by the issues of

pure

the day merely in their temporary significance, but in their broad relations. The great passages in his speech in reply to Hayne, in his orations on the anniversary of the landing of the Pilgrims and on the dedication of Bunker Hill Monument, and the description of the morning drumbeat of the military posts of England, all rise naturally from the line of thought with severe and stately simplicity. "From thought's interior sphere these wonders rose to upper air." They have contributed to form the American mind and have widened the basis of national self-respect. The outline of his life is too well known to need recapitulation.

The last inaugural and the Gettysburg address of Abraham Lincoln are a still more precious possession to the American people. Of a perfect simplicity of form and dignified with the spirit of a lofty humanity, his words transcend the limits of literature and have assumed in the national consciousness a quasi sacred character as if the utterance of a seer or inspired prophet.

As his name indicates, Thoreau was of French extraction on his father's side. Born at Concord and educated at Harvard, he was, however, like many of Henry David Thoreau, us, American in everything but origin. His 1817-1862. father was a manufacturer of pencils, and the son, peculiarly gifted with mechanical skill, learned to make a pencil equal to the best made at the time in England. When he had attained this end, and had a fortune within reach, he felt no further interest in making pencils, because he was perfect in the art, but desired to learn something new. He possessed wonderful powers of observing nature, especially the living things of the woods. He built a shanty on the shores of Walden Pond

and lived for a year by himself on what he could raise by his hands from a sterile acre. Here he wrote his "Week on the Concord and Merrimac Rivers," and accumulated the material for his "Walden." He died quite early from the New England scourge, consumption, and some verse and several other volumes of wood life were published after his death.

Thoreau imitated Emerson's style, but yet has ideas and manner enough of his own to free him from a charge of servile copying, and on the other hand his powers of noting the minute phenomena and shy beauties of nature undoubtedly widened Emerson's knowledge of the wild life of New England and enriched Emerson's pages with many an apposite illustration. Thoreau is the literary parent of those charming writers on outdoor life, John Burroughs, Olive Thorne Miller, Maurice Thompson, William Hamilton Gibson, and the rest, who know animals and birds and insects personally, and are interested in their characters and habits rather than in their anatomy or their scientific names. "Walden" still remains one of the most interesting books of its class.

Elisha Mulford, 1833-1885.

Mulford was born in Montrose, Pennsylvania, and prepared for Yale at the old academy at Homer, New York He entered Yale in the class of 1855, and after graduation spent some time abroad and subsequently read theology and was ordained in the Episcopal Church. His life was passed in literary and philosophical study, first in a retired home in Susquehanna County, and afterward at Cambridge. Our Civil War made a deep impression on him, and his elaborate philosophical work the "Nation" is inspired by, a lofty belief in the sacred character of the republic as an organi

zation destined by God to endure because charged with a mission in the development of humanity. In many passages his style reaches a triumphant elevation like that of the Jewish prophets, and in others possesses a singular poetic beauty. It is a book which lays broad the bases. of a religious patriotism and should be read by all young men. Mr. Mulford's other book, the "Republic of God," is a profound investigation into the foundations of religious belief marked in places by the spiritual elevation of the great religious teachers of the early church. Both these books are metaphysics, illuminated by a poetical conception of life and humanity, and are written in a spirit of lofty faith and contain thought of rare beauty.

At the time of his death Mr. Mulford had projected several works. The "Nation" is the greatest book, both in plan and execution, called out by the war.

1803-1882.

Emerson, oldest of the New England group of the nineteenth century, was born in Boston, and, as Dr. Holmes Ralph Waldo says in his admirable biography, his birthplace Emerson, and that of Benjamin Franklin "were within a kite string's distance of each other,” — rather an uncertain measure now that kites are sent three miles up into the air. Dr. Holmes says, too, that he was from one of the families who constitute what may be called the "Academic Races," the descendants of the intellectual, philosophic, cultured men among the old Puritans, whose names may be found in the early catalogues of Harvard and the lists of eminent ministers. Of this aristocracy of character and mind Emerson is the consummation and flower, for his father was the pastor of the First Church in Boston. The boy was prepared for Harvard in the Latin School, and was graduated from college in 1821, a