THE NINETEENTH CENTURY (continued 7)

James McCosh.—The Scottish philosophy was vigorously championed in America by President James McCosh (1811–1894). Born in Ayrshire, Scotland, of a sturdy middle-class family, he was educated at Glasgow and Edinburgh. His graduation essay on the Stoic philosophy won him the honorary degree of A.M. Becoming a minister of the Established Kirk, he seceded with Chalmers and rendered valuable service to the Free Church. His “Method of the Divine Government, Physical and Moral” (1850) laid the foundation of his fame as a philosophical writer, and doubtless led to his appointment in 1852 to the professorship of logic and metaphysics in Queen’s College, Belfast. From Belfast, after an active literary and educational career, he was called to the presidency of Princeton College, and thenceforward was a distinguished figure in the American intellectual world. His numerous writings after 1868 include “The Scottish Philosophy, Biographical, Expository, Critical” (1874), “The Emotions” (1880), “Philosophical Series” (1882–1885, eight volumes), “Psychology of the Cognitive Powers” (1886), “Realistic Philosophy Defended” (1887), “The Religious Aspect of Evolution” (1887), and “First and Fundamental Truths” (1894). Dr. McCosh was one of the first to point out the theological bearing of Darwinism and to announce his acceptance of it when properly understood. “Touching the thought of his time,” says Professor Sloane, “at its salient points and with tremendous vitality, he constantly insisted on the few central truths of his system in their application to each new question as it arose. Incisive, intense, and real, or rather concrete in his thinking, he felt a loyalty to truth which he sought to instil with all his might into the minds of others.”

William Torrey Harris.—William T. Harris (born in 1835) left Yale in 1857 to become a teacher in St. Louis, where he was superintendent of schools from 1867 till 1888. From 1889 till 1906 he was United States Commissioner of Education. Although leading a busy life as a teacher, he found time for philosophical work. He founded (1867) and has since edited The Journal of Speculative Philosophy, the first philosophical periodical in English. His “Hegel’s Logic” (1890), while highly technical, is one of the clearest and most scholarly expositions of Hegelian thought. He has written also “An Introduction to the Study of Philosophy” (1889), “Psychologic Foundations of Education” (1898), and many smaller educational and philosophical studies.

John Fiske.—One of the greatest of modern expositors of science was John Fiske (1842–1901). He was born at Middletown, Connecticut, and entered Harvard as a sophomore in 1860, graduating in 1863. The works of Spencer and Darwin opened a new world to his vigorous imagination and he devoted many years to elucidating and applying their doctrines, in “Myths and Myth Makers” (1872), “Outlines of Cosmic Philosophy” (1874), “The Unseen World” (1876), “Darwinism, and Other Essays” (1879), “Excursions of an Evolutionist” (1883), “The Destiny of Man Viewed in the Light of His Origin” (1884), and “The Idea of God as Affected by Modern Knowledge” (1885). His later years were devoted to studies in American history, the events of which he interpreted as the result of evolutionary processes. His work reveals a uniform optimism.

Some Living Writers.—Among living writers on philosophical themes space will permit the mention of only two or three. The son of Henry James, the theologian, and the brother of Henry James, Jr., the novelist, William James (born in 1842) was educated privately and at Harvard, from which he received the degree of M.D. in 1870. Two years later he became an instructor and in 1881 a full professor, the subjects of his later interest being psychology and philosophy. He has written, among a large number of books and articles, “Principles of Psychology” (1890), “The Will to Believe, and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy” (1897), “Human Immortality” (the Ingersoll Lecture, 1898), “The Varieties of Religious Experience” (Gifford Lectures at Edinburgh University, 1902), and “Pragmatism” (1907). Especially noteworthy is his work in analytical psychology. Always clear and fresh in style, his writings have exerted a marked influence on thought both in Europe and in America.

Borden Parker Bowne (born in 1847), who, after graduating at New York University in 1871, studied at Halle, Göttingen, and Paris, in 1876 became professor of philosophy at Boston University. He has written “The Philosophy of Herbert Spencer” (1874), “Studies in Theism” (1879), “Metaphysics” (1882), “Introduction to Psychological Theory” (1886), and “Principles of Ethics” (1892).

Jacob Gould Schurman (born in 1854) has made some worthy contributions to the literature of ethics; it is a matter of regret that administrative work has of late kept him from writing more for the general public. He was born at Freetown, Prince Edward Island, and studied at Acadia College. In 1875 he won the Gilchrist Dominion Scholarship in the University of London, from which he graduated in 1877. He later studied at Edinburgh, Heidelberg, Berlin, and Göttingen, and in Italy. From 1886 till 1892 he was professor of philosophy in Cornell University, of which he became president in 1892. He has written lucid studies of “Kantian Ethics and the Ethics of Evolution” (1881), “The Ethical Import of Darwinism” (1888), “Belief in God” (1890), and “Agnosticism and Religion” (1896).

Josiah Royce (born in 1855), a Californian who studied at the University of California, Leipsic, Göttingen, and Johns Hopkins, has done much to interpret and popularise the thought of Hegel, and has made valuable original contributions to contemporary idealistic thought. His philosophical works include “The Religious Aspect of Philosophy” (1885), “The Spirit of Modern Philosophy” (1892), “The Conception of God” (1895), “Studies of Good and Evil” (1898), “The Conception of Immortality” (1900, an Ingersoll Lecture), and “The World and the Individual” (1900–1901). A close thinker, he writes in a remarkably fresh, vigorous, and informal style.

Political and Legal Science.—In the fields of political, economic, social, and legal science the most that can be claimed for American writers is that a fair number of them have achieved genuine distinction and enjoy international reputations. America is still too young to be expected to have produced independent schools of thought in these lines. What Dr. Sherwood says of the economists may have a larger application here:

The chief reason for our failure to make large contributions to economic science [he remarks in his “Tendencies in American Economic Thought”] is the same reason which explains the meagreness of our contribution to general science, viz., the all-absorbing problem of making use of the advantages within our grasp. Within a century we have been compelled to work out several most difficult problems: how to unite in a solid empire many vigorous, large, and discordant nationalities; how to stretch this empire over the adjacent territories, so as to remove dangerous enemies; how to get rid of slavery without disrupting the Union; how to make our general education keep pace with our growth in numbers and with the advance of science; how, with the rapidly shifting forms of industrial organisation, to maintain purity of government and social order; how to govern an empire without an emperor; how to push forward material civilisation without going backwards in intellectual and moral civilisation; how to stimulate invention so as to win wealth for all, with inadequate labour and capital.

These practical problems have kept us from producing men with wealth and leisure for working out solutions of the large abstract questions raised in these sciences. Nor have our writers yet succeeded in handling large masses of facts with the skill of some foreign writers. The best comprehensive work on American institutions remains Bryce’s “American Commonwealth,” the work of an Englishman. Yet in Marshall, Kent, and Story we have produced some great jurists; in Wheaton, Lawrence, and Woolsey some great writers on legal science; in Carey, Wells, Walker, and George writers of commanding importance in the sphere of political economy.

John Marshall.—Pre-eminent among the jurists of America is John Marshall (1755–1835), for thirty-four years Chief-Justice of the United States Supreme Court. Marshall served as an officer in the Revolution; in 1780, being without a command, he attended Chancellor Wyeth’s lectures on law at William and Mary College. Entering upon the practice of law, he quickly became known for his acumen. His accession to the Supreme Court bench (1801) marks an epoch in our legal and constitutional history. He had, as it were, to blaze a trail. The Constitution had been adopted; it had yet to be construed. A thousand questions arose as to what it meant, what it included, what it was meant not to include. Marshall’s decisions, recorded in thirty-two volumes of reports, reveal the impartial workings of a master legal mind. Such men do not often appear; it was fortunate that the American Government in its early years was guided by Marshall’s constitutional constructions. They virtually form a system of law, a system which has not since been seriously modified. “The judge who rears such a monument to his memory,” says Mr. Magruder, his biographer, “will never be forgotten; in the united domain of English and American jurisprudence there are not half a dozen such memorials; but not the least distinguished is that of Marshall.”

James Kent.—It has been said of Kent’s “Commentaries upon American Law” (1826–1830) that they had a deeper and more lasting influence upon the American character than any other secular book of the nineteenth century. James Kent (1763–1847) graduated from Yale in 1781 and then practised law, first at Poughkeepsie, and after 1793 in New York City. In the same year he became professor of law in Columbia College. The Federalist leaders rapidly advanced him; he was made Chief-Justice of the New York Supreme Court in 1804 and Chancellor in 1814. Retiring in 1823, he resumed his teaching at Columbia, and later published many of his lectures in the “Commentaries.” His Chancery decisions, to be found in Caines’ and Johnson’s reports, were of fundamental importance and form the basis of American equity jurisprudence.

Joseph Story.—With Chancellor Kent, Joseph Story (1779–1845) shares the glory of having laid the foundations of American equity jurisprudence. Story graduated from Harvard in 1798 and was admitted to the bar in 1801. Becoming a leader of what was later the Democratic party, in 1808 he entered Congress and in 1811 was appointed an Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court. From 1829 on he was also a professor of law at Harvard. For some time after Marshall’s death he was acting Chief-Justice. Many of his opinions in patent and admiralty law are still authoritative. Some of his writings are “Commentaries on the Constitution of the United States” (1833), “The Conflict of Laws” (1834), “Commentaries on Equity Jurisprudence” (1835–1836), and treatises on agency, partnership, bills, and notes.

Henry Wheaton.—Less known than Story, yet in his day a prominent figure in the legal world, was Henry Wheaton (1785–1848), of Providence, Rhode Island, a graduate of Brown University in the class of 1802. He was a lawyer, an editor, and a diplomatist (from 1837 till 1846 Minister Plenipotentiary to Prussia). His “Elements of International Law” (1836, republished in several editions, and translated into French, Chinese, and Japanese) remains one of the leading authorities. Another important work was his “Histoire du progrès des gens en Europe depuis le paix de Westphalie jusqu’au Congrès de Vienne” (1841, English translation 1846). He was widely respected for sound learning and diplomatic ability.

Francis Lieber.—Francis Lieber (1800–1872), a native of Berlin and a Ph.D. of the University of Jena (1820), came to America virtually a political exile, and, though an ardent worshipper of freedom, was at first, as Dr. Harley remarks, obliged to make his home in the very heart of the slave power. For twenty-one years he was professor of history and political economy in South Carolina College, being “the first great teacher in this country of history and politics as co-ordinated subjects.” From 1856 till 1860 he held the chair of political economy in Columbia College; and from 1860 till his death he was professor of political science in the Columbia Law School. The great works on which his fame rests are his “Political Ethics” (1838), “Legal and Political Hermeneutics” (1839), and “Civil Liberty and Self-Government” (1853). In writing these books he was a pioneer, and pointed out some important principles of American liberty. In his later years he gave much attention to international and military law. From his proposals originated the Institut de Droit International, started at Ghent in 1873, “the organ for the legal consciousness of the civilised world.”

