Identifier: largerhistoryofu01higg (find matches)
Title: A larger history of the United States of America, to the close of President Jackson's administration
Year: 1886 (1880s)
Authors: Higginson, Thomas Wentworth, 1823-1911
Subjects:
Publisher: New York, Harper & Brothers
Contributing Library: The Library of Congress
Digitizing Sponsor: Sloan Foundation

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ore, I hope, your influence and actual power. Itwas midway between these two dates that the veteran publish-er Mr. S. G. Goodrich, in his Recollections, placed the birth-time of a national literature. During this period, he says, webeean to have confidence in American oenius, and to dreamof literary ambition. The Noith American Revieiv was estab-lished in 1815; Bryants Thanatopsis appeared in 1817; Ir-vings Sketch-Book in 1818 ; Coopers Spy in 1822. WhenMonroe went out of ofiice, in 1825, Emerson was teaching-school, Whittier was at work on his fathers farm, Hawthorneand Longfellow were about to graduate from college; butAmerican literature was born. People still maintained—as a few yet hold—that these vari-ous authors succeeded in spite of the national atmosphere, notby means of it. It seems to me easy to show, on the contrary,that they all impressed themselves on the world chiefly by usingthe materials they found at home. Longfellow, at first steeped THE ERA OF GOOD FEELING. 401
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KUFUS KINO.(From tlie painting by Gilbert Stuart, owned by A. Gracie King. Fsq.) TTA.U Sc. in European influences, gained in strength from the time hetouched his native soil; nor did he find any difficulty in weav-ing into melodious verse those Indian names which had ap-palled Mr. Everett. Irving, the most exotic of jjl these writers, 26 402 HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. really made his reputation by his use of what has been calledthe Knickerbocker legend. He did not create the traditionsof the Hudson; they created him. Mrs. Josiah Quincy, sailingup that river in 1786, when Irving was a child three years old,records that the captain of the sloop had a legend, either super-natural or traditional, for every scene, and not a mountainreared its head unconnected with some marvellous story. Thelegends were all there ready for Irving, just as the New Eng-land lecjends were waitinij for Whittier. Once let the man ofgenius be born, and his own soil was quit-e able to furnish thefood that shoul

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