An Outline Sketch of American Literature

r younger, were still contemporaries. Irving's Knickerbocker's History of l/ew York, 1809, was published within the recollection of some yet living, and the venerable poet, Richard H. Dana?Irving's junior by only four years?survived to 1879, when the youngest of the generation of writers that now occupy public attention had already won their spurs. Bryant, whose Thanatopsis was printed in 1816, lived down to 1878. He saw the beginnings of our national literature, and he saw almost as much of the latest phase of it as we see to-day in this year 1887. Still, even within the limits of a single life-time, there have been progress and change. And so, while it will happen that the consideration of writers a part of whose work falls between the dates at the head of this chapter may be postponedto subsequent chapters, we may in a general way follow the sequence of time. The period between the close of the second war with England, in 1815, and the great financial :rash of 1837, has been called, in language attributed to President Monroe, "the era of good feeling." It was a time of peace and prosperity, of rapid growth in population and rapid extension of territory. The new nation was entering upon its vast estates and beginning to realize its manifest destiny. The peace with Great Britain, by calling off the Canadian Indians and the other tribes in alliance with England, had opened up the North-west to settlement. Ohio had been admitted as a State in 1802 ; but at the t... --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.