William Beach Lawrence.—Another writer whose name is linked with Columbia College is William B. Lawrence (1800–1881). Born in New York City, he graduated from Columbia in 1818, was admitted to the bar in 1823, and gave attention chiefly to international law. For a time he lectured at Columbia on political economy, defending free trade. Removing to Rhode Island, he served as acting Governor in 1852. In 1872–1873 he lectured on international law in the Columbian University at Washington. His works are marked by breadth of view and soundness of judgment. They include “The Bank of the United States” (1831), “Institutions of the United States” (1832), “Discourses on Political Economy” (1834), “The Law of Charitable Uses” (1845), “Commentaire sur les éléments du droit international” (1868–1880), and “The Treaty of Washington” (1871).

Theodore Dwight Woolsey.—Theodore D. Woolsey (1801–1889) had a varied preparation for his notable career. Graduating at Yale in 1820, he studied law in Philadelphia, theology at Princeton, and Greek at Leipsic, Bonn, and Berlin. From 1831 till 1846 he was professor of Greek at Yale. Becoming president of Yale in 1846, he thenceforward confined his teaching to history, political science, and international law, and became eminent as a writer on subjects in these fields. Among his works are “An Introduction to the Study of International Law” (1860), “Essays on Divorce and Divorce Legislation” (1869), “Political Science” (two volumes, 1877), and “Communism and Socialism, in Their History and Theory” (1880).

Henry Wager Halleck.—Chiefly known as a soldier, and as general of the armies of the United States from July, 1862, till March, 1864, Henry W. Halleck (1815–1872) was after all more skilled in the science of war than in its practice in the field. He studied at Union College and West Point, from which he graduated in 1839. Before the Lowell Institute in 1845 he lectured on the science of war; his lectures, published as “Elements of Military Art and Science,” were much used later as a training manual. The chief of his other works, “International Law, or Rules Regulating the Intercourse of States in Peace and War” (1861), abridged in 1866 for college use, still ranks among the highest authorities.

Henry Charles Carey.—In his day the foremost champion of governmental protection to private industry was Henry C. Carey (1793–1879). The eldest son of Matthew Carey, the Philadelphia publisher, he devoted his early years to carrying on the bookselling and publishing business, retiring in 1835. His essay on “The Rate of Wages” (1835) was soon expanded into “The Principles of Political Economy” (1837–1840), which found favour abroad and was translated into Swedish and Italian. His other leading works were “The Credit System of France, Great Britain, and the United States” (1838), “The Past, the Present, and the Future” (1848), “Letters on the International Copyright” (1853), “The Principles of Social Science” (1858), and “The Unity of Law” (1873). Carey was originally a free-trader, but early became a supporter of protection on the ground of temporary expediency. Some of his views have been attacked as unwarranted and dogmatically expressed; it must be conceded, however, that he had a strong grasp of facts and that his works are an invaluable contribution to economic and social science.

David Ames Wells.—For many years, it is safe to say, the leading economist in America was David A. Wells (1828–1898). He was descended from Thomas Welles, Governor of Connecticut in 1655–1658, was born at Springfield, Massachusetts, and was graduated from Williams College in 1847 and from the Lawrence Scientific School of Harvard in 1852. For some years he taught physics and chemistry, and was engaged also in writing school text-books on these subjects. An essay (“Our Burden and Strength”) on the resources and financial ability of the United States (1864) brought Wells into prominence, while it did much to restore confidence in the Federal Government. President Lincoln summoned Mr. Wells to Washington, and appointed him chairman of the Revenue Commission of 1865–1866. As special commissioner of the revenue (1866–1870) he completed vast reforms in the complex system of revenue which had grown up during the war. Thereafter he was largely engaged in writing and speaking on economic topics. Among his books are “Robinson Crusoe’s Money,” illustrated by Nast (1876), “Our Merchant Marine: How It Rose, Increased, Became Great, Declined, and Decayed” (1882), “Practical Economics” (1885), “A Study of Mexico” (1887), “The Relation of the Tariff to Wages” (1888), and “Recent Economic Changes” (1898).

Francis Amasa Walker.—Born in Boston, Francis A. Walker (1840–1897) graduated from Amherst at twenty, then served in the Union Army, becoming a brigadier-general. In 1869 he was put at the head of the Bureau of Statistics; he was superintendent of the Ninth and the Tenth Census, and held other prominent positions, including (1873–1881) the professorship of political economy and history at the Sheffield Scientific School of Yale and (1881–1897) the presidency of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He was a prolific writer; of his economic works we can mention only “The Indian Question” (1874), “The Wages Question” (1876), “Money” (1878), “Money in its Relations to Trade and Industry” (Lowell Institute lectures, 1879), “Political Economy” (1883), “Land and its Rent” (1883), and “International Bimetallism” (1896). Walker’s influence as an economist was felt especially in connection with the theory of wages. “The central idea of his theory,” says Dr. Sherwood, “that the amount of wages under free competition tends to equal the product due to the labour, has been generally accepted, although not altogether as the direct result of his writing.”

Henry George.—The theories of Henry George (1839–1896) have been widely discussed. They were first put forth in “Our Land and Land Policy” (1871), in which he held that the burden of taxation should be borne by the land and not by industry, and that thus opportunities for progress would be equalised. His most important book was “Progress and Poverty” (1879), which in a few years made George virtually the apostle of a new economic and social creed. Conservative economists have been slow to accept his single-tax theory; it has, however, called attention to the enormous waste and wrong that result from granting public franchises to private corporations without due compensation. His theory of wages, that they arise from a value created by the efficiency of the labourer, has been generally accepted and may be regarded as a real contribution to economic science.

Some Other Writers.—More than a generation of Williams College men sat under the teaching of Arthur Latham Perry (1830–1905), for thirty-eight years professor of history and political economy. Perry published his “Elements of Political Economy” in 1865; some twenty editions have since appeared. His advocacy of free trade in the sixties cost him many friends. He published also a work on “International Commerce” (1866) and smaller treatises on political economy. Elisha Mulford (1833–1885), a graduate of Yale College and an Episcopal clergyman, was the author of two highly powerful and stimulating books: “The Nation” (1870), dealing with the philosophy of the state, and “The Republic of God” (1880), a religious work of similar character. William Graham Sumner (born in 1840) became prominent for his advocacy of free trade and of the gold standard. Graduating at Yale in 1863, he studied at Göttingen and Oxford, then took orders in the Episcopal Church. Since 1872 he has been professor of political and social science at Yale. He has written “A History of American Currency” (1874), “Lectures on the History of Protection in the United States” (1875), “What Social Classes Owe Each Other” (1882), “Collected Essays in Political and Social Science” (1885), “The Financier and Finances of the American Revolution” (1892), and “A History of Banking in the United States” (1896). Another well known political economist is Richard Theodore Ely (born in 1854), a graduate of Columbia College (1876) and of Heidelberg (Ph.D. summa cum laude, 1879), who, as director of the School of Economics, Political Science, and History in the University of Wisconsin, has trained more teachers of economic science than any other American living and has exerted marked influence on the thought of his time. He has to his credit a long list of valuable publications; some of them are “French and German Socialism in Modern Times” (1883), “The Labour Movement in America” (1886), “Taxation in American States and Cities” (1888), “Socialism, an Examination of Its Nature, Its Strength, and Its Weakness, with Suggestions for Social Reform” (1894), “The Social Law of Service” (1896), and “Monopolies and Trusts” (1900). The tendency of the Government to regulate economic movements is in harmony with a doctrine of which he has been a bold champion. Another equally high authority on trusts and currency problems is Jeremiah Whipple Jenks (born in 1856), since 1891 professor of political economy at Cornell University. His “The Trust Problem” (1900) and “Trusts and Industrial Combinations” (1900) have circulated widely. President Woodrow Wilson (born in 1856) of Princeton, discussed elsewhere as a historian, must also be mentioned here for his standard work on “The State: Elements of Historical and Practical Politics” (1889), “An Old Master, and Other Political Essays” (1893), and “Mere Literature, and Other Essays,” in which large and sound views of government and its functions are set forth in a clear and attractive style.

Ethnological and Linguistic Science.—In the broad field of ethnological research the work of American scholars has been chiefly devoted to the native and primitive races of America. This offers, as has been pointed out by Mr. McGee,23 “the finest field the world affords,” exhibiting nearly every stage of development and nearly every type of mankind; and American contributions to ethnology and anthropology have been correspondingly important. The names of Gallatin, Schoolcraft, Morgan, Powell, Brinton, will be at once recalled; probably the last named is our best known ethnologist. In the science of language our showing is, in point of numbers, somewhat more creditable. The lexicographical work of Webster, Worcester, Whitney, and March, and the grammatical work of Child and Gildersleeve have been recognised and appreciated the world over. In these sciences America’s debt to Germany is a heavy one. Most of our greater teachers of language received their professional training in Germany; and while fewer of our students now go to Germany for the doctor’s degree, the influence of German scholarship is still strongly felt among us.

Pierre Étienne Duponceau.—Duponceau (1760–1844) was one of the pioneers of American philology. Born in France, he came to America in 1777 as secretary to Baron Steuben, served in the American army as captain till 1781, and afterward practised law in Philadelphia, becoming well known. He wrote treatises on law: “Exposition sommaire de la constitution des États-Unis d’Amérique” (1837); and in linguistics: “English Phonology” (1818), “Mémoire sur le système grammatical des languages de quelques nations indiennes de l’Amérique du Nord” (1838), which was awarded a medal by the French Institute, and “A Dissertation on the Nature and Character of the Chinese System of Writing” (1838).

Albert Gallatin.—The long and illustrious political career of Albert Gallatin (1761–1849) must not detain us here. Most of his literary and ethnological work was done in his later years. In 1836 he published his “Synopsis of the Indian Tribes within the United States, East of the Rocky Mountains, and in the British and Russian Possessions in North America.” In 1845 appeared his “Notes on the Semi-Civilised Nations of Mexico, Yucatan, and Central America.” He founded the American Ethnological Society in 1842; and he is rightly known and will be remembered as the father of American ethnology.

Henry Rowe Schoolcraft.—Among the most prominent of early American ethnologists was Henry R. Schoolcraft (1793–1864). His grandfather, James Calcraft, formerly a British soldier under Marlborough, had kept a large school in Albany County, New York, and because of this his name was changed to Schoolcraft. At an early age Henry Schoolcraft became a student of mineralogy, chemistry, natural philosophy, and medicine. In connection with his father’s glass-making enterprises in New Hampshire, Vermont, and western New York, he was engaged for some time in building glass-works, and in 1817 began to publish a work on “Vitreology.” Conceiving a desire to travel in the Far West, he started in 1818 on a journey down the Ohio and up the Mississippi. A book resulting from this, on the mineralogy of the West, made him well known. Another expedition was described in “Travels in the Central Portions of the Mississippi Valley” (1825). In 1828 he was the leader in founding the Michigan Historical Society and in 1832 he helped found the Algic Society, for the reclamation and study of the Indians. A narrative of his work and experiences was embodied in “Personal Memoirs of a Residence of Thirty Years with the Indian Tribes on the American Frontiers, 1812 to 1842,” a work full of the flavour of the primitive West. Other works were “Algic Researches” (1839), a collection of Indian allegories and legends; “Oneota, or The Characteristics of the Red Race in America” (1844–1845); “The Red Race of America” (1847); and “American Indians, their History, Condition, and Prospects” (1850), an immense work covering a wide range of subjects. His books did much to promote knowledge of Indian life and thought.

