nd uncanny
incidents and in adventures in which the horrible is sometimes
dangerously near the ludicrous. Brown had not a particle of humor. Of
literary art there is little, of invention considerable; and while the
style is to a certain extent unformed and immature, it is neither feeble
nor obscure, and admirably serves the author's purpose of creating what
the children call a "crawly" impression. There is undeniable power in
many of his scenes, notably in the descriptions of the yellow fever in
Philadelphia, found in the romance of "Arthur Mervyn." There is,
however, over all of them a false and pallid light; his characters are
seen in a spectral atmosphere. If a romance is to be judged not by
literary rules, but by its power of making an impression upon the mind,
such power as a ghastly story has, told by the chimney-corner on a
tempestuous night, then Mr. Brown's romances cannot be dismissed without
a certain recognition. But they never represented anything
distinctively American, and their influence upon American literature is
scarcely discernible.

Subsequently Mr. Brown became interested in political subjects, and
wrote upon them with vigor and sagacity. He was the editor of two
short-lived literary periodicals which were nevertheless useful in their
day: "The Monthly Magazine and American Review," begun in New York in
the spring of 1798, and ending in the autumn of 1800; and "The Literary
Magazine and American Register," which was established in Philadelphia
in 1803. It was for this periodical that Mr. Brown, who visited Irving
in that year, sought in vain to enlist the service of the latter, who,
then a youth of nineteen, had a little reputation as the author of some
humorous essays in the "Morning Chronicle" newspaper.

Charles Brockden Brown died, the victim of a lingering consumption, in
1810, at the age of thirty-nine. In pausing for a moment upon his
incomplete and promising career, we should not forget to recall the
strong impression he made upon his contemporaries as a man of genius,
the testimony to the charm of his conversation and the goodness of his
heart, nor the pioneer service he rendered to letters before the
provincial fetters were at all loosened.

The advent of Cooper, Bryant, and Halleck, was some twenty years after
the recognition of Irving, but thereafter the stars thicken in our
literary sky, and when in 1832 Irving returned from his long sojourn in
Europe, he found an immense advance in