Charles Pickering.—Another well-known ethnologist, Charles Pickering (1805–1878), born in Susquehanna County, Pennsylvania, graduated at Harvard College in 1823 and took his degree in medicine in 1826. He accompanied Commodore Wilkes in the Vincennes on its exploring voyage around the world in 1838–1842 and later visited India and Eastern Africa. His great work was “The Races of Man and their Geographical Distribution” (1848); later works of importance were “The Geographical Distribution of Animals and Man” (1854) and “The Geographical Distribution of Plants” (1861).

Lewis Henry Morgan.—Lewis H. Morgan (1818–1881), born at Aurora on Cayuga Lake, New York, and graduated from Union College in 1840, became interested in studying the Indians through having organised a society called “The Grand Order of the Iroquois,” which he wished to model after the ancient Iroquois Confederacy. The first literary fruits of his studies were his “Letters on the Iroquois” (in The American Review in 1847). Finding that he must neglect his law practice or abandon his Indian studies, he determined to publish all his materials and then cleave to law. In 1851, then, appeared “The League of the Iroquois,” in which were fully explained the organisation and government of the celebrated Iroquois Confederacy, and which formed the first scientific account of an Indian tribe. A few years later, urged by Henry, Agassiz, and others, he took up his studies again, and began an investigation which was extended to embrace the whole world, and which resulted in his scholarly “Systems of Consanguinity and Affinity of the Human Family,” published in 1871, as No. 17 of the Smithsonian “Contributions to Knowledge.” In 1881 he gathered his materials on tribal organisation into an epoch-making philosophical treatise on “Ancient Society,” which materially helped to lay the foundations of our modern science of governmental institutions.

John Wesley Powell.—Major John W. Powell (1834–1902) became conspicuous both as a geologist and an anthropologist. He studied at two or three small Western colleges, served in the Civil War, and then taught geology in two Illinois universities. In 1867 he travelled in the Colorado Rockies and thenceforward for many years was busied with surveys and explorations of the Far West. From 1881 till 1894 he was director of the United States Geological Survey, resigning to become director of the Bureau of Anthropology. He made many important contributions to the sciences which interested him, publishing “Exploration of the Colorado River of the West and Its Tributaries” (1875), “Report on the Geology of the Uinta Mountains” (1876), “Report on the Arid Region of the United States” (1879), “Introduction to the Study of the Indian Languages” (1880), “Studies in Sociology” (1887), “Canyons of the Colorado” (1895), and “Physiographic Processes, Physiographic Features, and Physiographic Regions of the United States” (1895).

Daniel Garrison Brinton.—Daniel G. Brinton (1837–1899) of Philadelphia was one of the leading archæologists of the New World. Graduating at Yale in 1858 and at the Jefferson Medical College, Philadelphia, in 1860, he served as a surgeon in the war and from 1867 to 1887 was editor of The Medical and Surgical Reporter. From 1886 until his death he was professor of American linguistics and archæology at the University of Pennsylvania. He has to his credit a long list of important books and papers, only a few of which can be mentioned here. He began to publish in 1859 (“The Floridian Peninsula, Its Literary History, Indian Tribes, and Antiquities”). From boyhood he took a deep interest in the study of the American Indians; and in 1868 he published “The Myths of the New World.” He also wrote, on Indian subjects, “American Hero Myths” (1882), “The American Race” (1892), and numerous ethnological and linguistic papers. He also both edited (for the most part) and published “The Library of Aboriginal American Literature” in eight volumes (1882–1885). In the controversies between science and theological dogma he was a pronounced radical. Along with his scientific labours Dr. Brinton found time for some studies in poetry, especially of Browning and Whitman.

Noah Webster.—Among students of linguistic science the first to be mentioned in point of time, and one of the first in importance, is Noah Webster (1758–1843), a native of Hartford, Connecticut, and a graduate of Yale College, whose “Grammatical Institute of the English Language” (spelling-book, grammar, and reader) appeared in 1783–1785. These books had an immense sale. The grammar showed originality, but was partly superseded by Murray’s. Webster published also “Dissertations on the English Language” (1789), a more advanced “Philosophical and Practical Grammar of the English Language” (1807), and “Origin, History, and Connection of the Languages of Western Asia and of Europe” (1807); the last being one of the first fruits of Sir William Jones’ identification of Sanskrit in 1786. The great work of Webster’s life, however, was his “American Dictionary of the English Language,” first published in 1828. Revised in 1847, 1864, and 1890, this is now the “International” and enjoys a large sale. The edition of 1901 contains 2528 pages.

Lindley Murray.—Lindley Murray (1745–1826), a native of Pennsylvania, made a fortune in trade at the time of the Revolution, and then settled at Holdgate, near York, England. Here he wrote his “Grammar of the English Language” (1795), which by 1816 had swollen to two volumes. In 1818 he published an “Abridgement,” which went through some six-score editions. It laid great stress on syntax, and was a terror to generations of students.

Joseph Emerson Worcester.—For many years the only rival of Webster’s Dictionary was Worcester’s. Like Webster, Joseph Emerson Worcester (1784–1865) was a graduate of Yale College. After teaching for a time at Salem, Massachusetts, he settled at Cambridge. After various lexicographical labours, he issued “A Universal and Critical Dictionary” (1846), containing “in addition to the words found in Todd’s edition of Johnson’s Dictionary, nearly 27,000 words for which authorities are given.” In 1860 this was expanded into the quarto “Dictionary of the English Language,” which included about 104,000 words. In a memoir of Dr. Worcester, Ezra Abbot said:

The tendency of his mind was practical rather than speculative. As a lexicographer, he did not undertake to reform long-established anomalies in the English language: his aim was rather to preserve it from corruption; and his works have certainly contributed much to that end. In respect both to orthography and pronunciation, he took great pains to ascertain the best usage; and perhaps there is no lexicographer whose judgment respecting these matters in doubtful cases deserves higher consideration.

Goold Brown.—Most of our grandfathers got their knowledge of English grammar from the text-books of Goold Brown (1791–1857). His education was obtained at the Friends’ School in Providence, Rhode Island, his birthplace. He became a successful teacher and for twenty years conducted an academy in New York City. His “Institutes of English Grammar” appeared in 1823 and with an elementary work had an enormous circulation. His “Grammar of English Grammars” (1851), which brought him wide reputation, has been called “the most exhaustive, most accurate, and most original treatise on the English language ever written.” This is absurdly high praise; yet the book is undoubtedly a monument of industry, and has been for many earnest souls “a court of last resort on matters grammatical.”

George Perkins Marsh.—In his day a distinguished diplomatist and man of letters, George P. Marsh (1801–1882) made substantial contributions to philology. He graduated at Dartmouth College in 1820 and studied law. He soon turned to studies in language and in 1838 printed privately a translation of Rask’s “Icelandic Grammar.” His “Lectures on the English Language” (1861) were delivered originally at Columbia; his “Origin and History of the English Language” (1862) was a course of Lowell Institute lectures.

Samuel Stehman Haldeman.—Samuel S. Haldeman (1812–1880) attained a respectable place as a philologist, but was also known as a naturalist and an archæologist. He went to Dickinson College two years, but not liking the course of study, left to study by himself. Shortly after his marriage in 1835, he settled at Chickies, Pennsylvania, became a silent partner with two brothers in the iron business, and spent most of his time in his library, where, for many years, he worked sixteen hours a day. His nature-studies resulted in “Fresh-Water Univalve Mollusca of the United States” (nine parts, 1840–1845); “Zoölogical Contributions” (1842–1843); “Zoölogy of the Invertebrate Animals” (1850); and more than seventy papers. He began early to take interest in the Indian languages, and published papers on them, as well as on the languages of Europe and China, and on spelling reform. These writings are now valuable chiefly as landmarks in the history of linguistic science; but this does not impair Haldeman’s contemporary reputation as a learned and accurate linguist. His last works were a monograph on “Pennsylvania Dutch” (1872) and “Outlines of Etymology” (1878).

James Hammond Trumbull.—Well known as a thorough student of Indian languages was James H. Trumbull (1821–1897) of Hartford, Connecticut. He studied at Yale in the class of 1842, but was prevented by ill health from graduating. On linguistics he wrote “The Composition of Indian Geographical Names” (1870), “The Best Methods of Studying the Indian Languages” (1871), “Notes on Forty Algonkin Versions of the Lord’s Prayer” (1873), and “Indian Names of Places in and on the Borders of Connecticut, with Interpretations” (1881). He also edited Roger Williams’ “Key into the Language of America” (1866).

Francis James Child.—Francis J. Child (1825–1896), created a tradition of zeal for broad and sound learning, the influence of which is still strong. A Boston youth, he stood at the head of his class at Harvard, that of 1846. For forty-five years he was a professor in Harvard. In addition to some excellent editions of texts, he published an epoch-making monograph, “Observations on the Language of Chaucer” (1862), “Observations on the Language of Gower’s Confessio Amantis” (1866), and a monumental edition of “English and Scottish Popular Ballads” (1857–1858, revised and enlarged edition in ten volumes, 1882–1898), which is a model of accurate, comprehensive work, and which it is safe to say will not soon be superseded. It is due largely to Child that Harvard has become one of the leading centres of English study in America.

Francis Andrew March.—The Nestor of living American philologists is Professor Francis A. March (born in 1825), since 1855 a teacher in Lafayette College. He graduated at Amherst College in 1845. At first he pursued philosophical studies, but was later drawn to the study of language. His “Method of Philological Study of the English Language” appeared in 1865. His “Comparative Grammar of the Anglo-Saxon Language” (1870) was a pioneer, and with the “Anglo-Saxon Reader” (1870) did good service in introducing the subject into American colleges. For many years Dr. March has been an ardent apostle of spelling reform.

William Dwight Whitney.—Probably William Dwight Whitney (1827–1894) is best known as a writer of textbooks and popular expositor of linguistic problems. Among scholars, however, his chief monument is his work in Sanskrit. Born at Northampton, Massachusetts, he was graduated at eighteen from Williams College. In the winter of 1848–1849 he began the study of Sanskrit; this study he continued under Salisbury at Yale, Weber at Berlin, and Roth at Tübingen. In 1854 he was appointed professor of Sanskrit and comparative philology at Yale, and held this chair until his death; being for many years accounted the leading philologist in America. He was a most industrious and systematic worker. His bibliography includes 360 titles. He wrote simple and lucid grammars of English (1877), French (1886), German (1869), and Sanskrit (1879); “Language and the Study of Language” (1867); “Oriental and Linguistic Studies” (1873–1874); “The Life and Growth of Language” (1875); several translations, with commentaries, of Sanskrit texts; and numerous papers and reviews. He was also editor-in-chief of “The Century Dictionary” (1889–1891) and read every proof of its 21,138 columns. But his greatest service to the cause of science was in holding up to his pupils a lofty ideal and a rigorous scientific method.

Hellenists, Latinists, and linguists of every sort [said Professor Perrin in a memorial address], and even historical students in the more restricted sense, all over this country and Europe, are now labouring, each in his chosen field, with a more equable spirit, a broader method, and a loftier ideal, because they have caught them all, directly or indirectly, from the master whose memory we honour.

Basil Lanneau Gildersleeve.—Valuable work in classical philology has been done by Basil L. Gildersleeve (born in 1831). After graduating at Princeton in 1849, he studied at Berlin, Bonn, and Göttingen, receiving the degree of Ph.D. from Göttingen in 1853. For twenty years (1856–1876) he was professor of Greek (for five years, of Latin also) at the University of Virginia. In 1876 he was called to a similar chair at Johns Hopkins University, which he has since held. He founded (1880) and has since edited The American Journal of Philology, and has published, among other books, “A Latin Grammar” (1876, twice revised), “Essays and Studies, Educational and Literary” (1890), “The Syntax of Classical Greek” (part i., 1900, with Charles W. E. Miller), and editions of Justin Martyr, Persius, and Pindar.

Natural and Physical Science.—It is in the natural and physical sciences that our attempt to cover the ground will at once appear most hopeless. In some of these sciences, for example astronomy, physics, and geology, American scholars stand concededly among the foremost in the world; to practically all of them Americans have contributed noteworthy studies and discoveries. Lack of space prevents even the mention, with one or two exceptions, of living writers.

John James Audubon.—Among the naturalists of America no name is more illustrious than that of the chief of our ornithologists, John James Audubon (1780–1851). His father was a French naval officer who had settled upon a plantation near New Orleans and married a lady of Spanish descent. When but a child Audubon used to draw pictures of birds; of those which were not satisfactory he made a bonfire at each birthday. When he was about eighteen, his father settled him on a farm near Philadelphia; here he gratified the naturalist’s passion to such an extent that he was good for nothing else. “For a period of twenty years,” he wrote later, “my life was a series of vicissitudes. I tried various branches of commerce, but they all proved unprofitable, doubtless because my whole mind was ever filled with my passion for rambling and admiring those objects of Nature from which alone I received the purest gratification.” He lived with his family successively in Kentucky, Ohio, Mississippi, and Louisiana; drawing and studying birds incessantly. Visiting England in 1826, he arranged for the publication of “The Birds of America” (1830–1839). It was to be published in numbers of five folio plates each, the whole to be in four volumes and to be sold for $1000 a copy. The work was to cost over $100,000; yet he had not money enough to pay for the first number. He supported himself by painting. He was elected (1830) a Fellow of the Royal Society. Audubon accompanied his “Birds” with “Ornithological Biographies” (five volumes, 1831–1839), the literary value of which is important; “it presents,” says one writer, “in language warm from his having been a part of the scenes, a virgin past of our country, and its forests and prairies, which can never be restored or so well described again.” “The Viviparous Quadrupeds of North America,” with 150 plates, appeared in three volumes in 1845–1848; in this undertaking he was assisted by his two sons and the Rev. John Bachman of Charleston, South Carolina. The last three years of his life were spent in mental darkness. His claim to honorable rank in American letters cannot be denied.

Spencer Fullerton Baird.—No American naturalist exerted a wider and deeper influence than Spencer F. Baird (1823–1887). A native of Pennsylvania and a graduate of Dickinson College (1840), he was the friend and in some work the collaborator of Audubon, Agassiz, and other zoölogists. Appointed assistant secretary of the Smithsonian Institution in 1850, he directed much of the scientific exploration of the West; organised the National Museum (1857); succeeded Henry in 1878 as secretary of the Smithsonian and largely developed its work; and in 1874 became head of the Commission of Fish and Fisheries, and organised the science and practice of fish culture in America. He was besides a voluminous writer. His books and papers down to 1882 include 1063 titles. Of them we may mention “Catalogue of North American Reptiles” (1853), “The Birds of America” (with John Cassin, 1860), “The Mammals of North America” (1859), and “History of American Birds” (with Thomas M. Brewer and Robert Ridgway, 1874–1884).

Alpheus Hyatt.—In zoölogy and palæontology one of the celebrated scholars of his day was Alpheus Hyatt (1838–1902). Born in Washington, D. C., he received his education at the Maryland Military Academy, Yale College, and under Agassiz at the Lawrence Scientific School of Harvard, from which he was graduated in 1862. After the Civil War, in which he rose to be a captain, he continued his studies in natural history and became active in fostering these studies in general. He helped to found The American Naturalist in 1868, and was the principal founder of the American Society of Naturalists, organised in 1883. In 1881 he became professor of zoölogy and palæontology in the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and in Boston University. He was equally active in teaching, in popularising science, and in research. Some of his books are “Observations on Freshwater Polyzoa” (1866), “Revision of North American Poriferæ” (1875–1877), long the only work on North American commercial sponges, “The Genesis of the Tertiary Species of Planorbis at Steinheim,” a long and important monograph on the influence of gravity on certain shells, published by the Boston Society of Natural History in its “Memoirs” (1880), “Genera of Fossil Cephalopods” (1883), “The Larval Theory of the Origin of Cellular Tissue” (1884), giving his theory of the origin of sex, and “The Genesis of the Arietidæ” (1889). He also edited a series of “Guides for Science-Teaching,” of several of which he himself was also the author. Few Americans indeed have done so much to make natural science popular as did Hyatt. His work in research was immensely fruitful. He has been called the founder of the new school of invertebrate palæontology, while in systematic zoölogy he made several discoveries which led to important revisions in biological classification.

Alpheus Spring Packard.—The son of a Bowdoin College professor of the same name, Alpheus S. Packard (1839–1905) naturally entered Bowdoin and there came under the influence of Dr. Paul Chadbourne, who encouraged his inclination toward zoölogical study. After graduating from Bowdoin in 1861 and from the Maine Medical School in 1864, he worked under Agassiz at Harvard, devoting himself largely to the study of insects. In 1867 he became curator of invertebrates and in 1876 director, of the Peabody Academy of Science in Salem, Massachusetts. In 1878 he was appointed professor of zoölogy and geology in Brown University, retaining this post till his death. He was one of the founders and for twenty years editor of The American Naturalist. Besides hundreds of papers, he wrote a “Guide to the Study of Insects” (1869); “The Mammoth Cave and Its Inhabitants,” jointly with F. W. Putnam (1872); “Life Histories of Animals” (1876), the first attempt since the Lowell Institute lectures of Agassiz to attempt a summary of embryological discoveries; “Insects Injurious to Forest and Shade Trees” (1890), “A Naturalist on the Labrador Coast” (1891), “A Text-Book of Entomology” (1898), and “Lamarck, the Founder of Evolution: His Life and Work” (1901). Apropos of the last book it will be remembered that Packard, Cope, and Hyatt were the founders and chief exponents of the Neo-Lamarckian school of evolution. Packard was an indefatigable investigator and his contributions to entomology and zoölogy immensely advanced those sciences.

Edward Drinker Cope.—Another celebrated naturalist was Edward D. Cope (1840–1897) of Philadelphia, whose studies in fossil vertebrates were of epoch-making significance. He studied at the University of Pennsylvania. From 1864 till 1867 he was professor of natural sciences in Haverford College. For twenty-two years thereafter he was engaged in exploration, research, and editorial work. In 1889 he became professor of geology and palæontology in the University of Pennsylvania. Before he was thirty he had laid his foundations in five chief lines of research, ichthyology, amphibians, reptiles, mammals, and evolutionary philosophy. On all of these subjects he wrote much and wisely. He was the author of over four hundred volumes, papers, and memoirs, to say nothing of hundreds of editorial articles in The American Naturalist, which he edited from 1878 until his death. On the subject of evolution alone his most important works are “The Origin of Genera” (1868), “The Origin of the Fittest” (1886), and “The Primary Factors of Organic Evolution” (1896). His activity in research may be judged from the fact that he himself named and described 1115 out of some 3200 known species of North American fossil vertebrates. Naturally, in attempting so much, he fell short of perfection in some things.

His life-work, [says Professor Osborn,24] bears the marks of great genius, of solid and accurate observation, and at times of inaccuracy due to bad logic or haste and over-pressure of work. The greater number of his Natural Orders and Natural Laws will remain as permanent landmarks in our science. As a comparative anatomist he ranks, both in the range and effectiveness of his knowledge and his ideas, with Cuvier and Owen.... As a natural philosopher, while far less logical than Huxley, he was more creative and constructive, his metaphysics ending in theism rather than agnosticism.

Elliott Coues.—Distinguished as an ornithologist, Elliott Coues (1842–1899) became favourably known also for researches in biology and comparative anatomy. After taking degrees at the Columbian University in 1861–1863, he entered the Union Army as assistant surgeon, studying flora and fauna wherever he went. In 1873–1876 he was surgeon and naturalist to the United States Northern Boundary Commission and in 1876–1880 was connected with the United States Geological and Geographical Survey of the Territories. He helped found the American Ornithologists’ Union and edited its organ, The Auk. His “Key to North American Birds” (1872, rewritten 1884 and 1901) is of great significance. He wrote also on “Birds of the Northwest” (1874), “Birds of the Colorado Valley” (1878), and with Winfrid A. Stearns, “New England Bird Life” (1881).

David Starr Jordan.—David Starr Jordan (born in 1851) has in recent years been regarded chiefly as an educator; he became known through his studies on fishes. Entering Cornell University in 1868, he was appointed instructor in botany in 1870 and graduated M.S. in 1872. After teaching and studying science for some years, he was made (1879) professor of zoölogy at Indiana University, of which he became president in 1885. Since 1891 he has been president of Stanford University. Some of his books are “A Manual of the Vertebrate Animals of the Northern United States” (1876), “Science Sketches” (1887), “Fishes of North and Middle America” (1896–1899), “Footnotes to Evolution” (1898), and “The Food and Game Fishes of North America” (1902). He is a leader both in his chosen scientific field and in educational thought.

Asa Gray.—The best-known botanist of his epoch was Asa Gray (1810–1888) a native of Paris, Oneida County, New York. He graduated in medicine at Fairfield College in 1831, but soon gave up medicine for botany and in 1842 was elected to the Fisher professorship of natural history in Harvard University. Any adequate narrative of Gray’s tremendous activity as a writer and teacher is out of the question here; we can only say that his widely known and long standard text-books on botany (beginning with the “Elements of Botany,” 1836, which grew into the “Structural and Systematic Botany” of 1879, and including his “How Plants Grow,” 1858, and “How Plants Behave,” 1872) represent but a small part of his literary activity. With Dr. Torrey he began (1838) the “Flora of North America”; he wrote also valuable botanical memoirs and many valuable articles for The North American Review and The American Journal of Science.

Edward Hitchcock.—Edward Hitchcock (1793–1864), a Congregational clergyman, and for thirty-nine years a professor of science in Amherst College, was especially devoted to geological study. A large number of his books and papers relate to geological subjects, which he helped to make popular; among these books are “Economical Geology” (1832), “Geology of Massachusetts” (1841), “The Religion of Geology and Its Connected Sciences” (1851), and “Ichnology of New England” (1858). He was the first president of the Association of American Geologists, and was president of Amherst College from 1845 till 1854.

Louis Agassiz.—The celebrated naturalist Jean Louis Rodolphe Agassiz (1807–1873) was of Swiss birth and did not come to America to live until he was forty-one years of age, and had already become famous for those studies of glacial phenomena set forth in “Études sur les glaciers” (1840) and “Système glaciaire” (with Guyot and Desor, 1847). For twenty-five years (1848–1873) he was professor of natural history at Harvard, and in that time, besides training some of the most eminent of living American scientists, he did much to arouse popular interest in science and scientific progress. Of the “Contributions to the Natural History of the United States” which he planned to publish in ten volumes, he lived to issue only four (1857–1862). For Agassiz Nature was “the expression of the thought of the Creator.” In opposing the Darwinians as to the origin of species, Agassiz unfortunately took the wrong side of the question of how the Creator expressed His thought; but he remains nevertheless distinguished both as a scientist and as an educator; a singularly great and gentle nature, strong and true.

Arnold Henry Guyot.—Less distinguished than his compatriot Agassiz, but of enduring fame, was the geographer Arnold Guyot (1807–1884). Born near Neuchâtel, Switzerland, he studied there and in Germany, receiving the degree of Ph.D. from Berlin in 1835. Like Agassiz he became known for his glacial discoveries; and like Agassiz he came to America in the troubled year 1848. From 1854 until his death he was professor of geology and physical geography at Princeton. His text-books and maps revolutionised the teaching and study of geography. He wrote also many scientific papers and memoirs, among which may be noted especially those describing his studies in the Appalachian Mountains. American science owes much to his unselfish devotion.

James Dwight Dana.—James D. Dana (1813–1895), born in Utica, New York, was attracted by the fame of the elder Silliman to Yale College, where he graduated in 1833. To the Sillimans he became allied by his marriage with Henrietta F. Silliman in 1844; and like them he had a long and notable career closely connected with Yale College, where he became (1835) Silliman professor of natural history and geology. He wrote many reports on geological, zoölogical, and mineralogical subjects, besides “A Manual of Mineralogy” (1851), “A Manual of Geology” (1862), “On Coral Reefs and Islands” (1853), “Science and the Bible” (Bibliotheca Sacra, 1856–1857), and “Corals and Coral Islands” (1872).

Alexander Winchell.—Another noted geologist was Alexander Winchell (1824–1891). Graduating from Wesleyan University in 1847, he became a teacher of science in various schools, and in 1853 professor of physics and civil engineering in the University of Michigan; being soon transferred to the chair of geology, zoölogy, and botany. He afterward taught at Syracuse and Vanderbilt Universities. From the latter institution in 1878 he was dismissed because his views on evolution were “contrary to the plan of redemption.” The next year he was recalled to Michigan. Besides being a leading spirit in forming the Geological Society of America, and in establishing The American Geologist, he was a voluminous writer, especially of scientific works for popular use, and endeavoured in these works to show the essential harmony between science and Christian dogma. Thus he did the work of a peacemaker in what has long been a heated conflict.

Nathaniel Bowditch (1773–1838) was a pioneer in the study of astronomy and mathematics in America. At first a cooper and then a ship-chandler, he was studious, and learned Latin in order to read Newton’s “Principia.” As supercargo on a merchant vessel during several voyages, he became expert in the theory of navigation and published in 1802 “The New American Practical Navigator,” which in a revised form is published by the United States Hydrographic Office and is the standard compendium for navigators. In 1829 he translated Laplace’s “Méchanique céleste,” adding valuable notes.

Benjamin Peirce.—In the annals of mathematics and astronomy the name of Benjamin Peirce (1809–1880) has a place of distinction. Born at Salem, Massachusetts, he became a pupil of Bowditch, and graduated at Harvard in 1829, in the class with Holmes. He became a tutor at Harvard in 1831, professor of mathematics and physics in 1833, and nine years later Perkins professor of mathematics and astronomy, holding this chair till his death. From 1867 till 1874, succeeding Dallas Bache, he was superintendent of the Coast Survey. He wrote an important series of mathematical text-books; “System of Analytical Mechanics” (1857); “Linear Associative Algebra” (communications to the National Academy of Sciences, collected in 1870); and Lowell Institute lectures on “Ideality in the Physical Sciences” (1881). He obtained eminence, it has been said, equally in mathematics, physics, astronomy, mechanics, and navigation.

The Sillimans.—In the annals of American science no other name is so long and favourably known as that of the Sillimans. Benjamin Silliman (1779–1864) was for fifty years, beginning in 1802, professor of chemistry in Yale College and founded (1818) The American Journal of Science and Arts, which he edited for twenty-eight years. His son, Benjamin, Jr. (1816–1885), taught and studied chemistry, mineralogy, and geology in Yale, and was associate editor (1838–1846) of his father’s Journal. For the rest of his life he was a professor of chemistry, first in what is now the Sheffield Scientific School of Yale, then at Louisville University, and later in the Academic and Medical Departments at Yale. In 1858 he published “First Principles of Natural Philosophy or Physics”; and he was the author of many scientific memoirs, addresses, and reports. He was one of the pioneers in science-teaching in America, and his influence on scientific education was deep and abiding.

Joseph Henry.—Joseph Henry (1797–1878) was one of the most illustrious physicists of his day. Born and educated at Albany, New York, he began (1827) researches which resulted in important discoveries in the field of electro-magnetism, one of which made the telegraph possible. From 1832 till 1846 he was professor of natural philosophy in the College of New Jersey (Princeton), and from 1846 till his death was secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, which he had helped to organise. He published “Contributions to Electricity and Magnetism” (1839) and many papers, especially in the Smithsonian reports. A brilliant and profound investigator, he did signally important service in organising great scientific enterprises. “To Henry,” says Dr. Woodward, “more than to any other man, must be attributed the rise and the growth in America of the present public appreciation of the scientific work carried on by governmental aid.”

Alexander Dallas Bache.—Alexander Dallas Bache (1806–1867), a great-grandson of Benjamin Franklin, after graduating in 1825 at West Point, at the head of his class, at twenty-two resigned a lieutenant’s commission to become professor of natural philosophy and chemistry at the University of Pennsylvania. Having made a name for his researches on steam, magnetism, etc., he was called in 1843 to be superintendent of the United States Coast Survey, and performed his duties with marked efficiency. Gifted with quick apprehension and broad intelligence, he possessed great powers of leadership. He published nearly two hundred scientific papers, memoirs, and reports. “To him,” declared his eulogist Benjamin Gould, “the scientific progress of the nation was indebted more than to any other man who had trod her soil.”

Matthew Fontaine Maury.—Matthew F. Maury (1806–1873) is well known to students of meteorological science and also to the educational world. He was a Virginian of Huguenot extraction, who went to sea at nineteen and became not only a good sailor but also an authority on navigation. His “Treatise on Navigation” (1835) was favourably received abroad and was used as a text-book in the United States Navy. As “Harry Bluff” he published in The Southern Literary Messenger, about 1840, under the title of “Scraps from the Lucky-Bag,” a series of papers on nautical matters, which brought him fame and resulted in placing him in charge of the Depot of Charts and Instruments at Washington, an office which later became the Naval Observatory and Hydrographical Department. One of his first tasks was to compile some charts of winds and currents. These charts proved immensely valuable by shortening voyages and lowering the expense of commerce. His “Physical Geography of the Sea and its Meteorology” (1855) at once took the highest rank in its field, and the geographical text-books which he wrote in his later years have done great service to education and in a revised form still satisfy the needs of many schools. He was the author also of many pamphlets and official papers.

Josiah Parsons Cooke.—Josiah Parsons Cooke (1827–1894), a pioneer in chemical education, was born in Boston and graduated at Harvard in 1844. In 1851 he became professor of chemistry and mineralogy at Harvard. He did much to further the study of chemistry in colleges and was one of the first to urge the laboratory method of instruction. He published, among other things, “Chemical Problems and Reactions” (1853), “Religion and Chemistry” (1864), “The New Chemistry” (1871), and “The Credentials of Science the Warrant of Faith” (1888).

John William Draper.—John W. Draper (1811–1882) is known in the annals of science as a chemist and physiologist; he won eminence also as a historian. Born at St. Helens, near Liverpool, the son of a Wesleyan Methodist minister, he studied chemistry under Turner in London, and coming to America in 1833, graduated in medicine from the University of Pennsylvania in 1836. He now began investigating the chemical action of light, and published in 1844 a “Treatise on the Forces which Produce the Organisation of Plants.” His memoir “On the Production of Light by Heat” (1847), a valuable contribution to the subject of spectrum analysis, appeared thirteen years before Kirchoff’s celebrated memoir, which used to be thought of as marking the beginning of spectrum analysis. He was also the first to succeed (1839) in taking portraits of the human face by photography. In 1839 he became professor of chemistry, and in 1850 of physiology also, in the University of New York. His “Treatise on Human Physiology, Statical and Dynamical” (1856) at once took its place as a standard text-book. He wrote also a “Text-Book on Chemistry” (1846); a “Text-Book on Natural Philosophy” (1847); “History of the Conflict between Religion and Science” (1874), an able and comprehensive treatment of a vast subject; and “Scientific Memoirs” (1878), a collection of papers on radiant energy. Two of his sons, Henry and John Christopher, also became well known physiologists and chemists.

Charles Augustus Young.—Of the more recent astronomers of America, Charles A. Young (1834–1908) was one of the foremost. Born in Hanover, New Hampshire, the son of Professor Ira Young of Dartmouth College, he graduated from Dartmouth in 1853. From 1856 till 1866 he was professor of mathematics, astronomy, and natural philosophy in Western Reserve University. In the latter year he returned to Dartmouth as professor of natural philosophy and astronomy, remaining there till 1877, when he became professor of astronomy at Princeton. He was prominently connected with several important astronomical expeditions and produced some notable inventions, among them an automatic spectroscope which has been widely used by astronomers. He made some significant observations on the sun, including a verification by experiment of Doppler’s principle as applied to light, by which he was able to measure the velocity of the sun’s rotation. He also discovered the thin solar shell of gaseous matter called “the reversing layer.” He wrote “The Sun” in “The International Scientific Series” (1882), “A General Astronomy” (1889), “Elements of Astronomy” (1890), and “A Manual of Astronomy” (1902).

Robert Henry Thurston.—Distinguished as an educator, an inventor, and a writer on engineering subjects was Robert H. Thurston (1839–1903). He was born in Providence, Rhode Island, and graduated from Brown University in 1859. During the Civil War he served as an engineer in the Federal Navy; in 1865 he was appointed assistant professor of natural and experimental philosophy at the United States Naval Academy. In 1871 he became professor of engineering at the Stevens Institute of Technology, remaining here until 1885, when he was made director of Sibley College in Cornell University. His writings, always clear, exact, and authoritative, have circulated widely among engineers. They include “A History of the Growth of the Steam Engine” (1878, revised in 1901, and translated into French and German), “Materials of Engineering” (three volumes, 1882–1886), “Manual of the Steam Engine” (1890–1891), “Manual of Steam Boilers” (1890), with other valuable works, and about 250 scientific papers. Thurston served on several important government engineering commissions. Of him it has justly been said that “he made engineers better scientists, promoted engineering education, helped to put engineering upon a higher professional plane, and constantly was on the watch to dispel the fogs of prejudice by help of the truths of science.”

The Youmans Brothers.—The life of Edward Livingston Youmans (1821–1887) was spent chiefly in popularising science. Born in Albany County, New York, he inherited a strong bent toward scientific study. For many years he wrestled with threatening blindness, and was never well. His “Class-Book of Chemistry” (1851) was remarkably successful. “There was,” Mr. Fiske says of it, “a firm grasp of the philosophical principles underlying chemical phenomena, and the meaning and functions of the science were set forth in such a way as to charm the student and make him wish for more.” He spent many years in delivering lyceum lectures, for which he was well fitted. His “Handbook of Household Science” (1857) was a carefully written treatise on the applications of science to the problems of food, light, heat, and sanitation. Its popularity led him to plan a comprehensive “Household Cyclopædia” which he did not live to finish. Besides editing “The Correlation and Conservation of Forces” (1864), a series of expositions by Grove, Helmholtz, Mayer, Faraday, Liebig, and Carpenter, and “The Culture Demanded by Modern Life” (1867), a collection of addresses and arguments in favour of scientific education, Youmans published several addresses and papers, and did much to give the views of Darwin and Spencer a favourable reception in America. He was the originator and general editor of “The International Scientific Series,” of which fifty-seven volumes appeared in his lifetime. It was a difficult but eminently useful task to secure popular scientific books by masters; and the series of seventy-nine volumes has done much for education. Youmans was also the founder of The Popular Science Monthly (begun in 1872) and edited the first twenty-eight volumes.

While it was his main intent [to quote Mr. Fiske again] to give in popular form an account of the progress of the several departments of science, he never lost sight of the aim to show wherein the scientific method was applicable to the larger questions of life—of education, social relations, morals, government, and religion.

William Jay Youmans (1838–1901) first studied chemistry at Columbia and Yale and privately with his brother Edward, then took a medical course at New York University. After practising medicine for some three years, he became connected with The Popular Science Monthly, which he edited from 1887 till 1900. He wrote “Pioneers of Science in America” (1895).

Henry Carrington Bolton.—Henry Carrington Bolton (1843–1903) did much for the bibliography of chemistry; his “Select Bibliography of Chemistry, 1492–1892” (1893–1905) comprises over 12,000 titles in twenty-four languages. He also wrote many papers on the history of chemistry. His “Counting-out Rhymes of Children” (1888) gave him prominence as a folklorist, and he published also some important papers on various other subjects in folklore.

VII. THE PERIODICALS.

Their Importance.—No apology need be offered for including in this volume a section on the history of American periodicals. As Professor Smyth has well said, in speaking of the early magazines of Philadelphia, such a division “helps to exhibit the process of American literature as an evolution.” Much of our best literature made its first appearance in periodicals; and the remuneration received by authors from this source has great significance in the economics of literature. Likewise much of our best and most searching criticism, whether reprinted or not, appeared originally in newspapers and magazines, which have thus had a prominent part in the making of American literature. In 1810 there were only about thirty periodicals altogether; in 1900 there were 239 classed as general and literary, some of them having a considerable circulation on the other side of the Atlantic. In the brief space allotted to this section it will be impossible to do more than to mention a few of the most important literary periodicals; the full extent of the journalistic activity of the United States may be inferred from the fact that in 1900 over eight billion copies of periodicals were circulated, having a market value of nearly $225,000,000.

The Eighteenth Century.—The eighteenth century will not long detain us. Only ten years after Edward Cave had founded The Gentleman’s Magazine in London (1731), Andrew Bradford and Benjamin Franklin founded in Philadelphia the first monthly magazines in America. Of Bradford’s venture, The American Magazine, edited by John Webbe, only three numbers appeared; while Franklin published only six numbers of The General Magazine. In the course of the century several others appeared, among them The American Magazine and Historical Chronicle (Boston, 1743–1746); The Independent Reflector (New York, 1752–1753), among whose contributors were Governor William Livingston, John Morin Scott, and Aaron Burr; The American Magazine (Philadelphia, 1757–1758, revived in 1769), which Professor Tyler calls “by far the most admirable example of our literary periodicals in the colonial time,” edited by Rev. William Smith, first provost of the College of Philadelphia; The New American Magazine (Woodbridge, New Jersey, 1758–1760), edited by S. Nevil; The Royal American Magazine (Boston, 1774–1775); The Pennsylvania Magazine (Philadelphia, 1775–1776), edited by Thomas Paine, to which articles were sent by Francis Hopkinson, John Witherspoon, and William Smith; The Columbian Magazine (Philadelphia, 1786–1790), edited at first by Matthew Carey and later by Alexander J. Dallas, and changed in 1790 to The Universal Asylum (1790–1792; to this Benjamin Rush was a faithful contributor); The American Museum (Philadelphia, 1787–1792, 1798), for which Carey abandoned The Columbian and which was “the first really successful literary undertaking of the kind in America”; The Massachusetts Magazine (Boston, 1789–1796); The New York Magazine (1790–1797); The Farmers’ Museum (Walpole, New Hampshire, 1793–1799), of which Joseph Dennie, the editor from 1796 to 1799, boasted that “it is read by more than two thousand individuals, and has its patrons in Europe and on the banks of the Ohio”; and The Monthly Magazine and American Review (New York, 1799–1800), founded by Charles Brockden Brown, and carried on in 1801–1802 as The American Review and Literary Journal. But the reading public of those days was small, and other conditions were unfavourable to publishers; in consequence, almost none of these publications lived into the next century.

The Nineteenth Century.—Of the literary magazines established before 1850, only one or two have survived. Yet we now begin to see the periodicals exhibiting greater vitality; and gradually they come to deal more and more with native literature and to exhibit a greater self-reliance on the part of American writers. The first half of the century was the period in which the national spirit took deep root and made rapid growth; and this national spirit is fully reflected in the literature of the time.

In 1801 Joseph Dennie and John Dickins began to publish, in Philadelphia, The Port Folio, which was destined to live for twenty-six years. Among its contributors were John Blair Linn, author of “The Powers of Genius,” “The Death of Washington,” etc.; Robert H. Rose, author of “Sketches in Verse”; John Sanderson, who wrote a book of Parisian sketches entitled “The American in Paris”; Alexander Graydon; Gouverneur Morris; Joseph Hopkinson, author of “Hail, Columbia,” and of articles on Shakespeare; and Alexander Wilson, poet and ornithologist, whose works were edited by Alexander B. Grosart (Paisley, Scotland, 1876).

From 1803 to 1811, the Anthology Club maintained in Boston a sprightly magazine called The Anthology and Boston Review. The best minds of Boston contributed to it; among them George Ticknor, William Tudor, Joseph Buckminster, John Quincy Adams, Dr. John Sylvester, Edward Everett, and John Gardiner. The magazine never paid expenses; but the contributors cheerfully paid for their pleasure. The club did much to give Boston its literary prestige, and was the forerunner of the famous Boston Athenæum.

The Literary Magazine and American Register (Philadelphia, 1803–1808) was likewise founded by the novelist Brown, who published therein, among other things, his “Memoirs of Carwin, the Biloquist.”

Washington Irving began his literary career with the publication of Salmagundi, which he founded in New York in 1807, in conjunction with his brother William and James Kirke Paulding. The little sheet, in yellow covers, was issued by an eccentric publisher, David Longworth, the front of whose house was entirely hidden by a colossal painting of the crowning of Shakespeare. The magazine was modelled after Addison’s Spectator. Paulding was Launcelot Langstaff and Irving was Pindar Cockloft, the poet. “Our intention,” wrote the editors, “is simply to instruct the young, reform the old, correct the town, and castigate the age; this is an arduous task, and therefore we undertake it with confidence.” The work soon became popular throughout the United States for its clever reproductions of society foibles. After twenty numbers, however, it was discontinued, because, as Paulding said, “the publisher, with that liberality so characteristic of these modern Mæcenases, declined to concede to us a share of the profits, which had become considerable.” Twelve years later, Irving being then in Europe, Paulding attempted a second series (Philadelphia, May to August, 1820), which, though inferior to the first series, still contained some interesting pages.

The Select Reviews and Spirit of the Foreign Magazines, begun by Samuel Ewing in Philadelphia (1809), later became The Analectic Magazine (1812–1821). In 1813–1814 Irving was its editor and contributed to it some biographies of heroes of the War of 1812 and some of the essays afterwards collected in “The Sketch Book.” Other contributors were Gulian C. Verplanck, James K. Paulding, Alexander Wilson, and William Darlington. The Analectic published in July, 1819, the first lithograph made in America.

The Portico (Baltimore, 1815–1819) numbered among its contributors John Neal, whose lengthy review of Byron appeared as a serial. Neal continued to write for The Portico “until he knocked it on the head, it is thought, by an article on Free Agency.”

The Idle Man (New York, 1821–1822) was edited by Richard H. Dana the elder; in it were printed his novels “Tom Thornton” and “Paul Felton” and some contributions from Bryant and from Washington Allston.

The New York Mirror, a weekly, was begun in 1823 by General George P. Morris and Samuel Woodworth, the author of “The Old Oaken Bucket.” Woodworth soon gave way to Theodore S. Fay and he in turn (1831) to Nathaniel P. Willis. Morris and Willis conducted it with great success until 1842. Fay contributed “The Little Genius,” satirical letters on New York society, and “The Minute Book,” letters from Europe. Willis spent some years abroad as foreign correspondent of the paper (1832–1836), his letters being eagerly read and widely copied. Morris and Willis subsequently conducted The New Mirror (New York, 1843–1844), which in October, 1844, became a daily, and The Home Journal (New York, from 1846 on), which as Town and Country still continues.

The Atlantic Magazine (New York, 1824–1825), edited by Robert C. Sands, was continued till 1826 as The New York Review and Athenæum Magazine. In its later form it was edited by Henry J. Anderson and William Cullen Bryant. In it appeared many of Bryant’s poems and some of his prose, as well as contributions by Longfellow, Dana, Willis, Bancroft, and Caleb Cushing. In March, 1826, the Review was merged with The New York Literary Gazette. In July this was in turn combined with The United States Literary Gazette, which had been founded in Boston in 1825 and edited by Theophilus Parsons, the new title being The United States Review and Literary Gazette. James G. Carter, and later Charles Folsom, were the Boston editors, and Bryant was the New York editor. The periodical did not long survive.

The American Monthly Magazine (New York, 1829–1831) was established and edited by Nathaniel P. Willis, who enlisted a number of younger writers, such as Richard Hildreth, Park Benjamin, Isaac McLellan, Albert Pike (“Hymns to the Gods”), Rufus Dawes, and Mrs. Sigourney. In 1831 the Magazine was absorbed by The New York Mirror, of which Willis now became an associate editor.

The Illinois Monthly Magazine (Vandalia, Illinois, 1830–1832), edited and mainly written by James Hall, was the earliest literary publication in the West; it was superseded by The Western Monthly Magazine (Cincinnati, 1833–1836), edited by Timothy Flint.

One of the most popular of the Philadelphia magazines was Godey’s Lady’s Book (1830–1877), which as early as 1859 circulated 98,500 copies, and which published compositions by Paulding, Park Benjamin, Holmes, Irving, Poe, Bayard Taylor, Longfellow, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Simms, Willis, Buchanan Read, Thomas Dunn English, and Lydia H. Sigourney. Poe’s contribution on “The Literati of New York,” published in its columns in 1846, created a great sensation at the time. For more than thirty years Godey’s was edited by Mrs. Sarah J. Hale, who is also famous as the author of “Mary had a little lamb,” and through whose exertions our national Thanksgiving Day was secured.

The New England Magazine, established in Boston in 1831 by Joseph T. and Edwin Buckingham, published contributions from Hildreth, Park Benjamin, Whittier, Holmes (who published here the first two papers, never by authority reprinted, of his “Autocrat” series), Longfellow, William and Andrew Peabody, George S. Hillard (“Literary Portraits” and “Selections from the Papers of an Idler”), and other eminent writers. In 1835 Park Benjamin took it to New York and continued it till 1838 as The American Monthly Magazine.

The North American Quarterly Magazine (Philadelphia, 1833–1838) was conducted by Sumner Lincoln Fairfield, author of “The Cities of the Plain,” and of an unpublished poem, “The Last Night of Pompeii” (finished in 1830), from which he alleged that Bulwer, to whom he sent the manuscript, stole the plot of his “Last Days of Pompeii.”

Much more successful was The Knickerbacker or New-York Monthly Magazine, founded in the same year and quietly changed with the seventh number to The Knickerbocker. The founder was Charles Fenno Hoffman, who edited three numbers. Some contributors were Harry Franco, Bryant, Irving (“Crayon Papers”), Longfellow, Lewis Gaylord Clark (for a time the editor), William L. Stone, the brothers Duyckinck, Frederick S. Cozzens, Simms, Park Benjamin, John L. Stephens (letters from Egypt), and Parkman (“The Oregon Trail”). With some exceptions it must be said that the contents of The Knickerbocker were not of very great merit; and in its later years there were too many stories on the order of “Carl Almendinger’s Office, or, The Mysteries of Chicago,” which ran as a serial in 1862. In 1864 the title was The American Monthly Knickerbocker, and from July till October, 1865, when publication was suspended, the title was The Fœderal American.

The Southern Literary Messenger, published monthly at Richmond, Virginia, between 1834 and 1864, exerted a marked influence upon the literary taste of the whole South. In it were first published many of Poe’s stories and criticisms, and he was the editor of the second volume. Other contributors were Paulding, Park Benjamin, John W. Draper, Willis, Henry C. Lea, R. H. Stoddard, Simms, John B. Dabney, Matthew F. Maury, Philip Pendleton, and John Esten Cooke, Henry Timrod, Paul H. Hayne, Aldrich, Moncure D. Conway, Thomas Dunn English, John P. Kennedy, James Barron Hope (“Henry Ellen”), and W. Gordon McCabe.

In 1837 William E. Burton, the comedian, established in Philadelphia The Gentleman’s Magazine to do for his sex what Godey’s was doing for the ladies. Beginning with July, 1839, Poe became joint editor. The next year Burton sold out to George R. Graham, who combined the magazine with The Casket (begun by Samuel Coate Atkinson in 1827) to form Graham’s Lady’s and Gentleman’s Magazine. For years Graham’s was the most famous and truly national periodical in America. Graham understood the reading public as did few other men. He paid contributors liberally for those days, and collected a brilliant list of writers, including every name well known in letters at the time except Irving, who confined himself to The Knickerbocker. To Graham’s Longfellow contributed his “Spanish Student,” “Childhood,” “The Builders,” “The Belfry of Bruges,” “The Arsenal at Springfield,” “Nuremberg,” etc. Poe contributed “The Mask of the Red Death,” “The Murders in the Rue Morgue,” “The Conqueror Worm,” “Life in Death,” and some minor pieces. Here were first published also many of Hawthorne’s “Twice-Told Tales.” Simms, Paulding, Geo. H. Boker, Henry W. Herbert, Robert T. Conrad, E. P. Whipple, and John G. Saxe were “principal contributors.” Lowell and Bayard Taylor were editorial writers. Cooper received $1800, then a very high price, for “The Islets of the Gulf, or Rose Budd,” later republished as “Jack Tier, or The Florida Reefs,” and $1000 for a series of biographies of distinguished naval commanders. Nathaniel P. Willis wrote much between 1843 and 1851. In 1852, Graham boasted that in the decade previous he had paid American contributors between eighty and ninety thousand dollars. The circulation of the magazine for a long time was 40,000 copies. About 1854 Graham sold out. In competition with Harper’s and Putnam’s, Graham’s soon declined. In 1859 its name was changed to The American Monthly, and it quickly disappeared.

In 1839 Willis began, in connection with Dr. T. O. Porter, to issue a weekly, The Corsair, from the basement of the Astor House, New York. Willis was the chief writer, contributing romantic stories, dramatic criticism, letters from Europe entitled “Jottings Down in London,” and gossip. While in England he met Thackeray, whom he induced to contribute eight letters. In all, fifty-two numbers were printed, the last dated March 7, 1840.

The Transcendental Movement, which will be discussed elsewhere, found expression in 1840 in a Boston quarterly called The Dial, which flourished till 1844, and which was edited successively by George Ripley, Margaret Fuller, and Emerson. The last contributed more than thirty prose articles and poems, among them “The Conservative,” “Chardon Street and Bible Convention,” “The Transcendentalist,” and in verse “The Problem,” “The Sphinx,” and “Woodnotes.” Bronson Alcott sent his “Orphic Sayings,” the mystery of some of which has never been fathomed. Other writers were Theodore Parker, George Ripley, Thoreau, James Freeman Clarke, William H. and William Ellery Channing, Eliot Cabot, John S. Dwight, Christopher P. Cranch, Mrs. Ellen Hooper, and Charles A. Dana. “Conceived and carried on in a spirit of boundless hope and enthusiasm,” the magazine encountered much ridicule among the Philistines. The Knickerbocker said of the first number:

It is to be devoted to that refinement upon common-sense literature, just now so much in vogue at the East; which, like the memorable science of Sir Piercie Shafton, shall indoctrinate the dull in intellectuality, the vulgar in nobility, and give that “unutterable perfection of human utterance”; that eloquence which no other eloquence is sufficient to praise; that art which, in fine, when we call it literary Euphuism, we bestow upon it its richest panegyric.

Yet in spite of such strictures, the contents of The Dial are now immensely significant of the social agitation then going on in New England; and much of its matter has become a part of our permanent literature.

The New World, a large weekly established in New York by Park Benjamin (1840–1845), reprinted much from the English magazines, but included also contributions from Epes and John Osborne Sargent, James Aldrich, Herbert, Charles Lanman, Edward S. Gould, Charles Eames (editor for a time), and John Jay. George P. Putnam, the publisher, was for some years its London correspondent.

It was in Peterson’s Ladies’ National Magazine (a fashion journal begun in Philadelphia in 1841) that Frances Hodgson Burnett published her first story, “Ethel’s Sir Lancelot” (November, 1868). The magazine, long popular among readers of light literature, was a few years since merged with The Argosy.

The Union Magazine (New York, 1847–1848), edited by Mrs. Caroline M. Kirkland, was bought by John Sartain, the engraver, and William Sloanaker, who had withdrawn from the managership of Graham’s, and reappeared in Philadelphia (1849–1852) as Sartain’s Union Magazine of Literature and Art, attaining great popularity. It published works by Longfellow (“The Blind Girl of Castel Cuillé,” “Resignation”), Boker, Mrs. Sigourney, Lucy Larcom, Henry T. Tuckerman, Poe (“The Bells”), Park Benjamin, R. H. Stoddard, and Charles G. Leland.

Harper’s New Monthly Magazine (New York), established by the Messrs. Harper in June, 1850, has long enjoyed a deservedly large circulation. For a considerable time it contained chiefly articles, especially fiction, reprinted from English periodicals. In later years it has included much more from American writers, and its contents have in general been of a high order of merit. Its records of travel and of scientific progress have been valuable. For many years the “Easy Chair,” conducted by George William Curtis, and later by William D. Howells, has been an interesting feature. In Harper’s first appeared Howells’ “Annie Kilburn” and “Their Silver Wedding Journey,” Warner’s “Studies of the Great West” and “A Little Journey in the World,” Constance F. Woolson’s “Jupiter Lights,” “East Angels,” and “Anne,” Poulteney Bigelow’s “White Man’s Africa,” Stockton’s “Bicycle of Cathay” and “The Great Stone of Sardis,” John Fox, Jr.’s “Kentuckians,” Stephen Crane’s “Whilomville Stories,” Mark Twain’s “Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc,” Woodrow Wilson’s “Colonies and Nation,” Mary E. Wilkins’ “Portion of Labor,” Mary Johnston’s “Sir Mortimer,” and Margaret Deland’s “Awakening of Helena Richie.” The International Magazine, founded by Rufus W. Griswold in New York in 1850, was two years later merged with Harper’s.

Putnam’s Monthly Magazine began publication in New York in 1853. Its earlier editors were Charles F. Briggs (whose pen name was “Harry Franco”), Parke Godwin, George W. Curtis, and George P. Putnam. Among the more important of the early contributions may be mentioned “Shakespeare’s Scholar” by Richard Grant White, “Early Years in Europe” by George H. Calvert, “The Potiphar Papers” and “Prue and I” by George W. Curtis, a series of political essays by Parke Godwin, “Fireside Travels” and “A Moosehead Journal” by James Russell Lowell, the “Sparrowgrass Papers” by Frederick S. Cozzens, “Cape Cod” by Henry W. Thoreau, “Wensley” by Edmund Quincy, and “Israel Potter” by Herman Melville. Putnam’s was one of the first of American magazines which restricted its pages to original contributions, and which gave special attention to the encouragement of the work of American writers. Published till 1857 and from 1868 till 1870, it was revived in 1906 as Putnam’s Monthly, under the editorial direction of Joseph B. Gilder and George H. Putnam. Putnam’s is still to be described as a literary magazine, although space is given also to illustrated articles on popular topics. Putnam’s arranges with certain of the English magazines, such as The Cornhill Magazine and The Fortnightly Review, to share contributors, English as well as American. The essays of Mrs. Richmond Ritchie (Thackeray’s daughter) and of Mr. Arthur C. Benson, for instance, have, under such an arrangement, been published simultaneously in The Cornhill and in Putnam’s.

The year 1857 is memorable for the founding of The Atlantic Monthly by the publishing firm of Phillips & Sampson of Boston. James Russell Lowell became the first editor, accepting the post on condition that Dr. Holmes, who suggested the name, should be engaged as the first contributor. Among those who wrote for the first number were Longfellow, Lowell, Emerson, Motley, Holmes (who began “The Autocrat”), Whittier, Charles Eliot Norton, J. T. Trowbridge, Harriet Beecher Stowe, and Parke Godwin. Most of these were already well known authors. The list of contributors to The Atlantic during the half-century of its life includes all of the most illustrious of American writers—not only of New England, but of all parts of the country. In religious thought its attitude has been reverent but liberal. The achievements of science have been set forth by men like Agassiz, Percival Lowell, Simon Newcomb, John Trowbridge, George F. Wright, and George H. Darwin. The new political and economic questions have been discussed by such men as President Roosevelt, former President Cleveland, Richard Olney, Woodrow Wilson, Carl Schurz, John W. Foster, Henry Loomis Nelson, Edward M. Shepard, Benjamin Kidd, John Jay Chapman, and Thomas Nelson Page. The fiction of The Atlantic has been produced mainly by American writers—Hawthorne (“Septimius Felton”), Henry James, Jr. (“Roderick Hudson,” “The Portrait of a Lady”), Aldrich (“The Stillwater Tragedy,” “Prudence Palfrey”), Bret Harte, Howells (“Their Wedding Journey,” “A Chance Acquaintance,” “The Lady of the Aroostook”), Mark Twain, Marion Crawford (“A Roman Singer,” “Paul Patoff,” “Don Orsino”), Stockton (“The House of Martha”), S. Weir Mitchell (“In War Time”), Hopkinson Smith (“Caleb West”), Cable (“Bylow Hill”), Paul Leicester Ford (“The Story of an Untold Love”), Mary Johnston (“To Have and to Hold,” “Audrey”), Sarah Orne Jewett (“The Tory Lover”), Margaret Deland (“Sidney,” “Philip and His Wife”), Kate Douglas Wiggin (“Penelope’s Progress”), and many others. An equally brilliant list might be made of the essayists whose best work has made its initial appearance in the form of Atlantic articles. The editors have been Lowell (1857–1861), James T. Fields, of the firm of Ticknor & Fields, then the publishers (1861–1871), William Dean Howells (1871–1880), Thomas Bailey Aldrich (1880–1890), Horace E. Scudder (1890–1897), Walter H. Page (1897–1899), and Bliss Perry—an illustrious roll. The Atlantic has never changed its original purpose.

It is still [to quote a recent writer] an American magazine for American readers.... It holds that the most important service which an American magazine can perform is the interpretation of this country to itself, by the promotion of sympathy between the different sections of our varied population, the frank examination of our national characteristics, the study of our perplexing problems, the encouragement of our art and literature, and the reinforcement of those moral and religious beliefs upon which depends the success of our experiment in self-government.

These ideals largely explain the success and permanence of The Atlantic. The Galaxy, founded in New York in 1866, after furnishing for several years an entertaining literary and scientific miscellany, was in 1878 incorporated with The Atlantic.

Lippincott’s Magazine, established in Philadelphia in 1868, continues to devote its chief energies to fiction, though it has also published some notable poetry. Here appeared Lanier’s “Corn,” Edward Kearsley’s “CampFire Lyrics,” and some of the verse of Emma Lazarus, Maurice Thompson, Paul H. Hayne, Celia Thaxter, and Philip Bourke Marston.

The Overland Monthly (San Francisco, 1868–1875, 1883 to the present time) has faithfully mirrored the picturesque and stirring life of the Far West. It absorbed The Californian (1880–1882). The first five volumes were edited by Bret Harte, and a large number of his stories, probably forming his best literary work, first appeared in its columns.

Old and New (Boston, 1870–1875) was conducted by Edward Everett Hale with the intention of “squeezing from the Old its lessons for the New” and of combining amusing with instructive literature after the manner of the Revue des Deux Mondes.

In 1870, Dr. Josiah G. Holland and Roswell B. Smith projected Scribner’s Monthly (New York), and for eleven years Dr. Holland was its editor. In 1881 it was changed to The Century Magazine and under the editorship of Richard Watson Gilder has taken high rank as a distinctively popular magazine. It has given special attention to popular history, and its literary, historical, and scientific articles, generally substantial and meritorious, have appealed to a wide range of readers. Like Harper’s, it has drawn upon all of the leading writers, for example Harte (“Gabriel Conroy”), Cable (“The Grandissimes,” “Dr. Sevier”), Howells (“A Modern Instance,” “A Woman’s Reason,” “Silas Lapham”), Stockton (“Rudder Grange,” “The Merry Chanter,” “The Hundredth Man”), Boyesen (“Falconberg”), John Hay (“The Bread-Winners”), Henry James, Jr. (“Confidence,” “The Bostonians”), Eugene Schuyler (“Peter the Great”), Joel Chandler Harris (“Uncle Remus”), Hamlin Garland (“Her Mountain Lover”), Mary Hallock Foote (“The Led-Horse Claim,” “Cœur d’Alene”), Marion Crawford (“Via Crucis”), Mark Twain (“Pudd’nhead Wilson”), S. Weir Mitchell (“Characteristics,” “Hugh Wynne”). Many poems of merit have also been printed in The Century.

In 1887, Scribner’s Magazine was established by Charles Scribner’s Sons, and has since taken rank as among the first of American monthlies. It devotes proportionately more space to literature than is given by its competitor, The Century Magazine, and pays less attention to so-called popular subjects. Like The Century, it contains illustrations, which are characterised by a high artistic standard. Scribner’s is under the editorial management of Mr. Edward L. Burlingame. Like The Century, it is published in London as well as in New York.

Among the other literary periodicals established within the last quarter-century are The Bay State Monthly (Boston, 1884–1885), which became in 1886 The New England Magazine, and which confines itself chiefly to the history and literature of New England; The Forum (New York, since 1886), devoted to the discussion of present-day questions; The Cosmopolitan (New York, since 1886), a typical popular monthly miscellany; The Arena (New York, since 1889), which has been a fearless exponent of advanced liberal thought; Munsey’s Magazine (New York, since 1891), well illustrated, and claiming a circulation of over 600,000 copies; McClure’s Magazine, established by S. S. McClure in New York in 1893, which by the end of its first year circulated 150,000 copies; The Bookman (New York), edited since 1895 by Harry Thurston Peck; and The Reader (Indianapolis, Indiana, 1902), now merged in Putnam’s Monthly.

The Annuals.—In the twenties and thirties of the last century, too, the annuals were popular in America as in England. Almost all of the leading authors contributed to them. Among the best were The Talisman (New York, 1828–1830), written by Bryant, Verplanck, and Sands, and illustrated by Inman, Samuel F. B. Morse, and others; and The Token (Boston, 1828–1842), edited by S. G. Goodrich (“Peter Parley”) and (in 1829) N. P. Willis, in which appeared contributions by Longfellow, Hawthorne (some “Twice-Told Tales”), Mrs. Child, Mrs. Sigourney, and Mrs. Hale. In general, however, the American, like the British annuals, included a large amount of mediocre writing.

The Reviews.—The American reviews begin with The American Review of History and Politics, founded by Robert Walsh (Philadelphia, 1811–1813). In 1815 The North American Review and Miscellaneous Journal was founded in Boston and has consequently had the longest life of all the periodicals now in existence. Its founder, William Tudor, was, we have seen, a member of the Anthology Club, and a writer of fine taste, who later did good service in a diplomatic career in South America. The Review was at first published every two months in numbers of 150 pages each; after the seventh volume it appeared quarterly in numbers of 250 pages each and at the same time ceased to publish poetry and general news, thus conforming more closely to the leading type of contemporary British reviews. The most voluminous contributors to the first sixty volumes were Judge Willard Phillips (editor in 1817), Tudor, Edward and Alexander Everett (editors in 1819–1822 and 1830–1836 respectively), Jared Sparks (editor in 1822–1830), Bancroft, Francis Bowen (editor in 1843–1853), Nathan Hale, George S. Hillard, John G. Palfrey (editor in 1836–1843), Oliver, William, and Andrew Peabody, Caleb Cushing, Cornelius C. Felton, William H. Prescott, and Charles Francis Adams. Much of Whipple’s criticism originally appeared here. Among recent editors have been Lowell, Charles Eliot Norton, Henry Adams, and Henry Cabot Lodge. Bryant’s “Thanatopsis” first appeared here in September, 1817. The book reviews, especially between 1850 and 1870, were probably better than those usually found in any other American periodical. In recent years the character of The North American has largely changed. It now offers monthly a collection of signed articles chiefly on current political and social problems.

Other early reviews were The Christian Examiner and Theological Review (Boston, 1824–1869, in 1870 merged with Old and New), in which appeared some of the most virile criticism of the time; The American Quarterly Review (Philadelphia, 1827–1837), another of Walsh’s ventures and a quarterly of merit; The Southern Review (Charleston, 1828–1832, revived 1842–1855), started by William Elliott and Hugh S. Legare; The Western Review (Cincinnati, 1828–1830), founded by Timothy Flint; The New York Review (1837–1842), established by Francis L. Hawks and later edited by Joseph G. Cogswell and Caleb S. Henry; The Boston Quarterly Review (1838–1842), edited by Orestes A. Brownson, and merged with The United States Magazine and Democratic Review (Washington and New York, 1837–1852), which became The United States Review (1853–1859); The New Englander (New Haven, Conn., 1843–1892), for religious, historical, and literary articles; The American Whig Review (New York, 1845–1852), started by George H. Colton and later edited by Dr. James D. Whelpley; The Literary World (New York, 1847–1853), ably edited by Evart A. Duyckinck; The Massachusetts Quarterly Review (Boston, 1847–1850), edited by Theodore Parker; The New York Quarterly Review (1852–1853); and The National Quarterly Review (New York, 1860–1880).

The Nation was founded as a weekly in New York in 1865 by Edwin Lawrence Godkin, who remained its editor for a third of a century. Since 1881, when Mr. Godkin assumed the editorial control of the New York Evening Post, The Nation has been issued as the weekly edition of The Evening Post. During the forty-three years of its existence, The Nation has held a leading position in American criticism and also as an exponent of American politics considered from an independent point of view. From 1881 to 1905, The Nation was under the editorial management of the late Wendell Phillips Garrison. It is now under the direction of Mr. Hammond Lamont. The literary department is conducted by Mr. Paul E. More, who had, before assuming this editorial post, made a name for himself in literary criticism.

The International Review (New York, 1874–1883) printed many articles of solid worth. The Dial, semi-monthly, was established in Chicago in 1880 by Francis F. Browne. It has made a noteworthy reputation for a high standard of American criticism, and has retained the services of some of the ablest of American reviewers. The Critic was founded, as a weekly literary journal, in New York, in 1881, by Jeannette L. Gilder and Joseph B. Gilder. It did good work in literary criticism and in the presentation of literary news for twenty-five years, when it was absorbed by Putnam’s Monthly. The Sewanee Review, a quarterly founded at the University of the South, Sewanee, Tennessee, in 1892, and The South Atlantic Quarterly, founded at Durham, North Carolina, in 1902, are publishing the best literary criticism in the South to-day.